Pod Save America - "Indictments!"

Episode Date: October 30, 2017

Trump’s former campaign chairman is indicted for money laundering, his former foreign policy advisor pleads guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russian nationals, and the race in Virginia tightens in the homestretch. Former Department of Justice communications director Matt Miller joins Jon, Jon, and Tommy to talk about the Mueller investigation, and Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr talks to Dan Pfeiffer about sports and politics in the Trump Era.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, we'll have Dan Pfeiffer's interview with the coach of the Golden State Warriors, Steve Kerr. And in a few minutes, we'll be talking to the man who ran communications at the Department of Justice under Obama, Matt Miller. Lovett, go ahead and promote your show. Love it or leave it, it's a hit. Download it.

Subscribe to it. We've had some really funny episodes lately. We're going to have a really good one this weekend. We're going to be in D.C. Excellent. You guys should check it out. And we'll be there, too, for Pod Save America. There's a really funny one up right now with Akilah Hughes, Brian Babylon, and Jack Whitehall,

who's a really funny comic. It was an awesome episode. Check it out. And a new episode of Pod Save the People drops tomorrow on Tuesday with Dre McKesson, so check that out. And also, guys, check out Crooked.com. And also, thank you to Red Antler, the company that designed and built Crooked.com. They did a fantastic job.

It was an incredibly tight timeline that we gave them, and they nailed it, and the website looks beautiful. It's cool as hell. it was an incredibly tight timeline that we gave them and they nailed it and the website looks beautiful and so it's cool as hell if any of you need uh need websites or branding or logo stuff go to red antler yeah they're awesome but don't copy our shit all right come with your own style yeah there's always got to be a little little slight there from love it it's part of it part of the character charm okay let's start with some news. This morning, Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and his partner and former Trump advisor, Rick Gates, were each indicted on one count of conspiracy against the United States, one count of conspiracy to launder money, one count of acting as an

unregistered agent of a foreign principal, two counts of making false statements, and four counts of failing to report foreign bank accounts. Manafort turned himself in. You forgot. There's also one count of, but what about the uranium? Manafort turned himself in to an FBI field office this morning. Perhaps

even more importantly, former Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in a separate case for making false statements to the FBI about his interactions with a Russian national who told him that high-level Russian government officials had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. Basically, our friend George said that the Russian reached out to him before he ever

joined the Trump campaign. This was not true. The Russian reached out to him because he had joined the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos was apparently arrested at Dulles Airport on July 27th and since then has been cooperating with the government matt miller welcome to the program we have many questions for you yeah hey guys cool morning uh matt i guess we should just start with what stands out to you as most significant among this flurry of indictment news this morning so i think there's one really big picture thing

when you connect the two of them that stands out. It's not a coincidence at all, obviously, that you saw both a plea agreement from George Papadopoulos and some really heavy charges against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates on the same day. I think what Bob Mueller is doing is sending a signal to everyone else out there, every potential subject, every potential witness, look, there are two ways this can go when I come to talk to you. You can either cooperate and you'll get the deal like Papadopoulos got, and it looks like he's going to get zero to six months, which I bet when he ends up in court, he lands on something like probation. Or you can get every possible criminal charge we can throw at you, which is what they did to Manafort and Gates, who not only didn't cooperate with them, but if you

look through the indictment, it seems actually lied the first time they were approached. So that's, I think, kind of the big picture takeaway for today. It's like, you know, this is the first of many steps in this investigation, and it's Mueller telling people, you know, cooperate or else. So Matt, I emailed some smart DOJE people who you know well to sort of get their take on it. And they said similar things. The Papadopoulos plea is the real news because it's one, conduct related to the campaign, and most importantly, signals that the prosecutors now have a cooperator. And that puts the heat on Manafort, on Flynn, on any other conversations. Does that kind of jive with your understanding?

And do you think that, you know, extracting more information from Papadopoulos is the path forward for Mueller? Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And there's one really big tell in the Papadopoulos, so hard to say, Papadopoulos plea agreement about what Mueller is doing. And that is so he has this meeting in with this London professor who seems like a classic Russian intelligence cutout. And the professor offers him dirt on Clinton that will help him and offers stolen Clinton emails. And so that's in the document. And then after that, the document goes in great chapter and verse about possibly arranging a meeting between Trump campaign and Russian officials and who they talked to and on and on and on, but it doesn't say anything else

about this big bombshell. And obviously Mueller knows what Papalopoulos did with that because he's cooperating. He's come and talked to him and told him what happened. But Mueller kind of dangled this little piece of information out there, because everyone else that Papadopoulos talked to is going to look at this in the document and go, oh, so he knows about that, and he knows that they came and talked to me, and they're now under a lot of pressure to tell the truth when they come talk. Yeah, it says that it details extensive conversations between Papadopoulos and, quote, a high-ranking campaign official

and his campaign supervisor about his dealings with the Russian national. Of course, Podesta stole the emails. The Podesta emails were stolen in March. Yeah, Podesta didn't steal the emails. He wishes. His emails were stolen in March. So what do you think?

Do you think that they did not name the high-ranking campaign officials in camp? Why didn't they name who those were? Is it possible that that wasn't Manafort, that there are other people in the campaign? I guess it's possible there were other people. I think they didn't name them because typical DOJ policy, you don't name anyone in an indictment or a plea agreement unless

they're the actual person being charged. Because it's just, you don't want to unfairly malign someone. So now we can often figure that out, and I think in some cases here we can figure this out. There was a Manafort email the Post reported on previously where they talked about setting up these Russian meetings, and Manafort said to someone, well, let's not do this. What he left out of that email and what's in this plea agreement is the next line, which know, let's not do this. What he left out of that email and what's in this plea agreement is the next line, which is, let's have someone low level in the campaign tell them no,

so we don't send any signal, which I think implies that, you know, we don't want to completely brush off the Russians. We've got other business to do here with them. Remember that our boy, George Papadopoulos, graduated from college in 2009 and listed on his LinkedIn page the 2012 International Model UN. So that was the kind of heft he was bringing to the Trump campaign at that time. Matt, you and I have been going back and forth on email and text because you've been getting increasingly pissed off with the attacks on Mueller and his integrity and his credibility. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has joined the chorus of immoral assholes calling on Mueller to resign. They're laying the predicate for all Republicans to dismiss any charges that are made by him. Can you just give us like the 60 second?

Who is Bob Mueller? Why do you think he's the right person to lead this investigation? And why should he be inoculated against these sort of politicization charges? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you guys had any interaction with him when you were in the White House. I had quite a bit when I was at DOJ. I mean, Mueller is really one of the most respected prosecutors of kind of the last 50 years at the Justice Department. He's a Vietnam veteran, someone who volunteered to go to Vietnam, came back, served in the Justice Department as a career prosecutor,

served most of the time in senior positions under Republican administrations. He's a Republican himself, obviously was the FBI director under two presidents, and was so hard to replace that when his term was up in 2011, President Obama asked Congress to change the law to extend it for a couple of years, which they did. I mean, he is just as straight shooter and fair and nonpartisan a guy as they come inside the Justice Department. And so when you see these kind of hacks like Seb Gorka and Sean Hannity attacking his integrity and attacking his fairness, it really is just ridiculous. I mean, one of the things that we learned today is that George Papadopoulos has been talking to Mueller for weeks

and nobody had any fucking idea. Weeks? Months? It was just like there's been... He first started talking to Comey in January, right? That was the interview, the end of January 2017, just so we have the timeline straight. So his first interview with the FBI where he lied was at the end of January. He was arrested at Dulles

on July 27th and now the indictment is today, October 5th. Right? I'm saying the indictment has been sealed for three weeks. Right. Yeah, that's right. That interview he had on January 27th where he lied to the FBI. Do you remember what else happened

of significance in this whole matter on that day? I do. So that was the day that Trump demanded a loyalty pledge from Comey. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Interesting coincidence. I mean, maybe it is just a coincidence, but maybe not. Maybe there's, you know, we thought that what Trump had on his mind when he asked for that loyalty pledge was the Mike Flynn investigation. Sal Yates had come and warned the White House the previous day. But he might have also known about this interview, too, and been more and more concerned about what Comey was doing.

Matt, one other coincidence I just wanted to get a gut check from you on. President Trump is having lunch today with Attorney General Sessions. Cool or not cool? I mean, it's so complicated, right? I mean, obviously, the president should be able to talk to his attorney general. He should be able to have lunch with him. But nothing about the way that Trump has handled his relationship with Justice Department has been above board really from the beginning. I mean, it goes back to the transition where he was crossing all these red lines talking about maybe I'll prosecute Hillary Clinton, maybe I won't.

was crossing all these red lines talking about, maybe I'll prosecute Hillary Clinton, maybe I won't. You know, it continued all through, you know, we could go down chapter and verse with the Comey interference, you know, kind of public calls for Sessions to look into Clinton now, the Arpaio interference where he wanted Sessions to back off on Sheriff Joe. I mean, so I think you have to question, every time he has one of these meetings with Sessions, you have to question what goes on because he's shown he is constantly pressuring the Justice Department to do the wrong thing in these investigations, to either back off of people close to him or to go after his political adversaries. I guess to the extent Hillary Clinton is still a political adversary, it doesn't really make sense. So, yeah, I think it's worth questioning always those interactions. I mean, we're also just so inoculated against it now just because we're so used to it. He's tweeting about an ongoing investigation all morning.

He just acts. He's constantly doing something no president should be doing all the fucking time. Well, yesterday, Ty Cobb, his lawyer, was like, these are not related to the Manafort issue. And this morning, he's like, the Manafort stuff is nonsense. I mean, couldn't be more blatantly dis... Yeah, whatever. Yeah, he did this thing last week where he called over to the Justice Department and asked them to release this informant on the big Uranium One scandal

to release this informant from a confidentiality agreement, which if Barack Obama had done that, if Eric Holder had gone along with it, it would have been a month-long scandal, and it should have been. I mean, it's a massive thing for the president to do something like that. And it got a little pickup last week, but to your point, everyone's just so used to him doing this kind of thing that it's just kind of like, you know, the old story about the boiling pot of water that the frog doesn't know to jump out of

when it slowly warms while he's in it. No, the frog is like, no collusion! Well, we should also note that Trump's tweet this morning, his first tweet about these indictments, is a lie. He said that all of this happened before the campaign, but these charges included the years 2015 and 2016 for Manafort, right? Wait, Trump lied in a tweet? I mean, first Michael Moore, now this.

Like one of the talking points is going to be, oh, this happened before. Well, I like that the White House source this morning, there was a White House source told Sarah Murray, these were bad guys before the campaign and they were bad guys after the campaign. So now their defense is, you know, not to fear, I hired an experienced criminal. I would just like to note his second tweet was a lie as well. When he said the Obama campaign paid nine hundred and seventy two thousand dollars to Fusion GPS. That was the bill the Obama campaign paid to Perkins Coie,

which is just a big ass law firm that does election law. So he is it's so far beyond sloppy. It's willful misleading and just outright lying. Preet Bharara this morning tweeted that the Papadopoulos plea portends more charges to come. That was a fun thing to say. Dr. Seuss over here. What do you think he meant by that? I think he's looking at the plea agreement and looking at some of the things Papadopoulos lays out here, the kind of big questions. For one, what did he do with this offer for stolen emails and other data? It's hard to believe, given everything this

plea agreement lays out about conversations back and forth about arranging a meeting, that he followed up to that extent about the meeting, but he just let this offer for dirt on Clinton drop. There's no way he let that offer drop. He went and talked about it with other people. And what those people did with it is going to be central to what Mueller's looking at it. I think that's right. I think there is without a doubt other charges coming that are related to the core question of what Mueller's investigating, which is, did anyone on the Trump campaign help the Russians interfere?

So I've always wondered this. What kind of criminal charges would be related to, say, someone on the Trump campaign help the Russians interfere? So I've always wondered this. What kind of criminal charges would be related to, say, someone on the Trump campaign, whether it was Papadopoulos or Manafort or someone else, said, yes, you guys have these emails on Hillary Clinton. We'd like to see them. What law would they be breaking then? I think it technically knows, I think it's the Computer Fraud Act or the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, something like that.

It basically is the anti-hacking law. And if you enter into an agreement with someone who is hacked into the Podesta emails, even if you didn't know about that hacking when it happened, if you enter into what the charge would be a conspiracy, if you enter into a conspiracy after the fact to then distribute those emails, to do anything else with those emails, you've committed a crime. So that's basically what the crime would be. There's also potentially a violation of campaign finance law. If you accept anything of value from a Russian official, well, from any foreign official for that matter, that's a violation of campaign finance law. And I think you could argue that those emails were very much a thing of value, especially given

how much Trump talked about them the last month of the campaign. Well, it also seems from this plea agreement now that the Trump campaign, at least Papadopoulos and probably others, knew of the stolen emails before the public knew about it, right? Yeah. And that raises the question, look, remember during the Democratic Convention when Trump stood up and had that press conference and said, you know, Vladimir Putin, if you have these emails, Russia, if you have these emails, release them. Well, we now know that came two months after someone on his campaign was offered those emails. So it makes that, you know, it takes that directly to Trump himself. And, you know, I guarantee you Mueller is asking, what did Trump have on his mind when he said that that day?

It's also, there seems to be a pattern here, too, which is somebody offers them dirt. They email about it. They have the actual conversation. Never reference the dirt in email ever again. You know, they kind of like, which is, you know, maybe they just forgot about it. Well, Papadopoulos deleted his Facebook account, stopped using his cell phone, and then got picked up at Dulles and arrested. None of these are the smartest criminals. And that includes Don Jr., who lied about his meeting when it was clear that he was going to be busted in that lie and within 24 hours was.

also something to the fact that another coincidence that the day that papadopoulos was picked up at dulles was the same day or maybe the day before day after the day that uh the fbi raided manafort's house very well could be one of the things we learned from the manafort in indictment is that the reason they raided his house that way is they found out and we don't know how they found out it's not clear, that there were documents there, specifically emails, that he was supposed to turn over to the Justice Department that he didn't. And so they thought he was being uncooperative and untruthful and ready to tell us to go find out these emails, some of which now show up in the indictment.

So whether they found that out from Papadopoulos or someone else, we don't really know yet. The emails got him in the end. Man, I gotta tell you, email is a scourge. It's just, we're all afraid of our own emails. There's all emails we don't have to respond to, or we should respond to, plus these crimes.

Somewhere the Slack PR team is deciding when to roll out their new campaign. Matt, question for you. I can't get my head around the fact that ultimately Manafort laundered $75 million from a pro-Russian Ukrainian regime. Many people would call them a sort of a puppet regime. I mean, there's nothing in here that's explicit

that that somehow sort of bought his influence down the road, but I don't know. I mean, are we to believe these are coincidences? I don't want to be Louise Mensch over here, but what the fuck? So, you know, that goes to a larger point. People keep saying, and especially the White House is saying, all these charges against Manafort and Gates don't relate to anything about Russia. They don't relate to the campaign. And in one sense, that's true. Obviously, these are about his work lobbying on behalf of the Ukrainian government. But in the other sense, while he was working for the Trump campaign, he was talking to these connections he made while he was working for the Ukrainian government. You know, we know this email he sent to or he received from his former operative, Konstantin Kalimnik, offering, you know, talking about a meeting with the guy who gave you a big jar of black caviar.

offering, you know, talking about a meeting with the guy who gave you a big jar of black caviar. He was offering private meetings to a Russian oligarch who he met while he was working in Ukraine. And we know that he was overheard on U.S. wiretaps talking to Russian intelligence officials or cutouts for Russian intelligence officials. So this isn't the direct evidence of Manafort participating in any collusion, but if we ever get to that, this is a key link in the chain, and it helps answer the question, why was Manafort so eager to come work for the Trump campaign in the spring of 2016

and to do so for free? It may just be that he was looking to build his credentials so he could make more money as a consultant afterwards. It may be he was he was looking to build his credentials so he could make more money as a consultant afterwards. It may be he was selling access to Oleg Deripaska, who he was in debt to for millions of dollars. And it may be something much, much worse. He could have been a plant from the Russian government from the beginning that was going into the campaign to help steer it in a pro-Putin direction. We don't know the answer to that yet. Yeah. And remember that important things got stripped out of the Republican platform, like arming Ukrainian rebels and other policy matters that are of enormous importance to the Russian Federation.

And Donald Trump is strangely, inexplicably pro-Russia, a person with absolutely no values whatsoever, refuses to criticize Russia, has refuses to implement sanctions that he was legally bound to do as we speak. So that's deeply weird. That's still going on. You know, that's such a good point. There is all the, everything we find out in this investigation, these kind of pieces leak out one by one or come out in court documents. There's the open source collusion that Trump seems to do on a daily basis that he's been doing since the campaign, that you don't need an investigation to figure out. the campaign, that you don't need an investigation to figure out.

So, obviously leading up to today, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial board and a bunch of other right-wing goons have been calling for Trump to fire Mueller, for the investigation to end, to jail Hillary, all the rest. Mueller now has one guilty plea. He has indictments. What do you think Mueller, you've worked with him before, what do you think Mueller would do if Trump fires him? You know, I don't think he's the kind of guy that would come out and, you know, hold a big press conference and make it all about him. If he was invited by Congress to come testify, which my God, you'd hope he would be, I'm sure he would come and do that.

But, you know, if that kind of thing happens, it's not going to be Bob Mueller that can save us. It's going to take Republicans in Congress who decide that that's a really red line. You're not just interfering with an investigation that you've been calling a witch hunt, a fishing expedition. It's an investigation that's produced charges and people who are going to go to trial now. So that would be you would hope that's an impeachable offense. And I know you guys from listening to Pod have a lot of faith in Paul Ryan acting on that. Always. I guess we just have to wait and see.

When is Paul Ryan going to talk about how this is a distraction from tax reform? He already did. Wait. They asked him this morning and he said, I have nothing to say about the indictments. Nothing is going to stop us in Congress. It was almost like I had to check if it was a parody Paul Ryan statement. Are you kidding me? He actually said, nothing's going to stop us. Are you kidding me?

We need Bob Mueller to take on a little bit of the sanctimonious PR loving tones of one Jim Comey. Find your inner Comey, Bob. Well, Mueller doesn't have the perfect score that Comey's been batting. Well, Mueller doesn't have the perfect score that Comey's been batting. Matt, are you amazed that there has not been one leak about the Papadopoulos plea or anything related to him from, let's see now, late January of 2017 to October of 2017? Charges. Weeks of them. Yeah, I am. I'm not surprised at all that nothing came out from the government side.

Mueller has been pretty scrupulous. There haven't been a lot of leaks from his side. I think the first leaks we really saw were leaks about this indictment coming today. Other than that, I don't think you can point to one significant leak from him. But I'm surprised that Papadopoulos, we pointed out, you guys talked earlier in the show

about how he's kind of a clown. I'm surprised that he didn't run around talking to people about what he was doing and that it didn't come out in that fashion. Yeah, he finally learned to shut up, I guess, huh? It's a model UN training. The threat of additional charges maybe focused his mind. Plus, he had that mock trial coming up.

Yeah. He had that mock trial tourney. Hey, guys, I did mock trial in high school. That hits close to home. So did I, Matt. So did I. That's a surprise. Matt, thank you so much for joining us uh this was very helpful yeah thanks for walking us through this we'll call you

back next indictment day yeah speak to you next week hopefully that's soon hopefully that's soon and later i'll talk to you tomorrow thank matt take care matt yeah thanks bye Holy shit! Indictments! Are we doing a soft transition? I like it. No, we're in it. We're in it. This is still on the show.

Cool, cool, cool. It's a big day here, you know? It's Indictmentpalooza. Merry Indictment Day. We can say that again now. What's next? We're saying Merry Indictment again. Okay. Let's talk about the right-wing response saying Marion Diamond again. Okay.

Let's talk about the right-wing response and really upset ourselves. Yeah. I mean, I don't know much about the response to today's stuff yet. Although, a lot of people were tweeting various screenshots of Fox News this morning. Hilarious. Which talked about the National Anthem. Most popular candies. Some kind of emoji crisis on Google.

Cheeseburger emojis. So, just so you guys know there's two different there's an Android cheeseburger emoji and an Apple cheeseburger emoji don't think we needed exposition

and they are they are actually they have different ordering of the burger meat cheese bun and tomato and that's what Fox News covered today

that's important that is important I mean I do want to look because today's you know I mean once we had Manafort indictment and Gates indictment the first reaction was there's nothing to do with the Trump campaign in this.

There's nothing to do with collusion. This happened. Donald Trump said it happened before the campaign. And, you know, you could see the right wing media use that as the talking point all day. that as the talking point all day. Now with the Papadopoulos charges and the guilty plea here, it seems like they're going to have a harder

time sort of dismissing all of this. So far it seems like Fox has taken the path of we're just not going to talk about it yet until I'm guessing they're all probably having internal meetings to try to figure out how to spin this one.

Yeah, there's a seance at Roger Ailes' grave right now. I was going to say, there's a retreat at an active volcano deep within side. They sit around a stone table and chant. I got it. I do want to talk about this, like the propaganda machine here, because it is, I think it has reached new levels of both absurdity and danger. They pre-butted it. I was thinking about this last night. I was like, because everybody was speculating all weekend about like, what's the charge is going to be? Who's it going to be? Is it going to be low level, high level? What's happening? And I was thinking about it. I was just really trying

to think like, in hindsight, I thought whatever Mueller did, it's going to look smart and look like what he did to kind of blunt criticism and protect himself and be savvy as he's playing this long game. And none of the speculation included the idea that, oh, there's also going to be pleas rolled out as part of this, which is really smart because it's not just indictments. It's people copping to things, right? It's people admitting to things, which is a much harder thing to rebut. You can claim that it's a witch hunt right up until one of the witches is like, hey, I'm a big fucking witch. I i tried to leave dulls on a broomstick and they fucking nab me yeah i mean you and i thought you and dan did a really good job talking about this on thursday which is these charges are

indefensible laundering 75 million dollars is indefensible paul manfort is dead to rights a million dollars he laundered through an antiques a rug company near his house like give me a break uh poppetopolis blatantly colluding and then hiding that collusion, then lying about it is indefensible. So what they've tried to do is muddy the waters and try to make this about, guess who, Hillary Clinton again. They just need a boogeyman to focus on, to muddy things up and to distract us. This is where we need the media to not fall on its face like they did during the election. There is no equivalence.

There is no comparison between this Uranium One bullshit and what we are reading about from Donald Trump. And like, I think it's going to be incumbent on people like us to sort of pound that into the mainstream media like brainscape because the right wing is going to pull them towards their perspective. You're already seeing Uranium One popping up in places like the Wall Street Journal the mainstream media like brainscape because the right wing is going to pull them towards their perspective you're already seeing the uranium one popping up in places like the wall street journal editorial page which is normally not as awful as fox news but it has been i what the wall street the fact that the wall street journal editorial board chris wallace who you know i

have always had a lot of respect for on fox even though i disagree with them a lot um saying that so far there's more evidence of Democratic collusion than Republican collusion. Clearly, that's not true today. It's really dangerous. And it's dangerous. And the reason that we're not just harping on right-wing media here is because, you know, we've often said here that this Russia stuff and this investigation, at the end of the day, it's not just a matter of legal questions. It's a political question because as it relates to Donald Trump, the only way that Trump leaves office is through Congress. And it's not just Donald Trump watching Fox and Friends and reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page

and listening to Chris Wallace and all the other stuff. It's these members of Congress. And so far, Republican members of Congress have now launched two additional investigations, one into the uranium garbage and one into the dossier garbage. Partly because of what they're seeing on right-wing media because they know that right-wing media basically whips up the base all the time. And so this has a lot of political implications here, you know, watching this propaganda machine sort of, you know, go crazy. And it's it is effective, like the idea

that even the kind of sophisticated spin that, oh, Manafort, you know, these are crimes unrelated to the campaign. The campaign chairman, campaign manager of an American presidential campaign was into some Russians for tens of millions of dollars.

He was actively committing crimes before, during, and after his time at the head of one of the two major, well, the two major parties in the United States. He was a leader of our political system. It's a huge fucking deal. There's no way around it. The most important thing that the FBI looks for in your background check is, is points of leverage on you and mostly financial ones. If you're deeply in debt to God knows who or at least $75 million in the hole and a whole bunch of illegal activity to a Russian-connected Ukrainian oligarch or some other carve-out, you are unbelievably susceptible to blackmail. Just on the Steele dossier real quick. The thing was it started being paid for by the Free Beacon, which is a right wing news outlet.

When they stopped paying for it, the Mark Elias, apparently a Democratic lawyer, started picked up the tab and helped them continue it. this was really relevant until the top members of our intelligence committee decided these charges were so significant that they needed to be briefed to the president-elect of the United States. That's why these things matter. I want to make this point. If you're going to attack the Clinton campaign for funding this research and saying that they made up this dossier and this dossier was all spurless charges and all that kind of stuff, then you're also attacking our law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies because the FBI continued to pay Christopher Steele to continue his research after this. And then they decided that it was serious enough that they corroborated some of the dossier and used the rest of it as a roadmap, including in their investigation. And also the other thing, by the way, is people say, oh, well, did the FBI, you

know, use the dossier if the dossier was fake to just launch their investigation? No, it was one piece of evidence among many that caused them to launch this investigation. They were professionals following very serious leads. And by the way like yes of course a very detailed intelligence analysis showing all these potential crimes and and malfeasance of course they're going to look into it but again it's a distraction none of that has anything to do with why george papadopoulos is in fucking trouble none of it has anything to do why paul manafort's in trouble these are these are separate issues like there's nothing in that indictment of Papadopoulos that we got because Trump peed on a bed in Russia. There's nothing to do with that.

Maybe. Maybe. We don't know. Just trying to be fair here. No, I want to go back to Tommy's point, though, about the obligations of the mainstream media here. Brian Boitler, our editor-in-chief, put this really well in our Cricket.com piece, here. Brian Boitler, our editor-in-chief, put this really well in a Cricket.com piece, which is the fact that the Trump media propaganda machine is trying to distract us, is trying to drum up all these charges. That is a huge story. That is a story to cover. And, you know, Brian had pointed out that Eric Wemple of the Washington Post, he was the one that first sort of debunked this uranium thing in terms of how the right-wing media was covering it. And he said, you know,

obviously he's a media reporter, right? And so it's ripe for media reporters to do this, and political reporters just aren't as – a political desk isn't as equipped to do this. But this is now a major political story that a good deal of media in this country is trying to save the president, you know, from these potential charges or anything else related to the Trump White House with Russia, you know, that's a big story. I even saw, you know, John Boehner did this interview with Politico that's really worth reading, although there's a deeply troubling part that describes his legs in detail, but

you get past that and it's a good article. But he makes the correct point, which is, way that the right wing media is stirring up conservatives and kind of has sort of made the Republican Party kind of nuts. But he makes the comparison between what MSNBC does and what Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity does. But what we've seen this week is just how different it is. This is a coordinated campaign. not a coincidence that uranium nonsense and saying Mueller should resign and talking about all the rest of the bullshit and Perkins Coie and all of it happened in the week leading up to the indictments coming out. This is a coordinated effort to protect the president. It is pure propaganda. Steve Bannon's editor is paid to do a book. He coordinates the rollout of

the opposition research that they paid for in that book with the New York Times. They report on Uranium One back in 2015. Fast forward to today, John Solomon, who's a total hack, writes some piece of garbage for The Hill, which is, as far as I can tell, a newspaper that just writes up what people tweet all day long or like your Halloween costume. That is their level of... It's the second best newspaper on The Hill for staffers to read on the toilet. Yes, that's exactly right. And then all of a sudden that leads to an investigation by the Intelligence Committee or the Oversight Committees. I mean, that is... I don't want to use collusion because it's such a loaded term, but they're certainly coordinating their messages and using all the levers of government to score political points about something that's totally irrelevant.

And just one quick note on the uranium deal. You don't need to know that much about it because it's so confusing. But the bottom line is that the core allegation has to be that somehow selling this mine harmed our national security or gave something away to the Russians. Jeffrey Lewis, who's a nonproliferation expert, said that the sale of the company had as much of an impact on national security as it would have been as if the Russians had lit their money on fire. And you know who agreed with him? Nine government agencies, including two government agencies that are independent, that had no political appointees on them whatsoever. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, also the nuclear regulatory head in Utah. It was a Utah nuclear regulator that approved this.

So this idea that like- Liberal hack. Yeah, this idea that like Hillary Clinton is like going to Russia with a bag of uranium that she's trading for cash you know like let me fucking break i have to say they have come up with a lot of crazy conspiracy theories in their time on the right this has to be one of the sloppiest it's um one of the slot it is it is there's no usually there's some kernel in there where you're like and did the clons do something a little weird? Was the appearance bad? That's what we were talking about yesterday. There is nothing.

We were talking. This is why I think political reporters struggle here, because there's sort of a built in bias towards there being some truth to the story that, you know, even even political reporters that probably are liberal in their personal lives and in their personal views, even though they don't talk about it. In their heart of hearts, they believe that even if the parties aren't equivalent, that they operate in roughly the same way, that when a Democrat is hammering a Republican for a scandal, even if they're overplaying it, there's some truth to it. And then when the Republicans are hammering Democrats for some kind of a scandal, there's some kind of a kernel of truth to it. And that you just assume that that's the case, which is why they feel comfortable talking about it, saying how the Uranium One story is a bad story for Hillary Clinton, because it takes so much work to figure out that it's bullshit.

We were talking about this yesterday that like, you know, I was briefly feeling like I was a kind of a political reporter because I was like sort of following it and I wasn't able to totally get to the bottom of it because I'm busy and, you know, we're running a giant media conglomerate. And but I was like, oh, you know, it seems like bullshit. He missed the stories. giant media conglomerate. But I was like, oh, you know, it seems like bullshit. Love it was snapping. He missed the stories. A lot of video games to be played.

But I didn't realize it was truly nothing. I really didn't. I didn't know. This is important because this is a preview of, I mean, we can all like joke about, oh, they think Hillary Clinton's president and they're operating this alternate universe. But this will happen in 2018 and 2020. They will do this to whoever. And you can say that Clinton's an easier target.

We can debate why that is, but they will do this to any Democrat. And what we've seen, especially from this uranium thing, is like you said, like the New York Times was willing to play ball with Steve Bannon and Peter Schweitzer that wrote Clinton Cash and write up this uranium story in the first place. And the Washington Post is willing to play ball with with them too on the clinton cash stuff so there will be it doesn't matter how clean the democrat is that we put up in 2020 or even the candidates in 2018 they will make up some conspiracy theory and they will go nuts so it is not enough for us i think to just debunk this stuff do a fact check not comment on the story like we have to fight

what this is which is a concerted propaganda effort on behalf of the right. And the other part of this too, is people like the supposedly serious adults, the Paul Ryans, the Marco Rubios, the Jeb Bushes, the John Kasichs, all of them, all of them are complicit in this, in that they view Fox News, Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh as useful but troubling institutions that help them win elections. And they all know instinctively that they rely on the real news, the real media that does actual investigative reporting that actually cares about the truth, what they would call the mainstream media. They rely on those institutions to create the architecture on which we have a democracy, the way the truth is disseminated.

Well, and look, John Boehner admitted this in this profile, which was great, that it just came out last night, right? That I used to think Rush Limbaugh and those guys were, you know, sort of tough, but fine. And I talked to him all the time. And then now they're crazy. They've all gone crazy. And like you said, all these other Republicans, Kasich, Rubio, the rest of them who have all appeared on Fox, who've all appeared on these radio shows, they all know it. They know Charlie Sykes.

He was a former right wing radio host. He now says it all the time. They all know what liars these people are. I guess the point I was trying to make is they all thought it was useful because it helped them win elections but didn't do too much damage. They see that when empowered, it can undermine our democracy, undermine our institutions, perhaps make it impossible for us to have like a functioning politics. And now they're ringing the alarm. But it's, you know, maybe too late. Yeah. But, you know, we can't laugh at people like Jeanine Perrault saying it's time to shut the investigation down and lock her up.

I mean, that is as authoritarian as it gets. That is the kind of things you see in Venezuela or Cuba or Trump's favorite country, Russia. They just lock up opponents for trumped up bullshit. And then Donald Trump, who watches that all the time, tweets on Sunday, the guilt between Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is pouring out now

and then just writes in all capital letters, do something. So who is he saying that to? It's very scary. That was a very, that was sort of an underreported, scary thing that Donald Trump tweeted to just tell his followers, to tell his 30 something million followers to do something. Who is he in his narcissistic conversation with in his own mind? Like who in that moment was he talking to?

Was he talking to himself? Congress? I don't know. Was he having a little inner monologue with, yeah. So let's talk about how do we stop him from firing Mueller or at least make it harder for him to fire Mueller? Which, look, as we just said with Matt, it's harder to do today now that Mueller has a guilty plea and a couple of indictments. But, you know, who knows? It's Trump.

You know, I do think, you know, Brian has a, Boitler has a piece in cricket.com today that this is the time for John McCain and Bob Corker and Jeff Flake to speak up. Yeah. Right? And Mark Warner was just tweeting, Congress must take action now to protect the independence of the special counsel wherever or how high this investigation may lead. Like, they need to codify his role in this right now. And we said on this pod, like, I'm not expecting Jeff Flake and John McCain and Corker and the rest of them to suddenly start voting for liberal policies. I get that. They're conservatives.

But this is different. This isn't about liberal or conservative. This is about them. There are two pieces of bipartisan legislation in the Senate right now, one that Lindsey Graham sponsored and one that Tom Tillis sponsored, that would make it harder for Trump to fire Mueller. that would make it harder for Trump to fire Mueller. It would basically, they'd have to convince the Attorney General, the Department of Justice would have to convince a three-judge panel that Mueller needs to be fired. Now, there's questions, you know, is this constitutional?

Can they do this? But look, these guys in the Senate, Corker and Flake and that crew, they should speak up today. And reporters should also get every single member of Congress on record right now. What will you do if Trump fires Mueller? What will you do if he starts issuing blanket pardons? Yeah, I mean, I guess the question is, like, what do you think Democrats should be doing to pressure Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell? Like, what should we be trying to convince them to say? I mean, that they would sponsor this legislation?

Yeah, I mean, I would just do everything in my power to get a vote. I would hold up every possible point of leverage we have in the Senate or the House, whether it's funding bills or whatever it might be, to try to get a vote on protecting the existence of the special prosecutor. Yeah. And this goes beyond whether you believe there was collusion, Russia, whatever. There is a federal investigation that has now ensnared members of the president's inner circle, and the president himself is under investigation for potential obstruction of justice. To quash that investigation, I don't care what the topic is, is so threatening to the rule of law in this country. I know that it might not be politically fruitful to always talk about Russia and there's better issues

that Democrats can and should run on, but this goes beyond, this is important. And this is what we know, but we also know that his stupid son and Paul Manafort

met with some Russian carve-out who was trying to lobby against the Magnitsky sanctions by talking about adoptions, which is, by the way, Putin's number one priority in U.S. foreign policy is getting rid of the Magnitsky sanctions by talking about adoptions, which is, by the way, Putin's number one priority in U.S. foreign policy is getting rid of the Magnitsky Act sanctions. And he met with Dumb Don Jr. by floating the idea that they had Hillary oppo. And he's like, great, sounds good.

I mean, we already know that this goes up further and gets closer to the president. And we know that Trump himself coordinated the response to stories about that meeting. So if we don't get to the bottom of that, you know, we've not figured out what we even know in the public domain, let alone what might be revealed in documents or interviews or if one of these guys flips. The other hope here, too, is that Trump saw what happened when he fired Comey. And the hope has to be that it's somehow gotten through his thick, you know, thick little skull there, that that was not in his best interest. But I don't know.

No, that to me seems to be the most, the biggest potential problem for Trump is still the obstruction of justice. You know, you could imagine a world in which most of Trump's underlings were openly colluding with Russia, but maybe Trump wasn't aware somehow or whatever because he he was too stupid, or he was doing Fox or whatever else. But it seems like, what did Trump know about the investigation when he fired Comey? And what was his state of mind? And it seems like that's Mueller's real target with what he's doing here. The one other thing too, is Fox News has a lot of power here. And it is strange, it almost seems like the absence of ails has left them sort of rudderless and even less in control than they were before, because they have this access to Trump. Fox and friends, Jeanine Pirro, they know that he's going to see this. And instead of trying to calm him

down, they've spent the last week and a half riling him up and trying to get him more and more hopped about this and more and more angry about this when it's not totally clear that that's what they should be doing if they're trying to get past this thing and get to whatever bullshit agenda they really want to be talking about. Okay, let's talk about Virginia. We have a very close governor's race in Virginia between Republican Ed Gillespie and Democrat Ralph Northam. We'll be talking to Northam and the rest of the Democratic ticket in Richmond on Sunday night. But let's talk about them behind their backs right now. So polls are – I don't want to get into polls.

Polls are all over the place on this there's a quinnipiac poll that has northam up 17 today guys he's not gonna win by 17 i'm not in the prediction now of course that'll come true i'm not in the prediction business we don't know they're all over the map is a closer state there's been like a 30 point swing on some of these polls from north from down by 10 north from up by 17 it's nuts more important than the polls is how this race is being run and how this race is ending. Basically, before this race, Ed Gillespie was your garden variety cuck, right?

He's a lobbyist who used to work for Bush, and now he wants to cut all sorts of taxes and regulations. That's what really gets him up in the morning. Right, right. If Trump actually wanted to drain the swamp, Ed Gillespie would be flapping on the ground in a tiny puddle as one of the biggest lobbyists to die. Yeah. Right? Okay.

So now. I can't breathe through my gills. Where's the money? So now he's gone full Trump. And in the words of Crooked Media's token Republican Tim Miller, Gillespie is, quote, running a general election campaign centered on how the South will rise again if we protect Confederate monuments and wipe away swarthy criminal gangs. Tim was so funny in that interview, too.

Don't tell him we like him. No, we never wanted to do that. So why would Gillespie do this if it didn't work? And why does it work? It's working, right? It pulls. I mean, we've heard from people in the Virginia party who are associated with this race that this message pulls really well, which is why they're doing it. They're running as brutal a negative campaign as possible.

I think you guys are being very unfair to Ed Gillespie. This is someone who is why they're doing it. They're running as brutal a negative campaign as possible. I think you guys are being very unfair to Ed Gillespie. This is someone who is passionate about the Confederacy ever since he was growing up in fucking New Jersey. I mean, you know, we've heard that polls do show that people are concerned about

sanctuary cities. A big reason is that they don't actually know what sanctuary cities are. There's a lot of confusion that Republicans purposely sow about sanctuary cities, so that a lot of people think that they're these places where if you're an undocumented immigrant, even if you commit a bunch of crimes, even if you're violent, that you can be protected in the sanctuary city, which is not true at all. Yeah, they think it's like escape from New York. In Virginia, it's especially crazy because there are no sanctuary cities in Virginia,

even though Gillespie is running this campaign. And also there's a majority in Virginia, and many Polish others clearly don't want to remove these statues, these Confederate statues. So what do we do about this? What do Democrats do about this, knowing that these, because my thought is, what's the best way to fight back? If you ignore it, then Ed Gillespie is running all these ads that probably work on his base and that maybe they get some independence too. If you fight it, then you're playing on their territory and now you're a Democrat talking about statues and sanctuary cities and obviously that's not fruitful territory. So what do we do here? Yeah, I think two things. I think first, it's important to what Ed Gillespie is doing, I think, is an important reminder that while Trumpism, whatever you call it, is sort of a new level of this kind of politics,

it's not, you know, Republicans running racial dog whistle campaigns or, you know, whatever, bullhorn campaigns has been a hallmark of how they've been winning in the South for 50 years. I think, you know, you said this yesterday on Twitter. We've been talking about this a fair amount. I think it's about not forgetting the basics basics because I think Trump has upended so many of the rules that we forget to just do normal politics. And that means saying things like, Ed Gillespie wants to talk about statues because he has no way to help your family. Ed Gillespie wants to scare you about gangs because his policies won't actually help

middle-class people get better jobs. Like going back to that one, the second half of that sentence over and over again, that's what we failed to do with Trump in 2016. It's what we have to remember to do over and over again now, which is he wants to distract you with this, but that's because he can't help you. And just repeat that over and over.

Tom Perriello, who ran against Northam in the primary, tweeted yesterday, you know, Ed Gillespie went full Trump on race, partly because Virginians rejected his economic agenda that had bankrupted the United States and wrecked middle class pensions. And I do think that the second half, like you just said, of Perriello's message there is one that we have to remember to keep saying. Because Ed Gillespie, he doesn't want to run on cutting taxes regulations the only the only person who thinks that cutting a bunch of taxes and regulations is super popular is paul ryan i mean look this was effective it doesn't have a constituency it does cutting taxes on rich people and cutting regulations for uh big corporations is it doesn't

have a constituency in this country anymore beyond truth truthfully, a lot of our never-Trump friends in D.C. and New York. I mean, this is what Ed Gillespie has been doing for a long time. This is the way Bush ran elections, right? Bush wants to cut taxes for wretch people and do deregulation. So what does he campaign on? He has Ken Melman running around passing constitutional amendments on gay marriage. And he runs a wolf ad saying that – making stuff up about John kerry i mean this this is not new politics this is old politics you distract people and scare them and make it about social issues because the actual economic agenda

is one where democrats win on the issues again and again yeah i remember when the wolf had was controversial fuck the wolf ad man no that will bet it's still terrible okay um you i think you you guys all made some very good thoughts on the meta, what you should do narrative. But I think people who are listening, what you should do is believe the poll that shows the worst case scenario. Hands in poll. Donate and volunteer accordingly. This race is so unbelievably important. It has electoral consequences. It has potential constitutional consequences.

And it also is just, we'll set a narrative that shows a win or a loss for Donald Trump. And we need to scare the shit out of Republicans all across the country. That going along with the Trump agenda, going along with the Steve Bannon politics is not a panacea. This is not your get out of jail card free for supporting this monster in the white house who was fucking shredding everything we care about. So we have to win this race.

Yeah. Have to. Have to. Have to. If we can say that this kind of politics did not work in a very pivotal swing state and that maybe it excited the base but it was not enough to win an election for a Republican, then that's going to bode well for a lot of other races. And it's not just Gillespie that's trying this. I mean, we interviewed Phil Murphy last week, who's running for governor in New Jersey, and Kim Guadagno, his opponent in New Jersey, is running ads about, you know, sanctuary

cities and gangs and all that kind of stuff in a northern state. Right. I mean, so this is happening. This is their playbook. And look, I think as Democrats, we're used to saying, oh, so-and-so Republican is running this ad because he's desperate and behind and losing stuff. And it's not about desperation. We have to be a little clearer at the outset of our races and our campaigns that this is going to be a concerted strategy on the right to scare you because they have no plan for you. That has to be from the outset of every single Democratic campaign.

they have no plan for you. That has to be from the outset of every single Democratic campaign. We will wake up the day after the election and the stories will either be that Trumpism works and will be used by Republicans across the country to win or Trumpism failed and we have a way to fight back. I mean, I don't

think it's an exaggeration to say a huge amount of our politics hinges on that difference. So get out and help in Virginia and we'll be there next Sunday and Monday. Okay, when we come back we will have dan pfeiffer's interview with steve kerr it's a great interview that's pretty great interview steve kerr i didn't coach i didn't list yet i'm not gonna lie to you guys i don't lie to the listener we didn't it's it was gonna be a live omission because we didn't even ask i found the the tutorial about what double dribbling is what traveling is i found that to be the most helpful part because I've always been confused about that.

And now the interview. It is now my great pleasure to welcome to Pod Save America the coach of the NBA world champion Golden State Warriors, Steve Kerr. Coach Kerr, welcome to the pod. Thank you, Dan. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So much to talk about, but let's start with that fateful Saturday a couple months ago when you woke up and the President of the United States was tweeting about your star player and your team. How did you find out about that? What was your reaction? Well, first, when you just said fateful Saturday, that didn't narrow it down for me at all. There's so much to choose from. It didn't surprise me. We had been debating for a

couple of months what we would do in terms of would we visit the White House or not? If we did, how would we want it to unfold? There had been some back-channel communication between the White House and our organization. And so we were sorting through it all. But before we could get to anything, the president beat us to the punch, so to speak. And not really that surprising that he would say that or lash out because it's kind of his way. And do you think you guys probably would not have gone had he not done that? I don't think we would have gone. And I think he knew that, you know, we had all been, not all, but several of us had been very critical of the president in the past year. So it would have been

awkward for sure. So I don't think we would have gone but we were very interested in possibly going and not making it a photo op like these things normally are yeah but maybe actually going and having a discussion behind the scenes and talking about the issues that we we felt strongly about but that's kind of far-fetched yeah and do you so you know there will be the trip to Washington, D.C., which would have been the visit early next year, I believe. And have you guys thought about what you're going to do on that visit? Because I think in the statement you put out the day in response to Trump's tweet,

you talked about potentially using that visit to highlight the values that the organization stands for. Yeah, we've thought a lot about what we're going to do, and our organization is working on that right now. There's been a lot of ideas. Kevin Duran is from Maryland. We've thought about maybe going to Kevin's hometown and having a basketball clinic and some kind of charitable event. We've thought about engaging maybe Congress. We've been invited by various members of Congress to come visit. So maybe we could do something like that. We've talked about doing what we usually do in Washington, D.C., which is visiting one of the many museums or historical sites. Last year, we went to the African American Museum.

But we want to do something that has an impact that where we impact other people and something productive and we'll get there. The trip is still a couple months away. And I'm curious, like, your own personal emotions about the fact that this traditional visit to the White House, which you have done on many occasions as a player and then as the coach when President Obama was president, you know, the fact that that is not on the table. Yeah. More than anything, I'm disappointed for the players who've never been there. on the table. Yeah, more than anything, I'm disappointed for the players who've never been there. Four or five of our guys went two years ago, but there's a lot of guys who have not been there. David West, who is just one of the most impressive people I've ever been around in the

NBA, who is really interested in Washington, in politics, in social issues. He deserves a trip to the White House. And so I'm disappointed for him and for other guys. But it's just the way it goes. And you have a personal connection to the White House because I believe your brother worked in the White House when President Clinton was president. Is that correct? Yeah, you did your homework.

Well, I listened to your appearance on David Axelrod's podcast. Okay, all right. I don't remember if I told the story, but my brother was basically an intern in the National Security Council. He was there for a few years. Every time we went to D.C. with the Bulls, my brother would take the team on a tour of the White House. Back then, security was much more lax. It was so much easier to do that. We literally would go through a metal detector at the front of the White House, show our ID, and then that was it.

And so he would take us at night. There would hardly be anybody around. We'd literally walk to the Oval Office and peek into the Oval Office. And about half the team and my brother leading us around, no security. So it's a different time, different era. You know, in addition, beyond just not visiting the White House, you have been very outspoken about President Trump. We used to live in a stick-to-sports culture, and that seems to potentially be over these days. But have you gotten a lot of blowback for that?

And sort of what motivated you to be so outspoken? I'm sure I've gotten blowback, but I don't pay too much attention to be so outspoken? I'm sure I've gotten blowback, but I don't pay too much attention to it. I mean, I am on Twitter. I don't often tweet, I usually retweet articles that I like to read. But I've learned my lesson in terms of, you know, you put something out there, it's it's there forever. But I don't worry too much about, you know, what people are saying about me or to me i think circumstances dictate whether people need to be outspoken or not and i think the times call for people to talk and to say things people in positions of prominence people who are going to be heard it's important that they speak out if they're if they feel strongly about something and you have a

unique background for a basketball coach in the sense that you grew up all over the world, living in the Middle East, and you have a family who's been involved in service, with your dad as an educator, your grandparents as missionaries. You know, has that given you certain perspectives, particularly since much of some of the divisive rhetoric you've responded to is related to Muslims from around the world, people that, you know, you grew up with? related to Muslims from around the world, people that you grew up with? Oh, yeah. My background has everything to do with my perspective on the world. I grew up mostly in Los Angeles, but I was born in Beirut and spent three years in Cairo. I spent some time in Tunisia,

France. My dad was a professor of Middle East history. And so we traveled a lot. He would take sabbaticals and we'd live overseas with other kids from all over the world. Every race, religion, background you can imagine. And that shaped a lot of my thoughts on the world and on human relations. And so I think it's scary now. I think our foreign relations have never been worse. And I don't really think it falls on Trump's shoulders. I think it's our foreign policy over the last 50, 60 years has kind of led to this point. And it's really scary and disconcerting. Trump's rhetoric is exacerbating everything. But for me, I'm 52. This is the scariest that the world has ever felt to me. You know, I was born after, well, I think I was probably two years old during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I was six or seven when Vietnam was going on. So by the time I was really aware of my surroundings, you know, the Cold War would have been the big one, but that didn't seem like that big of a deal. Right. It just felt like the world was a safe, great place. And that's changed for me and my perception, and not just the last few years, but over about the last, you know, 20, 25.

And what do you think leads to that? Like, is it the entire world danger, danger to the U.S., specific foreign policy decisions? I think it's a lot of different things. I think it's, you know, foreign policy decisions for sure, but social media, the way the world works now, the fact that everybody can just tweet hatred, the fact that there's so much BS out there.

For example, you know, as a sports fan, the Kaepernick stuff has been really interesting to follow. And, you know, Michael Bennett from the Seahawks comes out and, you know, he talks about his incident in Las Vegas when he was arrested by the cops. There's all these conflicting stories. You get on Twitter and there's a picture of Michael Bennett in the Seattle locker room with all of his teammates around him, like, urging him on. And he's holding a burning American flag. Right. Well, that burning American flag. Right. Well, that didn't happen, right?

But this is the way of the world now. It gets a million likes and retweets, and somebody just doctored it and faked it, and that creates anger. And so there's a lot of forces at play, but the world has never operated like this, where people's emotions can be dictated by fake crap. And that part is really scary. Yeah, there's this new technology now that allows people to create fake videos with their actual voice. So you can hear, this is the big fear for the next election,

is that you could create a video that just says Barack Obama endorsing Donald Trump. Wow, really? Yeah. Oh my gosh, I didn't know that. I mean, now we sleep even worse. I'm sorry for that. The Kaepernick thing is so interesting because it speaks to what seems to be a real difference in how the NFL and the NBA have handled these things. Do you know Colin Kaepernick personally? Never met him.

What is your view as someone who has both been a coach and been a general manager in sports as to why Colin Kaepernick is not in the NFL? Oh, he's being blackballed. That's a no-brainer. All you have to do is read the transactions every day when you see the quarterbacks who are getting hired. He's way better than any of them. But the NFL's got a different fan base than the NBA does. The NBA's more urban. NFL, I think, is more conservative. And I think a lot of the fans are truly angry. A lot of the NFL fans are truly angry at Kaepernick. And I think owners are worried what it's going to do to business. And I think there is a legitimate concern, too, about the distraction that it's going to create.

And I'm not justifying teams not signing him. But I will acknowledge, when you think about Tim Tebow, for example, right? Tebow was like this lightning rod, whether you liked him or you didn't like him. If he went to a team, that was going to be the story every single day. That's now Kaepernick. And if you're a general manager, and again, take social concern out of it, take your beliefs out of it. If you're just saying we're just trying to be a football team and win football games if you're a general manager you do have to worry about the circus that would erupt if you signed Kaepernick again it's not justifying not signing him but it's understanding what you're getting into and so I think that's a factor and that speaks

to what we were just talking about the the social climate with social media, with the anger, with the fake stuff. And that would tie in directly with him signing with any team. And so he's in a tough spot. You know, I've been thinking a lot over the last few months about, you know, as the NBA has begun and we've been in the middle of the Trump era, and how vocal the players have been, the players and the coaches,self, Coach Popovich, your players, folks like LeBron. Stan Van Gundy has been very outspoken in a great way. He's been fantastic. But that's a new thing for the NBA, right?

So I think back to your former teammate, Michael Jordan, once saying, Republicans buy shoes too, right? As an explanation for why he did not get more involved. But it's also not just too, right? As a explanation for why he did not get more involved. But it's also not just Trump, right? You have LeBron and Wade and others speaking out about Trayvon Martin, stuff like that. What has changed either society within the NBA that's created this environment where people are willing to speak out? I think some of it is the people. I think Greg Popovich paved the way for people, for coaches and players to be more outspoken. I think a lot of it is driven by the circumstances.

When Michael Jordan said that, we were in a pretty good place as a country. I think it was before, I know it was before the Iraq War started. There wasn't this divisiveness. Divisiveness or divisiveness? I think it's tomato-tomato sort of thing. All right. I'm a divisiveness guy. That's fine.

The divisiveness that exists now did not exist when Michael said that. I think life was simpler. Life was easier. Michael's making money. The NBA's doing fine. People are generally happy. Not to say that there's not bad things going on, but nothing like the times right now. And so I think the times, I think what's happened, I think as angry as people are, as divided as they are, and as much access we all have to media as

there is, people are just more likely to speak out and they they have more outlets, like this one right here. As an example. The role of the NBA as a league, as an entity in this, is interesting to me. Because, you know, before the season started, Adam Silver puts out guidance that says the players will stand during the National Anthem. Right. And then that's just what happened. There was no debate or fight over it. what happened there was no debate or fight over and it felt almost like uh not like an edict from the league but almost as like a decision a group of people made because you have a lot you know

there are some strong personalities in the nba someone could buck that but i'm just sort of curious about the relationship of the nba with this sort of outspokenness and activism among the players i think adam silver's been brilliant brilliant throughout his tenure. He's just become commissioner in the last five years, I guess, four years. If you remember, his commissionership started with the Donald Sterling incident. Adam handled it beautifully. The players understand he is a partner. He is socially aware. He's concerned about people, players, their families, social issues. The players feel that, so I think they trust him. And I don't think there's a feeling like, you know, Adam Silver's telling us we've got to stand. You know, that's ridiculous. It's just, I think they respect him. And our players, I can only speak for our team they feel like you know kaepernick made

the stance um for lack of a better phrase by kneeling um he made it a an issue uh he talked about why he was doing it so the issues are out there and our players are trying to do things in the community to help they're doing a lot of great stuff, by the way. And they don't feel like they need to kneel. They need to help. The issue is already being discussed. So they don't need to further somebody else's protest, but they need to help. And that's their position.

We've talked about it as a team, and I'm very, very proud of them. I have one of the Popovich Kerr 2020 shirts. Right. I wear it around the Popovich Kerr 2020 shirts. Right. I wear it around San Francisco a fair amount. I get stopped all the time for it. People often tell me that they want the ticket reversed. They want Kerr Popovich. I also heard you tell David Axelrod that you would vote for Popovich as president.

I would. So I want to ask you first, is there any chance that you would ever get involved in public service? Then not necessarily it doesn't have to be elected office, but it could be public service outside of basketball. I can't imagine. It's not my passion. Basketball is my passion. Coaching is my passion. But you never know where life's going to take you.

But I would vote for Pop. I would. Talk to us a little bit about Coach Popovich. I would talk to us a little bit about coach Popovich and, you know, as you know him, what's made him become such a outspoken and very eloquent descriptor of what's happening in America. He's he's one of the finest people I know because he's incredibly principled. He's competitive. He's compassionate. He's smart.

He's worldly. He's fair. And you felt all that as a coach. And now you see his conviction with his comments about the world and about politics. And it's real. It's genuine. He's an amazing guy. He's got this incredible combination of discipline and humor and principle. And yet he sees the BS, the hypocrisy in the world. He's able to laugh at himself, and he's just one of my favorite people. Do you think there's any chance he runs for office one day? I doubt it.

He loves coaching. I think he's coming up on 70. I think his military background has really shaped him in terms of his view of the world and his view of coaching and his style. But at his core, he's a basketball coach and a lifer. He's been doing it 20 years. He loves it. He's great at it. I don't know why he would stop.

Here will be a hypothetical question for you. Which of your players right now is the best politician? Meaning would be the best politician. Were they going to politics? Sean Livingston. Oh, interesting. That would not have been my guess. Why do you say that?

Sean is incredibly thoughtful. He is a force multiplier. He's a uniter. He wants everything around him to be solid. He wants people to be happy. Andre would be the angry guy. That seems to be in vogue these days. Yeah. He would be angry, but with great conviction and principle. And there's plenty of reason to be angry. Sean would be the guy to sort of take the opposing view into consideration and try to negotiate, which is a novel concept in politics these days. So maybe he wouldn't be the best politician.

Not Draymond? Oh, my God. Draymond would be probably the guy who you would want leading your campaign. He would dig out all the dirt on the other guy and destroy him. I believe that. The guy who actually could make the biggest social impact, who I think will in his life, is David West. Interesting. This guy is incredibly well-read. He's incredibly interested in what's going on in the world. He's really, really smart.

Doesn't say a whole lot, soaks it all in, but sees everything. And not Steph. No, Steph is, he'll be a huge philanthropist. He will do wonderful things for millions of people. But no, he's going to play golf and do cooking shows with his wife and raise his children and have a wonderful life. And that's more power to him. Yeah, absolutely. He's got a good life.

He's got a great life. And actually, I relate to Steph quite a bit in that regard. I'm nowhere near as talented as obviously, but we have similar interests in terms of just wanting to chill and be with our families and, and get out and golf or, you know, just hang out. And,

but Seth, Steph lives a pretty simple life that the, the simple things make him very happy. And I, I can relate to that. That's awesome. Speaking of golf, how's your back? It's okay. It and I can relate to that. That's awesome. Speaking of golf, how's your back? It's okay.

I'm not golfing, unfortunately. It's been a tough blow the last couple of years, but I'm dealing with it and getting better, so thanks for asking. You're coaching. I'm coaching. Yeah, that's helpful. I'll try to close here on a maybe it'll be helpful note. I've listened to you talk about trump and politics today the thing that i took from it that seems to be most upsetting to you or offensive to you

is the division right and that we seem to be coming apart and that someone might be not to put words in mouth but someone is trying to incite that division. Are you hopeful that we can get past this moment? And if so, why? I am hopeful that we can get past this moment because I think this has been the perfect storm in a very negative way in terms of Trump being the guy to just exacerbate what already existed, which was this divide between conservatives and liberals or different ways of thinking or whatever.

What it's going to take is the next person in office, regardless of party, to be dignified and presidential and respectful and setting a good example. I don't know if that's quite going to solve everything, but it certainly would go a long way. What bothers me more than anything is a lack of dignity in politics, whether it's Trump or many others with a voice. And I think that's where we are going to go off the rails, and we have to get back on the rails. We need people who are respectful, dignified, able to communicate and show empathy and compassion. Those are all huge things. And in fact, these days, it's probably the president's main job because it's really hard to get anything done in Congress. As you can tell, even with Republican Congress, Republican president,

we still can't get anything done. So it's not about party lines. To me, it's about the president doing his job and being empathetic and being articulate and expressing himself and trying to unite and trying to bring people together. And the next person in that chair needs to be that way, regardless of which party he's in or she's in. And that's really a question of leadership, right? And, you know, where the real role of the president is leader of this country, not in the just the command the armed forces and pass legislation and put regulations in place, but sort of the moral or the moral leader of the country, right?

And you, you know, we talked a lot about Coach Popovich, but you have worked with and played with some of the great leaders in sports. Coach Phil Jackson, Coach Popovich, your college coach, Lute Olson, whether it was Tim Duncan or Michael Jordan. You know, what are some of the core leadership lessons you've taken from those people? Because you've had such a just, your career has just been constantly been around some of the best people in this business. Yeah. Phil was, what struck me about Phil was just the inclusion, making everybody feel important. You know, one to 15 on the roster, every guy felt like he had a role to play.

And he emphasized that the way he went about his business. Popovich was similar in terms of, you just felt like you were part of something bigger than yourself. And I know it's a cliche, but it was really true. Like being on those teams, and I'm trying to create the same environment here. And it's easier to do when you've got great talent and you're winning. But the idea that that 15th man matters is so important. And I think that's pretty good advice in any setting, right? Whether you're running a business or a classroom or whatever, when you can make the people who may not think that they matter that much when they feel like they do, it's an incredibly powerful force. And that's what leadership is to me is

kind of galvanizing and empowering and making people feel good about themselves, but also making them feel like everything that they do matters. And so you're motivating them to do well and to do good and to do right. Well, that's great advice. And Coach Kerr, thank you so much for doing this. I will be rooting for the Warriors all year long, except when they're playing the Sixers. Fair enough. But I think you will probably be heavily favored in those games. Well, thanks, Dan.

Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks again to Matt Miller and to Steve Kerr. What a Steve Kerr interview. I loved every minute of it. Just kidding. I still haven't listened to it.

I'm going to really soon. And the three-point line. Fascinating. Further than the rest of the lines. Right. Right. Again, everyone. Jump shot.

That's all we have for today. A merry indictment day to all of you. Donate to all the Virginia races now. And go help if you can. Good tidings on this indictment morning.