Pod Save America - “Grift while you can.”

Episode Date: March 22, 2018

Trump congratulates Putin on an election well-rigged, loses his head lawyer, and Congress does nothing to protect Mueller while the corruption scandals keep coming. Then Senator Mark Warner joins Jon and Dan to talk about the Mueller investigation, Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and his thoughts on the banking bill. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we'll be talking to the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, friend of the pod, Mark Warner. We still have tickets available for our Florida trip, which is, I guess, the week after next. And we announced a bunch of new cities last week, so check it all out at crooked.com slash events. Dan, good to be back with you here on the pod. I feel like we haven't done one in a while.

I know. You were gone last week, then we were on tour, then I was gone the week before that. But I feel centered now to have you back on a Thursday. And what's unusual for us is that the news broke. Well, I'm sorry. Some news broke before we started recording. I'm sure we're now jinxing this

and there will be more news that breaks after we're recording the president's head lawyer for his special counsel investigation. John Dowd resigned because reportedly the president was not taking his advice, which doesn't sound like the Donald Trump we know. I have a lot to say about this as we proceed through the outline. Well, I was going to say, yeah, let's get to Dowd later.

Let's start with the news of the week. As usual, there's been about six months of news since Monday's pod. start with the phone call that donald trump placed to vladimir putin where he congratulated the man who sabotaged our real election for winning his fake election the washington post then reported that in congratulating putin trump ignored specific warnings from his national security advisors including a section in his briefing that read in all capital letters, DO NOT CONGRATULATE. I just think it's so funny. DO NOT CONGRATULATE. It's like when we read the Blue Apron ads and it says in all capital letters,

MUST ENDORSE. But you endorse. We do endorse. You always endorse. That's the thing, we pay attention. Donald Trump did not pay attention. Dan, why did he do it? Why, oh why, would he choose to call and congratulate a man who launched a cyber attack against the United States and just had an ex-Russian spy and his daughter poisoned in London?

Well, there are many theories to this. One would be Trump didn't read his briefing, which is very possible. And I think it's worth noting that— It's got to be the most likely. Most likely, right? Yeah. And like the usual briefing for a Farden leader call will include the best intelligence from our intel community, the information from our diplomats who are working with Russia

and our allies around the country. It'll include talking points of things to say. The White House staff knew that that was overly complicated for Trump, so they had to write in all caps, do not congratulate the top. But he didn't even read that. But even if he did, the odds are pretty high he's going to congratulate him. And that's either because he has the attitude of a bratty two-year-old and will do the opposite of what anyone says, which you would think the White house staff could have taken a course in reverse psychology by now yeah and he does behave like i am not like our friend brian a p-tape truther or whatever but

he does always behave like he does not want to upset v Putin. Yeah, I wonder why. That is a fact. And so this call was consistent with that pattern of behavior, which is mildly concerning, to say the least. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, look, first of all, you're right. If they wanted to prevent him from congratulating Vladimir Putin, they probably should have written into his briefing, feel free to congratulate. Obama congratulated Putin in all caps. Yeah, that would have been the other way to go no but i mean look even if he didn't read a briefing you would imagine that someone who's the president of the united states who presides over a country whose election was attacked by vladimir putin uh not so long ago a man who's

like now poisoning people, killing journalists. You know, like, I don't know why you need a briefing to tell you that it's maybe a bad idea to call this guy up and give him a congratulations. Now, people on the right are saying, well, hey, Obama congratulated Putin in 2012. So what's the difference? What is the difference there? Well, I have sort of a counterintuitive take on this, but the difference is context. Many things have happened since 2012. There's obviously been the very recent interfering in our elections or sabotaging our elections, if you will, depending on your word of choice. There was the incident you just mentioned around the poisoning. There has been the invasion of

Crimea and causing a massive regional conflict. There's been the invasion of Crimea and causing a massive regional conflict. There's been a ton of aggressive behavior from the Russians in Syria and elsewhere in the world. Here's the actual thing. I don't really care that Trump congratulated Putin. It doesn't really matter to me in a vacuum because our relationships with Russia are complicated. We have to deal with them on Syria, Iran, and North Korea. This is also true of China, although it's a less tense relationship. We have these sort of competing equities that we're constantly managing, our trade concerns with our national security alliances we're working on, whatever that is. It's not that he did it. And so for all the people who are doing massive whataboutism about Obama doing this, fine.

That's not the problem. The problem is the larger pattern of behavior here that this fits into than the actual words of I congratulate you. Because it doesn't mean anything. It's not like he's conferring some official legitimacy on these elections. It's just a dumb thing to do. And it's consistent with this thing where he treats Putin with more respect than any person in the world. Right. Well, that's what I was going to say.

That's all well and good. But you said it in a vacuum. You can't separate out the context of the call from judging it. That's why I don't get all the criticism. Like, if these were the same circumstances under which Barack Obama had called Vladimir Putin in 2012, six years ago, then yeah, not really a problem if a Republican president did that too. And obviously, we believe that you need to talk to leaders that you don't like and agree with, because for all kinds of diplomatic reasons. But calling up to congratulate old Vlad on his sham election after what we've gone through in the last couple of years, you know, it seems a little off, seems a little off. You know,

one White House official explained this to Jonathan Swan and said, this is the way Trump is. If he's doing business with you or working with you in some way, he's going to congratulate you. I don't know if that White House official meant to use the term if he's doing business with you. I realized the analogy he was trying to make, but I don't know if that really landed. That also is bullshit. I know.

This is not President Mr. Rogers. He's not known for his unfailingly polite behavior. He's just so well-bred and well-mannered. Of course, he would say congratulations. It would be rude not to. That's just not that's not who he is. That is a bullshit excuse that apparently only applies to Putin and no one else. So we're also told that Trump is just furious that the story about the do not congratulate briefing was leaked since only a few people would have known about it and the material is very sensitive if not classified when he gets a briefing like that. So much for the non-disclosure agreements. Dan, how bad is it that it leaked? Any ideas on who might have done it? In a normal world with a normal president who operated within the normal confines of government, this would be a very alarming leak because only a small handful of people would have seen this briefing. And I don't know for sure, but I imagine it had some level of classification in it right um like if we were in the white house and the president's briefing memo or a readout of the president's briefing memo leaked to the press we would have gone insane of course i would have burned the building down looking for the people

who um but this is not a normal white house in the and no it not. I don't think it is. Agree. Understatement of the century. Come here for Lukewarm. Come to Positive American. Lukewarm takes like that. he, and so he has sort of forfeited by his own behavior the normal respect and

trust that a president deserves because he has not demonstrated that trust either way. And I think, I'm guessing that this leak is different than the normal leaks we get from the White House. The normal gets released from the White House are because of essentially verbal diarrhea from the staff who are either trying to protect their own reputations or destroy the reputations of their colleagues, or sometimes both. This sounds like a leak that is more akin to a whistleblower, where someone is concerned about how Trump is operating as president and how he's approaching Russia, and they decide to tell people about it.

And so I think it needs to be viewed in that context as someone who is – this is not – of course it's disloyalty to Trump, but it's also loyalty to the country. Yeah. It's not like that's a leak that some official would tell a reporter just to like roll their eyes and be like can you believe how funny this is it's like he always loves putin you know and he's disobeying the most basic advice like it seems like someone's trying to say look we are trying to tell him that it's a bad idea to cozy up to this guy and he refuses to listen. I guess the other theory on that is H.R. McMaster, who is on his way out at some point,

wants to make it known to everyone who may be hiring him after he leaves the White House that he was against the idea of Trump congratulating Putin. So that would be the more malicious interpretation of the leak. Yeah, he's been treated so well. I don't know why H.R. McMaster would want to do such a thing. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing about leaking, obviously, you're right. In a normal White House, it would be horrible that someone did that. Also, though, like, let's talk about, remember the time that Donald Trump discussed highly

classified intelligence that came from the Israelis with the Russians just in the Oval Office. Like, which actually, like, was serious. I mean, it fucking endangered the life of an Israeli spy who had infiltrated ISIS. I was looking this up last night to bring up this example. There's actually an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to Donald Trump's disclosures of classified information. wikipedia page dedicated to donald trump's disclosures of classified information remember he told he told people someone about the submarines that we had off the coast of the philippines i think he told deterte that or something like he's done this a couple times now so you're right that like in a normal environment you don't do this but like talk about a fucking

person just giving out classified information obviously the president has the legal right to do that. But usually, presidents don't disclose classified information to foreign adversaries like that. So it is definitely not a normal White House. Yeah, and I know I said normal White House, and I should be ridiculed for that. But let me put some context around that, which is there is something very dangerous and wrong happening in this White House. The amount of corruption and incompetence and lying and just complete staffing done – a president who's obviously emotionally, intellectually unfit for the office. People should speak out. Like this is serious business and we need people to speak out.

Either they, you know, and whether they are people who recently left who have told every reporter in town, you know, how things are going in there, but now won't speak out so they can cash in on their previous job or, or exactly to pick Gary Cohn, I think the name is, or people who are still there. And a lot of the NSC staff, it's worth it to be working on the National Security Council, are not political appointees.

They are career military, career diplomats. They worked in some cases for Bush, Obama, and Trump. So they're not in a position to just up and quit, right? They are civil servants. They are patriots. And so they are serving a government, not a president, and they are concerned. And so I think that's where a lot of this comes from. This is not the deep state undermining Trump. This is people who know what they're talking about, who go to work every day and are deeply afraid of what could

happen to the country if people are not aware of how Trump and his collection of clowns are handling the nation's business. And I think we have to think about it through that context. This is not Steve Bannon stabbing Reince Priebus in the face or Sean Spicer trying to leak against people and scoring an own goal on himself. This is something very different. Yeah. So Marco Rubio said, I don't agree with congratulating Putin

with bigger outrages this week that could only come from someone in POTUS and her circle. If you don't like the president, resign. But this ongoing pattern of duplicity holds potential for serious damage to the nation. So we went through all the reasons why, you know, in a normal White House, this would hold potential for serious damage to the nation. But what about Rubio's statement that if you really hate this guy so much if you think there's something wrong resign and then tell us look i don't know if i disagree with marco rubio that the best the best move is to resign if you are willing to then speak out if you say you don't disagree with marco rubio three times uh john lutheran John Lovett magically appears in the studio, like Beetlejuice.

So this is like a perfect Rubio statement, which is it says nothing, but if you think about it for more than five seconds, you realize it's completely asinine. So he's trying to obviously burnish his credentials as a as a russia hawk right which is what he he did like he has a record on that and he and campaigned against trump on that in 2016 but he also still wants to be friends with people in the trump administration and their minions that are patrons i guess at fox right but the only reason that we know this happened was because someone leaked it. So the leak was important because otherwise Rubio would be walking around, obviously with his head down on in some sort of disguise, blissfully unaware that Trump was doing these things. Sometimes, and this sucks for the party and for the White House or the administration or the government, but we only know these things because of leaks, in part because the Republican Congress has decided to not do any oversight on the Trump administration. Yeah. One person who has decided to resign this morning is John Dowd, who we mentioned,

president's head lawyer. So Dowd resigned. out who we mentioned president's head lawyer so dowd resigned you know we don't know all the news exactly about why but so far reports say he wasn't getting along with trump trump wasn't taking his legal advice one piece of legal advice that dowd gave him was that he shouldn't sit down for an interview with bob muller because of course dowd was worried that his client would lie because his client lies all the time. And so that was one piece of advice that he gave him. I think another piece of advice is like Dowd was generally more about like we should cooperate with Mueller in general and specifically Trump shouldn't be attacking Mueller by name,

which is obviously a piece of advice that he has ignored in the last week. What are your early thoughts on the on the Dowd resignation here? I mean, this is not a positive sign for Trump. When your attorneys are jumping ship as you get closer to Judgment Day, it's not a good sign, at least based on all the legal dramas I've seen on television. Especially when your client is like the president of the United States and you just drop them. Well, if you think it's not good for the president, if your view is, it'd be better for me to not be associated with the president to be associated with him. That's a problem. The one thing that I'm a little skeptical about, about John Dowd's approach

here, I don't think he's worried Trump's going to lie. I think he's worried Trump's going to tell the truth. Oh, yeah. Lovett's been saying that, too. Yeah. I mean, we know why he fired Comey, because he decided to divulge that information to Lester Holt. And to call that a grilling would be a dramatic overstatement. He basically asked one question, and then Trump vomited up a confession. So you can imagine how he would be with Mueller under some serious questioning, more serious than that of the anchor of NBC Nightly News. So yeah, it's not a good sign. It's also worth noting that Trump also hired this week another attorney who was most famous for claiming that the FBI

tried to steal the election from Trump and now is trying to overthrow him. And so we're headed to the grassy knoll pretty fast here. Yeah. What's that guy's name? Joe DeGeneva or something? Is that what it is? Yeah. Joe DeGeneva. I'm not sure he's actually an attorney. I think he is just like his legal office is in the green room at Fox. Which is basically what Donald Trump has always wanted. Okay. So the Mueller investigation seems to be getting very busy. Trump and his band of goobers seem to be giving him lots of crimes to work with here, potential crimes to work with. Here's a few reports just in the last 24 hours.

ABC reported that before he was fired, Andrew McCabe had authorized a criminal investigation into whether Jeff Sessions committed perjury in his testimony to Congress. We learned that. The New York Times reported that George Nader, an advisor to the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, and now a cooperating witness who's been given immunity by Bob Mueller, worked for more than a year with an RNC deputy finance chairman to lobby the White House to do a number of things, including fire Rex Tillerson, check, get tougher on Iran, and get tougher on the United Arab Emirates rival, Qatar. And then The Intercept reported that the Saudi crown prince has been boasting to people that Jared Kushner is in his pocket

because Jared, who had access to the highly classified presidential daily brief, gave the crown prince the names of disloyal royal family members. A week later, dozens of those people were arrested in a violent purge. Dan, do you have any thoughts on these stories? Screams into the void. I do not. My big question about all this is, how does Jared Kushner have time to be in so many people's pocket?

He is in the Russians' pocket. He is in the Chinese' pocket. He is in UAE's pocket. He's in the Saudis' pocket. I don't know where he finds the time to broker Middle East peace. And economic dialogue with China and basically fix the federal government. Those things seem to be flying by the wayside as he is using his position to bail out his failing real estate assets. I mean, one thing this is showing us, though, is that the smaller probe is really expanding beyond.

We've talked about this before. It is expanding beyond Russia stuff, right? before, it is expanding beyond Russia stuff, right? The Russian interference in our election, and it's now encompassing all kinds of corruption by Trump and Trump's aides and family members. And to me, it seems like, A, we always sort of knew this was headed here, probably knew this was headed here during the campaign when Trump refused to release his tax returns. And there were dozens and dozens and dozens of stories about all of his shady business practices. And B, it also tells me that I think this corruption storyline is ultimately a more powerful political message, at least for Democrats to run on, than any of the Russia-based stuff. You know, we've always sort of been wondering, like, how much do we talk about

this Russia stuff? Because we know that actual voters don't care about it as much as they care about the economy and their own lives. And yet now we sort of have a merging of the two stories, of people being angry at Washington for taking care of the rich and powerful and not them and this Russia investigation storyline, which has now spread into corruption. What do you think about that? I have been on this corner for a long time that the better 2018 message is corruption, not collusion. And that's in part because if you look at the polling, we have all this information about collusion, what Trump has said, the investigation has been going on for a year now, and people's opinions have not really changed. The polling's been

pretty steady. Democrats believe that Trump colluded, Republicans believe they don't, independents are kind of split down the middle, but it's not their most important issue. So there's what we should be communicating with voters. And the amount of corruption in this administration is mind-boggling. Staggering. And this is because it is unbelievable.

They have more scandals before lunch than Obama had in eight years. And that is because the fish rots from the head. Trump is an inherently corrupt person. He has hired corrupt people. And the people who hired who weren't corrupt are incompetent. And so they've put in no rules in place. There's no monitoring. There's no supervision. And so everyone is out because they have no loyalty to the country or to Trump. They are only loyal to themselves. So everyone, it's lootingoting they all know this is coming to an end at some point they're going to get fired trump's going to get impeached trump's going to lose re-election and so they're grabbing for the as

many big screen tvs from the self as they possibly can before they go out the door grift while you can yes grift while you can and this is tied to the tax bill because the tax bill is exactly this for the special interest. They have the same view of Trump in this Republican Congress. They're going to either they're going to get voted out or hauled off to jail before too long. So let's get all of our tax breaks as soon as possible. Let's get all the regulations repealed. And we're going to pay for it with campaign donations. going to do it as fast as we possibly can. And so we should be running on this. I think it's incredibly important, and it's very resonant. Corruption, and it can be boiled down into very understandable things, whether it's the massive tax cut that Paul Ryan gave the Kochs right before the Kochs gave him a half million dollars, whether it's Tom Price's private jets, Ben Carson's $31,000 table, whether it's Tom Price's Private Jets, Ben Carson's $31,000 table, Scott Pruitt's $25,000 soundproof box. There's anywhere and everywhere you can find something to run on here. Yeah, I mean, like you said, there's so many dots to connect here between the administration's corruption and actual policy decisions they're making that screw most Americans.

actual policy decisions they're making that screw most americans you know i was just noticing yesterday the story about how mcmulvaney at omb is continuing to move forward on this rule that would allow employers to take their employees tips to keep tips that are supposed to go to workers and you're like this is happening while fucking ben carson is throwing his wife under the bus about buying a $31,000 dining room table on taxpayers' dime. What is happening here? This is the tip of the corruption iceberg. We only know these things because they've been leaked or reporters have FOIA'd them. That's it. Congress has not subpoenaed shit.

The Republicans and Congress have no interest in looking at this. None. And so we only know these things because they have tumbled out almost by accident or by some very clever reporting, looks like Politico and others who have done deep in this. But there have been no hearings or no one's demanded information or used subpoenas to get it. So there is so much more there to be found. I mean, it's unbelievable. Well, let's talk about Congress protecting Donald Trump, which is, you know, the bigger scandal here, ultimately, because, you know the bigger scandal here ultimately because uh you know the constitution allowed for having a president that might be corrupt but they did not envision that the co-equal branch of government would not check that president that's why they set up a congress

and yet this congress this republican-run, has done largely nothing to hold this president accountable on anything. So Trump attacks the special counsel over the weekend and Republicans have basically done nothing about it. They have offered some criticism of Trump, which is good. Some of them have, at least. have at least. So, you know, you had people like Jeff Flake, who basically begged the president not to fire Mueller and sort of threatened impeachment if he does, which I thought was notable from Flake. You have, you know, McCain and Graham and others highly critical. And then you've got the Paul Ryans and Mitch McConnells, who originally, you know, we criticized for not saying anything at all, and they didn't at first. Since then, we've had Paul Ryan say, you know, I have received

assurances that his firing isn't even under consideration. McConnell said Mueller should be allowed to finish his job. What do you think tiny iota of credit to McConnell for saying that Mueller was a man of integrity and he believed his investigation was on the level. That's important because the entire argument of the right has been that somehow Mueller, a person who was so good at his job as FBI director that a large majority of the Senate passed a special law to allow him to stay on the job and was appointed to be FBI director by George W. Bush and appointed to be the special counsel by Trump's Republican deputy general was somehow wearing a pink bunny hat at home. I mean,

like, so testifying to that is important because what the right is trying to do and what Fox news is trying to do is create this permission structure that Republican voters can, and members of Congress can dismiss Mueller's findings because of quote unquote conflicts of interest. Yeah. That's what Trump wants.

And so that was good of, of McConnell, but Paul Ryan, he got assurances, Dan, good of of mcconnell but paul ryan he got assurances dan he's received assurances and those assurances are always ironclad when they come from the white house inside paul ryan's soul is dying he we just every day he is sideshow bob with the rake every day he, he steps on it, hits him in the face. So he goes out. I'm sure his staff, who we now know listen to the pod, crafted this.

Hi, guys. Hi. Come on anytime. We have a spot for you, Ashley and Brendan. Welcome on the pod anytime. You know we're right. You agree with us more than you will admit. They got together and they crafted this statement that they thought was brilliant, I'm sure,

saying that Trump's attorneys were going to have assured Ryan that he was not firing Mueller. Now, we know Paul Ryan's general MO is to not allow onto his very narrow radar screen any information that is derogatory and can possibly distract him from additional tax cuts for the wealthy paid for by ripping healthcare and entitlements from working class Americans. So he probably had not,

or maybe I guess his staff has abided by this, read any of the 758 stories over the weekend that said Trump was no longer listening to his attorneys. And then so Ryan goes out there and says that statement. The fact that people did not laugh in his face is a credit to the professionalism of the Capitol Hill Press Corps. And then today, Trump's lead attorney quits because Donald Trump is not listening to him. Yeah. So maybe that's a sign that the insurances aren't so

ironclad. I mean, so Bob Corker said that he thought the legislation to protect Mueller should be added to the funding bill that's passing today. It was not. And we can blame Republicans for that, of course, but also Republicans need Democratic votes to pass this funding bill like they always do. And so, you know, should Democrats have forced Republicans hand here and made sure there was some sort of protection for Mueller in this must pass spending bill to keep the government open? I don't know that if I was Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi and you're you're holding a pretty strong hand heading into the midterm elections that you're going to – Should I shut the government down over this? Yeah. I just think – I think that would be hard.

We already know that there is a handful of Democratic senators in these redder states who have – are pretty anti-shutdown over almost anything. who are pretty anti-shutdown over almost anything. And if you can't shut the government down over DACA, which is something that is so critical to helping, specifically helping 800,000 people, then doing it for this law seems a bridge. I think they should have fought harder for it and should have fought louder for it and get the Republicans on record opposing it.

Like, that's the thing. Because I think if you're from, you know, if you're Nancy Pelosi and you're thinking in your head, well, if Trump fires Mueller, we're going to pass a special counsel law if I have the majority. On the first day, we're back. And get Bob Mueller or someone like Bob Mueller back in the job. The thing that is so frustrating about Ryan and McConnell is they have a duty to someone other than Trump and Hannity. Paul Ryan is the Speaker of the House. He's not the chairman of the fucking RNC or the executive

producer of Water's World. He is the leader of one half of a co-equal branch of government. And we are staring down the barrel of a constitutional crisis that he could prevent, but he does not want to do it because he is afraid he will lose his job over that. And that is cowardice. It is just cowardice. He knows Trump is dangerous. He knows it. He tells people it. We all hear it around town. We know what he said before the election, but he will not say it publicly to save his own job. And that is cowardice. And that is dangerous. And that is how, if Paulyan was speaker of the house in the 70s during watergate nixon would have finished his term and then paul ryan would have passed the bill to name an airport after that's what would have happened it's i mean here's the thing it's

not a crazy idea to have legislation to protect muller and the reason i know that is because multiple senators have introduced legislation, both Republicans and Democrats, bipartisan legislation to protect the special counsel. And now when you go to them and say, hey, Lindsey Graham, hey, Tom Tillis, where's your, why don't we pass your bill that you have there that would protect the counsel? They're like, well, I don't think we need it now. And now I guess their thinking is, OK, if we pass this thing, it's going to go to Trump. Trump's going to veto it. And then, you know, we's going to go to trump trump's going to veto it and then you know we're going to have to override it and we're not going to have enough votes to do that like i don't

know if that seems like the best explanation though we don't want to pass this law because trump's going to veto the law that would protect the special counsel from being fired by donald trump like why not just go through the exercise anyway? Yeah. Get yourself on record as a Republican who the mere fact that you're a Republican and you're on the ballot, you're in danger. This can happen to anyone. Yeah. Get on record trying to do the right thing here. Even if you don't, if you care more about the politics than the patriotism about it, it's better politics to do it. And it's also not crazy because I don't know.

I doubt Bill Clinton ever would have fired Ken Starr, but he couldn't because we had a law. Right. And now that law was deeply flawed in many ways. And I think Congress was right to not renew it when it expired. Because it had been weaponized as a tool of political retribution, essentially. And we shouldn't have that. But in this specific case, that law was passed because of what happened in Watergate. And the parallels are so clear here that it seems so clear to pass this law, do the right thing.

And the idea that the Republican Party is just betting on Trump's long history of doing the right thing and standing by what he says is pretty fucking ridiculous. Yeah, it's not good. Let's talk about quickly about the other items that made it into this funding bill and what didn't. It's going to pass today. Probably there's $1.6 billion for border funding for the wall. It sounds like a lot of money, but Trump wanted $25 billion for the wall. And he initially threatened to veto this whole bill today if he didn't get it. But then Paul Ryan, I guess, talked him off the ledge. So big win for Paul Ryan there. $680 million to protect elections. That's good. $4.7 billion to fight the opioid epidemic. That's good. Pay raise for troops. Great. And then the FIX NICS bill, which would make modest improvements to the

existing national background check system for guns. It's not a great bill that we should all be celebrating, but there are some modest improvements to the background check system. You know, Chris Murphy co-sponsored this bill. So great. There's also now Republicans stipulated that money can be used, government funding can be used to research gun violence. We hadn't been able to do that. So that's a good thing. Let's talk about something that's not in this bill, which is anything to protect the Dreamers. Again, another funding bill. Apparently, you know, Jake Tapper was reporting this this morning that Trump and the Republicans offered Democrats, okay, we will give you three years of DACA protections so the Dreamers, the people can renew their permits for a DACA, Dreamers can renew their work permits and be protected from

deportation for three years, and then you could give us three years of wall funding. And the Democrats said no to this. I can't tell if it was a great idea to say no to it because my thought process is okay if the court rules at any moment that DACA is unconstitutional or decides to shut down the program then these young men and women have no more protections and they could be deported at any moment and the way that Donald Trump's ice works they probably will be deported at any moment and that's pretty scary for those people and I get that we don't want the wall and the wall is fucking ridiculous, but we're basically have to bet here that if we take back power in 2018, then 2020, we're going to say, fuck this wall, fuck this funding for the

wall. Let's get rid of it. But those dreamers will have been protected for three years and then we'll fix it permanently and protect them permanently, right? If we lose in 2018 and 2020, then we'll have at least still protected them for three years instead of nothing, which is what we're looking at right now. So to me, I don't understand why they didn't accept the bill, but I don't know what you think about it. I want to see more reporting on this. I've been on the end at the other end of pennsylvania avenue during a lot of congressional negotiations that blow up and most of what republican aides tell reporters is utter bullshit so i think there was more context yeah to this that was and jake to his credit like he reported what republicans were telling him and he was going to report

at some point what democrats were telling him so don don't take this for gospel. Take this what Jake was was transparently reporting as Republican account of what happens. And I mean, he may have tweeted it now while we're doing this. But I understand the cross pressures on Democrats here who are being pressured by sides of the left in both ways, both we have to get DACA done, fight harder for DACA. But there are other people who are saying, fight so hard for DACA, but do not give wall funding. And Schumer took a lot of crap for having put wall funding on the table during the previous shutdown. I agree with you that the building of a wall is an ethereal thing that happens over a long period of time. 800,000 DACA recipients, dreamers, getting deported to countries they barely know is a very real thing that can happen

at any moment. And I personally, were I in the room, that is a trade I would make. And I would not be happy about it. I think the wall is, I mean, the entire concept of the wall is inherently jingoistic and terrible. Just the idea that we have to create a wall to keep Mexicans out of our country is just, it's horrible. And symbolically to the world,

this sends a terrible signal. It's a giant waste of money on things we could spend it for someone else. But throwing a little monopoly money at Trump now in exchange for three years of docker protection seems like the right thing to do. And then I would just unfund it if we ever took over again. If Trump serves two terms, we have bigger problems in this country than him completing his wall. Yes, that's my point. But a Democratic president in 2021, I promise you it'll be in the announcement speech of every Democratic presidential candidate that on day one they'll sign an executive order stopping construction of the wall. And if we win the election, that's what would happen.

So I want to learn more about the actual – I imagine there were many more strings put on this than we saw in the initial reporting, because it doesn't seem that different from the initial deal that Schumer put on the table earlier this year. Well, we will ask our next guest about this. When we come back, we'll be talking to Senator Mark Warner. On the pod today, we are very happy to be talking to the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, friend of the pod, Senator Mark Warner from Virginia. How are you, Senator? I'm pretty good. Been a wild week. Wild week. Lots of news here.

So you were saying on Saturday that, you know, every member of Congress needs to speak up in defense of the special counsel. We've had a few Republicans speak up, which is nice. Your colleague, Bob Corker, said that bipartisan legislation to protect the special counsel should be included in the government funding bill you guys are about to vote on. How come it didn't end up in there? And, you know, do you think that Democrats should have pushed harder or what are your thoughts on this? I think Democrats pushed really hard. I think you had a group of folks mostly in the House who don't want to touch this subject. So I'm glad a lot of the Republicans stepped up and said they ought to support Mueller.

But it's not just supporting Mueller. It's making sure Rosenstein is not fired. It's making sure that people aren't pardoned before this investigation concludes. And one of the things I've been worried about is that, candidly, that there's not been more former U.S. attorneys, judges, prominent folks in communities all across America standing up for not just the investigation but rule of law. I mean this administration has just done full-on assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the very fishy firing of Andy McCabe a few days before he was supposed to get his pension. This could still be a rocky period ahead of us. And I hope people will stick to their guns and support rule of law. And part of that rule of law is being demonstrated by Bob Mueller. Senator, listening to the public comments of everyone from McConnell to Senator Flake, the Republicans clearly do not want Trump to fire Mueller. What is preventing them from actually passing this law,

do you think? Well, I think you've probably got a lot of folks in the House where things have broken down a little bit more that don't want to go that far. And then also you've had a lot of Republican senators who've just not spoken up yet. I'm glad that a lot of folks have, but there's a lot of folks we've not heard from. The good news is I've not heard at least any senator say that Mueller should be fired. But I think this is a time when we've got to decide. Are we a nation of laws? Nobody's above the law, including this president. And increasingly, we've seen this week, I mean, this is a president that's not taking anybody, even his own people's advice. I mean, today we got the announcement that his top lawyer quit. A few days ago, obviously, there was

indication when the president congratulated Vladimir Putin and John McCain said it best, you know, the leader of the free world shouldn't call up a dictator and congratulate him on a sham election. So he was ignoring his own national security staff. And I do think a lot of members are afraid of this president's power and a power that is pretty erratic in terms of, you know, depending on which side of the bed he wakes up, he's going to tweet one line of attack or another. So the House Republicans have wrapped up their investigation. Nothing more to see here. I saw today they voted to release a report on this. How close are you guys in the Senate to completing the Russia investigation? What else do you need? Who else do you need to talk to? What's the process there? Folks are still getting scheduled. We did do one piece this week, and frankly, we wanted to get it out.

This was on election security. Our systems are not fully safe. We need a paper trail for all ballots so that there is an auditable trail. We did get some money, $386 million in the omnibus bill to help states beef up their security, do election audits. do election audits in a normal administration after a country had been attacked on an electoral system, the White House would have taken the lead and said, hey, this is a national issue, a national security issue. We've heard in the last month from the director of the FBI, director of national intelligence, head of the NSA, that they'd received no direction from the White House to make this a priority. So we as the Senate Intelligence Committee got our – I think got our act together and put out some recommendations, had the current Homeland Security Secretary and the former one in and kind of went deep into the weeds on legislation.

I hope that will get moved on. We did get some money. We've got more to do obviously on social media. And then we've still got – I think at the end of the day will be the questions around collusion and collaboration. of the day will be the questions around collusion and collaboration. And there continues to be continuing breaking news on that subject as news stories and other things continue to come out. Well, let's talk about Cambridge Analytica. I mean, the first time we had you on Pod Save America, I think it was 10 years ago, back in 2017, you told us that one of the questions you're trying to answer is how the Russians were able to target ads to specific demographics of voters in specific swing states. And you wondered if they had help from any Americans.

Have you answered that question yet? And what else do you need to answer that question? And was the Cambridge Analytica news of any interest to you in answering that question coming out this week? Well, first of all, let's even just go back even decades ago, like December of 16, when I first started calling out that the social media companies might have been misused by the Russians and basically got blown away by a lot of the leadership of a lot of these companies. And we've continued to see, and I raised these issues again in the podcast in May, and there are still questions. I don't have, I can't answer that right now because Cambridge Analytica has not come in and talked with us. Clearly, there are questions as well,

how many of these 50 million Facebook accounts that were at least inappropriately used by Cambridge Analytica, how did that play in? You've got Cambridge Analytica saying, oh yeah, we were the main guys. We were the brains behind all the Trump digital operations. You've got the Trump campaign, of course, saying they weren't. So there are still questions, very legitimate questions that need to be answered. Do you expect to hear from them or are they refusing to come talk to you guys, which is a scheduling issue? And if they are refusing, is there a subpoena in order? Well, we've got to continue to sort through that.

We invited them back last year. They have not fully responded. I think we're going to have to take additional steps. You've clearly got the prior CEO who has been fired, and I think the British government may be taking actions against him. You've got the whistleblower. I think we will get to the bottom of this. You've had Zuckerberg come out yesterday from the Facebook angle and say they're going to do some more analysis, but there are still questions to be answered here. Of all the stories that we've seen in the last

couple of weeks regarding the Mueller investigation, whether it's George Nader, the cooperating witness, whether it's, you know, Jared Kushner, maybe being in the pocket of the Saudis, all this kind of stuff, which of the stories sort of worries you the most? What caught your eye the most of all these sort of stories about the investigation over the last couple of weeks? Well, probably wasn't even a single story on the investigation, although again, you can't make this stuff up, how it's drip, drip, drip, or more like you're turning on the faucet than even dripping in terms of amount of information flowing. But the fact that it's 2018.

Our election systems aren't fully secure. The Russians are still using social media in ways to divide us. We continue to see evidence, for example, around the whole NFL players kneeling debate around the national anthem that foreign influences were coming in and stirring up dissension on both sides. We don't have ties directly back to the Russians yet, but we've seen fake stories pop up after the Parkland shooting, pro and con on gun issues. So what worries me is we're into election cycle. We've had two states with primaries already, and we've got to get our act together. And since the president of the United States still refuses to call out this as an issue, to make it a priority, and instead he's out congratulating Putin rather than saying, hey, stay out of our election, or by the way, you guys shouldn't be off there killing people in the UK. I thought the Brits were our closest allies. And you didn't see this president

at all, at least based on reports, standing up for that ally and his congratulatory call to Putin. So this continual failure of the White House to acknowledge this problem and act on it, and I almost feel bad for a lot of the Trump appointees because the folks that he's appointed in the intelligence community and the law enforcement community, even the homeland security community, they all agree this is a real problem. But because it doesn't fit neatly into any lane, and this is the kind of area where you got to have a White House bring everybody together and knock heads and say, we got to get a real program in place. I think we started to take some action. Again, we from the Congress finally put some points on the board on election security and

have got some resources. We need legislation now. But that's probably the thing that worries me the most. Senator, you, among others, have been calling for Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress. Last night in one of the many interviews he did, he indicated at least some openness to that. Do you think you can actually get him to do that? And if you did, what do you want to ask him? I sure hope he will honor that commitment. And I think our committee who's been doing the most investigation and the most examination in this area, I hope he comes and talks to us. I think he owes that to us as policymakers. But more importantly, he owes it to the American public.

I mean, this company relies on the trust of its users. And it clearly has been manipulated by outside forces. And I want to hear not just kind of the targeted, carefully crafted interview that appeared on a couple of the channels last night, but I want to answer straightforward questions from Congress on where do we go from here. I mean it's hard. It's a challenging place. You want to protect the First Amendment. You've got to make sure of privacy. But as he pointed out in some of the interviews last night, he is able to identify the country source of some of this misinformation.

I mean that would be extraordinarily valuable. He mentioned that he was going to support our legislation that Amy Klobuchar and John McCain and I have been working on about saying there ought to be for political ads that mention a candidate the same requirements that an ad has on TV and radio. That's a good first step, but as we've learned, that's not nearly enough because political ads that mention a candidate was only part of the Russian activities. There were political ads that were more around, that didn't mention candidates, but were more issue related. How are we going to deal with that? And we're still sitting here trying to figure out how we get our arms around fake accounts that pop up on your Facebook feed.

What happens when the next generation technology comes in? You guys probably know about it. I'm not sure if all your audience does, called deep fakes, where you can put Dan's face on John's body and appear in a video, kind of a weird idea. Or you could have a public official who's had a lot of TV and video exposure. You can make any word come out of their mouth just with current technology and ability to

manipulate real time. So this is a problem that's only going to get worse unless people like Zuckerberg, who created this whole community around Facebook, was the genius that helped create this. He's got to help lean in, help us figure out how we go from here. We had your colleague, Elizabeth Warren, on the show last week, and she's not happy about the banking bill that has passed the Senate. I don't know if you've heard that. So the bill would relax some of the restrictions on both community banks and larger regional banks. Well, guys, all right, let me take it. I resent anyone who says,

I was actually here during Dodd-Frank. I was on the committee. Title I and Title II were pretty much the result of my work and a number of others. And I would do nothing to undermine the basic principles around Dodd-Frank about the biggest banks, about the consumer agency, about derivatives. You don't have to believe me. You got to just go believe what Chris Dodd and Barney Frank have said. I also know as well, you know what? Congress never gets it 100% right. So in a normal place, you always come back with a fix-it bill.

I've lost a third of my community banks since Dodd-Frank, and this bill did focus mostly on community banks and credit unions. There was a jump ball. Even the most ardent supporters of Dodd-Frank said the $50 billion limit in terms of where what's called enhanced regulations goes forward. That needed to be raised. It should have been raised to $100, $150, $200, $250. We basically – the Republicans wanted a lot more. As a matter of fact, my biggest bank in my state, Mattern of the Dickens, because they got no relief at all. But what we said for banks between $100 and $250,

the Fed's got to go back in, reexamine all those banks, and if they're plain vanilla, don't do anything exotic, maybe they can get less regulations. But what's really important is the stress test, which is the thing that most bankers will quietly acknowledge is most important. There are two sets of stress tests that are still going to apply to those banks, CCAR and something that's called a modified DFAS, which I get more details than you want. And there was an argument what the number should have been, but it really bothers me when people are out there impugning people's motives when we're trying to actually get something done.

And quite honestly, in a time when we got a Republican president, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate trying to stop the efforts to completely roll back the protections around the Consumer Bureau and completely unleash the big banks. So as long as you want to have a straight factual-based argument on this, I'm fine. Let's have it. But some of the over-the-top accusations been made just haven't been made based in fact. And frankly, you've got an awful lot of Democrats who are um up for re-election this year i'm not up for re-election we're disturbed by the tenor of the debate so the reaction i've heard from

a lot of the bill supporters is you know the opponents of the bill are overreacting it's not that bad and so obviously exaggerations happen but it's like saying that presumes that that this is some over the top not that bad. I mean, listen, there were good things that came out of this piece of legislation. I actually believe a community bank is going to have a better knowledge of a small town, and I've got a lot of small towns in Virginia, than Wells Fargo or J.P. Morgan. Yeah. And I've lost 25% of those in the last four or five years.

I want to slow that. And I think that's a good thing. So the CBO said that the legislation would create a slightly greater risk. So it's only slightly greater, but it does say that slightly greater risk of a financial crisis. The CBO also said there's a 50-50 chance that the Fed could use the law to relax capital requirements on big banks like Citigroup or JP Morgan. Let me try to address that. You could also say that if we took the enhanced prudential standards and took it down to banks that had only $100 million in capital, that that might slightly decrease the chance of financial instability. So you could say if you

dialed it all the way up, that would be the case as well. So some of this is judgment. that would be the case as well. So some of this is judgment. I'd also say what the CBO said was, and this gets technical, but there is a clause that says if a bank called a custodial bank has reserves at the Federal Reserve, they ought to be able to count those.

Now, what they are assuming is if the large banks tried to reconstitute themselves, completely got out of all their traditional businesses and just became a custodial bank, they might have a different capital requirement. I got to believe the Fed councils and the Fed chairman. They do not believe that will happen, and they do not have any intention of trying to lower those capital standards. So what was amazing is even in the original Dodd-Frank, we gave the Fed a bunch of flexibility. They have not used that flexibility. I voted for Jay Powell. Over, I think, 85, 90 members of the Senate voted for Jay Powell. We all had assurance from him that he's not going to radically restructure. So again,

I stand by, this was a good bill in every kind of legislation. There's some give and take. And, you know, frankly, I think one of the things that people get upset with in Congress is when all we do is scream at each other as opposed to actually getting some things done. I can tell you I got communities around Virginia that are going to have more local capital invested in their community because of this legislation. I guess my question is like every Democratic senator from you to Elizabeth Warren all wanted to relax some of the restrictions on community banks, right? Like that's something everyone agrees on. You have a lot in Virginia. So why not, you know, wait and try to pass a bill that only helps the community banks that really need help? Because I'm just wondering, wondering, aren't you worried that the House is going to make it worse? The House will make it worse.

I know this may come as a newsflash, but part of politics is trying to find common ground. We've also fought off efforts for the last few years to try to completely dismantle the Consumer Protection Bureau, which I think is one of the great attributes that Senator Warren brought to the debate, total relaxation on the larger banks. And we've been working on this for four or five years. You ought to have seen what the Republicans' first round of asks were. We've got somebody now in Mike Crapo who, again, I don't agree with him on a lot of things, but he was straightforward and a reasonable person to deal with. And I think we got what would be in a normal Congress, what's basically a medium-level bill.

You can be for it or against it. It's what I would call a traditional fix-it bill if Congress was in a traditional – any kind of traditional mode. And my fear is that when you end up then having some of these over-the-top attacks, you actually decrease the chances of Democrats taking back control of the Congress. And then we're subject to even more ability of a Republican-only solution that would unwind Dodd-Frank. Are you worried that the House will make it worse? Listen, we've been very straight. If the House moves this bill dramatically to write the 17, I'm not going to urge them all to vote against anything that would come back that moves the bill further to the right. Got it. Last question. Jake Tapper reported this morning, you know, he was talking to Republican sources and they said, you know, in the omnibus and this funding

bill, we offered the Democrats three years of DACA protections for three years of wall funding. And, you know, Schumer and Pelosi said no. What do you think about that? First of all, is that reporting correct? Do you think it was a good idea? No. Listen, what I've heard is there was an offer for three years if Trump got $25 billion and more detention beds, more interior enforcement, things that were way, way off the top. On immigration, this president keeps changing his position depending on the day.

And we were willing to go a long way towards giving him a lot of the wall if we could get the 1.8 million young people that path to citizenship. And, you know, again again that would have been a compromise that would have been back to the banking bill analogy well why wouldn't you just wait until you get you know 1.8 million people without giving up anything and under that circumstance we'd never move at all but there was to my mind uh no truth that i was aware of at least that the president and his crowd backed off from the full ask of the $25 billion. And three years is not enough for these young people. They deserve a path to citizenship. Excellent. Senator Warner, thank you as always for joining us. We really

appreciate you taking the time. Thanks, guys. Thanks again to Senator Warner for joining us today. Tom and John and I will be in D.C. tomorrow. We're going to be on the march on Saturday and we're going to interview Joe Biden tomorrow. Dan? I am so jealous about this considering that none of you have been from Delaware.

You make fun of Delaware. I have a whole... I'm going to be sending you a list of very specific Delaware-oriented questions that you should ask them. That's what I was hoping for. Which I recognize

is going to a very small, specific audience, but it matters. It's like you, Biden, and David Plouffe. And the rest of the residents of Delaware, of which there are many. Are there more than just the three of you? There are more people than just the three of us

and my parents. While you guys are in D.C. with Joe Biden, I will be at the March for Our Lives here in San Francisco. My family's coming out for it. Oh, good. We're very excited about it. It's going to be a really powerful event here in my hometown.

Excellent. Well, and our pod on Monday will be, we'll be talking to some people at the March and we'll do a quick news recap. And so that will be Monday and then the Joe Biden pod

will be out on Wednesday, I believe we're going to release it as a bonus pod. So have a good weekend, everyone. And we will talk to you next week. Bye, everyone.