Pod Save America - “Infrastructure 1, Democracy 0.” (with Sen. Amy Klobuchar!)

Episode Date: June 24, 2021

Joe Biden announces a bipartisan infrastructure deal, Senator Amy Klobuchar talks to Dan Pfeiffer about what’s next for voting rights, Democrats grapple with the issue of crime, and this week’s most important question: could the next Speaker of the House be Donald Trump?For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

I'm tired of talking about Mr. Manchin and Ms. Cinema. Me too. Me too, Bernie. I'm also sick of talking about Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema. Bernie Sanders, voice of the people. But alas, here we are. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Dan talks to For the People Act lead sponsor, Amy Klobuchar, about what's next for voting rights legislation. Joe Biden lays out his crime strategy in response to rising gun violence. And we'll try to answer the question on everyone's mind these days.

Could the next Speaker of the House be Donald Trump? Crazier shit has happened. house be Donald Trump. Crazier shit has happened. But first, check out Hysteria's 150th episode, where Aaron and Alyssa talk to Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin about the Equality Act. And congrats on 150. Very exciting, Hysteria. Don't miss our new scripted comedy that everyone's talking about, Edith, which explores the untold, true-ish story of America's secret first female president, Edith Wilson, the former first lady who basically ran the country for a while after Woodrow Wilson had a stroke. The cast includes Rosamund Pike, Clark Gregg, Stephen Root, Darcy Carden, Esther Provitsky, and an up-and-coming young actor named

Andy Favreau. Oh, oh nice i didn't realize that in the cast yeah and many more many more uh new episodes every thursday the first two are out now the second one's out today it is so funny uh go check it out it's an excellent podcast finally dan campaign experts react is back people are smashing subscribe buttons all over the internet uh tell us about the latest episode. Well, first, the mere presence of this episode is a rebuke to Elijah who tried to cancel us,

and then the fans reacted, and they told him. And they canceled Elijah. Yes. Campaign Experts is uncanceled. Elijah is canceled. I am joined by Campaign Experts React favorite Cornell Belcher to talk about the crime ads and the new recent New Mexico special election. Some of the ads being used to

persuade Joe Manchin to support democracy. And we talk about why some of these crazy MAGA Senate candidates are less crazy than you think. Awesome. Check it out. All right. Actually, what shit? What's the website there? Oh, it's YouTube. think. Awesome. Check it out. All right. Actually, what's the website there? Oh, it's YouTube.com. YouTube.com slash Crooked Media. Keep that in. That right there was the examples of how hard it is to have a video product in an audio company.

Anyway, check it out. YouTube.com slash Crooked Media. That's that's the website all right let's get to the news all 50 senate republicans filibustered the for the people act on tuesday refusing to even allow a debate on the voting rights and election reform proposal that all 50 democrats now support senator joe manchin who had been the lone democratic holdout voted to move forward after his party agreed to several compromises designed to get Republicans on board, like adding a national voter ID requirement. But alas, Joe's GOP pals told him to fuck off, to which Joe said, sure, okay. And since Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema keep saying over and over that

they refuse to get rid of the filibuster, We are now at an impasse on voting rights, election reform, and pretty much every other piece of Joe Biden's agenda that doesn't directly affect the federal budget. Dan, you wrote a spicy message box yesterday where you engaged in your usual Monday morning quarterbacking. Tell us, why do you think Democrats shit the bed here and what could they have done differently? How's that for a setup? I mean, just toss it up there. I want to stipulate that this vote was always going to fail. There is nothing more on brand for the Republicans

than to use a legislative loophole designed to block the majority to stop a debate on democracy. Right. Perfect. That was always going to happen. proof to Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, untold others, including perhaps Chris Coons of Delaware, that you could not work with Republicans on voter rights, that they were going to block it under all scenarios. But the problem with it was that we have known for months that Joe Manchin was not going to support the current version of the For the People Act. And we still did not have a deal with him to have him on board to support the motion to proceed until hours before the vote. And what that did is it took the conversation for much of the run up to the vote from Republican obstruction and sort of hatred for democracy to Democratic weakness and Democratic dissension. Really, so we leaned into the off-mocked and rarely but sometimes true meme of Dems in disarray. What I think this brought forward is two things that are worth noting. The first is there has never really been a real plan for how we're going to get this done. There are two paths. One involves getting people to flip on the

filibuster. The other involves getting 10 Republicans. And there's been a lot of confident sort of failure is not an option. We're going to get this done. It's the most important fight in a generation. And the first response to the most important fight in a generation is a doomed to fail procedural vote where you have not done the hard work of getting all members of the caucus on board beforehand. And that is problematic. And it makes me very concerned about where this is going, our ability to get this done. And even if we can't get it done, our ability to successfully make the case to the public about the dangers Republicans present to democracy and majority rule in this country. So in terms of the question, what basically

Chuck Schumer could have done differently, and I guess Joe Biden and the White House to an extent, your answer would be we basically should have figured out our shit beforehand long ago in terms of a bill or a compromise bill that all 50 Senate Democrats could get behind, including Manchin. So the Manchin compromise should have just come much earlier, in your view, is what you're saying. But also Democrats haven't agreed to the Manchin compromise yet either. Like, we have known forever that the For the People Act— Though it seems like everyone's going to be on board with that. Eventually, yes. But they're not there yet.

Like, there was a position where they could have adopted that before the vote, but there was some Democratic resistance to that as well. Yeah. Like, you don't have to adopt it because it's only a motion to proceed to a bill. But the big thing here is the For the People Act is based on HR1, a piece of legislation passed in January of 2019 that was a message bill. It had no chance of becoming law. It was not written to be a law. It was written to show what Democrats are for and the affairs of democracy. And it's filled with a bunch of incredibly important things. When it was repassed in 2021, it was not adjusted to two realities. The first, a 50-50 Senate where you need your

mansion's vote, or to address the growing and now very real threat of election subversion, of Republicans being able to disregard electoral results and discard ballots and mess around with election boards, et cetera. And there's a bunch of provisions in that bill that are good in theory, they're good public policy, like public financing elections that have never had a chance of being law. But throughout this process, no one from in the Senate, or in the White House, I would assume, wanted to have a tough conversation with the activists and say, you're not going to get everything you want. So we're going to have to deal with that now. And we just waited and waited and waited and waited to the point where it wasn't. It was too late to actually, we didn't have a plan.

There was not a plan to maximize this moment. They put a vote on the calendar. We've known it was coming for months and not enough was done to prepare for it. And look, is this the end of the world? No, it is one minor thing, but we ought to learn from the things that went wrong there. If we're going to have any chance of doing this, because the odds of success are so long and the path is so narrow that you have to do everything right to get it done. And we're going to have any chance of doing this because the odds of success are so long and the path is so narrow that you have to do everything right to get it done. And we're going to have to be smarter and tougher about this going forward. Yeah. And going forward is the big issue here, right? Like we'll hopefully hear more from Senator Klobuchar on this in a minute when you

talk to her. But where do you think that Democrats go from here, both on voting rights and then on filibuster in general? And when I say Democrats, like if you were if you were in the White House right now advising Biden, what would you tell him to do? I mean, I also just want to stipulate, and I wrote this in the piece that I hate being this person. This is the I have become the person I hate. This is always harder and more complicated than people on the outside think. They are dealing with a whole bunch of other things. And it's easy. You and I just spent last week making fun of the people who believe in the Green Lantern theory of politics would say, if you just give enough speeches and have enough

meetings, you can make the impossible possible. I don't think that's the case here. I think it is nothing. David Axelrod said this on TV the other day. If Biden had talked about this every single day from inauguration to today, the result still is a 50-50 motion to proceed vote on this bill. It doesn't change that. And again, that's because, and it's so infuriating to keep saying this because it is so frustrating. But like this is all about what you have to do to change Joe Manchin's mind. That's it. There's no more. There's no less. It is fucking Joe. He is. He is infuriating to all of us. But he has a vote in the Senate and we only have 50 of them on the Democratic side.

And threats aren't going to get you anywhere with Joe Manchin because he could always switch parties because he's in a fucking state that Trump won by 30 points because liberal Democrats yelling at him probably helps him politically in his own state. So you can't threaten him. So you have to figure out how to persuade him in a nicer way. And that's very hard to do. And it's fucking annoying. But it's like all of this shit that we keep talking about just comes down to that. That's it. What's going to change Joe Manchin's mind? You can protest in the streets. You can yell online. You can do whatever. It's all about changing Joe Manchin's mind. That's it. The order of operations is important here, and this is where I think the mistake happened in the beginning. You have to change the filibuster to do this. There is no 10 Republicans. There is no nine Republicans. There is not one Republican who is going to be for something for voting rights that is substantial for voting rights because it's not in their political interest. So you have to change the filibuster. In order to change the filibuster, you have to find a bill that all 50 Democrats support. So you have to get Joe Manchin. So that is step one. Which, so that's, and that, by the way, that should have been step one like months ago.

Yes, that is the problem is he has been telling us and telling us and telling us he does not support this bill. Now, granted, he seems to be a very annoying person to work with. He seems very vague. And look, and I just said, it's all about like changing Joe Manchin's mind. There was a report, I think Ron Brownstein brought this to The Atlantic, that when civil rights groups, the NAACP and Al Sharpton and other civil rights groups met with Joe Manchin,

they actually did succeed in leading him to embrace a compromise that actually included a lot more of the original provisions of H.R. 1 than he otherwise would have. So the guy can be persuaded. These groups met with them and they did convince him to sort of embrace more of the original provisions of H.R. 1 than he otherwise would have. So the guy can be persuaded these groups met with them and they did convince him to sort of embrace more of the provision. So it's possible. But like you said, he's very annoying because he's always all over the place and he's always saying contradictory bullshit. And it doesn't seem to be super deep in the details of the bill up until just this this last turn of the wheel here, reaching out the compromise. And I think there were some report, I think it was the New York Times, where these

Democratic senators who have been talking to him in the hallway keep saying, well, what do you want? What do you want? He won't, what he would say is I want one Republican. Right. Well, it's like, I want pigs to fly. Like that's not, that's not an actual answer to the question. But still, if you're going to have the vote, you got to have Joe Manchin, not hours before the vote, weeks before the vote, so that you can give people, you can drive a mess, you can drive an interview, you can do the very first part of what is a very difficult two-step. I guess the question now is, say Joe Biden does what a lot of people want him to do, including me, which is make voting rights a big issue, give a lot of speeches on this, say this is a top priority,

fight for it as hard as he's fighting for this bipartisan infrastructure deal, which we're going to talk about in a second, and his reconciliation package and everything else. And I think the question that comes from that is, does Joe Biden making this more of a priority make it any more likely that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema change their mind on the filibuster. That's what I can't really tell. It can't hurt. Right.

Well, there is some, apparently the White House has argued privately that Joe Biden being more public about this could possibly further polarize the issue along partisan lines and make it less likely for Manchin and Sinema to support reforming the filibuster. I'm really by that. I'm skeptical of that. Right. I mean, what's one of these reports also said is the Biden privately and like take every anonymous report with some grain of salt, which I mean, this isn't Trump saying they

made up the sources, just you never know who the person is and how much it actually represents the view of the president. But one of these reports said that they have decided that the odds on voting rights are incredibly slim to impossible. Infrastructure is a very real life possibility, which we'll talk about in a minute. And the politics of getting something done that is on the bread and butter issue of the economy is better for the results in 2022 than trying and failing on voting rights. I think that that is not an insane political calculus. I understand how they get to that point. My view, and I am incredibly biased on this issue, as you are, is think that everything flows from a Republican effort to install minority rule in this country. And if we don't take it on and address it, both substantively and politically, we are completely and totally fucked, right? That is the

Vote Safe America slogan. And so there is this feeling in its heart, like this is one of the sort of the dissonance of the strategy. I don't think you can say that the laws being passed in Georgia, Texas, and elsewhere are Jim Crow in the 21st century, or that this is an existential threat to democracy or those things like that, and not make it a huge part of your public messaging. I think that's good politics for 2022 because we have to keep people fired up. And if we cannot address it now, which I think is a very live possibility, there are things we can do. We can expand the Senate. We can fight. We have to know what is on the line in 2022. Well, it's possible to both be realistic about your chances for success, which are slim, and to fight like hell for that success. And that's absolutely essential. And Lisa Murkowski, and I choose Lisa Murkowski because she is the only Republican who has indicated support for some voting rights reform, which is the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Obviously, that's not sufficient, but she's the only Republican in the game who's supported who's decided to support any kind of voting rights measure. So you say to Manchin and Murkowski, OK, this failed. Manchin, you want a bipartisan election reform bill. You and your friend Lisa Murkowski, go find, just like you did on infrastructure, 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans, craft a bipartisan group to start these negotiations, come to the White House, I'll have negotiations, just like I've had negotiations on infrastructure, and make this public, you know, because I think one of the problems with this is people like Murkowski and Collins and Romney and some of these more moderate Republicans, or at least the ones who've been playing ball on COVID relief and infrastructure have gotten off really easy here because, you know, like Murkowski and Collins gave speeches on the floor when they said no to this, to move forward on voting rights reform, where they were like, HR1 is crazy. I could never back HR1. HR1 is not the, you know, S1 is not the basis for bipartisan election reform, blah, blah,

blah. They didn't even come out against Joe Manchin's compromise. They started attacking the original bill, which like lets them off easy. And I think the reason there is because they don't want to be put in a position, forced into a position where they now have to come up with a bipartisan bill because they don't really want to. But I think you have to put that kind of pressure on them. And I think Biden can put that pressure on them. And so can Manchin. Like call their bluff, make them come to the White House, you know, make them negotiate. I think that's the I think that's the only way to do it. Like this is a place where Biden can be helpful, which is name one voting rights provision you would support. Name one, name

one single one that will get Republican vote. Right. And this and he again, he doesn't have to do this in a snarky way. He doesn't have to do this in a snarky way. He doesn't have to do this in an overly partisan way. Like, it's just about making it public and putting this kind of pressure on them. Like, Mitch McConnell's never going to, he doesn't fucking care. But these 10, 20 Republicans, you know, like I said, I still think it's a very, it's long odds that this will work. But I do think it's, look, there's an inside game and an outside game. I think this is the inside game.

And then the outside game is, of course, activists and organizers should keep up the pressure and hold events all across the country and push for Congress and the president to do something on voting rights. Absolutely, that should still happen. I just think there should be sort of an inside pressure, outside pressure game. And one important thing you said, which is be realistic about the chances, because I think, and this is challenging. Right. You don't want to be defeatist, but you also don't want to falsely inflate hopes.

And one of the things that has been sort of haunting, which I which I worry that we've done. Yes, I agree that we've done. I think about that all the time. And I certainly think the groups are doing that right now. You know, like I hear people saying, like, oh, Joe Biden should fight as hard for voting rights as he does on infrastructure. Well, it's like, come on. Joe Biden needed 51 fucking votes on infrastructure and he needs 60 on this or to break a filibuster, which Manchin said he's not going to do. It is entirely different. Or someone said, oh, Joe Biden should fight for this as hard as Barack Obama fought for the Affordable Care Act. Barack Obama had 60 votes for the Affordable Care Act.

If Barack Obama only had a 50-50 Senate, guess what? The Affordable Care Act wouldn't have passed. The thing that haunts me about this, and like you said, I worry that in my public comments on this, I have been sort of more naive than I would like to be or more hopeful than I wanted because I think this is so important. And I do think there is a path. I mean, the numbers are there to do it. It just requires people to do the opposite of the thing they keep insisting on writing op-eds to tell us they're going to do. But the thing that I've been thinking about is in 2020, there was an article. I don't know whether this report is actually true, but it said basically the DSCC was keeping the Kentucky Senate race on their list of races to watch or their top

targets, whatever it is, because that was a great way to raise money, even though they very well knew that the odds of Amy McGrath winning that race in one of the most public states in the country in a presidential election year were basically zero. And when you – and this is – I wrote this in the piece. When you – one of the cardinal rules of politics is to treat your activists, volunteers, and voters like adults. And if you try to trick them into thinking that something is more possible than it is for the purposes of keeping them fired up, that's a mistake. I think if we don't get this done now, it becomes a huge issue for 2022. You have to win elections, particularly midterms. You have to raise the stakes. The fate of democracy is a high-stakes thing. And so that's why it's important to talk about it,

but understand that the current allotment of power in Washington make it incredibly difficult, if not impossible. And impossible no matter what. Chuck Schumer does, Joe Biden does. This is where you do everything exactly right and end up in the exact same place. So one place where there has been slightly more progress that I just want to get your thoughts on before we get to your interview with Senator Klobuchar is right before we started recording, Joe Biden came out in the Rose Garden with 10 Republican senators, 10 Democratic senators and said, we have a deal on a bipartisan infrastructure package. What do you think? What do you think about the big deal? I mean, it is a big deal, right? Joe Biden ran in part on his ability to get things done on a

bipartisan basis in Washington. And he did. If you had said six months ago, a year ago, that there was a Democratic president was going to strike a trillion dollar, near trillion dollar infrastructure deal with Republicans, you'd think that was insane. We have been dancing. We would have said that. We would have laughed. Yeah, we would have absolutely laughed. And so he- Let's be honest.

He has pulled something off here that proves his theory of the case. And he deserves a ton of credit for it. The Democratic senators deserve a ton of credit for it. These Republicans who seem willing to do something reasonable deserve some credit for it. They get some demerits for trying to rig elections and steal democracy and just general terribleness. But it's like, I am relatively bearish on the long-term politics of a bipartisan infrastructure deal. Infrastructure is not something that people feel in their lives immediately. But this is a huge feather in Joe Biden's cap.

immediately. But this is a huge feather in Joe Biden's cap. Before we break out the balloons and the confetti cannon, though, I will say the devil is still in the details here for a couple of reasons. Nancy Pelosi today has wisely said or apparently she said this on a call and it was reported out. She told other Democrats that the House will not pass this bipartisan infrastructure deal unless they see a full reconciliation bill that will contain all the rest of Joe Biden's economic priorities that could pass through reconciliation, climate, housing, education, child care, health care, the works, taxes, raising taxes on the wealthy. And so what I'm trying to figure out is, A, why did those 10 Republicans go along with a bipartisan infrastructure deal, knowing that next up on the Democratic agenda is a Democrats only reconciliation bill that's

going to contain all the progressive goodies that basically Joe Manchin can stand, because that's how you pass a reconciliation bill. And Joe Manchin, by the way, in the Rose Garden just told reporters, yeah, part of this deal is we're doing this bipartisan infrastructure deal now, but there's going to be a Democrats-only reconciliation bill, and I'm fine with that. I've been wondering this for a long time and trying to figure out how the pieces come together. There was a report a few last week, yesterday, a month ago, who the fuck knows at this point, that one of the reasons why McConnell was open to this deal happening was he thought it made a big bipartisan reconciliation deal less likely, that getting something done on a bipartisan basis would convince Manchin and

Sinema that they would not need to be on board for a big Democrats-only bill. That doesn't seem to have borne out according to what Manchin said publicly. Obviously, we saw an idea from Sinema and others about that. And I do think there's a lot of road to travel here. What's that reconciliation bill going to look like? Once again, it comes down to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and others. Is it really going to look like the $6 trillion bill that Bernie Sanders wants? That seems unlikely. What will be in there, won't be in there. Can what comes out of the Senate pass the House is an open question with those narrow margins. So like you said, a lot of road to travel here. Two reasons why Republicans might've done this.

One is it just may be that Mitch McConnell could not stop them. There are enough Republicans who have been in. Just like we can't stop Joe Manchin. Yeah. Who they want to do something right there in the Senate. They abided by a bunch of Trumpian bullshit for a long time. Here's a chance to do something. Like, there are human beings involved in this process always who have to go home and be like, what did you right. I didn't read Twitter and I covered up some crimes. And this was, you know, they can go home this weekend and say, we got a deal, right? And then the other, if you were to try to impute some sort of political strategy behind it is the Republicans need to show in order to make a case that they, for divided government, need to show that they're not just a bunch of Trumpian lunatics.

And here's a case for it, right? Like divided government works, put us in charge. We can do things besides just like enable Matt Gaetz or, you know, back Marjorie Taylor Greene or all those things. It's a, it's an argument that Republicans can govern. You know, I think it's probably more of the human thing than the political strategy thing. And I think it's, I think this happened despite Mitch McConnell, not because of Mitch McConnell. I think he he just could not stop it. Yeah, that makes sense to me, too. OK, when we come back, Dan talks to Senator Amy Klobuchar about what's next on voting rights. Joining us now is Minnesota Senator and friend of the pod, Senator Amy Klobuchar.

Senator, welcome back to the show. Well, thanks so much, Dan. I can't think of a better title than being friend of the pod. So thank you. Yes. It's probably ranked slightly below Senator, but yes. After the vote on Tuesday, your colleague, Senator Mazie Arano, told The Atlantic, there better be a plan B. I just don't know what it is. Do you know what plan B is? Is there a plan

B? What can you tell us about the next steps after the voting rights bill was stopped on Tuesday? Sure. Well, plan B is really starts with all of us. It starts with all the groups across the country this summer that are not just pushing to get this done. And I wouldn't be working on it if I didn't think we could. But it also involves registering people to vote for next fall. And that's happening big time. As chair of the Rules Committee, I'm starting out by taking the show on the road. I think some of my colleagues, Republican colleagues actually need to hear from the people that have stood in line for 12 hours and then are going to be denied volunteers giving them food and water. I think they have to find out what it's like to have one drop off box in the middle of a county with tons of people.

So that's my part. But I think there's more. We are going to continue to work to figure out a procedural way. I know the listeners of the pod understand how we had a unified party in the end behind this bill. Yes, we were still negotiating some of the details, but I think you heard from people like Barack Obama and Stacey Abrams, myself,

that we are in a pretty good place of getting an agreement with Senator Manchin. That to me is not as much of the big deal since he was including same day registration, early voting, all these things that we wanted in there. I think the big deal is getting some procedural way to get this through. And whether it's a standing filibuster, which he has said he's interested in in the past, or some other way to do this procedurally. We must get this done. Failure is not an option. You know, from the outside, right, there's two ways to get this done. There is convincing 10 Republicans to have a miraculous conversion. Exactly. I'm very glad

that you didn't even let me finish that sentence. They don't have to worry about my follow-up. Or as you mentioned, getting Senators Manchin, Sinema, and perhaps others to change their mind on the filibuster. Senator Manchin has expressed some private openness and a little public openness to do a change. Senator Sinema just wrote an op-ed saying she was not going to change her mind on the filibuster. From the outside, it seems like we're in a really dire straits. From your perspective on the inside, do you see more reasons for hope or arguments you think could be made to change her position or others' position to make an exception here or reform the filibuster or something like that? Yeah. Well, as I said, there are many different procedural ways. We're just looking at all the

options now that we could proceed. I also think that there are people that are such strong voices on this that are in very red states, right? Purple, they won them, so they're not all red. That'd be people like Jon Tester, who's a big fan of this bill. People like Reverend Warnock, one of our two new senators from Georgia. That's one of the reasons Georgia's been the epicenter

of voting controversies and limiting people from voting after expanding it earlier this year, last year. So I think that's that's really one. You'll hear their voices. And two, I just think getting out there and I want to differentiate. I'm not a Pollyanna about getting Mitch McConnell or Republicans to support this. Pollyanna about getting Mitch McConnell or Republicans to support this. But I don't think that we're doing our job if we don't take it out on the road and make the public understand this. Let's not forget, Dan, that in Georgia, one of the motivating forces for voters in that early January election was how Donald Trump and the Republican Party had messed up with their state in terms of not validating their election, questioning their election officials,

questioning the results, basically dissing our democracy. That's what these guys are now doing on a national scale. So for us just to be quiet about this and not take it out there, I don't want to confuse that, that we're going out on the road, that we're continuing to push this bill. I don't think that should be confused with thinking, well, at this moment in time, we think we're going to get 10 Republicans. I don't think we can right now. But you never know what happens six months from now, a year from now, when the public pressure keeps going. You alluded to negotiations with Senator Manchin around the text of a bill he could support. Are there specific things in his compromise that you oppose or specific things you want to ensure in there before we?

Because it sounds like we are not yet at that point where there is a fully agreed upon bill that all 50 senator Democrats could support. Exactly. Well, he'd be the first to tell you that. But let me say everyone that's worked with him on this knows he's negotiating in good faith. You know, he included that 15 days of early voting. That would be very helpful in states like Georgia. That's why you heard the support from them. He included the, when you go get your driver's license, that you are able to be automatically registered for vote.

And by the way, that would include the 16 and 17 year olds. They can't vote, but at least their data will be in there so that they are automatically registered when they can. He now has included in our negotiations same-day registration. The sticking points, of course, are the voter ID and how that's defined. Do remember, he's not just talking about a photo ID. He actually was talking about multiple kinds of documents, some kind of sworn statement, which we had in our own bill to begin with. And the second area of which we have to work things out is, of course, vote by mail. I don't think we can go backwards

on that anymore, Dan, after the pandemic. 34 states don't require an excuse. So those are two. And then, yes, what would I like to see added to his proposal? You know, there's a lot of things, obviously. But how about notary publics having to sign off on getting a ballot i think some of your listeners would be shocked by this six states including south carolina basically say if you want to get a vote by mail ballot or absentee ballot whatever you want to call it you got to have a notary public come and sign for it. Now, that isn't hard, right? What a joke. Someone with COVID had to have a notary public through a window sign their little notary signature with their little stamp just to be able to get their ballot.

That's crazy. One real threat to democracy in this country is not just voter suppression, but election subversion and the idea that Republicans will cast out legally count votes. State legislators would be able to get rid of election officials who they disagree with. This is something that we came very close to this being a gigantic problem in 2020. It's not addressed in the For the People Act, S-1 and any form. But you, along with Senator Warnock and others, have co-sponsored a bill. Can you tell us, one, what's in this bill and how real a threat do you think election subversion is?

Sure. It's a real threat. It's happening right now. And it basically prohibits these legislatures from taking over and throwing out the work of the people who are supposed to do it, which is the election officials. And we actually are working on getting that in the ultimate bill. And we're in the midst of talking with Senator Manchin about that another. So that's an example of, by the way, they just keep coming up with new dirty tricks and that you want to have

a bill that is completely up to date. And I guess if you want to look at any silver lining of Republicans completely blocking debate on this bill, we now have a chance to add that. That's the only silver lining I could find. But that is that's one. And the other thing we didn't talk about is the Disclose Act that's in there and was in Senator Manchin's proposal. Yes, every piece of it was in there, which would be really helpful with the outside super PAC money. And then we can figure out who's giving that money.

Obviously, the Senate is taking off shortly, was going to be out in August. We now have a bipartisan infrastructure deal, a pledge to move on budget reconciliation for infrastructure. Where do you think in the calendar we're next going to hear or have a vote on voting rights and protecting democracy? We must do it soon. We can't wait till right before the election. So I can't give you the exact date. A lot of this has to do with the procedural issue but nothing stops senator schumer who has made this his number one priority that's why it's sf1 nothing stops him from as he has said bringing it up again when the time is right so i think you won't there's just no way we're letting this go dormant we just have to figure

out the right thing. And remember, yes, the infrastructure package, but we also have to have the second package, which is things like child care and housing, things we've been talking about for quite a while. My frustration right now in general with the filibuster is there's other things we have to do, too, that don't fit under reconciliation, which is where that second package will be. That's the things like I just mentioned, child care housing, at least they can be related to taxes. And so you're able to put them in there. But immigration

reform in a big way, like we should do it, like many Republicans actually supported in the past. But we every time we just came up short, Or climate change legislation. Yes, we can put some green infrastructure in the packages, but that doesn't get us where we need to get. And so that's why, again, to move on these major, major bills that we've been waiting so long to do, we can't sit around and wait for this archaic Senate procedure to suddenly magically change on its own. There are two sort of ticking clocks that are putting pressure on the voting rights stuff. One is, obviously, we have an election coming up next year, but more short-term and more urgent than that is the provision, which very, I think, people were pleasantly surprised

to see in Senate Managers Compromise to deal with partisan gerrymandering and put in place independent redistricting commissions. That has to happen very shortly in order to be in place for 2022. Is that one of the arguments that you're making to people in the caucus about this? Thank you, Dan, for bringing that up, because we know how people have messed around with these districts that hurt the popular will and the popular will when you look at where people are on these, you know, 88% of people wanting background checks for guns, you name it, they're with us. And so the fact that you'll have states that actually, as Tammy Baldwin would point out, had a Democratic governor, Democratic senator, and then their

Republicans just dominate these congressional seats, we have to make a change. And that's what the gerrymandering commissions are about. And so that is in Senator Manchin's proposal. Senator Angus King, who's an independent, is a big fan of this. And so we can't wait to do that because, as you point out, these districts have to be determined. They can't do it the day before the election, figure out what territory you're voting in and what you're serving. Before I let you go, I wanted to ask you about two things unrelated to voting rights. First is this infrastructure package. What is your view of how this should be sequenced in terms of the bipartisan deal and budget reconciliation? Or is your vote on the

bipartisan deal contingent upon an agreement to do a larger budget reconciliation plan that includes some of the things you just mentioned? Yeah, I would say most of our caucus believe that we need to do these together. Either they believe it in their heart, which I do. And by the way, together, I don't mean on the same day, because we can never do anything in the Senate on the same day. By this, I mean, we have a general agreement for the money, we have a general agreement for what's going to be in that second package. And then we most likely vote on the bipartisan package first. be a Democratic package, just like the incredibly popular and successful American Rescue Plan was done through reconciliation with Democratic votes. This will be a very similar situation. So you can have an agreement in general terms on that and then vote on the bipartisan bill first. And so that's how I view it. We have to make some decision. And even if you didn't believe that in your heart, you got to believe it pragmatically

because the House isn't just going to vote for this alone. They've made that very clear. And so if you want to just get, let's say you're someone that doesn't care about the second package, and I think everyone does in our caucus, I do. But if you didn't care about it, if you want to get your own package through,

you got to get it through the House. So you've got to get some general agreement on the second package and the same to get the votes in the Senate, because I don't know what number of Republicans you're going to get on this package, but isn't going to be nearly enough. So you've got to get a bunch of Democrats. So I think there's a way to do this. And we've had many, many discussions about this, not just in Senate leadership, but with everyone. And I think there's general agreement, I'm not saying it's uniform, that we're going to have to do something like that. Last question. You have written and focused a lot of your energy on antitrust around big tech

in particular. Like having it be the last question when we have one minute to go. No, I'm kidding. Yes, exactly. Talk about it for an hour, Dan. And we would love to have you back to talk about it if I'm not very fascinated. But there was progress on this last night in a House committee.

Anything upcoming in the Senate that you want to see done or you're trying to get done? Actually, one of the bills that they passed out was my bill, which actually has passed the Senate, which is really the first key. And I know you know this from your time in government, the FTC and the antitrust division of justice, which are key to getting all this done. Lena Kahn, of course, is now who I introduced at the Commerce Committee, is now leading the FTC.

They cannot take on the biggest companies the world has ever known with duct tape and Band-Aids. So what my bill does is finally change the merger fees that are charged when companies come with mergers. It'll bring in over 100 million so that they can hire lawyers they need. I did it with Grassley. I got it through the committee unanimously, and it has sailed through the Senate. And so now that is one of the bills they passed. They also passed some really good tech bills, which I will be taking on in the Senate. I'm currently working and very close for a Republican author on one of them. And so that is going to be key, though a discriminatory one that they have is very important. And then I have a sweeping bill

that goes beyond tech that would include pharma and online travel and ag and all these areas. And there is interest in the Republican caucus, I would say, for parts of that bill, just like Grassley and I just did the fee bill. So that's something else I'm working on with the House, with the Senate. We are a small but mighty group who's willing to work on antitrust and understand it and work with the Republicans. And I've always said there's no monopoly on good ideas. We can't afford divides in our little group because we have so much up against us. We've got major companies against us. We've got people in kind of both parties who go, oh, I don't want to deal with this. We've got a lack against us. We've got people in kind of both parties who go, oh, I don't want to deal with this.

We've got a lack of knowledge. And the one thing that's been great with the Biden administration and President Biden putting in Lena Kahn and Tim Wu, both outside of the box thinkers, that we are moving forward. And Merrick Garland used to teach a class on antitrust. So there is an understanding that we haven't had for a long while. I know you have to go. So thank you so much for joining us. And we would love to have you back to have a much longer conversation about big tech and all your antitrust. That would be wonderful. We can talk about app stores, home technology. Yes. You name it. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Senator. Thank you.

So along with voting rights and infrastructure, President Biden also focused on the issue of crime this week with the White House speech that laid out his strategy to prevent gun violence. While overall crime is down nationally by 6 percent%, homicides went up anywhere from 25 to 40% in 2020, the single biggest one-year increase since 1960. Murders are up in just about every major city. There have been at least 293 mass shootings since the start of this year, 10 last weekend alone. Polls showed that crime was one of the second most important issue for Democratic voters in the New York City mayor's race, which Eric Adams is currently leading, a former captain in the NYPD who focused his campaign on fighting crime and violence. And if that's what's happening in Democratic politics, you can imagine what Republicans

are doing with this issue. But just in case you can't imagine, here's a taste. You will not hear Joe Biden beg forgiveness from the thousands of families whose loved ones have been killed by the Democratic Party's nihilistic embrace of crime and disorder. Looting is reparations. You go looters. Defund the police. It's childish. It's all so ridiculous and no sane person believes a word of it. The same talk about gun control and assault weapon like AR-15s are the problem. So if you're opposed to getting murdered outside Cheesecake Factory, you're a white supremacist. Love that last one. All right. I want to get to the policies that Biden outlined on Wednesday in a second. But first, I want to get your reaction to a CNN report that the White House has been

alarmed, quote, alarmed by the rise in violent crime. They think it could get worse this summer. And that's one reason why Biden gave this speech. What do you make of how seriously they seem to be taking this issue? I would like to make one point first that just so we put this in perspective. What year did you say the increase in murders happened? That would be 2020. Yes. The president 2020 was. It wasn't it wasn't Joe Biden and Antifa? Definitely it was Donald Trump. So we should just stipulate

that the Republican view is in the year 2020, the rise in murders was a result of big city, pro-Antifa Democratic mayors. And in 2021, the person responsible

for the rise in murders is the Democratic president. Right, of course. Amazing how that happens. The fact that Republicans make up a bunch of bullshit about crime as part of a political strategy does not mean it isn't an actual real issue that affects people's lives. And a rise in murder at that scale is something that has to be dealt with. And there are limits to what the federal government can do, given that so much of policing and law enforcement happens at the state and city level.

But Joe Biden's president of the United States, murderers up in the United States, addressing it seems like the exact right thing to do substantively, if not politically. Right. So there's a few questions here. What is causing the increase in violent crime? How real is it? How serious is it? And then what is the public's perception of it? Which are not all the same thing, right? So there's a lot of, you know, people, again, there's some statistics about how crime overall is going down. There's not enough data yet to find out whether sort of the skyrocketing murder rate from 2020 is going to be replicated again in 2021. And we don't know whether people's perceptions of crime are driven by what they're actually

seeing in their communities or sort of the media coverage and political coverage of crime. But regardless, when a bunch of people are worrying about crime, and we know that from data, whether it's real or whether it's partly real and partly driven by Republican attacks and media coverage. It's still real to those people. They're still scared. And to that end, you know, I mentioned the poll about New York City primary voters. YouGov did a poll just a few weeks ago, people said that violent crime is now the number one issue that they're most concerned about ahead of the pandemic and the economy. And then when asked who has done a better job handling crime, 34% said Trump, 32% said Biden. Among independents, it was 39% Trump, 23% Biden. So I do think when you see numbers like that, which I'm sure the White House is seeing, and you hear from local law enforcement officials and local officials that crime is on the rise in

the cities, and that is real, that is real. Yeah, you're going to have Joe Biden go out there and give a speech about crime and lay out a strategy, right? Yeah, I mean, it would be insane not to. And there has been in some corners, some dismissing of these numbers as a pandemic related aberration because they run counter to the long-term trends on crime since the 90s. And I think we should talk about why it would be related to the pandemic. And a number of people who study crime and sociologists, progressive sociologists and people who study crime have looked into this. And there's some belief that the pandemic created the kinds of economic and social dislocation and

disconnection that can fuel crime. So you had people struggling with finances, with mental health issues, a lack of social services like schools, community centers, churches. And when that happens in neighborhoods that were already plagued by violence and trauma and inequality, it exacerbates the situation. Right. I don't think it is, anyone can say it's a one-to-one ratio, right? Because this happened because of the pandemic. But you also would have to be a moron to say they're unrelated, right? It's obviously related in some significant way. The thing that is notable is that the data thus far in the first half of 2021, which while the pandemic is far from over, but society has opened up in some ways and some of the

2020 causes are less present now, the murder rates are still up. In the beginning half of this year, we're up 49% over this point in 2019. And there is some sociologists and criminologists who talk about sort of a self-perpetuating nature of crime, like crime leads to more crime. But regardless of the reasons, we can't dismiss it and we have to address it substantively and politically. So Biden focused his speech on five main strategies to reduce gun violence, stemming the flow of illegal guns, more support and resources for police departments,

more community violence interventions, expanding job opportunities and summer programs for kids and re-entry programs for people who've been incarcerated. What do you think of the plan, both from a policy perspective and a political perspective? Well, as a noted expert on crime policy, it seems great to me. As you always have been.

Yes. Substantively, it seems like the right thing to do. Politically, I think it is sort of a masterstroke, which is in the old 90s DLC world of smart politics, the message to Democrats was be tough on crime and soft on guns, right? That you had to, that that is a way, like that that was the right approach. By focusing, you know, this is obviously substantively correct, but politically focusing on guns allows Democrats to go on the offense on this issue. Because Republicans are the ones blocking the policies, the common sense, incredibly

popular policies, to help with universal background checks and other ways to keep – to stem the ready availability of guns that lead to these crimes and these murders. And so I think it's the exact right thing to do. It is leading its front foot forward. And if done correctly, can be a very strong way to defuse these attacks and put Republicans on the defensive. The one thing we haven't talked about yet that we should is the element of how Democrats should talk about the police and police reform as they're trying to address crime. So Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist who studies crime, talked to Derek Thompson at The Atlantic about this. And he said there is some evidence that police and residents both decided to pull back after the George Floyd protest. So the police refused to involve themselves in certain incidents and the public is less willing to reach out to the police for help because they don't trust the police.

And Republicans, of course, are all over this issue. They're basically they see the rise in crime or in violent crime and say, look at that. And they're and they're trying to, like they did in 2020, tie Democratic candidates to progressive calls for defunding the police. And it was interesting. I thought, you know, Al Sharpton said to The New York Times a couple weeks ago, we're in a very precarious position. People are afraid of the cops and the robbers. We have both of them that we've got to deal with, which I thought was a pretty good way to put it. Like, how how do you think Democrats should navigate that? challenging, right? Because the power of the Republican media apparatus allows them to convince large swaths of voters that the vast majority of Democrats are for defund the police, whatever that means, right? I mean, even we saw polling in 2020 in Wisconsin and Michigan, obviously at the center

of the conversation around police violence. And that showed that large portions of voters, including in some cases, nearly a third of Democrats believe that Joe Biden supported the position of defunding the police. So there's a ton of power in that. You and I talked about this a few weeks ago. I talked about it with Cornell on Campaign Experts React. There is some models of success in the New Mexico special where crime was the center of the Republican attacks on the Democrat, where the Democratic candidate who had supported the Breve Act and was being accused of defunding the police did two things that were notable.

One, she talked about her support for law enforcement without backing away for her calls for police accountability and police reform, or backing away from the important conversation around structural racism in America and in policing, and then took that and then pivoted to stronger attacks against her opponent. And so I think address the issue. Don't back away. It is not a binary choice between talking about efforts to combat crime and also recognizing the role of structural racism in policing and then go on the offense. Right. I think that is sort of the three steps there. And we should say the reason it's not a binary choice or it shouldn't be a binary choice is not just because it's like some Democratic strategy hatched in Washington to win elections.

Like this is where most of the public is. Yeah. So, you know, and there are conflicting views among the public. So like Vox and Data for Progress did a poll a little while back. And even among just take black voters, right? 63% of black voters said that most police officers cannot be trusted. Right. Totally understandable. cannot be trusted, right? Totally understandable. 65% of black voters, almost the same exact number, said that regular police patrols made them feel more safe. So you have the same people thinking,

I don't trust a lot of police officers, and yet I feel that policing can provide public safety, which is a very complicated, nuanced views that a lot of people have. So I think when Democrats try to figure out how to reform police departments, it is not necessarily contradictory to say that I want to protect my constituents from both gun violence and police violence, that I want to make sure that we hold police accountable, but that we have police around to help with gun violence. And by the way, we talk a lot about how police are asked to do too much and police are doing everything and they're responding to mental health issues and drug abuse issues and all kinds of other things that police have no business responding to. But when it comes to gun violence specifically, which is what's on the rise, there are not a lot of alternatives to policing, at least in the short term, right?

Long term ways to prevent gun violence, you know, get rid of more guns on the street, pass more gun restrictions, community based violence interventions, right? There's a whole bunch of real programs that can work here. But those are programs that pay dividends across the long term, right? In the short term, when there's murders in the streets right now, and it's gun violence, like policing is a strategy that works into a strategy that the vast majority of Americans, of Democrats, of black voters, of everyone wants to see. And that's just, that's according to all the data, right? So I do think that like Democrats, it may sound contradictory that they have to be contradictory, that they have to be both for police reform, but against complete defunding.

But that's actually where most of the voters are, including most Democratic voters. That's right. That's absolutely right. I mean, one last question on this is, what are the elections we've seen since 2020 where crime has played a central role? Tell us about the politics of this issue. So I'm thinking of the New York mayor's race, but also the Buffalo mayor's race, which socialist India Walton just won after pushing to reinvest some police funding. I'm thinking of progressive prosecutor Larry Krasner's reelection in Philadelphia. And then what you just talked about, which is the special house election the Democrats just won in New Mexico. I think the answer is that it's complicated. the Democrats just won in New Mexico? I think the answer is that it's complicated.

There is such an attempt to drive a simplistic political narrative or outcome from these sets of things, right? People can go find a data point to prove their prior views if they want. If you think that there's very good politics in pushing very, very hard on police reinvestment, then you look at Buffalo. But then someone else looks at that and says, that was a mayor's race with a 20,000-person turnout in a city with more than 200,000 residents. You could look at New York and say, here we are a year after the murder of George Floyd in a massive uprising in America against structural racism and police violence. And a former cop won the Democratic primary in one of the biggest, bluest cities in the country.

But you can then also look at, and I think Alex Perrine of the New Republic had a very good article on this the other day. Eric Adams' story is much more complicated than just being a former cop. Yes, he is a former cop. Yes, he talked about crime a lot, and particularly how it affected poorer New Yorkers. There's a really interesting anecdote from the campaign where there was a shooting in Times Square, and Andrew Yang rushed there to talk about it. And Eric Adams went and he took on Andrew Yang and said, these sort of things have been happening in my community for a long time, not just here in Times Square. It just took everyone else too long to notice. But Eric Adams has also, who's been in politics a very long time, been a fierce

critic of the New York Police Department in a lot of specific incidents. He has pushed for the ending of qualified immunity. For me, he is a former cop, but he's also someone who was seen by a lot of people as a critic of the New York Police Department. And so it's all very also what I hadn't realized is that he himself had been a victim of police brutality. And it's one of the reasons he joined the police force, because he thought that he could, you know, push for reform from the inside. You can debate how much he actually accomplished there. But he has been talking about police reform for quite a while, because he's been on the outside as well. So I do think there was this

sort of overly simplistic narrative about Eric Adams that he was just like, tough on crime, pro police, but it's actually much more nuanced than that his message and his background. I mean, think if you're going to try to draw any larger lesson from these elections in these very democratic cities, the one that I would at least take is you have to talk about crime, have a problem to deal with rising crime rates because voters, including Democratic voters, are very concerned about them, but also have a plan for police reform because voters, including Democratic and some some Republican voters are concerned about police violence. So you have to talk about both. That's the only that if we're going to try to draw a lesson from it, that is the lesson. I also think it's like people don't only want to be told like what you're going to take away from them, which I think is when you shorten it to just defund the police, all it sounds like is you're defunding the police. I think what a lot of advocates and reformers really want to do is they want to fund alternatives to policing like mental health services, addiction services, et cetera. And I

think the candidates who've been successful have said, yes, we want to have a police force that, by the way, is held accountable for misconduct and brutality. And we want to reform the police force to do that. But we also want to fund alternatives to police so that police aren't responding to every call. And then it's about both how you're protecting the public and how you're improving public safety and how you're reforming a broken system. And when you just shorten it to defund, which again, not a lot of Democratic candidates are doing. So it's something that the right says that we're doing. But the Democratic candidates themselves aren't really talking about defund. Some activists are. But when you're willing to talk about both of those things, you're going to be more successful. And that's been true for, you know, whether it's India Walton, who just won in Buffalo, whether it's Larry Krasner, whether it's in the special house election in New Mexico, like that's sort of what the Democrats who've been winning have been doing on this is sort of talking about the issue as a whole. Like, you know, Eric Adams at one point in a debate told Maya Wiley accused her of defunding the police. And she had basically been for that in the past. But she said, no, I'm not for defunding

the police at all. And she was backed by AOC. All right. Like she got the AOC endorsement. So it's not like there's any Democratic candidates running around out there anymore saying that they wanted to fund the police. It's just not happening. I think there's one other element. This is you. We can't let the Republicans off the hook for what they're trying to do here. This is a part, a central piece of the Republican political strategy going back to 1968, right? When Nixon ran as a law and order president. They focus on crime as an issue, particularly at times in which there is a conversation and progress on moving closer towards being a multiracial democracy. It is to say that advances in civil rights,

advances in political power, in economic power for black and brown and other non-white voters comes at a cost to you, white Christian voters, right? We talked about this with Jelani Collin. We talked about but this is the central story. And we should not ignore that story. We should recognize that the efficacy of that crime attack goes up when crime rates go up. And even if it's not happening in your city, and you know this as a nervous flyer, people's ability to calculate their own risks of danger are quite small, right? Like you drive your car every day without being afraid. I've seen you literally rip an armrest off of a regional jet at the slightest bit of turbulence, even though like I can tell you a thousand times intellectually that which is. Yeah,

no, and I get it. Yeah. And this crime is the same way, right? You can tell people it's not in their community. Doesn't mean they're not going to worry about their committee. So the salience of the political power of the issue goes up. But with everything, you have to call Republicans out on it. You have to. And this is why crime rates should bother Democrats and progressives, right? Because last time we saw sort of the politics of crime take hold in the 70s and early 80s, we ended up with over-policing, draconian crime measures, mass incarceration, right? draconian crime measures, mass incarceration, right? Like the policies that come from rising crime rates and the resulting politics are bad substantively, right? And they hurt people. And crime, by the way, crime in communities exacerbates inequality, exacerbates poverty,

hurts children, you know, gives people trauma for generations. Right. So like it shouldn't just be something the Democrats say, oh, we have to take on crime because Republicans are going to use it to bludgeon us like we should want to take on crime because a progressive vision of America includes making sure that every community can feel safe. Right. Especially communities that are majority black, majority brown, impoverished, right? Like that's where crime tends to hit the worst. And we should be saying like, no, no, we want those communities to be safe, right? So like I do think there's a substantive issue here as well as a political issue that we

should be pushing on. Dan, before we go, I just want to get your thoughts on two words that have echoed across the right wing media ecosystem this week. Speaker Trump. That's right. In an interview with MAGA grifter Wayne Allen Root, Trump was asked if he'd be willing to run for speaker if Republicans take back the House in 2022. Here's what he said. Why not run in 2022 for the United States Congress, a House seat in Florida, win big, lead us to a dramatic landslide victory,

take in the House by 50 seats, and then you become the Speaker of the House, lead the impeachment of Biden, and start criminal investigations against Biden. You'll wipe him out for his last two years, and then you'll be president. Do it. Do it. Very interesting. You'll be a folk hero. You'll be a folk hero. And people have said, people have said, run for the Senate. Okay, run for the Senate. But you know what? Your idea might be better. So not a denial, though, Jason Miller, Trump's paid liar and all around horrible human being. He did say later that Trump has, quote, zero desire to be speaker.

What do you think? Is this a Trump story that should make us laugh or make us worry? Before I get to that, it is we don't hear Trump's voice as much anymore. And so I'd sort of forgotten his habit of agreeing with literally any idea, which is based in some sort of underlying compliment, right? If someone was like former president Trump, you have just a great nose. Have you thought about cutting it off and putting it in a museum? He'd be like, you know, I,

a lot of people have been talking about my nose. Kind of seems like a good idea. It's an interesting idea. It's a very interesting idea. I hear a lot of people are saying it. A lot of people are saying it. But like, look,

has there ever been a person better designed for a job than Donald Trump, a speaker? He is someone with a mastery of details, deeply engaged in the nuts and bolts and the intricate rules of legislating. A real people pleaser, trying to make sure that he's a real diplomat, trying to get everyone in a caucus on board. Great manager. I am told that he is a student of Lyndon Johnson. He can recite lines from Robert Caro's Master of the Senate from heart. Like this is the perfect, like this is a man finding his passion in the house. No, it's fucking absurd.

He would be truly a worse speaker than Kevin McCarthy, which is saying a lot. And, but there is like, is that your friend, Paul Ryan? I put you in a tough position. I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I think Donald, I'm not gonna take the bait. It's not going to take the bait today. We're running long here.

No one, no one's got time for a 17 minute. Paul Ryan rant circa 2018. Can't blame you for trying. It's not going to happen, although it's notable even Wayne Allen Root is too stupid because to notice, Donald Trump could be Speaker without running for the House because there's nothing in the Constitution that says

the Speaker of the House has to be a member of the House, which is why... Which is crazy, by the way, but yeah. It seems like it turns out those founders had... It have like a loophole yes they they made they made they've made some errors early on um the but it it is like the cry part is if donald trump said he wanted to be speaker tomorrow the the house would vote out kevin mccarthy right? He like that is, that is a level of support he has. He could do it if he wants to. And that's, that's the scary part about if he just said he wanted it, they would give

it to him. And it just speaks to the larger fact that Trump may be off the main stage, be forced to do interviews with Wayne Allen Root, but he still is the most dominant figure in Republican politics and calls the shots. I think you told me that you did get a DCCC fundraising email about this, though. Is it something to get people riled up about in advance of 22 that if the Republicans take over the House that we could see Speaker Trump trying to investigate and impeach Joe Biden? I will say I was unfamiliar with, you know, I'm a regular listener of the Wayne Allen Root Show, but I missed it on this day. So when I got the email, I thought they just like made it up out of whole cloth.

And I was like legitimately mad at the Triple C. It's like, come on, be better than that. You're not a scam pack. But it turned out he did actually the words that come out of his mouth. The words did come out of his mouth, and Kevin McCarthy was later on forced to talk about it on a Sunday show, which was a particularly bit of disgrace for Speaker McCarthy. I do not think you can sell – voters are smarter than thinking Donald Trump is going to be the Speaker of the House. One, they don't – mostly don't know that Donald Trump doesn't have to be in the House. It seems incredibly stupid and crazy. But I think there's a bigger question about, you know, whether Democrats should

keep Trump front of mind heading into 2022, right? Whether that's his speaker, because he's doing this rally apparently this weekend, his general influence in the party, what, you know, like, that's a different, that's a different strategic thing. The speaker thing itself is too narrow and absurd to be a credible argument for donations, volunteers, and votes. But the fact that Trump could become speaker is the larger issue that probably has to be addressed. Yeah, the guy is a threat, whether he's sitting behind Joe Biden during the State of the Union scowling at him, which is what would happen. I mean, that would be worth the price of admission right there, right?

But don't you, I was going to say, Trump knows that. You can imagine it, at least it's entered Trump's mind, that image, thinking to himself, maybe I do want to be speaker just for that. So it's definitely entered his mind. But no, I think, look, the threat is there. And I do think that's going to be a big part of that. Look, the challenge is you do want Trump sort of front and center in people's minds heading into the midterms for a very substantive, serious reason, which is that he's the and runs for it. And then because of the polarized closed country, he's like, you know, 40,000 or so votes away from being president again. Right. And people should fucking understand that that's the reality. Of course, the challenge is we don't really hear him that much anymore, like you just said. And even though he's all over conservative radio and podcasts and OAN and Newsmax, most of the country isn't watching that. And so I do think for most voters heading into 2022, they're not necessarily going to be thinking about Trump all

the time because Trump isn't getting the coverage he used to get in mainstream media, which is a good thing in some ways. But also, I wonder if people are going to really understand the threat that's still out there from, you there from Republicans taking the House and then Trump potentially winning in 2024. It's an open question as to whether he's going to be much more front of mind when people start campaigning in 2022. There's going to be a bunch of primaries. And he starts campaigning too. And he's out there. Fox will start. He'll be on Fox more. But, you know, it certainly won't be like 2018 or 2020 for sure. He's not tweeting. But that's why that's why, Dan, we have this bipartisan infrastructure deal and people are going to go to the polls and they're going to say there's a road coming in a couple of months.

And that's enough for me to vote for Democrats. We went on a long car trip this weekend down the coast to the beach. And on the way there, there was tremendous traffic because of road construction. And I became an ardent opponent of infrastructure. Two small children in the car. That's tough. Wow, backlash for infrastructure. But then on the way home, we finally got Jack asleep. He does not like his car seat.

And then we hit a pothole and he woke up. And I became a huge proponent of the infrastructure deal. Fixing the damn roads. There you go. So Ron Klain, I'm going to send you an email with a very specific pothole on 101 North that you should take a look at. That's real power, Dan. That's the influence that you've been hoping for ever since you left the White House. Okay.

On that note, thank you to Amy Klobuchar for joining us today. Everyone have a great weekend. I am off next week on vacation. So I'll see you guys the week after. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer

is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are Jazzy Marine and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn,

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