Pod Save America - “Is Facebook killing people?” (with Sen. Brian Schatz)

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

The White House calls out Facebook for spreading misinformation about vaccines, Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz talks about climate change, immigration, voting rights and his tweeting habit; and later, the guys answer a few listener questions.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.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vittorio. Why did you say it like that? I don't know how I said it. I'll leave it in. What did I say? I don't know. I have a tickle. I have a tickle. There's a gay cold going around.

There really was. There was a gay pride cold. But you are COVID negative. Many times. Many, many tests ever since. On today's show, the White House calls out Facebook for spreading misinformation about vaccines. Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz talks to Tommy and me about climate change, immigration, voting rights, and his tweeting habit. And later, we answer a few of your questions. Let's get right to the news. The Delta variant of COVID-19 is currently tearing through unvaccinated populations around the world.

And here in the United States, where about 43 percent of eligible Americans still haven't gotten their first shot. People's refusal to get vaccinated is leading to more hospitalizations, more deaths and the return of restrictions in places like here in Los Angeles, where masks are once again required for public indoor settings. The Biden administration is now saying that one reason people aren't getting their shots is because of the misinformation being spread on social media platforms like Facebook. We heard it from White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who told Kara Swisher a few weeks ago that unvaccinated focus groups keep repeating vaccine misinformation that they say they saw on Facebook. We heard it on Thursday

from Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who issued the first public health advisory of his tenure on health misinformation. We heard it on Friday from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and we heard it from President Biden himself in response to a reporter's question on the topic. Here are some clips of the last three people I mentioned. My worry is that all this is misinformation that's floating around. It's having a real cost that can be measured in lives lost, and that is just tragic. There's about 12 people who are producing 65 percent of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms. All of them remain

active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms, including Facebook, ones that Facebook owns. What's your message to platforms like Facebook? to platforms like Facebook? They're killing people. I mean, it really, look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they're killing people. So Facebook responded

in a rather whiny blog post that their data shows 85% of U.S. Facebook users have been or want to be vaccinated. They said they've removed over 18 million instances of COVID-19 misinformation since the vaccinated. They said they've removed over 18 million instances of COVID-19 misinformation since the pandemic began, and they've prohibited the purchase of ads that include false information about vaccines. Biden then clarified his remarks this morning,

Monday morning, saying, quote, Facebook isn't killing people. My hope is that they would do something about the misinformation. That's what I meant. Facebook isn't killing people. Mark Zuckerberg is killing. Just to be more specific, I want to clarify my comments. Mark and Cheryl themselves are out there killing people. No, no. COVID is killing people. Facebook is spreading COVID. Tommy, how much blame do you think Facebook deserves here?

I mean, some part of it. I think I found the Facebook response to be shockingly childish. They tried to throw it into a political frame and suggest this was about meeting a political goal. And I think it's about saving lives and getting people good information. Before COVID existed, the World Health Organization listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 threats to global health. It's not a new problem because for years, Facebook, Twitter, other social media sites have allowed vaccine misinformation to spread. They also helped it spread. If you joined like a natural parenting group, you would often get algorithmically shown a suggestion that you join an anti-vaccine group, right? So they've helped these groups grow.

They've helped them organize. This is a long-term problem. It's not just specific to COVID. Now, it's hard to really delineate what their share of the blame is. But it's notable that they're happy to offer you reams and reams of information about all the ways they're helping people get good information. And when you ask them to provide information about who is seeing vaccine misinformation on their site, they refuse to present any data or give it to researchers or do anything. So, you know, clearly like you're hearing anecdotally in polling focus groups that people are getting bad info and getting scared about the vaccine on Facebook. Love it. What do you think? I mean, they've spent a very long time kind of priming the the conspiratorial pump. That's outright misinformation and falsehoods. But that's also just sort of encouraging conspiratorial communities to form on a host of different issues and to elevate some of the most conspiratorial thinkers in our politics, mostly from the right wing. And there is plenty of

misinformation they have taken down. But when you go and look at what stays up, no, it is sometimes hard to identify a brazen lie. But just asking questions, just sowing misinformation, just sharing misleading statistics. Like that's, that is the kind of, um, that is the like bread and butter of countless conspiracy theorists. And to Facebook's and to Facebook's point that lives on Facebook that lives off Facebook. It's a huge societal problem, but Facebook is a massive part of how people get and share information. And so it is a big problem on Facebook. Facebook talks about the billions and billions of pieces of positive, good information people have received. To Tommy's point, they will never tell you the other half of that equation. They know how many pieces of misinformation they've taken down. They could very easily tell us how many people saw it before that happened, but they won't. Yeah. So one thing we know for sure is that the country is awash in

misinformation about vaccines, right? One in five Americans, according to a YouGov poll, believe that it's definitely true or probably true that there's a microchip inside the COVID-19 vaccines. 30 to 44 year olds were the most likely age group to believe that. So this is not something, Lovett, that we can just blame on the baby boomers, which I know you always love to do. not something love it that we can just blame on the baby boomers which i know you always love to do look a millennial is just a baby boomer waiting to happen this is the reality of the situation 20 think there's a fucking microchip in the covid vaccine so we know the misinformation exists and obviously facebook is one of the you know biggest the biggest social media platform in the world right um on friday the day this all went down the top facebook post about vaccines in the world, right? On Friday, the day this all went down, the top Facebook post about vaccines

in the United States was from Marjorie Taylor Greene falsely stating that the vaccines are not FDA approved. That was the number one post on Friday, the day all this went down and then Facebook started complaining about it. So, I mean, it's really like,

Facebook is the sort of weapon of choice, but the ammo comes from Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Republican politicians. Donald Trump is now flirting with it over the weekend. He had a statement, you know, saying maybe people aren't taking it because they don't trust Joe Biden, you know, so he's he's dipping into it, too. But Facebook certainly helps spread it. Here's one thing I think that is indisputable is that their response is incoherent. So Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Democrat, big time anti-vaxxer. He's banned on Instagram, but he's not banned on Facebook. How does that make sense?

How does that work? Maybe he like broke the terms of service on IG, but not Facebook. But seemingly like you could rationally decide, okay, this guy is a bad actor spreading harmful information. We should take him off the platform. And there was a study that labeled these folks the disinformation dozen that the White House has cited that found that 65% of anti-vax content comes from 12 people. They looked at Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And nine of these 12 are still on all of these platforms. So, you know, Facebook's approach to these issues has evolved over time.

They started in the lazy Silicon Valley libertarian place of like, we believe in free speech. We believe it's bullshit. It's just like that's the easiest thing for the Mark Zuckerberg of the world to say to rationalize and defend a hands off approach. Over time, they started taking people off like Alex Jones, you know, folks like that. And they've clamped down harder and harder and harder on disinformation. But I think until October of this year, they allowed anti-vaccine paid advertisements. They were getting money. I mentioned that it was just in October. You're right. They started doing that. And there's still exemptions in that ban for

legislation. So, you know, I'm not saying this is an easy issue, but like it's completely incoherent when you look at their response. So you said like one easy step is at the very least banning people or posts, misinformation posts from folks who are already banned on other Facebook-owned platforms. That's low-hanging fruit. What more could Facebook and other social media platforms be doing in general to combat misinformation about the vaccines?

Love it. Well, one step that Facebook refuses to take is like the only information we get, a kind of overview of what people are seeing is from Facebook. And because Facebook has a communication strategy to be completely disingenuous, like obtuse and sleazy through virtually all of their communications for years, nobody trusts what they put out. Nobody believes it's giving them a full picture. And we know that they're kind of cherry picking the information that best suits their argument. You know, they'll point out all

the billions of they'll point out all the billions of, they'll point out all the misinformation they take down. They don't tell us how much of it has reached people, for example. And so there's this push to allow researchers access to Facebook's information, its data, its back end to kind of do research on the ways in which misinformation spreads and promulgates through their platform and off their platform. And they obviously do not see it in their interest to allow this to happen. But I would argue that if they genuinely believe they want to create this safe and productive place for community, they should want this transparency. in a way that's anonymized, in a way that keeps private information private, but that will give them, I think, some credibility and some genuine sort of goodwill in the fight to make a safer community that a huge proportion of the planet uses. So more transparency, the White House has

called on them to be more transparent as well. Tommy, anything else? I think giving independent researchers access to their data is the biggest thing they need to do as well. I mean, like, it just speaks to the fundamental problem with this, this company is like, they say, trust us all the time. And when you think back to all the, you know, sort of like, hat in hand to Mark Zuckerberg apologies that have happened along the way, starting with him suggesting that it's crazy to think that fake news could have had an impact on the 2016 election. They've just given us time and time again reason not to trust what they say. So, you know, I understand that these are not easy questions. The idea of working with the government raises First Amendment issues as well. a platform where videos like the plandemic video that essentially accused Dr. Fauci of creating

the coronavirus didn't spread like wildfire to millions of people for a week before you take it down. Like get some folks on top of this. And again, you know, YouTube is at fault there too, right? Like it's not just Facebook, Twitter, beyond Facebook. So, you know, the other point that Jen Psaki mentioned in her press briefing is that Facebook has the ability to tweak their algorithm to promote credible sources of information over less credible sources. They haven't done that yet. How do we know they can do that? Well, there's the story of the, quote, nicer news feed after the 2020 election. In the days after the election, Facebook employees convinced Mark Zuckerberg to change the algorithm so that it gave more weight and visibility to publishers with high news ecosystem quality or NEQ scores, which are in Facebook, a secret internal ranking that Facebook assigns to

news publishers based on the credibility of their stories. And in the days after the election, when they did that, CNN, New York Times, NPR became more highly visible posts than partisan sites like Breitbart or Occupy Democrats. And so like, and there was this big story, like we had a nicer newsfeed and all the employees were like, are we going to have this forever now? And then a couple of weeks after the election,

after the insurrection, after everything, when Joe Biden gets inaugurated, they just shut it off. They could have done it. I know, and look, and then they clamped down on anti-vaccine information in 2019 after there was a giant measles outbreak,

a disease that we basically eradicated in California that led to like 80 something kids dying. They have, you know, it's announced new policies limiting the spread of groups that give bad health advice or organize, you know, the militias with ties to violence. So along the way, they keep taking these steps. The challenge is like their response seems to be okay, but we've helped so many people find authoritative information by steering them there. But if you create a community where for a decade, anti-vaxxers, QAnon, Alex Jones, just like shred everyone's faith in institutions. And then you have a big tech company handing you over to the CDC for the information about the groups and people they've just been attacking. Like it's not going to work. The

damage is done. Yeah. It's, going to work. The damage is done. It's also like they constantly try to turn their scale from a liability into a strength and we just shouldn't rhetorically allow that message to work on us. If a supermarket had a bunch of different kinds of cereal that were deadly and that if you had a single bite of it

you would fall down and die. We would not accept as an argument from Stop and Shop that they've removed almost 90% of the deadly boxes of cereal. We would say, hold on a second. There's a deeper problem here. How is the cereal getting on your shelves? What brands are responsible? What are you doing to fix it?

And so only in, you know, we don't allow buildings to get so big that parts of it can fall down. We don't allow companies to get so big that their products can kill a certain percentage of their people. Although sometimes we do, to be honest. I was going to say, I think we do both of those things. Sometimes we do those. But we don't accept it.

We don't accept it. And so we should not allow Facebook to use its scale as a defense. It's not a defense. You built this giant fucking conglomerate, this giant monstrosity. You have to figure out how to govern it. It's not our fault you got so big. Oh, and one more thing. I mentioned earlier about Trump in the statement.

What do we think about him now sort of dipping his toe into the I mean, he actually has done it a couple of times now, but it was his vaccine. He likes to take credit for the vaccines being developed under his watch. Now he's saying, oh, people aren't getting them because because they don't trust Joe Biden and they think the election was stolen. It was sort of a mishmash of a dumb statement. But I mean, you're right that this is not a new position for him. It's more of a return to form. You know, there was this infamous study from the late 90s called the Wakefield study that

suggested that measles, mumps and rubella vaccines caused autism. That study has been retracted. Subsequent studies have found it was completely wrong, but it has been enormously damaging and sort of is the root of a lot of the anti-vaxxer sentiment you see. Trump, as recently as 2012, 2014, was tweeting that kids shouldn't get vaccines because it causes autism. So if he's now going back to a position where he's raising concerns about vaccines and getting vaccinated, it would be his previous position that he, you know, kind of grudgingly walked back from once he got into the White House. I mean, thank God, thank God he wants to take credit for the vaccine

on some level, because if he didn't, it's very clear he'd be completely anti-vax. He'd be right there with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson right now. That's where his heart is. But of course, he wants credit for the vaccine. He is vaccinated. So I think we have this like this statement from him is actually just punditry, right? He's not saying he's not saying that the mistrust is correct. He's saying, look at what Biden's causing because for all the reasons he wants to, you know, lay blame at Biden's feet, but he's not actually crossing the threshold yet.

Yeah, but you know, Donald Trump Jr., if you look at his Instagram, which for some reason I do, he posts anti-vaccine stuff all the time. Like recently he posts like a photo of a woman with a baby arm growing out of her head that said something about raise your hand if you got the vaccine, right? It's all like supposed to be for the yucks, memes,

LOL stuff, but it's like clearly- Edgelord, Donald Trump Jr. Exactly. All right, Facebook bad. Let's turn to the Biden White House. They aren't really known for even hitting Republicans or right-wing media all that hard. Why do you think they decided to step out on Facebook? I mean i i think that i talked to some folks there over the weekend who said that the facebook sorry did you do some reporting god damn right i did you know i had like a newsies hat on i got out my typewriter um they said that the facebook's response after vivek's report went out was just unacceptable and it just seemed like they were going to drag their feet again and And then the White House is out there saying,

hey, we really need your help with disinformation and hygiene on your platform. And instead of hearing about Facebook launching some new initiative to get anti-vax info off their platform, you read stories in the New York Times by people like Kevin Roos about how they might get rid of CrowdTangle, which is the only tool we have to really understand how people are engaging with posts on platforms. What posts are getting viewed the most?

It's an internal Facebook entity that they might just shut down because it's creating a PR headache for them. Because they don't like seeing Kevin Roos' posts about the top 10 Facebooks being like, Bungino, Bungio, Bungio. An AP story about the defeating of a sex trafficking ring because QAnon latched onto it. Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro. Yeah, it does seem like the Biden folks were just they're frustrated.

Right. And I'm sure President Biden's comment. I don't even know if his comment was planned, but it's killing people. I'm sure he's frustrated because they're you know, the vaccination campaign has stalled a bit over the last month. And they're seeing the Delta variant spread. And I think going public with this was the only way they knew how to do it, as opposed to just quietly talking to Facebook behind the scenes. Yeah, it just comes on the heels of constant dumb decision making by Facebook. They didn't ban Holocaust denial until October of 2020.

Mark Zuckerberg's official position was that he thought it should be on the platform so people should know it's out there. I love it. It's worse than that. He said, I don't think that they're intentionally getting it wrong when asked about people who post Holocaust. And I'm like, yes, they are, man.

Yeah, it seems like you might be off on that one. There's a long history of intentionally posting anti-Semitic stuff. They wouldn't fact check political ads in the 2020 campaign. So I imagine there's just an accumulating frustration

at the idiocy. I just want to say also that I appreciated this sort of Biden saying they're killing people. It launched this conversation. Then Biden walked it back. It's kind of like a reverse Trump because what used to happen is Trump would go out and say something kind of kind of that implied something so beyond the pale, it kind of repulsed most human beings. Then a few of his most devoted people would go out there and say he didn't mean it. And then on Monday, he would say it explicitly and they'd all be embarrassed. This is the reverse of that. Biden says Biden says Facebook is killing people. I think they are a bunch of people defend him. And then he walks it back.

He like deescalates. Yeah, that's all. That's what's that's one of the many differences among many differences. Yes. Biden team is trying a lot of different strategies to get more people vaccinated. They're calling out misinformation on Facebook. They've got community leaders going door to door. They've got Olivia Rodrigo at the White House. Who do they still need to reach and persuade to get a shot? And what else do you think they should try at this point? I mean, one in five Americans believes there's a microchip in your COVID vaccine, right? You mentioned that earlier. Same poll found that 40% of the country thinks the threat of COVID was exaggerated for political purposes, including 85% of the unvaccinated. So I think, you know, the microch look at the Tuskegee experiments where black men were given syphilis and not treated by the government. Horrible part of our history. You can imagine why that would create hesitation in the black community.

There are young people who are just confused about whether or not they need it. And they've heard news stories about the side effects that are scary. There's pregnant women, there's young people, right? There's all kinds of different groups who I think have legitimate questions, concerns, have seen something disconcerting. Those are all folks that are reachable. I think the like hardcore QAnon anti-vaxxers, we're never going to reach them. I feel like you have to separate anti-vaxxers from vaccine hesitant and vaccine skeptical. And we should probably stop saying anti-vax so much because that creates an identity. And we don't wanna affiliate people who have concerns rightly or wrongly

with people that will never get it. And I always try to say hesitant. And then, so Kaiser Family Foundation did a poll of people who got the vaccine, people who were hesitant to get the vaccine. And they looked at the 21% of adults who are now vaccinated after saying in January that they planned on waiting,

would only get it if required or would definitely not get it. And so they looked at the 21% of adults who are now vaccinated after saying in January that they planned on waiting, would only get it if required, or would definitely not get it. And so they looked at what changed their mind. One fourth said it was seeing others, especially friends and family, get vaccinated. 17% were persuaded by a family member, 10% by a doctor or health care provider, and then by close friends, co-workers, and classmates. And many of those who said they were persuaded after talking to their own doctor mentioned their doctor encouraging them due to their own or a family member's medical condition. So trying to protect themselves or their family.

And then the other factor was the easing of restrictions on vaccinated people. They decided to get it because they could get back to normal life. One of the respondents just wanted to go to the Bahamas. And so we should not underestimate the power of vaccine mandates. Well, and you'll see a lot of people in LA

have responded to the mask mandate that returned here by saying, well, what's the point of getting a vaccine? I thought if I got the vaccine, I'd have to wear a mask anymore. So that is one potential consequence of that. Yeah. And look back to the sort of Mark Zuckerberg being completely naive about why people post Holocaust denial. The other thing I think that they don't seem to get is, you know, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which put out this disinfo dozen report about these super spreaders of bad information about vaccines, they have found that anti-vaccine activists specifically target black communities and push this stuff on them, knowing the really dark history in our country. And that's why it has to be an active campaign to counter that misinformation or remove it with good information, right? Because there's a

lot of people for whom this is a thing they're very passionate about. They think about, talk about it, organize it, round it all day. And the rest of us just get vaccinated at some point in our lives and move on with our lives. And there's no countering the disinformation happening. There's just a big void. So the same poll that Lovett cited, the Kaiser poll in June of 2021 last month, 65% in that poll said that they had already received at least one dose. We know it's a good poll because at the time in June, it was about 65% according to the CDC as well. 14% said definitely not. That's the microchip crew. 10% said we're going to wait and see. And then 6% said they'll only do it if required. So that

10% and 6% is like basically who we're talking to. There's three things you can do, right, to get people to get a vaccine. There's persuasion, incentives, and mandates. Persuasion is what you guys have been talking about. The other persuasion strategy that I think we haven't used yet, it'd be interesting to see sort of previously vaccine-hesitant people who got the vaccine record testimonials, video testimonials and ads and start running ads where people said, I didn't know if I wanted to get it.

And then my father convinced me or my mother convinced me or my sibling, you know, and see how that goes. Incentives we've seen, we've seen the lotteries in different states, right? I do think, you know, everyone's very concerned about mandates. We've had mandates on a state and local level for vaccines forever in our history. In France, Macron, the president of France, announced on Monday that proof of vaccination or a negative test would soon be needed to access public events, restaurants, movies and airports. Since then, in just 48 hours after his announcement, more than 2.2 million French people booked vaccination appointments. So I really look. They are they are legal. Right.

In March, a federal court upheld an employer's vaccination mandate. It was a hospital system in Texas. A federal judge held it there. The Supreme Court has upheld local and state mandates for schools for 100 years now. Once the FDA offers a full approval instead of just emergency use authorization, they'll be on even firmer legal ground. But already employers can do this. And we know that one employer, one employer who actually mandates vaccines for their employers is Fox News. According to Fox News.

So Ryan Groom reported this this morning that Fox News has something called a Fox passport or something that if you're vaccinated um you can now look you don't have to mandate that every employee gets it what you can do is say okay um you either have to get vaccinated to come to work in the office or you need like a negative test every day or every week or something like that so you make it harder to not be vaccinated if you don't want to go the full mandate route but like i really think it's instead of just like counting on fucking mask mandates forever which aren't as effective as vaccinations, you should start vaccinating people. L.A. County doesn't even have a requirement for their city employees to be vaccinated, even though San Francisco does right now and they're putting out mask mandates. And one other piece of this to the other side of that, I feel like the carrot to that is I do think

that there are a lot of people who, you know, are if not, they're not they're skeptical, they're hesitant. Maybe they just haven't gotten around to it yet. And that employers encouraging and employers giving people time off huge or even cash bonuses or bonuses, just incentives at work to get vaccinated and make it part of the culture of your of your work to get it, I think, is another way to kind of encourage it. And the other the other small thing is, you know, we are now at the place where we're trying to reach people who are hesitant, maybe more likely to be mistrustful of government for a host of different reasons. And I do think that saying vaccines are safe and effective, vaccines are safe and effective, there is maybe room to start saying something, just like making it a comparison. COVID is far more dangerous than any vaccine. COVID is the risk. The vaccine is far, far less risky. And make that comparison

plain to people. Yeah, I do worry. You're starting to see very clear studies of how partisan vaccination has become. A lot of red states have far lower levels than blue states. You're starting to see sentiment on Twitter and other places. It's basically like, you know what? Screw these people. If they don't get vaccinated, they deserve to get sort of shouting them down, calling people idiots. I think that's very bad. I think we need to approach this conversation with empathy. I think if you, there's a lot of reasons to be scared. There's a lot of bad information online. There's a lot of lack of clarity about how science works, about what an mRNA vaccine is, about how it was developed so quickly, right? Like you could, you could ask a

lot of reasonable questions. And I think if we shut people down and attack them and call them stupid, it's not going to work, especially when you're talking about people vaccinating their kids, right? Like scary. And again, empathy is great. But even if you want to be purely self-interested about it, you know, the longer this is out there and the fewer people that are vaccinated, the higher the chance that a variant comes along that evades the vaccines. Also, like this is a stress on our hospitals, right? Like there are there are hospitals and health care workers in places where there are not a lot of vaccinated Americans who are just seeing the ICUs fill up. And that not only, you know, wears down our health care workers, but that means that there's less capacity in those hospitals for other people who get sick. but there's less capacity in those hospitals for other people who get sick.

Right. So it is like it is in the interest of all of us for even the most vaccine hesitant person out there to get the shot. And we should be doing everything we can to convince those people to get a shot or require it or require it. And don't take your cues from Twitter. Twitter is not the place to have this debate. They're actually people that have spent a very long time thinking about how to persuade vaccine-hesitant people to become vaccinated. Listen to them. They're often called vaccine whispers. There are groups that have been formed that have specialized in this and looked at this,

and we should be looking to them and not the ridiculous political arguments that play out online about, was this punishment? Is this incentives? Is this persuasion? Put that all aside. There are people that know how to do this.

All right. When we come back, Tommy and I talk to Senator Brian Schatz about climate, voting rights, tweeting and more. On the pod today, we have the deputy whip for the Senate Democrats. Welcome back, Senator Brian Schatz. How's it going? It's going fine. Nice to see you both. I just want to start by saying, Tommy walked into the office today.

He is wearing a button-down shirt, which I haven't seen him in over a year. And it was because he thought you were going to be here in the office. He thought you had a layover in LA on your way home to Hawaii. And now he's all dressed up for no good reason. My wife asked me if I was going to court. I said, no. We have a big interview. I like that that's fancy for you. That's great.

This is as fancy as it gets. Senator, there was a lot of elastic waists over the last year and a half. So we're climbing back. That shirt is like very casual for 90% of my colleagues. Well, I'm wearing shorts. All right. So I saw that you spoke toc news the other day about the prospects of passing joe biden's economic plans and said that you haven't been this optimistic

in many many months what's gotten into you why are you so optimistic well i think it's a couple of things it's a mood right it's um it's the sense that if joe biden's for it if chuck schumer's for it if if nancy pelosi's for it there is pretty good unity in the Democratic conference that we're going to move forward on the American jobs plan. We're also procedurally kind of in a good spot. We have plans to move on the so-called bipartisan infrastructure package and then followed by the budget resolution, which sort of unlocks reconciliation, which we can do in September. So we're like in pretty good shape procedurally, but I think it really more is an intuitive sense that there's a recognition we've got to do this. There's a sense of urgency. There's a sense of meeting the moment. And that doesn't mean that

this bill won't face numerous near-death experiences along the way because it's a big bill and that's what happens and people threaten to kill it all the time. And Axios will report trouble for the bill every 72 hours. But, and we're in a good spot and I'm feeling pretty optimistic. One of the big parts of the bill is obviously going to be like climate, Joe Biden's entire We're in a good spot and I'm feeling pretty optimistic. One of the big parts of the bill is obviously going to be like climate. Joe Biden's entire climate agenda or most of the climate agendas in this bill. You chaired, I think, some fancy committee on climate a while back.

I think it's like a special committee on climate. And I remember you telling Vox about a year ago that you thought that when it came to climate and agreeing on climate policy, all the Senate Democrats are united and ready to roll. Do you still feel like that's the case looking at what's going to be in the reconciliation bill around climate? Yeah. Two points. Well, three points. First, Vox, not Fox, right? I said Vox. Did I say Fox? I just couldn't hear it exactly right. You were on Tucker's show a year ago. Yeah, I don't remember a climate interview with Fox. First of all, I think that my experience in Hawaii when we were starting the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative in 1999,

there were lots of kind of stupid arguments in retrospect between people who cared about wind or people who cared about solar or people who cared about conservation. And what we realized is that the best policy pathway and the best political pathway are to enact all of the various measures to address the climate because the size of the problem and the size of the opportunity is so massive that we really have to throw everything we've got at it. And that sort of unlocks a political universe where we don't really have to fight with each other over very much. So we're the top line number that was authorized or not authorized it that has been contemplated of 3.5 trillion provides enough room for us to do not just meaningful stuff on climate, but the kind of climate action that will meet the moment, understanding that it's super rare for us to have the trifecta.

But look, you know, we're a diverse caucus and people are going to have hives about various pieces of the bill. And we've got to work that out. So I don't want to underestimate the challenge in front of us. But I think there's a recognition that the Democratic caucus has to deliver on climate and not for some sort of obscure political reason, because it's going to win us the midterms, but because the planet is on fire and everybody gets that. And the collective determination is giving me a ton of hope. Well, I'm glad you talked about the scale of the problem in the of hope. Well, you know, I'm glad you talked about the scale of the problem in the hives, because, you know, you work in an institution that is in part designed to tell the country, the House of Representatives to like slow its roll a little

bit, right? I mean, the cliche, the very modern metaphor you always hear is that the Senate is the cooling saucer. But we live on a rapidly warming planet with a bunch of people that move at Twitter speed. And that can create some friction right between lawmakers and people like you who are trying to work the process as fast as you can. And then activists like us who sit around and tweet, which is obviously much more important. So what is your message to people like me and John? Stop tweeting. Thank you. Do you find our tweets annoying? You first. Touche, John. We've come to an impasse. What's your message to activists who are, you know, filled with existential climate dread and, you know, want to figure out a way to sort of push lawmakers to meet the moment, move faster, et cetera?

Like, what should they, what do they need to know? So, first of all, don't despair. And the reason that I say don't despair is not sort of just to be reassuring, but to we have to remind ourselves that our opponents thrive on our despairing. They want us to feel despondent. They want us to feel like it can't be done. And so momentum begets momentum in the political context. And so we should turn our righteous outrage into action. But those actions should be equal to the moment, which is to say, it is not about finding some line in the sand and like whipping Democratic members about whether they're for a specific provision in the climate bill. Because the danger there is what I would

call like the Keystone thing, which was an important fight. And I was opposed to the Keystone pipeline. But in the end, that became like the measure of whether or not we were making progress on climate or not. And look, Keystone's dead and the climate is still a huge challenge. So you can use individual provisions in this bill as a rallying point, but don't underestimate the importance of a package of provisions that actually add up to 1.5 degrees centigrade. So the point being, we're not negotiating with each other. We're not even negotiating with Republicans. It's physics that we're contending with. And so, you know, not to get too wonky here, but my test, you know, I get asked almost daily, well, what is the one thing you need in the bill? Is it your carbon fee bill? Is it a clean electricity standard? Is it electrification of transportation? I say it's all of it. But second of all, the rather maybe unsatisfying answer for someone who wants a pithy quote is the truth is I'm going to take all of these things and I'm going to send

them to Columbia University, Resources for the Future, MIT and the federal government. And they have like modeling shops literally who do these statistical models. And they say and they'll take all the provisions from any proposal and within three or four days they'll spit out okay that'll get you x number of degrees of warming that's my test i don't care i mean i don't want to say i don't care but my primary concern is not satisfying any individual constituency my primary concern is satisfying my daughter who's 13, who's saying, you better do something on climate. You're going to fly back and forth 50 times a year. That's the

reason you're in the United States Senate. And that's how we have to look at this, which is a citizen's youth climate core is great. My, you know, bike lane, electric bike provision is great. I love my carbon fee bill. I love the environmental justice provisions. But it all has to add up to actually us solving it rather than just having something to rally around. I've never seen road rage like Jon Favreau with a biker out of a bike lane in Washington, D.C. It's incredible. It was a D.C. thing.

In L.A., you don't see as many bikers. No. They were all over the road. They acted like they were drivers. Anyway, that's another issue for me i'm are you anti bike john don't tweet at me about biking i support biking i have a bike now i i drove yeah i got it for my birthday last year when there's nowhere to go in the pandemic are you like just theoretically for biking as public policy but you're actually a jerk to bikers no no i well now everyone's gonna think i am I used to be.

I've gotten better. Are you a bimby? Or what is a biking? What is it? I don't know. Go ahead. You said the word despair and the image in my head

was the houseboat that Joe Manchin lives on. What do you know about what he's willing to support in terms of climate policy? Just based on, I don't want you to try to like divulge conversations you've had with him recently, but like just based on his past, past conversations, you know, past issues that he's been on either side of, like he said last

week, he has some concerns. He said this week that he has some concerns in the, at the language, you know, he said, you cannot be moving towards eliminating fossil fuels. That doesn't seem great. But like, I know you've obviously talked to him for a while. What do you think he's willing to support? Well, I mean, we've had multiple conversations. And like you said, I wouldn't divulge at least his side of the conversation. But let me give you, you know, my perspective. You know, when I was point person in Hawaii on the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, right? Like the business community sitting there going, oh, wait a second, we have the Pacific Command and we have Waikiki and we need, you know, firm, reliable power. And I said, yeah, of course we do. We're just going to move the percentage of our portfolio up as aggressively as possible.

And in the meantime, yeah, we're going to be lighting LSFO, low sulfur fuel oil on fire to create electrons. That's a stupid thing to do. But I'm not a I'm not a maniac. I don't want to stop that instantaneously and have nobody be able to turn their lights on. And so the sort of gap between someone like me and someone like Joe Manchin as a practical matter is not as wide as it appears, because all he's saying is, hey, for at least some number of years, we're still going to be lighting things on fire to create electrons. And what he is hearing is that basically all of these things will be instantaneously banned. And I think even the most aggressive climate activists understand that

we're still going to need to put gasoline in our cars. And for until we cite and permit and construct and plug into the grid, all of this renewable energy, we're not going to take away electricity from people. And so I think there's a fair amount of room to move here. I don't want to like overstate my optimism as it relates to conversations I've had with Joe. But I would just say that he's moved a lot. And I think he understands that those of us who have like serious plans as it relates to clean energy understand that both politically and morally, we can't like de-electrify the

United States of America, right? The idea is to put more and more things on the electric grid and then put more of that electric grid on renewable energy resources as aggressively as practicable. But the idea is not to turn our society into like 150 years ago where nothing works anymore. And I do think that the utility companies of old and the oil companies of old really put the fear of God in a lot of people that that's actually where we wanted to land. And like if we had ouruthers, that we would instantaneously just literally ban all fossil fuel generation, and transmission and distribution. And look, I think we should get rid of it as quickly as we can. But as quickly as we can is a matter of citing and, and permitting and then

getting it onto the grid, which which is going to be decades. and then getting it onto the grid, which is going to be decades. Senator, you, Congress passed into law a child tax credit that some experts say will cut child poverty in half. I believe those checks are going out to families this week. The question is, do you regret not incorporating like some sort of epic Trump burn in the bill text so that it would get covered? Maybe something about Ivanka versus Jared. Just sort of get it in Politico. You know, I think your point, I think your point, Tommy, is that we're crappy at capturing the imagination of the Beltway Press.

And they're crappy at not picking up what you're putting down. Well, fair enough. And but I also think it's a little more about their them reporting on what's exciting versus what's important would be really more the core of what's new, right? They just even the excellent reporters have a bias towards newness that drives me up a damn wall. But I will tell you that this thing is so popular and so helpful to millions and millions of families that it's not about capturing a news cycle. It's about being relentless about the child tax credit. So many families are going to get so much help from the federal government for the foreseeable future because of something that we did that people didn't even know we were

doing it when it happened. So we've got it in the American jobs plan. We've got to extend this. And then, frankly, we've got to run on it. We've got to make sure that everybody understands what we've done. Yeah. No, I ask that in jest because it's such a big deal. It's so monumental. It's so important. And there's the opportunity to extend it forever and just fundamentally change the way the United States government supports families in this country. And then John and Dan were talking about some focus groups on Thursday where Trump voters said, wow, Joe Biden could do that. He already had done it. That would make me really reconsider who I who I voted for in the next election. So it's politically popular, as you said. Have you have you talked to the White House

about your idea of calling it biden bucks i have and they're sort of like we'll take you know we're the messaging people over here we'll take that under advisement what about shots in arms s-c-h-a-t-z in arms biden bucks in pockets shots in arms biden bucks in pockets i like it i like workshop something anything that gives me credit for something i didn't do, you know. Again, I won't ask you to divulge details, but have you had any recent conversations with your colleagues that have made you optimistic on passing federal voting rights legislation? Not particularly. Bummer. And so I think there's kind of two ways to look at this.

First of all, you know, I want to go back to the thing I said about despair. This one in particular, the language has gotten so apocalyptic and for very understandable reasons, because the threat is very real, that it does run the risk of having the impact that Trump did on his voters in Georgia, that if people feel like they cannot win because the system is actually rigged structurally, then they will not turn out. So we've got to keep two things, two sort of things intention in our own minds and coming out of our own mouths. One is that this is creeping authoritarianism and it is the offspring of the big lie. Right. And that you can draw a straight line from the big lie to January 6th to all this voter suppression. And so we have to have that sense of urgency about passing legislation at the state and the federal level. We have to have a sense of urgency about Attorney General Garland and his deputies who are extraordinary doing everything they can to enforce

the law and the Constitution. And I'm not suggesting that this is not as bad as it seems. I am saying, however, that if we build up to the point where the only solution is to yell at my colleagues who have basically promised not to break the filibuster and just assume that if you if you're if you're a senator from Arizona, you're a senator from West Virginia, that you can be pressured into flipping on this. I think that's just like tactically not smart. Right. Because I take them at their word. They don't want to break the filibuster now. Are there ways to modify the filibuster to make it work better? Sure. Should we keep the pressure up? Absolutely. But again, authoritarian regimes and Tommy, you know this better than I do, but I've been studying a ton about this. They really do thrive on this sense of the inevitability of the of of of them winning. Right. Of a minority of people ruling the majority of people and the majority of people feeling absolutely powerless. And so, yes, we should fight for the statutory and constitutional provisions that that protect the sacred right to vote. But we no matter what happens, no matter what happens with the filibuster, with, because everybody, all of our, I was thinking about this, all of our predecessors, whether it was, you know, in the 60s and 70s,

or whether it was the Civil War, or whether it was World War II, they've faced these existential threats. And I very much doubt that the leaders of the movements that prevailed said, oh, we are well and truly, right? And there's so much of that stuff on Twitter, of people who sort of present themselves as leaders of a movement. And what a thing to say, right? What a thing to say, if we don't do this, it's over, right? And it's never over. And so I don't want to present to you good news that I don't have on voting rights in the legislative context. But I just want to say, don't despair, because hope is a decision. Hope is a muscle. And we've got to keep exercising it. Even if we're not even sure what the pathway is forward. We know for sure

that if we say, oh, we are well and truly. And it's October of an odd numbered year, truly and it's october of an odd numbered year um then we are well and truly i i really wish that i hadn't sworn so much on your pod we can bleep it no it's that'll be more fun yeah it'll sound cool if we bleep it to channel the the activists what they would say i think is like okay we'll be there and we'll fight if we know that this is lost in the end, right? Like we'll still be there. But we want to see every Democrat from Joe Biden to every Democratic senator trying everything and fighting as hard as possible. So, you know, you see this story yesterday that Manchin meets with the Texas Democrats that come out of the meeting. It seems a little hopeful. They say, all right, we believe that Joe Manchin wants to protect voting rights. He's going to he wants to do a much narrower bill,

put it on the floor, get everyone there. And then they ask him what the filibuster is like. I don't want to talk about the filibuster, forget about the filibuster. But could you see a scenario where you get sort of a pared down bill, a spare bill, you put it on the floor and then you're trying some of those. Forget getting rid of the filibuster because I'm with you. Manchin and Sinema have said it a million times. I think we should take them at their word. But you try some of these filibuster reforms. You try to say, right, 41 Republican senators have to be on the floor the entire time. Or maybe there's a carve out for voting rights legislation. What do you think about the likelihood of some of those reforms being tried over the next couple of months? I think the likelihood of them being tried is pretty high. And I think we should.

OK. Because I think that there's nothing that, that for instance, Kirsten said, um, that prevents the filibuster rules from being changed. Right. Cause there's lots of like arcane details, like, you know, you guys know this stuff, but like, we need 60 votes just to proceed to a bill, not to vote for it, but just to get on it. And so there, and the motion to proceed used to be like the equivalent of the like at the end of every Senate day, it's like, hey, we're going to convene at 10 a.m. and these committees are going to meet and blah, blah, blah. And technically, you could require a roll call vote for every single one of those, like basically ministerial little things

that we do. It's called a wrap up script every night. And it's like, here's what's going to happen tomorrow. Technically, any member could be like, I object. We're going to vote on all this stuff. The committees can't meet till noon. Like the Senate rules as they exist are completely untenable. And the only way we we function on a day to day basis is every night we get a unanimous consent, which means everybody doesn't object. And then we have like all this functional stuff. The Foreign Relations Committee is going to meet at 10 and blah, blah, blah, right. And so the motion to proceed, for instance, used to be never voted on, we just got onto a bill. And then some jerk, actually, I don't know if it was a jerk, because I don't I don't know who it was in history. I mean, odds are, yeah. Fair enough. Demanded that we vote on that. And so now just to proceed to a bill requires 60 votes.

So there are a bunch of reforms that could improve the process and still allow Joe and Kirsten and others to stand on. I didn't eliminate the filibuster. In fact, I saved the filibuster by making it work better. Right. Speaking of untenable, is it weird to work in a building with people who just don't seem to care that the Capitol was stormed by a fascist mob? It's super weird. I mean, I just like your tweets on this of like, if we can't come together to create a bipartisan commission to study this horrific event in our history, that I think is the best argument against the filibuster. I found that very compelling. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's hard. I mean, I, it's, it's hard that just as a human, like, I think anyone who's in the Senate and can't compartmentalize, you know, just at the human level and can't like deal with someone with whom you disagree pretty

strongly or even dislike pretty strongly, then you're probably not going to be very effective in the Senate because the deal is you kind of have to just be able to handle this this this kind of level of combat and situational partnerships, because otherwise you're just going to sit there in a corner and only work with the people with whom you agree, which which are never going to add up to even 50, but let alone 60. And so, yeah, you've got to compartmentalize, but compartmentalizing to the extent that you're trying to work with someone who ignores that the Capitol was under siege. And to me, the physical siege of the Capitol was a was a manifestation of an even bigger problem, which was they tried to overturn democracy. And so sorry for going off

on a bit of a tangent, but I think this is kind of important. What I worry about more than a siege on the Capitol again is a nonviolent siege on democracy itself, an overturning of the electoral college vote without a shot being fired, without a thug breaking through a window, because I think it's almost a certainty that the Capitol will be extremely safe the next time there's an electoral count, right? And so the crime against the country was manifested as a physical siege on the Capitol. But what I worry about is now we're going to say, OK, we're going to have a barrier around the Capitol. We're going to have better security protocols. And it's like, OK, well, that's great. But what happens if the

Congress just comes in and flips the goddamn presidential vote because they've all been overtaken by Donald Trump's, you know, base. And so I think we have to worry about both things, right? The physical security of the Capitol, but also the Electoral Count Act and the extent to which there were some, I don't even call them brave, but there were some individual election administrators who did the right thing. I don't think it's that brave to like abide by the results of an election. I don't think we should count that as an act of courage. But there were individual decisions that were the right ones throughout the country on both sides of the aisle.

And I think we just have to I mean, I one thing I direct your your listeners attention to is secretaries of state and county clerks to the extent that they're elected. There's some bananas people running for that with Trump's endorsement. Yeah, they're bad. Almost explicitly desiring to overturn the election next time. So I worry about all that. Can I ask you a little inside baseball question here, which is about the Senate parliamentarian? inside baseball question here, which is about the Senate parliamentarian. The last time we cared about the Senate parliamentarian was when this individual was removing a minimum wage increase from the COVID relief bill. Now there's talk that the big infrastructure bill that you guys are working on could include language that could create a pathway to citizenship for certain undocumented groups like the dreamers, farm workers living in

the US, potentially essential workers who are from the pandemic. So that would be a monumental step forward on immigration reform. But it seems like once again, this massive build, this massive decision rests in the hands of the parliamentarians. I guess two part question, how is that the process? One and two, what do you think the hope is here that these immigration provisions could could stay in the bill? Let me take the first one, the last one first. I'm reasonably hopeful about it. But as it relates to the parliamentarian, I guess I would just say that we ought to be careful not to make this like her fault. This is our no, no, no. Yeah, that we ought to be careful not to make this like her fault. This is our no, no, no. Yeah.

In the in the Senate that we have devolved or delegated our authority over lawmaking to an unelected person who's who's interpreting the law or the our own internal rules best we can. It is within our authority to overrule the parliamentarian who is not an elected official. She's trying her best. She's on the level. Of course, it's our fault. Right. And so, um, of course, I want everything possible to fit through this reconciliation aperture. Right. But if it doesn't, I think we should overrule her because these rules are a creature of us. And it's about, you know, rules in service of the institution rather than an institution in service of its own rules. Do you think that the clean energy standard could pass through the parliament? The parliamentarian will sign off on that. And if not, like, are there alternative plans for including some kind of carbon pricing in the climate provisions for reconciliation? I don't want to I don't want to I really don't want to predict what what what the parliamentarian is going to do.

It's highly technical. And like, you know, you get professional staff who spend like six hours with her making the case. And so who knows how all that's going to go. But I would just say that I believe a carbon fee still has to be on the table. And the bill that Senator Whitehouse and I and Martin Heinrich and Kirsten Gillibrand and others have introduced is a progressive carbon fee. And I think that one of the things that's happened over the last couple of years is I spent a ton of time with environmental justice leaders who had real reservations about a carbon fee, but frankly, a lot of the reservations were based on like a sort of Exxon-sponsored organization

that wants a carbon fee so they can just kind of like move on from this. And they wanted every single dollar of revenue to be remitted. They want it to be revenue neutral, which means all the money gets remitted back to the rate payer and the taxpayer. And our model is totally different. Our model generates revenue for environmental justice, for members of labor unions who are going to be dislocated. Whether or not we pass a carbon fee, coal is not going to last for another several decades. So our carbon fee is progressive. And we spent a lot of time listening, but also explaining that not every carbon fee is sort of written by corporations. Ours is written with them in mind.

Senator, I saw in preparing for this interview today that you were the Hawaii state spokesman for the Obama campaign in 2008. I was the Iowa campaign spokesman. John was a speechwriter. Pretty much the same job. Yeah. Well, now you're a U.S. senator and we read underwear ads for a living. Is there a lesson there about life choices? Well, I just want to say someone who was running against me had a pretty good burn about, you know, I was the Obama for Hawaii guy and they were like, Oh yeah, you led the committee to, to, to make sure the sun comes up tomorrow morning. So it was, it was not the most difficult campaign. It was a lot of fun and we did a lot of organizing, but our challenge was, Oh my God, we got too many volunteers. There's, we're running out of ballots.

Like we got to go to King Coast. You got like 70%, right? You mopped up. to ballots like we got to go to kinko's though you got like 70 right you mopped up we did great we did great um but i i can't say it was because of me i i do remember a buddy of mine calling and saying did i just vote for president on a post-it note i said i'm pretty sure you did um so good i didn't know this about you that you were the until tommy brought it up this morning that you were the obama spokesperson back then we called chicago to try to get like some resources like some merch whatever and they told us to live off the land that's such a pluff line oh my god um the other thing you know that we love is that you and senator uh chris murphy the murph dog the murphster you guys have this special fundraising thing going on twitter do other senators get mad when you only QT him?

How does that go over in the cloakroom? It's fine. It's fine. Everything's fine. We all love each other. Is anyone trying to get into your clique? I see Cory Booker. He's thirsty.

Michael Bennett seems a little thirsty. Yeah, Bennett, yep. Cory Booker is not that on Twitter anymore. I think he's just decided it was not a good use of his time. In fact, I got to send him tweets and say, hey, look, I tweeted at you because he's not It's a sad message. Capital V, very online. Well, but like, you know, we joke about this because we're obnoxious people. But

like, you know, we can talk to you and you can talk about MIT models on climate change. And then I look at your Twitter feed. And when the Gulf of Mexico was on fire, you tweeted, but can we afford climate action? But you did it in the SpongeBob square pants, alternating caps font. And I think that's is what makes you different. I mean, there's this generational difference in terms of how you communicate and how you fundraise that I think are to senders look at what you're doing and think, oh, maybe I wouldn't have to run to some lobbying shop on case to raise money if I was a little more savvy with some of this online fundraising? Well, I don't know about the fundraising piece, but I do think more and more members are running their own Twitter, you know, and it's getting more interesting because sort of one of the things that I've said and Corey in particular has said to the whole caucus is if you're prepared to talk to somebody, you know, while you're walking onto the Senate floor on the fly, then you should be prepared to do your own tweets. Right. Because that's good. Yeah. I think the fear, right, is you should be prepared to do your own tweets, right? Because I think the fear, right,

is you're going to tweet something that you didn't mean to say, but you've got more control over what you write and then press send than how you respond to someone from roll call sticking a microphone in your mouth on your way to the Senate floor off of a red eye flight and so there's a bunch of members who are getting a little more comfortable in the medium and then a bunch of communication staffers who are um getting gray hair so nervous yeah i wouldn't obama probably wouldn't have tweeted oh but no the obama's probably would have been that his tweets would have been like, he's like, look, here's my 140 characters, and now I need a 25-part thread.

Yeah, that would have gotten him into trouble. No, it would have been a link to a Medium post, right? Look what I have said, link to Medium post, 11-minute read. Remember when he dropped off a blog on your desk for the Daily Kos about John Roberts' confirmation? It was like, yeah, he wanted to be a daily coast blogger hey i got a question for you about about about your president um is he online with like lurker accounts i don't know i think so well so he was online with to play words with friends that was a thing a real security uh potential

violation threat issue there i bet he just smashed words with friends wouldn't he just kill everybody he was just crush reggie yeah i think they just played with him to make him feel good um i think that when he pete souza he had his ipad and he could read the news on his ipad he wasn't like on twitter at least back when no i'm talking about now like that's what i'm what yeah i think he is more i think he is like informed in a way that you'd be like well how did you know that if you haven't been scrolling around but i could also he does like he goes to the washington post new york times wall street journal he reads like the top red most shared stories he's kind of gets it that way sure he's at the atlantic right right? All the very Barack Obama type places that he gets his news from.

He's also disciplined enough to go on Twitter for 11 seconds, realize it's low calorie garbage and walk away. Unlike us. Yeah, that's what I would imagine. He's like, I give I give it 12 minutes a day and I scan and see if there's anything I need to know. And then I move on to more long form stuff where it's like, I keep scrolling and going like, I should probably, I should probably read something that's longer than, than a tweet. Oh, but what about this thing? Oh, but what about this thing?

And so it's only on the airplane that I can do the long form stuff. Yeah, no, I'm the worst. Cause I give my wife grief if she's on TikTok too much. And I'm like, you're on Twitter all day long. And it's just a chat room for nerds. It's really bad when you're even reading like a story in the Post or the Times and you're like checking Twitter in the middle of reading the story. That's what I'm like. All right. My attention span is now nothing. And this is just garbage what I'm doing to myself. Can I ask another dumb question? Is the House, is the congressional gym nice? Why do members, Love and I were talking about this the other day. there's so many gyms you could go to in Washington, D.C. Why does

everybody end up back at the House and Senate gym? So I don't know about the House gym. I heard it's fancy. My good friend and the former governor, Neil Abercrombie, was the chairman of the subcommittee on the gym. Come on. That's a thing? and and he said he told me that um you know it made him very popular with members and he was the first person to make sure that the women's and the men's side were equally resourced which is a big deal i'm not uh i don't exercise indoors for the most part so i don't go to the the the senate gym um i've been inside of it. It's small and lovely. That's all I can tell you. Well,

on that note, I think we should wrap it up. I don't know. The first time I see Steve King naked, I'm out of there. See ya. Now I know anyone who runs for Congress, your highest aspiration should be to,

uh, chair the subcommittee for the gym. That's pretty sweet. That's, that's where it's at. Big shoes to fill. Uh, Senator Schatz,

thank you so much for coming by as always. Next time you're in town on a layover in LA, please by the office so that tommy can dress up for a reason i'll dress down i guess i will do we'll figure out what we're all wearing and match it all up okay thank you all right thanks guys All right. Let's, before we go, take some questions from listeners today. Haven't done that in a while. Questions. Fake name McGee asks.

I love that. I love that Twitter handle. What do you think Joe Biden's favorite Olivia Rodrigo song is and why is it good for you? But seriously, is there any crossover between unvaccinated and Olivia Rodrigo? Anyone want to take a shot at either of those? I don't get the last part. I haven't looked at her cross tabs. Meaning like, was it worth having Olivia Rodrigo?

Do we, I guess this person is saying, do we really think that there's a lot of unvaccinated people who listen to Olivia Rodrigo and then Olivia Rodrigo and then would be persuaded? Olivia Rodrigo is the first person to have been able to kind of obliterate right wing misinformation from some of the top spouts on Facebook. It actually was competitive. Her post and Biden's post on Facebook about the visit broke into the top 10. You saw a bunch of D.C. reporters being like, Olivia, who get me some Springsteen? You know, like trapped in the 80s. But yes, she's wildly popular Again, my sources in the White House tell me that Biden

Loves her ballads, but it's also into the more like pop punk stuff. So I think that good for you Enough for you anything with a you in it Biden's super into it I think that Biden's favorite song is one step forward and three steps back because that's how he views governing. Oh Yeah, that was my I just want to say that several people have accused me of being the author of a certain sentence from 2016 it's spurious but i will say come 2022 we'll have to olivia rodrigo to the pulse that is and now we know that it was you that pokemon go to the polls all right uh rob asked if you could have one superpower, what would it be? Flight.

Time travel. Time travel is number one for me. Reducing the warming of the planet by two degrees Celsius. I wasn't that good of you. It really depends on the time travel rules that we're talking about. The ability to carbonate. Number three, the ability to virtue signal. Yeah, my superpower. That's Tommy's superpower.

Oh, man. That's very funny. I did that one for you, too. Just to see your faces. That's very funny. My superpower is carbon sequestration. The problem with time travel as a superpower is it really depends on the rules of your universe. Are we talking about rafts moving down a river a la the Tomorrow War?

There are paradoxes. I prefer the primer version of time travel but therefore it really you know i don't think it raises more questions than it answers i also think sometimes we underestimate just how much people being able to fly would transform our society gravity is a lot of what we rely on for security uh fences for example um so that would reduce carbon footprint right there people fine um all right jason asks what's the new show we should be watching here's my top five starting with number five uh too hot to handle season two on netflix amazing trash watch it uh kevin can fuck himself

on amc great new show on amc very good i i have a to-do list that's just sort of running and at some point in the middle of it it just says kevin can fuck himself and i had no idea if that was a weird note i accidentally wrote okay thank you that really did just like close a loop in my brain um dave on hulu season two very fantastic very weird season very weird season but very well done i think uh the good fight on paramount plus i love the good fight it's very very good this is one of the best seasons yet and number one white lotus on h HBO is fantastic. I can't believe. It's so funny because all I was going to say is I'll recommend White Lotus the second something on that show fucking happens.

I love Mike White. I actually am enjoying watching it, but I need something to go down here. I don't even need anything. I think it's so funny. It's smart. It's so good. I watched the first episode last night. I really like the mean teen characters.

I feel like there's a lot of potential there. Episode two is even better with the mean teen characters. Okay. there's a lot of potential there episode two is even better with the meeting okay i do love the mean they're hilarious the second episode is even better than the first i think if you want to know if olivia rodrigo could talk people and stuff those two could convince literally anyone to get vaccinated just by mocking them uh there's a follow-up on this question uh peps asks is tommy to blame for the inexplicable and ongoing success of emily in par Yeah. I mean, he's a cultural influencer and he loves the show and he's been promoting it basically nonstop. I'm wondering if you have some points on the back end. Je m'appelle Tommy. Oh, no.

Oh, no. I like Loki a lot. What's it about? It's about Loki. It's about Tom Hiddleston. He's like Loki. He's, you know, he's a trickster. And he gets himself some hot water.

And it's hard to explain. People just watch Loki. It's enjoyable. I love Tom Hiddleston, though. Tom Hiddleston in anything. The Night Manager, great show. Love the Night Manager. Also, hey, listen.

I've been very critical of my friends over there at the walt disney corporation we have a why don't mess with them we have a main character we have a main character we love you bob he is lgbt he is bisexual uh and i appreciate it now has he acted upon that in any way of course course not. But we're moving forward. All right. We're moving forward. Tom Hiddleston, bisexual, A+. And The Filibuster asks, what's your favorite movie that clearly set up a sequel you wanted to see, which was never made? And does the lack of said sequel diminish the overall greatness of that movie? I don't have one, but I know both of you do. I'm going to say World War Z. I wanted more World War Z. World War Z is both a movie that should have had a sequel and a great example

of successful reshoots. So often reshoots signal that you're going to get a disaster. World War Z. I wanted more of it. Someone told me the craziest reshoot,

which was, I think, Back to the Future initially didn't star Michael J. Fox. Oh, yeah. It was Eric Stoltz. Oh, wow. Here's the craziest part about that.

This is the saddest thing. They decided to change to Michael J. Fox, but they had to finish a few days of shooting. And so they were still shooting with Eric Stoltz, and they would just be like, don't worry so much about his side. Just get everything we need from the other side. Poor Eric Stoltz. Poor Eric Stoltz.

Eric, you nailed it on the first take next I think you're wrong though on your sequel The Passion of the Christ name a more anticipated sequel than Jesus Christ oh man name it have you heard the good news that's the trailer

that's the tagline for Passion of the Christ 2 Cast Away 2 someone gets tom hanks to take that trip to tahiti's always wanted it's just it's just wilson on an island yeah shawshank too recidivism problem this is amazing i don't know i like that you put some thought into this thank you pretty good uh jenny asked on a recent love or leave it love it rated the departed as a scorsese b plus what scorsese movies would you rate as an A? And I want to be clear. When I say that something is a Scorsese B+,

I consider The Departed. Scorsese, sorry. Scorsese. I consider it a Scorsese. A Scorsese B+, is better than what most directors will ever achieve. I mean that with nothing but love and admiration for Marty. But I love, obviously, Goodfellas. Obviously, Casino.

Now, I occasionally, I won't say it, that I put Casino above Goodfellas obviously Casino now I occasionally I won't say it that I put Casino above Goodfellas I do believe that's blasphemous but I love Casino but I love Goodfellas and I'm hesitant to even make that claim I would do Goodfellas the Departed Casino

but also the King of Comedy is awesome it also is the Joker movie people should go back and watch The King of Comedy is awesome. It also is the Joker movie. People should go back and watch The King of Comedy before they watch the Joaquin Phoenix Joker. You know, I love the Scorsese oeuvre all the way back to Mean Streets, but end of thought. End of thought.

Alex asked me, on average, how many tweets do you receive that are clearly intended for the other Jon Favreau? I would say about two or three per day no joke yeah yeah and you get funny emails and i also and i always know when um i know when you know he's doing something big because i get a lot of congratulations i get a lot of congratulations uh i guess he was nominated for an emmy for mandalorian i think people tweeted out that uh my twitter handle was nominated for an emmy i think it's funny when people uh reply to john lovitz be like, how are you dating Ronan Farrow?

How's that relationship work? Jon, can we tell the story about how you once got copied on notes on The Mandalorian well before it was out? And I offered my notes. An executive sent an email to me and to the... It's such a massive error. Spoiler notes for The Mandalorian to our Jon Favreau. We workshopped something funny for you to respond. You're like, I agree with most of these, but...

Yeah, I gave a big but. And then I just looped in the other Jon Favreau, whose email I have, because it happens a lot. Especially since I've moved out to L.A. Justina asks, have you reached out to Taylor Swift for an interview on the pod would make the perfect birthday gift for Emily? This is us reaching out. Anyone who can who can get in contact with Taylor Swift. Let her know we would love to have her on the pod. I also I think she could do some great work on convincing people to get vaccinated. Speaking of overall models who do that, there's a lot of bullshit going down in Tennessee.

They're trying to ban vaccination requirements in schools or even outreach to kids about vaccination. About their second dose. That's Taylor's home state. She could do a lot of good work there. Come on the pod. Come on, Taylor. Come on, Taylor.

Come on, Taylor. Should I? I'll follow Jack Antonoff. I believe he was doing a lot of work with her lately. Maybe we can get him. Yeah, I helped write Folklore. I like the bleachers a lot. Love the bleachers. I'll put Ron on this. Love Jack Antonoff. Does believe he was doing a lot of work with her lately. Maybe we can get him. Yeah, I helped write folklore with her. I like the bleachers a lot.

Love the bleachers. I'll put Ronan on this. Love Jack Antonoff. Does he have a contact? Come on. I mean, it's... It's Ronan. Are you kidding?

Who do you need to talk to? He'll get you. We haven't thought of this until now. Let's go. All right. Make it happen, man. Final question.

Favorite cocktail, everyone? Never asked this one for you guys. I don't know. I mean, I'm such a creature of habit. Hmm. Never asked this one for you guys. I don't know. I mean, I'm such a creature of habit. I'm an old, I'm an old fashioned guy.

Yeah. Those are great. So tried and true. Nothing in the summer is real. I love, I'm a gin person. I read once that George Burns, uh,

the ancient comedian used to have a steak and a martini after he did comedy. When I read that as a kid that like stuck with me. So I became someone who ordered martinis at first as a kind of pretentious performance, but then I grew to like them. But I do like a classic gin martini that has like a proper amount of vermouth. A lot of people order like kind of dirty vodka martinis or extra dry martinis. And really what they're getting is like, I don't know, pickle juice and a shot of vodka and it's like what what kind of life is this you you are not drunk often but every time i've seen

you drunk it's because you've been drinking martinis i take my cocktail cues from ken burns and it's usually just moonshine in an old bottle i know i'll dig out of a river i know i know so olives make it a martini cocktail onions make it a gimlet. What does Oxycontin do to it? Jesus Christ. What is that called? All right. On that note, thanks to Brian Schatz for joining this program today. Thank you for that.

And we'll talk to you later this week, everyone. Take care. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. 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, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, Yale Freed, and Narmel Konian, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.