Pod Save America - “Horny for Bipartisanship.” (with Beto O’Rourke!)

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

President Biden meets with Republicans who are blaming him for a disappointing jobs report, more states follow Georgia in passing voting restrictions, and Beto O’Rourke joins to talk about Texas’s new voter suppression legislation and the grassroots movement trying to fight it.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Tommy Vitor. Love it's off today after he had a busy weekend of writing jokes for Elon Musk. I am so happy. I think you did a great job. I'm so happy that I didn't watch it and I didn't tweet about it. And I'm just going to, you know what I'm going to do?

I'm just going to go on with my life. You know what? I'm jealous of you because I did watch it and 15 minutes in, Emily's like, why are we doing this to ourselves? And I said, that's a good point. It's a good point. Go to bed. On today's show, President Biden is set to meet with Republicans who are blaming him for a disappointing jobs report. More states follow Georgia in passing voter restrictions. And Beto O'Rourke is here to talk about Texas's new voter suppression legislation and the grassroots movement trying to fight it.

Few quick updates before we begin. What Today's Gideon Resnick will be joined by a rotating roster of guest hosts this week while Akil is on vacation, including Hysteria's Aaron Ryan, America Dissected's Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, and journalist Travelle Anderson. Each episode will be a jam-packed 20 minutes of the day's biggest news and important stories you may have missed. So check it out. And don't miss the latest episode of Take Line, where Jason Concepcion and Renee Montgomery sit down with TV producer Alan Yang to discuss the upcoming season of Master of None and his efforts to increase visibility of AAPI stories in his work. Don't miss Take Line. All right, let's get to the news. In the wake of last week's disappointing jobs report, the economy added only 266,000 jobs, even though a million had been forecast.

The president will meet with the top four Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress on Wednesday and a group of Republican senators on Thursday to see if both parties can find the sort of common ground. Gets Washington all horny. Will Republicans show up at the White House with an open mind? Well, here's Mitch McConnell last week. Yeah, 100% of my focus is on stopping this new administration. And here's Kevin McCarthy. Democrats are destroying this nation. We've watched the greatest expansion of government in this socialist liberal agenda.

You've got the largest missed jobs report in more than two decades. Have you ever heard two people sound more willing to sit down and compromise? Man, nothing like you mentioning Washington being horny and then hearing Mitch McConnell's voice immediately after. That is two things that don't go together very well.

So I don't know, John, like I get why Biden's doing the meeting, right? I actually, I think he sincerely believes in compromise and the value of it. And I think his team is also smart enough to know that like voters want to see him try. But I think the question is always like bipartisanship at what cost? And is there any realistic chance that those two goobers whose audio we just heard will cut a deal? I have no confidence that they can deliver. Right. You and Dan talked about this.

Liz Cheney is being run out of leadership for giving Joe Biden a fist bump in part. So that doesn't make me hopeful. Like, it's so performative. We're going through the motions. I hope it doesn't end with the press blaming Biden in some way, despite the reams of evidence that the Republicans don't want to deal. We have to believe these guys, right? Mitch McConnell in 2019 called himself the grim reaper. He brags about stealing Supreme Court seats. He said his biggest priority was making Obama a one-term president. Kevin McCarthy is the same. So I think Washington, right, they have this nostalgic view of these good old days when

Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill got together for a drink. They got together for a drink, they cut a deal. But those days are long gone. The resulting policies, by the way, were often very bad. And those backroom deals that everyone fawns over were just old white guys from the same social class. And they did things that harmed other people. So I don't know. I don't. Good for Biden for trying. Hope springs eternal. But I don't think it's going to work. The party is in the thrall of a guy who tried to steal the last election and then incited an insurrection. What the what are we thinking? There's that. This is you mentioned the media

like I'm fine with Biden sitting down with them, with them too right like we all know voters want the parties to come together a lot of voters biden wants to get caught trying we've talked about all this a million times before but i see already this week is being framed as like can biden get republican support for his plans and it should be seen as like will republicans refuse to support another bill that's hugely popular with most Americans, including Americans of all parties? Like that's the frame heading into this week. Right. And then again, like my question is, OK, so I've seen some people say Shelley Moore Capito is like genuine in her desire for compromise. But can you find nine more votes? I can't.

I yeah, well, we'll see at the end of this week. Republicans have been blaming Biden's policies for Friday's weak jobs report, specifically the American Rescue Plan's extra three hundred dollars per week in unemployment benefits. Congresswoman Nancy Mace tweeted, quote, Turns out paying millions of Americans to stay home leads to millions of Americans staying home. Republican governors in South Carolina, Arkansas and Montana are ending the extra three $300. Georgia and Wyoming could be next. And the Chamber of Commerce, of course, is putting pressure on lawmakers everywhere to make the cuts. How do you think Biden and the Democrats should handle this line of attack that unemployment benefits are keeping people out of work?

So, I mean, on the politics, I kind of feel like this is a layup. You know, like I can imagine like the 2008 Obama campaign speech where he would have had fun with it. And he'd be like, the Republican Party thinks that this pandemic has been too easy on you all. They think that life is just too good. So it's time to strip away some money from families who are still worried about getting sick or have no access to childcare or trying to figure out how to work and juggle remote learning. So, like, I don't know. Am I crazy to like the politics on this fight? I like the politics on it, too. I mean, there's a lot of things that economists are saying that we can, like, dive into.

Yeah, I'll get to that later. Yeah. The simple part here is it is without a doubt there are millions and millions of Americans looking for work. There are still fewer jobs. And if you're someone who's looking for work and there's not a job available and you were forced to stay home because of a pandemic through no fault of your own, nothing else, and it's just because you didn't want to get sick and die, then, yeah, you really think that an extra $300 a week, which is, by the way, temporary. It's going to expire this fall. You really think that, like, that's a huge fucking problem? I don't. I think it's a fine fight to have. I think you're right. Yeah. And again, obviously, the jobs report was not good news. We're about 10 million jobs short of where we were before the pandemic started. So that's why you saw The Economist hoping for

this big number in that report. But I don't think we should overreact to one jobs report. Again, I'm not an economist, but I read a lot of smart people. And like all of them seem to be saying the same thing, which was this data is just weird. It could end up getting revised. It could be seasonality. It could be the challenge of measuring things during a pandemic, or it could be a sign of a bigger structural problem that Biden's going to have to address. But I saw Austin Goolsbee, who was Obama's chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, saying that the research he's done and the data he's seen shows that the biggest impediment to getting people back to work is, surprise, surprise, they continue to be scared of getting sick. There's a lack of child care.

Schools have been closed. So does extended or expanded unemployment insurance give people the option of staying home instead of working? Yes, that was the point. It could be contributing to a softer number, but it seems silly or frankly kind of nuts to me to have all these Republican governors falling all over themselves to cut off UI payments when less than half the country is fully vaccinated. Like, I don't think that their voters are looking to the Chamber of Commerce for advice here. It's really a medical question. It's also, you know, Biden pointed this out. So Biden spoke about this today and announced some measures to get more people back to work. You know, he mentioned something that I hadn't thought about, which is that this unemployment report, the survey was taken before everyone was eligible to

be vaccinated. That's also something to keep in mind that all these jobs reports reflect the prior month. And so there's a lot more. So next month, you know, could be better for that. The other thing that Biden mentioned, again, and this is from The New York Times, federal regulations prohibit people from continuing to collect unemployment insurance if they turn down suitable work. So if you're offered a job in your unemployment, you can't turn it down or so you don't get unemployment. So the idea that everyone's just gaming the system, it doesn't fit with the actual law. And then the other thing that Biden announced today, in addition to what you mentioned, you know, child care and health concerns, is the state and local government funding in the American Rescue Plan hasn't actually gone out to states yet.

The plan passed, but hasn't gone out to states. So once that money is released and Biden talked about how it's being released today, you should start to see some state and local government jobs come back, which is obviously a big part of the employment picture. So I agree. Like we always said this in the White House, too. And we had some we had a lot of months of pretty shitty jobs reports. You never freak out over one jobs report and wait to see what the next month is. But obviously, Republicans are going to use this as an excuse to hurt more people, right? Like, look, governors who cut unemployment benefits right now guaranteed there's going to be millions of people out there who are desperately looking for work.

And this was their only lifeline. And now they're not going to happen. That's just what's going to happen. I mean, look, stock prices went up the day this report came out. So Wall Street seemed to think it's fine, or maybe they're just counting on the Fed to prop them up still. But to get even wonkier, the leisure and hospitality sector are the ones you hear complaining the most about labor shortages or not being able to find people to be waiters, et cetera, et cetera. But those sectors added 331,000 new jobs, which was 100,000 over the month before. So that sector actually did well. And some of the other ones were what were holding the numbers down. Just a brief aside here. It's funny that we are having this kind of like wonky conversation about unemployment insurance and like, you know, sort of the

traditional Republican establishment is now jockeying to try to cut off these funds. And Trump is not even part of this conversation because he, I don't know, spent the day yesterday accusing a horse of being a junkie, right? So like, there's two worlds of political discourse. You texted me that statement yesterday and I didn't think it was real. I actually thought it was like one of those accounts that does like pretend Trump statements. Even our Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit, is a junkie.

This is emblematic of what is happening to our country. The junkie. I don't even, like, where'd that come from? Why did he, who knows? We don't have to think about that anymore. I don't know. That's a nice thing. That junkie. I don't even like where that come from. Why did he? Who knows? We don't have to think about that anymore. That's a nice thing. In general, how do you think Biden should balance the desire to convey optimism about the economy with the need to acknowledge reality? He said on Friday, our economy is moving in the right direction, but it's clear we have a long way to go, which is a line I swear Obama must have said like at least a dozen times in his first term.

which is a line I swear Obama must have said like at least a dozen times in his first term. This is what we dealt with all the time. Yeah. I mean, look, I think Biden has a lot more running room to be optimistic because the situation is a hell of a lot more optimistic than it was when Obama took over in 2009. I mean, we're at the beginning of a recession, not the end. The current economic problems are the result of the coronavirus. 60 plus percent of adults in the US have now had one dose of the vaccine. So things are getting better, but obviously we're not there yet. Cases are going down, but like, you know, cities, states, they're getting this money, workplaces are opening back up. So I think a lot of people will notice that their lives get better, are different. Hopefully, they will feel more secure about their economic situations or at least have the opportunity to get a new job or change their lives in a way that

they couldn't a year ago when we all were stuck at home and scared to death. So we started the show by talking about how the economy gained 266,000 jobs in April. That was a huge disappointment. I was looking back at the stats from 2009, 10, 11. The average monthly job gain for 2009 was negative 421,000. The average monthly job gain in 2010 was 86,000 a month. So things were just way worse. Obama was stuck making this horrible counterfactual argument that things would have been worse if not for the recovery act. But, you know, that might be true, but it's not at all satisfying if you're rip shit at Wall Street, you're struggling to pay off your debt. You know, you're just an average person. Yeah. No one, no one at rallies is holding up a could have been worse sign.

Could have been worse. No, no. No, I mean, look, I'm, I'm very pro-optimism. It's, it's, I think it's one of the lessons I feel like I've learned from the Obama years is, you know, we always had to balance optimism and caution, I think. But I also the other lesson I took is like, I think your job as president shouldn't necessarily be to analyze the state of the economy, pessimistic or optimistic. It should be to your job is to fix the economy. And so, like, Biden should be out there talking about how, you know, during the pandemic, the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations got even richer while most people and small businesses fell behind.

And now it's time to make sure everyone succeeds. Right. Like you just got to be always out there fighting instead of having to be a barometer about whether the economy is good or bad or somewhere in between, because that's what's going to get people going. Yeah. You know, we talked at the beginning about the White House meeting this week, and you mentioned Shelley Morcapito's counteroffer. So it's nearly $600 billion, but it narrowly defines infrastructure as roads and bridges, public transit systems, rail, water, airports, and broadband. Mitch McConnell actually said on Sunday, I thought this was weird, that he could be okay with up to $800 billion in infrastructure spending. Biden's plan is, of course, $2 trillion.

So it does seem like the Republicans are coming closer to him than they did in their counteroffer on the American rescue plan. But like, how seriously do you think Biden and Democrats should take the offer? And like, how much should they be willing to compromise here? We started talking about this, but there is sort of a balance here about like, how long do you want to give these people? Yeah. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, the how long are you going to give these people? What do you think? Yeah. I mean, the how long are you going to let this drag out is my biggest concern. I think a lot about the protracted conversations about the Affordable Care Act and how much time we let kind of strip away. Real quick though, John, I want to do a quick pat on the back for listeners, because I think these moments are instructive because Biden's infrastructure plan is two trillion.

Right. So the GOP alternative is six hundred to eight hundred billion. Right. The COVID relief bill is one point nine trillion. The Republican alternative was six hundred billion. So these are good moments for everyone who worked hard to elect Democrats in 2018, 2020 in the Georgia runoffs. The difference between Ossoff and Warnock being in the Senate and us having control of it and not is literally trillions of dollars in the pockets of real people. So again, good for you listeners. Also, I think, by the way, it could be the reason that their counteroffers are this high, as high as they are, is because Biden and the

Democrats are in power. It could be zero if the Republicans are in power. Yeah, it could be zero. It could be COVID is over. We don't need any money, right? It wouldn't surprise me at all. I think there's, again, kind of zero value in compromising for the sake of compromising. And I think that Biden should fight for the amount of spending that he thinks we need to solve the problem and build the roads and bridges we need. And again, I don't hear a lot of people being pissed that the last COVID relief bill was done via reconciliation and not a bipartisan bill. Seems like everyone's fine with that. The problem per usual, right, is Joe Manchin, who said he doesn't want to use reconciliation to pass this bill. And I guess my question is, how much are we going to have to come down to get all the Democrats on board? Republicans have also rejected any tax increases to pay for the bill. So they just want

to gut other things. That seems like a non-starter to me. Manchin has been okay with some corporate tax increases, but he doesn't want to get all the way to the 28% increase that Biden wants to do. So I think there will be a negotiation. I just kind of doubt that it's ultimately going to be with Shelley Moore, Capito, or any of the Republicans. It's going to be sort of an intra-democratic fight because I just don't think we're going to get 10 of them to come along with something. Maybe I'm just too pessimistic. No, I mean, as you mentioned, this is all about what Prime Minister Joe Manchin will abide. And, you know, he said various things on this. I think he said more hopeful things on this than he said about H.R. 1 lately. But on this, you know, he he's whined about reconciliation. Like you said, he hasn't ruled it out on this. At one point, he said I could see four trillion

dollars for a big jobs package. Like you said, he hasn't ruled out tax increases. He's ruled out the 28 percent, you know, going back to that rate for corporations, but he said he would go a little bit lower, like maybe 25%. I actually think the shit's going to hit the fan because Republicans have ruled out corporate tax increases and they want to pay for this with user fees, which are basic, which are just taxes on working class and middle class people. So again, I think this is another great fight for Democrats to have. We want to create a bunch of jobs and build a bunch of infrastructure and tax the biggest corporations for this. The Republicans want to do it and tax you.

Yeah. Or tax electric vehicles or something. That was one of the other pitches I saw. Oh, I didn't see that. What if we just told Manchin that bipartisanship is choogy? Do you think that would get him to move off his position? Tommy, I don't want to talk about that. I didn't read that story. I think it was horrible. I really tried to work it into a lot of conversations at the wedding I was at over

the weekend. And I'm just going to say I had limited success. I would like to interview those wedding guests about how they felt when you tried to talk to them about that. interview those wedding guests about how they felt when you tried to talk to them about that. You know, some of them got the irony. I think some probably didn't. But, you know, here we are. But, you know, I think like there is this thought that they'll pass they'll pass a bipartisan, smaller infrastructure bill that's focused on traditional infrastructure. And then the Democrats will throw all the rest of their goodies into the second reconciliation bill and just pass that with only Democratic votes. I don't I'm skeptical about that strategy. Will Manchin support that? Right. I was going to say, will Manchin support that? Will progressives rightly think, OK, you're going to just basically give us an IOU and we get the

next bill and this one, you know, the bill we're passing now isn't going to have any of the really important stuff that you campaigned on. People are going to get tired after passing another big bill. Like there's going to be more complaints from the Republicans about spending too much money and a deficit and tax increases and inflation, all this bullshit. Like, I think you just got to act now as much as you can. That said, like, I realize that they're all just going through the motions partly for voters, but partly for Joe Manchin. You need to go through the motions for Joe Manchin to at least show partisanship. But I do think that Republicans having ruled out tax increases on this at all to pay for it is very telling. And I don't think they're going to unless they just pass a bill, they all decide to pass a

bipartisan bill and not pay for it, which also seems somewhat unlikely at this point, at least from the Republican side. The Manchin motions in the ocean. Yeah, I do. I do think it's very performative. I do. He lives on a houseboat, John. I do think that the lesson from the 2009 experience is we all thought that the Recovery Act was going to be part one of a multi-part stimulus effort, and then that never happened. So I think everyone is right to be a little bit skeptical of the value of IOUs in Washington, especially when you have a narrowly divided Senate and things are always quite precarious with a bunch of really old lawmakers.

That is correct. So you're talking about this Republicans in Washington this week. They're also busy trying to replace Liz Cheney with a voter fraud conspiracy theorist who is willing to overturn the last election. Meanwhile, Republicans in state legislatures are focused on making the next election harder to vote in and easier to steal. In Florida, Ron DeSantis held an event where he banned all local media outlets except for Fox News so he could sign what he calls the strongest election integrity measures in the country. In Texas, Republicans just advanced a bill that would make voting more difficult than in just about any other state. And in Arizona, Republicans in the state Senate have subpoenaed all the ballots in Maricopa County for a hand recount that's being run by a firm called Cyber Ninjas, whose CEO believes that Trump lost Arizona because the machines were rigged.

Sounds super fair. Want to get into Arizona in a second because it might be both the nuttiest and the most dangerous story of all. Yeah. But can you give us a rundown of some of the worst provisions in the Florida and Texas laws? a rundown of some of the worst provisions in the Florida and Texas laws? Yeah, I mean, I think one really cool new theme is passing laws that create penalties for election officials. I think that's fun. That's a fun twist. So the Texas bill would make it a felony to provide voters with an application to vote by mail if they hadn't requested one. So if you recall, it's very funny the pandemic gets left out of the voting rights story. It's like, again, yes, there were some voting access rules changed during the last election because there was a global pandemic and people didn't want to die trying to vote. But what some election officials did was send everyone an application to vote by mail. This Texas bill would make that illegal.

In Iowa, you could get fined up to $10,000 for just sort of like a technical infraction of election rules, which some, you know, sort of county auditors think could include things as small as opening up a polling place late. So you open up at 902 and you get fined 10 grand. The Florida law could create a $25,000 fine for election supervisors if a ballot box is left unsupervised or is available off hours. So they really want to make it harder for working people to vote after hours by limiting access to these drop boxes. So a lot of these bills are just kind of like the greatest hits of voter suppression. There's restricting early voting. There's making it harder to vote by mail,

suppression. There's restricting early voting. There's making it harder to vote by mail, less access to drop boxes, voter ID laws. All of them are predicated on the big lie. The weird thing about some of this is if you look at a state like Florida, they've traditionally really benefited from vote by mail efforts. So it's weird that they're doing this to themselves. It's a solution in search of a problem because Ron DeSantis himself said that the 2020 election was secure. And yet now they're embarking on this effort to make it harder to vote. So it's ugly stuff. Yeah, you see some Republican strategists already saying that they're a little bit worried that some of these new voter restrictions could actually hurt their own voters, which is just a very interesting Republican thing to do. But I totally agree with you that to me, the most alarming provisions are basically targeting election officials.

And I think that fits with sort of the scariest thing that Republicans are doing around voting and elections lately anyway. And it's remember in Georgia, I think the worst part of the Georgia law is that you basically have the Republican state legislature taking over both the state election board and having more power to purge officials from the county election boards. And now these laws are basically intimidating nonpartisan election officials or election officials that may be partisan, but not as partisan as some of the politicians, right? We saw like a lot of Republican election officials do the right thing in 2020. And the Republican Party wants to purge these people

so that next time there's an election they have fucking mega hacks in there who are going to be very willing to overturn the election or not certify an election or anything like this and it's going to drive all the good non-partisan election officials out of the business because they're afraid they're going to go to jail or get fined $25,000 for like accidentally breaking a rule. Like it's really terrifying. It really is ugly stuff. Let's talk about the shit show in Arizona. So Joe Biden won the state because he won Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, about two thirds of the state's vote comes from Maricopa. In November, the county's Republican run elections board did a hand count of sample ballots, found nothing wrong and certified Biden's win. And the Republicans on that board were good enough to say, yeah,

he actually won. Then earlier this year, the county also ordered because a bunch of fucking Trump conspiracy theorists were out there saying, oh, it was a fraud. It was, you know, whatever. So the county's like, all right, we will order a forensic audit conducted by three different independent firms um again and they found nothing wrong again but that still wasn't enough for all the trump fans so now the republicans in the state legislature have stepped in and handed over two million ballots to the cyber ninjas again that this is a real firm. They have stock photos of ninjas on the website. And this is for a recount that's being partially funded. The recount, because Cyber Ninjas only had $150,000 from the big Trump conspiracy theorist fan, right? And OAN, One America News Network, which got special broadcasting rights, even as they were kicking other journalists out of the recount. What other terrifying details have I left out? And how worried should people be about this? There's so many. I mean, so the founder of Cyber Ninjas, a random Florida-based company,

has tweeted conspiracy theories about the elections, including ones about rigged voting machines. So the founder of the company doing this recount has already expressed pretty clearly that he believes there was fraud. So they're looking for fraud. They're not looking for a fair process. Cyber Ninjas refused to release their methodology, such as there is any, until a judge forced them to. their methodology, such as there is any, until a judge forced them to. Almost all of the election observers are Republicans, and they had to sign NDAs, which seems to defeat the purpose of being an observer. One of the guys hired to count ballots was at the January 6th Stop the Steal riot. Amazing.

Photographs on the steps of the Capitol. So what this story really tells you, and this is just sort of like the latest data point, is there are these really, I mean, for lack of a better word, just insane sounding fringe conspiracy theories that we hear about, we laughed. It used to be the sort of the things of email forwards. And now they're just kind of getting mainlined to Trump himself into the halls of power in some of these state governments because these guys are looking for bamboo fibers because there's a theory, I guess, about China flying in ballots. And they're also looking for watermarks on ballots because I guess that's a QAnon conspiracy theory.

But why would you try to bring fake ballots into an election and then watermark the fraudulent ones? You know what I mean? Also, we also just skipped over. You're like, yeah, the bamboo. They're looking for bamboo fibers in ballots because they probably came from China. You know China. When they make ballots, fraudulent ballots, and then ship them to the U.S., they always make them out of bamboo. I really like this.

The Department of Justice is worried about what's going on and said something about it. And an Arizona state senator threatened to imprison people from DOJ if they kept talking about it. And then, you know, you read these stories about what Trump is up to in Mar-a-Lago, and he's reportedly completely obsessed with this specific effort, gets updates multiple times a day. So, you know, there we go. So, you know, there we go. I mean, it is funny a lot because it's so crazy, but there's also terrifying. Like, you know, one of the reasons the Justice Department has stepped in is because there is this plan to go to voters homes to verify that they had actually cast ballots. Can you imagine this crew of people who one of them was at the fucking insurrection and they're going to knock on people's homes in Maricopa County to ask if you, I mean, this is just, it's really, really dark shit that's going on there. Yeah. And also like, okay, let's say these guys found fraud, which they won't because there wasn't any, they have no recourse. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. That's, we should let people know that. Yeah. There's no, nothing can happen if they find fraud. Right. All you can do is just the classic, we're just asking questions bit where you are continually undermining

faith in elections in the United States and undermining voter confidence. And like long-term, I guess we don't really know how that cuts. Like I think Trump undermining faith in elections in Georgia seems to have contributed to Republicans losing in Georgia. So you can see this going both ways, but I think like a nihilistic view about democracy is not a good thing for anybody long term. No, one of the one of the Republican state senators who voted to subpoena the ballots actually told The New York Times, this is making us look like idiots. It's an embarrassment to be a state senator at this point. It's like, that is true. You should have thought about that before you fucking voted to hand over a bunch of

ballots to cyber ninjas. Right. So The New York Times reported this weekend they had a story about like what's the Democrat strategy to sort of fight all of these voter suppression laws. They said that the party is, quote, relying on broadly worded warnings and urgent pleas that are designed in part to build political pressure on the White House, Congress and the Justice Department to act as well as to engage their supporters to mobilize in advance of the 2022 midterm elections. You know, I just talked to Beto. to mobilize in advance of the 2022 midterm elections. You know, I just talked to Beto, we'll hear that interview in a second about the what can be done about Texas now. And, you know, he said he's, he's hopeful that now that the bills in committee and,

you know, Democrats have some leverage, because there's been so much public pressure that they can sort of strip out even more of the worst provisions, they've already stripped out some of the worst provisions in the bill. A similar thing happened in Georgia because of public pressure. So you get, you know, you do get some of these provisions either softened or taken out of this. But overall, like they're going to pass, there's a legal strategy and then there's us hoping for H.R. 1. Like what? Is that all we got? What do you think? Yeah. I mean, we don't have a lot of great options because a lot of these states that are pushing these bills, Republicans have total control of the legislature and the governor's office. So we can make noise about stuff. We can try to embarrass

them, but it's hard to actually change the bill. The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act back in 2013. So a bunch of states that had voter suppression histories, they used to have to pre clear their voter law changes by the Department of Justice. Now that's not the case. So now these legal challenges are just like law by law, case by case, and that takes a lot of time and money. And, you know, the courts are stacked with MAGA Trump judges anyway. So I think these protests are great. Good for Beto for doing that. I think that pressure on corporations to take a stand against these bills have been important. I'm glad we're talking about it, but ultimately we got to get something through Congress. There's the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would restore parts of the

Voting Rights Act that we just talked about that had been gutted and again, require that pre-clearance for states changing their voting laws. Then there's H.R. 1, the For the People Act, which is this much more expansive bill that would deal with the gerrymandering, campaign finance, voting rights, voter registration, et cetera. But as we've said a billion times on the show, to pass any of that, you got to get rid of the filibuster. Joe Manchin doesn't want to do that. Kyrsten Sinema doesn't want to do that. So we'll see. I mean, the S-1, the Senate version of H.R. 1 is getting marked up, I think, on Tuesday. So there are going to be some changes made to it this week. Maybe we'll know more. Last we heard from Joe Manchin on H.R. 1 was April 30th, where he told a talk radio host that he would vote no on the original version of

the bill as it exists today, he said, which, of course, it will be changed this week. So hopefully there's some changes that may get his support. He then said, quote, the vote should be accessible. It should be secured and it should be fair. And if states are subverting that, then we should put guardrails on it. Do you count that as a hopeful Joe Manchin comment? Oh, I guess so. I don't know. I mean, look, like, hey, Joe, states are subverting it. It's happening. Yeah, it's happening. That's that. Look around. Yeah. I mean, right. Sometimes you're just like, do you do you read the paper, man? Like it's all happening, right? Yes. I don't know. Like hopefully just giving himself some flexibility. But I don't know, without getting rid of the filibuster, it's hard to know what we can do. I will say that I get that the Biden administration is very focused on the American jobs plan and the American families plan right now.

You got to take one thing at a time. I know that Schumer and all of them are sort of targeting a floor fight on H.R. one in August. Right. This summer. So I know there's there's some time here, but I kind of think it's it's it's time to turn up, turn up the volume on this from the if you're the Biden administration, if you're Congress, like they got to make a little more noise. Joe Biden said, you know, a couple hundred words about this less in his joint session speech. You know, when Dan and I talked to Psaki about this, you know, she was like, it's Joe Manchin. What are we going to do? And again, I'm like very sympathetic to that. It's Joe Manchin. What are we going to do? And again, I'm like very sympathetic to that. But I think at some point they got to sort of increase the pressure on Manchin, on Sinema and just publicly and get the public's mind on this, because otherwise Joe Manchin is going to feel like there's no cost to just saying, fuck it, I'm not going to support this.

And then that's going to be that, you know? Yeah, I mean, I think the Brennan Center counted 350 plus bills restricting voting rights that have been filed in 47 states. So this is a countrywide pervasive problem. And the thing that's so frustrating for Democrats is, you know, you will see states make it harder to vote, especially make it harder that are totally advantageous to Republicans. And then inevitably, when those things contribute to Republicans winning elections, the conversation will not be about voter suppression. It'll be a bunch of attacks on Joe Biden, Democratic policies. Are we too woke? Are we defunding? Yeah, right, right. It'll be all the fucking conversations that are kind of beside the point that we don't want to be having and not focused on this stuff because we weren't focused on this. I mean, I like, look, to Biden's credit, to all the Democratic Party's credit, like there's way more discussion of these voter

suppression efforts today than there was, I think, 10 years ago. And that's positive. But, you know, we got to do something about it. Yeah. And look, they are they're doing the get caught trying strategy on bipartisanship this week all i'm asking on hr1 is to do get caught trying on that as well right like i realize you can't make joe manchin do something that he refuses to do and same with kirsten cinema but like go down with a pretty big fight here if you're if we're going to do this right we got to push him a little bit and maybe you carve off off smaller pieces of the bill and see if you can pass those. I mean, I think also we activists, we're going to have to start really thinking hard about,

okay, how are we going to overcome these bills? It's not fair that we get put in this position all the time, but that's going to be the case. And I mean, voter registration, voter education, mobilization early, like investing in communities earlier than normal, not just putting all our money into TV ads. So, you know, long game. And as you'll all hear from Beto in a second, he sort of focused on voter registration as sort of

the main strategy to sort of get around these provisions if they do pass. So I think that's where we're headed next. And on that note, when we come back, I'll talk to more about the voting rights mess in Texas with Beto O'Rourke. Here to talk about the Republican efforts to disenfranchise Texas voters, longtime friend of the pod, Beto O'Rourke. Beto, welcome back. Hey, John. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. of the pod, Beto O'Rourke. Beto, welcome back. Hey, John. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. So you and Julian Castro and a bunch of others spoke at a protest outside the state capital in Austin over the weekend, a day after the Texas House advanced a bill that would make it harder

to vote, which you called perhaps the single greatest attack on our democracy. So back when Georgia passed a law with similar voting restrictions, Nate Cohn of the New York Times set off this big debate when he said that all of the political science, research and data show that expanding voting options to make it more convenient, drop boxes, vote by mail, early voting hasn't actually seemed to have a huge effect on turnout or electoral outcomes. What do you say to that? I don't know. I haven't seen the, I guess, underlying data or research. I can just tell you that everything that Republicans have done in Texas over the last couple of decades has made it a lot harder to vote in Texas. And it's not

just an opinion. You look at the Election Law Journal. They ranked Texas 50th out of 50 states in ease of registering to vote and actually voting. You look at our voter turnout on the eve of the 2018 election, we were dead last in the country. I think we've now moved up to like 46th or 45th in voter turnout. And that was after a banner voter turnout year for Texas in 2020, where we broke our own internal records in Texas that still left us 46th in the country in turnout. So when you close 750 polling locations over the last eight years, implement the most onerous voter ID laws, have what three-judge federal panel calls a racial gerrymander of your state. You make it really hard on people, and you don't make it hard on all people. You make it particularly hard on some people, like Black voters, Mexican-American voters, voters with disabilities, very old voters, very young voters, and voters in big cities. Those are the same set of voters that these

new voter suppression bills are targeting now. And I think it's the greatest attack on democracy since the 65 Voting Rights Act, only because when you connect it to Georgia, Florida, Kansas, Arizona, 42 other state legislatures, and 360 other voter suppression bills, you really get a sense of the scale and scope. And it's not unconnected to the insurrection on the 6th of January, the big lie traffic by Trump and his acolytes, and everything else that the Republicans are doing, essentially not only to make it harder for Democrats to vote, but harder for democracy to survive. What are the provisions in the current version of the legislation that most alarm you? I think the most alarming provision is the free reign given to poll watchers, poll watchers in quotes.

These are partisan intimidators who can come to a polling place and question voters, harass voters in this legislation, videotape voters while they're trying to cast their ballots. And what we know from the history of poll watching in Texas is that it's not an objective, apolitical, nonpartisan affair. It is typically used by the dominant white power structure in Texas. It was used by Democrats at the beginning of the 20th century. It's used by Republicans at the beginning of the 21st century. But the consistent thread is that the white men in power to keep black voters from fully participating in the franchise. In fact, this legislation makes it almost impossible to eject a poll watcher from a polling place. The election judge has almost no recourse

under this legislation. When you combine that with the attack on those with disabilities who have to disclose private personal medical information while voting, when you look at the end of 24-hour voting, which really helped shift workers in a state where the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. When you look at the limitation on the number of polling places and voting machines within them, which is only going to exacerbate those really long lines that we see in Texas, six, seven, eight hours long, then you understand just how bad this is. What's the strategy to stop this thing now that it's passed the House? Is the fight over or is there still time to get rid of some of the worst provisions as they go

to a conference committee? There's still time to make this better and potentially, and you know, hope springs eternal with me, potentially even stop this. So a version has passed the state Senate. A version has passed the state House. A version has passed the state House. They're fairly different from one another. So they have to be reconciled in a conference committee. And the difference is ironed out and have to go back to both chambers for additional votes. And then they have to be sent to Governor Greg Abbott's desk for signature if it makes it out of that process. In that conference committee will be House Democrats. We give them more leverage to bring this into compliance with, frankly, the law, the Constitution, and what we'd like to see for voting

rights if we turn up the pressure on all state legislators. So if you're in Texas, call your state rep, call your state senator, tell them you want them to vote against SB7, Senate Bill 7, and HB6, HB6 and SB7. That will help. The second thing we can do is really turn up the pressure federally. We need the United States Senate to pass the For the People Act. It's the biggest voting rights bill since the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and it would repeal or safeguard, it would repeal the worst voter suppression stuff you see coming out of Florida, Georgia, and Texas, and it would safeguard voting rights in those states and throughout the country. Almost every single

Democratic member of the United States Senate supports this. President Biden has endorsed the legislation. We now just need it to pass. Calling your senator isn't going to hurt, but I'd also argue that letting the White House know how you feel. I know President Biden supports this, but I want him to know how much we all support this and that we're counting on him at this moment. And then the third thing that we need to do, of course, is win elections going forward. And if we're going to win state House seats in Texas and Georgia and Florida and Arizona in 2022, we've got to do a lot of work right now in 2021. In Texas, that means signing up to become a volunteer deputy registrar or a VDR. It's a peculiar provision of state election law in Texas.

You can't register to vote online. You have to go down to the county courthouse to get registered, which helps to explain how hard it is. So if you sign up to become a volunteer deputy registrar, you can literally go knock on your neighbor's door and get them signed up to vote. And just as importantly, begin a conversation with them now in 2021 that can be continued into 2022 when down the road, we might want to ask them for their vote. Do you think that President Biden has made passing H.R. 1 enough of a priority?

No, I'm really grateful that throughout his career, he has supported voting rights in the Senate as vice president. And again, he's endorsed this legislation, I believe, as president. But but this is the most important bill that could pass the Senate. More important than anything else, because everything else depends on the ability of our democracy fully functioning. get this right, I don't think anything else truly becomes possible except perhaps an absolute demolition of Democratic electoral prospects in 2022. As Amanda Lippman, one of my all-time heroes who runs Run for Something and has tried to keep us focused on our state legislative races, has said the average voter may not know or care about the filibuster, may not know that, you know, for the People Act is pending in the Senate,

but they will know if Democrats were in the White House, the United States House of Representatives and the Senate, and were not able to meaningfully improve their lives beyond what they've already done, which is not insignificant, they'll know that. And that will have a bearing on what they do with the ballot box. So I think for democracy, for sure, and most importantly, but also for the rest of the Biden-Harris agenda over the next three years, over the next seven years, it's imperative that this passes. And John, if we look back at a similar moment where democracy was really being tested in the mid-60s, John Lewis had literally just been beaten within an inch of his life, crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, trying to get to Montgomery from Selma. A week later, a week later, Lyndon Baines Johnson is addressing a joint session of Congress. And the first thing he says, he refers back to what John Lewis has just done.

And he said, look, folks, we have got to act. And he says, look, you may think the poll tax and the literacy test apply to everyone equally. They don't. If we're honest with ourselves, and he was from Texas, he understood the South and the former Confederacy. These are mechanisms designed to disenfranchise black voters. So we've got to do the right thing. This is very much like this moment where in Texas they're talking about just standardizing the elections. Who could be against that? And we're going to apply it equally to all voters. President Biden understands exactly what is happening. He

needs to call it out, call the country together, bring both chambers together and say, this is the most important thing that we can do together, not as Democrats, not as Republicans, but as Americans at this moment. This is our moment of truth. Let's not be found wanting. So I hope that he will pursue that course. Yeah, like I very much appreciate that Joe Biden and every Democrat in Washington has a Joe Manchin problem, has a Kyrsten Sinema problem. But I do think that it's time to sort of both amp up the public pressure and privately, I hope they're all sort of putting a little pressure on those two senators and anyone else who's still wavering on the filibuster, because I don't really see any other option here. I agree. That's the ballgame.

It seems like regardless of voting restrictions, Democrats will have to do a better job of reaching voters where they are if we're going to turn Texas blue. I saw that you said to Ron Brownstein, it was stupid for Democrats to abandon in-person organizing because of the pandemic or entirely abandon it because of the pandemic. And I remember you being concerned about that last time we spoke on the pod and you were going door to door. Do you think the end of the pandemic alone solves this problem in future elections or is there even more for Democrats to do? Yeah, I think there's more for Democrats to do. Certainly, we'll see more Democrats out there. And I mean, I don't know the partisan makeup of the crowd that came together

at the state capitol in Austin on Saturday, but it was the largest gathering during the entire legislative session so far, which says something. And John, there was a lot of energy. There was a lot of electricity. There were a lot of people making commitments to themselves that they were going to get out there and become volunteer deputy registrars or get behind great candidates or go knock on their neighbor's door. I think that's a great sign. But in addition to all of that, we've got to go to the places that are a little bit harder to reach, might take two flights if you're flying there, might take a 10-hour drive if you're driving, which is about the distance from El Paso to Laredo, Texas. It's even further if I want to

go down to true South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley. But if we're not at those voters' doors, and if we're not at those voters' doors, prepare to listen to them in Spanish as well as in English. And not show up, by the way, in 2022 and say, hey, remember, early voting starts next week. I'm here to tell you where your polling place is. We got to be there now in 2021 saying, you just tell me what's most important in your life. And I'm here to listen and understand. And then I'd like to, over the course of time, connect you with great candidates who represent the answers to the questions that you're asking, the solutions to the problems that you posed when I showed up. If we're not willing to do that work, we will lose those parts of Texas, those parts of America. And if the great sin is that Republican of the Republican Party is that they're trying to keep these folks from voting, then our sin historically is we have not shown up to give these folks a reason to vote.

And that's why you have such low voter turnout historically along the border. And it's why you have a real cause for concern in terms of how well Trump performed in these communities in 2020. So we as good a job as Democrats did in 2018 in Texas, for example, and many other places, I think we have to redouble our efforts and go even harder, even bigger in these much tougher to reach places, while at the same time, not taking for granted Houston and Dallas and San Antonio and El Paso and Austin. We got to show up there as well. And you got to be doing it now. And so we have a group called Powered by People that is working really hard on voter registration

and early voter engagement and long, deep canvassing conversations now. And we're doing it in Laredo and we're doing it along the border. And it's tough. It is really slow going. And they're very often very uncomfortable, not easy conversations. And you really get the sense that these places are in play for the first time in a while. we are on it now. As long as we take inspiration and cue from N.C. Uffat and Stacey Abrams and the great, you know, decade long project in Georgia and understand this is day in, day out, year in, year out, cycle in, cycle out, we can get this done. But yes, there's a lot more for us to do. I'd love to hear a little bit about some of those conversations, you know, particularly around the Latino vote and Trump doing better among Latinos in 2020 than he did in 2016, specifically in the Rio Grande Valley and South in South Texas.

I've talked to a lot of Latino strategists, Chuck Rocha and Carlos Odio and Stephanie Valencia about this. one of the theories is that, you know, a lot of non-white conservatives started voting for Republicans at higher rates than before. So these are black and especially Latino voters who used to vote for Democrats, even though they thought of themselves as a little more conservative and now are starting to vote more like conservative Republicans and sort of more white conservative voters. Do you think there's any truth to this or what are some of the things that you heard in 2020, especially from Latinos about why they might possibly want to vote for Trump or Republicans? So I went on one of these canvassing trips to Laredo a few weeks ago, and I was going door to door, primarily talking to people who were registered to vote in 2020 and did not cast a ballot to find out why, whether they were

happy with the results of the election and what they'd like to see going forward. And I was somewhat surprised by how open so many of these voters are to voting for Trump or someone like Trump. And a lot of it comes down to the corruption perceived and real that they see in Washington, D.C., they see in Austin, Texas, that they see in Laredo in this case. And this message that has extraordinary resonance of draining the swamp or blowing the place up or throwing the bums out or not speaking in the politically correct language and just calling things what they are, regardless of who does that. In this case, it was Trump. But essentially, the status quo, including, importantly and uncomfortably for a Democrat like me, the status quo of Democratic

leadership has not served these people well. The minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour. We're still the least insured state in the country, which means people in Laredo are dying of diabetes. Folks work hard, do not seem to be getting ahead. All their local representation is Democratic. The state representation is Republican, of course. The last administration was Republican. But to some degree, they're just saying to the hell with all of them, I'm not going to vote. Or if I am going to vote, I'm going to vote for the person who's going to most radically change the system that has done me so much harm or has done nothing for me at all. The most pressing issues that I hear beyond corruption are economic ones, insecurity about how long I'm going to be able to keep this

job or whether I'm going to be able to get a job. And I think Trump's false choice between your health and the economy, you know, preventing you from getting COVID or your ability to keep your job really worked in South Texas along the border and in Laredo. And then health care and anger around that. And frankly, the really good job that Trump and Abbott and others have done of scapegoating recent immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers over and over again, John, I've heard from people, my family did this the right way. We waited in line for our visas. We applied to sponsor our sisters and cousins and aunts to come over. We work really hard. And we see these people who just waltz right into the United States and get everything, you know, hotel rooms, health care, schooling for their kids.

Most of that is actually not true. But all that has been said by Trump and Abbott without an effective counter message from Democrats, because in large part, Democrats are not showing up and knocking on their doors and talking to them. So there's a lot that we're working against right now. And I think the only way to do it is to be there and have those conversations in real time. It does seem like that the Biden administration strategy and people in the administration have sort of said this, is if we can pass enough legislation to actually deliver for voters, if we can pass things that will tangibly improve people's lives, and people will connect that improvement with government actually

doing good. And that will sort of be enough for a lot of people who maybe thought that Washington wasn't delivering for them to say, okay, now Washington is delivering. Now I can support Democrats. Do you agree with that? Do you think that's enough? Yeah, I think that's definitely helpful. And I will say this, what the Biden-Harris administration and the democratically controlled Congress have accomplished in the first five months of this year is really extraordinary. And it is making a meaningful, immediate impact in people's lives. And we did hear some of that as well. And it is making a meaningful, immediate impact in people's lives. And we did hear some of that as well. And it's in part a counter to the perceived impact that Donald Trump

had on their lives. When someone told me I picked up a box of food from the food bank and there was a letter from Donald Trump, I got a relief payment and it was signed by Donald Trump. This guy was delivering for me. I think that the Biden administration has delivered in a much more meaningful way in a much shorter period of time. They're probably not shameless enough for my taste, John. Actually, I'd love for them to take more credit for that. It goes a long way. It goes a long way in a state like Texas where the media and the big microphones are dominated by Republicans and their lies. You need this real stuff to get through. And you've got to be, I don't know, you've got to

be a little shameless is maybe the best word I can find for it. But yes, more of that. And I think more of it and the most of it is only going to be possible if you pass for the people and if you amend the rules to the filibuster to get more of this stuff through, and whether it's minimum wage or healthcare protections or paid family leave, or all of these things that would make such a huge difference in the day-to-day life of these people that I'm listening to right now. If you do that and then follow it up with somebody at their door saying, hey, I'm here to see how you all are doing and to tell you that we can build on this success at the state level with this great state rep candidate, this great gubernatorial candidate,

this great U.S. senator candidate. And then when 2024 rolls around, now with 40 electoral college votes, Texas, I really do think could be the deciding state, at least the biggest battleground state in the country. But we're not going to win in 2024 unless we're doing that work now in 2021. I know you've been teaching. I know you've been on the ground organizing. How much do you miss campaigning all over Texas? I really miss it, to be honest with you. I just drove eight and a half hours Friday night to be at that rally with Secretary Castro and others in Austin, and then got in my truck and drove eight and a half hours back that next day.

And, you know, I felt it in terms of, you know, the endurance and a little bit of the exhaustion, but I also felt it in being with all these people who want to work together to make something really positive happen in Texas and who want to fight something that is really terrible for Texas right now. And so, you know, when you're tempted to despair, when you say, man, this shit could not get any worse. And then you show up and see 500 people who left their homes and drove their own distance from their hometowns to be at the Capitol and come together and fight together.

That's pretty damn inspiring. And yeah, I miss that a lot. And I tell you, the organizing at the doors in Laredo, listening to people in Del Rio and Eagle Pass, going down to McAllen, as a candidate or as a volunteer, it really doesn't matter so much to me. Just being with people and doing this work at a time where I just don't know that it could be more important. Literally, democracy is on the line. And if we do not figure it out now, and I think in this year, I don't know that we're going to be able to save

it. And I don't know that we're going to be able to keep moving forward in this great direction that the Biden-Harris administration have started us in. So it feels like the most important work we could all be doing. I'm just grateful to have a role in it. What's your latest thinking on whether you might challenge Abbott for governor in 2022? So I just finished teaching my last class at Texas State for the semester on Thursday. And now I've got to do my grading this week with my co-professor, Dr. Mora. And then I think I'm going to put some serious thought into this. And I guess really the larger question, where can I do the most good? With Powered by People last year, we registered 196,000 new voters in Texas.

You know, we made tens of millions of voter engagement calls. We're doing really great work on the ground now at people's doors throughout the state. That's deeply fulfilling. If that's where I have the greatest impact and if I can get behind really great candidates and help a campaign, then I will do that. But, you know, it's something to think through. It's certainly something to listen to people on. And then also just, you know, look at who else is out there and what all is happening in Texas. But one way or another, I'm going to give this all that I've got. I'm going to give this my life for as long as it takes to get it right. Well, if you do announce, there's a podcast that would be happy to have you to talk about it. And if not, and if you don't announce, we'd love to have you back as well. So thank you. Thank you for joining us as always. It was good talking to you. Likewise. I appreciate it. Thanks to Better O'Rourke for joining us today uh before we leave i wanted to just take a moment to

remember one of our favorite white house dogs beau beau obama passed away uh barack obama announced it over the weekend i was so sad tommy this hit me hard this this uh i did not like it at all i i saw the news on my phone as i mentioned earlier as a wedding i had to go have a little moment to myself to recover i mean the thing about a white house dog is yeah it's the obama's dog but like it's kind of like the the whole white house complex or campuses dog right like this super nice uh groundskeeper named dale would always you know walk around with beau all day long and he just like pop into your office and you just get to like pet this cute dog while you were at work it was the best i remember the like the first week in the white house he came just

running into my office by himself dale was like behind him and so i didn't see dale first it was just like oh there's that there's beau's just in my office hanging out and it was just so cool to be able to like pet him and cuddle him i also it just makes, the whole thing makes me feel really old too. I know. I was like, Bo died, what happened? And then I was like, oh yeah, it was 2009 and now it's 2021. Dogs don't live long enough, man. No, they shouldn't.

It's also such a cute story that, you know, that was the promise that Barack Obama made to the girls. That, you know, if he ran for president and won, he would get them a dog and then, you know, promise made, promise delivered. Number one. I know. I know. But yeah. Well, everyone, everyone hug your pets. Give your pets a little hug. Yeah. Hug your pets. And, you know, it's good for the team. Biden's got two dogs in there and they're apparently getting a cat. I'm not going to lie. It makes me a little nervous for the cat. Yeah, sure. Oh, look, I grew up with cats. Especially around major. Yeah. I'm not a cat hater in any way. I actually had some great cats growing up. I had one that was a total asshole. I actually had a heart attack jumping up onto the table in front of my very eyes and died. Weird story. but this poor cat, this poor, big, just obese cat jumps up on the table and

just dies in midair. And my poor mother didn't know what to do. And she just started laughing and we all were like, what do we do now? Anyway, but, um, yeah, I don't want the cat to get eaten. One of my favorite Tommy Vitor stories. I can't remember if you've told that on the pod before or not, but anyway, it's a, it's the first time I heard it was deeply disturbing. I was little and my dad was out of town and my mom was like, what the hell do I do with like a cat corpse? So, you know, we did what we do. Left him in the basement for the dad to deal with in a couple of days. Well, on that note, I think that's a good place to end the show today. Is this dark? Is this weird? Look, it happens. Things die. They live and they die.

My point was I had some great cats. I'm not a cat hater. I'm just worried about, you know, the interaction. I hear you. I hear you. Well, that's something to talk about next time on Pod Save America. Everyone have a great day. We'll talk to you later this week.

Yeah, we'll ask Dan. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are Jazzy Marine and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support.

Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support, and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.