Pod Save America - “It’s your Justice Department!"

Episode Date: April 26, 2018

Trump calls into his favorite program, Ronny Jackson withdraws, Mulvaney says the quiet part out loud, Kanye tweets, and Democrats find hope in a special election loss. Then Arizona Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema joins Jon and Dan to talk about her Senate race and her approach to politics. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Today on the pod we'll be talking to Arizona Congresswoman Kirsten Sinema, who's looking to prove this fall that a Democrat can win statewide in Arizona as she runs for the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Flake. Dan, how's your dragon energy this morning? I am feeling, I put it this way. This is gonna be a loose pod.

We got Kanye. We had to wake up and watch Fox and Friends, which is something I would not wish on my worst enemy. I forgot to eat breakfast. It's gonna be wild today. Do you have something to say about a book? Is that what I see here? I do.

I don't know if you've heard this, John, but I book what i did yeah i know it's rarely mentioned on this pod so please give me some forbearance to talk about it yet once again please but many of our very nice listeners have bought this book not as many as who bought jim comey's book and i did not steal the election for donald trump but we'll put that aside and deal with that later. But some people have asked me about how to get a signed book. And I will do a book tour, and there'll be more details on that coming. I would also note it will be a book tour consistent with the responsibilities of a man who will have a one-month-old at the time, but there will be a book tour. But if you have bought the book or plan to buy the book in this pre-order period here, if you go to the website, yes, we still can slash sign pre-order, fill out a form, upload the proof of purchase. I will send you a signed book plate that you can stick in your book.

So it's like you got your book signed, but it's delivered to you. It's like I came to your house and signed the book for you. And so this will go up until midnight June 18th, which is right before the book comes out. And reminder that proceeds from every book sold in the pre-sale period will go to our friends at Swing Left, who are trying to elect people like our guest today, Congresswoman Sinema. So yes, we still can book slash sign pre-order, and we will send you a signed book plate. And I would still note that Jim Comey sold 600,000 books in the first week. Well, I know what I'm going to do after the podcast.

I'm going to go get that proof of purchase, get my book plate. Also, check out Keep It This Week, where Ira, Kara, and Louis talk about the newest passengers on the Trump train, Shania Twain and Kanye West. We will get to that later, but first... The president started this morning by calling into Fox & Friends and screaming incoherently into the phone for 30 minutes before the host cut him off to go to a cooking segment. Dan, because we're very modern and fancy here at Pod Save America, we have a clip that we're going to play for everyone's enjoyment. He is guilty of crimes. And if we had a Justice Department that was doing their job,

instead of spending $10,000... It's your Justice Department. Mr. President, Mr. President, you're the Republican in charge. You've got a Republican running it. Here's what, I answer this all the time. Because of the fact that they have this witch hunt going on with people in the Justice Department that shouldn't be there. They have a witch hunt against the president of the United States going on. I've taken the position and I don't have to take this position.

And maybe I'll change that. I will not be involved with the Justice Department. I will wait till this is over. will not be involved with the justice department i will wait till this is over it's a total uh it's all lies and it's a horrible thing that's going on a horrible thing and yet i've accomplished with all of this going on more than any president in the first year in our history and everybody even the enemies and the haters admit that so so donald Trump at the beginning there was referring to James Comey. He threatened to obstruct justice on national television, which is not something that you do every day. During that rant, he also admitted that Michael Cohen did represent him in the Stormy Daniels case. He threatened Jon Tester for raising questions about Ronny Jackson's qualifications.

He bragged about his electoral vote. He yelled about the media, and he hinted that he may not have gotten his wife a birthday gift. Dan, your thoughts? I would cite this as a historic moment in the history of Fox News. Really? This is the first piece of public service journalism Fox has ever done. Now, they accidentally did it by just allowing our unstable president to call in and talk nonstop for what felt like a decade. Apparently it was a half hour. It was a half hour. For the world to see how Donald Trump thinks.

I would note that before you fill out a form for a retroactive Pulitzer for Steve Doocy, they did try to encourage Donald Trump to obstruct justice. They did. It was like, why aren't you obstructing justice, Mr. Trump? This is an opportunity for you.

It's your justice department. You could obstruct this justice, sir. I mean, it is. It's wild. It is wild this man is our justice sir it is wild it is wild this man is our president it is wild there is a news network like this that exists in the world that the president would call into I mean it is amazing

I mean it is really amazing and this will be the thread that ties Kanye and Trump together these are two men who put their inside thoughts on the outside yeah I mean at one point they did ask him about Kanye because together is these are two men who put their inside thoughts on the outside. Yeah. I mean, at one point they did ask him about Kanye because it was all over Fox basically since the whole tweet storm yesterday. And Trump said he starts talking about, you know, black unemployment and doing his usual

riff on that. And he said, you know, people don't realize if you go back in the Civil War, it was the Republicans that really did the thing. I guess he was trying to say that Abraham Lincoln as a Republican was the president when slavery ended. Just a little history lesson for all you buffs out there from Donald Trump, who's a history buff himself. So yeah, I mean, it was his usual crazy. I think it's always interesting when he calls in or he goes on television or he does one of these press conferences because we're so used to his Twitter voice, which is like all caps, ranting, you know, barely legible, not even sure it's in English half the time.

But when he calls in and he was just yelling the whole time. And he wasn't yelling with like an adversarial reporter here. These are his pals on Fox and Friends. And he's just screaming the whole time and he wasn't yelling with like an adversarial reporter here these are his pals on fox and friends and he's just screaming the whole time he's like so angry and it's like his thoughts just move from one thing to another so quickly he covered so much ground in 30 minutes none of it made any sense it is sort of evidence the twitter voice is his true authentic voice it is whatever he whatever pops into his head many people appear more angry on twitter than they are in real life yeah donald trump's appears to be equally angry on yeah yeah you are not an angry person no for those of you who have for those of you have not met john outside the twitterverse he's one of the

least angry people i know um i don't yell but Yeah, no, you're not a yeller. You are an all caps Twitter user periodically. But Trump is a that is truly authentically Trump. And that's actually pretty scary. Like, it's not performance art on Twitter to rile up the base or send a message to someone or send a signal to his massive propaganda network. It is just what he is actually thinking at the moment. And the things he is thinking would be scary if it was your uncle posting them on Facebook,

let alone the president of the United States posting them on Twitter. Yeah, there's no method to the madness. No one should ever think there is. There's no attempt to distract. There's no attempt to do anything. It's just stream of consciousness all day long. I do not want to spend too much time on this at all because it is so deeply annoying. But let's talk about Kanye. After a long Twitter hiatus, Kanye spent Wednesday declaring his

love for Donald Trump while noting that he doesn't necessarily agree with him on everything. He posted a photo of him wearing a signed MAa hat he said that nothing changed in chicago for the eight years that obama was president kim kardashian jumped in to defend and explain her husband chance the rapper inexplicably jumped in to say that black people don't have to be democrats of course we love chance here donald trump replied very cool to kanye don jr and ivanka got in on the action fucking anthony scaramucci who we learned from hold this whole thing texts with kanye tweeted we are all one race kanye the human race and the rest of us pinched ourselves but didn't wake up welcome to hell um dan what are your thoughts i know you've always been a fan of Kanye, as I am of his music, but have always thought he's sort of his albums many, many times. I will most certainly buy

the two albums he has coming out from himself and the three albums that he produced that are coming out at the, probably not coincidentally, at this return to the spotlight. Kanye's music is beloved. But Kanye is not a beloved individual, right? He has been – and this is the one thing that Chance the Rapper said after this – after the tweet you referenced on Twitter, which was this is the same Kanye. This is the Kanye who interrupted Taylor Swift. This is the Kanye who called – who said that George W. Bush didn't like black people. And we just have to accept in our culture two things. One, that Kanye is a jackass. except in our culture, two things. One, that Kanye is a jackass. Sometimes his jackassery is things we may find appealing, like when he yelled at George W. Bush after Katrina. Sometimes we may

find it amusing because it's on something more generic, like the Nike Adidas sneaker battle, or his weird desire to meet with Mark Zuckerberg, or Larry, as he said, Larry from Google. But there's also something broader about just this, the fact that all of politics stopped to talk about Kanye and Trump and what they said, and then the cable segments that launched in reaction to it, the Twitter storms that launched in reaction to it. we became obsessed with something that was incredibly trivial because we have an obsession in our country with celebrity. Kind of like what happened in 2016, huh? Yes, exactly. Exactly.

And Michael Cohen, the president's fixer under federal investigation involved in a whole host of things yesterday indicated that he was going to plead the fifth in the Stormy Daniels case. Now, that is his constitutional right to do so, but it is a newsworthy thing that I, a very intense news consumer, did not know for hours because of Kanye. And I don't know, I don't have a solution to the problem of celebrity in our politics, but we should at least recognize what it is, is that we are always distracted by the shiny things. And in 2016, we as a culture got distracted by the shiny thing that is Donald Trump and missed some very real things that affected our election, our policy, all of that.

We became obsessed with the style of the substance. And it's very, it's like this is another object lesson that we have not as a culture learned a lot from 2016 yet. And look, I now understand now that we run a quasi-media company. I now understand what media companies and reporters and editors go through when they try to make decisions about what to talk about because we sort of all had this debate here yesterday when we were writing up the newsletter. And we're like, do we put it at the top? Do we put it somewhere down in the middle? Like, well, everyone's talking about it. But then if we're talking about it, we're contributing to everyone talking about it as you and I are doing right now.

So it's really hard to figure out how to cover these things and how to talk about it, because they do get so much attention. And I would say that even as most journalists and most political observers are wrestling with that question, on the right, this blanketed Fox News all day yesterday after it happened. But it's interesting, like, all the MAGA trolls on Fox and Twitter were ecstatic that a black celebrity liked Donald Trump purely because they thought it would upset liberals. This was the whole thing. This is all they cared about. They don't care about issues. They don't care about policies. It's like, just own the libs so you can get more followers, so you can book more Fox hits, so you can get your own Fox show, so you can run for president, so you can own the libs more. This is like their whole, this is their reason for being on the right. And I do think that like, if we, as a culture, we're very vulnerable to celebrities sort of taking it over. But you realize like this Republican Party, Trump's Republican Party, they don't have, it's not even like Paul Ryan and his obsession with tax cuts. Like he's got something that wakes him up in the morning that's policy related. We all hate it, but he's got it.

He's got something that wakes him up in the morning that's policy related. We all hate it, but he's got it. Trump's Republican Party, the one you see on Fox News and everything else, there are no issues. There are no beliefs. There are no ideology. It's just like everything they do is to piss off liberals and whatever they can do to do that and to troll people, they will pursue that. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think we have a tendency, and I mean me in particular, sometimes you yell and you're like, why is the media covering this? Yeah.

And you yell at the media. And I've done that many times, so let this be part of my apology tour, is it's not the media's fault. The media is often a reflection of the culture, right? Yeah. often a reflection of the culture, right? Yeah. Their job is not to feed you spinach. Their job is to feed you things that you will read and listen to and be interested in. And the hope is you'll be interested in serious things. And so, of course, they're going to cover Kanye because we're interested in Kanye.

It is as much the public's fault as is the media's fault. It's politicians' fault for talking about this, tweeting about it. We're all part of the problem here. And there's not a switch we can turn off. I think for Democrats, it's to sort of understand we're sometimes a spinach party. And how do we succeed in a culture that doesn't want spinach? How do you take what we care about and are serious about? How do we make that interesting in a world that is fueled by retweets and likes and clicks? And I don't have the right answer to that, but if we do not get better at making our message viral

without sacrificing who we are and what we stand for, we're going to struggle in 2020 because the Republicans are under Trump. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are not good at this, but Trump has built an outrage machine, and we have to build something that is not an outrage machine but succeeds in the same environment that values outrage. Yeah, and I've said this before, but I think on the right, one of the main drivers is fear and anger. And I don't think we should emulate that on the left. I think the way that we get people moving and get people organized and activated is with both humor and inspiration, especially inspiration. And that's sort of our antidote to their side. I don't think we should

mimic them. But, you know, it's also something everyone's like, well, we don't when the whole Oprah thing happened, right? Everyone was like, we don't we can't have our own celebrity to their side um i don't think we should mimic them but you know it's also something everyone's like well we don't when the whole oprah thing happened right everyone's like we don't we can't have our own celebrity to their celebrity well you know what there's a big fucking difference between oprah winfrey and donald trump and kanye west because she knows what the hell she's talking about and she's brilliant right so it's not even like it's not just easy enough to say no celebrities anywhere because i do think people who are widely recognized who have a large following could potentially be good leaders. But it has to do with like, are your values in the right place? Do you know what you're talking about? Do you have the base of knowledge and policy and everything else to actually, you know, articulate a coherent and inspiring message?

And I think that could come from someone who is just, you know, who's gone up through public service their whole life and who's been an elected official. And it can also come from someone who's outside of politics. Like, I don't actually think it's the resume specifically that's going to tell us who that person is, but it's actually what they say and what their message is and what they know. Right. That's exactly right. Donald Trump's greatest flaw is not that he's a celebrity. No is the thing it is his greatest flaw are the characteristics that originally made him a celebrity it is it is vacuousness jackassery it's everything you heard on fox and friends this morning just listen to that yes those are his greatest flaws everything he said there it's not

like yeah and so maybe i the answer for Democrats is not we need our own Trump. So let's get the rocker Oprah or I don't know, someone similar. But it's also not if we have a celebrity, it doesn't celebrity is not the problem. Is it not the characteristic of the candidate that is the problem? The culture's obsession with celebrity that extends far beyond politics is a broader thing that we should be aware of and think about and look at because it's not just the obsession with Kanye's tweets. It's also the obsession with the Kardashians

or the Real Housewives or- It's an obsession with- Everything that people, right. It's an obsession with the trivial and the sensational over the substantive, you know, and what really matters to people's lives. I think that's what it is. And celebrity can sometimes be a stand-in for what's trivial and sensational. But I think what you said to it is the problem we have is that, you know, we need people to eat the vegetables, but people only want the dessert.

We should talk about Dr. Ronnie Jackson, who formally withdrew his name for consideration to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs this morning. This comes after Senate Democrats on the Veterans Affairs Committee released a list of allegations against Jackson that included drinking on the job, overprescribing medication, and overseeing a hostile work environment. So look, a lot of people have tweeted us about this, asked us this question, because way back in January, when Dr. Jackson gave that report on Donald Trump's health, because he's Donald Trump's personal physician, number of us in the Obama world said, we know Dr. Ronnie, he had been our doctor,

and thought he was a great guy and a good doctor. Later, when he was first nominated for the VA, I think pretty universally in Obama world, we said, still like him, still think he was a good doctor. None of us think he was qualified to lead the VA. And then all these allegations come out and people were like, well, did you guys see any of that when you were working with him? And the truth is I hadn't. I mean, like I, my experience with him was when I got to the white house, president had a different doctor, Dr. Coleman, and then Dr. Ronnie was sort of in charge of being a doctor to the senior staff and sort of helping run the White House medical unit. So I was a patient of his, and I thought he was a great doctor, took care of me. I had some medical

issues when I first got there in 2009, 2010, and he took excellent care of me. And then when I was on foreign trips, see him on the plane, ride with him in the van, said hi to him. He was always very polite, very nice. I never saw him drunk, never saw him drinking. But, you know, if a lot of these allegations are coming out from people on the medical staff who worked with him and worked for him, and you can't discount those allegations. It's very possible that the allegations may be true, even though a lot of us who dealt with him, you know, had limited experiences with him, except when he was our doctor, had different experiences, you know. So it's very possible that the allegations could be true. I just don't know.

Yeah, that's right. pointed out by many people that I tweeted something nice about Dr. Jackson back in January saying he was a really good guy and an excellent doctor who took great care of me. And he was an excellent doctor who took great care of me. As we've talked about, I had serious health issues. He oversaw my care. I'm incredibly grateful to that. I saw him be a truly kind individual to a lot of people. And I might have told this on this podcast before, but there was a friend of ours who was on the White House staff with us whose father had a heart attack in Illinois. And it was very serious. And we were on a trip to Illinois right after that. And during his off time, Dr. Jackson went to the hospital where our friend's

father was and met with a doctor to make sure that our friend's father was and met with the doctor to make sure that our friend's father was getting the care that he needed. Now, that is so far beyond the duties of the White House doctor. It was just being a good friend and colleague and person. And I always thought that that was an incredible thing that Dr. Jackson did for this person who was not above Dr. Jackson on the food chain, or it was just someone that he spent time with. And I thought that was really, that meant a lot to that person and to a lot of us who were friends with him. Now, as you said, I can only speak to what I saw, right? As someone I traveled with and someone that was my doctor. And those experiences were always good. Now, these other allegations are troubling. And I think it's important to

get to the bottom of them. And if these things are true, then appropriate action should be taken. But we spoke to the experience that we had with Dr. Jackson, and that may end up not being a full picture of his performances in that role. And so that, I mean, that is obviously troubling. Yeah, but look, I think people need to understand, and sometimes we miss this in politics, like just like in real life, people are complicated. And it is completely possible that Ronnie could have been a good doctor to some people

and very nice to some people and very kind to some people. And also had all of these allegations be, or some of these allegations be true and have done some shitty things as well. Like that's just human nature. But you're right. Like we, none of us who worked with him, and it's not just me and you and Tommy.

This is like Alyssa worked with him really closely and really liked him a lot. And a lot of our friends that we talked to. So it's really sad. The whole thing is very sad. But I'm glad that he withdrew his name from this because no matter what we believed about him personally, he was never qualified to lead the VA and Trump should have never nominated him in the first place. It just shouldn't have happened. Why do you think Trump did this? What do you think went wrong in this whole process? I think Trump has no idea what the government does and

what the job duties are of people in the government. And I think in Trump's view, the job duties are of people in the government. And I think in Trump's view, like, just think about the most simplistic way of thinking about this. The VA is responsible for, among other things, providing health care to veterans. Dr. Jackson is a doctor and a veteran. Ergo, he should be the head of VA, and he likes him. And the problem with that is, there's just so much, And the problem with that is there's just so much – like this is actually a real metaphor for just how unfit Trump is for this job because he doesn't understand what the VA does. about it just to his doctor right without any like real thought or process without understanding the complications of a confirmation process and what that would mean and can some because it's not just are you qualified it's are you qualified who is the most qualified person who can get confirmed right and it turns out that in this case dr jackson failed on both elements. And like three minutes of due diligence, one phone call before tweeting, he could have known this.

And the real victims here are the people who depend on the VA because now this thing is – Shulkin was a huge problem for a whole host of reasons. And we obviously originally appointed him in the Obama administration. And you need to get someone in. And probably more than any other department, you want someone who is non-controversial, who has a bipartisan support, because these issues are not, I mean, there are debates about privatization and things like that, that should be had and are a big deal and important. But also, there's a day-to-day management that needs to get done and fixed. And so you need a good person in there. Now that's going to be

delayed for Lord knows how long, because Trump was utterly incapable of doing the most basic functions of his job. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, like, in a normal confirmation process, you wouldn't go on a bunch of senior staffers in the White House saying like, yeah, he's a nice guy took good care of me, let's make him VA secretary, they would have sat down and started interviewing all these people who worked with him, many of whom have surfaced these allegations. They would have dug into the background, dug into the record. And at some point, any normal White House, Democrat or Republican, hopefully, would have looked at that record, looked at some of these allegations and be like, oh, shit. No, absolutely not.

We might have had some good experiences with him, but other people who worked for him have not. There's all these allegations. Let's not nominate this man. And that's it. That's simple. This White House didn't even do that basic work. I mean, this would not have solved this problem, but generally they do not even enter their nominees' names into Google to find out anything about them. They just nominate them because they were great trolls or

they support they're one of the few people who supported trump and they put them forward and eventually many of them end up either don't get confirmed or many of them have to quit because andrew kaczynski at cnn or others dig into their backgrounds turns out that they have posted on the internet which is open everyone, racist memes or birther conspiracies or all the above. And find yet he can't do the basics the very basics and that is it is the man should not be president like that is just the fact it gets proven we know it from twitter we know from fox and friends but just on the basic parts of the job he's incapable of even letting his staff who are subpar to begin with do very basic things because he has no impulse control. And it's not just Donald Trump.

It's all the people he has running the government. I mean, the real scandal here is not Ronny Jackson, who thankfully pulled out. It's all of the nominees who've been confirmed. Betsy DeVos knows nothing about education, doing a horrible job. DeVos knows nothing about education, doing a horrible job. Ben Carson yesterday proposed raising the rent by $100 a month on poor families receiving housing assistance. Rex Tillerson drove dozens of experienced career diplomats out of the State Department and was possibly the worst Secretary of State in history. Scott Pruitt testifying today, deeply corrupt, probably committed crimes. Mick fucking Mulvaney, the OMB director,

a right-wing nut who basically put himself in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau so he could destroy it, told a bunch of bankers and lobbyists that when he was a congressman, he would only meet with bankers and lobbyists who donated to his campaign. This is an actual quote. If you're a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn't talk to you. If you're a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you. Dan, you had an all caps tweet on this one upon hearing this news.

I did. I did. Those who know me may know that I may actually be equally angry on and off Twitter. But yes, he admitted to a crime. He admitted to exchanging government services for money. And I am equally offended by his criminality and his stupidity. to a bunch of people in order to encourage these banking lobbyists to give money to more Republicans so they can get better policies for Wall Street. He basically announced a previous and a future pyramid scheme, pay for play pyramid scheme.

It is, I mean, it's mind boggling. And just to do it is horrible. And look, like I'm not naive. The mere fact of money and lobbyists, there's a lot of things but the actuality of corruption by having distance between those things and ensuring that giving money does not guarantee you a meeting, but it doesn't deny you one either. And these people don't care. They just do not give a shit because they live in a consequence-free zone. There is no penalty for these crimes because there are no checks and balances because

Paul Ryan has basically given these people a corruption carte blanche to do whatever they want. And that is, it's mind boggling that we have gotten to this point. It is mind boggling. And again, we always talk about drawing the line from the corruption to how it affects people's lives. Mick Mulvaney, you know, he bragged about taking all these donations from bankers and lobbyists and then talking to the ones who donated to him. He received $63,000 from payday lenders. Payday lenders take advantage of low-income, middle-income people who don't have anywhere else to go for a loan,

and they charge them huge amounts of interest, and they get them trapped in this cycle of debt. It's awful. And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created, it existed to protect people from payday lenders. And it's been doing a fucking great job of doing that. Now, Mick Mulvaney, who took all this money from payday lenders, and had all these meetings with them, and then bragged about it, puts himself in charge of this agency that he's now trying to shut down so that it stops protecting people from payday lenders down so that it stops protecting people

from payday lenders, so that it stops protecting consumers from credit card companies who take advantage of them or banks who charge them overdraft fees or whatever it may be. It's outrageous. The good news yesterday, by the way, was Kirsten Gillibrand, who's just crushing it with the policy proposals lately, proposed the Postal Banking Act, which gives everyone access to basic banking services like checking and savings accounts, ATM machines, and low-interest loans right at their post office. And this could actually end the predatory practices of the payday loan industry. It's a really great idea. You have post offices in every single community in America. And a lot of times people end up at payday lenders because they don't know where to go and they're not near a bank with an ATM or anything

else. And this would mean that people could go to their local post office and do their banking there, which is really a great idea. Another cool thing about this is apparently Gillibrand heard about this idea from Mirza Baradaran on Pod Save the People. This woman is an expert in banking. She's a professor, and she started talking about it on Pod Save the People with DeRay and the crew, and Gillibrand was listening. And now she's proposed this thing, and, you know, if Democrats take over, it could become law. So there's good news, Dan.

It's not just all bad. I mean, good news in your efforts to make Crooked Media the Fox News of the left is perfect. You're setting the agenda. You're making policy. It's super. Could you imagine that? Yeah.

Could you imagine someone being like, I heard of this brilliant idea on Fox and Friends and now I've made it a proposal. I guess that's what happened with the wall. This is where the wall came from. I mean, like you, like I made a joke about Fox and Friends of the left, which was a joke for all people on Twitter,

but is they don't have like that. Fox is not trying to like it's almost like I heard about this idea on NPR. You'd be like, that's OK. Or I heard about this idea on The Today Show. Like people with or 60 Minutes, people would think that was normal. Fox is not a news network. And obviously, Crooked Media is a media company, not a news network in the traditional sense. But it hosts conversations with interesting people.

If people get good ideas from that, great. And I think that's a very interesting idea. I obviously want to learn more about it. But what I am appreciative of Senator Gillibrand for is just putting interesting ideas out there that, whether she runs or not, can be fodder for debate in 2020, because we need to come out of the 2020 election, not just with a candidate who's going to inspire people to turn out to vote against Trump, but also an agenda for the post Obama era, particularly on the economy, but across the board, right? Like, what do we do now? What are the things that address the changing economy, changing culture, what comes after Obamacare, all of that. And like, we need interesting ideas. We can't just recycle the same ideas

from previous elections. And so that, to me, this is interesting in that sense. Yeah. And I think like technocratic changes to the tax code and tax incentives and tax credits and the usual laundry list of sort of incremental policies, I don't think it cuts at this time. I don't think it cuts it politically. And I also don't think it is commensurate with the magnitude of the challenge that we're facing in the economy, especially for low-income and middle-income people. Let's talk about the Arizona special election on Tuesday before we get Kyrsten Sinema on the phone. Republicans won a special election in Arizona on Tuesday, and yet it might have been the best result yet for Democrats. Democratic

candidate Haral Tipirneni lost to Republican Debbie Lesko by five points in a district that Trump won by more than 20 points in 2016. The Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman tweeted on Tuesday night that there are 147 Republican-held House seats that are in districts less solidly Republican than the Arizona 8th. Dan, what's your take on the special? What lessons can we learn from the results? Well, I like winning more than losing. So let's be clear about that.

I would much prefer that Dr. Timbernati seemed like a great candidate who would have been a real interesting voice to have in Congress and certainly better than Debbie Lesko, who pledged to, quote, make America great again. But if you were looking at this, not in the context of this individual election, but what it says about the electoral environment, it is all positive for Democrats because there have been in each of the previous specials that people have pointed to were Democrats have won. There have been these sort of extenuating circumstances that allow Republicans to explain away why they lost. So you take Virginia.

Virginia is a state that Hillary won by more than Barack Obama. So it was a state that is anti-Trump, right? Resist Trumpism. Trump didn't win in the primary. They voted for Marco Rubio, I believe. There's no accounting for taste in that fact. You look at Alabama. Obviously, Roy Moore has had a unique set of challenges that are not replicable in other races. You look at Pennsylvania 18, which even though Trump did very well in it, it had a long history of voting Democratic. It actually has more Democrats than Republicans, even though it went very big for Trump.

Conor Lamb was, by all accounts, a superb candidate. Rick Saccone was, by all accounts, a terrible candidate. So you could attribute it to individual factors specific to that race. None of those factors were present here because Arizona is a state that Trump did well in. This was a district where Republicans greatly outnumbered Democrats. This is a district, I think 80,000 more Republicans than Democrats. This was a district that had early vote, which gave Republicans who, when you have an enthusiasm problem, early vote gives you a lot more time to turn your voters out. So ballots were mailed to people for early vote, too.

Yep. And it didn't require an excuse like in Pennsylvania, I believe, and some of these other states. And Debbie Lesko, by all accounts, was a very good candidate or certainly a generic Republican candidate. Yeah. It didn't – and despite all of those things, it performed very well for Democrats relative to past performance. And so that is a positive sign that if I were to give a lesson, I'd say the lesson is run hard everywhere. Because if the environment is like this, Democrats have a chance to win races we never thought we could race because this is not a Democratic district. I think I could be

wrong. There's like 147 districts, I think, that are more Democratic than this one. Yeah. I mean, also, I think it's the races they ran, too. Debbie Lesko's race was, I mean, you talked about Make America Great Again. She also talked about immigrants pouring over the border and Nancy Pelosi. This is like the new playbook now for Republicans. Not really new. And Dr. Tipirneni talked about health care and the tax cut and how the tax cut put health care in jeopardy and put Medicare in jeopardy and put Social Security in jeopardy.

And most voters are turning out in all these elections. And the number one issue they're talking, they said that brought them to the polls is health care. And Democrats are running on health care. And it remains true that the Republican attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act might be the greatest political mistake that they've made in the Trump era. I think the second biggest political mistake they've made is this tax cut, which they thought they were going to be able to run on. And now none of them are running on it. None of them are spending money on their ads on the tax cut. None of them are talking about it that much. Only Paul Ryan's talking about it as he goes back home to Wisconsin, because they know

it's not popular and neither is health care repe appeal. And Democrats should run on those two things all the way to November. We should also note that Democrats flipped their 40th state legislative seat in New York on Tuesday night as well. So that's pretty great news. Now, what do we think about sort of the DCCC's role or lack thereof in the Arizona 8th. Friend of the pod, Adi Barkin, tweeted some frustration with the DTRIP after the loss this week. He said he was disappointed that they didn't invest more in the special election. According to Politico, the DCCC didn't spend any money on TV ads in the race. The DNC, however, did put some money into fundraising and get out the vote efforts there, which is great. So is there validity to this criticism?

Should the DCCC have gotten involved? On one hand, obviously, you can't spend money everywhere. There's a limited amount of money. On the other hand, you know, it was a five-point loss in a district that Trump won by 20, and you wonder if a little more money invested in the race could have got Tip or Nanny over the edge there. I mean, Adi spent a lot of time in Arizona, and so he knows more about what's happening on the ground there than certainly I do.

But I would say that in every special election that I've ever seen in my years of politics, like the analysis afterwards goes two ways. If you spend money and lose, why did you flush all that money down the toilet, right? Which is the big discussion around Georgia six. What a waste of money we spent. Democrats spent millions of dollars and lost this race. And then if you come close and don't spend, then it's like, why didn't you spend the money? The truth is, I don't know enough to know. They're going to have to make budgetary decisions about how to spend money. And it is true. Money is not a – it's not completely zero-sum, but it's kind of zero-sum. And if they spend a million dollars here, that may be a million dollars they don't have to spend in another one of these races that may

model out to perform better than Democrats. But what is great about the enthusiasm of Democrats right now is we don't have to depend on the DCCC, right? Yeah. You have swing left, you can contribute, pick the races you want to invest in and invest in them. And there is a huge, Democratic candidates are outracing Republicans up and down the ballot everywhere, fueled largely by the enthusiasm of small dollar donors. And Republicans, the Republican Party establishment is raising more money from corporate lobbyists and corporate PACs that benefited from the tax cut and who are trying to maintain the status quo in Washington.

So the DCCC does not determine which races get money. We do, right? Or which races get energy or field or volunteers. And so, and I say we, meaning not positive America, but we, the progressives around the country. And so we can debate this forever. Like, I don't know that another new cycle of crapping on a democratic party institution is going to solve any problems. Question is, if you see a candidate you like, you see a race that you think is going to win, that you're interested in, contribute. Encourage your friends to contribute. Do it through Swing Left. Do it through Act Blue.

Whatever the mechanism is, in this new world, voters have as much, if not more, agency than the party institutions. Yeah. No, that's been my whole thought about the DCCC too. We could complain about it all day, but when you see the DCCC doing something that annoys you, figure out a way to go around it or supplant them or contribute somewhere else or help the candidate win in some other way. I think that's the most constructive thing to do. And I think that's happening all over the country in different races. The DCCC has done some things in Texas that we were annoyed by, but they've also done really good things too. They've done a really good job recruiting candidates all up and down the ballot and all across the country.

And like, we have to have a more new, like per our previous discussion, a more nuanced view of our party institutions, right? Like people, you scream about the DNC all the time. Many of that criticism is based on things the DNC did under previous leadership in a different election cycle. And they're not going to do everything you agree with, but they are going to do important good things. And you can decide whether to give to them or not. But I know it is like cool and hip now to crap on all Democratic Party institutions.

And when they do wrong things, call them out on it, but recognize that we're all on the same team here. And when they do good things, let's applaud them for that too. And so it's just – I don't want to like just create this cycle of recrimination over and over again that disenchants people from the Democratic Party when there are good things happening out there. They're not perfect, but there are good things happening. Nuance in an age of Twitter from Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer. That's what we're looking for. Okay. We have Congresswoman Sinema on the line.

So we will get her on the phone and we'll be right back. On the pod today, we're very lucky to have a Senate candidate from Arizona, Congresswoman Kirsten Sinema. Congresswoman, welcome to Pod Save America. It is great to be here. And also, I just want to say you're one of like 10% of people who gets my name right. So thank you. That was awesome. Okay, well, we try hard. So I want to start by talking about Tuesday's special election in the Arizona 8th. Republican Demi Lesko won what is a very conservative district by the same margin that Joe Arpaio did in the election where he lost Maricopa County by 13 points. And all this was after Democrat Hiral Tipirneni ran

as a pretty liberal, pretty progressive candidate in that district. What lessons did you take from that race as you try to become the first Democrat to win statewide in more than a decade in Arizona? Well, first, I think what that election proved is that voters are tired of the chaos and dysfunction in Washington, right? They're just looking for leaders who will put aside the partisan politics and just get stuff done. And in this case, in particular, voters want to support candidates who focus on the things they care about, standing up for veterans, making health care more affordable, protecting Medicare and Social about, standing up for veterans, making health care more affordable, protecting Medicare and Social Security, fighting for Arizona jobs, the stuff that everyday Arizonans care about. And this grassroots movement that we saw mobilized in the West Valley

is absolutely critical to continuing to build our momentum towards November. So I'm very excited about it. Congresswoman, you know, as you're out there talking to voters, like, how big a role is Trump in your race? Right? I mean, it feels like he overhangs everything in our culture. But do you hear like our voters asking you about him? Or is it part of the context of your run, the sort of a check and balance against him? I mean, it's it's sort of different because the senator whose seat you're replacing is someone who kind of was not a complete Trumpist, if you will. So I'm just curious, like how that's playing. You know, I gotta tell you, I'm so lucky. I get to go home every weekend to the greatest state, Arizona, beautiful, and amazing. And I listen to voters and talk with folks around the state every single weekend. And that is not what comes

up. What folks are talking to me, number one, first and foremost, is healthcare. So Arizonans are really, really worried about healthcare, because their insurance premiums have increased, the co-pays are really expensive, they can't get good coverage, they're worried about what it's going to look like next year. And they're scared that they and their family are just, you know, one accident away from, from financial distress. And so that's what folks are coming to talk to me about. You know, I tell folks that when I'm at home in Arizona, on the campaign trail, the Arizonans that I interact with every single day are just worried about like getting gas in the car, getting their kids to school, paying the mortgage,

like they're really focused on getting through their lives, which can be complex and difficult. And so they're worried about the day to day issues. What they're not worried about is, you know, the chaos and dysfunction of Washington. They dislike it. They're sick of it. They find it distracting, but also kind of petty. And what they really are focused on is taking care of their own lives and making sure their kids get to school. They want their kids to go to college, particularly if they didn't get to.

Those are the kinds of things that they're worried about every day. What do you think we should do to fix or improve upon the Affordable Care Act? A lot of Democrats in the Senate have endorsed Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All plan. A number of other senators have come out for some sort of Medicare buy-in option or a public option. What are some of your policy ideas for shoring up the Affordable Care Act and improving it? Well, as you guys probably know, I'm a very, very practical person. So what I'm interested in is like, what's a problem that I can solve right now? And who can I work with to get this done?

And so one thing I'm pretty proud of is the work I've been able to do in the last six years, serving in even a really chaotic and dysfunctional U.S. Congress, years serving in even a really chaotic and dysfunctional U.S. Congress of actually changing some of the provisions of the law to make it work better for Arizonans. So one thing we fixed was the group definition of how many employees a company has to have before they had to change their insurance plan. And we changed that from 50 to 100. That's a big deal in Arizona, because 94% of our businesses are small businesses, just mom and pop shops, doing their best to try and take care of their business and their employees. So we've been working on provisions to try and make it easier for small businesses to take care of their employees and provide them with good coverage.

You know, we got a delay to the health insurance tax and that was a big deal because the health insurance tax gets passed directly on to employees and it was going to be over 400 a year per family in these small businesses that folks would have to pay just to keep their existing coverage so there are lots of smaller things that need to be addressed and tweaked within the law to make it work there are some parts that are really wonderful that we've got to protect. And that in Arizona would be like Medicaid expansion. In Arizona, we call the program ACCESS, and it is a very efficient program that works really well and provides great coverage for thousands, hundreds of thousands of Arizonans. And our Kids Care Program, which is the federal CHIP program, provides great coverage

at a sliding fee scale for everyday families to make sure their kids have health coverage. So we want to protect those important programs, but we do need to go in and fix the parts of the law that aren't working very well. And the exchange isn't working very well in Arizona. It's really expensive and premiums cost a lot and people aren't getting good coverage. So my opinion is that we should get everyone together in a room and maybe put down some of the partisan talking points and maybe get rid of some of the rigid ideology and just have a conversation about how to deliver more affordable quality care for more Arizonans and then Americans, of course. And when you say it like that, it sounds so reasonable, right? Reasonable is a rare thing these days. Just

to be clear on this, though, in the course of that conversation, are you open to something that looks like Medicare for all or Medicare buy-in? Or is it simply improvements of the current system? What I'm really focused on is figuring out what are the practical solutions we can act right now that make a difference in the lives of Arizonans. So in the short term, in particular, I'm concerned about what's coming this fall. So you guys probably know this, but I'm not sure, you know, your 2 million listeners know all of these details. But one of the things that I'm really concerned about as part of the tax bill that Republicans passed back in December was that it increased the deficit so much that it's going to create mandatory cuts to Medicare. And that's coming this fall.

And the other thing that the tax bill did was change some of the aspects of existing health care law that will result in increased health insurance premiums. That's coming in October of this year. And I'm betting a lot of Americans don't know that those two things are coming. But that's really concerning that, you know, fallout from this tax bill is that it's going to make health insurance even more expensive for Americans. And that's an example of the kind of thing I want to fix right now, because it is going to hurt people soon. And it's our job to try and fix it immediately. So you've had a sort of fascinating political history. You started as a Green Party supporter of Ralph Nader. As late as

2011, an Arizona paper named you best local lefty icon. And then you joined the centrist Blue Dog Coalition in Congress. You talked about being a pragmatist, really wanting to work with people to get things done. And, you know, you voted with Donald Trump more than other Democrats. Talk about the political journey you've made over the years and specifically where you agree and disagree with Trump and the Republican Party. Sure. So, you know, you guys probably know a little about my history. I'm a little bit different than most people in politics. So I came into serving in public office from a very different road than most people. You know, I grew up really very poor. I was homeless for about three years of my childhood and lived for a time in this, you know, old abandoned gas station. So I lived for

a part of my childhood without running water, without electricity. And sometimes my family didn't have enough food to eat. So we really struggled to make it. And I was very, very fortunate because I got my shot at the American dream. So thanks to a Pell Grant, for instance, I got to go to college and get that same shot to get into the middle class as many of my peers. And so when I graduated from college, I became a social worker. And the reason I chose to become a social worker was because I wanted to help kids and families that had faced situations like I faced when I was a kid. And I wanted to make sure that we kept open those paths of opportunity to get that shot at the American dream just like I had gotten. And what I found over the years as I was working as a social worker in the Phoenix community was that the legislative system just wasn't designed to help folks,

right? So it was kind of confusing and it was over there and people didn't really engage. And so things would happen to people instead of them being involved in it. So I started getting involved in politics and, you know, engaging in activism, I went down to the legislature to try and talk to them about cuts to education that they were making in the late 90s and early 2000s. And that really, what I learned there was that I needed to go do this job. And for me, that's really about paying back my debt to my country and making sure that I'm giving back to the country that's given so much to me and ensuring that I'm paying it forward, that make sure that other kids and kids and their kids have that same opportunity and that same shot, the American dream that I did.

So when I served in the state legislature, I represented a liberal district in central Phoenix. And when I ran for Congress, as you guys know, I ran for a district that had been newly created in 2011. And this district had a slightly Republican advantage. So it was almost evenly divided between Democrats, independents, and Republicans, but slightly more Republicans than the other groups. And so I thought, you know, I want to go do a really good job in serving in Congress and being a representative of the people. And so I spent a lot of time learning and listening to the constituents of the 9th Congressional District. And when I was elected, I pledged that I would do my best to represent their values and to make sure that I was an honest broker for what

they cared about. And I think I've done that well in the last six years in Arizona and have worked hard to reach out, not just to members of my own party, but members of the other political party, Republicans, but also to Arizona independents who actually make up the largest group of registered voters, to make sure that they all felt that even if we didn't agree on all political opinions, I want them all to feel that I am their representative, and they can trust me and that I share their values. And I believe that if we had more people who came to Congress and came to the Senate with that perspective, we'd get a whole lot more done. And we'd probably see a lot more, not just comedy, but productivity out of Washington instead of the, you know, ridiculous chaos and dysfunction we see

today. Congressman, I wanted to ask you about DACA. I know this is an issue you've worked on a long time. What would you say to what I mean, a do you have any status updates on efforts to solve the problem legislatively? But what's your message to dreamers in Arizona who are, despite recent court rulings, living in fear of deportation? Well, number one, Arizona dreamers are incredible. They've graduated from our schools. They are contributing to our economy. They've enlisted in our military. These young men and women are citizens in everything except for paperwork. And they deserve to become citizens of the only country they've ever known and to which they've contributed so much. And it's so

frustrating that right now they're being used as political pawns in this political climate. And it's just, it's so upsetting. I don't know if you guys know, but I actually, when I first got elected to Congress in January of 2013, when I was kind of setting up my office, one of the first people I hired was a young woman named Erica Andiola. And Erica is a co-founder of the National Dream Act Coalition and has dedicated her life to passing the Dream Act. And I was one of the first members of Congress to hire a Dreamer. It was right after DACA had gone into effect. She just got her DACA card. And I said, Erica, come work for me, because we're going to get immigration reform done this year. That was 2013. I know I was like,

it was cute. And so she came to work in my office. And I even asked her to move to Washington for several months. And her job on my team was to literally walk up and down the halls of Congress and teach other members of Congress, Republican and Democrat, what it meant to get the DREAM Act passed and what it would mean not just to her, but to the literally thousands and thousands of young people just like her all across the country. And as you know, the Senate passed a bipartisan piece of legislation in August of 13. And then Speaker of the House John Boehner did nothing, didn't even allow us to have a hearing. And as we know, immigration reform died. And I'll tell you this, guys, nothing has changed. Our current Speaker of the House

is unwilling to bring any bill to the floor to settle the status of our DREAMers. And I've been a co-sponsor of the Dream Act since my first year in Congress. And we actually have a new bill that we introduced recently called the USA Act. It's a bipartisan bill that both does smart investment in border security. So drones and cameras and boots on the ground, not the wall, because that doesn't work. But it does the smart border security that stops the guys who are running the drugs and running the guns across the border. And it creates a long term path to citizenship for our dreamers and protects them. And we've got the votes. If that bill were put on the floor of the house today,

it would pass. We have the votes to pass it. What we don't have is support from Speaker Ryan to put the bill on the floor. He won't do it. And, you know, it's just so frustrating because they're using this as a political game and they're not working in the best interest of Arizona. And frankly, these guys should just get out of the way and let us let us get this done. So it seems like you're someone who's, you know, a lot of your political life, you've had very progressive views, but you're also trying to respect the views of your constituents that may be more moderate. And you're trying to get things with in Congress to sort of move in a more progressive direction to try to actually get some things done on the economy to give people who grew up like you did that chance to succeed, to make sure that dreamers can live in this

country safely? That's actually a real, I really am so grateful for that question. It's a great question because I think the answer boils down to the way you do this. And it is absolutely 100% about relationships, right? So when I was a social worker, I was successful in helping the clients that I served because I focused on building relationships that were based on trust. So I wanted my clients and the kids I was serving to trust me, and I wanted to trust them. And when you have a relationship built on trust, then you can identify your common ground and your common values.

And the reality is, guys, that as Americans, we mostly all share the same core values. We just talk about them differently, and they manifest differently based on different political persuasions. But we share these values of like freedom, right? We share these values of opportunity, this idea that everyone should get a shot at the American dream. And we share the values of security, right? Both personal security, making sure we're taking care of our country, but taking care of our community as well. So we share those core values. And it's hard to see that. It's hard to feel that when you don't

know another person and you don't have a relationship or a friendship. And it's hard to see that it's hard to feel that when you don't know another person, and you don't have a relationship or a friendship. And so I'm a firm believer that you start this process by investing the time in building authentic, meaningful relationships. And so people sometimes will be like, wow, Kirsten, you've got friends who are some who are on the, you know, I'm good friends with Beto O'Rourke, right, who's very progressive. But I'm also friends with Trey Gowdy, right, who's, who's a conservative Republican. And people be like, how is that? And the truth is that people are good. I think people are good. And they, they behave in a way that is in line with

their own life experiences. And so when you invest the time to build these trust-based relationships and authentic friendships with people, one, you have a better understanding of why they believe what they believe and where they're coming from. And two, and this is critically important, it teaches you how to communicate in a way that the listener can understand you, right? So when I'm talking with someone who's more conservative about a bill that I'm working on that I'd like them to support, I wanna make sure I'm using language

and talking in a way that they can hear me and understand me. And the same is true when I'm talking to someone on the left or someone who's in the middle. And I know you're not gonna hear a lot of people on a political podcast say that, but I mean, this is really core social work here. It's about learning to understand people and value them for who they are, and then

utilize those trust-based relationships to go to new places together. Because when you trust someone, you're willing to think about new ideas, and you're willing to try something new or look at something from a different perspective. So for instance, when we're talking about SNAP, right? That's food stamps. I can tell my own life experience of being a kid who was on SNAP for a time. After my dad left and my mom had three little kids and a high school education, right? So that story, that experience helps other people think, gosh,

wow, you know, maybe there are some good kids who are just down on their luck and had a rough time that needs some help for a bit. And that helps change people's perspective. And I've got to say, guys, that through those relationships, it's not only has helped me change other people's opinions, but it's allowed me to grow and change my own opinions over time. And that's something I'm actually really proud of, that I'm learning and growing all the time. And when presented with new information, rather than rejecting it, I'm interested in understanding it. And it might actually change my opinion or perspective. And I, of course, think that that's a sign of growth.

And I think it's great. But, you know, that's not super politically popular these days. It's very unusual for politics today. We'll say that. But it is certainly a good notion. Congresswoman, thank you so much for joining us, spending the time with us. And best of luck to you out on the campaign trail. Well, I really appreciate it, guys.

You know, I want to say thanks for letting me come on your podcast today. I'm really excited to have this opportunity to meet you. I do want to ask if folks who are listening would be willing to learn more about our Senate campaign and help us because we've got an uphill road. It is Arizona after all. It is. But momentum's on our side.

And as you guys have seen, the recent polling is looking fantastic. Arizonans are supportive of our campaign, but I'm going to need help from folks all around the country. So I'd invite people to go to my website

and check it out. It's kirstencinema.com, but my name's really hard to spell. And it's kind of a weird name. It's K-Y-R-S-T-E-N-S-I-n-e-m-a so like the movies but mess dot com and i'd love it if people who are listening today would would go online and learn a little bit about me and send a little help our way because we're going to need a lot of help yes um to win in november yes everyone go check it out and uh no i we were in phoenix a couple months ago doing a show i know

you were out of town because otherwise we would have had you on but the energy was uh inspiring out there there's a lot of excited democrats and a lot of excited independents too on the ground in arizona that want to flip that state so oh and some moderate republicans and some moderate republicans they're all there they're all there yeah we saw we saw a few republicans at the show too um okay well good luck out there. Everyone check it out. Kirsten Sinema, thank you for joining us. Thanks so much, guys. Take care.

Have a great day. You too. Thanks to Congresswoman Sinema for joining us today. And we'll see you next week. Back to Fox and Friends. Bye, everyone. Thank you. Bye.