Pod Save America - Indictment Eve

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

Donald Trump prepares to be charged with more crimes. Mike Pence and Chris Christie jump into the race with some pointed criticism of the man who almost killed them. Matt Gaetz foils Kevin McCarthy’s plan to protect your gas stove. And later, White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients stops by to talk about the debt ceiling deal and what’s next on Biden’s agenda. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Donald Trump prepares to be charged with more crimes. Mike Pence and Chris Christie jump into the race with some pointed criticism of the man who almost killed them. Matt Gaetz foils Kevin McCarthy's plan to protect your gas stove. And later, White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients stops by to talk to Dan about the debt ceiling deal and what's next on Biden's agenda. But first, if you are in the San Francisco area, June 22nd and 23rd, sounds like you, Dan. I'm unfortunately out of town, but I am being blown up by people looking for comp tickets

to see Love It. It is Love It or Leave It coming to San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts. Love It will be joined by a great lineup of guests, including Chris Fleming, Casey Newton, Dylan McKeever, Adam Savage, and some more surprise guests. Head to crooked.com slash events to get your tickets today. Also, Crooked's newest limited series podcast, Dreamtown, the story of Adelanto, has premiered with two episodes out now. Dreamtown, the story of Adelanto, has premiered with two episodes out now. Dreamtown is the story of a small California city named Adelanto in the desert that is about to go bankrupt until a stranger comes to town with a pitch to make Adelanto great again by becoming the first city in Southern California to legalize commercial weed cultivation.

It's a great story, wild, local politics with a lot of national political themes in the backdrop. Search for Dreamtown, the story of Adelanto and listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to the news. So we are currently on Trump indictment watch again with multiple reports suggesting that the twice impeached criminal defendant could be charged any day now with violating the Espionage Act and obstructing justice in connection with classified information, he refused to give back to the government. in Miami, where he is expected to possibly bring charges, and that he also let the former president's lawyers know last week that Trump is, in fact, a target of the investigation. Dan, care to comment on the unverified report that Jack Smith has delayed the indictment so that it comes right after we hit publish on this episode of Pod Save America.

I just hope when that moment comes, the appropriate people in America thank us. Because if big news only breaks after we pod, if we don't pod, no big news. Ergo... Look, I'm ready. I'm ready. I've got the afternoon cleared. I'm ready to jump back into the studio. Just for you people. Clearing the afternoon was a huge mistake. That is messing with the indictment karma gods.

Oh, yeah. Well, I am busy till around 1. So it could happen up until 1. Okay. All right. I feel good. Just so people know on the timing, there was some news yesterday saying it could be today. I mean, there was some news yesterday saying it could be today. Others are saying that the fact that the Miami grand jury was hearing witnesses just yesterday suggests that, yes, the indictment is imminent, but imminent could be next week, week after. But more importantly, we are having a live show Monday night in New York City with the New York attorney General and Hillary Clinton joining. So maybe they could get it done by then. Just maybe. It would be nice if them.

Who will think of the content, Dan? Our content, specifically. Our content. Yes. Okay, so can you use the legal degree that you got from Twitter and strict scrutiny to explain what the flurry of developments over the last few days in the classified documents case actually mean. So I want to try to do this in like a Schoolhouse Rocks version of how do you imprison a former president?

We have to go back in time a little bit because I do think that this has gotten, we're just, there are so many cases. There's one in Fulton County. There's the one in New York with the Manhattan DA. There is what Jack Smith is doing. And so let's go back. After there were, it came out that Donald Trump was hoarding classified documents at his beach house. Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel named Jack Smith to investigate all Trump investigations because Trump was running for president against Joe Biden. It's pretty typical to have a special counsel when there could be allegations of political interference. This is exactly why the Republican Deputy Attorney General appointed Bob Mueller, our hero and savior, to investigate Donald Trump and the Russiagate stuff.

So Jack Smith impanels a grand jury in Washington, D.C. to start hearing from witnesses. We don't know a ton. Every once in a while, something leaks out or a Trump witness goes out and says that they got hauled in so that they can get their story out there before Trump hits Truth Social to attack them for whatever. And we kind of know that they are looking at at least two things. One is classified documents. The other is what role Trump may have played in trying to overthrow the election, either through violence on January 6th or through a cocky maybe scam of fake electors.

As you mentioned in your thing, a couple important things have happened the last few weeks. Apparently at some point in May, Trump got what's called a target letter, which is when a federal investigator tells someone that they are the subject of the investigation. They're not a witness. They might actually be the person charged. That is often followed by a meeting with the investigators. Last week, Trump's attorneys went in there to meet with the Department of Justice to try to suss out the nature of the charges, the state of the case. Based on Trump's all caps truths, after that, it appears the meeting did not go well. And so here we are. We are now waiting to find out if and when the at least in the classified documents cases

is the one we understand, according to reporting that Trump is the target in when that indictment will come down. Direct relationship between the number of capital letters and truths from Trump and how he's feeling about the fact that he may get indicted. So that's what you, when there's more caps, more truths, we're getting close, getting close to an indictment. That's usually the rule. Yeah. No, you don't want a target letter. You don't want a letter letting you know that you're the target of a federal investigation. Just, I don't have no legal degree, but that's just something that you want to avoid. What do you think is going on with the second jury in Florida? It is an opportunity for everyone who is a lawyer, went to law school, or met a lawyer to speculate

recklessly on Twitter about what it can mean. But I will offer you the short menu of what are possible options here. One is very simple logistics, which is Mar-a-Lago is in Florida. A lot of the potential witnesses to Trump's potential crimes, like the people who work at Mar-a-Lago, the Secret Service agents, are all in Florida. You can make life easier on yourself and the witnesses to impanel a grand jury in Florida. So they can just like drive there instead of flying to Washington, D.C. to appear before that grand jury. It also can happen a little bit more outside of the view of the press than when they all get marched in front of the stakeout of cameras at the D.C. federal courthouse. The other and I think more likely reason based on some reporting from Carol Lenning at The Washington Post is that if Jack Smith is going to try Trump, he wants to do it

in Florida because even though he legally could because of the nature of a crime like the Espionage Act or obstruction of justice, he could charge it in D.C. But the argument for charging in Florida is if the case is charged in D.C., the very first thing Trump's attorneys will do is run to Fox News. After that, they will then file a motion to try to object to the venue and try to have it move to Florida, which will take a bunch of time. And it is very much in Jack Smith's interests for the country, for the state of the case to get it resolved as fast as possible, certainly before Donald Trump can pardon himself potentially in January of 2025. And so while there's some legal risk to this, a different jury pool that may be more favorable to Trump in Florida than Washington, D.C., certainly based on partisanship, if you want to look at it that way, you could get one of those crazy judges like the ones who – Eileen Cannon. Eileen Cannon is an option there. Yeah, that's not good.

if we're trying to get to a resolution of the case as quickly as possible, you might get a delay in the indictment of a couple of weeks because you, they, you, they then Jack Smith then has to go to Florida and read the Florida grand jury, the testimony and evidence offered in Washington, but you might get a faster resolution of the case. If they go to Florida route.

There's one more aspect to the venue question. Um, former, uh, Mueller prosecutor, Andrew Weissman, also, uh, positive American guest prosecutor Andrew Weissman, also positive American guest Andrew Weissman, he wrote up something today saying that Jack Smith has to get the venue right, not just because of the potential for delay, as you mentioned. You end up going with the wrong venue and you get a conviction. But then on appeal, they say, oh, well, this was never supposed to be tried in D.C. in the first place.

The Supreme Court is currently hearing a case about whether you can try the person again just because of a venue, because the government screwed up the venue. And we don't know what they've decided. But to be extra cautious, Jack Smith may bring charges in both D.C. and Florida just to make sure he's doing it right. But he may bring the bulk of the charges in Florida just because he wants to play it safe and does not want any risk of some judge saying, by the way, it shouldn't have been in D.C. And now the whole case is gone. So there you go. We've learned a lot about the law is what I would say. We learned a lot about the law. I'll just say my Twitter list of legal experts, they have a lot to say. People seem very sure that he is getting indicted, more sure than they were before the hush money case. And partly that's based on just the mountain of evidence that we know about over the last several months in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, both on the taking the documents, withholding

the documents, potentially obstructing justice, potentially disseminating classified information. It doesn't seem great. It doesn't seem great for him. Yeah, there are three pieces of evidence that have come out in the last couple of weeks, and most likely from grand jury witnesses who've been asked about this. The first is the long voice memo that Trump's attorney dictated to himself about his interactions with Trump on this case, which became evidence because the fraud exception in attorney-client privilege was found. Second, that Trump is reportedly on tape with a group of people doing Mark Meadows' memoirs,

admitting he has a classified document that he can't show them, thus proving he didn't declassify it, an argument he never really used. We talked about it last week. And then this thing you guys talked about, about how they accidentally drained the pool into the server room at the Ed Mar-a-Lago.

Who among us, you know? We also learned this week that Trump's last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has testified before the grand jury in both the classified documents investigation and the January 6th investigation. Again, my Twitter list of legal experts all seem to think that was huge news. Some were even saying it was bigger news than any of the Mar-a-Lago stuff that happened this week. What do you think? I have the same list of Twitter lawyers, so I feel exactly the same as you do. Mark Meadows is important because he is one of the very few witnesses who was in the White House when Trump packed up all of his stuff, was in contact with Trump after the White House, and was intimately involved with efforts around the post-election insurrection planning, including being a person who was in contact with the quote-unquote war room in Virginia with Roger Stone and the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

That's where the rally and eventual assault on the Capitol were planned. Yeah, and of course, Cassidy Hutchinson testified in the January 6th hearing that he said to her, January 6th could be really bad, really bad. It sounds like he had some knowledge that something might be going on. How are you feeling? We talked about a little bit this on Tuesday, but gut feeling right now about the potential political impact of an indictment in the classified documents case? Call me naive. Call me a wild-eyed optimist. Call me naive, call me a wild-eyed optimist, but I just have to imagine that being charged with a crime under the Espionage Act is not a political winner, even in this Republican primary. I know. I feel the same way. I also think the other difference between this case and the Hutch Money case is this is happening at a time where a bunch of other Republican candidates have announced.

time where a bunch of other Republican candidates have announced. A couple that we're about to talk about have actually gone directly after Trump. And whether they attack Trump for this or not, if he's indicted, now Republican voters who are maybe feeling a little hesitant about all the crimes, they have another place to go because they are now starting to see other candidates. So I do think that's different. And I think it's an easier case to understand than hush money. In the hush money case, there was a lot of novel legal theory commentary going on. This is not a novel legal theory. This is pretty straightforward. You can't steal classified information and then hoard it in your beach house and then pass it out to whoever you'd like and then obstruct justice when they ask for it back.

Pretty easy. All right. Well, let's talk about the rest of the field. Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and my man Doug Burgum are officially running for president. The former vice president, who was nearly killed by his own voters after Donald Trump attacked him for not overturning the election, had some choice words for his old boss in an announcement speech

where he let it all hang out. I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be President of the United States. And anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be President of the United States again. But the American people deserve to know that on that day, President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the

Constitution. Now voters will be faced with the same choice. I chose the Constitution, and I always will. It's a pretty good line. Would you say that Mike Pence is getting the hang of it? you say that Mike Pence is getting the hang of it? Once again, Mike Pence, the only person in polite society you can make fun of third near murder. Were you surprised that Pence went directly at Trump in a way that was sharper than he ever has before? And I know the answer is yes, because your first draft of the outline was like, Mike Pence did an announcement and didn't really go after Trump, unlike Chris Christie. And boy, did Mike Pence prove you wrong. I would just note for the record that we work under arduous deadlines at Positive America. So my outline was done before the Pence speech.

So I was wrong. Was sharp the words you used there? I originally thought about the word tougher, and then I changed it to sharper because I don't know if it was tough. It was sharp. It was sharp compared to cotton. I mean, he said he should never be president. I think you were grading him on a curve. And I think in the long history of attempted murder,

no attempted murder victim has ever had a more milquetoast response to his attempted murder than Mike Pence did right there. If we stopped grading any of these Republicans on a curve, we would have nothing to talk about. They are all on a curve right now. Not our next guest. Since 2016, we've been on a big old curve that we're bringing all of them on. And you know what?

Mike Pence, good for you. Good for you. Yeah, I was a little surprised. I was a little surprised. But I guess if the guy you're running against almost had you killed and your whole claim to fame was that one time at the very end of the first term doing the right thing, you might as well say something about it. Sure. Kudos. Right?

The Wi-Fi password at his announcement event was kept his oath. That's the Wi-Fi. How do I get on this Wi-Fi? It's kept his oath. So Pence was later interviewed by Dana Bash during a CNN town hall. On the plus side, he said that unlike Trump, he wouldn't pardon the people convicted of crimes in connection with January 6th. And he thinks that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal, not a genius, as Trump said. On the minus side, Pence refused to say whether he would pardon Donald Trump,

doesn't think that Trump should be indicted in the classified documents case, because even though he supports the rule of law and thinks that no one should be above the law, he thinks an indictment would be too divisive. And then he said this to Dana Bash about whether he'd support Trump if he is the nominee. You just spent a lot of time both here and earlier today explaining why you think that the former president did not uphold his oath to the Constitution. So then how can you say that you would support him if he's the nominee? Well, because I don't think Donald Trump's going to be

the nominee of the Republican Party. I don't think he's going to be the nominee. What if he is? I have great confidence in Republican primary voters. We have a field of strong and experienced candidates that grew by one today. I'm glad he has great confidence in Republican voters.

These are the same people who put up the gallows and started chanting, hang Mike Pence, just FYI. Why do you think that Pence was willing to tell people Donald Trump violated the Constitution and should never be president,

but wasn't willing to say he won't support him if he's the nominee. Because every Republican candidate has theoretically signed a loyalty pledge put out by the RNC that as a, if you want to be on the debate stage, which all these candidates need to be, they have to say they're willing to support the nominee. Now I think absent that loyalty pledge, they would also support the nominee. I definitely believe that to be the case, but the most technical reason is the loyalty pledge. Yeah. I mean, if I was Mike Pence running for president, I was Chris Christie. And let's say I was going to be courageous and that at the end of this nomination, if Donald Trump wins, I was going to say, no, I'm not supporting

him. I would definitely say I'm supporting him now because I need to get on that debate stage. It's the only chance these people have to win to get on that debate stage. So yeah. And guess who lied about whether or not they'd support the nominee last time? Donald Trump. Donald Trump also lied about whether he would accept for leaving open the idea that they will pardon Trump. And morally, that is an abhorrent position. Strategically, it's kind of brilliant. Because here's what you want. If you win the nomination, you want Trump to have some serious skin in the game for your victory. Yeah. You want to dangle the pardon out there so that he doesn't burn the whole fucking house down while you're trying to run for president and win.

Yep. Now, Asa Hutchinson tried to, uh, for those of you who might, may have forgotten, which you are forgiven for, uh, Asa Hutchinson, Arkansas governor who is running for president, uh, on the Republican side, been very critical of Trump. He tried to square the circle by saying that the RNC should change the pledge so that you only, you don't have to support the nominee if they've been convicted of espionage or another serious felony, which could happen to anyone.

Yeah, I mean, also, it's just so notable that you feel so strongly about that. it has to be put in writing. Mark Short, one of Pence's top advisors. He was top advisor in the White House, now in the campaign. He was also apparently crying during the announcement. He was so moved by Mike Pence. He said to Dave Weigel at Semaphore that they've seen focus groups, not that they've conducted, they've been shown focus groups where Republicans agree with what Pence did on January 6th after they hear him lay out his side of the story. And Mark Short's argument is voters have only heard the mainstream media side of the story on January 6th.

Once they hear the conservative side of the story from Mike Pence, that's going to be our ticket to the nomination. Do you buy that? And in general, what do you think Pence's theory of the case is here? Well, let me answer your second question first. Pence's theory of the case is the same theory of the case that all of us have when we buy a Powerball ticket. It's like, we might win. It could happen. I don't know. If we do, it'd be cool. I do think it's possible that there have been focus groups that show that you can convince Republican voters that Mike Pence's refusal to commit treason is an acceptable thing. Because even if, even for all the Republicans who only believe that Trump won the election, there was fraud, etc., most of them still don't like what happened on January 6th, the day. So I think you can probably sell people that.

I think it says a lot about the party that in the con column for Mike Pence, for most voters, is that he didn't commit treason. But we'll let them figure that out. most voters is that he didn't commit treason, but we'll let them figure that out. The guy has higher negatives than any of his opponents, is the highest negative of anyone running Mike Pence. Adam Wren wrote a piece for Politico about sort of the Pence case, theory of the case. And it is that Trump and DeSantis kill each other because they keep going at each other the whole time, kill each other in Iowa. And then Pence scoops up the evangelical vote in that state because he's got a high name ID. Probably because he's a white dude. He's going to visit all 99 counties in Iowa.

He's going to stake everything on Iowa and hope that Trump and DeSantis just kind of cancel each other out. And that's it. That's the Mike Pence theory. High name ID and high unfavorables is not a good thing. Because people know you and they have formed an opinion. Let's talk about the other new Republican candidate whose life Donald Trump almost ended. His old debate coach, Chris Christie. No announcement video from Christie.

No big teleprompter speech. Just a town hall where as promised he kicked the ever-living shit out of Donald Trump let's listen a lonely self-consumed self-serving mirror hog is not a leader well let me be clear in case I have not been already the person I am talking about is Donald Trump. I am going out there to take out Donald Trump, but here's why. I want to win. And I don't want him to win. There are not multiple lanes to the Republican nomination. There is one lane to the Republican nomination, and he's in front of it. And if you want to win, you better go right through him the grift from this family is breathtaking Jared Kushner and Ivanka

Kushner walk out of the White House and months later get two billion dollars from the Saudis you think it's because he's some kind of investing genius or do you think it's because he was sitting next to the President United States for four years doing favors for the Saudis? That's your money he stole and gave it to his family. Know what that makes us? A banana republic. Because he's the only person outside the state of Delaware to have ever lost to Joe Biden. Every time before Donald Trump that Joe Biden ever tried to run for anything outside the tiny little state of Delaware,

he lost. He said once. Because he got to run against Donald Trump. So my first reaction to that clip when I heard the Jared and Ivanka hit was that I didn't know that Tommy and Ben were speechwriting for Chris Christie now. Sending that clip to Tommy really made my week because it made him so happy.

He was so excited. He was so excited. He was so excited. So that was fun. What did you think? What did you think of Chris Christie? I think, well, after hearing that, the question I have to ask is, how many delegates does the winner of Resistance Twitter get for the Republican nomination? Well, it depends on the delegates are awarded

proportionally on how many RTs you get. From the Krasensteins. Yeah, it's an RT. It's an RT based allocation of delegates. So we'll see. Okay. He's got a shot then. I loved it. Of course. Of course. How could you not love that? Christie was later asked by Brett Baier to reckon with his past support of Donald Trump. And here's what he said. What changed? He changed. He changed in material ways. I've known him for 22 years.

And what I was hoping to do by endorsing him early, recognizing that he had won in New Hampshire, he had won in South Carolina and almost won in Iowa. He was the nominee. And I thought as a longtime friend, I could make him a better candidate and a better president. I was wrong. You think that's good enough? And how much does it matter?

It matters a little. It's fine. Every one of these people have the same problem, which is how do you make a case against Trump when you were just slavishly defending every terrible thing he did six months ago? And at least Christie says he's wrong. Yeah. I mean, Mike Pence probably has the best version of this, which is he tried to kill me. And that really opened my eyes to the problem.

I guess Christie could have just said that too. Talk about a deathbed conversion, you know? Yeah. It's fine. It's fine as an answer. Chris Christie's inability to reckon with his previous support or his challenges reckoning with the previous support is not his biggest problem. His biggest problem is Republicans hate him. Right. Yeah. He's a minus 51% net approval among Republicans. You just slightly,

just, just slightly beating out Pence. There was, there was like one poll. There was one poll that had 60% of Republicans say they won't even consider Chris Christie as a potential nominee. No, you won't even consider. 60%. That's tough.

That's a tough path. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's 40% is Trump won with less than 40% in 2016. So you just got to consolidate every other single human being on the planet. You can win. It's got to consolidate every other single human being on the planet. You can win. So, yeah, obviously, as you said, all of these people who are taking on Trump have issues and that they all supported Trump and basically said nothing during the whole time he was president.

Here's the thing. I don't really care. I don't care because I don't care if the people who kick the shit out of Trump are heroes or assholes or hypocrites. I just care that they're kicking the shit out of Trump. You know, like, and I especially don't care about Chris Christie because he's not going to be president. He's not, he's not going to win this nomination. And if he wants to go down just every day, kicking the shit out of Donald Trump and actually criticizing him like he should be criticized and not doing the whole it was also funny listening to this mocking thing

of the other candidates being like there's someone that I won't name who's not good and he was making fun of that I like that, good, go for it and if that gets a bunch of media attention because the media likes conflict and someone actually kicking the shit out of Trump, then great. Perfect.

Go for it. Have a blast. I think it's probably Christie's best strategy. Like you said, he's almost certainly not going to win, but he understands that. So he is trying to have a different strategy than all these other yahoos. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. But it's high variance.

And that's what you need with your launch. Maggie Haberman said that it was difficult to find actual Republican voters at Christie's Town Hall and that apparently almost every single voter that they talked to was a registered independent. If you want to stop Trump, don't you actually have to talk to Republican voters at some point? I mean, he's just, he's warming up.

Let him just like walk into the pool slowly. Right. Get used to it. He did go on Fox and have that interview with Brett Baier where he said he was wrong. But it is it does crystallize why he needs the debate so badly, maybe more than anyone else. Because if he doesn't get on that debate stage, where is he getting his message out aside from the liberal media that can't be trusted? Yeah, he absolutely needs to be on the debate stage. Trump should not want him on the debate stage because he's pretty good at this. As a just political performer, he is leaps and bounds better than everyone else on that stage,

except for Trump. I mean, Pence has no personality. DeSantis is awkward. Haley's not that great. Tim Scott. I mean, I don't think Doug Burgum, your boy's making the stage. So yeah, I mean, it's better TV for all of America and more challenging for Trump if he gets there. So I hope he gets there. I do think it's a challenge if Trump doesn't show up. Yeah. Then I don't know what Christie does. I guess Christie then just has a chance to whack Trump for an hour and a half. It's like when they would do the junior varsity debates on the Republican side in 2016. And then like Lindsey Graham would really like show out like against the, you know, I don't know, Carly Fiorina or whoever else the other people were up there.

And so I'm sure he'll look great compared to these other people. We haven't talked about this yet, but what do think about like so the iowa caucuses go first there is no democratic iowa caucus this time around just republicans and then in new hampshire of course um you know independence can jump into the primary and there won't really be a democratic primary in new hampshire either so do you think that like part of a strategy for christy could be getting democrats and independents to vote for him in the primary just as a way to stop Trump? Is that like a realistic possibility? I don't think that's a real strategy, but but because independents can vote in either primary just by showing up on that day or non I don't think they're technically independents.

I think so. There's-party affiliated MPA voters, that how the role they play in an individual party's primary is dictated by what's happening on the other side of the ballot. One of the theories for why Obama underperformed in New Hampshire in 2008 is a lot of independent voters thought that Obama had it locked up. So some of them voted for McCain because they had previously supported it. There was some overlap in Obama-McCain voters. You can see a world in which if Christie – I mean, what are we talking about here? This is insane. This is a stupid thing to talk about.

Well, Christie or someone else, I'm wondering about sort of just in general the capacity for Democrats and independents to meddle in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary on the Republican side. Yeah, I mean, I don't think they can meddle in the caucus on the Republican side. I think they would have to re-register as Republicans in Iowa, I think. The Democratic caucus was open to independents. I don't think the Republican one is, but I could be wrong. I think that's all on the margins. I think the increased number of independent voters who will be voting in the Republican primary in New Hampshire will have an impact. I don't think

it's part of a specific strategy. It's just the fact that there's not a competing Democratic primary happening. But I don't think there's going to be – you can already see these people like re-registering as republicans to vote for christy or some dumb shit like that that is even if that happens that's not gonna i don't i think that is not mathematically significant got it okay so when we come back dan talks to white house chief of staff jeff science Joining us now for the first time on Pod Save America is White House Chief of Staff, Jeff Zients. Jeff, welcome to the pod. Well, thank you for having me. I'm a big listener, and Dan, it's great to see you. It's good to see you. Congratulations on surviving your first

debt limit crisis as chief of staff. That's no small thing. No, it was an incredible case study in leadership, starting with the president and the teamwork here, both at the White House and working across the agency and with the Hill, I think was just A plus. And I think that was how we got the outcome we got, which I think is a good outcome for the American people. We'll get a little bit into what's in the deal, but I want to start a little bit with what you mentioned is the president's leadership. Because there have

been debt limit deals before, there have been budget deals before, but this president's operating in sort of a different kind of politics than we've had, or maybe a worse kind of politics. What does it say about Joe Biden and how he goes about politics that he's able to strike deals like this with a Republican party that the vast majority of whom refuse to acknowledge that he even won the presidency legitimately. They go after his family, they go after his health. What was his approach to getting this done with this group of people? Look, I think this is a natural gift to the presidents, but he also spent a lot of time, decades on the Hill. And then, as you know,

Dan, we worked with him for eight years as vice president. And now a couple of, I think, historic years as president, he's a leader and he's experienced and he's wise. And I think from the beginning, he said this is going to take time. It's going to have its ups and downs. We can't overreact to either when it feels really good or when it feels really bad. We've got to play the long game here. And I, you know, my first night of work was the State of the Union. So those few days before the State of the Union, when Ron was winding down as Chief of Staff and I was cranking up, I spent time in the rehearsals for the State of the Union. Dan, you remember those sessions. I do. I do, yes. The State of the Union is a big deal because it brings together the priorities for the upcoming year or two of the presidency.

So you can imagine the process that goes into figuring out what the most important priorities are, how to frame them for the American people. So I sat in on a couple of those sessions. And central to it was Social Security and Medicare, and the fact that we were not going to undermine the Social Security system or Medicare, which tens of millions of Americans rely on. Now, we didn't know that someone would shout out from the Republican caucus that the president wasn't telling the truth when he pointed out that some Republicans wanted to cut Social Security and Medicare. But the great news is within a matter of a few weeks, the Republicans had taken Social Security and Medicare off the table.

So the president's leadership, I think, on the debt ceiling really began that night at the State of the Union when he protected Social Security and Medicare. And throughout, it was his strategy and his leadership and our teamwork that I described earlier that enabled us to get to this point. You know, at the end, Dan, those last several days, you can imagine if you were in your old job as communications director, leader of the White House, the pressure that Anita Dunn and team were under to punch back as Republicans were criticizing the president as they were declaring victory. And the president's instruction to all of us was, let's give this negotiation the space that it needs.

I think we're headed to a good outcome, particularly in this context of divided government for the American people and for Democrats. Let's be patient. Let's play the long game. And that's what led to that discipline that I think was hard to implement, but was absolutely hard to be disciplined about at times. But I think we did a really good job of implementing it. It really mattered. And again, that was the president's direction. You know, in the middle, we were under a lot of pressure, Dan, as you know, to negotiate. McCarthy kept saying it's been 50 days since we've met. It's been 70 days. Well, the president was very clear when they first met, and that was also just around the State of the Union, that he was going to put out his

budget, which would show our plan for deficit reduction. It had over $3 trillion of deficit reduction. Importantly, it had new revenue. Corporations paying their fair share, wealthy individuals. The average billionaire pays 8%, the idea of a minimum tax on billionaires. So billionaires pay their fair share the same way teachers and firefighters do who now pay more on a percentage basis by a multiple than the average billionaire. Having revenue in an equation when you're putting together a budget is really important. It's not just about spending. The Republicans only want to focus on spending. So having the Republicans asking McCarthy to first

put forward his plan for deficit reduction before in a budget and priorities, so he would contrast our priorities, our values with the Republican values was something the president said in that very first meeting. And we kept insisting upon that. And then, you know, what was it, three months later, they passed the bill, which showed their priorities and their values. And they're very, very different than our democratic values and the president's values. And at the end of the day, making sure that they put their priorities on the table before we begin to negotiate was hard day to day. Absolutely right answer that the president had and the team executed well against that too.

Was that the pivot point when you went from, you know, the president started this out saying, I'm not going to negotiate. That's been sort of an article of faith among Democrats since President Obama went through this when you and I were in the White House in 2013. To go from saying, I'm not going to negotiate to sitting down with McCarthy and having his team do it. Was that the point? And when they put their budget out, how did that pivot happen? Look, the president always had a framework that said, we're not going to negotiate over the debt ceiling. We will negotiate over the budget. Show me your budget. Here's my budget. Here's my values. Here's my deficit reduction. Here's my new sources of revenue from, as I said, large corporations, closing tax loopholes,

billionaires paying their fair share. Once we got the so-called plan of the Republicans on the table, there wasn't a lot of detail, but it certainly gave a direction of where they wanted to head. At that point, we entered into the budget negotiations. Clearly, having the debt ceiling created pressure to get to the budget agreement we did. And we can talk more later about that's not a great system to govern or legislate in this country. And how do we change that going forward? But I think where we've come out of here, which is a two-year extension of the debt ceiling with all the president's priorities from infrastructure to the Chips and Science

Act to clean energy investments to reducing prescription drug costs and reducing Medicare prices, not coverage prices or costs for the U.S. government is really, really important. All of the president's priorities were protected, even though the Republicans wanted to undo a lot of those things. Now, I know two years is a long time from now, but it's going to be here very fast. This agreement will expire in January of 2025. If and when the president is reelected, the first thing he's going to have to deal with is the debt limit all over again. When the president was asked about this right after the agreement was struck, he brought up the idea of potentially looking at the 14th Amendment next

time. How are you guys thinking about avoiding going down this path? Because the outcome you got, both in terms of the substance of the deal and avoiding the damage to the economy, was great this time, but that may not happen next time. I agree with you, Dan. Divided government is difficult and you don't get everything you want, but I agree with you, Ned, we did very, very well under the president's leadership here. As I said a few minutes ago, this is not the way to run an operation, to run the railroad, if you will. The idea that every year or two, you have a debt ceiling and that creates this pressure. So we need to figure out if we can fix

that. And we will be looking at that. You mentioned the 14th Amendment. What other legal or constitutional avenues should we look at in addition to potentially the 14th Amendment? Are there legislative fixes? But, you know, whether it's a Democrat in the White House or a Republican in the White House, independent of what the composition is of the Senate or the House, we should get out of this. This is not a good way to run a country or to legislate. After the deal was struck, one of the, in the White House, the President and the White House staff were talking about what you got out of this deal. There was, as you mentioned very critically, protecting the president's priorities through certainly the balance of his term into the future.

But he also talked about running room, that having this behind you meant the White House would be able to do more. What is on the agenda next? How are you going to use that running room? It's a good question, Dan. And we're really excited to have that running room. If you will, we've been parallel processing, as the president says, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. So it's a lot of continuation of what we've been doing, but we can now focus on it even more. So with these historic pieces of legislation, it creates this enormous opportunity to invest in America.

New bridges, new factories, more prescription drug costs, decreasing pricing, decreases that benefit the American people. There's so much to do that is enabled by those historic pieces of legislation. Our job now is to implement, execute, get things done, and then show the American people how this is changing their lives day to day, better jobs, less expensive health care. And, you know, at the same time, there are things like junk fees. You know, we talked to the president going back to the State of the Union, called for families to be able to sit together when they travel on an

airplane without having to pay more money. That's happened. We're going to continue to make people's lives better with issues they deal with every day, the cost of things, the ability to get from point A to point B without sitting in a lot of traffic, having better transportation options in their cities and towns across the country. You know, this manufacturing renaissance is real. The amount of investment in manufacturing that's happening across this country is completely unprecedented. And that's enabled by the president's leadership and this historic legislation. But it's very much obviously a public-private partnership that's working. So we've got a lot to do, and we're doing it.

And we've got to just keep pushing on all fronts. You know, I'm sure the president will continue and want to look for things to get done legislatively. Obviously, that's probably a limited menu given certainly the position that Kevin McCarthy finds himself in right now after this deal. But one thing that actually has to get done from the administration's point of view is more funding for Ukraine. Kevin McCarthy came out the other day and said there would not be a supplemental. How are you guys going to approach making the case for additional funding to support Ukraine against Russia? Look, Ukraine is so important for the people in Ukraine, for the people in Europe and for the world. I mean, this is about freedom and protecting freedom.

And I think as we continue to support the Ukrainians and their tremendous courage and performance, that people will continue to see that appropriate funding from the U.S. and from our allies. I think it's really important that this is part of an effort that our allies are supporting the same way we're supporting is really important, again, for the people of Ukraine and for freedom around the world. So I think this is a top priority for the president, and I think Congress will continue to support it. There is support. You believe there's support in the Republican, among Senate Republicans for this. Do you think you can pressure the House to go along? I think so. I mean, look, if you step back, you know, when the president was campaigning and talked about bipartisanship, people sort of scoffed like that doesn't exist anymore.

But we've got, you know, the agreement that we started talking about at the beginning, which is so important in protecting the president's priorities and Democrats' priorities and is so good for the American people, was a bipartisan agreement. Now, at the end of the day, Dan, I do want to put the data on the table, which is 75 percent of the House caucus supported the budget agreement. Ninety percent of the Senate Democratic caucus supported the budget agreement. 90% of the Senate Democratic caucus supported the agreement. I think if we were talking four or five, six weeks ago, or four or five, six months ago, you probably would have said, good luck with that one, right? I did say that. Yes. Yes. But but at the same time, you know, there were Republicans supporting both the in both the Senate and the House. And it was a bipartisan agreement, the same way the historic infrastructure agreement law was bipartisan. So there are

bipartisan opportunities. There's been bipartisan support for Ukraine in our efforts to support the people of Ukraine. And I believe that'll continue in both the Senate and the House. One of the elements of the budget deal involved ending the pause on student loan payments, but you are also dealing with, which I know the administration was planning to do eventually anyway, but you're also awaiting a Supreme Court decision on the student debt cancellation plan that the president put in place. How much planning are you guys doing to think around what would happen from an adverse ruling from the Supreme Court? Look, we believe the court's going to do the right thing. We believe it's really important

that the people have relief. 90% of the people who have relief have family incomes less than $75,000. We're talking about $10,000, $20,000 relief that's really important. At the same time, I was with the president yesterday and we were talking about this very topic and the importance of student debt relief. And he brought up the the you know, the the the loans that people got or the or the grants that people got for the PPP program and how how that went to many people who are now voting or pushing against student debt. And you can't help but to contrast that and how important this is for working class Americans, middle class Americans. The president has done historic work on student debt relief with the program that you're referring to that's in front of the Supreme Court, where, again, we hope that the court does the right thing. You're right that that's likely to come in the next week or two or three. So we're watching very closely there.

At the same time, he's put in place income-based repayment programs. So you're only paying a certain percent of your income, an affordable amount of your income each month on student debt and no more. And that program is really important and is taken off. Also, relief, student debt relief for public service, people who participate as teachers or in the federal government or in state government, really important. And the president is going to keep fighting for student debt relief. And we will do that in any outcome in the Supreme Court. But again, we're cautiously optimistic that the court will do the right thing. Last question for you. One of the issues that I imagine probably wasn't at

the top of the president's list when he took over as president a couple years ago, but has quickly risen in salience and concern among the public and others is the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence. How are you guys thinking about a policy process, a regulatory process to protect against whatever risks that even some of the people building this technology say are existential? Yeah. No, Dan, it's probably one of the top three issues at the White House and across agencies right now. We had the CEOs of the leading companies in a couple of weeks ago. The president came to that meeting. The vice president sat through that meeting. It's a tip-top priority.

Corporations, the leading corporations, need to do the right thing, and they're stepping forward with commitments that we're working on right now that will be announced relatively shortly. We're working across all agencies of the federal government to figure out what we can do from a regulatory perspective so that we can do appropriate smart regulation here. One of the things that's really challenging, Dan, when we worked together a decade ago, the regulatory process can be relatively slow. And here we cannot afford to wait a year or two to figure out what makes sense, what smart regulation that balances the potential of AI to make our lives better, but at the same time, make sure we're managing the risk for it to do things that would not be good for us here in our country or across the world. So getting that balance right, being smart,

but moving really fast because AI changes every day. So it's not the standard regulatory process of months or years. We've got to act in a much quicker timeframe and we're geared up to do that. And you'll see that the president will continue to lead on AI. We'll do all we can with our executive branch powers and also work with The Hill to advance smart legislation. Well, we'll keep our eyes on that. Jeff, thank you so much. Good luck out there.

You have the hardest job in all of politics. Well, it's great to see you. How can you look even better and even younger than you did a decade ago? I stopped coming to a meeting in that office at 7.30 every morning. Well, you're welcome back anytime. Thanks, Dan. All right, before we go, this week, the legislative mastermind of his generation, Kevin McCarthy, rode the momentum from his big debt ceiling victory right off a cliff. The speaker held a vote to protect us from jackbooted feds busting down our doors and confiscating our precious gas stoves,

which is something that absolutely no one in the federal government has proposed, though one agency did say they're considering some kind of regulation on new gas stoves because they are a growing source of childhood asthma and other harmful emissions. But, of course, Republicans need to pretend that they're coming for your stove to keep their voters nice and angry, so screw the kids with asthma. Problem is, McCarthy's vote failed because 12 of the biggest MAGA Republicans decided to tank the bill as retaliation for the speaker

negotiating a bipartisan deal with Joe Biden to save us all from default. And apparently they're going to keep tanking bills. Matt Gaetz tweeted, House leadership couldn't hold the line. Now we hold the floor. Little I'm the captain now from Matt Gaetz tweeted, House leadership couldn't hold the line. Now we hold the floor. Little I'm the captain now from Matt Gaetz. And here's Gaetz on why they're so pissed. chooses you know he can't he can't the way the cartel works he has to be monogamous he'd rather have hakeem jeffries we're gonna spend but we're gonna force him into into a monogamous relationship with one or the other what what we're not going to do is uh hang out with him for five months

and then watch him go jump in the back seat with hakeem jeffries you know and sell the nation out and and underwrite four trillion dollars in debt. That was colorful. There was a colorful explanation from Matt Gaetz to the newly subpoenaed Steve Bannon, also just got a subpoena in the January 6th investigation that I'm sure he'll ignore. What do you think of this whole mess? Enjoyable. Absolutely enjoyable. Look, I warned the folks at Punchbowl not to erect the bronze statue of Kevin McCarthy within seven minutes of the deal happening.

But they did. And now they're paying the price for it. I am still giving credit to Kevin McCarthy for doing the responsible thing here, which is negotiating the deal with Joe Biden to avert default and not listening to these fucking goobers who are now trying to destroy his speakership and just cause chaos in the house. Also, these people, I just want to talk about the gas stoves for a second. I know we've talked about the gas stoves when they first became a controversy, but these fucking people are like, this is the greatest threat and the government is coming for your gas stoves. And what are we going to do? So what do they do? First of all, they set up a fake vote that doesn't really matter because it's just a messaging bill that will die in the Senate anyway. So there was just no danger of this ever becoming law.

Also, Joe Biden's the president, right? So it's never going to become law. But of course, it's so important to them that they protect us from the federal government stealing our gas stoves, that they kill the vote because they're pissed at Kevin McCarthy. It's unbelievable. I mean, when you get to gas stove confiscation, you are scraping the bottom of the grievance barrel pretty bad.

I mean, but you know, and it's also, we have not talked about this today, but because of the Canadian wildfires, the New York, D.C., a lot of the East Coast is like blanketed in like just dirty, polluted, very dangerous to your health air right now. And the Republicans have now just like the gas stove thing, right, where a bunch of kids are getting asthma from gas stove. They don't give a shit because they got to own the libs. They are now treating the what you can see when you walk around New York. Just the pictures are like you can barely see five feet in front of you. And they've all decided that this is the media and Democrats using the fires to hype up climate again. This was one of the this is one of the clips on Fox News recently.

But the reality is there's no health risk. We have this kind of air in India and China all the time. No public health emergency. This doesn't kill anybody. This doesn't make anybody cough. This is not a health event. Particular matter is very fine soot. Well, you don't want to be breathing that in all day.

They're just carbon particles. They're innocuous. soot um well you don't want to breathe that in all day just carbon particles they're innocuous uh lancet study said that uh pollution killed 2.9 million indians in 2019 alone uh and that's just not what that like this is this is their this is their standard line on this this is the republican standard line on this it's smoke no one wants to breathe smoke it's like it's not it's like what are we doing it's just it's so it does remind me of like how the conspiracies about the covid vaccines have now spread to like all vaccines like now when you look at like charts republicans

the anti-vax sentiment is not just on covid vaccines but on all the rest of the vaccines is now rising same thing it's like they've been against climate as the answer to anything. They've been against the idea that climate change is real for so long that now they're even saying that like air pollution isn't real, that like smoke isn't a problem. Just things that people can see and feel for themselves when they walk out of their fucking houses. If they weren't so goddamn stupid, you would think that all these people were Democratic sleeper cells trying to kill Republican voters with their ideas. It's just insane. Your base electorate is older Americans, and what you tell them to do is don't get vaccinated and go breathe smoke in in fact go breathe smoke to own the libs that's it you want to you want to stick it to those libs you go outside you inhale some of that pollution you did it you own the lips congratulations real

but anyway great stuff in the house they're they're i don't know how this is going to end because they said that they're going to block a bunch of shit. Until what? Until Kevin McCarthy goes back in time and undoes the debt ceiling deal? I don't know what they're hoping for here. I think there's a serious thing here, which is Kevin McCarthy has to win their support back. And to do that, he's going to have to agree to something pretty fucking crazy and bad. And so that's what we have to keep our eye on.

What ransom does he pay? Because for all of his big talk about the debt limit, he's the hostage now. I'm the hostage now. Yeah, that is true, though. You know, when the Senate's controlled by Democrats and the White House is controlled by Democrats, fucking around with the debt ceiling was really the only leverage they had. I guess we could be headed for a government shutdown now, maybe. I don't know. It could be a government shutdown because they still have to pass – the budget deal, as important as it was, doesn't guarantee there's no shutdown.

But it could also just be performative bullshit. Like who do they have to impeach? What do they have to subpoena? I mean this is how we got – it was a similar thing that came on the heels of yet another fiscal deal that led John Boehner to appoint the Benghazi special committee years after every government agency and the Republican House committees had already proven all the conspiracy theories about that tragedy wrong. Yeah, well, the only thing people need to know is that the Republican House doesn't want to protect your gas stoves. That's what you should know. Despite what they say,

they care more about sticking it to Kevin McCarthy, who, as you said, is the hostage. That's our show for today. Thank you, Jeff Zaitz, for joining. Everyone have a fantastic weekend. And Monday night is going to be the next Pod Save America. We are live in New York City. Alex Wagner is a co-host.

We got Roy Wood Jr. We got Tish James and Hillary Clinton. Dan will be there. John, Tommy, me, we're all going to be there. It's going to be so fun. So that show will come out

Tuesday morning and it will be recorded Monday night. So we'll talk to you then. Everyone have a great weekend. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Madeline Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Mia Kelman, Ben Hefko, and David

Tolles. Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube to catch full episodes, exclusive content, and other community events. Find us at youtube.com slash at Pod Save America. You know those conversations you play over and over in your head but find really difficult to actually have? That's exactly what the show Death, Sex, and Money is for. It's hosted by Anna Sale, who has surprisingly comfortable conversations with her guests about uncomfortable topics, like the devastating impact the far right can have on a marriage, or how Welsh coal miners led to the invention of Viagra. Some of her guests are famous, some not. And very often, they're from the community of listeners all talking about what we're figuring out as we go along.

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