Pod Save America - “Jeff Sessions’s mixtape.”

Episode Date: August 3, 2017

The Mooch Era is a short one, General Kelly takes control, Jeff Flake takes on Trump, and Trump and Sessions play the hits. Then Jon Lovett talks to Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto about the future of the Democratic Party. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later on the pod today, Jon Lovett will talk to Nevada's senator who's not Dean Heller, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. We are recording this portion on Wednesday evening because I'm out of town on Thursday. So get ready for breaking news on Thursday morning, I guess. I know. RIP to your Wednesday night or Thursday morning. Can't wait. Can't wait to see what happens. Okay. A lot has happened today. Let's start with all the comings and goings at the White House. The mooch has been fired. Long live Chief of Staff John Kelly.

So John Kelly, who was the Homeland Security Secretary, took the job based on a few demands that he had. He demanded that everyone reports directly to him, not Trump, that all information and access to the Oval goes through him, and that he has complete authority over personnel decisions, which he used to fire Anthony Scaramucci on Monday. Also today, Ezra Cohen Watnick, the guy who helped Devin Nunes come up with his unmasking conspiracy,

was fired, so it looks like Kelly's making a few moves. We should probably start with the Mooch. The Mooch is gone. Also, right before the recording today, a memo leaked. Mooch put together a full communications memo, which mostly wasn't crazy, I will say.

It was not. I don't think it was outstanding, but for what we would expect from the Mooch, it was pretty good. A few highlights from this memo. Number one, I thought it was interesting that he wrote, communications is customer service and POTUS is the number one customer. Of course, everything is about pleasing Donald Trump in this White House. Number two, the craziest part of the memo in an otherwise pretty normal good memo was, for example, POTUS is the best golfer to serve as president.

Perhaps we embrace it with a national online lottery to play a round of golf with him or a charity auction. What did you think about that idea, Dan? Well, I think it's pretty sure it's illegal, one. And two, that actually ladders back up to point number one, which is communications, customer service, and Trump is our customer. Because you know who likes to think he's the best golfer ever? Donald Trump. The most important part of the memo, in my opinion, is the fact that it quotes former Obama Director of Communications Dan Pfeiffer.

Dan, you made Mooch's memo. I know. He misspelled my name, though, which drives me fucking insane. What can you do? The double F was in the wrong place there. He says, to quote Obama Director of Communications Dan Pfeiffer, there is an insatiable appetite for content and traditional

news outlets don't have the resources to produce the amount of content that the internet requires on a 24-7 basis. So create your own content. Look what you've done, Dan. You've created a monster. Well, yes, I take full responsibility for the mooch and Trump. That is actually from an interview I did with Back Channel,

which is a tech publication, right as I was leaving the White House. And the next paragraph in there is about how you have to be very careful to not do propaganda. And it was as much about how the Internet is about images, not just written words. And the White House is geared around written words. So we should have images, but don't do propaganda. He missed the second part of that, which was don't do propaganda, because what then followed was how do we create a propaganda operation?

Which is sort of funny because they don't need a propaganda operation from the white house they have one called fox news that broadcasts 24 hours a day like everything they could ever want you know like they have a propaganda network that was the funniest part about the mooch saying we should have state-run tv i think he said it on fox news which is state-run tv right it's like what are we doing um so any lessons that that you've learned from mooch's uh brief tenure by the way mooch was officially supposed to start on august 15th he was fired before he was officially supposed to start he he's he's the first white house staffer in history to serve negative days in office well i would uh i'd first say the mooches memo is a thousand times less crazy than i thought and in some of the stuff in there about meeting with the press and treating the press

better i'm not sure he ever could have executed on that if your number one customer is is trump and he does he keeps people like seb gorka around despite their nazi ties because he likes the way they yell at c. Right, right. So that seems unlikely. But just in a vacuum, it's probably one of the more sane documents that has passed through the Trump administration. But I think the lesson here is there is a reason, and I say this with full self-awareness, that people go from White House communications director to cable TV pundit and not cable TV

pundit to White House communications director. cable TV pundit and not cable TV pundit to White House communications director. There are two different things. And being good on Fox News is very different. I mean, maybe it's the same thing as being Trump's press secretary, but it's very different than being a traditional White House communications director. It's not the same thing. And the other thing about this is this is a different level of a different game than the Mooch ever played. Because there was a tweet from Kevin Roos, who's a financial journalist who works for the New York Times now, who said, after the Ryan Lizzo call, that said, anyone who has covered Wall Street is used to getting calls like this from the Mooch. Where he'll just call and scream and curse and say crazy things.

But no one reported what he said because no one cared who he was. and scream and curse and say crazy things, but no one reported what he said because no one cared who he was. Once you're a White House communications director and you're under real scrutiny, or White House press secretary, or chief speechwriter, or any sort of White House aide,

you are under scrutiny and you have to have the discipline to do the job. And just being super smooth when you're a guest on The Five is not actually credentialing for doing the job of White House communications director. Which is something to keep in mind next time you see someone appear very smooth and polished on television, which is what everyone sort of lost their minds about when Mooch did that first

press conference in the briefing room and he was smooth and polished. Everyone was like, oh, maybe a new era will be ushered in. And so it's like, you know what? Instead of just watching him on television and judging him based on five minutes at a podium, perhaps look into his background a bit. And maybe you'll realize that a crazy hedge fund guy wasn't necessarily qualified to be the White House communications director. I don't know. It's just a thought. White House communications directors do TV sometimes. I did it sometimes. But there is an inverse relationship between how good you are as White House communications director and how often you're in a cable TV green room. I think I did the job for well over a year before I ever did a single television interview.

Now, I'm not as smooth as the mooch by any stretch of the imagination, who possibly could be. But I do know enough not to call Ryan Lizza and accuse my fellow white house staffers of a particularly limber form of self-pleasure um you never did so you never did that i never said that about axel or if i did i did it off the record sorry rob um i think the other lesson is that trump really will throw anyone under the bus anytime there is no loyalty there like this you can you can give up your life give up your career go work for the trump white house and inevitably you will be thrown under the bus you will like your dignity will be lost it is it's just a recipe for disaster i don't know how this guy gets anyone to work for him it never turns out well it doesn't matter who you are yeah it's just he will turn on you you will whatever your reputation is when you start

and john kelly will actually probably be the test of this yeah whatever your reputation is when you start it will be destroyed in this process and maybe you'll survive and get to continue being humiliated for longer than the mooch was at least they put the Mooch out of his misery. The Mooch could have been like Bannon or some of these other people who get humiliated, hang around, only to surface and get humiliated again. So maybe he wins in the end. He only had to waste 250 hours of his life, and he can go back to being rich and smooth and, I don't know,

be on Water's World or something, whatever would be interesting to him. So let's talk about Kelly. So the Politico story just came out before we started, too, that Kelly has realized that the real problem is that Trump doesn't have the ability to discern good info from bad info. And so he's trying to limit the bad info. And he's doing this by controlling access to the oval office by controlling which information trump gets i mean my thought is the best way to stop bad info from getting to trump is call up comcast cancel the white house's cable subscription and don't let him watch that's where he's getting all his info from the fucking television it's not like people are giving

him bad memos or warring advisors telling him other things. He's just reading the chyrons and then tweeting his ass off. That's what he's doing. I read that Politico story, and I got a couple thoughts on some random things in there. But part of this is we are – I think – look, I think Kelly is an accomplished human being in his life. I think Kelly is an accomplished human being in his life, and he is a serious professional person, which makes him very different than every other person in the White House except maybe McMaster. But we are treating the first things he did as like he is making fire. And these are the basic tenets of any management job ever have a reporting structure have a process

to get information to the boss control it's the most basic things and we're like I mean good God look at the change he fired a guy who accused the chief of staff of a felony and said that the chief strategist likes to suck his own cock

he fired that guy that seems like the basic move of anyone who would go into a management position in that scenario right i mean he did establish lines of authority that everyone reports to him which that was necessary i i said before this that was the test. If Mooch, Scavino, all these other people, I think Jordan and Ivank are a little bit in a different category because you can put them in the reporting structure, but it doesn't really matter. But if these guys all got to say they still report, and Kelly and Conway

said they still report to the president, and Kelly cannot get them to say they report to him, then he was doomed to failure. I mean, he's still doomed to failure, but that was the right thing. There's so many good things in that story, but one part is people can already tell that things are different. They saw Ivanka Trump at a senior staff meeting.

She is on the senior staff of the fucking White House. Her title is senior advisor. What do you mean? She's finally started coming to meetings? What are we doing? I mean, God, opening up my email this morning and reading Axios and seeing what Jonathan Swan had from sources in the White House told him, Trump appears to be trying to impress his four-star handler, picking up his game by acting sharper in meetings and even rattling off stats. Wow. Like, Trump is sitting in these meetings about North Korea and he's just sitting there like, 45%, 23%.

I'm just trying to imagine what rattling off stats is. What is he doing? I mean, I'm just trying to imagine what rattling off stats is. What is he doing? I mean, I'm sure the stats aren't right. You know what the stats are? Probably his electoral college victory. Three million illegal voters. Three million illegal voters. It's like this is a meeting about tax reform.

What are you saying? Oh, man. So do you, I mean, what do you think about Kelly's ability to actually change Trump? I know what you think, but why don't you tell our listeners? Yeah, I mean, he obviously can't change Trump. I will say I think it is very likely that Kelly professionalizes the White House and makes it run better where they can – As good as it can run. Right.

Like, where there will be processes to do things. Right. Like where there will be processes to do things. And some of that will minimize the craziness from the White House, because if you create a good piece of staff and we had many of them create a process where everyone gets to weigh in. And then if you feel like you're heard, then you don't necessarily call Axios and tell Jonathan Swan what your idea was. That makes it reduces that. Right. And I think Kelly will do that. And I think people are, at least in the early stages, afraid of him. No one was afraid of Reince Priebus. Trump basically emasculated Reince Priebus in the beginning. And he was like the on great joy chief of staff, just incapable of of exerting any sort of authority. And Kelly will be different. I think a general has stature. And so if your hope is that the Trump white house will collapse on itself in pure chaos, Kelly probably changes that. Yeah.

I mean, as an American worried about like an actual national security crisis happening one day, you probably want a professional in that job, right? Yeah. Look, I think it, it may improve things in that job, right? Yeah. Look, I think it may improve things on the margins, right? I think that, again, it's fun to talk about the mooch.

It's fun to talk about Kelly. It's fun to talk about all the machinations in the White House with all the different staff members. But when you zoom out, what really matters is the larger dynamics. We have a 71-year-old in the White House as president who's shown zero propensity to learn, grow, change in his entire life. You got a Republican media that defends Trump, feeds him a steady stream of new conspiracies, and a republican party that enables him at every turn like those those to me are the three larger dynamics at play here and until one of those

or a multiple of those change nothing nothing big is going to change in this white house i have some bad news for you none of those things are going to change anytime soon well that you were correct yeah you are correct that on the margins having kelly there matters and we may really appreciate that when we get to a world where we have to lift the debt ceiling uh in six weeks but trump is trump trump will still do crazy things he will still say crazy things. He will still say crazy things. He's incapable of learning. I don't – like I am not a psychiatrist. I can't say he has a mental disability. But he acts like a disturbed human being who is a ravenously insecure narcissist.

And that will not change. It doesn't matter. They can make Colin Powell his chief of staff. Karl Rove could be his senior advisor. You can bring whatever the best Republican talent is. Anyone you want. And Trump is still Trump.

Trump is still Trump and Trump will still taint their reputation and make them do things that they didn't want to do when they got there. So on July 25th the editor-in-chief of the wall street journal uh gerard baker sat down for an interview in the oval office with trump in the interview trump said that the leader of the boy scouts told him his jamboree speech was the greatest speech ever made to them we later found

out that trump never received a call from the leader of the Boy Scouts, so that was just a completely fabricated story. He's had a bunch of shit on health care that makes absolutely no sense. He attacked Hillary Clinton. He referenced the book Shattered at one point about her campaign as he was accusing her of crimes. Now, we only know this because Politico got a hold of the full transcript of the interview, which the wall street journal refused to publish so this goes back to one of the big dynamics which is the republican

media defending trump at every turn this was crazy do you consider the wall street journal the republican media i consider their editorial board and some of the editorial opinion side the republican media i think they have some excellent reporters and journalists working on the news side. There is this, I think there are a couple of interesting dynamics to this. One is there has been, if you sort of read like media reporting, a decent amount of discontent within a lot of the reporter, from a lot of the reporters at the journal about how gerard baker who it comes from the murdoch world where rudolph uh reuben murdoch owns the journal um and other entities destroying america like fox news and so people are concerned

about that he said a few things early on about how basically they had to be friendlier that was interpreted by some as being have to be friendlier to trump um there and there's been just concern about it that he is putting his thumb on the scale and you know hard to say yes or no until you read that interview transcript and i mean he basically walked in the oval Office door and crawled directly up Trump's ass for the interview. I mean, it was sycophantic. It was just very strange way for a journalist to do an interview with the president, which is probably why he would not let the transcript be released. And then they lied about it afterwards. And they said,

oh, we just we printed everything that was newsworthy. And all we decided to withhold is some of the crosstalk that doesn't really make sense. And that's not true. Like the Boy Scout thing was newsworthy. And we wouldn't have known that had Politico not published. I mean, the President of the United States lied. He made up a story. They decided to withhold it. They were proud that they withheld it. The Wall Street Journal, apparently in a call with their staff, they said, you know, damn right, we kept the transcript. I mean, it's just not really on the level, Dan. Well, you know, I remember when Murdoch bought the journal. There was a lot of people who were very concerned about how this would go. And people were like, no, the journal's an institution. It'll be fine. Murdoch's like, I'm not going to, you know, I'm going to let it be the journal. And I think we're beginning to see the impact of that of that transaction and i mean and there are a couple other things there one i think there was according to our friend uh

daniel dale is that his name yeah daniel dale daniel from the toronto star who pointed out that i think there was i think it was like 11 or 12 myths true myth misstatements or lies in the part that was not released by the journal. Which you would think, if the president is lying to the Wall Street Journal, the Wall Street Journal would want to do something about that. So that is one. And then Vanity Fair had this great story

recently about the epic battle between the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and the Trump Act, where they're just like scooping each other. The Washington Journal and the New York Times and the Trump Bible, where they're just like scooping each other. The Washington Post and the New York Times. Right. And in that article, there's a line that says, you know, it's odd that it's the Post against the Times, not the Post and the Times against the Journal. Where is the Journal? Well, the answer to that question is in this interview and the refusal to release the

interview transcript. Because you're not holding the president's feet to the fire if you're going to protect him from his own lies. I'll never forget the day where the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial attacking, slandering Susan Rice about this unmasking conspiracy bullshit, which has since then been proven bullshit, while the journal's news side, a news story in the Wall Street Journal, was basically debunking the fact that she was involved

in anything untoward. It was amazing. It was like, you actually have a news story that is saying that this is sort of bullshit, but your opinion section is attacking her for no good reason. It's really- Is there a list that said that paul ryan was born in a petri dish at the heritage foundation i don't know but i i think that was that might have been steve bannon i don't you know oh yeah that's bannon in the oh that's right josh green book yes i feel like it's actually paul ryan was born inside the editorial board of the wall street journal it seems about right did you see paul ryan's wall video by the way the other day on twitter just just a whole video from paul ryan about building

the wall paul ryan paul ryan the great policy wonk of washington now now chilling for an unworkable ridiculous policy that donald trump wanted a policy that he said just a few months ago would never become law. What an embarrassment. I know. Paul Ryan is such a joke. It gets me so worked up. It's like all my list of blood pressure rules is like, don't eat salt. Don't talk about Paul Ryan. I will say, Paul Ryan very cleverly threw the hand grenade back at Mitch McConnell on this healthcare thing with the skinny bill. When Paul Ryan did not guarantee that they wouldn't just vote for the skinny bill in the House. He said he'd go to a conference, but he didn't make a guarantee. It was a very carefully worded statement there.

And it was so funny because basically Mitch McConnell throws the grenade at him. Paul Ryan throws it right back with this statement. And he did play a part in actually stopping the skinny bill from passing. Do you think that was intentional or he was trying to give himself? What do you think the goal was there? I think the goal is you can see it in the statement that Ryan released later. He said something to a reporter later, which is the House is the only functioning institution. He basically wants to go into 2018 saying, don't vote in a Democratic House. The Republicans in the House are doing everything we can to deliver on our agenda. It just gets

stuck in the Senate. They're the ones who have the problem. I think that's what he was trying to do. Do you remember our 2010 State of the Union where Obama was running through the list of things that the House had passed and the Senate had not? And they were basically in a world where there were huge Democratic majorities on both sides. They almost started yelling at each other over it. I do remember that. Which is a reminder that Republicans and Democrats are different parties, but the House and Senate also don't like each other. No, they don't. And it's a lot of competition.

The House thinks the Senate goes too slow. The Senate thinks the House does crazy things. I mean, that's just, that's sort of how it goes. They're both right, actually. Yeah, they are. Let's talk about Jeff Flake. Jeff Flake, Senator from Arizona, is out with a new book called

The Conscience of a Conservative. And he pretty much eviscerates Trump in this book. A few excerpts that were published this week. He blames his party, Republican Party, saying, quote, we all but ensured the rise of Donald Trump. He takes an implicit shot at Mitch McConnell for saying that his number one priority was assuring Obama's defeat, said that was a problem. Goes on to say, quote, it was we conservatives who were largely silent when the most egregious and sustained attacks on Obama's legitimacy

were leveled by marginal figures who would later be embraced and legitimized by far too many of us. A tax trump for his lies, for his conspiracies, his affection for autocrats and strongmen, his executive overreach, and the threat he poses to our values and our institutions. What did you think about this? the threat he poses to our values and our institutions. What did you think about this? I don't know, because I'm, my initial take was, well, that's fucking great, Jeff Flake. Why don't you actually do something?

Because, I mean, he, for all the things he said, like, Jeff Flake, in Republican-adjusted terms, is I think a decent human being. I think he is in it for mostly the right reasons and has shown political courage on things like immigration in the past. And he has a very good, friendly relationship with Barack Obama, which is not – I don't know that there are a bunch of Republican senators who would allow that to be uttered out loud and jeff flake would but then you do things like you basically almost sell people in your state down the river so to avoid a primary challenge which is exactly how you ended up with trump to begin with it's that sort of political calculation and that we would understand what you believe for that gets us in that place. Yeah, I mean, look, my view on this is, I want to see Jeff Flake replaced with a Democratic senator for Arizona, because Jeff Flake's positions are

very conservative. He is not some moderate, he's not some liberal. He's not even some like Susan Collins type. He is a traditional conservative in the mold of Paul Ryan. And so I don't think that as liberals we should have expected him to do something courageous on health care because that's not what he believes. And that's fine if that's not what he believes. Great, we're going to run someone against you and try to get you out of the Senate. I can believe all those things and still respect him for speaking up and like he did, which is more than a lot of people in his party have done. But I think what you can criticize him is it's a lot of words, like it was a lot of criticisms of Trump, you know, with Trump's lies and Trump's conspiracies and what he's done, you know,

his coziness with Russia and what he's done to institutions. But he hasn't even done anything as a senator on those issues to check Trump. Like Josh Barrow wrote a piece about this. He said, you know, Flake hit Trump's protectionism. But unlike McCain or Sasse, he voted for Trump's U.S. trade representatives. What has he done on Russia? He didn't do anything on Tillerson. He sits on Foreign Relations Committee, hasn't really been outspoken from his perch in the foreign relations committee so even on things where you say okay it's fine if you want to have your conservative positions obviously we're not going to agree with you there you know he's he says he wants to take on trump but he doesn't really done anything to take on trump's attacks on institutions some of his crazier tweets all that shit yeah see i agree with that

you know i read a lot i was about to just unleash the twitter fire on this and then i read a couple constitutions, some of his crazier tweets, all that shit. Yeah, see, I agree with that. You know, I read a lot. I was about to just unleash the Twitter fire on this. And then I read a couple threads that was basically, one, it's dumb to think that just because Trump agreed, Flake disagrees with Trump means he agrees with us. Right. Which is a fair point. I think healthcare is slightly different in the sense that what I know of Jeff Flake, there's no way he thinks that that Frankenstein, even if you just want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, you have a position closer to McCain's. I think Flake in his private moments completely

agrees with McCain and is probably very glad that McCain spared him of having this bill implemented in his election year. It was, but it was, you're absolutely right that it was particularly cowardly of him that even with McCain out there, his fellow senator is out there standing up, stopping this whole thing, and Flake decides, and McCain's saying, oh, because of my governor,

and my governor said he didn't like this because it cuts Medicaid, and none of that phases Flake at all. He just sort of, he just said nothing, just went along with everything. Didn't show any bit of courage on the healthcare thing. But I think we as progressives should be holding Flake accountable going forward for whether he lives by those words. But we should also just not be in a world where demand that people speak out against Trump and then shit on them the second they speak out against Trump. Right.

We have to let this play out a little bit. So he wrote his book. He's probably going to sell a shitload of books because he did this. But let's see. There's going to be moments coming up where we'll see if he does the right thing. And if he doesn't do the right thing, then we can go back and say you're full of shit. thing. And if he doesn't do the right thing, then we can go back and say you're full of shit. But this, it's going to be a slow process to get the Republicans to actually do anything about Trump. And so we, we can't expect, we can't expect all of it now. Flake

may want to have his cake and eat it too, but no one else wants to have cake yet. So let's let it, let's let it play out. Well, and I'll say he's really not having his cake and eating it too at all right now because he is the, he's the least, least popular Republican Senator in the Senate. His approval rating is so low. And I mean, he's getting the worst of both worlds right now, which is he's sort of hated by Republicans for shitting on Trump.

And he's got, he's always fending off primary challenges from the right, but he's disliked by Democrats and independents. And, you know, some of those Obama Trump voters for embracing unpopular policies like Trump care. So he's disliked by Democrats and independents and some of those Obama-Trump voters for embracing unpopular policies like Trumpcare. So he's really not doing too well for himself. Yeah, this is a hard one because from a – I understand the political calculus.

And Tim Miller talked about this when he was on our pod. I understand the 100% political calculus why Republicans are not running from Trump, because the Republicans most likely to vote are the ones who like Trump. And so if you piss them off, it's not like a bunch of progressives who want a Democrat there. So you can take the Senate back are going to be like, well, I appreciate what Jeff Flake did. So I'm going to support him. Right. And I mean, it's the same thing that all those red state Democratic senators who tried to be critical of Obama, and then get his voters to turn out, struggled. It's a similar situation. So, you know, from a political perspective, I understand why they do what they do. From a moral perspective, it's fairly indefensible.

It has been interesting to watch not just Flake, but it seems like some other Republicans in the Senate and some other Republicans in general, their support for Trump is starting to slip a little bit. We may be seeing a few cracks here in Trump's support, particularly around health care. Basically, after this last health care failure, Trump and the White House keep saying, we want another vote. We want to repe peel and replace still. We're not going to pay the cost sharing reduction payments. So we're going to let the whole Obamacare collapse. And so far, the Republicans in the Senate and even in the House aren't really budging. And they're saying, A, I don't give a shit what you say about healthcare. We're moving on to tax reform.

And B, some of them are saying, you know what, we want to pay those cost sharing reduction payments because we don't want to see a whole bunch of people lose their health care. So I thought that was pretty interesting. Yeah, it's funny. Every time, like we would often be in a situation when we were in the White House where after the Republicans took over Congress, where there would be undone business heading into the August recess or the Christmas recess or one of the many periods in time in which Congress is not working. be undone business heading into the August recess or the Christmas recess or, you know,

one of the many periods in time in which Congress is not working. And it's a, any communications meeting, so I'm welcome with the ideas. Let's be like Truman and let's go tell them to stay in until they get it done. It's like the plot of 17 West Wing episodes. And I would take that idea and I would go up to, you know, our ledge office and I'd be like, what do you guys think about this idea? And they're like, you can say that, but they're all going home, including the Democrats, and you're going to look like an asshole. So you will have pissed off the Democrats and you're going to look really weak.

And Trump really needed someone to tell him that that's a bad idea because he demanded they do something and then they're just like, see ya. They do something and then they're just like, see ya. The other point I would make that we should not in the in the world of being a Levin esque straight straight shooter. We should not gloss over the fact that the Republicans almost to a person did a pretty extraordinary thing in passing the Russia sanctions bill. Yeah. party and everyone in congress is about how trump is compromised and i mean that in a policy sense maybe also in a p-tape sense but definitely in a policy sense is compromised by putin and willing to do things that are so far outside of the mainstream that they had to pass legislation with veto-proof majorities to enforce him to sign it which is a pretty it's pretty extraordinary thing yeah they got lost in the mooch coverage but it's a pretty big deal yeah no i mean look i think it's i think it's a hopeful

sign i don't think we should you know throw our hands up and cheer and think it all is well now and the republicans are going to be courageous on everything but we can we can look at that one moment and say good job you know um kudos kudos now i think so the senators are you know starting to go their own way and the congressman um we've seen some drudge headlines drudge is starting to turn on trump have you noticed that yeah i don't i don't really have a feel for what that means like i don't drudge is a real mystery to me in the world but it is how well i guess the question is how influential do you think drudge still is i do not know i would love to get some data on that um but i know i think it still feeds like it's it still drives traffic to quite a few reps websites unfortunately quite a few news

agencies um or news outlets and then look i mean getting, and again, drudge is just drudge, but if Trump starts getting worse coverage in the Republican media, then you will see what is also starting to happen a little bit in some of these polls, which is his base support starting to slip a bit. I mean, he's pretty much at his lowest approval rating since he started the presidency,

since he began his presidency. He's stuck around 36%, 37, 38 percent now. Again, you know, we've seen before anything happens and polls go all up and down, but he's having a particularly tough time. And I think how he's going to respond to this, and we're already seeing signs of this, is he's going to play to the base. this is he's going to play to the base and not with economic issues, which is why a lot of people say he won this thing, but with cultural issues. So he gave that speech to the police last week where he advocated police brutality story in the New York times, but Trump directing the civil rights division of the department of justice to investigate and sue colleges over their affirmative action programs i think you need to be very specific with that he has encouraged them to essentially investigate racism against white people yep that's about it imagine telling

2013 john favreau that a real thing that would happen is the government of the united states would be investigating racism against white people. After Barack Obama was president. And then there was today, which, you know, Trump proposed legislation that would cut legal immigration in half by sharply curtailing ability of American citizens and legal residents to bring family members into the country. They want immigration to be based on skills and your ability to speak english and then they sent out c plus santa monica fascist stephen miller to the podium uh who had quite an exchange with jim acosta of cnn he accused him of cosmopolitan bias because i don't know acosta talked about the statue of liberty i don't fucking know there's this whole there's a whole controversy around the statue of liberty and the emma lathros poem and what was that i barely saw it as i was walking

into the studio and the huffington post headline says white house distances itself from poem on the statue of liberty and i was just like okay i'm done yes so uh jim acosta basically quoted from that poem as a way of asking a question about whether changing this approach to immigration was a change in sort of American values of the State of the Union on the Statue of Liberty. And Stephen Miller said, actually, Jim, I don't want to get a historical ball at this, but that poem was added later. So it was like the original intent. He was trying to say the original intent was to show the rest of the world America had freedom. So they would emulate us. America had freedom. So they would emulate us.

And then only later, probably with some liberal snowflakes, added this poem and began to treat the Statue of Liberty as a place to welcome people so they could have liberty. So that's what goes through Stephen Miller's mind. Someone said on Twitter that Stephen Miller is the word actually in human form. Actually, Jim. Actually. Man, that guy sucks stephen miller who

like i love stephen miller accusing jim acosta of causing apology and bias stephen miller who grew up in santa monica and went to duke is accusing other people because stephen miller who like was booed off stage in his high school when he was trying to run for student council and then would walk the halls telling immigrant students that they should learn to speak English and go back home. That's Stephen Miller for you. It tells you a lot about why he ended up where he did. Someone tweeted that Stephen Miller is a great argument against bullying. It's just... I mean, all of this stuff, though,

the most interesting thing about the immigration legislation that they proposed today is this White House knows full well that this immigration legislation will never pass Congress. They are doing things like this, and this is the DOJ thing, obviously, has legs because they can control what DOJ does in the cases they prosecute. But they are doing this stuff purely to get headlines and send a message to their base that we're with you and we're fighting for you and what you want, which is, you know, an anti-immigrant sentiment and obviously, you know, discrimination against white people and all this kind of stuff. They are doing what Trump did in the worst days of

the campaign, in the darkest days of his campaign, to sort of rile up the emotions of some people in their base. The Sessions thing is particularly interesting to me because Sessions and Trump, as we know for the president's Twitter account are on the outs and sessions is like trying to, it was sessions is doing like the equivalent of someone like making a Spotify playlist for their, for their ex with all the songs that reminded them why,

when they fell in love, it's like It's like, remember? Sessions is like, remember my racism that originally attracted us to each other. It's still there. I haven't changed. This is Sessions mixtape. Yeah.

It's just, I mean, he's trying so hard. I guess he's having a press conference on Friday to talk about his leak investigations. He's hitting all, this is one of your terms. He's hitting all of trump's erogenous zones to try to get back in his good graces so the serious question here is what i mean this this is how the campaign will be run in 2018 and then 2020 like there will be no trump barnstorming talking about all the economic stuff

he wants to do or has done because he will not have achieved much of it. I'm sure he'll be bragging about, you know, if it's the case till then, the stock market and blah, blah, blah, and he'll do all this crazy shit. But Bannon and Miller and that part of the White House, like I don't assign any strategy to Donald Trump himself, but I do assign strategy to Bannon and Miller. And I think that those two specifically will be trying to peddle all of this cultural stuff and trying to gin up the culture wars in 2018. And the question is, how do Democrats respond to this? That's a good question. I think you are right that there's a little bit of Bannon and Miller filling a vacuum here with Reinskahn. And it's worth noting, General Kelly, for all of his service to this country,

was a immigration hardliner when he was at DHS. And that's why Trump picked him. The guy beat out Chris Kobach for the job. He probably believes this stuff. I said this on Monday's pod too, but it's like, he is like grown up in the room, but he is not like McMaster in that just because he's another general. Like he is more, he is much more in the mold of Trump in terms of his beliefs and his ideology than McMaster is. He's not just some, you know, nonpartisan or he might be nonpartisan, but he's not some non ideological technological technocrat who became a general. Like, he definitely is in line with Trump on some of this immigration stuff.

So the question is, what do Democrats do? I think Democrats have to push back very hard about American values and, you know, I mean, despite when the poem was engraved on the Statue of Liberty, that those are our values and do that. But also take the conversation back. We have to take back economic populism from Trump. Yes. And one of a great advantage that we are going to have in that is the Republicans are hell bent on trying to pass tax reform. Now, I've seen a fair amount of polling in my life, and Democratic tax reform plans poll worse than almost anything in the world except Republican tax reform plans.

And it is the least – no one in America who is not a corporate CEO or a Paul Ryan acolyte thinks we should cut the corporate tax rate. Americans, Trump supporters, are not walking around going, you know, I feel like Exxon and Google and GE, they're paying too much in taxes. That's the biggest problem in America. It is. And, you know, Trump had this tweet the other day that was corporate. It was like a Fox & Friends. Someone was on Fox & Friends.

It was like – or some show he watches. It was like corporations have never made more money than under Trump, which really runs against any argument that we need to cut their tax rates anytime soon. And so if they want to run a cultural base play, we have to capture the economic populism part of that, which you can do in a bunch of ways. It can convince people Trump's a fraud. It can show that we're the ones really fighting for the economy. But don't get sucked – like fight back on our cultural values for sure. Do not cede one inch to these piddling white supremacist wannabes. But talk about pivot it to the economy and do it fast and do it hard and run a very aggressive contrast campaign against Trump and

the Republicans. Yeah, I mean, their goal is to pit white workers against brown workers against black workers, and they're going to try to pit men against women. They are going to continue to try to divide anywhere they can. And I think our goal has to be using an economic message and other messages to try to unite people. And unite it with a strong economically populous message that speaks to all working people, no matter what you look like, where you live. And I think that, and I don't think, I think like Hillary in her mind somewhere probably wanted to do that

and just did not do it with her message, at least in a strong enough way on a consistent basis so that it broke through. I'm sure she said the words, but it didn't really break through. And I think that the next, I think Democrats running in 2018 and 2020 are going to have to really hit that message even harder. And it'll be somewhat easier because we won't be, Trump will be the backdrop to the campaign, but we won't, these Democratic candidates will be running against Republican incumbents.

And so what happened to Hillary was you got a little stuck in the Trump vortex of being caught. Even if you gave a really economic popular speech that day, you had to respond to Trump's insane thing. And that became that Trump was able to define the contrast of the conversation. Well-run Democratic campaigns can make it be about Tom McClintock or Daryl Issa or MacArthur or any of these Republicans that we need to beat. That's right. All right. When we come back, John Lovett talks to Nevada's senator, who's not Dean Heller. Dirty Dean Heller? Not Dirty Dean Heller. Lovett's here. Dan, I'm here. I came in when you said we need to do it fast and do it hard and i'm not sure what it was about but it sounded fascinating oh do you do you know about

our do you know about our new sponsor you porn um i want you guys to know that i'm here because john and i are going to be doing some ads for all the various podcasts you know i make the company money but we have not yet recorded my conversation with Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. Catherine Cortez Masto. And I just want you guys to stick around because I have no guardrails. It is just me and the senator. She has been sold a bill of goods. John will not be here.

Tommy will not be here. My first question may very well be insane. It is right after the break. It has not happened yet. Dan, you've raised the bar quite a bit. I mean, in don't know. In a couple seconds, they'll hear the interview that is recorded in future time tomorrow. But right now, on Wednesday night, you've raised the bar quite a bit.

I just know we're going to get the Apple data about what's going on with podcasts. And I don't want there to be a big drop-off at this moment because it will hurt my feelings. Who do you think, Lovett, is the... What media figure's interviewing style do you emulate uh i like to go between a cross of uh al franken and a dmv employee i thought you're gonna go with your friend charlie rose oh i love charlie rose well who's that who's that famous person who has his charlie rose's best question is your your book, why now? It's like, what happened?

Yeah, what happened? All right, Dan. This is so much bonus content for people. It's great. It's great. All right. And right now we have John Lovett's interview have Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. Senator, thanks for joining today.

Oh, thanks for the invitation. So let me start by saying this. You are the first Latina to be elected to the Senate. I know that's something you've talked about. Why is that important? And do you feel as though the diversity problem in the Senate has now been solved? Oh, no, definitely not. It has not been solved. Let me say, one, it is important. And I'm excited to make history, not only as the first Latina, but the first female senator from Nevada. But more importantly to me, it is about now being a voice at the table, right? Having a seat at the table, having a voice to represent those who are traditionally underrepresented. That's one piece of this. The other is opening the door to more

diversity. I've always been a big believer that our government and the people who work in our government should be just as diverse as the people we represent. That's why when I was Attorney General of Nevada, I felt very strongly about that, particularly with Nevada's growing diversity. And so that's what I've been doing now in the United States Senate, is making sure my office represents that diversity, and then reaching out and talking with many of the staffers here on the Hill to talk about what are the barriers to opening those doors to bringing more of that diversity.

And we've had great conversations. And then the goal for me is to implement some of those action items and tear down those barriers here in the Senate, in my office, and then have good practices that I can talk to my colleagues about and talk with Senator Schumer, who has initiated a diversity initiative here in the Senate. And so those are some of the reasons why I think it was important. And let me just say one final thing, John. The most exciting thing about all of this for me is when I get to meet young Latinas, whether they're in my state or across this country, who find out that I'm the first Latina and are excited.

And the most exciting thing for me is knowing that they're looking at me thinking, well, if she can do it, I can do it too. And that's what I want. Well, that's inspiring. Now, we've seen a kind of, I don't know, pushback against diversity from the podium of the White House briefing room yesterday, when Stephen Miller, who is a C-plus Santa Monica fascist, gave a speech in the briefing room, basically saying that they were going to pursue this rollback on immigration, even saying that the poem on the Statue of Liberty was actually added later and doesn't really count. Also today, we saw an extraordinary leak of a transcript between Donald Trump and the president of Mexico discussing the border wall. Did you have any reaction to the president basically saying to

the Mexican president, talking about the wall is important politically, but I just need you to give me the space to keep kind of banging that drum without having to, I don't know, get the money from Mexico? That he sort of conceded that this is a political position he's taking for his base. Yeah, which makes it worse. It's disgusting. And it's something that I dealt with on the campaign trail. And I don't know if most people know, I'm half Mexican. My grandfather came from Chihuahua, Mexico.

He crossed the border because he wanted an opportunity at that American dream. He served in our military. He became a United States citizen. He brought his young family from Las Cruces, New Mexico, where my father and my grandmother were born, and brought them to Las Vegas. And it is no different than so many other families that I have met in Nevada,

and the reason why they have come to this country for that opportunity to succeed. What I saw on the campaign trail was Donald Trump using for political advantage, trying to pit people against one another and demonize Mexicans who are trying to claim that they're illegal, they're criminals, they're rapists, they're killers, which is absolutely false. And I have been very clear, I have no problem bringing a check on Donald Trump and his administration, because there is no room for discrimination, divisiveness, this hate, and this type of rhetoric in the White House or

anywhere. And we have to fight against it. They're still trying to play out this game, which is harming people and harming families and tearing them apart. And the other piece of this is, which is so contradictory to everything that he claims that he wants to do, is if he really wants to grow this economy and have a positive economy across this country and engage in growth, then we are going to embrace immigrants across this country. And we are going to fix our broken immigration system by passing comprehensive immigration reform. Because we know, and I've seen the studies, not just alone in Nevada, that by engaging in comprehensive immigration reform and keeping these families here,

they contribute to our economy. It is a win for Nevada. And so by continuing down this path of demonizing them is just, to me, it's offensive. He's talking about my family. He's talking about so many other families that I know and I fight for every single day. You kind of see two arguments. You see the demonization argument, which Trump is making on the trail and that we've now seen in the White House briefing room. But you also kind of see an intellectualized version of it, which is an economic argument.

Do you think that there is any truth to the argument that reducing even legal immigration would help increase wages for middle class families, that this is competition for jobs and that's ultimately a good reason to restrict immigration? No, not at all. It's actually false. No, not at all. It's actually false. The studies show it. And literally talking with people in my state, particularly the businesses in my state who rely on legal immigration to help them keep their doors open and contribute to our economy in the state of Nevada, they will tell you the same thing. They are not connected to one another. And in fact, what's interesting, you know, so I come from the state of Nevada, Las Vegas.

We are very strong both in Las Vegas and Nevada in tourism, right, and conventions. And many of our illegal immigrants work in that field of tourism. They work in our construction industry. They work in the northern part of Nevada. We have agriculture. They work in our construction industry. They work in northern part of Nevada. We have agriculture. They work in agriculture. And every single business that I have talked to supports legal immigration in this country because it contributes to the economy. It keeps the doors open. And quite honestly, our Latin Chamber of Commerce in Nevada, our individuals, legal

immigrants who are here who've opened their own businesses contributing as well. So this whole notion that they're trying to, this false sense of statistic that they keep pushing out there is just wrong, and they're using it to promote the political agenda. So you've recently taken action on DACA, which is the Deferred Action for Children. You know, we've seen Donald Trump say that this is a very hard decision for him to make. At the same time, there's been this increase in raids. Now, they claim that the raids are aimed at criminals, but we've seen that the majority of people swept up in those raids are people they weren't targeting at all. Can you just tell us what the latest is on the deferred action and what you're doing

in the Senate on this? Let me tell you some of the conversations and why this is concerning to me, because in Nevada, where almost 30% of the population are Hispanic or Latinos, right? And we have in Nevada, most people don't know, in Southern Nevada, the passage is growing Asian American Pacific Islander population. And what I have seen is this fear. People afraid to come out, go to work, send their kids to school because there is an ICE car, a patrol car in the neighborhood sitting near a school. So I've had principals I've heard from. I've heard people are afraid to go and even report crime to law enforcement, which is not what our local law enforcement want in the state of Nevada. And I've heard there have been instances of people who are undocumented individuals

who are working hard, they're going to have a job, their kids are going to school, they have committed no crime, they now get a moving violation, a traffic ticket, and they're being picked up and being deported, which was contradictory to my conversation with Secretary Kelly. I had the opportunity to talk with him. And I said, you know, you should be focused on the violent criminals. I was Attorney General of Nevada for eight years. And I know working with federal, state, and local, we address violent criminals. We want to hold them accountable. We want to lock them up. And I know working with federal, state, and local, we address violent criminals. We want to hold them accountable. We want to lock them up. And if they are undocumented individuals, then we deport them. But we do not tear hardworking families apart who are not violent

criminals in our communities. And he said, we're not going to do that. And I said, well, you are doing it because right now I have somebody who has committed a moving violation and he's being deported. And that's the only thing he's done. And Secretary Kelly said, well, that's not my understanding of how it should work. And I said, well, that's what your officers are doing. And you need to know that. My biggest concern has been the lack from the top down of written protocols and policies on how these agents should utilize their discretion. And we didn't see that coming out of this administration like we had seen it in the previous administration. And that is very, very concerning to me. And let me just

put a face on all of this, because I think this gets lost in this discussion. What I'm talking about are families and kids that I have met with. I have sat down around a table with them, and these kids, these dreamers, are kids who have come to this country at a young age. This is all they've known. Their only crime is trying to work hard to get an education. Some of these kids are working two jobs, John,

and they're trying to not only help their family, put themselves through school, get an education, be a constructive part of this American dream and who we are as Americans. And now there are threats to deport them, and if not to deport them, deport their families and leave them here. So what we have done in the United States Senate, which I am very proud of in a bipartisan way, the most recent action was the DREAM Act, which I co-sponsor, and it is to focus on all of the DREAMers and legalize them, make sure they're here, they're safely here, and they can continue staying here and getting that education and working hard. But that to me is just the first step. We do have a broken immigration system and we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform. We need to protect their parents. We need to move down this path of addressing all the

undocumented individuals who are here and really solve this problem. And we can do it and still secure our borders. Neither is mutually exclusive. Yeah. I mean, it's just this, and still secure our borders. Neither is mutually exclusive. Yeah, I mean, it's just this, we built this massive system of telling people to come illegally. We created a whole extra legal economy of jobs. And then when the hammer comes down, these are the vulnerable people who pay the price for it. Now, let's move on to healthcare. I know now that Senator Murray and Senator Alexander are starting this bipartisan process. I did want to talk a little bit about what happened last week. Your colleague, Senator Dean Heller, gave a speech, a very passionate speech, a press conference with the governor of Nevada saying, I will not vote for

something that will kick hundreds of thousands of Nevadans off their insurance. And then he turned around and voted for the repeal bill that would do exactly that. Do you have any insight into Senator Heller's thinking on that change? And do you think that he has plans for what he will do after he loses? You know, John, I could not even try to fathom and explain and understand the thinking there, because I will tell you, I know representing Nevada, the people I've heard from, and if I'm hearing from them, Dean is hearing from them as well. These are families that are fighting and asking me to fight against the repeal because they have children who have pre-existing conditions

that need that health care. These are individuals who have been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer who need that access to that health care so they can get their treatment that I hear from. There were, my gosh, 94%, 95% of the mail, e-mails, calls that I would get into my office from the state of Nevada was to not repeal the Affordable Care Act, to keep health care. Because what people need to understand is, you talked about it, we have a Republican governor. And under Governor Sandoval, we expanded Medicaid and we created the Silver State Health Care Exchange. More people have health care now in the state of Nevada than did before.

health care exchange. More people have health care now in the state of Nevada than did before. Our uninsured rates of individuals decrease dramatically. And these individuals, for the first time, have a peace of mind because now they can access affordable health care and quality health care in the state of Nevada. Our hospitals, particularly in our rural communities, have opened their doors and have hired people and have new programs that are reaching out to members in our rural community to really give them health care for the first time. The whole downside to all of this is the chaos that was created by this administration and this whole process to repeal health care has really caused damage in the state of Nevada and across the country for some of our rural communities

where our insurance companies, because of this instability, are pulling out. I have now, because of the chaos that was created, the instability, there's 17 counties in Nevada. Fifteen of them now are bare. There's no health care insurance company there. They pulled out. In the exchanges.

Just in the exchange. And so, to me, the next step now is doing just what Patty Murray, Senator Murray, and Senator Alexander are doing. Having in a committee hearing now the conversation about how we stabilize this market and how we start moving forward. We keep the Affordable Care Act. I think it's incredible. It's brought health care to millions of Americans. It is a foundation where we start.

Is it perfect? No. Are there major fixes we need to make to it to really address what I think is the problem across this country, which is to ensure that everyone should have access to affordable, quality health care. That's where we start. That's the problem we're trying to solve. And then we move forward from there. And so, yeah, we have to address the stability and bring that back because that will keep the premiums down.

That will bring more of those insurance companies back into some of our rural communities that have left, and we have to give them that certainty. But there's more that needs to be done. We have a prescription drug problem, as you well know. And it's unbelievable to me that I have talked to individuals in my state that have to make the decision whether they can afford the prescription drugs or put food on the table or pay their energy bill. That's ridiculous. And so that's a major problem we need to address, where we should be working in a bipartisan manner moving forward. And how helpful would it be to have a colleague that, say,

isn't in the pocket of a few billionaires and the Trump administration to work with on those issues? It would be very helpful. And let me just say this. You know, Senator Heller was following the lead of Governor Sandoval. He tethers himself to Governor Sandoval, and he should have stayed there. Governor Sandoval was absolutely right when he said in that press conference, these people are worth fighting for,

and that's where we should be standing, with those people who are fighting every day to have that peace of mind, and to know that they have health care when they need it. That's probably why many people are calling Dean Heller Dirty Dean Heller, because he is in the pockets of moneyed interests. What do you think about that? I'll tell you, I came from a brutal, brutal campaign in the state of Nevada and just came off the campaign trail, and the Koch brothers were there.

It was unbelievable to me the negative stuff that they make up, the negative stuff that they will push out, the omissions, just to tarnish another individual for their own benefit. The Koch brothers were there. They're spending millions of dollars. In my race alone in Nevada, over $90 million was spent. Insane. Insane. Well, it's great that you stood up to that. It'd be nice if you had a colleague who did as well. I want to ask one last question because this is something a few people asked me about on Twitter. Senator Cory Booker has introduced legislation to end the federal prohibition on marijuana. Have you taken a position on that? a couple of things. I haven't actually looked at all of the provisions in his bill. As you well know, Nevada is not only a recreational marijuana state, it's a medical marijuana state as well. So we do have done just both of those. Honestly, I didn't know that, but it does make a lot of sense intuitively. Yeah. Well, so there's medical and recreation in Nevada. And the challenge we have

now is we have no banking system that can work with those businesses, right? And then we have a problem where I believe we have to address how we schedule marijuana in the first place under the federal schedule and address that and decriminalize some of these issues when it comes to marijuana. So those are the things I'm focusing on here. And I think it's something of concern to me where AG Sessions is going to go with this. I think they should be looking to the states and letting the states decide how they want to handle this issue, because the states, as you well know, are making this decision and they're putting laws in place locally, but we need to work in collaboration with them. One last question. So you bring up Sessions. We've seen in the past week that Trump kind of

under siege, you know, not a lot of accomplishments. This health care bill goes down. It kind of goes back to, you know, whatever his classics, his hits, you know, whatever his Thunder Road. It's he attacks transgender people on Twitter. He goes and, you know, talks to law enforcement at roughing people up. He makes a mockery of the Boy Scout Jamboree, of all things. And then he does this immigration statement. What do you think that people can do to kind of push back against this kind of politics? How do we stay focused on things we care about, healthcare, the economy, while still not letting him take us backwards on these sort of core fundamental values issues? No, it's a great point, because I don't know about you, but it's the first time I've ever seen somebody tweeting policy in this country, which is the worst thing that we could ever happen. And now people need to stand up and hold him and anybody accountable, particularly with the bullying that you see and the cyberbullying and trying to divide this country. I think we all have an obligation to really stand up now, use our voices, and try to unify this country. I think we all have an obligation to really stand up now, use our voices, and try to unify this country. Let me tell you, and I talk to people about this all the time, I think,

and what I do every day, I have values and principles that I follow. And I believe that we as a country govern with those values and consistent with those values and principles. We enforce the laws consistent with those values and principles. We enforce the laws consistent with those values and principles. And we need to ensure we keep those values and principles in the forefront. And everybody is held accountable. And we have an administration now that I think has lost that. And it is all about a political promise that they're trying to pursue for their own agenda and not to the betterment

of this country. And let me give you an example. If we really want to grow this economy and find jobs for individuals, and I think we should, and in Nevada I'm fighting for that every single day, one of the things we can do is really invest in our infrastructure and focus on how we work in a bipartisan way to move down that path and create these jobs. You don't hear any discussion about that. There's no discussion from this administration about trying to work in a bipartisan way to grow this economy, even though we're willing to do so. I'm willing to do so. That's why I'm here, is to work together. And that's not happening. Clearly, there is this administration, their agenda is a political agenda that is not benefiting this country.

And that's why we need to stand up more so than ever. It's so shocking because these are things that you'd think what he'd want to do to be popular. I mean, the president pursuing an infrastructure plan, pursuing some kind of a populism as he campaigned on, would actually be tougher for Democrats to deal with. Exactly. But here's the thing that I, you know, and I say this because I go back to my state and Hillary won Nevada, but, you know, Trump has, there's supporters there. And I look at it, I'm representing everyone.

And at the end of the day, if you just have a conversation with people, and you may not be on the same political side, but if you have a conversation with them, you can find common ground somewhere. You can figure out how you can work together to find that common ground if they're willing to do so. I find that this administration is not willing to do so. They say so. They say that they are, but their actions show differently. And I think their actions are much stronger than what we see happening here, because that dictates and tells me who they truly are. Yeah. Well, we'll have to leave it there on that note. Thank you, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. Great.

Have a good day. You too. All right. That was Levitt's interview. Amazing. What do you guys think? We were recording this before we heard what it was. I know it was superb i cannot believe she hung up on me when i badgered her until she refused to say dirty dean heller well that's all the time we have for today's episode uh we'll be back on monday and we will uh we'll talk to you guys then have a good weekend guys bye Bye, guys. Bye.