Pod Save America - “Impeach the motherforker.”

Episode Date: January 7, 2019

The human toll of Trump’s shutdown grows as he plans a primetime address, Democrats debate how to talk about impeachment, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez triggers conservatives by doing literally anything. Then the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel talks to Tommy about his coverage of Elizabeth Warren’s first trip to Iowa as a presidential candidate.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in the pod, you'll hear Tommy's interview with Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel, who was covering Elizabeth Warren's big trip to Iowa this weekend.

We're also going to talk about all the latest shutdown news, the Democrats' impeachment strategy, and the ability of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to trigger conservatives by doing literally anything. Welcome back, guys. This is our first pod of 2019 the three of us happy new year January 7th we finally made it also we're going back on tour

we're heading to New Orleans, Charleston and Durham in early February buy some tickets, come see us what are you waiting for? crooked.com slash events and while you're there grab some tickets for Love It or Leave It. He's going all over the country. Going everywhere.

D.C. Chicago. That's it. No, there's a ton of places. There's a ton. The Love It or Leave It tour, all the tickets are on sale now. It starts in D.C., ends in Radio City Music Hall. Oh, my God.

You think you can fill that? Take that, Long Island. Big time guess. Oh, we're going to fill it. They're going. Oh my god. You think you can fill that? Take that, Long Island. Oh, we're going to fill it. They're going. They're going. Cool. Well, I'm excited to get back on the road. Okay. We are on day 17 of what is now the second longest government shutdown in history.

The longest government shutdown was 21 days in 1995 when Newt Gingrich and the House Republicans shut down the government because Bill Clinton refused to cut Medicare and education, a position on which the vast majority of voters agreed with Clinton, which is why Gingrich eventually backed down. This time, Donald Trump shut down the government because Democrats refused to force taxpayers to fund a metaphorical border wall that Trump promised Mexico would pay for, a position on which the vast majority of voters agree with the Democrats. And yet Trump and the Republican leadership have not budged an inch. No progress was made during the two meetings held over the weekend, and as the shutdown drags on, it's starting to inflict real pain

on the millions of people who either work for the federal government or count on government services. And now we have heard today that Trump will address the nation on Tuesday night at 9 p.m. Eastern. Guys, let's start with the consequences, the human consequences of the shutdown. How bad is this for people and how much worse can it get? It's pretty bad. I mean, I think that it's a partial shutdown, which means that the military is still going, social security, a lot of major institutions are still going, but the treasury department

shut down, department of Agriculture shut down. So people won't get tax returns pretty soon. If this keeps going, people who need food stamps assistance are going to see cuts. So like this is going to severely hurt people. And if you're one of the people who are not allowed to go to work because of the shutdown, like you're stressed out and you're wondering if you're going to get PAC pay. And if you're a contractor that's part of the shutdown, you probably won't get any back pay for the time you've been shut down.

So like there's going to be a human cost. There's going to be an economic cost. Like this is dragging into serious territory. Yeah. I mean, this Friday will be the first Friday where paychecks don't go out. So there are a lot of people who just can't, cannot make ends meet. They just, they're not, people are not built

to have just one paycheck disappear on a Friday because Donald Trump caught wind of a right-wing backlash to the fact that he was going to approve a government spending bill. And so, you know, every day it goes on, it gets worse. You know, there are the, there are the ways in which it impacts Americans who want to take advantage of government services in small ways. That's the parks. It's also, and you know, their TSA is going to be affected. The airline safety is going to be affected. That one, I saw that and immediately thought of John. I took a big note on that one. The people inspecting the planes. Well, so yeah, so a couple of different things going on with the airlines. TSA agents are calling in sick because they're not getting paid at all.

And so that's causing delays at airports. And they're also starting to realize that they can't check now every bag for security. And so they're trying to figure out what's the most. Yeah, we don't want a Band-Aid TSA solution. No shit. TSA is a Band-Aid solution. Also, the airline pilot union said they're worried about a lack of working inspectors and regulators, so the FAA has no idea if your plane is safe.

So this is, like, well beyond travel delays. Yeah, federal aviation inspectors haven't been working, and they've been holding signs saying, was your airplane properly repaired and inspected today? The FAA does not know. That is fucking terrifying. That is a... I don't like going to LAX, but man, do I not want to go to LAX? And then when I get there, there's a person holding a sign that says my plane hasn't been inspected.

That's not good. Also, this whole fucking debate is supposed to be about security, security at the border. And the fucking airlines now are, you know, there's no security there or there's reduced security there. As you mentioned, Tommy, you know, 19 million households that receive food stamps. They will have less money if this drags into February. They will have no money for food stamps if it drags into March. 38 million low-income people. 38 million. Unbelievable. No, you had the household number. Oh, the household number, right. And so our national parks are filled with shit, literally. There are also, like, three people died in the national parks because there's no and by the way

do you remember this is just a small thing i don't know if everyone remembers this when uh the government was shut down in 2013 and obama closed all the national parks and all the republicans said that that was just a political ploy that he was closing the national parks just to show you know it was a stunt to show how bad this was no you fucking close the parks because it's dangerous to have parks open that aren't staffed. That's why you close the fucking national parks in a shutdown. Trump has kept them all open, and so now they're filled with garbage shit, and they're dangerous to people. So that's great.

And look, and the other thing with all this is you have people, as these paychecks don't come out, as you have cuts to food stamps, as there's like people can't get loans, they can't get mortgages, right? Anything that requires like government forms like that. This is going to have a ripple effect throughout the entire economy, right? Like people on food stamps, they can't buy food. People aren't getting their paychecks. That's going to hurt small businesses. I mean, this is like serious inflicted damage to the economy. And while all this is happening, Trump said on Friday that the shutdown could last for months, even years. And when asked about all the people who aren't getting paychecks on

Sunday, he said, quote, I'm sure that the people that are on the receiving end will make adjustments. They always do. Now, I realize that a lot of people think that normal political rules don't apply to Trump, but is it is it tenable for him to tell 800000 people who aren't getting a paycheck tough shit? No, not at all. And it gets even more untenable if people don't get their tax refunds because people also count on that money coming in as well. You know, there's two pieces of this. And I know we'll get to the politics, but there's two pieces of this. One is the fact that he's doing it and the fact that he's doing it over a symbol, right, which is so despicable.

And obviously he doesn't care about the harm that he does. He cares about how it looks on Fox News. He cares about how it looks to the base. But it's also even just the way he went about it. The Senate Republicans passed a spending bill. Hundred to nothing. It was a hundred to nothing. It was a fait accompli. It was just a done kind of it was the usual bad government we were kind of accustomed to. Short-term fixes, getting things over the finish line, late, last minute, nothing fixed, nothing reformed. That's the new high bar under the Trump administration. But he threw a fit. We're in this because he threw a fit without a plan. And you know, Ann Coulter got us into a shutdown. But

the thing about this is, at least when Newt Gingrich shut the government down, there was a philosophy and an ideology and a plan behind it, a gambit. There's not even a gambit here. There was no, you know, he can't even get his ransom. I will say we've had a history of this, though. It wasn't just Trump. The shutdown in 2013 was Ted Cruz believing that he could shut the entire government down and that somehow by doing that, Obama would just single-handedly repeal his greatest legislative achievement, get rid of Affordable Care Act.

But that's a great example. Ted Cruz set the table for this. No, he really did. That's a great example, because Ted Cruz in a lot of ways behaves like a smarter version of Trump. Ted Cruz did that because it was good for Ted Cruz's brand, or at least he thought it would be.

And ultimately, he was right. And because he was just one senator, not the president, he could bring down all the ire and hate of all the people around him. But ultimately, he can't personally keep the government closed indefinitely, but Trump can. The most amazing thing about watching this is now watching all these Republican senators who just voted a couple weeks ago to fund the government and keep it open now say, Oh, I can't be there's no way I'm going to vote for anything unless it's a wall. We must have a wall. It's the most important thing ever.

You all just voted to keep the government open without the fucking wall. Now you're acting like it's the most important thing in the world because Ann Coulter is running the government because she led Trump into the shutdown and now Senate Republicans have to back Trump. So now they all just follow each other off the cliff. Yeah, Lindsey Graham is doing his, you know, 2019 Lindsey Graham where he just runs out and beats his chest and says whatever Trump wants him to do to defend him.

But back in 2013, he was attacking Obama for being a pathetic leader. He said he wasn't engaged enough in negotiations. He said he kept moving the goalposts. Like all the things Trump is doing now, he complained about. It's all on the record, Lindsey. You're full of shit. We know it. He's very full of shit.

So the question now is how does Trump get out of this? He said he's considering declaring a national emergency, which he believes would allow him to use the defense budget and our military to build the wall. The Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, said on Sunday that he thinks the president can do this, though other Democrats and legal scholars disagreed. And even Smith said it would open up Trump to a major legal challenge. Guys, how alarming would this be? And what could Democrats do to fight it, if anything? I think we need to start like I think we can't even have that conversation because, you know.

This seems to me like the most Trumpian way to get out of this, though. I think, though, it's it's also one of the most Trumpian ways to change a conversation. Yeah. Right. Like he's not in the same way, you know, he announces we're going to withdraw from Syria and then takes it back. He, you know, announces all kinds of things and takes them back just to get the news cycle. You know, we're talking about the fact that he's going to declare a national emergency. Maybe he will. Maybe he won't. This tends to be the kind of thing he does with bluster in the hopes to get some kind of a deal. But, you know, ultimately, you know, we are now in this conversation about a national emergency at the border, whether Trump will give a speech to the country, whether or not he'll get his border security money. And it's it's the debate he wants us to be having. I guess.

So I don't even know. Should we now have to debate whether Trump can seize land on the southern border and use the military to build a wall? That's the debate we have to have now? I don't know. But you also have to understand the reality of what's going on on the ground to understand how absurd this is, too. Like, it's not this fucking wall, right? It's not a wall.

It's never been a wall. There's fencing along the border, along many miles of the border. We've talked about this before. Trump, through Department of Homeland Security and the money they got last year, they are already, you know, in eminent domain cases trying to get some land. That process has been going on. It takes years.

From the Bush administration. From the Bush administration. They're litigating these eminent domain cases. They've been handing out contracts to build more of this fencing. So it's like, they're just – he just wants money for some more fencing. There's no such thing as a big wall anymore. He wants money for more fencing that's already being raised up there. So this idea that then he's going to declare a national emergency to what? Then give out more government contracts, do more eminent domain cases.

It doesn't make sense. Right. I guess my struggle with it is I don't really know what it means, to your point. It doesn't make sense. Right. I guess my struggle with it, because I don't really know what it means, to your point. I mean, so they have spent like 10% of their border security money that was appropriated last year. Yes.

So maybe start there if it's an emergency. Right. When I hear the words national emergency or state of emergency, it makes me think of like Erdogan in Turkey or President Sisi in Egypt. Like authoritarians who lock down civil liberties in the name of some security threat. So that scares me, but I don't know if that's the appropriate way to frame this and think about it. But like you said, I mean, I just if you declare an emergency, you need to act on it immediately. And there's no mechanism to do that, given the nature of how construction works. Right. The way the wall would be created. It doesn't make any sense. I think, yeah, it seems that presidents have too much power anyway.

And the fact that you can declare a national emergency and have all these powers is terrifying. And, you know, we should talk about that. It should bother the libertarians in the Republican Party. But in the case of Trump and in this case, it seems like some of the same shit he was doing right before the midterms when he tried to create another border crisis. And if you're Trump and you're realizing, OK, the Democrats aren't actually going to compromise at all. And the Senate Republicans aren't going to hang on forever. And he's not winning this fight.

You know, he can have this big moment where he seems authoritarian and he declares emergency. And a bunch of DOD people are like, okay, I guess we'll continue to do what we're doing and like build some fencing. And then everyone forgets and then we move on and then the government goes back up. You can see that. That is, to me, that is, I think, the most, because, you know, Trump's like a shadow boxing authoritarian.

He wants to play authoritarian but then just lacks the discipline. He needs to get to the next episode. And get to the next episode. This episode's going on longer than he thought. Oh, for sure. For sure. I do think like to your point,

this is another moment where we're sort of required to kind of go back to first principles a little bit, which we haven't done in a long time because we have been too comfortable with presidential power. But when we say that a president should have some kind of emergency powers, it has to mean that in a moment in which Congress couldn't have the time to act, the president should do things to defend the country because the constitution is not a suicide pact. That is what an emergency is meant to mean.

Every president for decades has abused their national security power. They've abused their emergency power. That is true of Obama. That is true of George W. Bush. That is true of Bill Clinton, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The one thing I'd also just want to say, too, is like it's also important, I think, to think about what we'd be talking about if Donald Trump hadn't shut the government down. And what we'd be talking about is the probably the Democratic bill to restore, you know, to get money out of politics and restore some democratic norms. We'd be talking about the investigations of Donald Trump. And to me, like what we've been seeing in the last week, it's, you know, the Trump presidency is a heist. It is a heist. And now we're in the getaway. These next two years are the getaway and Mueller's on him and we're on him and the, and the voters are on him and, you know, Democrats are on, everybody's on him and we're chasing him down the highway. And he's reaching behind him to try to get things to throw out the window.

And he grabs Siri and he throws it out the window. And he grabs Rashida Tlaib and he throws her out the window. He grabs chunks of a wall, throws her out the window. Throws 800,000 federal workers out the window. Throws parks out the window. Throws whatever he can reach behind him and grab and throw out the window. And our job, and these are big chunks of shit coming at us, but it is still our job to swerve around them and keep focused

on the main project. And the main project is preventing this person from putting his agenda in place and getting him the fuck out of office or ideally running him off the fucking road. Was that the end of the French connection that you just described? See, I will say I used to be in that camp and very alarmed. Distraction this, distraction that. He did the distraction thing in the lead up to 2018 into the midterms, and I

was terrified. I'm like, we have to be talking about our stuff. He's taking up the agenda. This is horrible. He's got out the spotlight. And then it didn't fucking work and he lost 40 seats. I do think that these, this is, the thing that concerns me most about this shutdown is the pain that it's

inflicting on people. And Trump is always going to control the media agenda as long as he's president. We're never going to be able to prevent him from doing that. We have to play our game, like have our message out there, go out and talk to voters about what we want to talk to voters, introduce those bills like the House Democrats are doing, keep pushing the message. But he's going to he's going to play these games up until the moment he leaves office. Absolutely. And I think it's our job to decide when do we stop the car to get out and help, and when do we keep going. I agree, this is a moment where you don't give in, you don't let him have the issue, you have to fight because

it's so important. To me, it's like, there's the shutdown issue and there's the wall issue. It's clearly not an emergency when the number of people arrested at the border by CBP is below the decade average. Not an emergency. If he wants to get his wall funding we should go back to the deal where there's a daca fix for wall funding we'd like the art you know

it it was well negotiated until you blew it up so it's there but in terms of the shutdown i don't think we can let him hold us hostage on all these things and and i mean the best part of this is they think that being accommodating and sounding reasonable is saying well president trump says we'll go with a metal wall not a concrete wall like it's not about building materials steel fence instead of concrete well that's what they're saying yeah how do you like my five billion dollar curtains how about my five billion dollar drapes like that's not the issue don't treat everyone like fucking idiots that's that's treating uh democrats their voters, literally everyone in America like a fucking moron, saying that the big concession now is that it's going to be a steel fence instead of a concrete wall.

Go fuck yourself. Yeah. Also, just Republicans didn't plan on having this fight. They weren't. But now they're in it. But now it's like the fight they've always wanted to have. I know. Lindsey Graham, he's been thinking about this for two weeks.

It's like Lindsey Graham shows up on set every day and he's like, is this Law & Order SVU? Is this fucking, is this Friends? What show am I in? I don't give a shit. I'll play whatever character you need me to play. I'll be Ross. I'll be Chris Noth. I'll be fucking, I'll be James Gandolfini.

I'll be, I don't know, one of the, I'll be Young Sheldon. What do you need? What do you need me to, who do you need me to be, Donald Trump? I'll be whoever you want me to be. I'm Lindsey Graham, and I will be whoever you want me to be. Theon or Reek? Yeah. Let's talk about the Democratic strategy here.

Speaker Pelosi said this week, House Democrats will begin passing individual appropriations bills to reopen all government agencies, starting with a bill that covers the Department of Treasury and the IRS. It's marked over the weekend. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen suggested that Senate Democrats should block consideration of any bills unrelated to opening the government until McConnell and Senate Republicans allow votes on those individual appropriations bills that Pelosi is going to pass through the House. And then we find out today more and more senators got on board with Van Hollen's ideas, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine. Of course, it started with the senators who represent states with the most federal workers,

Maryland and Virginia. And then Schumer said that this is going to be his strategy as well. So this is great news that the Democrats are doing this. And it made me think, like, at some point, maybe it's time to put all the pressure not necessarily just on Trump, but on these Senate Republicans. I agree. Because Trump can be immune to political pressure

because all he cares about is the 35% of the country that backs him. But a lot of these Senate Republicans, we already saw Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, and Tom Tillis, who are all up in 2020, say that McConnell should open the government. So he's starting to lose some of the vulnerable Republicans. And the question is, if we start making this about McConnell and pressuring McConnell and pressuring those Senate Republicans, maybe that's the way to get out of this.

McConnell wants no piece of this. He's literally not speaking in meetings. He's showing up and being silent. You also have Lamar Alexander and Pat Roberts who have said they want, they're not running for reelection, so people think that they might be gettable. I mean, I agree with you that you need to put the pressure on McConnell because structurally, this is not set up to succeed, right? Trump's negotiating team is Jared, Mike Pence, and Kirstjen Nielsen. So you have a dilettante, a supplicant, and a liar. You can't negotiate with those people for the fact that they're idiots,

but also Trump will just upend the negotiation no matter what. So I do think, like, this road goes through McConnell. A dilettante, a supplicant, and a liar walk into a bar and they say, Marco Rubio, what are you having? But, yes, also, I really, there was this great moment, like,

this is the thing, too, like, the White House negotiating. So, you know, it's not, unless Trump is in the room and Trump is caught in the right mood, none of it matters. I love that they sent Mike Pence in to negotiate, not with members of Congress and senators, but their staff. So sad. Imagine coming home and being like, how was work today? Like they like I imagine coming home, be like, how was work today? Well, I was in a fucking 10 hour meeting with Mike Pence that he started with a prayer and ended with no progress whatsoever. The only thing Mike Pence succeeded in doing is like somehow he like he's lowering the office of vice president. We're diminishing that role, too. I mean, I don't give a shit.

It's who cares. But it's just like you're meeting with staff. Why did you agree to that? It's like they're sending Mike Pence in like he's a toddler on the plastic steering wheel next to Trump who's really driving. Like, look at me. Look at Mike Pence. Mike Pence is driving. Did you guys read how Jared apparently said that he was bringing his business acumen to the negotiations? I thought of you when I read that. Oh, I lost my mind.

I thought you would be very angry about that. His business acumen? Well, you know what? He is. That's actually true. So just so everyone knows how this could end. So you need 41 Democratic senators to agree to hold up business, right? Because you need 60 votes in the Senate to get anything done.

So if we get 41 Democratic senators to say nothing gets done until we open the government, no business in the Senate happens until then. So that's number one. So how could McConnell get out of this without Trump? It's done until we open the government. No business in the Senate happens until then. So that's number one. So how could McConnell get out of this without Trump? Well, he did pass a bill a couple weeks ago, 100 to 0, to keep the government open. So Trump, McConnell's like, oh, I can't pass anything that Trump won't sign. That's just not true.

Yes, he can. Of course Trump can veto the bill. It can go back. This is how laws work. This is how the government works. I think Mitch would know that. Trump vetoes the bill. It goes back to Congress. And then McConnell and all the Republicans and all the Democrats in the Senate can do what they did a couple weeks ago and override his veto by 100 to 0.

And then it goes back to the House. And, yes, Pelosi would need some Republicans to join her because you need two-thirds in the House to override the veto. But if a bunch of Republican senators just did it, you imagine that a lot of the House Republicans are going to do it too, and that's how the shutdown could end. It could end without Donald Trump. You don't need him. Override the fucking veto, guys.

And he'll be so angry. He'll be very angry. Yeah, there's something that's really interesting that's happened with the veto that is the fact that it's just gone out of use. that is the fact that it's just gone out of use in this. It is a reflection of the kind of sclerotic. Oddly enough, the fact that there isn't more divide between the presidency and the Congress that ends in veto threats, vetoes, and overridden vetoes is a sign not of things being healthy, but of things being kind of broken.

Because a lot of, so much of what we see is a kind of kabuki dance where everyone's playing games and there's cloture votes and fake filibusters and fake veto threats. And everything is hashed out behind closed doors rather than in the open by passing fucking bills and seeing what happens. But also, it's all jammed into a gigantic omnibus rather than piece by piece appropriation. So it makes it almost impossible to veto. I mean, the one just funny thing, like, what's hard for Trump here is that there is no case for the wall. His chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, called the wall absurd and almost childish. He said, you go under, you go around, you go through it. So the fence doesn't solve the problem. Everyone knows that the policy here is stupid. So we're just debating the politics. We need to

win on the politics. Right. And that does, by the way, make it different than the shutdown that happened, the brief shutdown that happened in 2017 when the Senate Democrats were saying, prevent these young immigrants from being deported, provide DACA protections, or else if we don't do this, this is our last chance, which is why it's worth shutting the government down over. Because if we don't do this, which is Republicans and Democrats agree on, have both voted for DACA protections, then a bunch of kids are going to get deported. Right. That's like a real thing. We're not even shutting the government down over something fucking real right now.

It's a metaphorical wall. And we also just can't give in to a kind of governing where we're in a fit of pique. The president can decide he wants something new right something that wasn't discussed that wasn't part of the negotiation out of nowhere and then because the republican party is so broken the republican senators go along and we're supposed to pretend it didn't happen yeah i mean so much of what we see every single day is a bunch of people prevent present uh pretending trump isn't And you know, you see what happens when a congressman says motherfucker

or somebody wants to talk about civility that we know Republicans and pundits are going to pretend Trump didn't happen. They are pretending Trump isn't happening in real time. Like, what are we all fucking kidding ourselves? Like, Lindsey Graham is going to pretend that this is on Democrats?

These guys are going to, these guys are going to actually have the audacity to pretend we don't all know what's going on? He unfollowed Ann Coulter on Twitter and then he shut down the government. We're in. We know why it happened. We are in the final stages of There Will Be Blood.

There is a, there is a, there is a, there is a fucking asshole wandering around a mansion, brooding and shooting his gun off at furniture and we're all pretending he's the president. Spoiler. Okay. Let's talk about the new Democratic House. On Thursday night, I saw

a tweet from today's podcast Washington Post's Dave Weigel, that said, New Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib told the crowd at a move-on event in D.C. we're going to impeach the motherfucker. And so I see this tweet, and I think to myself, okay, this is going to be a thing. But perhaps, perhaps it will just be a thing on Fox News and the conservative world. Or perhaps it'll be a broader thing, but it'll just be, you know, we're in this, we're in Trump world now. So news cycles last two hours and then we move on.

And yet here we are, guys, here we are on Monday and people are still writing motherfucking takes about Rashida Tlaib saying impeach this motherfucker. It's still fucking happening. So I just want to spend like two minutes on how dumb the debate is, and then I want to actually talk about the substance under the debate, which is how Democrats should talk about impeachment, which is a real issue. What's

your take, guys? What's your take on the motherfucking gate? I also saw Dave Weigel's tweet, at which point I went to use car dealership, and I bought a car in cash, and then I got into it. I threw my phone away, took the battery out, threw it away. I got in my car, and I just drove until the road ended.

And then I got out, and I walked until the trees stopped, and then I sat quietly until this very moment. I prayed before the altar of both sides. If you don't like the word, as listeners of this show know, we don't mind the word fuck, so we say it a lot. If that word bothers you, that's fine. I think Nancy Pelosi doesn't swear a lot.

I think she has a swear jar in her office. Like, she doesn't like it. That's cool. Totally. It's old school. But, like, give me a break that impeachment is a big deal. I mean, Brad Sherman, a congressman,

is reintroducing articles of impeachment into Congress. Beto O'Rourke has come out in favor and said impeachment is appropriate during his campaign and then like just to step back like this is some unprecedented big deal republicans started talking about impeaching obama in 2010 uh yeah daryl isa remember joe sestak when we like i guess offered him a job to not run in some primary daryl isa said that was could beachable. And this is my favorite one. In 2016, the Oklahoma legislature filed a measure asking their House representatives in Washington to impeach Obama, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Education, and anyone else involved

in the decision to allow transgender students to use whatever bathroom they wanted. So that's how seriously this issue has been taken in the past. Yeah. And it's like, look, I'm with you, Tommy. If profanity offends you, fine. That's a legitimate opinion. It doesn't offend us. It offends our parents sometimes when we use it too much. Yeah. But I get that. If your position is profanity offends me, whichever party uses it, right?

There's, of course, the hypocrisy of Republicans saying that they're offended by this when Donald Trump is president, which we There's of course the hypocrisy of Republicans saying that they're offended by this when Donald Trump is president, which of course. But I think what bothers me even more is the political pundit reaction, this is going to help. This is a gift to Donald Trump. This is going to help Donald Trump. So dumb.

Here's the thing. You have no evidence of that at all. And in fact, the evidence we have to date suggests that you are wrong um michelle wolf's uh joke about sarah huckabee sanders remember that remember that was going to tip the election to the world that did not tip the election uh refusing service at the right hand that was going to help donald trump did that help no it did not well it's also maxine waters remember maxine waters telling people to get in their face remember mitch mcconnell getting getting

interrupted his dinner at the restaurant? Remember all those things were going to help Donald Trump? Helped him to a 40-seat loss in the House. Yeah, I mean, look. Stop fucking. Nobody knows anything. Here's the thing, though. That's actually, but we're just like, no one knows what helps and what hurts.

What we do know is that actually the only way we now digest politics, like there's the only way someone saying the word motherfucker could hurt Democrats is that there are going to be columnists who write pieces called This Will Hurt Democrats. And it's this it's this Uroboros of of punditry and horse race politics. The one thing I would say about this is we are talking about this today because Rashida Tlaib is a Muslim woman and they want to target her. This would if this was Joe Crowley, right? Or it's like, I don't think we'd still be talking about it. And you just mentioned it. The day before, Brad Sherman, a member of Congress, introduced articles of impeachment,

which I'm sure like you can make a whole bunch of arguments about that too and say, well, geez, it's like Nancy Pelosi's first day, new Congress. They're trying to introduce a sweeping anti-corruption bill. That's the message. And, you know, Brad Sherman takes them all off message with this article of impeachment. But no one really, there was only a couple stories about Brad Sherman, and Rashida Tlaib, by the way, that day, the day that she made the comments, wrote an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press laying out a very thorough and substantive case for Donald Trump's impeachment,

which, by the way, we should talk about this, is a case that you should be able to make. If anyone hasn't read it yet, David Lennart in the New York Times wrote a very long piece about why Donald Trump should be impeached over the weekend. And I think we should start taking that seriously.

Yeah. There's also this false comparison that says, oh, you know, you're going to defeat Donald Trump by becoming like him. And it's like, yeah, you're gonna defeat Donald Trump by becoming like him? And it's like, yeah, all right. You know what? Actually, saying impeach the motherfucker

isn't actually a lot like Donald Trump. It's not like, it just, it does use a bad word and Trump does sometimes use a bad word. And if that's your level of nuance, fine. But no, but there is something, there's a reason I think we've seen some democratic politicians start using vulgar I think we've seen some Democratic politicians start using vulgarity, and we've seen it a few times here and there. And it actually

does relate back to Trump, but it's a deeper problem, which is people are so mistrustful and so frustrated that one thing that you, one of the hardest things for any politician to figure out how to do, especially even, especially Democratic politicians, is to convince people that that they're real, that they care, that that they're that they're going to actually do what they say they're going to do, that they care about the same things that you care about, because for so long, people have felt like their leaders don't do that. It's why I think Kamala Harris came on our podcast and said that said, fuck, it's why we bullied Eric Garcetti into cursing on the show.

There is a feeling that Democratic politicians don't speak for Democratic voters. It's, I think, part of why AOC appeals so much. And so, you know, I like, you know, I don't know what the value is of cursing. I don't know what the harm it does or the good it does. But I do think it speaks to a problem, which is Democrats are right now trying to figure out a language to say, I get it the way you get it. I feel the way you feel. And because Democratic policies haven't reflected that for a long time and there have been a lot of Democratic successes of late because Republicans have controlled the government, people are looking for a way to get through to people. That's all. I think it's a it's a bigger issue with some House Democrats, though, because a lot of House Democrats were like privately complaining about this. some House Democrats, though, because a lot of House Democrats were like privately complaining about this. I think it goes beyond the profanity, right? It is, they are very concerned that some

Democrats and activists will treat impeachment too flippantly, right? Like it's easy. And of course, it should, impeachment is something that should not be treated lightly, right? I mean, I do not think you shouldn't be able to impeach a president because you disagree with that president's policy, right? I mean, well, you know, Tom Steyer's campaign at the beginning was like, we should impeach him because he had this policy, you know? And it's like, I don't agree with that. Republicans made that argument about Obama, too. Right. And you just, so, but like, and, you know, Lennart in his piece and Rashida Tlaib in her piece as well, lay out real reasons why Donald

Trump deserves to be impeached. And Lennart's case, he said, you know, he's the use of presidency for personal enrichment, violations of campaign finance law, obstruction of justice and subversion of democracy lays out four different areas. And there's almost an airtight case in all four of those areas. And again, we've talked about this before, too. I don't quite know why Democrats are so nervous about this. Like, I get that they want to build a careful case. I get that they want to wait until Mueller's finished. That's totally fine. But I do think it is time to start laying the groundwork in public opinion that this man has committed offenses that may be impeachable. And again, starting impeachment proceedings is not guaranteeing a final verdict.

It's just saying an imp you have a hearing in the house let's lay out all the ways that donald trump has used the presidency to enrich himself let's talk about the obstruction case let's talk about the fact that he's been implicated in multiple campaign felonies by federal prosecutors like let's start talking about that stuff and then if the senate you know votes to acquit him they vote to acquit him but clearly he has reached the point where he has committed offenses that may be impeachable. Yeah. So there's constantly combining these two things.

Like, yeah, Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office as soon as humanly fucking possible. He is a criminal, unfit moron, racist thief. Like, get him out. Of course. The question, I think, for all of us is, how do we make that politically possible? And I think, you know, op-eds will help. Making the argument will help. Our goal here is, we need to remove Donald Trump one way or the other. We need to get him out of office. Impeachment is one of the ways we can do that.

Resignation is another. Building a powerful case for his removal achieves both ends. And so, you know, when do we do it? How do we do it? Get to the point where impeachment is politically possible. Every day should be about making that case. All right, let's talk about another freshman congresswoman who's triggered the cons. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. On the week she was sworn in, there were uproars over everything from a video of her dancing in college, to the nickname she used, to what was thankfully a more substantive controversy over her 60 Minutes interview. But before we get to that, why do you guys think she is driving conservatives so completely insane in a way that we haven't seen a Democratic politician do in quite a while? It's a really great question. I think,

I think she's a woman. I think she's a woman of color. I think she's beautiful. And I think that turns their knobs in a way that they hate. I also think she is managing to make

very liberal policies simple, palatable, sensible, and that's also quite frustrating. And she's not asking permission. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like she, the biggest one for me is she talks like a normal human being and she calls out the bullshit, right?

She's just, she, which she does not talk like she was born and raised in the Russell Senate, the Senate Russell building. No, the opposite. She's this political Rorsec test where people can watch the same thing. But Republicans watch her dancing and think somehow that that's bad. We watch that and we're like, oh, a young, cool, fun person dancing to a scene in a movie I really like. It's like the Laurel Yanny of fucking politics. The dumbest thing

ever. But they're elevating her. They're helping her. And I think they're attacking her because she is a woman and is young and is exciting and has seized the microphone and is pushing a progressive message. And so they see her as a threat. I really think it's that simple. It's the other thing that they have a blind spot in the conservative movement.

Clearly, they did have this blind spot spot which is one of the reasons that donald trump was elected president to populist economics she is a very specifically because she she can talk about progressive ideas very well but specifically when she talks about populist economics and progressive economics she does so in a way that conservatives somehow think what she's saying isn't popular because they don't understand that most of the country is so fucking fed up with inequality and rich people just getting away with murder. You know, and she talks about it. And so they say things and, you know, we'll get to what she said. about how you pay for the Green New Deal and floated a top tax rate of 70% for people making over $10 million, which means that every dollar you make over $10 million

gets taxed at 70%. And this led conservatives to go crazy. Grover Norquist called it slavery. It was all over Fox, stuff like that. But it's like, how many people in this country, first of all, how many people in this country do you think make over $10 million? About 0.05%. Yeah, not a lot. Like, if you asked a bunch of all, how many people in this country do you think make over $10 million? About 0.05%.

Yeah, not a lot. Like, if you asked a bunch of people, do you think once you hit $10 million, if every dollar over that was taxed at 70%, do you really think that's a problem? Also, the top marginal tax rate peaked in 1944. It was 94%. And it never dipped below 70% in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. So this isn't some radical crazy idea. It's sort of returning us to a historically sensible, it's returning us to a historical tax rate. And it's not just AOC that

has floated this idea. Like Peter Diamond, who won the Nobel Prize for economics, thinks the top rate should be 73%. Christy Romer, who we all worked with at the White House, thinks it should be 80%. So a lot of people think that like worked with at the White House, thinks it should be 80%. So a lot of people think that the best tax rate for the richest people on the planet is as high as you can make it as long as they'll continue to work and put more revenue into the system.

Yeah, I also think the dancing video ties back to the response to that 70% line. I actually think there were plenty of Republicans who were like, why are you... I think that inside inside of like the the base sort of whatever roiling right wing conversation they were like you're making her look good this is a good video yeah would you do most republicans got that it was a stupid attack but but there's a subset that don't because they're so viscerally uh uh angry about her just existing and having a platform and speaking and

it goes to what happens whenever she says something, which is, uh, you know, the, it's such a, there's a, there's this like very sexist attack that often follows,

which is, Oh, she thinks the tax rate should be 70% because she doesn't know what she's talking about. She never can know what she's talking about. It's not that she's wrong. It's not just, she's a radical.

It's not that she's a leftist. It's not that she's socialist or communist. She's just a debts, right? That's the only explanation for why someone would disagree with you. And they look for every weakness, every hole in what she says. And meanwhile, she's advocating what are economically defensible positions that she's helping to move into the mainstream while people like Paul Ryan said that the, you know, if Paul Ryan was a 28 year old woman saying that the tax cuts would pay for themselves, I do not believe that Republicans would be saying that she doesn't know what she's

talking about. Yeah. He was treated as a very serious policy wonk. And like, there's the, you're right. There's two kinds of reactions. There's the crazy right winger reaction, which is just nuts about everything. But also I thought the 60 minutes interview with Anderson Cooper was borderline condescending, right? Like, he kept asking her these really skeptical questions about the Green New Deal and how impossible it was. He never mentioned the fact that the UN climate report says we have, like, 12 years to avoid the whole planet burning to the ground. At one point, he said to her, do you believe Trump is a racist? She's like, fuck yeah. And he's like, how can you say that? Have you not been watching the last four years?

How can you say that is one of the craziest things Anderson Cooper has ever said. He is so much better than that fucking question. Anderson, where were you during Charlottesville? Were you on another planet? Were you watching the news during that time? Come on, back to Earth, man. But you're right, love. The whole tone is, you don't get it. You don't get the game

of politics. You don't get how politics is played. Hey guys, the game got upended two years ago. You don't either. Like she has grabbed the mic and is unabashed and advocating for these, uh, left positions. And because she is so charismatic and young and a woman of color, she has garnered, uh, attention, good and bad. And she has decided to take that platform and do good with it. And that's really impressive and really fucking hard. It is hard to go from being a bartender to being on 60 Minutes in the span of a year. That would be terrifying. That is terrifying.

Her way of communicating is so effective because I don't know if you guys saw this, what she did after the 60 Minutes interview is on her Instagram stories, she talked to everyone and she's like, I just want to talk to you guys about what that was like and what it's like to do something like that. For those of you who don't know, and she's like, I just want to talk to you guys about what that was like and what it's like to do something like that. For those of you who don't know.

And she's like, it's very terrifying. They do like hours and hours of interview and then you don't know what they're going to cut. And, you know, I think I did really well. But then when you do something like that and you make a mistake, you know, unless it's perfect, you know, you're going to have people complain. And she's basically she's like explaining to many people who follow her, who I'm sure are a lot of people who have not paid attention to politics that closely before Trump was elected. This is how politics works. This is how media works.

And she's sort of like taking people through her journey along with her, which is a really, she just has a very smart, normal human way of communicating. And it's like, and again, we've said this a million times, but like,

that's my advice to all democratic politicians. Now the advice is not watch exactly what she's doing and then do exactly that. Right. It's like make some food. Just because she's going to fucking cook and talk doesn't mean you all need to fucking cook and talk to now. Like, just do what works for you. You know what I'm saying? Like, different things will work for each politician.

Just be you. Right. Also, one other thing about this, too, is, you know, Republicans have been so much better at this for so long. You know, they're, they're more conservative members introduce an idea, they get the country talking about it. And all of a sudden, the moderate position moves to the left. They, you know, they're talking about the Overton window all the time, the, you know, the acceptable range of debate. Here's somebody showing up and doing what very, very few, if not zero Democrats have done for a long time, which has gone out there and say,

here's, we're, we maybe we'll do something incremental, but here's the goal. Here's the far goal. Here's, here's the, the bold left position and allow the debate to happen around that. Because you know what? I've seen conservatives debating a 70% tax rate all day and liberals are debating it and journalists are talking about it and conservatives are trying to defend their position on it and uh that's a really good thing because i don't think we're going to get to a 70 tax rate but you know what's on the table now getting it to be a bit higher as a compromise like 50 yeah which is what it was in like 81 when reagan was president i'll tell you the only problem with what she said is it only raises about 72 billion

dollars a year which is not enough to pay for a Green New Deal or Medicare for All. We're going to have to go, not higher necessarily, but it's probably going to have to go broader than $10 million. Or you're going to have to stop worrying about deficit spending, which is the other, talk to Stephanie Kelton about that, that you actually don't have to care so much about the deficit and that you don't have to pay for every single fucking proposal.

The left is pushing on both of those ideas, both higher marginal tax rates and the idea that you don't have to pay for every single fucking proposal. The left is pushing on both of those ideas, both higher marginal tax rates and the idea that you don't have to pay for every single dollar. That was what the whole PAYGO debate was about. And it's good that we're having that debate now. It's good. And you know what else? It's good because we have to have it

because so far there's only two things you don't have to pay for, wars and tax cuts for the rich. And that is a terrible fucking way to run a soda stand. Agreed. Cool. All right. When we come back,

we will have Tommy's interview with the Washington Post's Dave Weigel. On the line is Dave Weigel. He's a reporter at the Washington Post. You might have heard of it. And he writes a fantastic newsletter called The Trailer. Dave, welcome to the show. It's good to be here. Thank you. I am so glad to have you on because I think that you are one of the best political journalists in the business. And I think that is because you seem to spend as little time in Washington as humanly possible. So I believe you're just back

from Iowa, right? Yeah, I got back yesterday afternoon after four of five events Warren was holding, colleagues who were there for the entire trip. I got the gist, although it was interesting to hear her work out the message. And then, you know, this early stage of the campaign, maybe you get hives when you think about it. But for me, it's the time when there's no Secret Service. You're kind of catching up with staff right after the events and seeing how they think it went. Things are getting worked around. It's like what I imagine a table reading is for a script. Totally.

Yeah, this is like the magical part of a campaign where you actually have access and people are. And also this time, usually when the presidential cycle happens, people are like, oh, my God, already? And this time people just seem pumped. Oh, absolutely. So Warren's venues for this were all overflowing. As you know, I mean, as you know, the nightmare is we book 1,000 seats and 950 people show up and the camera is trained on the 50 empty seats, right? Yep. Because they're always at the front because people are polite and don't ask questions.

And she filled the event. and she filled the event. She talked to around 3,000 people, showed up at these events, and she did some scrums with the media after almost everything. Also, this was important. It doesn't sound important. It sounds like horse race, nonsense journalism, but she made sure to take photos and sign books with everyone who wanted to after the events. They baked in time for her to hang around.

Having covered lots of campaigns at this point, not everyone does that. This was a reason I thought Bernie Sanders ended up losing Iowa. Should it matter? That's a very good question. But very early in this campaign, or I just wanted to be a campaign so we can

stop the exploratory, because this is such a time-wasting word. This early in the campaign, no, they've got exactly what they wanted. And it's not as big as the Obama launch in Iowa. I'm not just saying this to pander to you, but on the scale of people making their first visits, it was pretty big. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. That was my baby. I'm just kidding. So, okay, so you're with Elizabeth Warren.

Interesting to me, I thought it was interesting that she started her her kickoff in western Iowa, which is traditionally more Republican. It's generally less important for Democrats in the caucuses because of the way the delegate math works. Most of your delegates are going to come from Des Moines and then the eastern part of the state. Do you know why they did that? And how do you think her message was received generally in those in those visits? Well, it's not just that. And again, I want to keep saying, as you know, all right, let's assume. Both of us here don't need to Iowa-splain to each other. But yeah, also, if you're in western Iowa, half your crowds are going to be from Nebraska or from South Dakota.

And they can vote at some point. But if you're South Dakota, you're voting like six months after Iowa does. So, yeah, it was it was interesting. And the sense I got that they don't like to talk shop, but you can get you can get a feel from talking to campaign staff. Any Democrat could go to Davenport or Des Moines and get a big crowd. Warren got a big crowd in Council Bluffs. She got a big crowd in Sioux City. These are places that, you know, forget Hillary losing them. They just don't go Democratic. Steve King's different.

She, I think, wanted to demonstrate that for all the coverage about how she's the lefty Bernie progressive move on candidate, that this message is interesting to people who do not fit that stereotype. These are not places that even went very strong for Bernie in 2016. So I think that came off. There were Republicans in some of these crowds. Not a lot. But you did not see the kind of hard-nosed cynicism, people showing up and turning away because she didn't answer their, you know, how do we close off the border with laser beams questions. But it was a pretty moderate crowd.

It wasn't just lefties who showed up. I mean, frankly, just a lot of guys with beards and trucker hats and teamsters who did not love Hillary Clinton when I talked to them, didn't have like a ton of animus, but were not happy to vote in that election and showed up for her. So I think that message got across. And, of course, she finished in Des Moines and Ankeny. But it was notable that she did her first three stops in places the Democrats don't tend to win. Yeah, Ankeny being a northern suburb of Des Moines.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The joke during 2016 was that Marco Rubio was the mayor of Ankeny because he would just come to Des Moines, go to the suburbs, and then go back home for a fundraiser. He's the mayor of his own sad little existence now. So I watched a couple of Warren's events on YouTube because I lead a rich and fulfilling life on the weekends. And the message seemed to be a lot of her bio. And then she really hammered income inequality, corruption. She talked about influence peddling in Washington. There was not a lot of Trump talk. Was that what the caucus goers wanted to hear?

Absolutely. And I think this is lost in D.C. and New York and wherever else you can yell about a green room. Lots of people have green rooms, but those are the problem green rooms, the morning show ones. Yes. So this idea that Democrats want a fighter and the fact that Michael Avenatti showed up to some Iowa events and had the crowd and said we need to fight that got some attention. But it just that's not really what people want. They assume they want a Democrat who will defeat Trump. And there is a a trauma from 2016 that I think in some ways is useful. Some ways is probably paralyzing that if you are in a fight with a guy every day, it's just it's going to backfire. And frankly, I one of the pieces I wrote, I quoted something you'd said. So I noticed that. OK, good. We'll talk about it. So, yeah, in 2016, Democrats had a very different theory.

And frankly, at the time, there were a lot of Republicans who were embarrassed by Trump, who have now gone like the the Lindsey Graham reeducation treatment and appraise him for everything. But it was not crazy to think that pulling Trump out and exposing him and calling him racist, yada, yada, that was baiting him, that was getting him off message. That was Warren's role in 2016. I mean, she was tweeting, giving speeches, making fun of him. I remember kind of super packed videos that were like cartoons that showed trump literally like shrinking as she talked about him uh and you know a quote of you at the time said that was that was a good role for her and frankly i think in some ways it was um that is not how people think right now that is not how she thinks and a question that was

kind of hard to untangle right now i think it will be untangled is whether she is in a worse position to criticize trump than other people is because she does not want to do that she does not want every time she goes out because this was this is her life for a while every time she goes out she gives a policy speech she talks about corruption and people are like and then trump will tweet crazy pocahontas is at it again and she gets asked 50 questions about pocahontas yada yada um she only mentioned literally only mentioned his name when a voter who, in the tone of the question, wanted her to win, just was worried about her and Trump baiting, said, you know, why did you take the DNA test?

And she said, I can't control when Trump says racial slurs. And in 2016, she tried to control that. I mean, that was when she was speaking, was Trump would say something and she'd tweet at him and we'd write about it. They have a very different theory now, which I think comports with what Iowa Democrats, I mean, that was when she was speaking was Trump would say something and she'd tweet at him and we'd write about it. They have a very different theory now, which I think comports with what Iowa Democrats and we'll see about other Democrats, what they want, which is, OK, we want somebody who is going to answer that voter who took a chance on Trump and is being driven crazy by how bad he is at this job. And they do not want to hear that Trump sucks. That is taken for granted. And it's something that mirrors what people ran on in 2018 when she, she didn't do a ton of travel, uh, for Democrats in that cycle,

did a little bit. She did help a lot of campaigns and she stayed very close in touch with campaigns. And I think heard that message that people were not winning by saying, you believe this crazy thing. Do you see that SNL clip? It was, Hey, this guy said he was going to fix things. He didn't enough about that joke, a jokester. Here's what, like, I'm going to get in there and expand health care. That was her message. Yeah. Yeah. And I watched that question, that Q&A about the DNA test. And it was a vintage Iowa caucus goer question because it was sort of a punditry question. Like, why would you give Trump more fodder to attack you? Like, a lot of the questions she got were political. And she kept saying, you know, I've been in politics my whole life. I'm a policy person. So let me answer

that way. It's incredibly disciplined and impressive. And the other thing I'm hearing from activists and friends who are getting recruited for jobs, frankly, is that she is like calling people, emailing lots of personal touches, like really, I think, an impressive campaign so far. Yeah, she's very good on those metrics. And also just the way she presents herself. So I've seen her in Massachusetts a few times at town halls. I've seen her at big progressive events, right? But I've seen her at town halls where she gets a couple of annoyed questions from people. And the thing I've always said about her, and since she's been in politics, is like

she's not full of it. She really did not ever think she was going to run for office. Like, had they just made her chair of the CFPB, she would have been chair of the CFPB. That's it. So she was a communicator and an expert who would have to synthesize ideas for people, but not in a way that would say,

and then vote for me. And she did that for decades, and then she's been a politician for seven years. So the skill set just, there's no's it's there's no way to do that without taking decades getting good at something she has the skill set of talking about policy in a way that does not sound like a bunch of advisors came up with it and she she sometimes um kind of uh sets it up but remember one question she got which again was nobody's

headline was uh i just want to thank you for your work on the 2018 bankruptcy bill. And she says, oh, we're going to nerd out now. Great. I mean, that's the way she talks, which is not what she used to. And everyone else who's a good communicator in politics comes out. Voters really want authenticity. We always say they do. But more than ever, they think just Trump's going to puncture your armor if it looks like you're a stuffed shirt politician and that was not how she came across

man not everyone who was at these events came away saying i'm all in for her but um but you did hear that i mean so i was standing uh she she i mentioned the overflows and the big crowds and i was standing at one overflow in des moines and like right next to people who were having the kind of punditry conversation we were mentioning. Just these these nice women who were like, oh, you know, in the polls, Biden's doing really good. She's only eight percent. They were already communicating about the polling. Yeah.

But then afterwards she gets done. She's like, oh, she just seems so real, you know. And so like Biden also has this not not to get into it. Like I want to go can if I can't. But that was somebody who is not super sold on anybody, but knew where the vibe was ahead. And then her first impression was, that's a normal person running for president who knows stuff. OK. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the other thing that impressed me with her was the way she wove her bio into her vision for the country, which brings up something interesting you wrote about today, which is the political conventional wisdom is that Senator Warren and Bernie Sanders occupy the same political space. But you wrote that Senator Warren, quote, is not Bernie Sanders. What did you mean by that? Yeah, actually, I noticed that was the headline of one of the opposition research Republican groups blasted out to reporters like devastating gaffe. I warrant she's not Bernie. No, buternie just has a theory of politics uh that is you have ideas you build a mass movement you spread the ideas through giant

rallies and personal lifestyle behavior you're you are not important the message is important so he does not talk about himself i was his as that his kind of his office opening not of celebration his office for him being sworn in last week and linda sarsour who's a women's march organizer uh remember her telling him bernie you're so humble and it pisses me off because he he just doesn't talk about himself yeah he just he just shows up and he's like um the the of Bernie's speech is policy idea, applause. Policy idea, applause. Why don't we have this policy?

Applause. Whereas Warren gets up and just says, great to be here. I want to tell you who I am. And she spends about four minutes on her biography, which is one of the things if you're a reporter, you assume everybody knows it. They really don't. I mean, you look around the crowd and she mentioned she's from Oklahoma. And you see some people go like, oh, you know, not nudging each other like i didn't i didn't know that uh and mentions that she just grew up she grew up um she used to say the ragged edge in the middle class she doesn't

say it anymore but just tells the story of her family because of medical bills nearly losing their house and her mother having to go to work uh and from that says and that informs everything so that informs everything i do every time i'm thinking about this i think of my mother pacing around her house saying we're not going to lose this house and putting on her dress and going to get a job at sears and back then you could uh with a minimum wage job pay for a family like mine and now you can't and that's why i'm in this and that's the message and frankly not to dump on hillary clinton but what i came away with some you know again some some savvy voters were saying you, boy, Hillary never could explain why she was doing this, and Warren explained it. And I thought, you know, cartoon light bulb appeared above my head because that was the problem that people kept citing for Hillary.

is that she also in her bio, just in talking about her work as a senator, it's a combination of here's a bunch of stuff I beat the banks on, mainly the CFPB, but also Wells Fargo, Equifax. I mean, she just goes after the banks, but not Republicans. And when she talks about Republicans, she talks about individuals that she has dealt with and gotten things passed with. but individuals that she has dealt with and gotten things passed with. So it is a message that I think resembles some that have worked before, which is there are enemies that I've identified. They're not your neighbors. They're not Republicans.

There are these people who, if left unchecked, are going to screw us all over, which is not the same as Trump sucks. Yeah. I was impressed. It was a tight 15-minute, 20 20 minute stump speech that I thought was really compelling. Another thing that's been impressive is that she locked down a bunch of talented staff, including a woman named Emily Parcell, who was my colleague for a year when she do another campaign, I was like, oh, shit, that is an impressive team. And for the first time, it really made me think that there is a cost to those waiting to make a decision. Like, are you hearing any more sense of urgency from the Bernie, Kamala, Beto, Biden camps? It's a good question. So Bernie is unique because he does have a team that's ready to go if he says if he blows the whistle again not exactly the same as last time but he'd be the only guy running who um you know has a modern

campaign team and biden last did this in 2008 2008 right uh i i think it has shaken some of the other people's schedules um i don't want to you you know, I'm going to try to break the news when I can about when people are actually running. But it was the first really smart move because I think not only in terms of hiring staff did Warren get an advantage, but there are certain narratives that you could see at these events already sunk in with people. Like, they were really irritated with how she was already being compared to other women who'd lost stuff, and she

was being called unlikable. And I think had Kamala gotten in or Gillibrand gotten in on December 31st, they would have gotten some of the same coverage. Not identical, but there would have been anonymous Republicans telling Politico or Axios or The Post, you know, oh, she's just like Hillary.

And we would have had the same likable discussion when we were at the post. I think that helps. And that's kind of intangible thing that you can't replace with another good staffer. But no, it was and it was very revealing to people. I mean, the the very smart, very serious take for the last two months was Warren Mr. Moment. Warren's had a bad rollout, et cetera, et cetera. But that was not the impression that talented staff came away with, and I think that has changed the way other people are thinking.

I mean, there really was a will Ken Warren even run idea circulating a few weeks ago, and it is now, oh, how can we scramble to get staff before she does, which is night and day. Yeah, anyone taking her for granted should watch some of those events from the weekend because they were good. Last question for you. It has now been three days since Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said of Trump, we need to impeach the motherfucker. I just want to know, how are you doing? I know that people in D.C. rarely diverge from the King's English and it's been a tough time for a lot of folks in the Beltway. and I just want to make sure you're okay. I'm fine. Journalists, it's very well known that we just break into spontaneous tears

whenever someone uses a curse word. It's awful. We have to go home for the day. We're very... What I try to do is I go and say a couple of rosaries just to purify myself. No, the conversation was idiotic. I'll use that word.

That's stupid. The dynamics that are more interesting is that it is true that Democrats do not want to talk about impeachment all the time, and it's mostly a media thing. They just hate being asked about that instead of literally anything else they're doing. But the premise that they hated her choice of words, actually, there's like two or three Democrats, like Joe Manchin, who I will point out said he'd beat the hell out of anybody who tried to burn a flag. A few Democrats who said they liked the choice of word. The rest were in similar Nancy Pelosi saying, oh, it's a generational thing. I wouldn't have said that word, but whatever.

And because they know that people in politics talk like this. It's just absurd. It's almost like if somebody said this at like a locker room, we were like, well, I can't believe people talk like that. No, we know that. They were a little bit of an impeachment. I have a lot of people because she's a Palestinian-American who believes in a two-state solution and is at least against banning BDS or punishing boycotts of Israel. I don't want to speak for her. Has moved a little bit forward towards boycott, divestment, sanction of Israel.

And, okay, that, more than a curse word, that is not something Democrats want to talk about everywhere. But what I found is that like just as Louie Gohmert can exist and like Charlie Baker doesn't have to ask him, didn't get asked about him all the time. She will exist. She is trying to shift the window of debate for her beliefs. And that's OK. And reporters who are grownups and know how to curse should not pretend that we are blown back when somebody used the F word. Yeah. I mean, look, Brad Sherman, a congressman plans to reintroduce actual articles of impeachment. I believe he introduced them in 2017 with a couple others. So I'm not sure why we're so worked up about Beto O'Rourke talked about impeachment during his Senate campaign. But like, I, you know, what I like about your reporting is you wrote up about how, you know, how stupid this is basically, but it did launch a million pearl clutching takes where we act like civility is now dead. It's like, I just wonder how does the,

the media establishment sort of go forward with that kind of nonsense in the era of Trump. Like, don't people see how stupid it is? In defense of people, like, if you polygraph people, I think there are some who resented that they had to chase around Tlaib, but the desk needed it. Not to get too in the weeds, but yeah. So the editor said, you got to write this. We need new footage of people responding to this woman. They're like, do we?

But in their defense, some of these questions like, you know, Kevin McCarthy comes out on the fainting couch, you know, brings his own fainting couch, which is actually very hard to get up the stairs in the Capitol. He's walking around all those skittles. How offended they are. And the first question is, I mean, like, hey, minority leader, the president called a woman a horse face. Did you guys not complain about that? And he kind of hems and haws. So, like, as long as Donald, look, the time to say that this rhetoric is unacceptable in politics was November 2016. And had Trump lost and a congresswoman said this, I think there'd be a different conversation.

But it is just, it, like, beggars reason to get into this fight with while Trump is president. And the questions of two Republicans have taken that tone. I thought it was, you know, there is such a thing as real outrage. It doesn't happen very often. Most of what we end up covering in politics is totally fake outrage meant to get, frankly, people like me, but hopefully I'm not dumb enough to fall for it to people like me to write about it. Yeah, it's hard to spot real outrage in the wild these days. Last, last question. What is prog rock and why should all the kids listening like it? That's right. So in addition to everything I was just talking about, I've written a lot about music. I wrote a book that came out in 2017 called The Show That Never Ends about progressive rock.

And it is a history of this cul-de-sac rock went down where in the late 60s, and then there were a couple other movements that sparked afterward to read about, the kind of acid rock and mod evolved into extremely ornate orchestral multi-part song suites that incorporated either classical forms or Asian instrumentation or electronics,

just a very high-minded evolution of rock that was seen to be the future for like five years, which is actually a pretty long time when you think of how fast trends burn out, and then was totally discarded by 1977. So that's what it's about. People should buy it. Buy it. The newsletter is free. The book is not free, but, you know, you're going to like.

If you're like me and I just, like, lost a pair of $100 headphones yesterday, you know, what's $18? You need to spend it. Who cares? That's right. AirPods are the easiest things to lose in history. Subscribe to the trailer. Buy the book. Pay for The Washington Post.

It's incredible journalism. Dave Weigel, thank you for joining us. These guys, people need to pay for his trips to Iowa so he can keep telling us what the hell's happening there I mean if you buy the book on Amazon you basically have so oh cool yeah perfect all right Dave thank you so much man thank you have a good one thanks to Dave Weigel for joining us today and uh you know we'll we'll talk to you later in the week take a walk on the Weigel side you know we'll we'll talk to you later in the week take a walk on the weigel side you know Bye.