Pod Save America - “Joe and the Giant Speech.”

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Joe Biden takes on Republican voter suppression in Georgia, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler talks about Ron Johnson’s re-election announcement and saving democracy in the Badger State, and Ted Cruz grovels to Tucker Carlson after referring to violent insurrectionists as terrorists.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun restrictions in states, overturning Roe v. Wade, and severely threatening our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Lippman, and each week on Strict Scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes of Strict Scrutiny every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Joe Biden takes on Republican voter suppression in Georgia. Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler talks about Ron Johnson's re-election announcement and saving democracy in the Badger State. And Ted Cruz grovels to tucker carlson for referring to violent insurrectionists as terrorists wild stuff you know a lot of clips get shared online and they're like this is the worst thing you'll ever see i can't believe how

bad this this one delivered like nothing nothing i've seen in a while it sure did tommy it's why i broke my new rule of i tweeted it but i didn't do a screenshot i wanted people to watch the yeah me too if you uh if there were any more cringes per minute on that clip it would be part of and just like that and just like that ted cruz humiliated himself there in case there's anyone who was involved and just like that listening to our podcast it's now heard attacks four or five episodes in a row sorry it's okay sorry attack away all right but first before we start you know what you did check out this week's offline where i talked to facebook's former chief security officer alex stamos about why he left the company why he thinks mark zuckerberg should too and how

he thinks the platform can become less of a democracy destroying hellscape is he broken up about this is he broken up about the bob saget news oh my god it is sad it is sad listen you don't have a lot of chance to make a stamos joke i actually was sad about the bob saget you actually texted me about the interview and did say john stamos yep yep so that's that is one thing that happened i was was sad too. We all grew up watching America's Funniest Home Videos. And America's Funniest Home Videos. Both shows. America, this is you.

Also check out the latest episode of All Caps NBA on YouTube where Jason Concepcion discusses who's playing and who's not as COVID-19 cases soar within the league. And Carl Tartt from NBC's new show Grand Crew joins to explain some lesser-known Los Angeles Clippers facts. Subscribe to the Take Line YouTube channel so you never miss an episode of All Caps NBA. It's fantastic. All right, let's get to the news.

Joe Biden is headed to Georgia for a major speech on voting rights where he's expected to again drive home the message he delivered on January 6th about the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump's Republican Party. The president also delivered remarks on Friday about the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump's Republican Party. The president also delivered remarks on Friday about the monthly jobs report, which showed a sharp drop in the unemployment rate, where he had the following message for Republican politicians who accuse him of ignoring inflation. Malarkey. They want to talk down the recovery because they voted against the legislation that made it happen. They voted against the tax cuts for

middle-class families. They voted against the funds we needed to reopen our schools, to keep police officers and firefighters on the job, to lower health care premiums. They voted against the funds we're now using to buy COVID booster shots and more antiviral pills. to buy COVID booster shots and more antiviral pills. I refuse to let them stand in the way of this recovery. And now my focus is on keeping this recovery strong and durable, notwithstanding Republican obstructionism. Malarkey. Malarkey. Malarkey.

So Biden's recent speeches led to a classic comes out swinging piece from Michael Shear at the New York Times who described the president as, quote, lashing out at Republicans with, quote, forceful new attacks and a sharp tone. Do you guys think this is an intentional strategy from the White House? And why do you think they decided to do this now? Tommy, you also missed the really the triggering line for me, which was seeking to jumpstart his agenda, which obviously is true, but I don't know. This is one of those. I think it was a stall. Was it stalled agenda? Did it say?

Probably. Yeah. You know, could write these things. It's so annoying when the change in tone is the focus, but I don't know. You kind of go into this speech knowing that's what's going to happen. Yeah. I mean, they were, I think they, he didn't talk about Trump for a year and then he talked about Trump. I think they knew what they were doing.

One other thing I just, and the piece is fine. It's fair. It's actually funny. It's a it's a classic of the genre, but it's fair. Yeah, it's a yeah, it's a classic of the genre. Exactly. But the but there's also in this genre of stories, there's always the to be sure paragraph like so here are the things that are going well, but then here are the things that aren't.

And my favorite part of that paragraph laying all the challenges that lay before Biden, is every day there is evidence that climate change is getting worse. I saw that too. It's like, wow, that is a tough part of the thing you're supposed to deal with in the first two years. But the other piece of this is just as we head into the midterms and Trump is going to be more and more of a figure, it is just a reminder that like Biden puts down a pencil and picks up a ballpoint pen. He is escalating the rhetoric.

Trump puts down a rifle and picks up a sword and he's easing tensions and turning down the temperature. We are at malarkey. Like, lest we forget, Trump threatened to kill Hillary Clinton. Yeah, a few times. A couple times. And he's like, malarkey. Malarkey is the sharp new tone. And it is a sharp new tone, but just...

No, this is the trap that Democrats often lay for themselves. And this is why the story was triggering for me. I got very mad about it, and then I reread it, and I was like, oh, it's completely fine. Completely fine. Which is that Barack Obama, you know, when he ran, pledged to have the most transparent administration in history. And then every time you do something that isn't seen as perfectly transparent, that gets thrown back in your face. When you run as the unity candidate, you just got to know that for the next 48 years, every time you say something that could

remotely be construed as divisive everyone is gonna punch you in the face for it well so sometimes the press treats what you do as a strategy when it's actually just happenstance um but then sometimes it is a strategy and the press writes it and you're like oh good they figured it out yeah i kind of felt like it was the latter this time like i felt like in the white house they were all right, enough of this shit. We've been we've been getting hit for a while now. All we've been doing is like, you know, there's a lot of coverage about Democrats fighting amongst themselves, like the Republicans are the one who are fucking up democracy in the country here. Let's take it to them. Do you guys agree? Yeah. I mean, it seems like he held back.

I mean, Clyburn, I think, represented the frustration pretty well, which is like we were trying to do a bunch of stuff, including with Republicans. Of course, that was not the time to go full bore with a with a partisan hit. But now is a different moment. January 6 is the perfect moment to have him kind of have a Trump message. It was carried live by a bunch of networks. It was pretty effective. It was also pretty tame by the standards of our politics. So it seems, seems all, seems all, uh, yeah. You know, you can't be upset about the word malarkey. What the White House people would say is this is actually what he ran on. I mean, the, the, his announcement speech was about Charlottesville, the divisiveness and the need to bring the country together between then. And now we had a pandemic. You guys might've noticed the economy, some challenges in the economy. So he was focused on getting those things done. Sick of this Joe Macron. A lot of it involved Congress. So I think it made sense to come out on January 6th. They also probably knew just tactically, again,

like this is probably the best chance you're going to get this kind of message about Trump covered in the way you want it to be covered on the anniversary of an attack he unleashed on the Capitol. It's also January of 2022. It's an election year. The election is here. The election year is here.

Yeah, and look, we've talked about it many times, but right now, generic ballot. Republicans are winning. They're not winning because, obviously, vote suppression will help them, but they're winning fair and square. They're winning on the popular vote, and that is because no one has done a great job

of defining these people. Right now, if people are going to vote, they want Marjorie Taylor Greene to have more power and they want your favorite member of Congress, be it Josh Gottheimer or someone else. But mostly Josh Gottheimer. Or AOC. They want that person to have less. And that's because nobody has made a really strong case. And all the coverage has been about the intra-dem battles to get something through the Congress.

While the fact that the reason it has to be a solely Democratic conversation is because Republicans have basically abdicated governance. So do you guys both think it's a smart strategy from the White House? I think you have to show a contrast. You have to be fighting with someone you need an enemy. It is certainly better than trying to tell people, which they also did in that economic speech, that actually the economy is good. Actually, inflation is transitory. Like that's just a tougher sell. It's much easier to be out there and seen as fighting something. It reminds me of 2012 Obama, where the economy wasn't great, but the message was about how Mitt Romney was a corporate raider and would make things worse. And you're

better off with me, Barack Obama, than Bain Capital over here. I mean, the hard part is going to be deciding when to engage with Trump. I get why they haven't wanted to make the first year of the administration a colloquy with Trump, where they're just constantly going back and forth. But my concern has always been that Trump is waging war against Biden all day, every day. So are his surrogates. And Biden's also dealing with tough events, the economy, COVID, things that drive you nuts. And sometimes like you just got to be seen as fighting remember the biggest election in 2021 that went well for the democrats was gavin newsom's uh the recall effort against gavin newsom here in california and it started going well when gavin newsom told people what larry elder stood

for the right when someone googled larry elder and realized he's a fucking lunatic and he did and it wasn't just telling him he was a trump clone, like we saw Terry McAuliffe do with Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. I think Gavin Newsom said, you know, Trump was defeated, but Trumpism still lives. And here's what Larry Elder actually stands for. But he really hit against minimum wage, against climate change. Now, of course, you can say this was California. California is very blue. But again, the margin in 2021, the recall was the same as the margin in 2018, which is not what we can say for Virginia or New Jersey. That went bad.

Now, we all think it's a smart strategy. Does anyone want to take the Chuck Todd red hen sign of the argument? Yeah. Red hen. Civility alert. Red hen. Civility alert. P Hen. Civility alert.

Paging Chuck Todd. Paging Chuck Todd. Tip O'Neill. Ronald Reagan. You are needed with a bourbon in the West Wing. There's a bridge. Red Hen. Red Hen.

All right. Cut it off. Going just a little too long is the best part of it. Yeah. Just keep going. I have tweeted that so many times and i just want chuck todd to respond to me once someone out there get a get a word to chuck wisely chuck's probably not on twitter as much anymore yeah i think he's not okay okay this is my straw man

case uh for for biden taking the high road being civil not mentioning trump by name although i don't know that he mentioned it by name but not like hammering him before you i want to hear this but i cannot stand the didn't say the name did say the name it is so stupid we're still doing this it's so dumb i don't want to say is i don't i know where did it come from it's like a lake off book i don't fucking get it before that man yeah seriously it's been yeah no i know I hate that too. Anyway, look, okay. I'm going to- Straw man. Straw man.

So ironically to convince you guys that you are idiots for wanting to not take the high road. So like we talked about earlier, Biden is defined as the unity guy. He's the heal the nation guy. And so when he changes course, it's going to be covered tactically. It's going to focus on the change. And the problem with that is the one thing we know is that voters hate divisiveness. They hate infighting in Washington. They hated impeachment. So if you know that this is going to be the outcome, just stay on the high road. Talk about your message to voters only care about the economy. New AP poll, 68 percent respond and say it's their biggest concern.

Concerns about inflation went to one to 14 percent. They're still pissed about COVID ruining their lives. Any time spent focused on Trump decreases your chance of talking about that. Third, you will never get as nasty as Trump. If you attack him, he will bludgeon you, but this time he gets mainstream coverage because it's seen as a response to Biden, so it elevates him.

Fourth, Biden is very good at unity. He's not always good at attacks. That's the last point i have that's my straw man for taking the high road and you morons you fucking dolts bozo's want to respond i'm persuaded you're you got me i mean i think that you have raised a good point there which is here's what we know is true. Biden has campaigned on campaign on two themes. You mentioned both of them so far today, bringing the country together and preserving democracy.

Yeah. So the question is, and I think we also know a majority of voters want both. They want democracy preserved. They also want the country to come together. And so the question is, how do you do both? I think. the country to come together. And so the question is, how do you do both? I think. And I think if you're Biden, you have to make it clear that you are a president who represents all Americans, even if you didn't vote for him, president who's going to fight for all Americans, even if you didn't vote for them. But then you try to marginalize Republican politicians and Donald Trump as people who want to keep dividing us for their own gain. I think that's the way you sort of split the difference.

I mean, the simplest argument against what you just said is what Joe Biden said this week is what he said as a candidate over and over again for the entirety of the race, both on how he argued against Republican economics and how he argued against Trump specifically. That was those were I mean, like the three messages were kind of unity. Trump is an aberration to our values and our democracy and our morality. And he's enabled by these Republicans that don't care about you or the problems you face. And that's what he reiterated. He became president because he was able to deliver that message at a time when people were really receptive to it.

And I think the point that Jen Psaki made in one of these look back pieces that basically some of this sort of some of this sourness in the polling, you can attribute it to gas prices. You contribute to whatever you want. But like the base issue is the country's not back to normal. We are still in a pandemic that is uncertain. That sucks. People don't know if their kids are going to be in their school or not. They're still wearing masks. They're hearing about Omicron all the time. And so as long as that is the case, I mean, the truth is, as long as that is the case, these are not, this is not a political problem. This is a cultural, societal problem. It's not a messaging problem. No, it's not a messaging problem. It's a, it's an outcomes problem. And so I think right now it is about defining Republicans as best you can.

It is about, I think, Trump in the right measure measure which i think is exactly what he's been doing and then it is trying like hell to figure out how to get the country out of this and then be able to take credit for it starting with the state of the union it's an election year joe biden's job is to define the choice that voters face which has always been the job of every incumbent every party in power since the beginning of time that's just the way politics works and we also know that every compelling and every party in power since the beginning of time. That's just the way politics works. And we also know that every compelling message, every compelling political message has a villain. With Barack Obama, he talked about Washington dysfunction.

He talked about special interests. Sometimes it was Republican politicians that were in the way. And, you know, he was seen as the unity bringing the country guy together too. But no one just does, let's bring the country together and i'm trying as hard i can to solve the problems and no one's standing in my way and so that's it that's not gonna work for anyone my my straw man and again no one tweeted me that i'm an idiot because it's just a straw man what i believe deeply believes it the problem is when you when you walk out in front of the mics every day and you're like here are the ways i'm fixing the economy no one covers it.

And so a fight with Trump is more likely to get covered. I think it's his only path. On the Georgia event, love it, how would you put together a speech on voting rights and democracy that doesn't just feel pointless the moment that Joe Manchin and or Kyrsten Sinema inevitably say that they still don't want to get rid of the filibuster? I thought about that question. And then right before we recorded, sure enough, Manu Raju from CNN tweeted, Dem pressure campaign on Manchin to use nuclear option and change rules to pass a voting bill isn't working. He told me tonight, quote, I haven't seen a proposal that he could back to change rules along party lines. Quote, maybe someone is hiding something.

They haven't shown it to me. He said while covering his eyes and it's this thing there's this um very strange it's almost like a kink of like i don't i'll never he never rules anything out and he never rules anything in he keeps it all possible what's his safe word um it's maserati safe word that's nothing uh but what i was gonna say so it's like i think you have to act under the assumption that there's no magical set of words that joe biden can issue in the right combination it's not a fucking it's not a spell yeah it's not like you bring you put the right things in the cauldron while saying the right incantation and joe mansion becomes a civilized fucking human being.

It's not magic. But now he's running out of his office. I did it. Like Alan Turing cracking the enigma code. I think there's three things. One, there is more to do to protect democracy than simply passing

laws at the federal level. That's really important. Two, I think that there is, I think Trump was, woke us up to the amount of backsliding there was, not just in our politics, but in our culture around democracy, that we are still paying a price for and we will continue to pay a price for. People simply do not have a strong adherence to democratic values in the way that we thought. And once the kind of elite protection, the kind of elite consensus around how democracy should work, how elections should work, what it means to concede when you've

lost, what it means to accept fair results, once that broke, there weren't very many guardrails behind it. And so I do think making just a larger argument for democratic principles and democratic values, making it big, you know, Republicans have spent the last 50 years taking on every patriotic symbol, co-opting every the eagle and the fucking flag and don't tread on me and owning all of it. Like we need to do a bit of that ourselves and take some ownership, co-op some of the democratic symbols and the democratic process as something we believe in and that they don't. And then the third piece of this is, look, stopping vote suppression is really important. Reforming the Electoral Count Act is really important. We need to do these things. They will determine the outcomes of these elections when they are close. But one example,

the Trump-Eastman-Giuliani plan to steal the election, it was extra legal. It was in some ways to defy the constitution and the law, ignore the constitution and law, pretend the law and the constitution say something that they don't. And so ultimately, the only real way to fascist proof your country is to win. It is to have power. The only way we will stop these people ultimately is with power. And sometimes that is about making a case around democracy, but sometimes it's just about fucking winning on whatever terms you need to take in order to win. Yeah. I know that a lot of voting rights groups were upset months ago when the white house said, we're going to have to out-organize them. But again, even in a perfect world where we pass the freedom to vote act and the John Lewis

voting rights act tomorrow and did something about election subversion legislatively tomorrow, we would still need to out-organize them. There's no piece of legislation that can prevent some of these yahoos from running for office for secretary of state or governor or county recorder or all these positions that have power over the administration of our elections. And we have, and Joe Biden should point that out. Everyone should listen to my interview later with, with Ben Wickler, the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, because he talks about some specific, very scary individuals running for a local office who are overt in their desire to just steal elections. Yeah. I mean, the problem with the Biden strategy is like the Georgia

speech is about raising awareness and general support for voting rights and legislation. And, you know, I guess just like getting everyone fired up about the issue, the, the, the strategy to actually getting that done as an inside game where we can have to convince the same people whose names I refuse to say, it's not like we got to get Warnock and John Ossoff on board. And so that's, that's why it seems a little discordant. And I know that, you know, some of the, some voting rights groups in Georgia are skipping Biden's event today because they say, we want to vote today. I think these are some of the smartest, most effective organizers on the planet. But I don't totally understand that because I worry that Biden's attempt to get voting

rights covered in the conversation will now be impacted by this boycott of the event. I'm not sure exactly how it helps. I guess the argument for skipping the event, if you're a voting rights activist, is that your job is not to be Joe Biden's friend. It's to be the squeakiest wheel possible and get time and attention and grease. But I don't know.

I mean, it's tough. Same idiotic senators are making our lives harder. Yeah, the voting rights group said, Georgia voters made history and made their voices heard. In return, a visit has been forced on them, requiring them to accept political platitudes and repetitious bland promises. As civil rights leaders and advocates, we reject any visit by President Biden that does not include an announcement of a finalized voting rights plan that will pass both chambers, not be stopped by the filibuster and be signed into law. Anything

less is insufficient and unwelcome. I get the anger. I get the frustration. These people have been working their asses off and they did tremendous, tremendous work in 2018 and 2020 and many of them in many years before that when people weren't paying attention. But like, again, this is what is Joe, like how does Joe Biden force people to take a vote that they don't want to take when he doesn't have political leverage? A lot of groups did some heroic work by going to West Virginia and trying to pressure Joe Manchin in West Virginia, running ads in West Virginia. Did that work? No. Do I blame them for that not working? Of course not.

They tried their best. Well, and just practically, Schumer's promised a vote by the 17th, correct? So we're talking about seven days from now. There will be a vote. There will be a vote. And as of right now about seven days from now. Six days from now is when this airs. There will be a vote. And as of right now, it would probably fail. It was a local use for a mansion. If we were living in a world

where what we had seen over the last few months was Joe Biden choosing build back better over voting rights, making a political calculation that he wanted to do a domestic agenda before he did democracy reform. And so he put all his power and pressure, brought it all to bear to get a passage through the Senate. And that worked. And it successfully persuaded Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. And he had successfully gotten Build Back Better through. I think you can have an argument

that he chose Build Back Better over voting rights. But right now we've got fucking neither. So there's no where is this pressure campaign that Joe Biden is supposed to be mounting that is going to affect Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema? It hasn't been possible. Like you can argue that there needs to be more of a focus on voting rights. I think that's probably true, but you can argue that when Joe Biden

brought pressure to bear, it worked. It didn't, it didn't, it didn't work. So it's not on, I mean, I don't know what else we're supposed to do. I mean, it's on him, right? The argument is he needs to do a better job he needs to figure out a new strategy but like i just think i just don't totally get what skipping the event does and i say this with the utmost respect like i love latasha brown blackboarders matter they're incredible work these are like some of the smartest hardest working people

period i just don't get this move well this is back to levitt's joke about the the speech like is there a certain combination of words that bernie sanders or stacy abrams or kamala harris or elizabeth warren or anyone any democrat could have uttered to joe mansion that would have uh led to a different outcome i may be does anyone want to make that case hey joe mansion here's a manila envelope filled with photos of you en flagrante with someone who is not your wife and who is not a woman does that do anything for you joe mansion all right well let me know if those pictures exist other than that you know i don't know all right uh i for one would welcome queer ally joe mansion but for him i think it would be it would make maybe work as blackmail. Is that a lump of coal in your pocket, or are you just glad to vote with me?

Well, we're a little far afield now. I think you're right, yeah. On Biden's economic message, the other part of this where we started a long time ago. Thanks, John. I want you all to know that that was the second version of what we decided I was allowed to say on this podcast. It gets worse. Yeah, no, just remember that.

It will always get worse. On Biden's economic message, Jeff Stein had a Washington Post piece today saying that some economists close to the White House, including people at the Treasury Department, surprise, surprise, are uncomfortable with the president's new argument that, quote,

price increases for gasoline and meat are connected to corporate consolidation and greed. What do you think of that? What do you think of the Treasury nerds getting all upset about that? I want to encourage all the economists in the Treasury Department listening to get real close to the speaker.

Turn up the volume just a little bit. Shut the fuck up. We don't need to convince economists. We need to convince voters. You guys do your economist stuff. Econometrics is a class I didn't take. Figure out what policies will deal with inflation. Then let Joe Biden make the argument he wants to make.

Here's one thing we've learned over the last few years. Whether it's that economists shouldn't do punditry. Epidemiologists shouldn't do fucking punditry. People and Bob Mueller's investigative team shouldn't do punditry epidemiologists shouldn't do fucking punditry people people and and bob muller's investigative team shouldn't do hey we probably shouldn't do anymore okay nobody should do it at least at least no one's at least no one's in danger having to make a big decision because of what we say on here uh you know we're not in positions of authority anymore it's like also just don't tell the washington post like keep the debate inside the house i thought uh i thought um larry summers was

was it perfectly larry summers he was like yep uh if it's a message for politics that's fine if it's about how you know he goes if it's a political message that makes sense if it's actually about stopping inflation it won't work but either way it's fine corporate profits are up so here's i mean here's what always happens between the communications and political folks and the pollsters and all of the economic policy folks every for as long as i've been in politics long time now what what's at the top of the chart when we pull policies uh taking tax breaks away from companies that ship jobs overseas, giving tax breaks for companies that create jobs right here. Not outsourcing overseas, creating stuff here, right?

Like every message about corporate greed, about rich people not paying enough taxes, about creating jobs in America. John got his DLC hymnal. It is just, those are the most popular policies ever, all the time. And then you go to the White House like we did, and you sit there and you're like, all right, where's the policy that we're going to implement

about taking away tax break for companies that ship jobs overseas? And you get some nerd from the Treasury Department there, oh, I don't think we can do that because of the tax code. Okay, okay. All the time. And then the promise goes unfulfilled, treasury department there oh i don't think we can do that because of the tax crime okay okay all the time and then the promise goes unfulfilled and then we look like assholes so it's like i get look i don't want people lying about the economy i don't want people lying about policy i don't want people proposing policy that can't be done part of an argument exactly what you said tommy like corporations are making record profits right now and people

are paying higher prices. It is completely fine and right to point that out. Yeah, I was persuaded, actually. I was skeptical of this sort of message just because it sounded I don't give a fuck about how, you know, where it fits on the fucking expected value fucking economics. I didn't take any economics and i'm glad i didn't no but but i'm gonna say is i don't know i don't know where the fucking lines intersect on the goddamn chart but here's what i know when someone says inflation's happening because they're greedy corporations what i think is that weird. Were they less greedy five years ago?

I'm just common sense. That doesn't make sense to me. Wait a second. People didn't suddenly become greedy. No, of course not. It's an easy fix. Inflation's happening. Meanwhile, these greedy corporations are doing as better as they've ever done.

I would actually even go further. I thought they put put in the piece looking at these arguments, they put Elizabeth Warren's as if it's like to the left of Joe Biden when she says or more explicit than Joe Biden, when she says that corporations are taking advantage of the pandemic to make more profits and raise costs. And I actually found that more persuasive. Like, I think that's like a simpler, oh, that to me and then this part about consolidation like sure like consolidation is a long-term problem but like i think it's a pretty reasonable argument to say hey while you weren't paying attention a bunch of big companies sort of swallowed up some of their competition and when they saw an opportunity to

use that new power to raise prices during a pandemic they fucking did it like that's a very reasonable uh argument to me and i think that like of course we should be making that point of course we should be making that argument and also just some some news you can use here uh data for progress our friends pulled uh inflation in december pulled the best testing messages against inflation these were the top performing messages on inflation number three per what we were just talking about quote president biden says corporations are recording record profits while americans are paying higher prices he says we need a fairer economy where workers and consumers not ceos and shareholders come out

ahead so that's number three number two is doubting the bipartisan infrastructure deal because it will strengthen our supply chains and number one the most popular we need to bring manufacturing jobs back to america by making sure our supply chains are housed here, not outsourced abroad. Which I didn't even know you could do. Can you do it? Who knows? If this is what Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren are out talking about, this is the message they're carrying, which it is, it's probably a good one. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, Sherrod Brown won Ohio a bunch of times when he wasn't supposed to.

So, yeah, maybe it's a good message. Anyway, something to think about our segment giving a noogie to some poor economists in the yeah no i'm sorry department austin gulesby is welcome to come back on here and and defend all of the economy yeah sure um okay when we come back wisconsin democratic party man spend the cost curve in the out years r squared confidence intervals when we come back wisconsin democratic party chair ben wickler chats with tommy about ron johnson's announcement that america's dumbest senator is running for re-election I am so excited to welcome back to Pod Save America, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Ben Wickler. Ben, good to see you. Thanks, Tommy. It is good to see and hear you too.

I love Zooming with you because you have the most campaign office vibe. We got Tony Evers signs. We got big maps with counties on them. I assume there'll be pushpins in there soon for various reasons. Indeed. Yes, there'll be pushpins. There may be string connecting the pushpins. I've got my Tony Evers and I've got my Biden-Harris four by four barn sign up on the facing wall. For folks just listening in the podcast, just imagine the most campaigning of rooms. There's also a used large couch, which is always a campaign feature. Yes. All you need is a potluck and you are officially in a campaign office. All right, Ben. So we want to talk to you this week because there was some big news out of Wisconsin. Senator Ron Johnson

said he is going to run again. I thought he had pledged to not run for a third term. Why did he lie? What's up with the change of heart? Well, lying and breaking promises is like breathing air for Ron Johnson. So in some ways, the fact that he promised not to run for a third term is not a surprise. But when I look at what he's done over the last dozen years, he'd been in the Senate. He ran as Mr. Kind of Pragmatic Businessman. And after he got reelected in 2016, after his closing argument was that he wouldn't run again, he got to the Senate and worked with Donald Trump to get his tax bill passed. And, you know, lots of Republicans voted for the tax bill. Republicans voted for the tax bill. But Johnson stood out because he actually refused to vote for the tax scam, which was a massive giveaway to people at the top, until he convinced Donald

Trump to add a specific carve-out for something called a designated S-corp. And a designated S- corporation happens to be the exact kind of corporation that Ron Johnson owns. Hmm. Interesting. It is interesting, right? And it's something he knows a lot about. And it's the kind of corporation that Ron Johnson owns. Hmm, interesting. It is interesting, right? And it's something he knows a lot about. And it's the kind of corporation, as it turns out, that his biggest donors own, the Uline family and Dian Hendricks.

They're right-wing billionaires in Wisconsin. Between Richard and Liz Uline and Dian Hendricks, they gave away $84 million to Republican donors in the last election cycle. They put $20 million into his 2016 race in a super PAC. And the year after the tax bill passed, after Ron Johnson got his dream loophole added to Trump's tax bill, because it didn't already give away enough money to rich people. The year after Johnson got his dream tax loophole added, the U-Lions and Diane Hendricks walked away with more than $200 million in one year. That's a great investment. It's a 10 to 1 return in a single year. It's like a cryptocurrency

accessible only to right wing billionaires. That's nice. It's a hell of a kickback. I want to do more about the Johnson rap sheet because he is there's a lot of Members of Congress who are not quite tethered to reality and he's sort of in the upper echelon But real quick Johnson announces change of heart his flip-flop in the Wall Street Journal Is that a popular newspaper and in Sheboygan? Would you make it? You know this audience, you know, I'm sure the it's not just and the Wisconsin right-wing billionaire class that enjoys reading the Wall Street Journal op-eds where he penned his campaign announcement. He actually, you know, Madison, Wisconsin is not like a right-wing bastion, but his campaign office, or his, excuse me, his constituent office in Madison is located on Wall Street in Madison, which is an address that I didn't even know we had a Wall Street until I went to his

office and discovered that that's where he'd managed to locate it. So I think he's sending a big flashing signal for whose side he's on. And it is not the good people of the state of Wisconsin. So we talk, there's so many members of Congress who are just a mess, right? We got Marjorie Taylor Greene, we got Matt Gaetz. I mean, it's like, it's hard to keep track. What's the rap sheet on Ron Johnson? Why do you think he's uniquely dangerous? So here's the thing about Ron Johnson. He makes huge national news for being just the worst of the worst conspiracy theory monger, you know, claiming that there was no insurrection on January 6th, saying that he would have been scared if it had been Black Lives Matter protesters, but he was never scared because it was patriots who loved their country and loved law enforcement.

That was his literal quote about the people who beat up cops with an American flag. He has called climate change, the idea of climate change, BS. He has gone out of his way in a million ways. He was the guy opposing Juneteenth being a federal holiday. He used all these things that are just patently offensive. You said that excess carbon in the atmosphere helps the trees grow. Yes, what carbon dioxide does is it helps trees grow. He claimed that green, anyway,

there's a lot of things like that. And it's easy to just focus on those. But the thing about Johnson is that with one hand, he's just, you know, stirring things up and saying horrible stuff that in some cases has lethal consequences, like his huge championing of conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and, you know, opposing, pushing vaccines on anyone. That's the way he describes it. But on the other hand, he's just lining his own pockets. He's picking the pockets of Republican constituents and Democratic constituents and non-voters and independents alike. He's a venal self-serving

politician who is dressing himself up as a truth-telling messiah from some right-wing utopia. And the bait and switch, the kind of like the corruption at the heart of that equation is the thing that is actually dynamite for republican voters and i think as we as we look at this guy who uh you know is right there at the front of the attack on democracy who's trying who's calling on our state legislature to unilaterally seize control of election administration in the state of wisconsin we have the most gerrymandered horrific right-wing state legislature you can imagine while he's doing all that why does he want to rig the system? He wants to rig it so that people like him can stay in power and give more money to people like

him. And that's like, it's not just that he is completely out to lunch and completely out on the fringe. It's that he's actually profoundly corrupt in the kind of the, the, the real politician sense of corruption. And so many voters, when they, even if they kind of maybe agree with him about every Mectin or whatever, if they hear that he's ripping them off and that he's, you know, the stuff he's doing behind closed doors, um, actually, you know, he's trying to block the stimulus checks for people. You're going to block the child tax credit. He's trying to, he's one of only six senators to vote against the ban on surprise medical bills. He's like the most in the pocket of all the worst special

interests. That stuff actually cost him support from what he would hope to be his base at the same time as he tries to appeal to the worst instincts of the worst parts of the American political discourse. Opposing a bipartisan bill to ban surprise medical bills is a strange vote if you want to win. You mentioned this. So, you know, Johnson wanted the state legislature to take control over federal elections. What would that have meant in practice? And can you talk about the response even from some Republicans in the state? People, this is like so far outside of the bounds of, you know, of democracy, I guess you could say, because changing who runs the elections requires a bill that needs to be passed into law by going through the state legislature and then being signed by the governor. That's how states work.

He just wants the state legislature to assert that it has a constitutional right to do whatever it wants and seize control. And state legislators were aghast. The public was totally aghast. Every editorial board that commented on it thought this is a horrific idea. But he fundamentally doesn't believe that voters should decide who runs our government. He was opposing the certification of electoral college votes until the insurrection had actually like crashed into the u.s senate then he put that aside for for a few hours and was right back feeding the big lie right afterwards if if our state legislature got control uh we've seen in lots of different ways what they would do they would they've already passed a slew of laws to crack down on all the things that people did to try to vote safely during the pandemic. They have

passed a law through the state legislature that would restrict access to drop boxes. They've required, they would require that you take a photo of your voter ID every single time you request an absentee ballot, even for primary and then a general election, even if your idea is already on file, all these things. The governor has vetoed all of these rules, but he wants the state legislature to have carte blanche outside of the bounds of law. And there's really no constraint based in reality or our constitution or common sense or data or science that affects what he aims for. What he aims for is things that consolidate power for people like him. And that is exactly why he shouldn't have that power. It's because it's so contrary to the

fundamental idea of how this country is supposed to work. Unfortunately, it does work that way sometimes, but it should not. And that's the reason why we're organizing so intensively and have been for the whole last year, even before he announced, to make sure he doesn't get another term. Yeah. I mean, so you mentioned Tony Evers, a Democratic governor, and some of the things he's vetoed. He's up as well. What's at stake in that race? So if you are concerned about the future of American democracy, you have to zero in on exactly how it is that Republicans would overturn a presidential election. And it really comes down to a handful of

states those two presidential elections have been super close in each in each election there were three states that they got the the winner over the top and wisconsin was the only state that was on both of those lists wisconsin pennsylvania michigan in 2016 wisconsin arizona georgia in 2020 wisconsin was the tipping point state in both elections and the reason why democracy prevailed in 2020 is that we had a democratic governor in wisconsin in 2020 who didn't throw the election to trump or support its overturning there's a woman named rebecca clayfish who's running for governor of wisconsin she was scott walker's lieutenant governor she famously negotiated the giant foxconn deal she she's

do you remember do you remember um when that senate candidate said that uh rape survivors should turn lemons into lemonade and they shouldn't that's why there shouldn't be a an exception for rape and uh incest in abortion oh my god someone said that yes rebecca clayfish quote tweeted that and said like she's telling it like it is like she is just an extreme, like really radical far right Republican candidate. But she is saying that she would actually sign a law to do what Ron Johnson says should happen to give the state legislature control of our elections. And she was asked directly if she would support if she would sign a bill that would allow the state legislature to overturn an election result. And she said it would be premature to comment. We set up a website called radicalrebecca.com when she launched, and she started talking

about radicalrebecca.com on the campaign trail. This is like, she's running as the candidate of the most extreme of the extreme fringe, if she wins, then it becomes much, much harder to have confidence that democracy actually will function at its most basic level in 2024. And Governor Evers is absolutely rock solid, a veto of any threat, anything that makes it harder to vote, anything that makes an election less free and fair and secure. I mean, for people in Wisconsin, the stakes are good schools. He's got our schools back in the top 10 after Scott Walker and Rebecca Clayfish looted the public school system. Roads, he's paved a thousand miles of roads. Healthcare,

he's great on preexisting conditions. All this stuff that affects Wisconsinites' lives. But for the whole country and the whole world, the Wisconsin governorship can actually affect whether we have a democracy at all. We have to win. We have to reelect Tony Evers. We have to win the governorship in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan. Let's elect Stacey Abrams, let's elect a Democratic governor in Arizona. That becomes the firewall to make sure Republicans can't actually overturn the election results. Get obsessed with governorships. Get obsessed with reelecting Tony Evers is my advice for friends of democracy. And while we're at it, let's take out Ron Johnson. Those are, that's our, that's our to-do list. That's a great to-do list. So although I know,

I know you're obsessed with the governor's race. I know you're obsessed with, with taking out Ron Johnson, but I also know you are focused on countless smaller mayoral and county level positions. Can you give us some examples of local races in Wisconsin that we're never, ever going to read about in the newspaper, but you're super focused on and why you think those are important? Basically, what I'm trying to do is get you to inspire by proxy a bunch of people outside of Wisconsin to give a shit about the county clerk of whatever or the mayor of blah, blah, blah. I would be more than delighted.

And let me say, if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking about how you can have an impact on things, go to wistems.org slash donate and chip in. Good, if you care about Ron Johnson, why not go to wistems.org slash Ron Johnson, become a monthly donor, support the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and go go to wisdoms.org slash volunteer, because we need your time and your treasure and your talent. And this spring, on April 5th, there will be local elections across the state of Wisconsin that will help shape how elections run in the fall of 2022,

and thus, whether we have a democracy in the fall of 2024. So when you're thinking about this huge national crisis of democracy, I want you to think about the mayor of the city of Darlington in Lafayette County, Wisconsin. I want you to think about the mayor of Dodgeville in Iowa County, Wisconsin, the mayor of the city of Rice Lake in Barron County, Wisconsin. These offices have enormous effects on who becomes the municipal clerk. In Wisconsin, we have one of the two most decentralized election administration systems in the country. We have more than 1,800 municipal clerks, city clerks, who administer the elections in those cities. And those people matter enormously for whether the right to vote actually has meaning for the people who live there.

We can't let Bannonite, stop the Steeler authoritarians, take charge of local election administration systems. And just to be clear, as listeners to the show know, I listen to Steve Bannon's show all the time. He is day after day after day telling his folks to go and run for office, run for the school board, volunteer for these local municipal elections because he wants to set up a scenario where those MAGA brainwashed people are in charge and can actually steal the next vote. That is their plan. They talk about it in the light of day every day on his podcast. the light of day every day on his podcast? Literally, I mean, there are two counties in Wisconsin that actually flipped in 2020 relative to 2016. They flipped by like a couple percentage points. There's Sauk County and Door County. And in Sauk County, one of the larger municipalities is the city of Reidsburg. Reidsburg is, you know, it's not New York City. It is not Detroit.

It has 9,508 people. But guess what? The total margin in the presidential race in 2020 in Wisconsin was 20,682. So you take a city of 9,508 people, and that matters a lot in determining what happens to the entire country. It's insane that our system is set up this way, but it is set up this way for now,

so we have to fight in these races. Yes, we do. We will be. Let me say one other thing. In Wisconsin, when you request an absentee ballot to vote for the Mayor of Reedsburg, Wisconsin, you can request your absentee ballot. You can click a box on the myvote.wi.gov website and click a box to request absentee ballots for the entire year.

And what that means is that every vote that we get out through absentee ballots in the spring election this year is a voter who we can get to be absentee voter in the fall of 2022 as well. It means we're doing GOTV for the November elections while we're working on the spring election. And that is a super, super, super powerful thing. You don't have to wait until election day to actually get out the vote to win races up and down the ballot and save democracy. You can work on Wisconsin local elections this spring and do exactly that. That's right. And I know there's a primary

in the Democratic side in the Senate race, so I will not ask you to choose between all the potential children that you will one day love no matter who wins that race. But what people need to understand is I'm a monthly recurring donor to the Democratic Party in Wisconsin. It's the best money I spend every month. And it's a way that I can start working to defeat Ron Johnson right now, even before he has an opponent and there's a candidate to donate to, etc. right now, even before he has an opponent and there's a candidate to donate to, et cetera. So Ben, you know, we, we talk often, like, what have you been doing? What has the Wisconsin Democratic Party been doing over the last year to prepare for today? And if, you know, 100, a thousand listeners decide to join me and become, you know, recurring donors, give you 10 bucks,

like what else could you be doing? What's on your wishlist that you wish you were getting done right now? First of all, thank you. As a monthly recurring donor, you are powering the organizing juggernaut that is the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. And I want to say you led the Wisconsin Adopt the State team for Pod Save America in 2020. The Adopt the State or the Pod Save America listeners who volunteered to support our work, like legitimately turned out more voters than the margin of victory in Wisconsin. It's a giant gift and infusion of not just resources, but volunteer energy and time and talent and all of your humanity that helped win that election. So thank you. And what we did is in 2020, our organizing model, it's the Obama model. It's something you know very well. It's the model where our organizers actually build local teams across our state. where they mobilize people. They have a contact in each apartment building who will let them in to knock on the door of people who just moved there.

They know which areas you gotta have a driver who can drive the mile between farms to make sure that someone else can jump out and knock on the door. Those teams are still in place from 2020. And we organized all over Wisconsin throughout 2021. We had a spring election, which we won by 16 percentage points for the superintendent of

public instruction against a candidate who got hundreds of thousands of dollars of dark money ads from Betsy DeVos. The Republican attack on education that happened in Virginia, they tried it in Wisconsin and it totally failed. And then in the fall, we went back on the doors. We actually knocked on the doors of and called and texted more voters in the fall of 2021 than we did in the fall of 2019 before the presidential election. Wow. Like more than twice as many. We've been building momentum and all of that momentum will be necessary, but we're bursting into this year now with this kind of the infrastructure set to be able to scale up organizing this year.

Now that the year has begun, every hour of someone's time that you volunteer with our party, every dollar that we can use to hire another organizer to build more teams, those folks can get folks to request absentee ballots for the entire year, to win the local elections in the spring and to turn out in the fall.

Those folks can help us recruit and train and turn out poll workers who, this is another Bannonite obsession. Steve Bannon is trying to get far-right anti-democracy authoritarians to become poll workers and mess with people's right to vote. We're out organizing the right in poll worker recruitment because we have people in English and in Spanish recruiting poll workers, making sure they go through trainings. People can work the polls this spring. That qualifies them to move up the chain of command in the fall. We want people who believe in everyone's right to vote. We're not trying to suppress anyone's vote, but we want people who believe in democracy to be working the polls.

It allows us to hire candidate services managers. So people who are running for these local offices, maybe they've run for something before or even served, but they've often never had a real contested election. And so we actually have staff that will help people set up their campaign website and figure out how to set up a Facebook page and figure out how to run some digital ads and get a list of the voters who they need to talk to, which a lot of people don't realize that you can get. All this stuff, it just takes human time to be able to do. And we have systems to scale it. But what that means is we can put money to work to actually support dozens, hundreds of local candidates across the state in the course of the spring. And all that work, all those people then

become terrific staffers for state legislative races in the fall, because Republicans are going to shoot for super majorities in our state legislature again. We know that that's their goal. Republicans are gonna shoot for super majorities in our state legislature again. We know that that's their goal. So the impact of early support, of early contributions, of early hours volunteering, it has a multiplier effect. It echoes throughout this whole year and it echoes from election cycle to election cycle.

That's the power of a party that actually, it's like a battery that can get charged up with energy and then push it all out on election time. It's not something where you buy an ad, it airs once and it's gone. We actually are building something. And that's the reason why we've won 10 of the last 11 races in Wisconsin. And that is the thing we need to put every ounce of our energy into to win in the fall of 2022. I think that's such an important point. And look, people listen to the show, have given a lot of money. They've been asked by us to give a lot

of money. We're so grateful for that. All the people who adopted a state like it. But it's just worth knowing what we're talking about here is not, you know, an October donation to run an ad for November election. You're talking about getting hiring one more person who's going to work for an entire year because of contributions that came in today and the multiplier of that. entire year because of contributions that came in today and the multiplier of that. Ben, if we could clone your team, I think we would never lose another election. But give us the website one more time where people can donate and then we'll let you go to dinner time or whatever you're doing with your family tonight. WIS like Wisconsin, W-I-S, Dems like Democrats, D-E-M-S. So it's WIS Dems. You're autocorrect. We'll try to change it to wisdoms. What even is wisdoms with Dems dot org slash donate or slash volunteer. We're so grateful for all the support. And after you give and support us, join your local state party wherever it may be and go to your county party meetings and plug in because this is the fight to win power at the local level and make sure Republicans can't shred our democracy from the bottom up.

It's happening everywhere. Yeah. And Steve Bannon is going to be there if you're not. Ben Wickler, thank you again. Thanks for all the work you're doing. Let's win this thing. And Ron Johnson sucks. End of that. Thanks so much, Avi. All right, before we go, we have to call your attention to one of the saddest, most pathetic displays of political groveling we've seen from someone who basically owns the genre. After describing the January 6th attack as a, quote, violent terrorist attack on the Capitol, Beta Cuck Senator Ted Cruz crawled onto Tucker Carlson's show to beg for forgiveness,

and it didn't go so well. And you never use words carelessly. And yet you called this a terror attack when by no definition was it a terror attack. That's a lie. You told that lie on purpose, and I'm wondering why you did. Well, Tucker, thank you for having me on when you aired your episode last night. I sent you a text shortly thereafter and said, Tucker, thank you for having me on when you aired your episode last night. I sent you a text shortly thereafter and said, listen, I'd like to go on because the way I phrased things yesterday, it was sloppy and it was frankly dumb. And I don't buy that. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't buy that. Look, I've known you a long time since before you went to the Senate. You're a Supreme Court contender. You take words as

seriously as any man who's ever served in the Senate. And every word you repeated that phrase, I do not believe that you used that accidentally. I just don't. So, Tucker, as a result of my sloppy phrasing, it's caused a lot of people to misunderstand what I meant. When Ted Cruz sends you a text, this is the sound it makes. Oh, a text from Ted cruz came in the uh uh wow was it tough for you guys to figure out who to root for in that exchange uh no who'd you root for the viewer what's funny is you know people did a five seconds of googling and they found that ted cruz had used the word terrorist in

conjunction with the january 6 attack many, many times. It was not an accident. Tucker was absolutely right. It was a purposeful, deliberate choice of words, as it should be. Because if you look up the legal definition of terrorism, it's a bunch of people using violence to impact the government. In fact, some of the charges that were brought against the January 6th attackers were domestic terrorism charges. Yeah, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. I don't want to be accused of like attempting to trump up domestic terrorism charges and

create more surveillance. None of that, like just on a technical sort of legal basis. One, he'd said it many times. Two, what I find funniest about this is Ted Cruz thinks that his political future required eating shit, groveling to Tucker Carlson and walking that back so the MAGA people didn't hate him. What he doesn't seem to get is when you look that pathetic, it's unfixable forever.

You're winning no side. You're winning no converts when you're that pathetic. No one wants to vote for that person. That person can't be president. There's a scene in Mad Men that I always think of when I think of Ted Cruz, which is there's the ted cruz character of madman is pete campbell and he doesn't get a promotion he doesn't

understand why and i always think i think ted cruz captures this perfectly which is that like uh ted cruz look goes to these conservatives and it's like look look i'm meeting all your needs i'm meeting all your needs and then like sorry trump makes us feel like we have no needs yeah yeah you know yeah also he's just an asshole no like it the shocking thing to me is that so many people in texas vote for the guy he's just like it's it's incredible he's the uh the ambition and the fact that like even tuggar carlson knows that he can have some fun and introduce him and say like people don't like this guy but they respect him. Here he is, Ted Cruz.

I don't believe you. And you kind of like it's first of all, it's the first time in a long time you've seen Ted Cruz like someone actually call him on his sort of bullshit. The way he like kind of just wheedles and spins and sort of makes things up as he goes. It was kind of nice to see. Which is why he gets away with it all the time because he doesn't sit down for interviews that are contentious right he he's in his right wing media bubble he goes in the senate floor and does his bullshit he tweets bullshit to people but he does he's never made to answer for his garbage no no it was pretty great actually look if i were to answer your question honestly who was i rooting for tucker i was rooting for

tucker the whole time because he was calling him like every once in a while you see uh a republican get called out on fox news by another republican because usually because they broke with whatever you know trump's dictate was that week and this is one of those instances and it's amazing to just watch the the piercing of the bubble well one of my thoughts in my head was, wouldn't it be great to see any Sunday show host do that to a Republican when they get them on? Aside from like Jake Tapper. Yeah, that's the thing about it. It's like, I think that the power Tucker Carlson has on that show.

I mean, look, I think it was yesterday, he basically referred to the insurrection as a bunch of people taking a tour through the Capitol. It's basically how he describes it. So obviously he has a sick and sinister worldview. I do think he's like a genuine representation of what fascism in America looks like. He's talking about overpopulation. He doesn't believe in democracy anymore. But there's real power in what he has, which is an ideology and a set of beliefs

that inform everything he does on that show. Now, it's a character that he's playing. He's a character he has adopted, but nonetheless, he's playing it so fully that he has a lot of power and a lot of confidence and a lot of kind of there's a he's comfortable in his fascism. Yes, he's comfortable. And there's a confident and there's a coherence to it that gives him strength in every kind of conversation he can have on that show, gives him a place to go in every single show. And the difference is, I actually think there's a reason that I think Jake Tapper is one of the only people that does anything even remotely like that is because the kinds of people that are hosting nonpartisan shows on Twitter, the right on their own platforms, and there is a lack of confidence and assuredness and coherence to what they're supposed to be doing to the point where they don't even necessarily view themselves as partisans for democracy,

and it's why people like Ron Johnson and all of these creeps can go on these shows, Ted Cruz included, and feel like they have a safer platform than they do with fucking Tucker Carlson. That's why Tucker's so dangerous, too. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, if you watch enough Tucker,

you realize that he's advocating for the, he's talking about the great replacement theory, which is basically saying that Democrats want to bring in people of color to this country to replace white voters. He repeatedly does segments on how the January 6th attacks were a false flag and how the FBI had informants or agents in there who were the ones who were actually fomenting violence. And that's why all the bad things happened. I mean, it is that dark. But the power of the show is that Ted Cruz wants to run for president. He knows Tucker's audience. And when Tucker says, jump, he says, how high? I'll be on tonight. I'll be on tomorrow. I'll be on anytime you want. I'll

come to your house. I'll do your streaming show. I'll do whatever you say, Tucker. They're all falling all over themselves for him for truly wild that Ted Cruz thinks that he can run for president again. And it's just it's wow, it's impressive. People need therapy. Tougher question. Tougher question. Where do you think the Tucker appearance ranks in the pantheon of Ted Cruz debasement? As a refresher, here are two other contenders. And and after a couple of days after the girls being really cold, it being in the teens and the 20s outside, our girls asked, said, look, school's been canceled for the week.

Can we take a trip and go somewhere warm? We left yesterday. The plan had been to stay through the weekend with the family. That was the plan. I started having second thoughts almost the moment I sat weekend with the family. That was the plan. I started having second thoughts almost the moment I sat down on the plane. Just to be clear here, Senator Cruz is claiming he had second thoughts the minute he sat down on the flight. That's because people were taking his picture on the airplane. So he knew that he was caught. So that was that was Ted Cruz,

of course, blaming his family for abandoning his constituents during a blackout to go to Cancun. And of course, there's this all time favorite. What happened to vote your conscience? He questioned your wife's physical appearance. He accused your father of being associated with the Kennedy assassination. He called your citizenship of being associated with the Kennedy assassination. He called your citizenship and your eligibility to be president into question. You have decided to forgive him for those things. Has he apologized? He has not. What I'm going to tell you is this. We're in a general election now. Yeah. I don't think it is productive for me to criticize the Republican nominee today so you can ask me to but i'm going to decline to do so just amazing i still think that's the way i still think that's the worst

in front of that um that trump pence sign making the fucking phone calls and mid-trump never walked it back really really really incredible i will say ted grew saying i had second thoughts the second i sat down on the plane the most relatable he ever was his whole life the most he ever the most I ever kind of bought he was like ah this is obviously hard to disagree that I think he's a bad actor who tries to act all the time in that sense he should be on your favorite show and just like that just kidding they're good actors on that right do you guys have dinner with Sergio Parker or something it's a it's a it's a i have no dog in this it's a cynical show but like on that line though he goes he goes like like he does like a voice like he's just uh

sipping a coke for the first time in his life it's it's absurd and on the tucker he's like tries to do this sort of earnest like furrowed brow you know it's not the mike pence reagan impersonation but it's just a way worse version oh i think I think the most sort of pathetic he's ever been was when he pretended to stand up for Heidi, his wife, because there's a longer cut of it, I think, where he's like, y'all ready? He's like sort of talking to the press and staging this ridiculous thing in front of his campaign bus or whatever. And you can kind of see reporters near him smirking and laughing at him in real time i mean you know lion ted not actually a good liar no does it a lot pretty easy to know when he's doing it really has a really has a tell which is just all of his body language talking bullshit that comes

out of his mouth but i'll always have a soft spot for him i don't know why you do i do what do you think he's some intellectual giant. Yes. That's right. I think Ted Cruz is. That's right. You got me. I think Ted Cruz is an intellectual giant. No. You think he's a bad, smart guy.

I think he's a bad, smart guy. And I think he was the intellectual. And I think he went harder and smarter at Trump than anyone else in that Republican primary. And he was the only one who had a shot to win. He beat him in Iowa. Absolutely. I think maybe he's book smart and not clever. I think he's not very clever. And the other thing is I will always

pick Ted Cruz over Marco Rubio. Because Ted Cruz knows what Ted Cruz is but Marco Rubio is still telling himself stories. You know? Yeah. It's just, it says something like everyone you ask who has worked with among around ted cruz hates his guts absolutely like george bush will say it on the record like everyone will say lindsey

graham's quote if someone killed him on the senate floor like no one would care right if i nobody testified what does it say about american politics that that guy's like aha my divided as we are to run for office but i'm just saying one thing that can unite democrats and republicans which they hate ted cruz john bayner's quotes remember oh those are good that's cool this is not a guy he has zero friends he doesn't know how to make friends he's not nice he's not fun he seems to have no hobbies whatsoever i admire him okay it's obvious power nobody likes him nobody wants to be around him anyway ted cruz here's to you ted here's to you ted um raise a glass thanks thanks for giving us so much fodder for today thank you ben wickler for for joining us and talking about wisconsin and

i want to thank you both for not bringing up the fact that Ted Cruz likes incest cock porn because there's nothing wrong with that. Oh my God. You don't know, that's not a, that's nothing about, that's not a problem. It is just like,

how did they, how does he get through all these things? It doesn't, it's a, that's not, it's not important that he likes that kind of porn. Didn't they blame a staffer? It's the,

um, politics today selects for the most shameless. And he is truly one of the, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, these people are, it's been long enough. politics today selects for the most shameless and he is absolutely one of the donald trump ted cruz these people are it's been long enough how is there not like a deep dive new york magazine piece on what actually happened who did or did not like the incest of course we are talking about for those of you who haven't seen i'm sure you all have the twitter if you've gotten to this far in pod save america you if you are you know that please let us know you know that ted cruz click like on some incest

pornography and then blamed a staffer and then blamed a staff i don't think it was incest i think it was uh yeah where'd you get the incest from i my understanding is that it is both my understanding is that it was both i honestly i thought it was because someone's you know why because someone this is now maybe fake news. Ted Cruz likes incest porn. Is the music playing now? Should the music be playing? Play us out big time.

Play us out five minutes ago. Play us out after the Wickler interview. Look, maybe it was incest porn. Maybe it wasn't. But here's one thing I know for certain. It was on 9-11. Oh my God. I did not know that.

You bet. Hot Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse, and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerrard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine Howe for production support.

And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.