Pod Save America - “He loves your ass.”

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

Rep. Adam Schiff joins to break down all of the latest impeachment news, Pete Buttigieg takes the lead in Iowa, and Elizabeth Warren offers her own Medicare for All plan. Then Senator Sherrod Brown talks to Jon F. about impeachment, health care, and his new book, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. In just a few minutes, we'll be talking to the one and only Adam Schiff about a few things he's got going on this week. A little busy. The one and only. The one and only.

I thought we were booking Jim Jordan this whole time. Yeah, he couldn't make it. He's yelling at a wall. He's like, oh, I hulked out of my shirt. I gotta go change. I don't respect his policy on undermining the rule of law. I do respect his no-jacket policy. Yes, me too. We're also going to talk about what recent Democratic victories in red states like Kentucky and now Louisiana can tell us about the politics of impeachment and break down the brand new Des

Moines Register poll that shows Mayor Pete way out in the lead. And finally, you'll hear my interview with a good friend of the pod who stopped by the office on Friday, Senator Sherrod Brown. Man, big pods today, guys. Huge pods. Love it. How was the show this week? We had a great Love It or Leave It joined by Whitney Cummings, Joe Mandy, one of the funniest shows we've done in a long time. So check it out. Apparently Dion Waiters ate an edible

and they had to land the plane. Heard that. Heard that. Very relatable. Love it. I believe you also have an announcement about a little Love It or Leave It road trip. Yes.

Love It or Leave It is coming to Iowa City on January 30th, right before the caucuses. The presale starts Wednesday at 10 a road trip. Yes. Love It or Leave It is coming to Iowa City on January 30th right before the caucuses. The pre-sale starts Wednesday at 10 a.m. Central. Crooked.com slash events. The password's crooked in all caps. And you can come

check out the show. And speaking of Iowa. Speaking of Iowa. Tommy, this is the big week, right? Tuesday. The first part of a five-part series on the Iowa caucuses

will be released. Tuesday's episode is going to focus on the Obama campaign in Iowa, the way we structured it, our strategy, and what it meant for his candidacy over the long term, because I think it helps us understand why there's so much focus on Iowa today. And then episode two, we're going to go through all the history of how Iowa became first. And we'll dig into the pretty reasonable arguments that maybe this isn't the best way to pick a president.

We'll talk about the good and the bad of the Iowa caucuses. And then there will be four episodes in a row. And then we're going to do one more in January closer to the results. So I've been working on this a while with the great folks at Pineapple Street Studios and very excited to release it to the world. And I will just say a little endorsement for me. I realize there's a lot going on this week, a lot of hearings tomorrow morning, but listen to the first episode. It is so great.

It is, you know, especially because all we do is talk about polls and politics and national stuff. And when you hear some of these field organizers, you're just, you can't help but be inspired. Yeah, I think that'll be the part people like, which is that politics feels bad all the time. But when you're hanging out with a 20 year old who is dedicating their life to trying to help a candidate win, no matter who that candidate is, it is inspiring and impressive and something worth doing.

Yeah. Finally, we'll be doing our live group thread during the public impeachment hearings nearly every day this week and on Wednesday night during the debate. Sounds like excited. Big week of news. So you can hear from us in real time while everything's happening. Subscribe to our channel at youtube.com slash crooked media. Okay, let's get to the news. With us this morning, House Intelligence Chairman and friend of the pod, Adam Schiff. Congressman, thanks for being here. It's great to be with you.

Mr. Chairman, we want to start with something that's been troubling us about how you've conducted this hearing. It was bad last week. It looks to be worse this week. You've scheduled these hearings to begin at 9 a.m. Eastern, which is 6 a.m. Pacific. You are our congressman. I live in your district. How can you do this to us? Well, you're just going to have to get up early, what can I tell you? But we have two hearings back to back, so we'll be going all morning, afternoon and potentially into the evening. So they're going to be long days ahead of us. I will say, Congressman, you've made us all very proud out here in Los Angeles, the way that you've conducted the hearing so far. Of all the testimony and developments from last week, what do you hope the main takeaway is for people who might have not been paying super

close attention? Well, I hope people will get a sense of many things, of the seriousness of the president's misconduct, of the dedication of the public servants from the State Department and the Defense Department and elsewhere who came forward against the wishes of the administration, who did their lawful duty, answered a lawful subpoena, and told the American people what they knew. That's the way it should be. We're facing, I think, one of the most significant and all-encompassing obstruction campaigns that we've ever seen by a president.

And these courageous people like Ambassador Yovanovitch and Bill Taylor and George Kent and others that the country will hear from this week have testified at great risk to themselves and their careers. And I hope the public will have an appreciation for their courage, and I hope it will inspire others. Congressman, the Republicans' defense of Trump seems to shift over time, but a lot of them are settling on a question about the president's intent and his personal motives in this quid pro quo or this extortion scheme. It seems like they are in part dismissing evidence from witnesses as hearsay as a way to build that defense. At the same time, Republicans are also trying to prevent people like Mulvaney or Pompeo from Bolton from testifying when they would actually be able to speak to the president's mindset and intent. Well, this is the thing that I think is so difficult for Republicans, which is they are supporting the president's efforts to stonewall. They're not urging the administration to make these witnesses available. Few of them are saying anything about all the thousands of documents the administration was holding. And instead, they're saying, well,

there should be more direct witnesses. The reality is, though, we have plenty of direct witnesses. We have, for example, Mick Mulvaney, the president's chief of staff, saying on live television how there was a quid pro quo that essentially the military aid was being withheld because they wanted Ukraine to do this political investigation into this discredited theory that it was Ukraine that interfered in our election in 2016, not the Russians. You have other witnesses who I think quite directly, even though their testimony may be limited to discrete episodes, go right to the heart of the president's intent. And Robert Holmes is one of them. Now, I can only speak to his written testimony because that's all that's been released so far. But he overhears this conversation in this restaurant in Kiev between Ambassador Sondland and the president, in which the president wants to know, are the Ukrainians going to do the investigations?

And Sondland assures him that they are. And when they get off the phone, the State Department employee asks, and these are not my words, so you'll forgive me, does the president give a shit about Ukraine? And Sondland's answer is, he doesn't give a shit about Ukraine. He just cares about the big stuff, And that means what affects his personal interests. And that, I think, tells you a lot about the president's intimate involvement in this, as well as his frame of mind, what he cares about, whether he's acting in the U.S. interests.

And of course, the U.S. national security interests are in helping defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. Congressman, you obviously don't want to wait for weeks and months for courts to settle this, but why not at least try to subpoena Bolton and Mulvaney and then hold them in contempt if they don't show up? What's sort of the thinking behind the strategy there? In terms of Bolton and Mulvaney? Yeah. Well, we subpoenaed Mulvaney. So he has received a subpoena and he has defied it.

Bolton has told us if we subpoena him, he will take us to court. And this is what his lawyers have said. We're not interested in playing rope-a-dope for months in the courts. We think that Bolton should do what three individuals who work for him have done, and that is he should make himself available and come and testify. He should show the same courage that those that work for him have demonstrated. They were also instructed not to testify. They also did so at personal risk. They were told in no uncertain terms that, you know, things they say could be privileged and therefore they shouldn't come, but they did anyway. And if Bolton were sincere about his willingness to testify, then he would have come to the deposition when we asked him to.

So right now we've seen testimony from Taylor, Kent, Yovanovitch. It has been, I think, extraordinary to watch, devastating to the arguments that Republicans have been making. And yet I think there's been this dichotomy in the hearings between the kind of show that some of your Republican colleagues are putting on and then the struggle of the Republican lawyer to actually make inroads into the argument. And I think there's a distance there between the facts that are really impossible to argue with and the political realities and equities that the Republicans are grappling with. And they're sort of desperate to try to distract from this sort of mounting evidence. Behind the scenes, is there a different posture on the part of these Republicans? Are there more sort of open and reflective conversations behind the scenes that we're not seeing? Or is what we're seeing on television the posture they're showing you when the cameras aren't on?

Well, you know, I think, and I certainly, I get feedback from some of my colleagues on both the Democratic and Republican side, including Republicans, senior Republicans, who would come up to me after hearing and say, you did really well. That's not something they're going to say publicly. Publicly, they're all attacking me. But others, you know, are more candid, I think, with some of my colleagues and are willing to express their concerns. You know, some, frankly, expressed their concerns early on in public. Mike Turner, for example, expressed that he thought what the president had done was not okay in that call. But as we've seen the president come down on anyone who deviates from the party line that this was a perfect call in any way, they go after him.

And so the Mike Turner that we heard in the hearing the other day was a completely different Mike Turner than we heard a month ago. was a completely different Mike Turner than we heard a month ago. You know, similarly, the president went after, I think, Mac Thornberry, and Mac Thornberry said on the Sunday show that it was not a perfect call and it was problematic. And the president called that a fool's errand to say things like that. And so the White House, I think, has been very heavy-handed, skillful, you might say, in so eviscerating anyone who deviates from Trump's orthodoxy that they're scared. And so we see this spectacle where some are auditioning for the

president for future roles, potentially in the Trump administration. Some are just trying to keep their head down, and others are just not willing to confront this deeply unethical man. But how could you watch this testimony? How could you hear people like Basha Yovanovitch and Taylor and Mr. Kent and not be alarmed that the president of the United States was withholding hundreds of millions of dollars that all of us in Congress supported to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression, really defend the United States against Russian expansionism, and holding it up to try to coerce this dependent ally to do these political investigations. You can imagine how they would feel if any Democratic president were ever to engage in half this conduct. Two quick things. First, I just want to note that this

conversation has been chock-a-block with pizzazz, so thank you for that. Second, Roger Stone was just convicted of lying to Congress to protect Trump. Gordon Sondland had to revise his testimony and may have to again. These individuals haven't demonstrated, let's call it, a lot of respect for the truth. Are you concerned about President Trump possibly pardoning Roger Stone and what message that might send to others who are asked to testify? Well, I've been concerned all along with the president's abuse of the pardon power in the way that he would dangle pardons over people, like I think he did with Michael Cohen, in the way that he would praise people like Paul Manafort, who refused to cooperate, and call others who did cooperate rats, the way he speaks like an organized crime boss.

So yes, we have to, I think, all be concerned with the continuing possibility that Donald Trump will pardon either Roger Stone or Paul Manafort or others, and the message that would send, you know, I have to say those kind of actions only build to the case against the president for obstruction of justice and obstruction of the Congress. So there's a peril in the president taking those steps. You know, one thing is perfectly consistent about this president, and that is he doesn't care about anyone else or anything else but himself. So the judgment about whether to pardon any of these people will be strictly viewed through the prism

of what's best for Donald Trump. And I don't know how to weigh that calculus for the White House, except that they must know that where do you engage in this kind of abuse of the pardon power? that where do you engage in this kind of abuse of the pardon power, he may be just adding to the weight of evidence against the president in a potential account for obstruction of Congress and obstruction of justice. Do you expect Gordon Sondland to revise his testimony once again this week? It seems like he's in need of some recollection refreshment again. I don't know what to expect. I can say that one of the reasons we want to do these hearings in open session now that we've done our preliminary

fact-finding is we want the American people to be able to judge the credibility of these witnesses for themselves and make their own determinations about who they believe is telling the truth and who might not be. I think that, you know, the Stone case does demonstrate that we take perjury before our committee very seriously. There are two people now who have been convicted of it, Michael Cohen and Roger Stone. And I would hope that all the witnesses that come before us will be very mindful of their obligation to tell the truth, the old truth and nothing but the truth. Speaking of perjury, which is very hot right now, there's reports that the House may look into whether or not President Trump lied in his answers to Robert Mueller. Is there any truth to that? And can you tell us any more about that? Well, you know, one of the obviously the most important parts of the Mueller report,

indeed, half the Mueller report was about the president's efforts to obstruct justice. And if the president lied in his answers to Mueller, lied under oath, that only further substantiates a case of obstruction of justice. When we get done with our investigation in the Intelligence Committee and we make our report to the Judiciary Committee, we as a caucus, you know, in consultation with the Constitution and our conscience are going to have to determine what's the remedy for this presidential misconduct. And are we prepared to say that this is now acceptable, okay, something that we have to expect now in future presidents? Or if not, what's the remedy? And if the remedy are articles of

impeachment, we'll have to consider whether to include among those articles the president's obstruction of justice. And if he lied to Congress, that could be part of that kind of an article. It could be something independent of that. But those are questions for another day. Right now we still need to finish our fact-finding. But pursuing this grand jury material, and this is the context in which that issue came up today, will help inform us on the issue of obstruction of justice. So Republicans are telling reporters that two of this week's witnesses, Kurt Volker and Tim

Morrison, will actually help undermine the case for impeachment. Why do you think they're saying that? And what do you anticipate Republicans will try to argue in their hearings? Republicans will try to argue in their hearings? Well, look, I'm glad that the Republicans at least had some witnesses that were relevant and could provide important information for the American people. And so we're calling them this week. I think both of these witnesses have things that are very damning to the president's case. And so I look forward to their testimony. We've had an extensive deposition with both. Volker was one of the first witnesses we brought in.

I think we know a great deal more now than we did when he originally testified. But I think both of these witnesses have very important testimony that goes to the president's misconduct. And I will leave it to the public to judge who their testimony helps or hurts. is that in Warsaw on September 1st, immediately after Pence is talking to Zelensky, Ambassador Sondland and Morrison witnesses that walks over to Andrei Yarmak, one of Zelensky's top aides, has a private conversation, and comes over to tell Morrison what was said. And what he tells Morrison is, I informed the Ukrainians that if they wanted a military aid, they were likely going to have to do these investigations that the president wanted. That is about as direct evidence of coercion, bribery, extortion as you're going to find.

And why they think that's helpful to the president, you'd have to ask them. Yeah, seems bad. Well, I'll just end where I began. I mean, obviously, you have selected sort of the order of all these witnesses for specific reasons. What is the story you're hoping that collectively the witnesses this week tell the American people about about President Trump's behavior? Well, I think these witnesses lay out a long course of conduct that began with a campaign against Ambassador Yovanovitch to, first of all, get rid of this ambassador who was a thorn in their side, who was championing anti-corruption efforts, urging the Ukrainians not to engage in political prosecutions. And of course, what they wanted was for Ukraine to engage in two particular political prosecutions. So they clear the way by getting rid of Ambassador Yovanovitch. They bring in this irregular channel that runs from the president through Mick Mulvaney, the chief of staff, through Ambassador Sondland, through Rudy Giuliani, to the Ukrainians in order to essentially bribe or coerce them into doing two investigations that Donald Trump

believed would help his reelection, one into the Bidens and one into this debunked conspiracy theory about 2016. And the president was willing to condition a White House meeting that President Zelensky desperately wanted, and $400 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to help Ukraine defend itself against the Russians in order to get Ukraine to do this dirty work. And I think what the American people are going to have to decide, and Congress as their representatives, is are we prepared to say that that's somehow now compatible with the oath of office, that a president can abuse his power this way? And at the end of the day, I keep coming back to what Mr. Holmes said,

and that is if the president of the United States doesn't care about our defense or Ukraine's defense, only cares about his personal interests, that's a profound danger to the country. And we're going to have to decide what needs to be done about it. So I hope that Americans are watching. I think they are. And that they will help inform their representatives about what they think our response should be. Congressman Schiff, we really appreciate you coming on. Thanks for the time, and best of luck this week. Thank you very much. You take care. We will be back with more news.

All right. So we talked about this a little with Congressman Schiff, but I wanted to get your reaction to Friday's hearing with Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who Trump fired after Rudy Giuliani, his indicted Russian mobster friends and a bunch of corrupt Ukrainians orchestrated a smear campaign against her because she was standing in the way of the bribery and extortion scheme. I'll be honest, I hadn't thought that this hearing would be a huge deal because she didn her entire career as a nonpartisan diplomat who served her country in dangerous places and fought corruption in Ukraine stood as such a stark contrast to the deeply corrupt man and men who destroyed that career. And so, I don't know. Tommy, what was your reaction to the hearing? I mean, I think we all have to remember that people who get to the rank of ambassador are the best of the best in the Foreign Service. You have risen through the ranks. You're like a three-star or a four-star general. So these are like unbelievably seasoned, accomplished professional people who often work in dangerous places. So it is really nice that that did break through. But then you can contrast that with the like three amigos or the, you know, or Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman and the fraud guarantee gang who are cooking up a James

Bond mission at a Hanukkah party at the White House is the channel to diplomacy. And I think it speaks to one the just idiocy and absurdity of what the Trump administration was trying to do and just how brazenly corrupt what they were working on was. Love it. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think that what's striking about these hearings, the two hearings we saw, right, we had Kent and Taylor. And obviously there was a Twitter hubba-baloo about whether or not it was dramatic enough. And then we had Yovanovitch and Taylor and Kent helped really establish the fact pattern so clearly about the wrongdoing. But of course, we're going into these hearings where the wrongdoing is self-evident and, you know, corroborated on multiple fronts by virtually every witness with any kind of honesty. And you can have the dishonest witnesses who've had to revise their testimony because the evidence boxed them in.

And so there's sort of two things going on. One is building the fact case. there's sort of two things going on. One is building the fact case. And that's like, it's, it's a bit like, you know, Democrats are trying to get weight on one side of a seesaw and Republicans are kind of screwing their side of the seesaw to the ground because they know that like, there's just so much evidence against them. And what was striking about Yovanovitch is, put all that aside, the case is the case and it's pretty fucking clear. This is a righteous person. And there was a, there was a moment that I'll always remember when the Republican said to her, you know, doesn't the president have the right to have the, you know, the ambassador he wants?

And she says, yes, of course. But why did he have to smear me? Yeah. And it was this incredible moment of a woman who gave her life into the service of this country and says, you know, several times in these hearings that all she has is her reputation. And she saw that shredded by this president. And it's only by dint of impeachment that she's had the opportunity to make her case publicly and to be redeemed. And, you know, Twitter, social media, the way politics is covered, it's designed to make you cynical. It's designed to make you feel as if your sentiments are somehow unearned or childish

or naive. She went to a jazz club at the end of her tough week and she got a round of applause. And there was something so wholesome about that. This woman had a really hard week and she just wanted to unwind with some jazz. And she went and they gave her a round of applause. And like, you know, I think what we're seeing in this week, to me, my takeaway was that this was a revolt of people with integrity against people who don't have it. And it has been nice to see that that honorable behavior, that righteous behavior still has currency, still can get a foothold in our politics. Yeah, I think it was an important point that because the Republicans are obviously trying

to say, we're trying to say during that whole hearing, president can fire whoever he wants.'s the deal right and then they tried to do the whole like you still have a job don't you aren't you still happy you know most condescending thing you weren't marched down the street while someone rang a shame bell and i think like the reason besides everything that you just said love it why she was a powerful witness. The reason I think she was an important witness for the case against Trump is she would agree and the Democrats would agree. Of course, the president can fire whoever he wants at any time. And of course, like if you have disagreements on policy, on foreign policy, especially with the people who are serving you abroad, you can make changes or stuff like that. And this is someone who has worked under Republican and Democratic administrations. And many of these career

service officers, career ambassadors, like they don't necessarily have to agree with the policy of the president that they're serving, but they're diplomats for America and they carry out that policy to the best of their ability. And basically what she's saying, what the Democrats are saying is all that aside, what the president cannot do, must not be able to do is get someone out of the way, fire someone purely for their own personal political interests to basically run this bribery and extortion scheme. That's the problem. If he was so confident in his ability to fire anyone he wants at any time he wants, why cook up a pretext that smears her character and accuses her of a bunch of things she didn't do? He undercuts his own argument in the process of making it. And then he goes on to attack her in the middle of the hearing itself and blame her for the problems that exist politically in Somalia. It was just so fucking absurd and childish

and outrageous. And he's now attacked at least four witnesses in the impeachment inquiry. Bill Taylor, Yovanovitch, Alex Vindman, not by name. And then he over the weekend, he attacks Mike Pence's current aide. And the best that pathetic, sniveling Reagan impersonator could do in response is state. She works at the State Department. Well, guess what, buddy? All NSC staffers, by and large, the mass majority of National Security Council staffers are detailed from other agencies. So she currently works for you. Yeah, I mean, there was so, you know,

Trump does this during the hearing. I mean, this Maria Ivanovich, right? Like part of the hearing is about how Trump on the phone call with Zelensky called her bad news, said that she's going to be going through some things. And so Schiff is asking her how that felt. And she answers, as you talked about, love it and saying, like, you know, why does he have to smear my reputation? That's all we have. This has been a painful period. She talked about her friend saying that the color actually went from her face when she read the transcript. And then as that's happening, he sends that tweet. And, you know, there was this whole debate. Is this witness intimidation? Should Democrats add

that to the impeachment case? I don't know if, you know, you've talked about this before, Tommy, like, I don't know if we need to get into the legal weeds about what's witness intimidation or what's not. Like, what we do know is this is a case we're trying to make to the public about impeachment and a case that we're trying to make to the public about impeachment and a case that we're trying to make to republicans and if the president is attacking witnesses while they're testifying or before like and every single person who works for him who then says the truth is suddenly a never trumper who deserves to be attacked like whether you add it to the articles of impeachment or a lot not, it doesn't look too good.

And also they're trying to out the whistleblower, right? His allies are, his son tweeted the name of an individual he thought to be a whistleblower. Steve King tweeted a picture of one of George Soros' kids who has never worked in government, but that didn't stop him from like, so we also, we have this pattern and we also saw fairly recently that a crazy MAGA guy was willing to

send pipe bombs to a bunch of people he perceived as enemies. So I think we should be a little more careful with our words when we're the president of the United States. Yeah. I think there's a few other parts of her testimony that were worthwhile in building the case against Trump. She testified that there wasn't a shred of legitimacy to the conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in 2016, which she would know because she was the ambassador there. And she also testified that Joe Biden was in fact fighting corruption when he got that prosecutor fired and carrying out the wishes of not only the Obama administration, but the global community. And like George Kent said, yeah, there could have been a potential

conflict of interest with Hunter being on the board. But remember, because this kind of gets lost in a lot of the in a lot of the coverage. Donald Trump and Giuliani didn't just want an investigation into Burisma itself or to Hunter Biden himself. They wanted the investigation into Joe Biden pushing for the firing of the prosecutor in the Burisma case. pushing for the firing of the prosecutor in the Burisma case, right? And so, and every single person who's testified without fail has said Joe Biden did the absolute right thing in firing that prosecutor. So the whole, you know, we had to go through this whole thing was like, there's no evidence that Joe Biden did anything wrong. It's like, no, no, it's not just no evidence. Joe Biden did the right thing. He was fighting corruption when he did that. So I think that I thought that was pretty important. So since Yovanovitch's testimony, there has been three additional Trump administration

officials who testified in private. Jennifer Williams, as you pointed out, Tommy, an aide to Mike Pence, who was on the call with Trump and Zelensky and testified that it was, quote, inappropriate. Tim Morrison, a White House national security aide who testified that Sondland did not exaggerate how closely he worked directly with Donald Trump, and David Holmes, an American diplomat in Ukraine who overheard a phone call where Trump asked Sondland, So, President Zelensky is going to do the investigation? To which Sondland said, Mr. President, Zelensky loves your ass.

No, no, no. Loves your ass. Get it right. CNN got it right. Zelensky loves your ass. Do we know that? Loves your ass. He loves your... Mr. President, he loves your ass. It was... Mr. right so he loves your ass do we know that loves your ass he loves your mr president he loves your ass it was mr president he loves your ass it was so funny watching cnn he loves your ass the cnn people got it wrong over and over the the emphasis was on ass the whole time and i don't think that's what watching phil mattingly and cnn that's the clip that of

course uh made uh john oliver last night too it's gone everywhere and it's just phil manningly reading it and it's almost like he read it for the first time he's like uh zielinski loves loves your ass anyway it's sorry loves your ass dark times we need this zielinski loves your ass and would do anything you ask him to holmes also testified that sonlin told him as we heard from congressman schiff that Trump didn't, quote, give a shit about Ukraine and cared only about the big stuff like the Biden investigation. Love it. How does this phone call between Sondland and Trump strengthen the case for impeachment? Well, you know, it's just a it's making it stronger. And we all know that. Of course, we knew that before we actually got more evidence about what was happening in the call.

I mean, what I what I what I see happening now is it's Republicans aren't trying to get to the truth through these hearings. They're just trying to get out of a maze. They're just trying to get out. And with each passing hearing, a door comes down and blocks an exit. Right. The whistleblower is a hardcore partisan Democrat. Door closes. It doesn't matter what the whistleblower says. We have the transcript and it's corroborated by every other piece of evidence. Everything you're saying is hearsay. Door comes down. Actually, Sondland spoke to him directly and he's going to testify. Rudy Giuliani and Sondland are the masterminds behind all of this. Door comes down. We have more evidence that Donald Trump was directing this. And at each day, more and more of their exits are blocked off. And I think that that has, you know, the case is getting stronger. Yes, but it's getting harder and harder for Republicans to find things to say out loud in these hearings. Yeah. How important, Tommy, is Sondland as a witness right now? Because it does seem like he's the he's the one with that that will testify that has the most direct connection to Trump and communication with Trump.

I think he is incredibly important. Like, you don't have to be a good person to be a good witness. And that was kind of why initially when everyone was singing the praises of some of the earlier witnesses, it made me a little bit nervous. Like, yes, it's very impressive to have a record of service to the country and military service and all these credentials. But like scumbags and rats and liars can provide helpful information. And that, that

might be what Gordon Sondland is. But we also know like a record that this call happened exists because that's how phones work, right? If you call someone, there's a record of it. We should also note that if you're a senior U S official taking a call in Kiev, the Russians are collecting the contents of that phone call. Remember Torian Newland, who was a senior official for the Obama administration, the state department, she got her call collected, recorded, and released by the Russian government back in the day. So just another thing, since operational security was such a big deal in the 2016 election, we should remember. Yeah. I heard some people say, well, Sondland's credibility is in question. What kind of witness is he going to be? And if it was just

Gordon Sondland alone giving recollections, refreshing those recollections, getting himself question what kind of witness is he going to be and like if it was just gordon sonlin alone giving recollections refreshing those recollections getting himself out of perjury that would be one thing just about every witness who's already testified has had direct contact with gordon sonlin and is they're all telling the same story right two people heard the call right so if you're saying that like you don't trust gordon sonlin that's fine but two people heard the call right so if you're saying that like you don't trust gordon sonlin that's fine but two people heard the call tim morrison uh as shift told us you know was with him in warsaw when he said the aid is conditioned on the investigations uh bill taylor had the text with him volker had the text with them like it doesn't really we have enough other people testifying that what is it it's like the word of uh eight or nine witnesses under oath against gordon sonlin who's already

had to revise his testimony yeah i mean it's just the word of eight or nine witnesses under oath against Gordon Sondland, who's already had to revise his testimony. Yeah, I mean, it's just the sheer number of people that have to be lying in order for a innocent version of these events to be true or extraordinary. Yeah, I mean, the other piece of this, too, is just Gordon Sondland was a Trump guy to Trump. There's a reason he brings up ASAP Rocky to Gordon Sondland. There's a reason he brings up ASAP Rocky to Gordon Sondland. Gordon Sondland was just somebody he seems to like to have talked to. That the reports that Gordon Sondland was actually in a kind of running conversation with Donald Trump is being borne out, right? There were questions as to whether or not Sondland was exaggerating how often he talked

to Trump. It seems that that's not the case. You know, Trump only really likes talking to a certain kind of person. And Gordon Sondland is that kind of person, a rich white guy who knows how to hang. I mean, that's really what's going on here. And so he would call him and talk to him about what was on Sondland's plate, but also it was on Trump's plate. And what we were learning is that is a big part of where this conspiracy to extort the Ukrainian government was unfolding. I think Gordon Sondland has some pretty important decisions to make this week. I don't know if he's already made them or not, but I mean, he's already revised his testimony once. Clearly, he's going to need to either say, I need to revise it again. I misspoke. I read he could do is he could plead the fifth, which wouldn't

get us very far. Or he could, you know, in the face of all of these other witnesses who testified to the contrary, keep lying, I suppose. But like, you know, we could be headed to a Michael Cohen esque public confession here on Wednesday that sort of, you know, lays the whole case out. Right. It's worth remembering that, you know, one of the great natural defenses we've had against the Trump administration are the kind of people that are willing to work with Trump are the kind of people that are willing to work with Trump. And so, yeah, sure, there are Trump loyalists, whatever that phrase means. But really what that means is they're loyal to their own interests. Gordon Sondland forked over a million dollars. It was the worst million dollars he's ever spent.

Worst possible. It just got down the fucking tubes. He basically says it all the time. He just got far more than he bargained for. Gordon Sondland doesn't need anything from Donald Trump. He's a wealthy man. He doesn't need a sinecure on Fox News. He's not a member of Congress.

He can't be primaried. He just wants to get the fuck out of this. Go back to his hotels. And go back to his hotels with some portion of his dignity and reputation. I think that's what he said. Whatever the he's he's trying to get out of this with whatever's left go with god gordo and so to me i see that and i think i see somebody who is going to uh not want to uh go down with the trump ship i do want to before we go on just

stop and and talk a little bit about the story that you referenced to me um from cnn that broke on friday that really hasn't gotten much coverage because of all the other shit that's happened over the weekend um according to the friends of indicted giuliani goon lev parniss donald trump pulled parniss and igor fruman his partner aside during the white house hanukkah party and gave them a secret james bond mission from the president is how it was described. A secret mission, James Bond mission from the president to carry out his Ukrainian bribery scheme involving fake investigations into Joe Biden. These are mobsters who've just been indicted for campaign finance felonies that are being pulled aside at the White House Hanukkah party and told you're my guys to go do this here's the craziest thing uh there was only actually enough corruption to last one night but it actually the corruption managed to last eight nights and that's like

a pretty like miraculous thing you know and to to yeah to that end love it uh the washington post reported that in april 2018 there was a small fundraising dinner at Trump's hotel and Parnas talked to Trump then about Yovanovitch. So like there's a longer paper trail. And just, you know, for shits and giggles the day before the Hanukkah party, Giuliani brought Parnas as his guest to the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush. So everything about this is weird. I mean, he's a hot ticket. He's lonely. He's a divorced man who needed a plus one. I don't know. Bush. So everything about this is weird. I mean, it's a hot ticket. He's lonely. He's a divorced man who needed a plus one. I don't let's not indict him for being sad. I sort of think that the Democrats and they might be planning this. We should ask Schiff, but I think they should call Parnas to testify since he seems

willing to testify. And to your point, Tommy, these don't they don't need to all be upstanding public servants because Parnas was clearly in the middle of this plot. There's clearly ways to corroborate whatever testimony he offers. And there are enough stories out there, right, that people who are currently under indictment were carrying out this plot and also trying to, you know, grift on the side, too. Yeah, I think that's I think it would be very, very bad for the Republicans to have to interrogate those two. You know, one thing we've noticed in our polls, you know, we look, we get into the details of what's happening in these hearings. And then, you know, you look at

the polling about how impeachment is faring. And obviously, impeachment is getting more and more kind of popular with people. But you dig into the numbers and you sort of wonder, it seems like the parts of what Trump did that sound the crimeyest are the things that people think are the worst thing to do right you introduce words like tampering intimidation right words that in people's minds wait yeah those are things i associate with criminality they tend to look the worst i can't think of anything that would look worse for donald trump than these two fucking goons sitting in front of congress talking about the hanukkah party and their secret mission i mean it just it just's, they might as well be inside of the Watergate with flashlights. It's a great story. Um, so it was already a bad week for Trump. Um, we didn't even,

we didn't, yeah, we didn't even fourth impeachment in American history. We didn't even, but we didn't even really talk about, uh, Roger Stone being found guilty on seven counts for obstructing the Mueller investigation and lying specifically about Trump's connection to the Democratic emails that Russia stole in 2016. He could face up to 50 years in prison. So that's happening. But then after all of that last week, on Saturday, the Republican candidate that Trump campaigned for in the Louisiana governor's race, a state where he won by 20 points in 2016, lost to Democratic incumbent John Bel Edwards by about two and a half points. So, first of all, we should thank everyone who went on Vote Save America and volunteered in that race, organized in that race. One of the big reasons that Edwards won was because of increased turnout, especially increased African-American turnout,

increased turnout in the suburbs around New Orleans and some of the other major cities. So that's great. And not only did the Democratic governor win again, but Democrats prevented Republicans from winning a supermajority in the state legislature there, which means that Democrats will absolutely have a hand in drawing the maps in 2021, which is part of our Fuck Jerry fund. Yeah, we could pick up another seat there. I mean, look, I'm no expert on either Kentucky or will absolutely have a hand in drawing the maps in 2021, which is part of our Fuck Jerry Fund. Yeah, we could pick up another seat there. I mean, look, I'm no expert on either Kentucky or Louisiana politics. I think we could have a longer conversation about the relative strength of the candidates involved in these races. But we all do know that there's a narrative that, you know, there's over all of this. And a lot of people in D.C. were excited, if not eager to say

that if all of these Republican governors won, an impeachment was the reason why. And it was a mistake to do so. They were floating this theory. And then the exact opposite happened. So Trump does not look like a particularly strong president. Certainly he can't will a candidate to victory like he used to argue he could. And I will say, you know, we cannot repeat enough the fact that Trump campaigned in both of these states tried to make the campaign about impeachment the candidates he campaigned for in both states tried to make it about trump and tried to make it about impeachment these are deep red states that he won by 30 points and 20 points and um he couldn't do it and you were just talking about

that narrative tommy like that narrative is so deeply ingrained because reporters have always believed that impeachment was a bad idea and one of the reasons that reporters have believed it was a bad idea is because in fairness a lot of the democrats in congress for a long time thought it was a bad idea too and polling suggested and polling suggested it too so this will come back up because if republicans decide to acquit donald trump if they stick with him you know we're going to get a whole nother round of stories. Is this going to be bad for Democrats? We can't forget that we just had two elections in the middle of this in deep red states and it just wasn't good. Also, we should talk about the new ABC poll out this morning.

70 percent of Americans now think Trump's request to a foreign leader to investigate his political rival was wrong. 51% say it merits impeachment and removal. Another 6% say it warrants impeachment, but not removal. And only 25% think Trump did nothing wrong, which I think are pretty good numbers. It's also worth noting, I think in that poll that something like either 21 or 25% of people just really hadn't heard about it yet. Yeah. So that's really the goal of this impeachment inquiry is to make sure those people know what's happening because boy, it seems hard to believe that you could not have heard about the president of the United States getting impeached, but it's what a world.

I listen. We so nice. I just, they're not listening to this. They're not listening to anything, but my goodness to live in a world where you just found out Donald Trump got impeached. I want to go there. I want to visit you. I want to go there. I want to visit you. I want to experience it.

I want to take a vacation to that life. Well, I mean, to that point. So 58 percent in the poll say they're following the hearings very or somewhat closely. Of the 21 percent who are following impeachment hearings very closely, 67 percent of that crowd think Trump should be impeached and removed. Now you can say, is that causation or, youation or are those people more likely to watch the hearings? But the party breakdown in the people who are watching very closely is pretty even. Slightly more Democrats, but it's pretty even. So at the very least, what we can say is what the Republicans are doing during those hearings

is not working. It's not persuading. I will also say I have made it a point to try to watch some Fox News throughout these hearings, because like it or not, I actually think it's an incredibly important, you know, the way Fox News covers this impeachment is probably more important than the way CNN does and more important the way MSNBC does, because Fox News is where they can protect themselves the most. And a lot of that coverage has been pretty straight. Brett Baier, Chris Wallace, you know, they've had some very silly chyrons throughout the hearings, but they're playing the hearings in full. Those hearings speak for themselves. Some of their conversation in the middle, they are really at a loss for how to

defend the president. A few people trying to find ways to throw to what the Republicans are doing. But, you know, that to me is at least a sign that the that impeachment has not only rested the microphone from Donald Trump. It's it's in part rested it from the propaganda machine. That's not speaking. Look, what's happening between eight and eleven on Fox News continues to be. Well, I was going to say a true horror, but nonetheless, where they're having trouble is when they do live coverage. Sometimes it's so stark what's happening in those hearings that it's hard to do their bullshit. And by nighttime, they've cleaned it up and so i do think once the hearings are over they'll close ranks again and we'll get the usual fox news but it's interesting that they're having a hard time when faced with this testimony live saying anything but uh the truth at least some of them

yep few of them all right let's talk about 2020. On Saturday night, the gold standard of Iowa polls from the Des Moines Register showed Mayor Pete Buttigieg gone from 9% in September to 25% now and has taken the first clear lead in the Iowa caucuses, according to that poll. After Pete, it's a three-way tie with Elizabeth Warren at 16%, and Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders at 15%. Amy Klobuchar has 6%, and everyone else is at 3% or less. Also quite important, more than 60% of respondents in the poll said they'd be open to supporting someone besides their first choice. So yes, the race is still quite fluid, but man, that is a pretty incredible poll from Mayor Pete. Tommy, you've been on the ground in Iowa. What do you attribute Mayor Pete's rise to?

So a few things. I mean, I think that he's been, he raised a ton of money early and he's been on TV advertising and making a case for himself. I think that has been important. I think he's had a big team there and they've been organizing. I thought he had a good JJ speech and that helped set a narrative. And I also think that his rise seems to coincide with a dip for Elizabeth Warren. And I do think, look, this is a great poll for Mayor Pete. I think it looks particularly great for him because he's way up since the last register poll, which was in September. But I think you've seen some of the strength in other polls. The Monmouth poll recently showed him doing very well. The most important point, though, is the one you stated afterwards, which is only 30% of these people have made up their

mind. This thing is so fluid. And the caucus seems like it will be massive. So figuring out who is actually going to turn out is going to be incredibly difficult. Love it. What'd you think? Obviously, it was surprising. I think I was not surprised to see Pete rising. I was surprised to see by how much he's rising. You know, we talked about this when Elizabeth Warren was kind of having a trajectory that looked like this. And one of the things we noted is that, you know, she'd actually had a pretty smooth few months with very few, if anyone, taking any shots at her. I think Pete's been in a similar place actually recently,

any shots at her. I think Pete's been in a similar place actually recently, as Elizabeth Warren has drawn some fire and as Biden has drawn some fire and Kamala and a few others have actually drawn some heat as well. You know, now I think what's been happening is when candidates suddenly pop up to the front of the pack in Iowa in polling, they go from being covered in standard definition to being covered in ultra HD with HDR. And I think that will present some challenges for Pete. I think we'll see at the debate on Wednesday, becoming an Iowa frontrunner will have some costs because I would expect debaters to take some shots. He's actually, I think, Julian Castro not being in this debate.

I think actually that is a very fortunate thing for Pete because I could have seen Julian Castro taking a pretty good swing at Mayor Pete. I also do think now the question will, look, Tommy makes this point all the time, people want to win. They want to win. They want to win. They want to win. And now that Pete has this real chance of winning Iowa, and it looks like it's a real possibility, the question about his support from a huge portion of the Democratic coalition, people of color, will start to become not just a moral question, but a political one. I will say to start that, you know, evidence is mixed on whether voters make up their minds based on ideology or how much voters think about ideology. We know that for sure. And the conversation about lanes in the

primary can sometimes be like a little oversimplified. But with all that said, they did ask in this poll, is the candidate, do you think this candidate's views are too liberal, just about right, or too conservative? Buttigieg fares the best of the four candidates in the lead with 63% saying he's about right and only 13% calling him too conservative and 7% saying he's too liberal. And so he is he's much better than all the other candidates on that. He clearly you know, we talked about this during the after the last debate. He's made this move to sort of capture some of that that moderate vote. sort of capture some of that that moderate vote and you know i have to say like i didn't i was skeptical whether it would work not because i didn't think there were a ton of moderate voters but because i thought it would look too transparent at least it seemed like that in the debate i

thought his lj speech was like i was much happier to see that than i than him at the debate so i think he was better there but clearly it's working working because he lead he leads now because he's at 30 percent among moderates and conservatives. of the party, which is, I think, which just means he thinks Biden isn't up to this. And he thinks Warren and Sanders are too far to the left. Fine. But it looks like several others have had this idea and Pete being the leading one of them. Yeah. I mean, I think that almost every issue debate we've had should be viewed as a proxy for electability, right? Because no one knows what that means, but everyone just, you know, 63% of the people in the register poll said they're more focused on electability than issues. That said, at the same time, and I believe the CBS News had a tracking poll of early states that came out over this weekend too. And in that poll, you saw

the support among early state Democrats for Medicare for all down seven percentage points. And I suspect that a big piece of that is the discussion about whether it's realistic or whether you could get elected supporting that position. Yeah. Well, let's talk more about Elizabeth Warren, who was the front runner in the last poll. In this poll, we were just talking about the statistic for Pete. The share of Democrats who describe her as too liberal has risen from 23 in march to 38 today one possible reason for that as you mentioned tommy has been her support for bernie sanders medicare for all legislation which has been under attack from almost all of the other candidates aside from bernie um but now uh warren has released her own plan in her first hundred days

she said she would pass a bill through the budget reconciliation process which is key because that only requires 51 votes in the senate and not getting rid of the filibuster um she would pass a bill through that process to create a very generous medicare public option that would be open to everyone and free for children and people with lower incomes. And then later, during her third year in office, she would try to pass Bernie's full Medicare for all bill that would fully transition away from private insurance. Lovett, what do you think about this plan? It's interesting. It's interesting watching her try to thread this needle between not wanting to abandon her support for Medicare for all, but similar to Kamala Harris and others, reflecting on the fact that there are

real political challenges in terms of actually passing Medicare for all. And clearly, they are worried about the attacks on Medicare for all as being too radical or hurting them in some of the battleground states. It's just so clearly an effort to kind of bridge the gap between what Pete has been saying about Medicare for all who want it and the fact that the polling bears out the fact that a Medicare public option polls far better than Medicare for all, and the fact that from a moral point of view and from a political point of view, she does not want to lose the bona fides that come with being a champion of single pair. What did you think, Tommy? I mean, it seemed like, I think she wants to be talking about other things.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, we've been stuck in this cul-de-sac for a long time. And look, it's a very important cul-de-sac. I don't mean to diminish it in any way. But I think, you know, her message is less distinct from Bernie on this issue than in a lot of other places. And I think she just wanted to get through it

and get to there. Yeah, I mean, I think it's great. I was so excited by the plan. And my only complaint was, I wish she had done it earlier. And the New York Times has a great TikTok of this. And she had been working on this for a long time. So even before a lot of the Medicare for all attacks of this. And she had been working on this for a long time. So even before a lot of the Medicare for all attacks really picked up, she had been working on this for a while.

And I think it's I mean, it reminded me of we always talk about this. You know, the interview she did with you, Tommy, here on Pod Save America way back when when she said, yeah, I'm for Medicare for all. But there's a lot of different pathways to get there. of different pathways to get there. And I think she I mean, she is way more pragmatic when it comes to legislating and governing than I think her critics or even most people would imagine. And that's her record in the Senate bears that out. And I think she has known for a long time. She gets how hard it's going to be to pass Bernie's Medicare for all bill. Like you got all these Democratic senators saying we're not going to get rid of the filibuster. And even if you do, there's a bunch of them who said no way will I

pass that. You know, one of the problems for Medicare for all supporters, the people who like Bernie's bill is they started this whole effort by talking about the polling and how popular Medicare for all was in the polls. But then when the polls started asking about private insurance and do you like a public option better? And everyone said, yeah, we'd much rather in the short term, would cover every single American, right? And yes, now, what it wouldn't do is you'd still have some waste and inefficiency from having private insurance. You know, they would still be able to pull some of their bullshit, but every single person in the country would have guaranteed care if they wanted it. Yeah, it's just interesting. Like, it was no, it wasn't necessary that, like, every single democratic debate would end up in a

debate about public option versus Medicare for all that that would become such a central focus of the debate. And, you know, I think it's just a, it was a reality of just how these debates unfolded, how some of these questions unfolded, that the order of operations was, she was for the Bernie plan. Then she faced a lot of really hard questions that she seemed to not want to answer about paying for it. Then she provided an answer on paying for it. And then she provided this final piece of the plan. That sequencing, and I don't claim to not suggesting there's some better way it could have unfolded. But like, I do think that that sequencing got her kind of stuck in a conversation that I think hopefully now, even more importantly than just having then the plan itself politically, is that now she can, to Tommy's point, make that part of her speech, but not the focus of every event, the focus of the question, the focus of the debate. policy that she's proposing that's unpopular in some degree is Bernie's Medicare for all piece

of legislation. The wealth tax, again, is incredibly popular, according to almost every poll among not just Democrats and independents, but Republicans, too. It's also I find some of the, you know, sort of the donor revolt and some of the wealthier public speaking against those with wanting to be so frustrating because there's this idea that, oh, she's too radical. And it reminds me actually a lot of what was said about Obama, who was mildly critical of Wall Street, mildly critical of the wealthy. But yeah, he said the word fat cats once and it was the end of the fucking world. Right. And so there was but there's this narrative took hold that somehow he was sort of

so vicious toward them. And then you would try to find any evidence of it in the record. And you couldn't. I think it's actually true for Warrant as well. It is true that her policies are much more antagonistic. She does have that billionaire tears mug. But she is running ads only on CNBC in Iowa. I would say I would say this one. A little further. Yeah, she's embraced the fight.

But the fight came long before she started selling billionaire mugs. The point I'm making is only don't you if you want, we expect presidents to lead. And one of the ways you lead is by staking out a position that maybe goes beyond what's possible in Congress. And then the negotiation ends up at a good place because you had a president who was willing to push harder and go further. All of these, you know, nervous Democrats about like actually seem to be done, have this idea in their head that should be a radical president. Like, don't you trust the limits of the system? Like, this is how it works. You want a president who's going to be bold. That's the idea. But but it's more about, you know, this question of electability. But but it's more about, you know, this question of electability. And I know it drives everyone fucking crazy and it should and we shouldn't be thinking about it. And I it is completely hard to judge. We don't know what the fuck we're talking about. But when you talk to voters, especially voters in Iowa, right, they are they are terrified of losing to Donald Trump, as we all should be. And so what Elizabeth Warren is going to have to do now, and her campaign has known this for a while, this is that the electability thing is a

challenge, is make some argument as Pete's out there on the rise and Biden's sort of hanging tough in a lot of these other states, why Elizabeth Warren is the best person to go against Donald Trump and win. And there's an argument to make there. But she she's going to have to make it, you know. Yeah. You know, one thing that I also take away from Pete leading in this poll is less obviously is less about Warren and more about what it says about Biden in that Biden is the avatar for those arguments against Elizabeth Warren. But people in Iowa who are paying attention, who are seeing these campaigns, who are experiencing this race firsthand,

are looking at Joe Biden versus Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana and saying he's the electable one. And the electability conversation is so scrambled by the fact that the national poll leader, Joe Biden, has lost so much ground on one of the key questions in the race. Yeah, though, I would say if I was Joe Biden looking at that Iowa poll, the measure of comfort I would take, and especially looking at that CBS Battleground set of poll trackers, is if Pete Buttigieg wins Iowa, but is still sitting there with, you know, little to no support among black voters. And now Elizabeth Warren hasn't won Iowa. And Joe Biden is still leading with black voters by huge margins in places like South Carolina and North Carolina, which he is because we just saw polls there over the last couple of weeks.

And we go into Super Tuesday and now he doesn't have Elizabeth Warren as a threat. And now Pete Buttigieg isn't doing well with voters of color either. Joe Biden could run the tables. Yeah. I mean, the CBS poll, the way they framed it is a distinction of safe versus risky. And even the people who don't support Biden think he's the safer choice. So it does make you wonder if there's some room for people to come home to biden and that would make me nervous if i were all the other campaigns knowing that this electability discussion and like yes it's fraught it's confused but like i also don't blame people for only caring about finding someone who can win because god that's where my brain is too

right but we can all scream about the unfairness of how people judge electability. And we should. And we have. And we will. We live there. But for most people out there who are not paying as close attention as we are to the race and who might not tune in until there's an actual winner in one of these primaries, that's what they're thinking about. And you can't blame them for thinking like, God, we got an I want someone who can win. Yeah. At some point, we can't get mad at voters for thinking the way they think. And the way you prove you're electable is by winning.

And there is a lot of embedded racism and sexism and, you know, all kinds of problems within how people make those judgments. But ultimately, your job as a candidate is to just get as many votes as humanly possible. And you will prove to the world that you are then electable. Well, and you make an electability case. Right. that you are then electable. Well, and you make an electability case, right? I mean, Elizabeth Warren kind of started doing this at the at the LJ dinner when she started talking about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Right. She can turn to Pete and say, I have experience that you don't have. You know, Pete can make electability arguments. Biden will. I think you'll see a lot of these candidates in this week's debate try to make some kind of electability argument based on their own credentials.

I mean, Pete's Iowa LJ speech was a huge portion of it was an electability speech. It was here's the contrast between me and Donald Trump. Here's how I knock down every kind of criticism that he could level because, you know, I served. He didn't. And went over some independents. I'm from the Midwest. He's from a tower, whatever, whatever it will sort of is i think you know it speaks to his just to compliment pete too like he's smart he's really fucking smart and he has been thinking about this in a really sophisticated way uh and it's bearing out yeah okay when we come back uh we'll have my interview with ohio senator sherrod brown I am now joined by the senior senator from Ohio and author of the new book, Desk 88, Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America, Sherrod Brown. And senator from your wife's home state.

That's right. That is right. As we always say when you're here, the reason that we're married, that we met, is because of you. My office, Emily. That's right. Emily worked a long time ago in Washington. So I want to get to your fantastic book in a minute. But first, I want to talk about some of the news over the last few days.

We're recording this on Friday. This morning, Donald Trump attacked former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch during a hearing where she testified about being threatened by Donald Trump. What was your reaction to that and in general, just some of the Trump officials who have testified over the last week? Yeah, well, it's clear that this president committed a crime and it's something Richard Nixon never did, bribing a foreign official to ask for help for his own election. And so I think that Pelosi's comments were just excellent, that he thinks he's in above his head and he just lashes out at everybody. I don't think I've ever met a human being that consistently criticizes publicly the people who work in his operation, the people that he hired. And it's in this attack that we

know from two days earlier when he didn't, he said he didn't even listen or watch to tweeting and criticizing her and bullying her. And in the end, all, you know, he's a bully and all bullies are cowards. And that shows every day with this president. Do you think that if this does get to the Senate, if the House votes to impeach, could you see any of your more moderate or independent minded Republican colleagues actually voting to convince? I couldn't today, with the possible exception of Romney. Nobody is there. But I know what I hear. And I hear senators privately, some Republican senators say things like they know he lies, they know he's in over his head. Some are willing to say privately he's a racist, but they love their tax cuts and they love their attacks on environmental issues and workers that Trump does. And they love his young judges on the Supreme Court and for the whole court system.

He also, and I think they're scared of his base, but they help to make that base so solid. Because if you're a Trump voter in Ohio or Michigan or Florida and anywhere else, you may watch Fox, you may listen to Rush Limbaugh, and then all the Republicans whom you vote for, none of them ever criticize him. You're going to think he does no wrong. And so that's why they're so scared of the base because they helped to create that base. What about some of the senators who are up in the more moderates, like a Maine or a Colorado? Oh, I think they're sweating more. I mean, you look at Arizona, Colorado, Maine, increasingly Iowa, increasingly North Carolina, maybe Georgia, Maine, increasingly Iowa, increasingly North Carolina, maybe Georgia, maybe Kentucky, but a whole different. You saw in your in-laws' neighborhood just across the river in Kentucky,

that may have been the reason that the Democrats won because suburban women in suburbs of Cincinnati but in Kentucky really changed that race. But I think they're scared. I think they're sweating. I think that if more things come out and the public turns even more strongly against Trump, if that number goes well over 50, I mean, there's 35 or 40 that are not going to move, but that's still a lot that could. And that happens, They start getting scared, and there is a chance of it. It's hard to think there'd be enough to get over the threshold of removal. And that's assuming every Democrat, and we've not really talked about that. And most of us are both – I think we believe in our country and our constitution enough not to say and really not even to decide what we're going to do if it gets to that. Because I'm not a lawyer, but I understand that impeachment is an indictment

in a court of law and the Senate, 100 members of the Senate or the 100 jurors. And we should listen to the evidence and make the decision based on the evidence. And I'm not certain because I don't know what Trump will say because I don't know what Trump will say. I don't know what the answer is, what Trump's lawyers will say and what his answers to all this are. But if it really is done the way it should as a jury, we will do the right thing. We'll convict him and remove him if he deserves it. And we will not if he doesn't. So Nancy Pelosi announced this week that a deal is imminent on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. You've been long critical of free trade agreements and have spoken specifically about issues with past versions of this agreement.

What do you need to see in sort of a final deal for you to support something like that? Fundamentally, you judge a trade agreement, does this lift standards, worker environmental standards, to the point that we don't see, that the trade agreement doesn't continue to send jobs overseas? And this agreement's not very close yet to that. The language that Speaker Pelosi's trying to get in the agreement, the language that I'm trying to get in the agreement with Rosa DeLauro, the sort of the House member that's doing the most here,

is called the Brown-Wyden labor enforcement language. And that will answer the issue of stopping the outsourcing of jobs. I mean, GM closes down in Youngstown, the Lordstown plant, three shifts, 1,503 times in a row. They laid one shift off. Several months later, a second. The day they laid the second shift off, they announced they were moving jobs to Mexico. So they're still doing that. Trump's done nothing to stop that. And so it's pretty clear that a renegotiated NAFTA has to have that in it or it doesn't go. Is there any concern among Democrats that if Trump gets a win on a trade deal, then he runs around 2020 talking about how he has got this big win on trade. Well, yeah, he's either going to do that or he's going to say, I was making NAFTA a lot better and Democrats didn't do anything. So either way, he's going to say that and he's not going to

tell the truth because he's not at all fought for the provisions for workers. Of course he hasn't. I mean, the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives and it's never he's never looked at me. Fundamentally, the reason we're going to win in 2020 is that Democrats are the party of workers, the party of dignity of work and Trump's betrayed workers. And you can just go down the line, whether it's people with preexisting condition, whether minimum wage, whether it's the overtime rule, whether it's trade. Yeah. So you've been a long term advocate for Medicare for all, but you've called Bernie Sanders version a terrible mistake for a Democratic nominee to support in the general. I don't know if you saw Elizabeth Warren today sort of released a plan where she basically splits it up into two different parts and she would pass legislation that would basically create a sort of robust public option and open up Medicare to more people in the first hundred days. And then basically in her third year, she would try to complete the transition away from private insurance. What do you think about her plan? Is that better? Is that more palatable? I actually traded phone calls with her today about that because I've been talking to her about the whole issue. Look at it this way. Everybody on that stage, however many there are on the stage in the next debate. Changes every day.

Changes every day, yeah. Everybody in that stage is for universal coverage. That's what Democrats are for. And whether they – everybody – each has a different path. Each has a different speed at which to accomplish it. But the important thing is everybody's for universal coverage on our side. And Trump's trying to take it away. I mean, first he failed in the Senate by one vote to repeal Affordable Care Act, Obamacare.

And now he's in the Northern District of Texas courts to try to overturn it. And the fight needs to be that, the fight. I mean, there's going to be differences among Democrats. I understand that. But we need to make this contrast. And again, if you've heard me say, and I know you understand, think about this too, that it's who's side are you on? And Trump clearly on health care isn't on the side of most people. So I will talk less about any individual plans or programs, and that's what I think our candidates should do, and make the contrast that where we are and where Trump is.

and make the contrast that where we are and where Trump is. And for instance, in Ohio, 2 million Ohioans out of 12 million population have a preexisting condition. Trump overturns the ACA. This court does that. All 2 million of them are at some risk of losing their health insurance. And that's a much better way to talk about it than do Medicare volunteer at 55 and negotiate drug prices and take away the tax subsidies for companies that advertise drugs on television. All of that is the direction to go. And that's a sharp contrast because Trump's on the wrong side of every one of those. Do you think that we've spent a little too much time debating the finer points of all these plans on the debate stage? Yeah, of course we are. And the public quits listening

and Republicans figure out how to write ads from them. And I understand when you're running a primary, you've got to differentiate yourself and you don't stand on the platform and say, oh, we all agree on this. Because they don't agree on a lot of details. And I know there are fairly significant differences, but nothing compared to Trump, to that difference.

And I think a candidate that starts going to that stage and sort of talking in that way will be really appealing to Democrats. workers in Zanesville and Mansfield and Lima and Cincinnati, Ohio, that Trump has abandoned them on jobs, on wages, on healthcare benefits. We'll begin to peel off enough of those to win Ohio. So let's talk about Desk 88. It is not the kind of like, I might run for president, so I need to write a book kind of book. It's something that you've been working on for quite a while. So what made you want to write the book? And tell us a little bit about it and sort of what the process was of writing it. It's mostly about hope in the sense that I took my first one. I first was when senators were looking at the freshman senators were looking where they were going to sit on the Senate floor.

They're no bad seats. You're not sitting behind a post, right? So I started pulling out desk drawers because a senior senator told me, Senator, scratch your name in their desk drawers. And about the fourth desk I looked at, it had said McGovern, South Dakota, Gore, Tennessee, Hugo Black, Alabama, and then it just said one word, Kennedy. So Ted Kennedy, this was 2007, was standing nearby. And I said, come here a second. I looked, I showed it. I said, which brother's desk is this? He said, well, it has to be Bobby's

because I have Jack's. So I just started thinking about who these senators are and what contribution they made. And fundamentally, it's a book about the power of government to make people's lives better. And progressives, we don't win often, but when we win, we win really big. You know, we win big and look at history, Medicare, 40 hour work weeks, civil rights, voting rights, safe drinking water laws, clean air laws, protections for the disabled, Pell Grants, Medicaid. I mean, just one, we win really big. We may lose two or four years later, but public benefits from these kinds of reforms for years. And that's this canary pin I wear. It's all about that.

It was given to me in a Workers Memorial Day rally 20 years ago. It's a depiction of a canary that the mine workers took down in a cage down in the mines. In those days, they didn't have a union strong enough or a government that cared enough to protect them. And this symbolizes to me the power of government to make positive change. And it really is based on government responding to good, to social movements and creating progressive eras like we had with Roosevelt and we had in the 60s and very possibly we have in 2020 and the years beyond that if this election turns out the way that it really could. Of all the eight senators and all the stories that you researched, what surprised you the most? Did you learn anything that was particularly interesting? Yeah, I didn't know. I think what maybe surprised me the most was

the unevenness of all of them. And what I maybe liked the most was the three of them, two of them especially, didn't start their careers all that well um hugo black was a kkk member and said he i belonged to any group that got me votes 30 years later after he was put on the he was roosevelt's favorite labor senator he wrote eight hour eight hour work 40 hour work week he wrote some with wagner some of the collective bargaining laws 30 years later when he was on the court he he was burned an effigy um in his law school in Tuscaloosa because of Brown v. Board of Education because he helped- And he ruled the right way. Yeah, and he ruled the right way.

Yeah, I was going to say it was quite a- Kennedy started off with working for McCarthy. Then he tapped Martin Luther King's phone in the early 60s when he was attorney general. But look at the Bobby Kennedy that a whole lot of us love the last three or four years of his life. So that's the most pleasant kind of surprise. You write about how history has always been a battle between the innovators and the conservators, the latter being those with wealth and privilege who consolidate power by exploiting people's fear that change is too risky. It seems like today, a big part of that strategy is exploiting people's fear of a changing, diversifying America. How do progressives overcome that?

That's a really good observation. Yeah. I mean, Emerson said history is that fight, conservatives and progressives. And the conservatives, they have most of the media, they have the lobbyists, they have money, and they fundamentally want to hold under their power and privilege and wealth and status. Progressives want to push forward. And it's so difficult because of the way... There are always fewer conservators, conservatives, because they're the wealthy interest groups and all. There are fewer of them, but they create fear of change. And you had it exactly right. I mean, it was McCarthy. It was communism in the 50s. It was integration and maybe in the 60s and 70s and

80s. And it was terrorism in the last 20 years. And it's always been immigration. There's always been that strain of people. And I just think you just have to out-organize them. I mean, I think that you look at, you say, how do you sort of assuage those fears? Look at your generation versus mine. Look at people younger than you in their 20s and how so many of them have lived in a much more diverse world than people growing up when I did and your parents. And that gives me a lot of hope that when you're exposed to people of all races and religions, I mean, I don't think I was thinking of Tonya, I was talking about this, I don't think I knew a Muslim kid when I went

through 12 years of public schools. Certainly didn't in grade school and I'm not sure. And being exposed to people that are different from you really just makes you a better person and makes you much less fearful of change. Yeah. The book is all about different progressive eras in American politics. How much do you think the next great progressive era might be held back by the Senate itself, and partly because of geographic polarization and the way the red states are. I try to count all the time. I can barely count to getting 51, 52 Democratic votes with some of them being moderates, let alone getting a 51-vote progressive majority in the Senate. How much

do you worry about sort of the structure of the Senate? The Senate has a conservative bias to it, just like the Electoral College does, just like the court system does, which again makes it harder in these progressive eras. I think that three years ago, I wouldn't have said this, maybe because I hadn't finished the book, maybe because I've seen McConnell for three more years, that I think we eliminate the filibuster. I think that the filibuster is such an enemy of, it's such a conservatizing influence on our body politic. And it's just too hard. It's so hard to do a constitutional amendment because you need 37 states. It's so hard. so hard to do a constitutional amendment because you need 37 states. It's so hard. Almost every election, I really need to look at these numbers, but consistently, even years in our particularly good Democratic years, more votes are cast for the Democratic candidates for the Senate and the

aggregate than Republicans. I mean, look at this state, look at New York, look at Texas is now getting closer and closer. And so we just do better. We get more votes, but we don't have enough senators. So if we get to 51, I think there's going to be a real movement to eliminate the filibuster and begin to move on progressive issues on climate, on dignity of work. I was in Laconia, New Hampshire when I was thinking about the presidential race. And Connie and I met a woman who was in child care for working for 40 years. And she said, child care should be a public good. And that term just so much comes with that. If we start thinking that way, we start thinking like the rest of the developed world, the rich world that for mothers and fathers after babies, for vacation time,

for all the things that for sick days, all that. Smart. The book is Desk 88, Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America. It is fantastic. I've read it. I really love it. And not only that, but John actually did a blurb for me. Yeah, I blurbed it. Yeah, you blurbed it. It's pretty cool.

Read it and blurbed it. Sherrod, thank you so much for coming on Plot Save America, as always. Appreciate it. Good. It was fun. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks to Adam Schiff and Sherrod Brown for joining us today.

And we'll see you every minute of every day all week because there's too much news. News never stops. Bye, guys. Bye. Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Somenator, and Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmel Coney, and Yael Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.