Pod Save America - “Impeachment, Lies, and Videotape.”

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

House Democrats use video footage of the Capitol attack to make a powerful case against Donald Trump, Republican Senators look for excuses to acquit, and the Republican Party has been losing voters since January. Then Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal talks to Dan about Covid relief negotiations and the minimum wage. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail].

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, we'll break down the big moments from the first few days of Trump's impeachment trial and talk about a new report that suggests the insurrection might be causing voters to leave the Republican Party. How about that? Then Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal talks to Dan about the COVID relief bill and the minimum wage. Also, check out What a Day on Friday morning. Akilah and Gideon have Dr. Fauci on the show. You don't want to miss that. Check that out.

That's tomorrow, Friday morning on What A Day. Finally, we're having a President's Day weekend sale at the Crooked store, Dan. Everything is 15% off through Monday. It's like I'm a car salesman. So head to crooked.com slash store. Check out all the new merch. 15% off President's Day weekend. All right, let's get to the news.

We are in day three of former President Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, and the House Democrats' case has been even more damning than in the first trial. Lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin began day one rebutting the defense argument that the trial of an ex-president is unconstitutional by pointing out that we can't make a, quote, January exception where presidents can get away with crimes during their final days in office. Over the next several days, the House managers used never before seen sometimes graphic video and Trump's own tweets to argue that his months long effort to overturn an election he told his supporters had been stolen led hundreds of them to storm the U.S. Capitol,

a terrorist attack that left five dead and nearly resulted in the mass assassination of most of our political leaders. There are a lot of emotional moments over the last couple of days, but for me, the most moving part was the close of Congressman Raskin's opening speech on Tuesday when he spoke about what happened when he finally found his family after the attack. Let's play the clip. And I told my daughter, Tabitha, who's 24 and a brilliant algebra teacher and teach for America. Now, I told her how sorry I was. And I promised her that it would not be like this again the next time she came back to the Capitol with me. And you know what

she said? She said, Dad, I don't want to come back to the Capitol. of all the terrible, brutal things I saw and I heard on that day. And since then, that one hit me the hardest. That and watching someone use an American flagpole, with the flag still on it, to spear and pummel one of our police officers ruthlessly, mercilessly, tortured by a pole with a flag on it that he was defending with his very life. People died that day. What were your reactions watching the Democrats lay out their case over the last few days?

Maybe you can talk about both the manager's argument and maybe separately the use of all the audio and video footage. while I always believed that impeachment was the right and only course for the Democrats to go through, I was very sort of skeptical of even watching it because I was just frustrated by the futility of it. Just like the previous impeachment where I sat in front of the TV for hours, as we all did to watch that trial, knowing that the jury was rigged. as we all did to watch that trial, knowing that the jury was rigged. Yet, when I sat down to watch it, including Congressman Raskin's presentation, I was riveted by it. It really sort of brought me back to the moment we were all sitting in front of our TV on January 6th, watching sort of in horror and shock and fear as something that we didn't really imagine would happen in America in this day was happening before our eyes.

People's lives were in danger. The Capitol was being taken over by a mob. There were people flying the Confederate flag in the United States Capitol, a building that you and I both worked in where we have friends who currently work and people we know, reporters who cover it. But even though that was only five weeks ago, I have felt like the emotions of that day had grown somewhat attenuated with the distance in our very weird pandemic social media world. And that brought me right back to that moment,

just how scary that was. The argument, and I think that's what the video clips certainly did more than anything else. The video they used to open with, the video clips that were the security footage that was then used in day two, all were a reminder of just how scary this was and what it felt like to be watching it on that day. argument is open and shut. It is like, this is not even, it is an absolute embarrassing farce that there is even a question as to whether not just two thirds of the Senate, but the entire Senate isn't going to vote for this. This is a man who very clearly and very obviously incited a violent insurrection and sent a mob to kill the people who worked there. And now many of the people who worked there, who came with it, as we now know, within milliseconds, in inches of being the victims of that mob will vote to acquit the person who did it just because. Yeah, I mean, we talk a lot about politics here and political implications, and I don't know if this impeachment trial will have any political implications whatsoever over the long term or the medium term or the short term. But sometimes you just do things because it's the right thing to do.

And I had that feeling watching the impeachment trial. It is just the right thing to do to remind a country that has a very short collective memory, shorter with each passing day, that this horrifying event took place and that this man was responsible for this event. And this man who continues to be part of public life, who has contemplated running for office again, for the same office again, a party that is still loyal to this man. Like I had forgotten over just a month, I pay attention to politics every single day.

I thought that January 6th, when I was watching it unfold, was maybe one of the angriest I've been throughout the whole Trump presidency. The most terrified I've been throughout the whole Trump presidency. And that feeling had already escaped me over the last couple of weeks.

So I think the country should be reminded often that this happened on January 6th, let alone one impeachment trial. So, you know, I'm very I'm glad that the Democrats did this and the Republicans who voted for it as well in the House. And I think the managers did an outstanding job sort of putting this case together, which, as you say, is it is an open and shut case. But, you know, we're speaking on Thursday morning and we still have the defense lawyers are going to bring their case. We'll talk about how they've been doing so far in a second. But look, they're going to they're going to say the riot was terrible. It was an attack. Ted Cruz walked out of the chamber yesterday and said this was a terrorist attack on our country.

Their argument is, how can you blame Donald Trump? He had some overheated rhetoric, but is it really his fault that this happened? He said a few times, go home. He said a few times, be peaceful. So can you really blame him? And I think what the managers have done over the course of the last several days is not only just made a very emotional and powerful case using that audio and video footage, but they also anticipated every single potential defense that could come from Trump's defense team

and just swatted it down, swatted it down with Trump's own tweets, with footage, with comments from other Republican officials, with comments from other White House officials. I do think it was it was it was a pretty, pretty powerful case. Yeah, I mean, if you were someone who went into this with an open mind, then it's just, it's impossible for me to fathom how you could not walk away from this thinking that Donald Trump is guilty of this and so much more. It's just, it just, the evidence is overwhelming. And the choice that they made, which I thought was interesting and smart, was that they made the case for incitement much bigger than Trump's speech at the rally. They've got Trump telling people the election was stolen over and over. They showed other instances before January 6th of Trump mobs intimidating public officials because of those lies.

because of those lies. Trump sees the danger in that, doesn't care, excuses it. In the case of it happening to Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, excuses the people that did that at the Michigan State Capitol, keeps telling lies, helps organize the rally. They've got rioters saying, I'm here because of Trump. The president invited us to be here.

The president wanted us to storm the Capitol. That's what they showed today. And then a huge part of the case yesterday on Wednesday is what Trump did during the Capitol. That's what they showed today. And then a huge part of the case yesterday on Wednesday is what Trump did during the attack, because part of his defense might be, well, I didn't intend for it to get out of control like that. Well, if that's the case, why are there Republicans and White House officials on record saying that Trump was pleased and excited by the attacks? Why didn't he listen to Republicans who were calling the White House from the Capitol, pleading him to tell his supporters to go home? Why did he send a tweet, a tweet attacking Mike Pence after he learned that

Mike Pence's life was in danger? A tweet that was then read aloud through a bullhorn by the rioters outside the Capitol. They read through a bullhorn a Trump tweet attacking Mike Pence after Mike Pence was carried out of the Senate chamber because they were trying to fucking hang him. Like, I just and I do think like because it was all sort of in the in the fog of war and we were watching it all unfold that day, sort of hard to keep track of everything that happened. And I'm sure if you were a senator or a House member who was in that in the Capitol, it was probably hard to put together what was going on outside and what was going on in other parts of the Capitol. And I do think the House managers

did a really effective job connecting all the dots in a real logical order so that the senators, if they do have an open mind, which I'm sure many of them do not, would be able to understand understand perhaps for the first time just how extensive the attack was and how much Trump had to do with it both ahead of time and how much he refused to stop it during the attack itself. I mean, just embedded in the various exams you give are what would be smoking gun pieces of evidence if this were a normal criminal

trial and not a political process with a rigged jury. The Mike Pence example is the best one. Only Donald Trump thought that Mike Pence had the power to stop the election. This was not a talking point amongst a bunch of different legal scholars. This was just some weird thing that someone told Donald Trump that he got in his head. thing that someone told Donald Trump that he got in his head. And he said it to this very group of people that morning before they marched to the White House. That is the piece of evidence. And then these Republicans come back and they say, well, Donald Trump gave this video where he told people to go home. Now, once again, neither of us are attorneys. We will not be confused for constitutional law scholars by most, I guess. But here's one thing I do know about the law is that if you set a fire and then afterwards begrudgingly put it out under pressure, you are still guilty of arson.

And so the fact that after he incited the crowd and sent them to the White House to hang his vice president, if he later told them to go home, that is not exculpatory in some way. No. And in fact, the House managers made the case this morning that they have a couple of the rioters on record saying as soon as Trump finally said hours into the attack, go home. Hey, everyone, we should go home. Trump just told us to go home. Before he told us to come here, now he's telling us to go home. So we should go home. Just proving that they felt directed by the president of the United States, which of course they were. So Donald Trump's defense lawyers responded to these very powerful emotional arguments with honestly a performance that makes fucking Rudy Giuliani sound like Atticus Finch. I mean, it was just his lead lawyer, Bruce Castor, you know, known previously as the guy who declined to prosecute Bill Cosby. I don't know where they found this guy. I guess they couldn't find anyone else.

Bruce Caster kicked things off with a 48-minute rambling speech where he didn't make a cohesive argument about anything, but at one point did praise the House Democrats' presentation, said that they did a great job. Here's a taste of what you may have missed from Bruce Caster. No, when you're driving down the street and you look over at your wife and you say,

hey, you know what? That guy's about to drive through the red light and kill that person. Your wife can testify to what you said, because even though it's technically hearsay, it's an exception because it's the event living through the person. Why? No opportunity for reflective thought. Could you detect any kind of an argument there? Certainly. I don't know. I don't know what that was. I literally don't know what he was referencing at all. What legal how that had any kind of

connection to this case whatsoever. But like maybe we should maybe you should try to answer what case was Bruce Castor trying to make? What was he supposed to be making? case was Bruce Castor trying to make? What was he supposed to be making? Great question, John. I am curious who Trump was in that little story there. Is he the person- The guy driving, running through the red light, the wife. The person incapable of reflective thought. Was that the point? I did not understand that. There were two arguments, I think, embedded in the case put forward both by Bruce Castor and then David Schoen, who did a slightly better job. I will say one thing about Bruce Castor, though. As a general rule, if you were making a legal presentation on national television and my cousin Vinny starts

trending, not ideal, right? That's a sign that maybe you missed the mark. But the two arguments were – the first one was contradictory. The House moved too fast in the sense that they did not give Trump due process rights, which don't actually – there's not a thing that actually exists in the impeachment process. But they moved too fast. But then they also moved too slow because he is no longer president. And that is ultimately the crux of the Republican case that I think it's a fig leaf these Republicans use to justify their acquittal vote, is as a private citizen, as a former president, he is ineligible for the impeachment process. And that process was designed for presidents. Now, there is a gigantic problem to that, which Congressman Raskin called the January exception. I think of it slightly differently, which is essentially at the core

of the Trump legal team's argument is the legal argument underpinning the plot of the movie, The Purge. It is this idea that there is a period of time by which you can commit crimes with no consequences. Because that's really what it's saying here, because we just have to put a fine point on it. Because these Republicans believe, and it is the opinion of the Department of Justice for decades, that a sitting president cannot be tried in criminal court, cannot be indicted for crimes committed while they are president. And that is because the Constitution has prescribed impeachment as the appropriate forum for adjudicating presidential crimes. Yet at the same time, these people are saying that

if the crime committed while president that is ineligible for civilian criminal prosecution is discovered after that person is president, then they cannot face any accountability for it. And so what it really does create, this is why the January exception rule comment by Congressman Raskin arises, there is obviously a period of a week, a few days, three weeks between when a president is leaving office and when they have left office where they can commit crimes because you can't impeach them fast enough to hold them accountable for it. commit crimes because you can't impeach them fast enough to hold them accountable for it. There's also just a glaring precedent here.

Like Ulysses S. Grant's Secretary of War, William Belknap, was accused of corruption. He resigned in order to avoid impeachment. The House impeached him anyway. And then he was tried in the Senate. Happened once before in history. Wasn't unconstitutional was very constitutional because the senate and the house decided that it was constitutional which is what you do around impeachment now did did they address the belknap case of course they did, because they were saying God knows what. I did find it very funny that a Trump advisor told Maggie Haberman that Castor was intentionally trying to reduce

the emotion in the room after the House manager case and said that what he did was a deliberate strategy. I don't know if the strategy succeeded. Even the Republicans cultishly defending Trump couldn't defend Trump's lawyers who were criticized by Trump ass kissers like Ted Cruz, John Cornyn, Alan Dershowitz. during the trial and playbook reported before it all started that actually trump is pretty chill these days he's quote reveled in his silence on twitter and quote finally realizes less is more so what was trump's super chill less is more reaction to his lawyer's performance dan well one person familiar with trump's reaction told the new York Times that on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the angriest, Trump was an eight. So what happened to this new Zen Trump? I don't understand. It's so funny that he left the presidency and decided to take up meetings, something he did not do in the White House. I mean, it's just I mean, we could yell for days about people who would credulously and anonymously report.

Stuff about Trump's move that flies in the face of everything we know of Trump over the last six years, not to mention his decades of public life like that is embarrassing. I do think that the Trump legal case is somewhat of a microcosm of what it's been like to be a Republican who supports Trump this whole time, which is all you want is like the barest fig leaf to justify your cowering at the feet of Trump. And then Trump never gives it to him because he's so incompetent or he just admits, you know, much like the last impeachment, like, no, no, he didn't really. He wasn't demanding a quid pro quo. Trump's like, yes, I wanted a quid pro quo. Like, that is what I want.

That's what a dealmaker does. They're like, ugh. It's a similar thing. Like, this is, I mean, we can get to Bill Cassidy, but this is, these Republicans are frustrated because they couldn't even get something within the same universe as credible for a rationale for acquitting Trump other than we just do what Trump wants because we're Republicans and we think that's good politics for us. So we, I think, appropriately made fun of the idea that Trump has discovered some new kind of discipline in his post-presidency. But do you think it is weird that we haven't heard from him? Like, I realize that he doesn't have his Twitter account. He has many other outlets available to him to speak through. He has many friendly outlets available to him to speak to. He could call up his Fox and Friends pals, call up his pal Sean Hannity, get a bunch of softballs. Do you think that he's actually worried that he may say something that

could get him convicted or change some Republican senators' minds? Or is he just lazy and doesn't want to talk to the press? It's probably a combination of fear of legal consequences and laziness. I think that's probably... I mean, if you remember back when there was the discussion about what Trump would do if he was forced to testify or give an interview to Mueller, and the people who had been engaged with Trump in his pre-presidential legal shenanigans point out that his mind focuses like a laser when it feels like he might go to jail. A very diffuse, weak laser, but relative. It's all comparative, compared to jail. A very diffuse weak laser, but relative. It's all comparative, compared to normal. It could be that he has been convinced that the best thing for him to do is stay quiet.

There was probably a combination of things here. If he had his Twitter account and he could get his message out unfiltered, he probably would just do that. I think he's probably avoiding helping Fox because he feels like he has him a little bit over the barrel right now. So I don't know. I feel like I'm just on psychoanalysis of Trump, and that's sort of what we argue against.

But I agree with you. It is bizarre that he has been able to remain quiet in some way, shape, or form for weeks now. He hasn't really given an interview to anyone since the election, right? No, not at all. I also think it's, you know, Twitter announced yesterday that they're going to continue the permanent ban on his on Donald Trump's Twitter account, even if he runs for office again, which we may not get a conviction or a vote to make sure he can't run again. But it does seem like if he is permanently banned from Twitter, that could make it pretty

hard. Do you think you can run for, not to hijack the very specific outline we did, but do you think you can run for president if you're banned from Twitter? We might find out. Yeah. Do you think you can credibly run for president? Here's why I think it's hard a very small percentage of the american people are on twitter we know that right like it seems like the

world to all of us news political junkies vast majority of people are not on twitter way more people are on snapchat way more people are on facebook right like it's just it's pretty small but every fucking journalist in the world is on Twitter. And in that way, Twitter sets the media narrative. And if you're not part of that because, and you're running for office and you don't, and you can't just speak how you want or get a message out on Twitter, I think it could make it difficult. Now, Trump has a vast right-wing propaganda machine at his disposal.

And the first step, of course, is to win the Republican primary. So if you're going to win the Republican primary, do you need to be on Twitter or can you just talk through the right-wing media ecosystem? You can probably do that. And then if you win the nomination, then you do get attention because now you're the party's nominee. So that's the path for him. I think it's probably harder if you're a Democrat running for president. Oh, for sure. All you have is just you're coming on Pod Save America every day, right? I mean, as you would have to, if you had any hope of getting the nomination. As you would have to, just look

at Joe Biden right now. Okay. Anyway, now we're way off track. Now we're way off track. Back to Trump's lawyers who not only pissed off their client, they actually pissed off a Republican senator so badly that he switched one side is doing a great job and the other side is doing a terrible job on the issue at hand, as an impartial juror, I'm going to vote for the side that did the good job. Imagine that. What a refreshing, weird thing to hear. Cassidy's vote did not go over very well with the Louisiana State Republican Party, which released a statement on Tuesday saying they were, quote, profoundly disappointed in the senator. Do you think Cassidy's explanation of why he did it is the truth? I think his what he what you just quoted there is why he did it.

I do believe that I would just know. It is not how trials work. It's not a performance. It's not America's got talent for lawyers. It's like whoever presents the best argument, whether they do it coherently or not. Now, the Democrats presented the better argument here, but his reasoning was stupid. I think he did not think about this very much. I bet his staff learned he was going to vote this way at the exact same time we did. The other senators who voted in the previous iteration of this constitutionality motion to table vote thing, I think all spent a lot of time thinking about how they were going to vote,

and they made a calculation for why they were going to vote for it. Cassidy, I think, just was like, these guys are a bunch of yahoos, and I'm going to vote for it. And I do believe him when he says, this tells you nothing about how I'm going to vote on the actual verdict. So I think it was a little bit of a reaction to the poor performance of Trump's attorney. It's just the weakness of their argument and the emotion of seeing what happened. I did. Do you see Doug Jones's tweet about this? Yeah. Yeah. He was shaken.

Yeah, there it was. He was responding to some reports about all of these Republicans who were very moved by and startled and shook by these images of their colleagues almost being killed by this mob. But we're not going to change our position. And his tweet was shaken, but not're not going to change our position. And his tweet was shaken but not stirred, which I thought was perfect. And Doug Jones, free on Twitter without the constraints

of running in a deeply red state? I'll take it. Yeah, there's your upside. You get to make a joke on Twitter. There are also some reports that Bill Cassidy may retire at the end of this term, which would be another reason he's would not be as concerned about the politics. But if he doesn't, then then good for him. The politics, we should point out,

are not great for Republicans doing the right thing here. Data for Progress did a poll the other day. Sixty nine percent of Republican voters said they'd be less likely to vote for a political candidate if that person found Trump guilty in the trial. You look at numbers like that, and you're a Republican senator, and you think, okay, maybe it's the right thing to do to convict him, but I would easily lose a primary with numbers like that. And if I did vote to convict, there's not enough of us to actually make it real. So is it just a waste of my time doing that? I mean, from a political standpoint, can you blame them for thinking? I mean, I can certainly blame them and do blame them from a

moral, ethical standpoint, but they probably have the politics correct, sadly. Probably have the politics correct, sadly. Yes and no. Yes, it is true that the politics are currently that, and the political downside for a Republican voting to convict, in most cases, is to greatly exceed the upside. But there's also an element of a self-fulfilling prophecy here, which is that no one has tried to make the other argument. They all allowed the election, the big lie about the election to fester. They promoted it. Almost all of them. There's a small

handful of scriptures. Remember, most of these people would not refer to Joe Biden as a president elect for like six weeks. And then they're like shocked that their voters think the election was stolen. I guess it's really self-fulfilling short-termism to how they approach this. Yes, it's true, but they have not tried to make the opposite argument. They haven't tried to move the party away from this level of radicalization. They have just constantly fed into the radicalization because that's what benefited them in the five minutes in front of them as opposed to thinking five months, five years, 10 years down the road. And so, yes, that's what the politics are, but the politics are that way because they have allowed them to be that way because they haven't had the gumption to actually do anything about it.

And I will say the most contemptible Republican senators are the ones who don't have to face voters again and are still voting to that the trial is unconstitutional or to exonerate Trump. unconstitutional or to exonerate Trump, like Rob Portman of Ohio, who announced that he's not going to be running again and yet still voted that the that the trial is unconstitutional, which is complete bullshit. And Rob Portman knows that he's a smart guy and not going to face voters again. So he can't use the political excuse, just decided to vote that way anyway. So there is just when you think maybe it's all this political pressure for these. So no, some of them just do the wrong thing because they're assholes. That's it. So no other Republican senators, aside from the six who voted in favor of constitutionality, have given any signal that they might vote to convict. That includes Mitch McConnell,

even though Bloomberg has reported and Politico has reported that sources close to McConnell say he hasn't yet made up his mind. There we go. Team Mitch out there spinning reporters again that Mitch McConnell still hasn't made up his mind. I think those sources are full of shit. What do you think, Dan? It's just it's so embarrassing for the people who wrote that story. It is so embarrassing. It's how many times you're going gonna go to the same well and look like

an asshole over and over and over again why do you why do you continue letting fucking josh holmes and the other fucking team mitch assholes out there spin you don't let them and fucking embarrass you like this just because they want to still be part of the establishment they want all their fucking k street buddies and all the rest of it. Like, give me a break. Mitch McConnell, like he is. It does. There is reporting that like, you know, in that Bloomberg report that, you know, McConnell has told every senator to vote their conscience.

What do you think Team Mitch's strategy is here? sure he has it both ways so that he's not crossing Trump and the Trump base, but also is, you know, doing enough to try to get corporate donations back in the party? Like, what do you think? That is exactly right. He is trying to say they want the money back. They want the money and they want the MAGA base. He's trying to find a way to navigate that because he needs to raise tens, hundreds of millions of dollars in super PAC money from very wealthy people and corporate interests to hold on to the Senate. And many of those corporate interests are very uncomfortable with what happened on January 6th and since then.

And some of them have stopped giving to Republicans. Some of them have stopped giving to both parties, which is really fucking stupid. We're so angry about what Republicans are doing that we're not going to help Democrats get elected is a very, very, very short-sighted way of thinking of things. And so he's trying to have it both ways. And he is successfully having it both ways right now. It's exactly what he is doing. He has created this fiction that he is trying to rid the party of Trumpism while also doing everything he can do, enable the party's continued affiliation with Trumpism. If Mitch McConnell decided tomorrow that he was going to vote to convict Donald Trump, it wouldn't ensure conviction, but it would absolutely open the door

to a bunch of other Republican senators potentially convicting him. Mitch McConnell has that power, and he just is choosing not to use it. And that is a choice he has made. So where do we go from here? Like, do Republicans just get to acquit Trump, wait a few days for everyone to forget, then move on to whining about Joe Biden not taking the deficit and bipartisanship seriously? And that's that? Yep, that's what's going to happen. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. I mean, there is an element of defeatism that can come from this process, as it did from

the last impeachment, where you have a president who does something that is clearly wrong, clearly worthy of removal, clearly criminal, and gets away with it. And Republicans want to weaponize that to make you feel like your vote does not matter, your participation does not matter, because cynicism is the greatest ally to conservatism, because they will do better if our voters tune out of the process. And I think we have to take the long view about what to do here, right? Which is, this is one step, and it is a painful step and a frustrating step in doing two things. The first is making the Republicans pay a political price for everything that they have done over the same sort of long-term thinking, the same sort of enthusiasm and organizing and investment to the 2022 elections that we brought the 2018 elections because they are proving to, they're making the case for why the stakes are just as high, even

when Trump is not in the office. And the second what is, is that what is happening before us, if presuming the Republicans vote to acquit is a yet another crystal clear example of how broken our democracy is. And you see it in the polling where it says 56% of the public wants Trump to be face removal and the consequences come from it, and 44% think he should be acquitted. In a normal functioning democracy, that would be really bad news for the 44%. But 44% is basically what you need to hold on to the Senate and be within spitting distance of the White House with our

rigged politics. And so we need to take what is happening here and use this argument for the things we care most about, including the For the People Act, voter expansion, democratic reform, and do all of that. That is where we go go from here and being defeatist and cynical about the outcome only aids those who are seeking to shield Trump from any sort of accountability. I also think a fiction still exists that among certain democratic politicians, that a lot of Republican senators, Republican House members can be dealt with, reasoned with, negotiated with. And look, in fairness, you know, Joe Biden was accused of believing in that fiction during most of the campaign. I think the actions of the administration so far have showed that he doesn't necessarily believe that and that his view of unity is bigger than just the politicians in Washington and involves the whole country. So that's good. But I think people like Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, who are still sitting there thinking,

yeah, we can work with Republicans and we can get big things done and we don't have to get rid of the filibuster. I, you know, I saw reports that Joe Manchin was like fairly outraged with being reminded of what happened and Donald Trump's role in it over the last several days. And maybe if you're Manchin in your cinema and you're sitting there and you're watching these Republicans just go on and acquit Donald Trump, you think to yourself, maybe we can't work with them, you know, and maybe this isn't what does it. But it certainly builds the case that something fundamentally is broken with the Republican Party, that these aren't just people who can't sit down and negotiate over tax cuts and deficits and whatever else anymore, that they are protecting someone who incited an attack on democracy. And that is much bigger than just

having a difference with the other party. So there are other consequences that could come from this. So don't despair. There's one other way to hold Trump accountable now that he is a private citizen. The district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia has opened a criminal investigation into efforts made to influence the results of the presidential election in Georgia. As you might remember,

Trump threatened Georgia election officials. He asked them to find him more votes. He abused his power in a desperate attempt to overturn the results in that state. We all remember that. Well, now Fulton County DA Fannie Williams has asked state Republicans to keep documents related to the investigation, writing in a letter that doesn't specifically mention Trump, quote, This investigation includes, but is not limited to, potential violations of Georgia law prohibiting the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local government bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office, and any involvement in violence or threats related to the elections

administration. Gee, who could that involve? What is this case or this potential investigation opened by the Fulton County DA into what happened around the election in Georgia, what does that mean for Trump going forward? Well, it certainly could mean that Trump will, there will be discovery. Trump could be subject to subpoenas. He could likely at some point be required to testify. Now, I'm sure that all of the people who are currently arguing that Trump cannot be impeached for action now that he's not president also cannot be convicted for actions he committed while president. But it is a state case. So that argument's a little bit harder and the DOJ opinion does not apply.

But it is Trump faces and it just put aside what's happening in the center. And now Trump faces an array of incredibly challenging legal problems. Go for it. He has got what's happening in the Senate right now. Trump faces an array of incredibly challenging legal problems going forward. He has got what's happening in New York State. He's got his businesses, his foundations under investigation. But this is him. This is Donald Trump himself being investigated for a crime of which he is on tape committing. And if they were to proceed and an indictment were to happen, he's going to have to testify. He would potentially face trial. What the legal penalties are and whether they're throwing a book at Donald Trump, are we going to see him frog-marched out of Mar-a-Lago? Who knows? But it is deeply concerning, and it is one of the reasons

why the idea that Donald Trump is most definitely running for president in 2024, I think, is sometimes a little ahead of its skis because he, I mean, he has, he has a lot of problems to traverse between now and when it comes time to start showing up at an Iowa pizza ranch again. So yeah, no, I think, uh, I think he could have some problems. So the other consequence, um, that may come from, uh, not only this impeachment trial, but sort of the insurrection that is the cause of the impeachment trial is for the larger Republican Party. Some news on that front from the New York Times yesterday, across just the 25 states that report party registration data, almost 140,000 voters have left the Republican Party since the attack in January.

Now, it is normal for parties to shed some voters after an election, especially the losing party. But this is significantly more than the 79,000 voters who've left the Democratic Party over the same period. Republicans have lost more than 12,000 voters in Pennsylvania, nearly 8,000 in North Carolina, and more than 10,000 in Arizona, where Biden won by around the same amount. A Gallup poll on Wednesday also showed that only 37 percent of Americans now have a favorable view of the Republican Party, a decrease over the last few months that gives the Democratic Party a double digit advantage on favorability, with 48 percent of people approving of Democrats. Is this just noise? Is this what happens to a losing party

or is this a more notable shift? What do you think? I think we need to know more about who these voters are. Are these Romney Clinton suburban Republicans who voted for a Democrat in 18 voted for Biden and are shifting? Are they more moderate voters who are angry that Trump engaged in insurrection? Or are they more conservative, more MAGA voters who are angry at Republicans because they didn't help with the insurrection? Right. In which case, now, even if it's that, even if it's the latter, we saw what happened in Georgia on the runoffs. These could be voters who are big Trump fans, pissed about how the Republican Party handled the insurrection and think that they're not sufficiently defensive of Donald Trump. And they might be dropping out of the party and dropping out of politics altogether.

Yeah, I think the latter is more concerning for Republicans than the former. Right, right, right, right. for Republicans than the former. Right, right, right, right. And some of it could be, you know, a CBS poll released this week found that 70% of Republicans would consider joining a new political party founded by Donald Trump. Now, there was a reporting from Maggie Haberman when this was first raised a couple weeks ago that Trump quickly decided that a third party wouldn't be the best idea because if he founded a third party, it would be hard to stick it to Republicans during Republican primaries that he wanted to punish. I mean, yes, that is true. But the primary reason why he's not starting a third party is the same reason why he's not

starting a television network or a social media company is he's lazy and lazy. Yeah. Work work is the greatest impediment to Donald Trump doing anything. I think it's hard to know what this is all going to mean. There was a lot of reports about the Republican Party falling apart after Obama won 2008. He won a surprisingly large share of Republican voters. The party consolidated around Republicans in opposition to Obama. The thing we're going to need to know about these people who have left the Republican Party is, are they not voting? Are they voting for Democrats? Or are they just independents who vote for Republicans? Because the traditional thing here is when you use an election, a bunch of people quit the party and they become independents, but they remain

Republican voters. They're either independents or what you would call an NPA or a nonpartisan affiliation. And this has happened so often, which is why incumbent presidents almost always lose the independent vote share when they run for reelection. Because it's not that they became less popular, although that may be part of it, but that the pool of independent voters just contains more people who profile as members of the other party. Obama won by a huge percentage of independents in 2008, lost by I think one or two in 2012. But it is very clear the Republicans are divided in a

whole bunch of fronts here, and that presents a political opportunity for Democrats. So I'm not trying to pour water on the parade or whatever the right metaphor is. And the other thing we don't know about these voters who've left is we talked about it from the perspective of were they happy with the insurrection? Were they upset about the insurrection? It may not have to do with the insurrection at all. There was a couple of voters who spoke to the New York Times about leaving the Republican Party. One of them talked about how they were upset that the Republican Party wouldn't back a $15 minimum wage, and Democrats did, which brings up, you know, the possibility that some of these voters are potentially, who are leaving the Republican Party, are potentially open to Democrats if, you know, Democrats propose certain policies, have a certain agenda,

look like they're fighting for them. Ezra Klein tweeted last week, you know, one thing you really see in the Romney child allowance plan, Romney proposed, I think, $4,000 per child, is that all those studies saying social issues split the left and unite the right, but economic issues unite the left and split the right are true. What do you think about that? I think that's exactly right. It's not, and I think we should be very clear, it's not an argument that Democrats shouldn't talk about social issues. We absolutely should.

We have to. Our voters care about them. They're important. Reproductive rights, civil rights, voting rights. Immigration. Immigration, right, are under tremendous threat from this Republican party, and we have to talk about them. But when we think about how we're going to make the case against Republicans, there are some very obvious economic wedge issues here. Donald Trump had more

success with, quote unquote, working class voters in a multiracial way than any Republican in a very long time. Now, it's all bullshit, and we know that, but he was able to sort of sell this populism. He is banned from Twitter and therefore apparently doesn't exist anymore. And so the Republican Party is embodied by a bunch of congressional Republicans whose two primary goals in life are cutting Medicare and Social Security to pay for tax cuts for corporations. And so you would imagine that there is some opportunity for Democrats to go get some of the voters, go get back some of the voters who supported Obama over Romney when the economy was the centerpiece of that election that we lost in the years to come,

because this version of the Republican Party is not what they, at least we believe incorrectly, imagined Trump's version of it to be. So I think there are real opportunities there. We really have to think very strategically and creatively about what are our economic wedge issues that we can use. And the $15 minimum wage must be high on that list. Another proof point here. Donald Trump was impeached twice, incited an insurrection against the Capitol, did all kinds of just heinous shit over the last four years.

The two moments he was least popular, his approval rating was the lowest out of four years, was trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act and passing a tax cut for the rich. rich that was where he was least popular more so than the insurrection itself um which does tell you about the opportunity democrats have to put forth an agenda that speaks to working class black americans brown americans white americans and and hopefully build a multi-racial working class coalition in this country that can help split the Republican Party and sort of exploit some of the divisions that exist in that party right now. And that's going to require actually achieving some of the things we ran on, which is why figuring out a way to ensure we get this $15 minimum wage done as part of this bill is absolutely critical. Because talking about it, the way people view politics right now,

talking about it, but not achieving some of those things is not going to work for us. We're going to have to achieve some of those things and then put Republicans appropriately and correctly on the other side of those issues. And people are going to have to feel the change in their lives. We can't just tell them we achieved it. They're actually going to have to feel it. All right. Well, you're going to talk a lot more about all these issues with our next guest, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. We'll hear that after the break. I'm now joined by Washington Congresswoman and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Representative Pramila Jayapal.

Thanks for coming back to Pod Save America. Thank you. It's always great to be with you. There are a number of important victories for progressives over the last week or so in the efforts to pass the COVID relief package. I want to start with the minimum wage. This should be intuitively obvious, but I think for many of the folks in the media and for certainly the Republicans, there's a question about why a permanent change to the federal minimum wage should be included in an emergency relief package. Could you help explain the logic behind that? Yeah, absolutely. So we are in a time where low wage workers, frontline workers, essential workers who are amongst the, you know, disproportionate share

of minimum wage workers are really struggling. They're taking the brunt of the pandemic. They, in many cases, have had their wages cut because of high unemployment. They've had their hours cut. And so we're in this moment where we have to recognize the disproportionate impact that COVID had on low wage workers, many of whom are people of color. disproportionate impact that COVID had on low wage workers, many of whom are people of color. And so it was really fabulous to have President Biden come out strong when he first came into office by saying we needed to include a minimum wage increase in this package. Remember, it's been 12 years since the minimum wage has been, the federal minimum wage has been increased. And in that time, over 30 states have started to pass some sort of minimum wage increase. I'm, of course, proud that

I come from Washington state. We were the first state in the country to index minimum wage to inflation back in 1998, which meant that at least your wages had to grow at the rate of inflation. That's not true for most of the country. And so a federal minimum wage increase to 15 over five years, I would like it to be quicker, but that's where we are, would lift up 30 million workers, the wages of 30 million workers. It would lift up a million workers out of poverty, and it would put $330 billion back into the economy over the next 10 years. Why is that important during COVID? Because when you raise the wages of the lowest wage workers, they plow it right back into

the economy, right? They're buying food to put on their table. They're going to frequent small businesses. And that money is going to help those local communities also and those local businesses also to do better. And so this is absolutely the right time to do this. And, you know, we had to fight to get it in, Dan, but it's in. And, you know, I assume we're going to talk a little bit about that. But this is the time to go big and bold. And this is a structural change that is long overdue, necessary in the moment, and also will survive beyond COVID. The opponents of not just a federal minimum wage increase, but the actual idea of a federal minimum wage have latched onto this CBO report that claims that 1.4 million jobs would be lost through the passage of this legislation. That seems patently absurd to me and seems to fly

in the face of the experiences of places that have raised the minimum wage to $15. What's your response to that? Yeah, we had a hearing and a markup in education and labor that went for almost 14 hours the other night. And this, of course, was the argument that they kept making. Now, first of all, the CBO report, I could tear it down. I could spend the entire podcast tearing it down. It is a shoddy piece of work, in my opinion. And it is very different than the report that the CBO released just last year. jobs, it is a range that goes down to zero. So they're saying that there will be some level of people that will lose their jobs, but not even just lose their jobs. They're talking about just losing hours potentially. There are a lot of minimum wage workers who are working three or four jobs. So if one of those workers loses one of those jobs because they now only have to work two jobs, in my mind, that's a pretty darn good thing. But in addition, if you look at our experience

in Seattle, we were the first major city in the country to pass a minimum wage increase back in 2015 to $15 phased in. And I was on the committee that actually helped draft that proposal in 2015. Everyone came and wrung their hands about all the businesses that were going to close and about all the jobs that were going to be lost. And this is the same. It's like Redux. We hear it every time. That is absolutely not what happened. We had the businesses, some of the businesses that came and said they were going to lose jobs actually opened new branches. We continue to have high unemployment and the lowest unemployment rate in the country over the next several years as we were raising the minimum wage. And in 20, I think it was 2018 or 2019, Forbes ranked us as the best place in the country,

both to do business and for workers to have great careers. So it is just not true that minimum wage actually makes it worse for anybody. The whole community does better when workers do better. There was a study that came out early in that experiment that said we were going to lose a bunch of jobs. Three years later, the same authors put out another study that said we were wrong. That didn't happen. So this is the problem with these studies. And if you look at the comprehensive look of studies, over 172 studies that have been done in states across the country, there is absolutely zero evidence that raising the minimum wage creates job loss. Are you saying that giving money to workers so that they can buy goods and services is good for the economy? I am saying that, Dan. I recognize

neither of us are members of the CBO, but yes, that seems like that might make intuitive sense to me. Especially those workers that are at the lowest wage, right? Exactly. Because they're not like putting money away for stock trades. They are actually spending it on food and other necessities. It flows right back into the economy. So what's next in the minimum wage fight? There's going to be a battle in the Senate. There's a question about how this fits into the quote unquote budget reconciliation process that we'll need if we have to only get 50 votes in the Senate.

Where's your head on that? Well, I really believe that the CBO report for everything I don't agree with actually made it very clear that minimum wage has a considerable effect on many parts of the federal budget. And so I think it made the case for budget reconciliation in the Senate. Now, we should be really clear that the parliamentarians, so basically what happens for people who don't know how this weird process works, if you use budget reconciliation, it means you only need 51 votes, which of course, if we kept all Democrats together and the vice president breaks the tie, we've got 51 votes in the Senate. But in order to qualify, you essentially have to show that there's a

significant impact on the federal budget. And so the CBO report, I think, has done that. But the way it works is you present arguments. It's like a court. Right. So the Democrats present their arguments. The Republicans present their arguments. And then the parliamentarian of the Senate gives an opinion on whether or not it qualifies. We should be really clear that according to the rules of the Senate, that is an advisory opinion to the chair of the Senate, who happens to be the Democratic vice president, Kamala Harris. And so the chair can then decide whether or not she wants to take the parliamentarian's opinion or not. And if she decides she doesn't want to take it, then it would take 60 votes to overrule her ruling, essentially. So I believe it's going to qualify. I also think, Dan, that Republicans have used the

rules in so many ways that benefit the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest individuals. In fact, they even brought in a parliamentarian when they didn't like the parliamentarian's opinion. And so I really think that Democrats need to use every tool in the toolbox to pass a minimum wage increase to 15 and benefit 30 million workers across the country. weekend. As you know, President Biden made a statement that, you know, that he wasn't sure if it was going to survive in the Senate. And that led to a series of things, including arguments being put up for why the House should not include it. And when I found out about that, I was on the phone all weekend with the White House, with our leadership, with the chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, making it very clear that progressives... Oh, sorry. There's nothing more allowed than dogs barking during this podcast. That is fine. Making it very clear that progressives would have a very hard time supporting a package out of the House that didn't have a $15 minimum

wage. And so we were able to work with leadership and with everybody else to tear down the procedural reasons for why we weren't putting it in. And on Sunday, there was no $15 minimum wage in the Edna Labor package that was released. And on Monday, it was back in. And so I'm really proud to have led that effort in the House, working with Senator Sanders and his staff to also educate people on our side about the procedural reasons that we needed to put it in. The other victory that was notched in this process was beating back in effort to target, I don't even feel like target's the right word, but target the relief checks. Can you talk a little about what the final result is and how

you beat that back? Yeah. Well, this whole idea. OK, I want to talk about the politics because I know you really are so good on the politics as well as the policy. Right. There's. Yes, of course. Two reasons for this. So this is a populist policy that Democrats ran on in Georgia and across the country that we wanted to get two2,000 of survival checks, money in people's pockets, immediate thing that somebody could see. Donald Trump was advocating, I try not to use his name anymore, but he was advocating for this policy as well. We passed $600 in December. I would have loved to see $2,000 on top of that. But OK, we got 1400 as proposed by President Biden to the same audience. The way you determine. OK, sorry. Let me stick with politics for a second.

So it would be absolutely crazy for Democrats to now say, you know what, we don't want to give it to the same people that got it before. to the same people that got it before. We want to reduce and restrict the number of people who can get these very popular, politically popular checks that we actually ran on in Georgia and won on in Georgia. And we're going to cut out 40 million Americans from getting these checks by reducing the threshold that qualifies you to get a survival check. So it was 75,000 and 150,000. The proposal from, including some conservative Democrats, was to reduce that to 50 and 100, 50 and 75, excuse me. And so that makes no sense politically. But just from a policy perspective now, the threshold that we're using to determine eligibility is from 2019 tax returns. Tens of millions of people lost their jobs in 2020, and a million people, almost a million people every

week are still filing unemployment claims. So if you want to, quote, target, I call it restrict, checks based on eligibility, then you would need to have very recent numbers to fine tune who's going to get these checks. We don't have recent numbers to fine tune that because people, most people have not filed their 2020 returns and we don't want to delay these checks. The whole point is right now, we got to get help to people. And so from a policy perspective, it makes no sense to try to restrict the checks. Very few people at the top end of the spectrum, everyone talks about people who are earning, couples who are earning $300,000 getting checks. I provide benefit to the large number of people, get it out quickly, and hope that those people would give that check away if they get it and they don't really need it, than to try to wait or try to unfairly restrict access to these checks. Another element of the COVID relief package that I think is incredibly important but has

gotten less attention is the expansion of access to health care in there. Could you help our listeners understand what is going on with that? Yeah. So for anyone who doesn't know that's listening, I'm the lead sponsor of Medicare for All. I got to put a plug in for my bill. That is ultimately, in my view, the way we solve our health care crisis and make sure everyone has health care. OK, we're not in a place where we're probably going to get Medicare for all in this moment and we need to expand health care for everybody. So we're pushing on Medicare for all. But at the same time, I was the co-chair of the Biden Sanders Unity Task Force on health care last summer, and we were able to get a whole bunch of foundational pieces of Medicare for all into those agreements. Some of those are contained in this bill, but not all. And we are still pushing to include those agreements that candidate Biden made into this bill. But we are going to increase subsidies based on the federal poverty limit substantially so that people will have way more

access to health care immediately. We are going to decrease the total percentage of income that anyone has to pay. So it's now going to go to eight and a half percent. That will be a big piece of making sure that health care is affordable to people. And then we are pushing to tie to do what we said we would do in last year and tie this to a platinum level plan, because in Heroes, it was only a silver level plan. And frankly, those plans, you have to pay eight thousand000 out of pocket. They are not particularly good plans. So if we could tie this to a platinum level plan, as candidate Biden had committed to, then that at least will allow people quickly to access good and comprehensive coverage. The last piece is we really believe, and we got this into the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force

agreements, that we should have auto- Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force agreements, that we should have auto-enrollment. Because part of the problem, Dan, is people don't know that they qualify. They don't know how to go about getting it. Why not just automatically enroll everybody? My actual proposal was to automatically enroll anyone who had lost their job or anyone who was uninsured into Medicare. That would have been the easiest, quickest and cheapest thing to do. So we're working on auto enrollment, at least into the platinum level plan or into one of the ACA plans. So people don't have to go fill out that paperwork. The final thing that's in the bill is COBRA subsidies. So subsidizing COBRA for employees who lose their jobs. But I don't want to, I don't want to diss on COBRA, but it's a very expensive way to go.

And it covers a very small number of people who even have employer covered healthcare. My personal opinion is we're not doing enough in this plan for the uninsured to really cover those people who are just falling through the cracks. We will get a lot of them. It will be dramatically better than what we had before, but it's not going to cover everybody. And I do think that should be a priority. So I have told the White House and our leadership that if we can't do everything in this plan, we should at least implement the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force agreements into the Build Back Better plan. One last question for you before I let you go. As you mentioned, you're the lead sponsor of

Medicare for All. You are the chair of the Progressive Caucus. You were a very prominent and proud supporter of Senator Sanders and his presidential race. But you're also now serving in a moment of unified democratic government with a democratic president who, while I think is more progressive than he gets credit for, is more to the center than you and your chosen candidate, a Senate where someone like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema or Mark Kelly has the final vote necessarily on any package. What is your strategy for pushing for the progressive causes you care so much about in this moment in Washington, where there may be some

limits from some members of your own party? Well, my strategy has always been both on the inside and the outside. So, you know, the movement for Medicare for all is really the most electrifying thing that we have. And I think we're going to continue to try to build that movement, including in districts where we don't have people yet who are bought in. But in addition, I worked last cycle with Speaker Pelosi as part of a negotiation on the rules package to get an agreement that we would have the first ever in the history of the country hearings on a comprehensive Medicare for all bill, my bill. And we were able to get that. We had hearings in the Rules Committee, the Ways and Means Committee, and the Energy and Commerce Committee. And that allows us to start

laying the legislative groundwork for taking on all the things that are being said about Medicare for All that I believe firmly are not true. All the arguments that are being put forward by pharmaceutical companies and private insurance companies. And so we are going to continue that process this year in the Small Business Committee, in the Energy and Commerce Committee. We had over half of the Democratic caucus on the Medicare for All bill last year. That was a record number of people. We hope to do that again this year. And there are many of my colleagues who have seen the disaster of the pandemic and have actually come to me and said, you know, I wasn't sure about Medicare for all before, but I am really convinced that that's what we have to do now. And so we're going to continue to move all of those pieces.

You know, I know it's really disappointing that we're not immediately moving a bill to the floor for Medicare for All supporters. But I don't want us to lose when we move it to the floor. We've got to win that vote. And the reality is we've got to work with President Joe Biden as well. And so that's why the Unity Task Force agreements were so clear and so important, because we got automatic enrollment, something really critical. We got no deductible plans. We got into the public option. We got a public option that will be run by Medicare, not by a private insurance company. Critically important. We got better agreements around drug pricing and negotiating drug pricing across all payers than we did in H.R. 3, which was the House

bill. So I'm really excited about continuing the work to sort of put in place these foundational elements of Medicare for All and at the same time to continue to push for Medicare for All to be the policy of the land, which I call me a hopist, but I really firmly believe that it's not a question of if, it's a question of when. Congresswoman, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save America, and we will talk to you soon. Thank you, Dan. Thanks for everything you're doing. Thanks to Congresswoman Jayapal for joining us today, and everyone have a great weekend.

We'll talk to you next week. Happy President's Day, I guess. It's a good President's Day. I know we finally have a good president. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, 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.