Pod Save America - “Free Steve Bannon!”

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

Steve Bannon surrenders to the feds while Donald Trump admits yet again an attempted coup, former Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee joins to discuss inflation and the economy, and the DC gossip machine trains its focus on the relationship between Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and what it all means for 2024.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun restrictions in states, overturning Roe v. Wade, and severely threatening our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Lippman, and each week on Strict Scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes of Strict Scrutiny every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, Steve Bannon surrenders to the feds while Donald Trump admits yet again an attempted coup. Did not surrender. Okay, Tommy. Okay. Unbelievable. did not surrender. Okay, Tommy.

Okay. Unbelievable. Also, former Obama economic advisor Austin Goolsbee talks to us about inflation and the economy and cryptocurrency. You guys got into crypto? Yeah, because of Tommy.

Yeah, we took a little bong hit detour. It was fun. It was great. And the DC gossip machine has trained its focus on the relationship between Joe Biden, Kamala Harris,

and what it all means for 2024. But first, check out the latest episode of Offline, which you can find right here in the Pod Save America feed. This week, I interviewed international soccer star Megan Rapinoe about social media, mental health, and the pressures that athletes live with in today's extremely online world. We also talk about whether she should run for office. It's a fun conversation. She should. She should. That's what I told her. also talk about whether she should run for office. It's a fun conversation. She should. She should. That's what I told her.

Check it out. She should. And love it. Tell us about your fantastic show at the New York Comedy Festival. We did such a great show in New York. It was so much fun. We had Bridget Everett, Wyatt Cenac, Ronan Farrow, Cal Penn, Busy Phillips, the Lucas Brothers.

It was awesome. What a lineup. It was a really great show. There were a lot of people on that stage. It was really fun. All right. Let's get to it. I want to start with some tough news about Tommy's favorite podcast host via a statement from the FBI.

It's not about Dan. From the FBI. On Monday, November 15th, Stephen K. Bannon self-surrendered to the FBI and was arrested and processed on two counts of contempt of Congress. Bannon was indicted by a grand jury for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas for testimony and documents related to his conversations with Donald Trump about the attempted coup and insurrection that followed the 2020 election. Trump has directed all his former aides to defy these subpoenas, and ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows may get charged as well. As for Trump himself, he's busy doing what he does best, admitting everything he's been accused of. In an interview with ABC's Jonathan Karl for his upcoming book Betrayal, which reveals new details about how the White House pressured Vice President Mike Pence to steal the election,

Trump basically copped to everything. There was a report, and excuse my language, not mine, it was in the report, that you talked to him that morning and you said you could be a patriot or you could be a... Did you really say that or is that an incorrect... I wouldn't dispute it. Really? I wouldn't dispute it. Were you worried about him in that siege?

Were you worried about his safety? No, I thought he was well protected and I had heard that he was in good shape. No, I think... Because you heard those chants. That was terrible. He was, you know, the... He could have...

Well, the people were very angry. They were saying, hang Mike Pence. Because it's common sense. How can you... If you know a vote is fraudulent, right? Yeah. How can you pass on a fraudulent vote to congress what a cool boss yeah really they do the interview in a dining hall what was going on

back there where was he interviewing i'm just glad uh carl went for it you know he didn't he didn't bleep it and he didn't bleep it himself he waited for others to bleep it you know yeah yeah yeah imagine apologizing to donald trump for using the p word i know come on come on who are we performing i've called both my sons that twice today he said uh let's start with bannon tommy yep how you holding up uh what's what's the vibe on the war room podcast it was a tough weekend um a lot of denial a lot of anger a lot of bargaining um kind of working through it uh the the vibe on the bannon podcast was defiant bannon didn't host today for obvious reasons but uh guest host peter navarro's their newish line

and i've been listening long enough that i i noticed a difference in the line today was that the january 6th movement was a peaceful strategy that Bannon came up with. They gave him credit for coming up with, which is an interesting legal strategy. But the idea was to challenge the results in the House, send them back to the battleground states, and then draw attention to election irregularities. And that peaceful effort was disrupted by violence that was instigated by, wait for it, FBI informants. And then Pence betrayed Trump because his Koch brothers' plant chief of staff, Mark Short, wanted to clear the field for Pence in 2024. That is like, it's not verbatim, but that is all that was said today. I mean, can I just say that even that giant sack of bullshit is filled with lies?

Because the actual strategy now detailed in several memos was to not send it back to the states to make awareness of what happened. It was to send it to the House so that the number of state legislatures in the House represented in the House is Republicans have more of them and that they could just throw the election to Donald Trump. They weren't they weren't challenging the election. They were going to steal the election. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's the point, right, That that Mike Pence prevented them from doing that. They I don't think Steve Bannon disagrees with you. I think they wanted to win the election, you know, in a new way. But and Mike Pence, let's just call it a new way to win. That's what I mean. That's how I don't I

don't I think they like these memos. I think the only part they're now trying to create distance with is the instigation of actual physical violence. That's the only part I think they like these memos. I think the only part they're now trying to create distance with is the instigation of actual physical violence. That's the only part I think they don't want to be associated with. They want to be associated with every other piece of it up to and including throwing out the electors. They have no that's that's great to them. Yeah, I think like I think Bannon could be in some real legal trouble, but from a PR

and a personal branding perspective, like he's a pig in shit. And I think this is what you need to understand about how the band and media ecosystem views the world, like the territory that's been plowed for this, this day. They believe that the January 6th insurrectionists are political prisoners who are being held because that's what Nancy Pelosi wants. They think that Trump supporters were arrested for trespassing or other crimes are innocent patriots who are basically set up by these FBI informants. It sounds crazy to us, but that's what they hear day after day. The other interesting thing is that Marjorie Taylor Greene has woken up to the reality that prison conditions are really bad.

And so they're very upset about that all of a sudden. But Bannon's arrest will be folded into this broader martyrdom narrative. And it is all framed in these apocalyptic terms. And somehow China's behind a lot of it in their world. So Bannon doesn't speak for the entire MAGA universe necessarily. There's all sorts of slivers of this cult, but like this is a lot of people are hearing these messages all day, every day. I think that's exactly right. You know, David Frum had a good piece about this in the Atlantic where he was basically saying, this isn't a smart legal strategy from Bannon, but that's not the point.

It's not a legal strategy. It's a political strategy. And the other side, all of us need to recognize that because if we've learned anything from Mueller or from impeachment, it was like Mueller will save us or the law will save us. But like that's not the game that they're playing here. And he writes the fight to uphold law cannot be won by law itself because the value of law in the face of violence is the very thing that's being contested. The fight ahead is an inescapably political fight to be won by whichever side can assemble the larger and more mobilized coalition. That's what Bannon and the rest of them understand about this. And the legal stuff is all sort of small ball.

It's a powerful political story they're telling. One thing that people have brought up, Republicans are now saying is, well, Democrats are doing this now. But if Republicans take the House, like we're going to get revenge. You know, we're going to start enforcing congressional subpoenas and we're going to start, you know, prosecuting Democrats. What are you worried about that, Lovett? Am I worried about congressional subpoenas being enforced? Not nearly as much as I'm worried about a world in which congressional subpoenas don't mean anything ever, no matter who's president. You know, look, what changed here actually is not who's in charge of Congress.

Democrats were in charge of Congress during the Trump administration. What changed is who's in charge of the DOJ. And what's happening now is we finally have a DOJ that is responsive to congressional subpoenas being upheld, basically upholding the law. You know, without that, without the intervention of DOJ, you know, Don McGahn's subpoena took two years to come to a settlement. The Eric Holder subpoena from the Obama administration took seven years to play out. Like, we've had this problem for a long time of the inability of Congress to exert its power to enforce subpoenas against the executive branch. This is the first contempt of Congress charge since 1983. And I believe it's no one has ever been prosecuted before for contempt of Congress when executive

privilege was asserted. Now, in this instance, executive privilege being asserted is ludicrous because Steve Bannon left the White House in 2017. But, you know, it's precedent setting. Yeah. I mean, and I will say, too, that it's not like DOJ just did this on their own. Right. There was the FBI investigated. A grand jury was convened. The grand jury indicted Steve Bannon. And then basically the DOJ said, OK, we will allow it to move forward. Right. And they're going to try to make this into like political retribution. But, you know, this was all sort of followed by the law here. Right. And it is so egregious. I mean, that's that is, I think, where, you know,

Bannon clearly had a choice. Right. It was to defy the whole thing, declare it a farce, be a political prisoner. He could have shown up, answered certain questions, not answered others, invoked privilege in a kind of completely unacceptable way, answered others, invoked privilege in a kind of completely unacceptable way, but in a less kind of dramatic and glaring and defiant way than he did here, right? Maybe that would have been a better legal strategy, but it wouldn't have been a better strategy for him as a person because he'd still be in the same place he is right now, which is defying a congressional subpoena. But now he gets to do it in a fun way on courthouse steps, calling the whole thing

a farce, making content for Tommy. And again, this is all about content. Keep in mind, everything happening now in this country is content based. Yes, it's a content based democracy. Absolutely. Democracy on the edge of that. And the content creation is fully integrated with the monetization of said content because you create this apocalyptic

the world's going to end and then you sell gold to scared old people. That's literally what happens on the show. I will say the one thing that does worry like we are in this position where Bannon has been indicted because the Department of Justice was willing to pursue this when if it was still a Trump DOJ, they wouldn't have been. One of the reforms that Congress has been talking about is a way to kind of fast track subpoenas through the judicial system without having to rely on the administration. That is probably a power we want Congress to have, but we should all be really fucking worried about what happens when it's in the unscrupulous hands of someone like Jim Jordan. That is a real tough bargain we have to decide on. How powerful do we want Congress to be? Look, Republicans take over Congress and they subpoena all the Biden

administration officials to testify. The Biden administration officials are going to go testify. Yeah, I mean, that's what Jim Jordan is wrong. Like Ben Rhodes had to testify about Benghazi. They didn't assert blanket subpoenas. They just negotiated. Right, exactly. Tommy, what do you think about Trump's comments to john carl about mike pence the uh basically just admitting that he he did pressure him to do this and then when he was asked about the uh chance of people wanting to hang mike pence was just like yeah whatever you know it's common sense yeah uh deeply chilling um i mean the takeaway from john carl's interview with trump about pence is that he has no regrets. Not just that. Trump believes that threats of physical violence and that violence generally that happened that day, it was justified. It was fine. He understands it. And I think what everyone needs to understand is that the rhetoric around the big lie from the very beginning to now, it's getting more heated, not less. It's getting more apocalyptic and not less. This is war. This is good versus evil. The election was stolen. War with China is inevitable. And I think it's

setting up a scary situation where violence has happened. It has been defended. Ashley Babbitt is a hero and a patriot. And I think it's going to lead to more violence. And I think it's directly from comments like this. Well, and recognize the shift as well. At the beginning, when it first happened, it was, Oh, the insurrection wasn't real. There wasn't much violence. Oh, it was Antifa that did it now.

It's, Oh yeah, it happened. And it was good. No, it was an FBI false flag. It was, it was good.

What happened? These were, these were protesters and this is, this is what should have happened. So here's a response to Trump from Wyoming's John Barrasso, the third ranking Republican senator. So he says, hang Mike Pence is common sense. Can your party tolerate a leader who defends murderous chance against his own vice president?

Well, well, let me just say the Republican Party is incredibly united right now. I mean, love it. I guess that qualifies as a basically true statement it's um just hang mike pence common sense what's your take i think we're united we all want to kill the guy yeah look here's the thing who among us hasn't want to murder mike pence that's the republican position but the um i do think there's something similar between what barrasso did and what trump did because what Trump actually does in that statement is he kind of glosses over what Jonathan Karl says about the hanging of Mike Pence. He just keeps making his previous point.

But I don't know that like that doesn't like make it better. Like Trump is just completely unfazed by the prospect of Mike Pence being murdered. Whether or not Mike Pence is alive or dead is sort of an incidental issue for him. And with Barrasso, it's the same thing. It's like, look, whether or not it's common sense to murder Mike Pence, obviously, I'm not going to say it, but you know, I don't agree. John Barrasso doesn't want to murder Mike Pence, but he's not going to sit here like an idiot and disagree with donald trump on something as fundamental as whether or not to hang mike pence it's it's it's applying typical political talking points to an extreme situation in politics that we've never dealt with right which is like hey what about hanging my pants george you always want to look back i want to

look forward yes but they're going to kill the vice president george you're trying to distract us from inflation sick of these gotchas it's it's uh it's the cousin of uh donald trump calling chris christie on his deathbed from covid and saying are you gonna tell people you got this from me oh my god it's uh well hey hey i'll tell you i'll tell you you know what you want to talk about hanging mike pence i want to talk about how the middle class in this country has been hung out to dry. I mean, speaking of Chris Christie, he's got a new book coming out. He did an interview with Maggie Haberman and he's like, you know, big tough guy now. He's criticizing Trump.

He's telling the party, oh, if we look back on 2020 the whole time, we're going to lose and Trump shouldn't be part of the party if we're looking back on 2020. But then he's like, oh yeah, well, knowing what I know now, I still would have supported Donald Trump over Joe Biden. It's like, what? This fucking guy. I mean, like Christie's utterly full of shit. Everything he says and does is about helping himself politically. And if I had to bet money on it, I would bet that

Chris Christie falls back in line in six months, eight months, 12 months. That's it. I am interested in seeing, like, I want him to take this. That's it. I am interested in seeing, like, I want him to take this message on the road. I want him to go out and say, you lost Donald Trump. You're a loser. You lost a Joe Biden who you told us was brain dead at the time. And the question is, will Christie continue to do this? And also, will he ever do it on a conservative outlet? Right. He's not talking on Fox News right now. He was on ABC, The New York Times, CNN, right? Places where conservatives aren't watching, places where he can try to rehab his image with the elite media and not really deliver a message to the MAGA base that I would love to have inundated with this kind of, you know,

Trump is a loser message. I mean, we're joking about all this because what else are you going to do at this point? Obviously, it's all deadly serious. Like, how big of a deal should Democrats make this? Like, you know, I watched these stories over the weekend. You know, that John Karl Blok got some good pickup. Obviously, they talked about it on the Sunday shows. Some of it is it doesn't get more coverage because we've known it all for a while. Trump has admitted all this.

He's very open about it. But like, I don't know, we're headed into another. We're going to head into a midterm election and then a presidential election where, by all accounts, Donald Trump is going to run for president again. And, you know, the odds on favor to become the Republican nominee. Like, how should Democrats talk about this? How big of a deal should they should they make of this? Love it. Yeah, I mean, it's very similar to the like the question about how to make a big deal about not just the insurrection, but of the fact that Republicans briefly were honest about how serious and bad it was.

And then with a matter of hours, if not days, abandoned that position and fell in line. And now now are either lying about it, pretending it didn't happen or cordoning it off from their brain somehow to continue to support Donald Trump. It reminds me of how we about the problems of impeachment, which is I think a lot of Democrats that were being really cynical and political, maybe fairly said, if we do this, maybe it feels like the right thing to do, but it will hurt us politically. And I think we have been struggling as a party now for five years for how to talk about the Democratic threat that Trump poses, for how to make that tangible to

people outside of the few moments when it was obvious and clear and dramatic and violent and smoke coming out of the Capitol. And so like, should it be a big deal? Of course it should. It's one of the greatest threats we've ever faced. How should we make it a part of these campaigns as we head into next year when we're trying to also talk about infrastructure and achievement and like the issues that really matter to people. I have no idea. It has been a difficult problem for us for years now. Tommy, I think you can make a broader message about the extremity of the modern Republican Party. And a piece of that should be John Barrasso, as I believe his name. They're all rallying around their willingness to hang Mike Pence. That's a piece of it. And the violence

on January 6th. But there's also the fact that the House of Representatives is talking about expelling 13 members of the Republican party for voting for an infrastructure bill, right? They're getting death threats. They're opposed to liberal roads, right? Like, imagine how much fun Barack Obama would have with that kind of message. You could you could make it funny. You could make it like make it lighter and just talk about how extreme this party is and how absurd it is to be opposed to roads and bridges because Democrats support them. Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling these people traitors. Not just because Democrats support them.

Like, yeah, like other. It was a bipartisan bill that their own Republican colleagues in the Senate helped negotiate. 19 Republicans in the Senate. Fred Upton's getting death threats for voting for Rhodes? It's crazy. It's crazy. One last piece of data on this. Priorities USA, which is the biggest Democratic super PAC, did some recent polling in battleground states after the Virginia elections. They tested 25 messages, 13 pro-democratic message, 12 anti-Republican message. They tested them among

swing voters and among new and infrequent Biden voters from 2020. Number one most effective message among both groups was about Democrats making the tax system fairer, making rich corporations pay more. Also up there was Democrats voting for the rescue plan, Republicans voting against it. Infrastructure was popular with the swing voters. But of the 25 messages, a message on the big lie in January 6th ranked fifth among swing voters and sixth among new and infrequent Biden voters. So it's a good thing. It's not like number one or number two, but of 25 messages, it's up there, you know, like it is. And that's that's not just with Democratic base voters. That's swing voters. You know, that's people who haven't voted before. And I do think the way like there is a way to kind of tie them together, which is that like.

And I would imagine if you like a message around like being willing to work with people you disagree with and not seeing Republicans and Democrats as enemies is something that always consistently polls really, really well. And there's something to be said about like, you know, these people hate Democrats so much they were willing to burn the Capitol down. And that's not just dangerous. Obviously, it's incredibly dangerous to not believe in these basic democratic values. It also means you're not willing to work with these people to get things done. Right. Like there's a way that like you can see even like kind of mainstream, like you can you can see a kind of basic message that tries to put those two things together in some way.

Yeah. Like let's come together and agree not to hang Mike Pence. Yeah. Or at least understand that in politics, some people want to hang Mike Pence. Some people don't. But we're all human beings except for Mike Pence. We'll leave it there for now. When we come back, we will talk to former Obama economic advisor Austin Goolsbee about inflation. One of the biggest drags on the economy and President Biden's approval rating is inflation, which hit its highest level in 30 years. Last month, as prices rose more than 6% between September and October, Republicans are ecstatic about the political opportunity, with Senator Rick Scott saying, this is a goldmine for us. So what can the president actually do about this? Joining us is our old friend from the Obama

campaign and then the Obama White House, the man who took pity on a speechwriter who'd never taken an economics class and patiently taught me how to explain credit default swaps to the American people, the former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, Austin Goolsbee. Welcome back to the pod, Austin. All right. you then you were teaching the class you didn't just learn you became the teacher yeah no i steered the administration through that early crisis is what i like to tell people the green shoots recovery summer was my recovery that was my idea yeah oh boy um okay so austin when you were on the show in august you told dan that there was this debate among economists about whether inflation was permanent or temporary.

And you said that you were on team temporary. Are you still on team temporary? I'm still on team temporary. Wow. I'm still on team temporary because it's still the case that most of this inflation is concentrated on all of those physical goods where the supply chain has got this problem. And it's happening all around the world. You got Germany's got the highest inflation in 29 years. You got China's got its highest inflation in 26 years.

And I think that's all because we're still in this weird period where people are buying physical stuff in a way that they normally don't. They normally buy services. And if the whole world tries to go buy TVs at the same time, the system is not designed for that. And the price is going to go up on all of that. So our old colleague, Larry Summers, you you know him pretty shy kind of guy um he he just issued an edict in the washington post today that was headlined it's past time for team temporary to stand down are you guys going to have like a nerd fight what's gonna happen look the thing is as you know he's a very smart guy he predicted that there would be not just inflation.

He predicted there would be more inflation than everybody else, including me, was giving credit at the time. The thing that I've still, and I've talked to Larry about it, the thing I still can't quite put my handle on is if you look at the last time we had this experience of inflation in the 1970s, when oil prices were going up and a bunch of things went wrong, the conventional wisdom among economists coming out of that period was that if the thing causing inflation is a supply shock, tightening monetary policy, raising the interest rate is not the right thing to do.

And somehow we've either lost that lesson or they've decided that this isn't a supply shock. But I think it is. I think if you go look so far, that's what it looks like. And as you know, my bias is that the virus is driving this whole thing. This wasn't a normal recession. It doesn't look anything like a recession. It was a massive downturn caused by the virus. If you get control of the virus, we can go back to spending money on services like we normally do. And when that happens,

it's going to relieve the pressure on the supply chain. That's what I think. He says we need to stand down if you're team temporary. Because why? My view always was that we've got to wait till the summer, end of the spring, beginning of the summer, so that you're more than one year after the collapse before you would start to see things go back to normal on inflation. To me, that's temporary. But maybe if you wanted it in a month, then you say, oh no, it's permanent. Well, so let's go back to the 70s, to the Carter era, you know, discos on the radio,

people are watching, you know, all in the family or whatever. So you have economists like Alan Blinder who say that inflation in the 70s was in part driven by psychology. People felt like inflation was here to stay and it became this self-fulfilling prophecy. Do you agree with that? And if so, how do you break inflation of the mind? Like, what do you do there? Yeah, inflation of the mind. Well, in a way, you're taking me back.

I was just a kid, you know, when this inflation was going on. The thing is, the economists call that the inflation's expectation game. And unions were much more powerful then. They were more involved in the private sector. And so there were more collective bargainings. And so if inflation was 5%, then in the wage negotiations, they'd be like, well, if there's 5% inflation, we want 6% wage increase. And then if you've got 6% wage increase, the company would be like, ah, our costs are up 6%. We've got to raise prices 6%, you know, and you get on that circle. That's what they call the

wage price spiral. I think that is kind of what happened in the 1970s. And then you got to decide, And then you got to decide, do you think that the rule of 1977, you know, the fashion rules don't apply and the music rules don't apply? Should the economic inflation rules apply? I don't know. And this was kind of like what I said, even three and a half percent without generating sustained inflation. So the question I have is the unemployment rate is still a fair bit above that. So why would that generate sustained inflation now when it didn't in 2019? I mean, we had the unemployment rate down to three and a half percent and it wasn't generating that kind of inflation. So that's why I'm still in my heart on team temporary. So I'm hoping that it's not like, you remember the, you remember the movie on good morning

Vietnam, the guy who gives Robin Williams the hard time and, and he puts a, he puts a Bruno Kirby on to the radio and he has a little horn and he does all this. Yeah. Like a walk, a walk, a walk. And they fire them. And then he says, sir, in my heart, I know I'm funny. That might be me. In my heart, I remain team temporary. This is higher inflation than people saw. I don't think it's from the argument that this is from the US.S. spending too much on stimulus, I still think that there's maybe some

holes in that argument, because if you look around the world, ports are backed up all over the place. Inflation is way up all over the place, including in places where they didn't have a big fiscal response like what we had. Well, there's the argument that it's because we spent too much on stimulus. What Republicans want to say now is, okay, well, now you just passed this infrastructure bill and even worse, you're going to pass this build back better bill. So that's going to be $5 trillion total in spending over the year. This is a disaster. This is what's causing inflation. Why is that argument wrong in your view? Well, I think that argument is wrong on a couple counts. The first is this bill is basically paid for. So if you raise taxes to pay for whatever your

spending was, it would add nothing to the stimulus component. And so that part would be irrelevant. And so that part would be irrelevant. Now, my experience has been, if you say to Republicans, hey, I'm taking your idea seriously, maybe we should redouble our efforts to raise taxes on high income people to make sure that there's no inflation. They don't accept that. They don't accept that part of the argument. But the second thing I'd say is the inflation is a matter of a six to 18 months kind of timeframe. And the Build Back Better bill is spread out over 10 years and even added up over 10 years is a modest contribution. So the amount that that will contribute to inflation in the next six to 18 months is really quite negligible. And Larry Summers himself says that. They tried to get Summers to attack Build Back Better. And he said, no, that has nothing to do with it. That wouldn't increase inflation. And I kind of agree with him. So I think we are just back in, we talked about in the summer, the argument about unemployment insurance, that there were Republicans saying, let's not do any of the things that Joe Biden ran on and now wants to enact. Let's not do them because unemployment

insurance is causing these problems. And then if you showed them, but unemployment insurance isn't causing these problems. Look, half the states got rid of it. It didn't change the amount that people are looking for work. Then the other half get rid of the supplemental UI. Same thing. Didn't matter. They weren't saying it because they actually thought that that's what the what was causing the labor shortage they were saying it because it was a convenient cudgel to attack the the biden administration and that's happened to us when we were in the obama administration right it would come up with argument after argument why Obama should not be allowed to do the things that he ran on and said he wanted to do when he won.

And I feel like we're back to that. Yeah. Put that in your calculator and smoke it, Larry. You know what I mean? So Austin, putting on my political hack hat, not that I ever took it off. I mean, the other thing I can confirm as a consumer is that gas prices seem high in all of our years in politics. Gas prices have always seemed to have had this outsized impact on voter sentiment and frustration. There's speculation as to why. Some people say the Saudis are keeping supply artificially low and prices high because Mohammed

bin Salman, the crown prince who is a sociopath murderer, is mad because Joe Biden won't meet with him. There are periodic news reports where someone floats letting gasoline out of the strategic petroleum reserve. That took me back to the Obama days as well. The old days. Are there things like can Biden do anything about gas prices? Is this a stupid debate every time it comes up? What do you think? Yeah, it's mostly a pointless debate in the immediate term. What people want is the price of gas that go down this week. I mean, and I just took my car 68 bucks to fill my car. So if people wanted to go down this week, there's not a whole lot you can do to make the price go down this week, for sure. Within OPEC, the thing to remember is there was a time when OPEC dominated all the production.

Now there's a lot of other countries that aren't in OPEC that also produce oil. I don't know what the Russians are doing, but it seems like they're constantly making mischief in both oil and every other kind of market. And they're blowing up satellites today. They're blowing up satellites, chunk and sand. Come on, just chill out.

And so I know that when we shut down the Iran deal, you've got chaos in a bunch of oil producing countries. Production is relatively low. We went through this shale and the fracking boom in the US, followed by bust when the prices went down. Now the prices are back up. So you'd normally think, okay, well, won't all of those fracking shale producers come back? But a lot of their financing is like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You're not going to burn us twice. We just did this. The price went up. You all went in there. You pumped so much oil

that the price collapsed, and then we lost all our money. So I think we got on the diplomatic front. Look, I know you guys are the foreign policy experts. If we could get the Iran deal back going so that we would have more production, I think that would matter. Yeah, Tommy. Yeah, that'd be good. If the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, I wrote a thing a long time ago that I thought we ought to operate it like how my mom used to be with the toilet paper in an earthquake, which was she wanted to have two weeks of toilet paper. And so if the thing is to replace U.S. production, kind of go figure out what the U.S. production rate is and say, here's how many days of U.S. production, if we were interrupted, here's how many days of use

we could use. That has usually, if you follow that type of logic, it says you could draw down the strategic petroleum reserve. We have been in a thing where we got it so full, they literally could not add any more to it. It was that full. And it probably doesn't make sense to keep it that full. But overall, like I say, it's a worldwide thing. All the countries of the world are trying to come booming back all at once. The supply of oil is not there to satisfy that. And that's why the price is high, not just in the U.S., everywhere in the world, the

price is high. So there's not much that Biden can do in the short term about the price of gas. He has limited number of tools to affect inflation. If you were sitting in the White House right now in your old job, what would you be advising Joe Biden to do about all of this since it's not doing great things for his poll numbers, that's for sure. Yeah, for sure with the poll numbers. I mean, the two and a half things to remember are first, the poll numbers tend not to just reflect what happened this week. They're accumulated over a few months. And there's no question we had a tough summer in which the Delta variant came back, the

virus resurged. The Delta variant came back. The virus resurged. We had a bunch of slowdown of economic growth, a few months of jobs numbers that weren't that great. So I think the fact that the approval rating on the economy deteriorated, I think is kind of understandable. But the last job numbers were stellar, outstanding, borderline amazing, 600,000 jobs in a single month in the private sector.

If you put up two, three, four months of half a million jobs a month, I think people's attitude is going to improve if we get incomes growing back faster, job growth faster. if we get incomes growing back faster, job growth faster. Second, as part of this rescue plan, we gave people money to cover what we knew were going to be costs of this recovery. So we had this famous image of the woman on CNN who had the nine kids and said she buys 12 gallons of milk a week and the price went up $1 a gallon. Okay, but the thing is, the child tax credit that Joe Biden passed

would have given that woman $6,000. So you buy a lot of milk with $6,000. So true. I do think, let's bear in mind that the very thing about the rescue plan that they're condemning is also a benefit, which is it's giving people money that they can use to deal with this. And then the third, just because this is a multi-month phenomenon and is going to be grumpy and people are going to be annoyed, and you can see why, doesn't mean we should. There's too many negatives in that.

Doesn't mean we should, there's too many negatives in that, doesn't mean we shouldn't. We should do all the blocking and tackling that we can to improve the supply side and the bottlenecks on the supply chain. And that means whatever money can be pulled forward from this infrastructure bill they signed today, then they should do it. They should work on, go down to the ports, to the rail, to trucking. If they can- Joe Biden should move some boxes. Defense Production Act, all of the things that you can do to help get the supply chain. I think that will matter for inflation over a multi-month period, not in one month, but over a multi-month.

And go get more vaccines. You slow the spread of the virus. Like I say, you can get people going back to spending their money at Disneyland, at restaurants, and blah, blah, blah, and buying fewer TVs, and that will relieve some of the pressure. It's good advice. Austin, my final question for you. It's not about inflation. This is sort of a bonk it in the dorm room kind of question that

I've always wondered. So over the past decade or so, we have seen literally trillions of dollars in value created out of nothing in the form of cryptocurrency. This afternoon- Oh no, Tommy's on this crypto thing. I'm curious. No, I'm not a crypto bro. I wish I Oh, no. Tommy's on this crypto thing. I'm curious. No, I'm not a crypto bro. I wish I'd, I've got, I'm a crypto FOMO guy. But like this afternoon though, I looked. The market cap for Bitcoin alone is $1.2 trillion.

What does that do to the global economy? You have like rabbit out of a hat wealth creation. One day we decide that there's another couple trillion dollars worth of value in the world. Like what the hell? Yeah, look, it's speculative, speculative investments. I should have said, by the way, on the matter of inflation, you know, I'm an economist. So I'm going to say, go get rid of all the stupid Trump tariffs. They increased taxes. That was a tax increase on the American middle class of $2,000 a family. If you go get rid of some of those tariffs, you can put more money back in people's pocket. Glad you got that in. The thing about Bitcoin, NFTs, and other online stuff,

you know that if somebody makes a painting and a bunch of people say, yeah, that painting's worth a lot. Yes. In a way you can create assets out of nothing. The whole puzzle to the, to the economist is, is that really a currency? That's not a currency. Like if you're thinking in your mind, that's going to replace the dollar. It's really not. It doesn't have the attributes of a currency. It has the attributes of a speculative investment. And if you're going to go invest in speculative investments, I do think you want to think about some of the basic economics like, well, what are the substitutes and what's to stop every other jerk from taking his pet and taking a picture of it and calling it an Irish setter

coin or whatever. We're back to what they called the free banking era. There was a time when banks created their own money like the 1800s. Sure enough, turns out lots of banks want to print their own money because it's really lucrative minting money. It costs how much for the paper and then you get a dollar for it. And we're prone to bank runs. We're prone to inflation. They're prone to crises of confidence in these various currencies. Now, I'm all for if you believe that one of these cryptocurrencies is better than all the others, and no matter how many new ones come in, there will always be demand for Ethereum, Bitcoin, something. If you feel like they can get the transaction costs down, so far the transaction costs are really quite high, which is another reason why it's not really a currency. If there's some reason why this one's worth betting on versus all the others, then fine.

But just recognize it's really risky. And then you get to these NFTs and it's like, come on, one NBA photo that can't be specifically replicated, but they can just take another photo of the same player one second later. It's hard for me to understand how that stuff can be worth $500,000. The Bored Ape NFT sold for $2.7 million. Is that a buy? That's a good work. If you can put the T in NFT, you know,

you got it. Tommy's going to come in tomorrow with a doodle coin. You should. The V coin coin put a big v on it there's one there's some like shinaibu coin or something that's up 81 000 this year 81 000 and that's a competitor to the other one the doge coin which was should have been pronounced doggy coin but like what what are they doing i't understand. It's fun to watch it. It's fun to see, you know, kids coming in.

So are you, what do you think about crypto, professor? It's like, oh. Yes. Well, Austin, I look forward to talking to you again sometime when you help me write a speech explaining to the country why we're in a financial crisis because of crypto. Yeah. I'm going to have to get my crypto malay sweater austin goldsby thank you so much for joining us as always come back again soon good seeing you man thanks austin see you guys later

all right so monday was a great day for a White House that badly needed one. President Biden was joined by Democrats and Republicans at a signing ceremony for the Infrastructure Bill, which is now the Infrastructure Law, a historic investment in transportation that will deliver jobs, roads, bridges, public transit, clean water, all kinds of good stuff. it clean water all kinds of good stuff also joining biden were vice president kamala harris transportation secretary pete budaj and former new orleans mayor slash new white house infrastructure manager mitch landrieu all of whom have recently been the subjects of way too early dc media speculation about whether they'll run for president in 2024 despite the fact that joe biden is saying publicly and privately that he'll run again the The latest in the genre is an incredibly long CNN piece from over the weekend. So long.

It took most of my Monday to read it. The piece was about the relationship between Biden and Harris, and it starts, quote, Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff, deciding there simply isn't time to deal with them right now, while, quote, many in the vice president's circle fume that she's not being adequately prepared. First of all, first of all, do you guys think this is a record for early speculation about an election that's three years away? Like, why do you think it's happening so soon? Why do you think there's speculation about the next Democratic nominee when the current one is 78, unpopular, and talks about how he's going to pass the torch to a new generation? I think it probably has something to do with it.

Ding, ding, ding, ding. Correct answer. Yeah, that might have something to do with it, huh?'re not gonna find this analysis anywhere else and by the way i would bet if you go back it does feel early but i imagine if you go back and look you can find some fucking like day after the inauguration speculation every four years you know it just feels new to us because it's been a while i mean look if we don't know what joe biden is planning or what he's thinking speculation every four years. You know, it just feels new to us because it's been a while. I mean, look, if we don't know what Joe Biden is planning or what he's thinking, but if Joe Biden had decided before the election, even that he wasn't going to run for a second term, he wouldn't say it. He wouldn't probably even tell a lot of close advisors that because

then you're a lame duck president. We don't know what he's thinking. But, you know, there has been reporting that, of course, on one hand, like you said, love it. He wants to, he said publicly, he said this during the election, he wanted to be a bridge to the next generation. On the other hand, there's reporting that he's thought like, I'm the only person alive who's beaten Donald Trump in an election. And I want to make sure that if Donald Trump runs again, we better be damn sure that the next nominee can do the same. Right. So that's probably in his mind as well. But I'm sure that's what's that's what's going on. Tommy, what did you what did you make of the story about about the vice president? Agreed on the length. It was it was a mess for a lot of reasons.

So starting with the vice president, I hear their frustration on a lot of points like The coverage of the vice president's foreign trips was often absurd. Yes, the interview with Lesser Holt was bad. It was an unforced error. But some of the coverage set the bar impossibly high for her. Going to Guatemala didn't solve corruption in Guatemala. The New York Times wrote that her visit to Singapore and Vietnam was bad because it happened as the government of Afghanistan was collapsing, which they wrote, forced her aides to answer questions, quote, about the historical parallel between that exodus and the US evacuation of American citizens in 1975 from Saigon. I'm sorry, that is just stupid. The media chose that angle, not Harris or her aides. This recent trip to France comes on the

heel of a diplomatic dustup with the US and the French that she had nothing to do with. Seems like she actually did a pretty good job of playing mop up duty for mistakes she didn't make. I think her team is right to be furious at ostensibly serious reporters like Bloomberg's White House reporter regurgitating right-wing nonsense that she was faking a French accent. That was insane. That was insane. No truth to that. It was just straight-up idiocy. But here's the problem for Harris, for Biden, for everyone else. That coverage is par for the course. You never get the credit you want on foreign trips. There's always a domestic issue that overshadows what you're trying to do. That's how it goes. And yes, the CNN story was too long and it was gossipy bullshit. And I'm sure annoying for everyone involved, but the people who ostensibly were trying to spin for Biden or spin for Harris made it all worse by complaining in the press. And the people who are frustrated that the vice president has a shitty set of issues on her plate

are right on the one hand, but on the other hand, the presidency isn't a la carte. You get all the issues. You know what I mean? And it's only going to get worse if she runs for president and gets elected. So I get their frustration. We lived through it with Obama, Fox news, conservative outlets clearly target her because of her race, because of her gender, that is a given. But I do think like to solve these kinds of problems, the only way you can deal with it is behind the scenes. You work it out behind the scenes. Biden should tell his staff that if he catches them leaking about her, they're fucking fired. She should tell his staff that if he catches them leaking about her they're fucking fired she should tell her staff and supporters to lock it down and not talk to the press especially ones who are known troublemakers and like go from there show me any example of when a bunch of

anonymous leaks to the press served anyone but the reporters writing the fucking story i don't know how many times we say this it is like so crazy and it's you know it's it's donors who are always fucking oh you can tell the donors you can always you can tell the donors because they always it's a lot of um there's also a kind of i think part of these stories where people with where it's like um uh uh you know once again she's being poorly served by her staff which you know is a donor kind of coming in and like making a critique from the outside with no with no knowledge. The other thing I would say about this, too, is it was gossipy and also really kind of devoid of any kind of specific and good gossip. I was like, can we get any kind of conference? There's there's zero confrontations.

There's zero actual kind of real dramatic infighting in the piece. It just seems like a lot of boiled up minor frustrations added up into a kind of narrative from talking to like several dozen people. And like that, like this idea that the reason these problems are happening is because of a question on a foreign trip or or a poorly chosen answer at a specific event. Like, no, no, these are frustrations from a moment in which both of their approval ratings are way lower than they want them to be heading into the midterms after a really tough period. That is like, that is what this story is ultimately about, right? Like, it's not about it, the specifics there were so kind of

soft and thin, and not not doubting that any of them are not accurate, but it's like, yeah, like, you, you know, you, you call, uh, uh, you call several dozen people who are in a, in a building that feels a little bit under siege and frustrated. You can churn out a story about a meeting that went poorly and a, and an event she didn't get to go to, et cetera, et cetera, et etc etc etc and i and i will say one of the reasons we're covering this is not because of a single cnn story there has been a number of these stories over the last several months this is the the most extensive by far and you know they said they talked to three dozen whoever's uh for the stories but like politico did a piece on like

there's been a whole bunch of the stories so this is sort of like bubbled up at this point, which is why it's worth talking about. But I also think like, look, no vice president in history has been comfortable or satisfied in that role. They made an entire hit television show based on that premise of like what vice what it feels like to be vice president in the White House. Like this is this is just what happens, right? Like you're in a weird job you don't have a lot of power you're there you're a heartbeat away from the presidency you're trying to figure out your role you're trying to figure out what you do it's hard it's been it was hard for joe biden it was hard for all the vice presidents before him you know like that's just that's sort of how it goes i mean joe biden has you know what's unique is that Joe Biden has sat

where Kamala Harris is now. Having been in the White House, Tommy, what do you think made his partnership with Obama work? And what do you think is replicable from that? So there was clearly like genuine friendship and respect that I think kept things together, kept the lid on when times were tough. They dealt with zero of this current speculation that Obama wouldn't run for a second term. So that was not on the horizon. And Biden said he wasn't going to run. Yeah, right. And, you know, like I think it was also a lot more obvious how Joe Biden's experience complimented Obama's. There were more clearly defined roles that flowed from that. So the Recovery Act implementation, Biden was handed the Iraq drawdown process,

congressional negotiations, because he'd known these people for 30, 40 years. That doesn't mean things always went well. There were some pretty high profile blowups over marriage equality or other unforced errors, right? And in hindsight, they all seem very rosy. But I think friendship, mutual respect, clarity on roles, disposition of the two, got them, but I think, you know, friendship, mutual respect, clarity on roles, uh, disposition of the two, like got them through it. And I, you know, I think that you'll work it out. It's been a, it's been a rough month or sorry, it's been a rough year for the president and the vice president. I mean, you know, if, if this reporter started chasing down story, you know, narratives for this CNN piece in like August, yeah, I bet you could call a lot of people who

are frustrated. Yeah. And there was a lot of talk in the piece about like she got handed a set of issues that are really tough and which made me think like you have it all the issues are tough right now what's the easy what are the easy issues out there i gotta tell you if i were kamala harris like standing on the southern border and i turn on television i see mitch landry with a hard hat with a fucking shovel cutting the ribbon i'd be like oh i picked wrong well she was there for that too i mean i would that's a good point because mitch landry's plugging routers in at a school she's in guatemala telling them not to come here that's a fucking bum deal here's the thing here's the thing i would bet i would bet after that story after this weekend

that kamala harris's staff and probably kamala harris herself when she's in a meeting with joe biden is like hey as pete and mitch lander are out there cutting ribbons on infrastructure projects can i get some of that and she should right like she should go out there and do that as well look the immigration portfolio biden gave her because he was given that portfolio by Barack Obama. So he sort of passed it. He paid it forward. Voting voting rights is one that she asked for, which she got. And everyone's like, oh, well, it's tough on voting.

Tough issue. It's not her fault that it's a fucking tough issue. And it's not Joe Biden's fault. It's fucking Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema's fault. How many times have we been over this? You know, and they're like, well, she privately wants to get rid of the filibuster. Well, now Joe Biden said it publicly, too. Great. It's not moving Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema's fault. How many times have we been over this? And they're like, well, she privately wants to get rid of the filibuster. Well, now Joe Biden said it publicly too. Great. It's not moving Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Again, that's not Kamala Harris's fault. That's not Joe Biden's fault. That's fucking Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema's fault.

Well, the other piece of this too is, I think this happens in a lot of political coverage of these kinds of internal fights, which is, is this about a PR strategy to make her look like a president? Or is this about her actual involvement in the administration solving problems? Is this about, I mean, there was something very patronizing in this CNN piece, which was like, she was denied the opportunity to learn at the foot of a master about like congressional negotiations, some kind of weird shit in there. But on the whole, it's like, like, if you want, if the issue here is that she's been handed issues that are very, very difficult, well, then sounds like that's a PR problem. But

maybe something you'd want someone who might be the nominee to kind of tackle, right? Or is this about getting better headlines? Yeah, she should get the fucking hard hat on and go tour an esplanade and talk about how many jobs this project is going to create. I'm okay with either outcome, to be honest. What kind of political spotlight do you think being transportation secretary or managing the new infrastructure funding gives a Pete Buttigieg or a Mitch Landrieu? This feels a touch ridiculous. Look, I'm a big Mitch Landrieu fan. I think Pete is doing a great job. He's already, he's a great spokesperson for the administration. He's already made Secretary of Transportation a far bigger job than most people ever make it. Right?

Like Normanetta wasn't getting talked about like this. Normanetta? That's the poll I had. Oh my God. I'm sure both of them will like have cool opportunities here. Like Lovey was saying, like they will plug in routers. They will work with state and local officials. Like they'll get to deliver stuff and do good for communities. But the idea that this is some

giant political gift for them is just like it presupposes that most political discourse is about substance. When I think the last few years undercut that. It's also so naive too. It's like, it's also like you live in a world where people see on the news that somebody's built a road and they remember like, like where is this fantasy land of democracy? We're like, you know, I like that Mitch Landrieu. I saw him open up a new tunnel between my house and my neighbor's house. It's a fucking nonsense. It's the end days people. days people ideas don't matter like i realized we're all talking about it speculation happens early and as we said there's a reason for the speculation with this particular president but it's it's 2021 right and like infrastructure projects now what

pete's gonna do what lander's gonna do what kamala harris is doing. This is just not going to matter if there is a primary in 2023, which is still an if, by the way. So the idea that everyone's gaming everything out now, I'm sure they are privately with their staff and stuff like that. But the idea that it's actually consequential what happens right now with cutting ribbons, I don't know. Think back to every election that's ever happened in history and remember how stupid the issues were that were at the fore of it it's not you could never tell in advance can anyone remember any of the issues from the 2020 primary that we all got no i remember i remember remember in um must have been uh uh 2013 or 2014 when you had mark warner on the cover of uh of uh of a

magazine at the new york times magazine with a big grin the next president i'd say it's let's when you had Mark Warner on the cover of a magazine, the New York Times Magazine, with a big grin, the next president of the United States. Everybody got to calm the fuck down. And Marco Rubio was the heir apparent for the Republican Party. How's that going? Yeah, it's early. Kamala, Mitch, Mayor Pete, Amy Klobuchar,

any one of these people could lose to Donald Trump at this point. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That hurt. That's tough. Well, sorry i'm sorry that's that hurt that's tough well on that note that's all we have for today i guess we don't end on a high note uh thank you to austin gulesby for joining us and teaching us about inflation and uh helping tommy become a crypto billionaire yeah i'm a buy now to buy wait tommy's finally admitting he's by i was just waiting god damn it i saw it that just passing by clip it clip it clip it clip it clip it sir clip it i need you to be a little

more mature on this broadcast i don't think so i don't think so this is radio this is radio on your phone you want me to be more i was i actually never got to i had i um i was gonna say sorry guys i can't hear you since the bannon news the resistance splooge on my screen from twitter has made it hard to see either of you how about that too too much a lot of a lot of just shaking heads here in the studio back in la people amelia's so disappointed i can see it from here now she's hiding her love it i just i'm i'm like just kind of wondering you know we have some more time here do you sure you don't want to like just gratuitously poke the k-hive because you've been saying a lot about that

off mic yeah i feel like we're not going to get a lot of replies oh you want me to pick a yet another fight with the k-hive the people with the longest memory in fucking human history? They're like they're like ice core. You can use the K-Hive to find historic carbon records. I was wondering if there's one thing you could say that would draw the ire of both the K-Hive and Team Pete with the same comment. Neither one of them won Iowa. Oh, my God. I did it. That's it. Wrap it up. That's it.

We got a show. Alright, we'll talk to you on Thursday. Good stuff. Good stuff. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Mews and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer.

It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerrard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.