Pod Save America - “Joementum.”

Episode Date: May 13, 2019

Joe Biden’s frontrunner status changes the dynamic of the Democratic primary, and Donald Trump threatens to abuse his power in order to derail the former Vice President’s candidacy. Then Senator Brian Schatz joins Jon, Jon, Tommy, and Priyanka in studio to talk about impeachment, the Senate, the primary, and take some listener questions. Also – Pod Save America is going on tour! Get your tickets now: crooked.com/events.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, our interview with Senator Brian Schatz, who stopped by Cricket HQ on Friday and joined us for some listener Q&A with What A Day's Priyanka Arabindi. We talk about impeachment, we talk about the Senate, and a lot of other issues in the news right now. Boy, did we have some cues for his day, you know? Okay. But before we get to that, we're going to start by talking about 2020 and how Joe Biden's frontrunner status is affecting the primary race. Also, some housekeeping.

New episode of Love It or Leave It dropped over the weekend. Our Texas tour has come to a fitting conclusion. I don't know. But we had a great time in Dallas. We had a great time in Austin. The Dallas show is out right now. I spoke to Julian Castro, presidential candidate, Texas native. He played queen for a day, the latest candidate to face the gauntlet.

We had Emily Heller, Colin Allred, member of Congress from Texas. Christian Hernandez, an activist with DSA. It was a really great show. On the latest hysteria, Aaron Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonaco talk about the frightening fetal heartbeat bill just signed into law by Georgia's governor. And check out our latest candidate bonus episode where tommy talked with california congressman eric swalwell finally we are on the road this week in brooklyn and washington dc instead of a thursday pod we'll be releasing the brooklyn show on friday morning and you'll hear the dc show on monday all right before we get to our conversation with brian shots uh let's talk about the Democratic primary. Okay. Since Joe Biden entered the race a little more than two weeks ago,

he has only increased his polling lead. The average national polls show he's got a 27-point lead over Bernie Sanders, the next closest candidate. He's about 13 points ahead of New Hampshire, and a new poll out this weekend showed him up more than 30 points in South Carolina. Two big caveats here.

One, we have nine months until the first votes are cast. We haven't even had the first debate. And if we all recall, Donald Trump did not even enter the race until June in 2015. Second big caveat, Biden's lead in Iowa, where many of the other candidates have spent a lot of time, is an average of only four points. Guys, some pundits predicted that Biden's best day in this race would be the day before he entered. That has not come true. What do you think explains his current strength as a candidate at this moment in time?

Because like we like to say over and over, it's only a snapshot in time. That's our classic phrase. It's only a snapshot in time that's our that's our classic phrase it's only a snapshot in time that's not predictive it's just a snapshot i think part of it is probably the fact that he is basically a celebrity i think 2016 taught me a lot about how celebrity can overwhelm all the things we think we know about politics uh remember that guy trump got elected and and Biden is the closest to that level of fame. You know, I also think that electability is, has been his core argument and it's something people are looking to hear. And because no one knows what electability means,

you just have to say it a lot and people assume therefore you are electability. The question we all will be asking ourselves is, will this be 2016 where Trump shot ahead to a big lead early and just maintained it? Or will this be like every other election before it where people rose and fall throughout the race? I don't think we know that yet. Yeah. I also think, I mean, Joe Biden spent eight years as vice president to the most beloved Democrat in the entire party. Barack Obama has a 95% approval rating among Democrats. And when people see Biden, they think he's the guy that not only Obama picked, but he supported Obama's policies and Obama's presidency lockstep for eight years.

And most Democrats are very happy with obama's presidency they're also very happy with the fact that he uh won twice that he won twice right and i think we also have learned we've said this before um most democrats are not as ideological as you would assume from reading twitter um which is why also you have like people who say biden is their first choice a lot of them say bernie sanders is their second choice and vice versa. People who Bernie Sanders is their first choice. They say Joe Biden's their second choice. So that does not fit well with the wars that rage on Twitter every day.

Yeah. Biden is sort of defanged some of the loudest voices on Twitter, at least so far. I think a lot of people assume that they would surface old quotes and votes and statements and that that would immediately hurt him among key constituencies. In fact, the opposite occurred. He got a six-point-some-odd bounce from his announcement until today. So, you know, all of this is likely to change when these questions are raised at debates or in paid advertisements or, you know, routinely at stops in early states. But it is notable. Yeah, but I do think, Tommy, too, what you in early states, but it is notable. Yeah, but I do think, Tommy, too, what you said about celebrity is a very smart point.

Like, people feel comfortable with Joe Biden because they know Joe Biden, and they don't really know. Here's the candidates they know right now. They know Joe Biden. His name recognition is, like, off the charts. Bernie Sanders' name recognition is approaching 100% as well. And then the next candidate that they know is Elizabeth Warren, because she's been in the national spotlight for a little bit too, though her name ID is not as high as Bernie or Biden,

but it's up there. But beyond those three, most Democratic voters in the country are not very familiar with Kamala Harris or Cory Booker or Beto O'Rourke or Pete Buttigieg or all these other candidates. A lot of the people that we talk to are people who are active on Twitter, who are paid close attention to politics. Of course they know all these other candidates. And with a lot of those people who pay close attention, the race is actually closer. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, it's a little bit like right now we're at kind of a self-serve yogurt place. And we know we like plain you know, plain tart.

Yeah. We like plain tart. Maybe with some gaff chips in it. You know, we know that that's something we've had before. I hate the plain tart. I love a plain tart. It's my go-to. But now we're like, you know, we're like, you know what?

This is our time. So we're trying a little gay mayor. Trying a little Vermont socialist. I was going to say cake. Vanilla cake flavor. We kind of stuffed our faces on Texas congressmen, and now we're not sure if we're just sick of it or actually if we truly love it,

but we just haven't tried it in a cone yet. We're giving things a try. Who are the little white cups here? I guess caucuses? I don't know. Sure, fill them up. I also think there's a difference in what kind of race it is. In 2008, for example, George W. Bush, no matter what happened, was going to be a distant memory.

He was not going to win again. And so a lot of Democrats are open to, okay, what's next for the party? Let's experiment. Maybe we'll take a shot on this black guy named Barack Hussein Obama, who was a state senator before that. I think in this race, Democrats are, for good reason, scared to death of a second Trump presidency. And so I know we've been talking about electability. Electability is hard to measure. But I think it does explain gravitating towards someone, at least initially, who you know, who you feel comfortable

with. If you don't, if you're not totally sure you're going to be happy with some complicated cheesecake flavor, you just fill your container with vanilla and you walk out and you're like, it may not be the perfect thing, but I know I'll eat the whole cup of it. Just cover it in cookie dough. But no, but also I do think that's like, you know, I was thinking about, you know, the polls about Hillary versus Obama in 2008. And one of the things that happened among black voters was there was a long period of time where Hillary was leading.

By a lot. By a huge margin. Most among black voters. Among black voters. And there was a kind of shift that happened when all of a sudden people got a real look at Barack Obama, and they were like, this isn't just a fluke. This isn't a pie-in-the-sky idea. We believe in this person, and we think just a fluke. This isn't a pie in the sky idea. Like, we believe in this person, and we think he can win now. And once the idea of him winning became a real possibility,

all of a sudden people got behind him. And I think there's, I don't know what's going to play out in the polls, but to your point about how fearful people are, I think that when, I mean, I think it's actually an important moment to look at polling that shows white voters versus people of color, because right now, I think a fair argument for why Biden is leading is you see the people who feel most threatened by the Trump presidency and who are most worried about Trump winning before he won, saying we want to go with the safe bet. Now, other candidates can make the same argument Barack Obama did and said this electability argument isn't fair. I'm the electable one. I'm the one who can appeal to the people who Trump has lost. I'm the one who can appeal to the broadest base of this party. And by the way, I think one of the biggest challenges Biden is going to have is people who say, I'm the one who's going to appeal to young people who you

need to knock on doors and get out there. But right now, I think there's a kind of, to your point, there's a kind of redoubt to safety because the stakes are so high. Yeah. And also you notice, Harriet of CNN pointed this out, that non-college educated Democratic voters, white, black and Latino, are more likely right now to be gravitating towards both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders because they are not paying as close attention to politics and the ups and downs of the news cycle. And Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are people who they know. Now, I love what you said is, you know, Obama's support among African-Americans changed dramatically once he won Iowa. Right. The key to winning South Carolina was winning Iowa. Which we always, which we always planned on the campaign. Why do you think, so Tommy, you know, Biden's lead in Iowa is only four points, and we actually haven't had an Iowa poll in a little bit. So,

you know, it could either go up or down. But what makes you think it might be closer? So Biden has never done well in Iowa. In 2008, Biden's Iowa numbers never went above 6%. He finished fifth. He didn't win a single county. So he performed very poorly in Iowa. He has no staff. He has no organization in the state. Other candidates have been there, you know, half dozen times less. They've been a bunch of counties. likely to remain undecided for a longer period of time, too. So there's not going to be as many low information voters who are like, yeah, I'm for Biden now. I think they're going to say, I don't know. But I mean, the interesting thing to watch in Iowa is the number of people who say a given candidate is their second choice as well as their first choice, because in a field this big, the way caucus math works is you have to meet a certain threshold to be viable and to be eligible to get delegates. And people below that threshold, if you're supporting a candidate that isn't viable,

you can then go to your second choice. And so it's something to watch. And it's also part of the tactical considerations when you decide whether to take a shot at the front runner or not. Yeah. And I think the fact that more candidates have spent more time in the state of Iowa than any other state shows that when voters get to know people more, get to know some of these candidates, they might think, OK, well, I started off knowing Joe Biden, knowing Bernie Sanders, but I've been seeing Kamala Harris. I like her. I like people who did it. So I think that's one dynamic at play. How does his frontrunner status change the dynamics of the race, of the primary race? The fact that he has, right now, a commanding lead. What do you think that does to the other candidates' strategies? I think it helps out Bernie for a while. I mean, I think you're a lot less worried about having people take shots at you

if you're sitting in second place than you're sitting in first. Yeah. See, I was going to say, I actually think it might hurt Bernie in this crowded field because I think Bernie's bet is, okay, he's got near universal name recognition and he's polling at about 20% in a lot of these states. And you think, oh, that's not that high. But in a crowded field, 20% could be enough. But that's only if the rest of the vote is spread out fairly evenly among all of the other candidates. To the extent that Biden is taking support away from Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, and the rest of them, if Biden's support gets too high, then Bernie's 20% isn't going to get him.

Yeah, but I mean, that's assuming a static race from now through the caucuses. I'm saying that in the near term, if you're ahead, you're likely to get shot at. And if you're in second or third place, you are not. I mean, I think that's beneficial. I would bet that the dynamic in this race is going to change somewhat over time. And so I would like to not be the front runner right now. Yeah, I think that's a good point. Yeah, I'm not really sure.

I'm just thinking, like, what are the kind of ideological implications for what we're seeing, right? Because you have Joe Biden who represents Obama politics, right? And in some sense, I think we'll, I expect to see him in some places give to the kind of the moment and shift to the left to kind of recognize where the base of the party is, while at others trying to articulate a message about appealing to people in moderation, right, which will drive some people crazy. Then you have Bernie and Elizabeth Warren staking out this more kind of structural critique of not just the Democratic Party, but of the economy and American politics. And then you have, I think, a mishmash of other candidates who are in some sense doing what Biden

is doing while trying to more appeal to the Bernie and Warren wing of the party. And so Bernie really was rewarded in 2016 by a clean ideological debate, right? Hillary Clinton represents the establishment. I represent a left change movement. And now I don't know who Bernie's arguing against exactly. In some ways, he's won. In some ways, with Biden, he's not winning. It just puts him in a tough position, and it makes the ideological debate harder to find. Now, to your point, it's not as important to Democratic voters, but it is important to me, you know well we've said this before at the beginning right which is um the the big question in 2016 was uh was bernie's vote a pro bernie how much of bernie's vote was a pro bernie pro bernie vote and how much of it was an anti-hillary

vote in the democratic party and if it was do some quick math if it was... Do some quick math. If it was very pro-Bernie, then he's in a strong position. But if there were a cohort of voters who decided to vote for Bernie Sanders because they did not like Hillary Clinton, and now that they have a bunch of other choices of candidates who, like, namely Elizabeth Warren, who have similar policies to Bernie,

or some of these other candidates who said, yeah, yeah, Bernie was right. I'm for $15 minimum wage. I'm for Medicare for all. And then you have this choice, then it becomes a little trickier for Bernie. There was a great moment, Bernie had an interview and they asked him, you know, in 2016, you represented what a lot of people considered the fringe views of the Democratic Party. Now, all these years, now just four years later, you have all these candidates kind of adopting your worldview. Doesn't that mean you don't necessarily need to be in this race? And he goes, excuse me, I can't do it. You can do it, Tommy.

You have a great voice. But why are they in the race? And I think that's sort of the sticking point for him. Like, you know, how much of the vote was anti-Hillary versus pro-Bernie or how much of the vote was anti-Hillary versus pro-Bernie politics? Bernie or how much of the vote was anti-Hillary versus pro-Bernie politics? And now Bernie politics are divided amongst six or seven candidates, mostly amongst two, but also trickling down through the rest. Tommy, you said something that I totally agree with, which is, you know, you don't want to be, or it's dangerous to be the front runner this early because people start taking shots at you. The question for the field is who is the, who takes shots at Biden,

right? Because you also know that in Iowa, if Bernie decides that his role in Iowa is going to be to start taking shots at Joe Biden, Iowans don't usually like that. That's the risk. There's a real risk to being seen as negative in Iowa. Iowa caucus goers notoriously, historically, do not like negative politics before January, whatever. The caucus is February 3rd this year, I think. So yeah, I mean, there might be a prisoner's dilemma, just like we saw in 2016, where everyone's like, who's going to attack Trump first? Could be Biden. Who's going to attack Biden first? That said, Elizabeth Warren took a pretty tough shot

at Biden early on about donations from lobbyists. You know, you could see them starting to mix it up on climate policy over the weekend. So, you know, it seems like they're itching to have a substantive debate about policy that could veer negative. Is that a prisoner's dilemma or is that a tragedy of the commons? OK, I leave it to the Internet to decide. Let's talk about how some of Biden's opponents are handling this. I do think, just to one more point about Bernie, Bernie's first comments about Biden that could be construed as a contrast, right,

were, I don't want to talk too much about Joe Biden. Joe Biden's a friend of mine, but he voted for NAFTA. I voted for against it. He voted for the Iraq war. I voted against it. I think that's, by the way, completely fair. Completely fair and legitimate. Let's talk about how some of the other opponents are talking about him.

Last week, Reuters reported that the vice president will be releasing a climate change policy that might not be as ambitious as the Green New Deal. One of his advisors, Heather Zichal, who we all know and worked with in the Obama administration, said, quote, I respect where the activists are coming from. What we learned from the Obama administration is unless we find middle ground on these issues, we risk not having any policies. Now, no details of the plan have been released yet. And the Biden campaign says that Reuters mischaracterized its policy. But in response to the story, Bernie Sanders said, quote, there is no middle ground on climate policy. AOC called the middle ground comment, quote, a deal breaker.

And the Sunrise Movement said that Biden's middle ground policy is, quote, a death sentence for our generation. Huh. What do you think of the back and forth there, guys? We can wait till we see it to have an opinion. And by the way, you know, maybe the critics are right. I'm totally open to that. And I am also very, you know, I am I think Heather Zichal is incredibly smart and she knows this issue better than anyone. I just want to I want to see the plan. I don't know. I don't I don't know how we can all reach such stark conclusions without having seen it. Yeah. I mean, I guess my reaction to the plan depends on what we think it is. So with the caveat, again, that we haven't read the plan, but a so-called middle ground climate change policy probably won't deal with the magnitude

of the problem. And I would not love that. And I also don't think that Democrats have made any progress on climate change policy over the many years we've been talking about it by trimming our sales in advance in the hopes that Republicans will meet us halfway. We make progress by winning elections and then doing things. Now, if it's a political strategy, I think the jury is still out. I mean, if Biden thinks that this is the best framing and the best way to talk about climate to win an election, then they have to prove it. But, you know, the one thing, again, that we know for sure is that the way you get action on climate policy is by voting for Democrats. It's a binary choice. Republicans will do nothing if not make it worse. Republican Democrats will do something. So we'll see. I mean, the best thing the Green New Deal

proponents did is they've completely changed the left flank of the debate. And they've also forced every Democrat to say, this is the first thing you will do when you get into office. I don't think that was true with Obama. We did health healthcare first. So I think they've really shifted the way we prioritize climate. Well, one of the problems we had is we did a, we actually had a cap and trade vote right around the same time

that healthcare was happening. Right. A bunch of Democrats in the House walked the plank basically by taking this vote and doing what they thought were right. And then they were, and then the Senate

just left them all fucking hanging there. And because there was a lot of red state Democrats who wouldn't even go for a cap and trade program, which for those who don't know, cap and trade is like, talk about green new deal is way less ambitious than the green new deal. Okay. And so we couldn't get a bunch of red state Democrats to support that in the

Senate. Democratic house members voted for it. And a lot of them lost their election. Maybe it was that, maybe it was healthcare, maybe it was just a bad economy, you know, we can argue about that. But two questions on every Democratic policy in this primary. Is it big enough and ambitious enough to meet the magnitude of the challenge, and do you have a plan to get it done? And that could be non-ideological at times, right? Like, is Medicare for All ambitious enough to meet the challenge? Absolutely. Do you have a plan to get it done? Well, if you're not willing to get rid of the filibuster, no, you don't.

Well, you know, and also the part of this, the ability to get something big done on climate, part of that may depend on staking out a claim further to the left than where you ultimately plan on being, because you want to have room to give to some of those moderate Democrats, right? So it's a little bit of a non sequitur to say, we want to propose something more moderate because we want something that we can get done. Maybe part of what we're trying to do right now, especially in this primary, is stake out our vision, stake out the truest version, the most ambitious version of what we believe in. And then if we have to give, if we have to compromise just to get something done,

that's politics. But I do think that part of the criticism coming at Biden, even before we see the plan, is not acceding to that mindset around Democrats, which is, I think, one of the things that the left flank of the party has shown to be effective. I mean, look, AOC talks about a high marginal tax rate, and then the whole country's talking about it for a few days. And lo and behold, it's popular amongst independents and moderates. Same thing with Elizabeth Warren and her wealth tax. You stake out this ambitious position, and then all of a sudden you've made it mainstream. And maybe you don't ultimately get there when the final votes are tallied, but you've actually given moderates a way to win, right? By saying, look, I made this less, I made this more conservative. I made this more moderate.

So I agree with that. And I think, I think there's a difference between the policies you propose, which I agree with you, Lovett, should be very ambitious because you, as we learned in the Obama administration, you end up giving a lot. And the politics you use to build support for it. And I, you know, credit the Sunrise Movement for incredible activism and putting this on the national agenda. I think when you respond to a Reuters story that doesn't have the detail planned with this is a death sentence, this would be a death sentence for our generation, you potentially turn off people that you need. Like, I think there is a way to, so Jay Inslee criticized this report as well.

And he said, he praised the Obama-Biden administration on climate policy, but said, the times and science have changed. We simply cannot go back to the past. We need a bold climate plan for the future. I actually think if you're running against Biden, that's a fairly effective message. You start by recognizing that a lot of people in Democratic Party, most in the Democratic Party, like what Barack Obama and Joe Biden done. But you said, you know what? Times have changed.

The situation has changed. We need something better. We can't go back to that. I like that Jay Inslee said it from a scooter. That was – yeah, I look – I think that – I do like that. I do – look, the activist groups like the Sunrise Movement, I mean, their job is to criticize everything to the right of what they want. That's right.

Now, I don't know that accusing a politician of mass generational murder is the way to do it. No, you do that after the white paper comes out. Yeah. But, look, I think the reality is what these guys run on on climate policy is important. And it's important to try to build a movement for policies you think are going to be your key priorities when you get there but what will happen when the next president walks into the oval office is you will figure out what is doable you'll figure out what support there is and we talk about the filibuster a lot it's important it doesn't fucking matter if we don't

win the senate yeah it's a we're we're a long way away from giving a shit about the filibuster we need to win elections in in some states where we don't have candidates yet well and that's exactly right and that's another big problem because like let's remember arizona in 2018 kirsten cinema is the senator she is pretty conservative for a senator she is like she is middle of the road centrist to you know like she did not glom onto a lot of those positions a lot of liberal positions so we do have now a democrat out of arizona but i bet she's not going to be on board with a big ambitious green new deal and we're going to have to figure out what that means you know we should pressure her we should pressure other people like this but

as we pressure people we've got to make space for them to sort of come on board right like it has to be a mix of pressure and also like okay come, come on board now. Because I mean, part of this is, if we don't address this issue, it doesn't matter what ice cream we pick, it's going to melt. That's exactly. Well, there's another good political argument for this from Julian Brave Noiscat, who's the director of Green New Deal Strategy at Data for Progress, obviously a very lefty group. He said, quote, Biden appeals to white middle class suburban voters, and that's great, but he's not doing so well among young people. We do have a policy out there designed to build a new climate coalition.

It's called the Green New Deal, and he needs to jump on board. That's a very good argument. I think that, like, to me, you know, we can talk about where the polls are now, but obviously everything depends on what these candidates do in the next nine months. And to me, what I am looking for, not just like as a Twitter pundit, but like as a person is like I want to I want to understand where the kind of old fashioned folksiness of Biden that has come with, I think, some old fashioned positions along the way meets the the moment that we're in. And in a way, that's not only good policy, but also good politics, because to their point, he is his great challenge is going to be to appeal to young people. And it's not going to be with memes. Luckily, I don't think they think that it's going to be with policy. And to me, it's about college,

it's about health care, and it's about climate and among other things. So I think that to me is actually a really, really good sign for Biden, because sometimes, you know, sometimes candidates are presented with a problem. They don't have to appeal to a group of people and they don't have a way to do it. There's a clear path for Joe Biden to maybe cement this nomination by adopting some pretty good policy. relations and partisanship has shifted over the years that he's been in politics, even since he's been in the Obama administration. Because if he believes that back-slapping Mitch McConnell is the way to change this country and get progressive policies passed, I think he's sorely mistaken. And I worry about that. I want to see candidates. And this is about whether they can win and whether they'll be good presidents.

It's both an electability and a president thing. Like, do you not only just have a plan to get things done to change things, but do you have a way to get that plan passed? And it better not include, like, Settlers of Catan with fucking Tom Cotton. That's exactly right. And, like you said, Tommy, if we don't get the Senate back and we're not even thinking about the filibuster because we didn't even make the Senate, now what are you going to do? Okay? Because Republicans probably still aren't going to compromise with you. So do you have executive actions ready? Do you have other things that you can do ready? Are you going to focus on foreign policy? You know what I'm saying? Like there's how are you going to staff your administration? You know, I mean, there's

there's a whole bunch of things you can do to figure out a strategy to get your plan passed. And I want to see that Biden and if, and if I was Biden's opponents, that's sort of where I would go. Like, have you recognized and understood how politics has changed in this era? And so far, time will tell. So one person who's taking Biden quite seriously is Donald Trump.

He said in an interview with Politico on Friday that Biden is a front runner and that the other candidates in the primary, quote, aren't registering with the public. Meanwhile, Trump's TV attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was planning on going to Ukraine in order to persuade that foreign government to move forward with bullshit investigations into the origins of the Mueller investigation, as well as business dealings between Joe Biden's son and a Ukrainian oil company. He ultimately canceled that trip after the New York Times reported it. But Trump told Politico he thinks it'd be appropriate for him to talk to his own attorney general about opening an investigation into either Biden or his son.

And Giuliani said it's fine for Trump's team to meddle in a foreign investigation. What does this tell us about what we can expect from Trump in 2020? And how do Democrats handle this shit? I mean, they're just going to run the dirtiest race they can possibly run, including using all of the levels of levers of power that they have, including things that would normally be seen as beyond the pale, like flying to another country to try to urge their law enforcement to reopen an investigation because it might damage someone you're running against and then bragging about it to the New York time.

That was the craziest article I've ever read in my life. I do sincerely wonder how many martinis Rudy Giuliani had before he took that call from the New York Times because it was batshit crazy and he canceled the trip. I do like the idea of Rudy Giuliani traveling around the world trying to make trouble because I do believe it will be ineffective on the whole. Yeah, I mean, one of the... Much like the Stephen Miller hair dye

he used on his Fox appearance over the weekend. I didn't see it. Oh, that's going to be a treat for me after we finish recording. Before and after, there's Rudy with all of his very few gray hairs, and then the next scene, there's Rudy with just jet black hair.

Look, here's the thing. Rudy is genuinely going through something,, there's Rudy with just jet black hair. Look, here's the thing. Rudy is genuinely going through something and he's doing it in front of all of us. And actually one of the things that happens when you have someone like Trump in office is that because he's such a primitive kind of creature in his, in his habits, he attracts people who are really kind of tapping. Not, this is not a lot. We don't have a lot of frontal lobe decision-making going on right now. So you get a lot of real base shit, and it plays out on television. But one other part of this is, you know, it is incredibly nefarious. It is incredibly dangerous, this idea of investigating your opponents.

But it's worth remembering why this is happening and one of the base-level risks of Donald Trump from the very beginning, when you have someone who is so fundamentally corrupt, someone with so many foreign entanglements, someone with so many illicit dealings over the years, one of the only strategies they can take to win is to try to make the other person look just as dirty, whether it's true or not, whether you're latching on to sort of corruptish behavior, as we've seen in the past, or just trying to invent something out of whole cloth. And so because Donald Trump is so corrupt, the only way he can win is by making the other person look so corrupt and that requires doing things that further corrupt the institutions of our country.

And again, it boils down to, it comes back to the Republicans who have forgiven so much along the way to make someone this low require so much additional viciousness in order to win. I also believe that one of the reasons they're starting this now during the primary is because they know we have a potentially divisive primary on our hands among Democrats. And so if you're one of Joe Biden's opponents and you're looking at

Giuliani and Trump opening up investigations into Biden and thinking, maybe this is going to be good for me, I think every Democrat should stand up and condemn this kind of shit because it's Joe Biden today, it'll be you tomorrow. He's going to do this. If you think that Hillary Clinton, like we've said this before, she had a long history and a lot of baggage that she had to deal with in this race. But don't think for a second that donald trump and all of his goons and a giant conservative media apparatus can paint any democratic candidate as a corrupt awful asshole because they will do it

to every single one of them and so that when stories like this come out every democrat should stand up and say that is fucked up. First, they came for Joe Biden. Right. But I did not speak up because I was at three percent in Iowa. But no, it's right, you know, because I think I think part of the challenge we had in 2016 is they used the foundation and made shit up, but then also used little bits of truth to generate incredibly explosive and unfair stories, whether it was emails or double-dipping by members of her team and what have you. But then again, you go look at that Uranium One story, and it is basically fabricated out of whole cloth.

And they will still run with it. Much like this Ukraine story. Benghazi turned into a multi-year political fiasco because it was expedient and for no other reason. And reporters are going to play along, by the way. They are not our friends. They are not on our team. They are trying to take people down left and right because they see themselves as holding people in power accountable regardless of party. So we should not expect reporters to be the ones who stand up and say, no, this is wrong.

So we should not expect reporters to be the ones who stand up and say, no, this is wrong. So. I think it's, you know, how much of 2020 is going to look exactly like 2016? And let's just hope it's just enough that we win. And that is something to be hopeful about. OK, when we come back, we will have someone who is quite hopeful about the state of politics, Senator Brian Schatz from Hawaii. On the pod today, we have his official title is U.S. Senator from Hawaii,

but he's known for his good tweets. Brian Schatz is with us in studio. And, you know, we're going to take some questions. Priyanka's here. We got some questions from the online crowd. And then we're going to do a little chatting, too. Senator, how do you feel about having your position as one of 100 U.S. senators in the Congress side by side with the fact that you're a good tweeter? I have mixed feelings about that.

Okay, okay, okay. We'll dig into it later, I think. Let's start with our latest constitutional crisis. Are you in favor of impeachment hearings? How do you think? Oh, we're getting right to it. How do you think things are going? Listen, I actually listened to the debate that you're having

in a way amongst yourselves, but probably across the country among progressives. What do we do about all this? Here's the thing that I think defines how we ought to move forward. People want to take impeachment

off the table. I think that's super unwise. But I also think it's unwise to move forward with impeachment if we don't have the votes. I'm talking about on the House side. I think it would be not a good look for us to sort of move to impeach and then we lose 30 or 40 Democrats. And so I... Do you think we need all of them? I don't know the answer to that, but I think that there is no harm in building the case. And I think there is no harm in doing what Jerry Nadler is doing, doing what Adam Schiff is doing, and sort of pursuing what your colleague is calling

Watergate-style hearings, which may end up arriving at a point where we decide that articles of impeachment need to be brought to the floor. Or it may be that the timing is such that we've essentially made the case to the American public and the election is upon us. So I'm sort of undecided on where this all lands, but I don't think there's much differentiation on where we should start, which is, you know, Robert Mueller has to testify, these subpoenas have to be honored, and we have to do aggressive oversight. Do you think what you've seen so far in the Mueller report is impeachable? Like, do you think that he's committed impeachable offenses or are you still waiting for it? Listen, I think there's a couple of ways to look at this. First,

there are impeachable, obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense, but it's important to remember that when Nixon was impeached, it was the abuse of power that was the first article of impeachment, right? It was Nixon trying to interfere with the Washington Post through his Federal Communications Commission, which sounds kind of quaint, right, looking back on it. And so one thing we need to remember is that it's not just a matter. And I think we screwed up a little bit and allowed the whole question to be defined as whether or not there was collusion, which, of course, there's no statute against collusion. collusion. But the use of presidential power, even if it is consistent with constitutional law or statutory law, if it is the abuse of that power, that's what the Congress is for. That's what impeachment is for. And so I look at whether or not this president is abusing his power,

not whether or not specifically he's violating a statute. And one that I think rises to the level that everybody should be concerned with is the emoluments clause. I mean, he is very clearly taking money from foreign governments through his enterprise. And the constitutional framers were very, very worried about this. And they explicitly banned it. And we've actually been successful in clearing the first hurdle of summary judgment in the D.C. Circuit. We were the plaintiffs and we're basically saying we're the legislative branch. Any emolument, any gift to the president of the United States from a foreign government has to be specifically and individually approved by the Congress. And they're not presenting any

of these emoluments to us. So we do have standing and we got over summary Congress. And they're not presenting any of these emoluments to us. So we do have standing and we got over summary judgment. And now we're into discovery and things will get very interesting. OK, so we're obviously this impasse right now where Trump is saying, giving the Heisman to all oversight efforts. He's exerting privilege over things that make no sense for him to exert privilege over. He's exerting privilege over things that make no sense for him to exert privilege over. If we move to impeachment, do you think it would make it easier somehow to make to compel those individuals to come to bring forward documents to testify and otherwise give testimony? Yeah, I don't know the answer to that question, because I think that's a that's a that's a question of both the law and the complexion of the courts. And I'm not a lawyer.

There is an argument that if you're doing things pursuant to an impeachment inquiry, then it has more legal weight. But I just don't know how that would play out through the court system. I will say that the White House strategy, and I don't think they started this way, but they are stumbling into daring us to do it, right? it this way, but they are stumbling into daring us to do it. Right. And I just wouldn't underestimate House members and how much they jealously guard their prerogatives. So they're just starting to get increasingly pissed off at this. So people who sort of said, let's move cautiously, if they're just not going to cooperate, then I think you're going to get more and more momentum in the direction of

aggressive oversight. And one other thing that I'll say, and this is the, I think it was the Mnuchin refusal to turn over the tax returns. He basically said this is not pursuant to a legitimate legislative purpose. There is no more legitimate legislative purpose than the legislative branch trying to determine whether the head of the executive branch is corrupted. And so, and that's one point, that's the substantive point. The other thing is, that's our call. We get to determine what a legitimate legislative purpose is. Right. Well, it's also, this is not a situation where there's no clear law and there's just an argument as to whether or not it's Congress's responsibility. There is a law and it doesn't say

if there's a legitimate legislative purpose as determined by the executive. There's just a sentence that says, give it to us. Shall furnish. Shall. Shall furnish. Shall furnish. Listen, when I first got to the Hawaii legislature in 1998, one of the first things you learn is shall or may, right?

If you have a bill that you think is a great idea, but you don't have enough juice to get it through, then they turn shall to may, and then you can claim credit. Shall means shall. That's a good tip. Shall means shall. And look, I'm not a lawyer, but I do have a really good LSAT score. And so I sort of approach it to that perspective. Release a long form record. There's no need for that.

Claiming executive. It's 2019. You can say whatever you want about what you did in your past. So you made this point about that some of this is just about people getting angry. Do you think that explains what's happening in the Senate Intelligence Committee, where now we have a bipartisan effort to subpoena Donald Trump Jr.? I'm not exactly sure what Chairman Burr is up to. I'm pleased that he seems to be continuing to work on a bipartisan basis. The most alarming part of this is not that you have a couple of United States senators on the Republican

side who are saying, you know, unlawful and cowardly things. That's sort of par for the course. The alarming thing from my standpoint is that there's like deep reporting from a caucus lunch, right, where it's, you know, twice a week, Democrats and Republicans go to separate lunches and sort of strategize their politics for the week or the month or whatever it is. And they had this conversation about the operation of the intelligence committee uh in caucus lunch and i just feel like i mean that is not the place for that john what do the democrats do during theirs they just talk about game of thrones we talk about game of thrones you know there's actually the one complaint i'll make about caucus lunch is

everyone's just constantly applauding everybody else literally there's just a lot of like wasted time you're doing great how's the food uh food's actually pretty good cool you know what a lot of participation you can tell he's being given a great force beat chuck great chart chuck you can that's funny you can tell who um sort of income levels by whether or not people like the lunch. Right. So, you know, like if it's your two square meals a week, then you're, you know, just got to the Senate. And if you're sort of complaining that this lunch is gross and they got to provide variety, maybe you've been around a little bit longer. Mark Warner brings his own. Not going to force you to respond to that.

What do you want to hear from Mueller? Mark's great, and he likes the lunch. All right. There you go. What do you want to hear from Mueller? What would you ask Mueller if, when he finally testifies? I actually think it's important to just let him speak because I think we just have to have some uninterrupted time

to hear from Robert Mueller. And there are some pretty obvious questions, right? Like sort of the spin on the ball that Bill Barr put in the first instance and in the second instance and then sort of on an ongoing basis. But my view is that this person, like a lot of people have not even heard his voice. And I think that you want to avoid the kind of like Zuckerberg's here on the Hill. Everyone's going to try to have their viral moment and put on on social media. We just want to basically give him a half hour, an hour, however long it takes for him to explain himself and to explain how he came to the conclusions that he came to. There are some obvious questions like the decision that he made not to charge.

It seems to me was based on the OLC opinion and not that there was insufficient evidence, right? And that I would like to confirm what is written, which is that he clearly intended to kick it to Congress and Barr clearly sort of intercepted that play. But my view is that if he goes to testify, he wants to say certain things and we should probably do less talking and more listening. Can I ask a question about the process there? Sorry to interrupt. When you guys have a big blockbuster hearing like that, it sometimes can feel like there's a series of four minute speeches followed by one minute of maybe a question. Is there an effort to coordinate and slice up important things we want to get to so that we hear from the witness? Obviously not.

Maybe that's something you could do during the caucus lunch, maybe between rounds of applause for not being in the majority. You could maybe say, hey, everybody, skip the preamble. Well, there are sort of two things. First of all, don't chew up your five minutes with four minutes worth of pontificating. Yes, fair enough. But also the sort of two things. First of all, don't chew up your five minutes with four minutes worth of pontificating. Yes, fair enough. But also the sort of coordination of sort of how you follow each other's line of questioning. First, you can do some kind of pre-planning. But sometimes what you have to do is be in the hearing and listening to your colleagues.

I think Sherrod Brown is the ranker on banking, does an excellent job. I mean, different members do more of an aggressive job of coordinating. But when it's a blockbuster, then members just say, I don't care what the play is. I'm going to have my moment. And that's when we, you know, that's when everybody starts to tweet, oh, everybody should give all the questions to Kamala or whoever is doing or Dick Blumenthal or whomever. And it's not so much that any individual is better or worse at sort of the interrogating process although they're obviously well but of course they are some are better and worse but

the but the point being we just need some uninterrupted time to kind of follow a string yeah and people are as you know kind of blowing in blowing out so they don't even know what was talked about. Right. And then once they're done, they leave, right? Cool system. Super cool system. How are you feeling about the Senate recruitment efforts and our efforts to flip this thing in 2020? Yeah, I think there's a lot of anxiety out there,

and I like anxiety. I think people should be totally, like, on edge about everything, including winning the Senate, because we're sort of imagining a universe in which we, you know, win the Senate and win the presidency and hold the House. And none of those are for sure. So I like that people have anxiety. But I think we're doing very well in North Carolina. I think we're doing well in some states that, you know, you may be surprised by. Colorado, a couple of candidates are looking at running in Maine. But it is a little bit early.

And I've just sort of gone through the coverage of the sort of Politico or Hill or roll call. Here's how everyone's doing on recruitment. And it literally has, if any correlation, it's an inverse correlation with how successful you are in the coming cycle. So I just don't know. One other thought I'll offer is that there is a tendency to think that the person who is polling the best, you know, in May of the odd numbered year is the strongest candidate. So that has caused us to get a lot of former statewide elected officials in their 60s and 70s. And I just don't think that that is necessarily who we want. I mean, there may be instances where that's the best candidate,

but I think we need a candidate who represents this growing movement, and I don't think we necessarily need an actually young person, but like a Senate young person like me, like 46, 58, 62. But I don't think just because somebody was governor and popular, you know, in the 80s or 90s means that there are like star recruit. You're basically a Senate tween. Yeah, I'm basically. How does this recruiting process work? I mean, we talked about this the other day, and John was trying to be less anxious, and I was just emoting on a live stream. Like, is it

Schumer and the DSCC recruiting people? Are others helping out that process? How does it work? It depends state by state. So, you know, there are certain states that you sort of go through whoever is at the top of the food chain, right? And so there's a fair amount of that. And then I think, maybe because I come from Hawaii and we have primaries

and that's, you know, that's the way we roll, that I think, you know, probably the best way to figure out who's the best recruit is to just let them run against each other. And whoever wins is by definition, the best vote getter. So I think we should do a little more of that. Um, but certainly Chuck does a fair amount of personal recruiting and is very persuasive. I just had this conversation with Kirsten cinema, uh, and, and a bunch of others. Um, Catherine's doing an extraordinary job. I think we're going to have a bunch of female candidates that are going to be inspirational.

But I also think that we shouldn't try to select who's our best nominee any more than we should do that on the presidential side. If we do take the Senate back, what are your feelings on the filibuster? Yeah, so, you know, i knew you were gonna ask me impeachment and filibuster yeah um listen i i think that i think we ought to look at all of the senate procedures and all the ways in which mitch mcconnell has sort of um rigged the game

and um and that's one of them um i think the way you do you do reconciliation is another one of them i also think we ought to look at puerto Rico statehood. And so all of these kind of structural reforms are important and serious and have to be part of the conversation. in October of 16, like sitting down with my staff, trying to figure out what good people we knew that would be interested in populating the Clinton cabinet. And so this just reminds me of the way we put the cart before the horse. But your point is a reasonable one, which is we were talking about a sort of vast array of progressive priorities, and we're going to have to make some structural changes to the way the country works if we want to actually implement them. Well, I guess like follow up to that, win the Senate or not. Is this a point where like, do you see Republican senators, you work with Republican senators where you're like, you know what, on a big issue, maybe it's not a

progressive priority. Maybe it's not a really ambitious proposal, but I might be able to get, we might be able to get 51, 52 votes or even 60 votes for this sort of medium range proposal that's not quite so ambitious. Doubling money for the senators for disease control. Yeah, like a middle class tax cut. Sure, okay. Like, do you think you could find Republicans to work with in the Senate? Or how broken is the Senate and how partisan is it at this point, I guess? It's not the old Senate. And I think part of what we're dealing with is that it's such a strong institution over time that everybody's trying to recreate

the Senate of the 70s and 80s and 90s. First of all, it wasn't that great for people who were not in power, right? So this idea of comity and civility, it's important and it does characterize the institution, but it's also that it was comity and civility among people who were in power, who were primarily older white men. And so people were getting screwed during those periods of civility pretty deeply. So that's one part of this. The other part is that underneath the battles, we've been able to do pretty well on appropriations

where, you know, there's an old saying, there's three parties in the Senate, we've been able to do pretty well on appropriations, where, you know, there's an old saying, there's three parties in the Senate, Democrats, Republicans, and appropriators. And so we've been able to reject most of the most draconian things that Trump and Mulvaney have proposed as it relates to EPA, the National Park Service. I mean, they wanted to eliminate, or not eliminate, but drastically cut CDC and NIH funding. And we just went ahead and not just rejected those proposals, but massively increased medical research funding. So there are glimmers of hope, and I still want to cultivate all of that. But the ability to be an effective senator, in my view, is contingent on your ability to compartmentalize and be super disappointed with

someone and then collaborate with them the following morning. It's like parenting. Yeah. Okay. Senator, there's a lot of loose talk among some of your colleagues. Private Rubio speaks openly about he acts like he commands the armed forces and that if Maduro moves to take military action against the opposition in Venezuela, he will lead the charge like the rough riders into the country. Do you think there's any appetite for Trump to actually take military action in some place like Venezuela

where there's clearly no legal authority and you guys would have to, I don't know, pass a bill? Yeah, we'd have to do an authorization of the use of military force. That's number one. Number two is Maduro is a bad guy. And we hope there's a transition in leadership. But what you have to do is use all the tools in the toolkit. And I think you really ought to take military action off the table. That's what I think. As bad as this leader is, we do not need another war and certainly not in this hemisphere. But John Bolton is behind all of this stuff. And he's he's cooking intelligence on Iran and he's banging the war drums.

And I think Trump sort of likes it to the extent that he thinks it's got electoral punch and maybe in Florida and he doesn't want to look like a wimp. But now he seems to be like, well, you know, I wanted to rattle a few cages. But I and I and I think he thought that, you know, there was talking there was talk about he was on a tar Maduro was on a tarmac and it was, you know, it was basically going to be a coup. It was done. And now that it's not done, he's thinking, well, what's our next play, Mr. Bolton? And so but I think we should understand that John Bolton is driving the bus on foreign policy. And for, you know, I would say half of your listeners who don't remember John Bolton, he's the guy that his whole thing is cooking intelligence and getting us into wars. That's his whole shtick.

He's been doing that for a very, very long time. And he's very effective at it. I mean, he's not a clown in that way. And he's now doing it in multiple countries. Branca, we got some questions? Yeah, we got lots. Okay, so everyone here loves you on Twitter. Something you tweet about a lot, climate. So people want to know what your top three specific policy proposals that you want to see in any Green New Deal style legislation.

Oh, it's a really good question. First, I believe we need a carbon fee or carbon tax. And the reason for that is that it's just been proven to transform the economy quicker. Places that have done that have been able to make quicker progress on clean energy than anything else. Second, I think one of the most brilliant parts about the Green New Deal is that it recognizes that you can't just do a carbon fee or a cap and trade or some kind of renewable portfolio standard as much as all those are effective policies because what you end up doing is creating the sense that this is an elite project or some kind of renewable portfolio standard, as much as all those are effective policies. Because what you end up doing is creating the sense that this is an elite project. And this is another thing that can be sort of traded as a derivative on Wall Street. And that was, you know, Macron's problem in France.

And I believe that's why the ballot initiative in Washington state failed. There's a saying a good friend of mine uses in Hawaii, paint a picture and paint me in it. So if we're going to build a climate movement, it has to not just be coastal liberals who are sort of configuring some technocratic solution. And that's essential. So we do need investments in communities. And the last thing I'll say is we really have to be very serious about bringing in organized labor because coalition politics matters, because the Republicans do it sometimes better than us, but also because that should matter to us. If people who represent the workers that we purport to represent and fight for are uncomfortable with aspects of what we're talking

about, then that isn't about, hey, you're afraid of this and you're not truly progressive. That is the truly progressive thought process. And next step is, okay, let's sit down and let's figure this out together and let's charge up the mountain together. So involving organized labor, I think, is essential to implementing a Green New Deal. That was the original line in Titanic. Is that right? Paint a picture and original line in Titanic. Is that right? Paint a picture and paint me in it.

Is that right? Oh, God, I was super embarrassed. Can I just follow up real quickly on Priyanka's question? Because, you know, you get all this praise for being great on Twitter, but your colleague Chris Murphy tweeted, those of us who follow the Brian Schatz Twitter feed know that he is consistently both grim and humorless. And so, you know, that was shots fired from Mr. Murphy.

So I took, I did a little examination of his Twitter to see how, you know, lit it is. And, you know, here's a couple examples. Turn on C-SPAN 2. I'm heading to the Senate floor now. Excited to have U.S. DOL secretary with us in Connecticut today to showcase the success of our Eastern Connecticut Manufacturing Pipeline Initiative.

Happy Easter, everybody. Ralph Wiggum Giff. Do you think that he's winning the battle? Everybody unfollow Chris Murphy. There's one thing you take from this live stream. No, Chris and I have a lot of fun on Twitter, and I think we're a book or two, but there are very few of us

who actually operate our own accounts. You're at the controls. Yeah. You're at the controls. Yeah, we're at the controls. And that means periodically I say a jackass-y thing, but I think that's fine. Were you about to say more than periodically? No. That's funny, but I wasn't. I was actually going to say, why are so many of your colleagues afraid to operate the machinery? I don't know how afraid they are, but some of them are getting... Sheldon Whitehouse is tweeting his own stuff.

Nice. And it's getting... And by the way, Sheldon has his own voice. I was excited for converts. So more and more people are getting interested, but also everyone's communications team is against it. Oh, interesting. Including mine on an ongoing basis.

Mixed feelings, let's say. Is that true? We're getting mixed messages. Mixed messages from your own Twitter field about this, Priyanka. All right. We have more questions. People want to know, what issue do you think is not being covered enough right now? And then are there issues or news stories that you think are getting too much coverage? Let me just take the first part of the question, housing. We have an affordable housing crisis across the country. And, you know, I thought it was in sort of just high cost, high density places like Hawaii and big cities, but it's actually all the way across the country. all the way across the country. And it's a huge middle class issue. And I think the extent to which this trade war is harming manufacturing in the Midwest and causing the bankruptcy of farmers

sort of gets only talked about in the context of whether the Dow went up or down. And I think if your farm went bankrupt, but the Dow's at 26,000, none of that matters. So we need to talk a little bit more about that. I'm not going to get into what gets too much coverage, because I think if your farm went bankrupt, but the Dow's at 26,000, none of that matters. So we need to talk a little bit more about that. I'm not going to get into what gets too much coverage because I think that's just a little bit obvious. Two follow-ups. One, as a patriotic American who respects the institutions and the pride we take as citizens of a country that ended the age of royalty, as citizens of a country that ended the age of royalty. Do you think it's embarrassing, if not shameful, that Americans care that a royal couple in a place,

in some place in Europe, had a baby? I feel like I'm going to get in deep trouble for this one. No, I think it's cool. I mean, listen, if I like basketball. Yeah, love it. I mean, I, if I like basketball... Yeah, love it. If I follow... I mean, I follow basketball. I follow Game of Thrones. If there's a royal baby,

you get to be excited about whatever you want to be excited about. Okay, Senator Schatz, I'm going to forward you something called the Federalist Papers. After we're done here, you can take a look at that. Are you?

I have a serious... I have actually a serious question about housing. So there's been, there is a lot of talk about the fact that we have a housing crisis, people can't afford to buy homes, right? We see that all across California, it's a huge problem. How much of the housing crisis is actually a sort of symptom of an economic inequality crisis? Like how do you worry at all that efforts to target housing is an effort to avoid the larger structural forces that are preventing middle class incomes from rising? Well, I think it's an income problem, but it also is a supply of housing problem. And one of the things that we liberals, I think, have to get straight in our minds is that planning and zoning

has its place, right? But planning and zoning was the original redlining, right? It was the continuation of discrimination, especially against African Americans. So all of these laws about minimum lot size and what you could build where was to preserve the segregation of communities. And now it's not so much, it's not totally racial segregation. Now it's economic segregation. Now it's not so much, it's not totally racial segregation. Now it's economic segregation. And lots of liberals still sort of haven't wrapped their mind around the idea that if we really want everybody to be housed, that you're going to have to see it.

I mean, we had this conversation in Hawaii when we were moving towards a higher and higher percentage of our energy being generated from clean sources that people said, well, I'm for clean energy, but I don't want to, that windmill is too big and it's near my house. If we're going to generate a hundred percent clean energy, we're going to see a lot of windmills. And if we're going to house nurses and firefighters and young people and the elderly, you know, we're going to have housing in places that might make us initially uncomfortable. So I feel very strongly about this. I take your point that we need to deal with income inequality sort of as a more general proposition, but housing

is an urgent matter now. All right. So people in the live stream want to know about the heartbeat bill that was signed this week in Georgia. Do you think this will survive? And then what do you think about ideas like stacking the Supreme Court, things like that? Well, on the heartbeat bill, I think it's just important to say reproductive choice abortion services are health care. So when we say they're coming after your health care, it's not just they're coming after eviscerating the ACA through the courts and through legislation and through administrative actions, but they're coming after women's health care in a very straightforward way. And I think the most sort of apocalyptic claims about what the Republicans want to do over time are turning out to be true. So that's number one. I have no idea if it'll survive the court process, but certainly they think it will,

and they think it will for the very simple reason that Mitch McConnell has declared the United States Senate to be a legislative graveyard. And basically every week we go in and we process nominations to the circuit courts and the district courts. And they believe that they will succeed not just on this, but on other sort of anti-progressive legislation all the way through. Got it. Not great. Not great. Kyle from YouTube wants to know, what's the advice for those of us in red states that are trying to flip them blue or at the very least purple? Oh, first of all, run for office campaign. I mean, look, California used to be purple. California used to be purple. used to be purple. Texas is turning purple. Georgia is turning purple. And so one of the reasons that we have failed in places is that we just literally haven't even tried. Right. And I

mean, this is a funny thing, but at one point, the state house of Hawaii was within four seats of being flipped to Republican rule in 19, I think it was year 2000. And there were some districts that we thought were solidly Republican. And over basically 20 years, we've systematically taken those seats back. And now the balance of power in the legislature is 46 to 5 in the House and I think 25 to 0 in the state Senate. I almost say that sheepishly, but so be it. But the point is you have to compete everywhere and don't give up because it may not be this election cycle that you're successful, but eventually it'll succeed.

And one other thought I had is I just remember what a star Jason Kander is and was. But one of the reasons that he was such a big deal is that there was there were no other Jason Kanders. Right. And that's because we hadn't done any work on building our bench and having members of the legislature and school boards and and small town mayors. generation of House members, Stacey Abrams and others who are younger, who have served in legislatures or as small town mayors or lieutenant governors or city prosecutors who are next up when there's an opportunity for them. Can I ask a question about that? You know, we've seen this, we've seen incredible candidates like Jason Kander come close. We've seen incredible candidates like Jason Kander come close. We've seen some defeats in states like Missouri. You know, we've had trouble in the Midwest. And yet when ballot initiatives around democratic priorities, whether it's Medicaid or the right

to work or, well, preventing the right to work laws from passing or minimum wage, they pass in places like Idaho and Utah and Missouri and Arkansas. What do you see as the difference between a Democratic policy and a Democratic candidate right now? Yeah. So this is a tough one because I know what I want to say and I probably shouldn't say it, but I'll just go for it. Nobody's watching. It's fine. I think people like Democratic policies, but they don't always like Democrats like they just don't like us. They feel that we are being condescending, that we do feel like we have answers. So they love these policies. Right. And, you know, in Florida, when when Andrew Gillum loses and my good friend Bill Nelson loses,

there's this ballot initiative that that decisively wins, that gives back the franchise to vote to people who are incarcerated. And so you're right to point out this phenomenon. I don't have like a magic solution for it, but Idaho Medicaid won, right? And I'll also just say that if we know that there's that kernel of truth, then we have to find those progressive priorities. And they are progressive, but they also happen to be compelling to independents and a lot of Republicans and run on those next year. There is no shame in saying, I care about these 10 things, right? But these six things are the best vote getters, right? And I don't, I mean, on Twitter, it's like, if you talk like that, you're some big sellout, but winning is very important.

And winning is, is maybe the most important thing. It's not that you sacrifice your- It's important for a majority of people to like your proposal. Yes. In the country. It's an important thing. It's okay if one of your ideas is unpopular. You can still be for it.

Right. But you don't have to put it in a TV ad. Right. And if you find out that Medicaid expansion and bread and butter issues are the ones that will cause you to be successful in the election. That's good, not bad. Yeah. I called Jason this morning.

Did you? He sent me the voicemail. He's got one of those very millennial voicemails that's like, don't leave me a voicemail. Text me. Oh, really? Isn't the most millennial voicemail the voicemail is full? Oh, yeah. That's my move.

That's my move. Yeah, you're going to have to try harder to get me. Because the voicemail is just someone saying, I wanted to talk to you on the phone, you didn't want to talk to me, but I just had my half of the conversation anyway. It's incredibly rude. How is that different from a text? Well, a text is... I guess it's not. I've been defeated again

by the... from the greatest deliberative body. Wow, I love this. Can you be here always? We have more questions from Twitter. Christina wants to know if you are lonely in the Senate now that half your colleagues are in Iowa. Aha.

Great question. You know, half my colleagues are in Iowa. And it's kind of exciting. Like, you know, I send texts to them and try to be as just like personally supportive as I can. And, um, and it creates an opportunity for those of us who are not running to kind of dig into the policy piece, because listen, when you're running for, even if you're running for the state house, it's like not the time to be doing policy development. If you're

out there trying to get votes. And certainly if you're running for the United States Senate or the presidency, there's like no time anymore to sit down with your like ledge team and try to solve a problem. You're already off to the races. And so some of us have to, and I don't mean this facetiously, some of us have to do the legislative work so that if and when we take power, we're ready to roll. When the Republicans took power sort of, I think to their surprise, legitimately, they were not ready to roll on health care. And that's one of the reasons that they failed. If you were a campaign manager on a Democratic presidential campaign right now, what would your big piece of messaging advice be?

What would you want your candidate to be talking about? For the general? For the, for the, uh, both. Because we know we don't want to pivot too much between the, for the, uh, both. Ha ha. Because we know we don't want to pivot too much between the primary and the general. So I think, um, I think the, the, first of all, let's start with the general. I think it's healthcare, healthcare, healthcare. And I think we have to make, we have to prosecute the economic argument. And I think, I don't think we should be so afraid of the stock market that we can't make the case that people are struggling because people really are struggling. And then in the background, there's going to be a drumbeat of, hey, this is the most corrupt administration, certainly in generations and maybe ever.

And I don't think you necessarily have to be the candidate articulating all that. Maybe in a debate, you kind of have an exchange, but that's not going to go into ads. But I think we would be unwise not to mention, oh, by the way, right, this is terribly corrupt and awful. And Ryan Zinke and Scott Pruitt and all the rest of these guys are literally enriching themselves. And they're not just enriching themselves in the abstract. They are enriching themselves at our expense. On the primary side, I don't know the answer to that. I mean, listen, I've been to Iowa once and it was like, I had to like disabuse everyone. I'm not running. I'm just trying to be helpful, whatever. But you were thinking about it. No, I was not. But if somebody asked you the question, aren't you thinking about it? Well, however I can best serve, John. No, that was a

joke. That's two in a row we got Abrams yesterday we got shots on the hook today we got potential candidates coming through here not running never will thank you never will

wait come on never hey why are you doing that why say never yeah because what we really need is that

anyway so on the primary side I actually do think that we're gonna those debates are gonna be more important than your average debate, because I think, you know, probably 80 percent, whatever they're telling you. My guess is 80 percent of the voters are totally undecided. Right. You may have locked into your specific preference, but someone has a good moment. You'll be like, yeah, I like her. Sure. Done. And so part of what we're going to measure is sure is whether or not someone lines up, you know, on your issues, on your core issues. Are they good for climate? Are they good for civil rights? Do they have a good background? Do you agree with them on X, Y, and Z? But a lot of it is an audition for the general. And I think it's okay for us to look at someone and say, how does that person match up against Donald Trump. So this electability question can very easily turn into a proxy for basically whether or not you're a white dude. That's terrible. But I think lots of voters really are trying to figure out who's our best, who's our most talented communicator, who's our best leader

to marshal the resources of what we hope will be the biggest grassroots movement in American history. And I think it's okay for a voter to evaluate that, but we should just remember that the traditional analysis of electability is mostly always wrong. Right. When senators text, are there emojis? Are there gifts? Like what's the vibe with your colleagues? No, it's like full punctuation, capitalization. Like signing, you're writing an email like love chuck yeah that's how my mom texts there's no there's no texting with chuck yeah really i don't i mean not with me no he has a flip phone i mean i guess he could text from it i think he can receive texts what is the uh latest or earliest time chuck schumer has called you oh well i mean there's a six hour time difference

so yeah it's 3 a.m you know hawaii time and I just go, hey, Chuck, you know, it's a blocked caller. Hello. I know it's Chuck. Who else is calling me at 3 a.m. in Hawaii? But, you know, hello, Mr. Leader. Sweet. OK, so what there's so many good ideas out there from all these 2020 candidates. What legislation proposed by a candidate would you be most interested in seeing getting passed? Oh, gosh. I mean, let me list a few, because, you know, this is one of those things where it's like, What legislation proposed by a candidate would you be most interested in seeing getting passed? Oh, gosh. I mean, let me list a few because, you know, this is one of those things where it's like I love all my siblings exactly the same. Elizabeth has she has an extraordinary ability to understand the not just the problem as a general proposition but what pathway could be taken to fix it. Bernie I think has diagnosed part of our problem as a society which is that we really do need

to do movement building not just like the sort of technical aspects of legislation. I love Cory's baby bonds idea. I love what Cory has done on environmental justice. I think that's quite overrated. I mean, not overrated, excuse me, Corey, underrated, because he's done these environmental justice tours and nobody has really paid, I think, enough attention to it. Kamala's LIFT Act, what Kamala wants to do for teachers. Jay Inslee just signed probably the second best climate bill in the country after Hawaii. And I'm sure I'm leaving someone out and that's going to cause me to get in trouble.

We're going to be here a while. Yeah. But I do love all my children equally. Really hearing that you despise John Hickenlooper. I like Hick. I met him when he was a mayor. Just call him the loop over here. And I'll also say that I'm excited about climate plans coming out. And I'm going to personally make an effort to just see to it.

I'm not going to get into the technical aspects of it because you guys know probably better than I do that once you get into an administration, it becomes, okay, we're going to do climate. Now what's possible, right? But Beto's plan is serious. Jay's plan is serious. And I anticipate all of the major candidates will have a your Republican colleagues. So who is the most unlikely collaborator you've ever had in the Senate? And can you tell us about a time where someone surprised you with wanting to team up with you on an issue or to work on a bill?

Yeah, Jim Inhofe. So Jim Inhofe, for those of you who don't know, wrote a book called The Great Hoax about climate change. And, you know, I got to the Senate and ran for the Senate because climate is my lifetime passion. But Jim and I did a bill together to honor Native American veterans.

And frankly, on this bill, he was a prince and a very skilled legislator. So this is the problem of the Senate, which is that if you're not able to compartmentalize, then you will be totally ineffective. Because, I mean, I could have very easily said, listen, you think climate change is a hoax. Not just that, but you wrote a whole book about it. I can't deal with you. But if you operate that way, especially in this environment, by process of elimination, you will find no partners. All right.

Well, we'll switch to some fun questions because we have a lot for you as well. First off, this, I think, was asked at least 20 times. How do you kill time on your flight, deal with jet lag flying from Hawaii to Washington all the time? What are your tips for us? Oh, well, tweeting, obviously, is how I kill my time on the airplane. I don't really have any good advice about airplanes other than it's super dehydrating and people don't really think that way. So get an aisle seat and then drink lots of water. But I'm grouchy a lot.

I mean, Mondays are bad and Fridays, I'm a little jet lagged, but at least I'm home. So that takes the sting off. GoGo Wi-Fi, can you do something about those people? I cannot. Is there any accommodation made for people from Hawaii or Alaska who clearly have a more challenging time getting to votes on Mondays and Thursdays than Delaware? Nope. Whatever. As well as Sherrod says, no whining on the yacht. It's fine.

Got it. Okay. The guy who's never been on a yacht. All right. What's the best time of the year for people to visit Hawaii? Oh, gosh. There are no bad months. I think a lot of people, especially on the East Coast, think it's like super muggy and terrible certain times of year and all the rest of it. It's pretty great all the time. Spring's fine.

January, December. There's not a bad month. Yeah, whale season in the time. Spring's fine. January, December. There's not a bad month. Yeah, whale season in the winter. Yeah, whale season in the winter. Got all the humpbacks with their babies. Surf in the summer. We went in February. It was wonderful.

So cool. Beautiful. It's pretty much always great. It's paradise. No one is disappointed when they go to Hawaii. That makes sense. When you're in D.C., so not at home, what is your favorite thing to go eat? Where do you go?

What are your spots? Oh, my eating habits are very depressing. Sometimes district taco, but that's like just B plus. And then I moved to the side of the hill where I'm like across the street from a grocery store. So like my meals are sad. Sardines on rice, sort of like wheat thins, cheese, salami, fruit. Sardines on rice? Are you a prisoner?

I like sardines on rice. It's like a rail car hobo. That's a sad meal. Hot sauce? Yeah, that's right. Did you get off the rail car and take your bindle and go to the Senate? I don't know what a bindle is, but yeah. It's that like ball on a stick.

Oh, I got it. The rotisserie chickens are good because they'll last for a couplele is, but yeah. It's that like ball on a stick. The rotisserie chickens are good because they'll last for a couple days. Yeah, yeah. It's fine. But I basically don't eat very well. Okay, got it. Something we've also been discussing a lot in this office. Game of Thrones.

Do you watch and do you have thoughts on how this should end? Well, I don't have any thoughts about how it should end. Well, I want Tyrion to be on the Iron Throne. But here's the thing. It's the correct answer. It's the correct answer to want Tyrion.

I like short, cerebral guys. Right back to same. But I... It's such a bad... So I'm on the red eye at 8pm and so I could watch it live at like 3 in Hawaii, but that's kind of a waste of a good Sunday afternoon with my family. So I end up watching last week's episode like tonight or tomorrow during the day.

So you haven't seen last week's episode yet? Yeah, so. How do you deal with that? You're on Twitter so much. I get off Twitter for about 24 hours. Smart. Wow. Not 24 hours.

Now, if your tweets are important for the messaging of the Democratic Party, is the fact that you're not keeping up with Game of Thrones hurting our chances to win in 2020? Yeah, I think it hurts. It's called Benioff. That's the question. Another thing that's very important to Crooked Media fans. Do you have a dog? Yeah, we have two dogs.

Two? I have a tiny little lap dog, a Bichon Shih Tzu named Shumai. And Do you have a dog? Yeah, we have two dogs. I have like a tiny little lap dog, a Bichon Shih Tzu named Shumai. And then we have a great dame called Jupiter. Oh my gosh. Variety. Were you going for sort of a comedic walk? Yeah, kind of. We have

a Christmas picture where it looks it's a funny picture. But what we wanted was a big guard dog that wasn't actually dangerous, but terrifies people who may be up to no good. Were they like a buck 80? No, she's not. I mean, she's small for a great danger.

She's like 130. But on her hind legs, she's a good seven feet tall. That's amazing. That's cool. Senator Schatz, thank you for joining us. And please always feel free to use Crooked Media as your layover. Yeah, anytime. Whenever you want. Nice to see you guys. It's great to run out the shots clock with you oh no that's

well done yeah that's fire thanks to brian shots for joining us today and And what did we think of Game of Thrones last night? Love it as a pin to him. Give him your spoiler buffer. Spoiler buffer. This is a spoiler buffer. You're driving. Turn the volume down. If you're on a bird scooter,

pull over. You're hitting pause. That means you, Jay Inslee. Yeah, Jay Inslee. Take your AirPods out while you're scooting around. All right, you ready? Shut it off. Shut it off, shut it off.

Thrones. I'm sad. Loved it. Unbelievable. Look, I've loved Game of Thrones from the very beginning. In fact, I remember a time where sitting on my couch at 13 Bro 9 and turning to my friend Jon Favreau and saying, hey, I got something I think you should watch

and he's like, what's this shit? Fuck you. But I got him to watch it. And you know how he said, it's all about the map. Let me just show you a map and I said,

that's how you're gonna get me to watch it? And it worked. It did work. You know, what can be said that hasn't already been said online?

I would direct you to my Twitter to understand where I'm coming from. I just believe they didn't have the time. And it makes me, you know, I have no joy in saying this. They didn't have the time to tell the story they needed to tell.

And I just think that's a bummer. It's a bummer. Tommy, do you have thoughts? I think it's a TVmer. It's a bummer. Tommy, you have thoughts? I think it's a TV show. No. And that everyone needs to calm the fuck down. I don't want to calm down. And I enjoyed last night.

I enjoyed watching Khaleesi's pretty, you know, obvious, likely transition to a psychopath. Seeing the dragon mow down all kinds of innocent civilians it got a little tiresome i didn't need to see the third burned child's charred body on the on the ground but it was in service of a broader point i think about power corrupting absolutely uh you know i don't know i it was a fun episode i don't know how much more we needed about Daenerys' turn that hadn't already been there.

From the day she arrived at Westeros, she had wanted to just... Episode 2, Season 7, she gets to Dragonstone, and she's looking at the board, board and she's got the three dragons and she goes to Tyrion you know my brother was here and he had three dragons he would just be going after King's Landing right now he would just be burning it right now and Tyrion says you don't want to be queen of the ashes he says at first and then she looks at him and she goes okay and so the next time that she's meeting with Lady Elena and Ellaria Sand and all the rest of them, and they're plotting everything, and they say, burn King's Landing to the ground. And Tyrion says, what do you mean burn it to the ground?

Tens of thousands of people will die. All these innocent people will die. And Ellaria Sand says, it's war that happens all the time. And Lady Elena looks at Daenerys and she says, listen, she's like, these people are like sheep, these lords, these people of Westeros, they only respond to fear. You are a dragon, act like a dragon. And Daenerys looks at her and is sort of like,

you can tell she's like, well, I like that advice, but she had just been listening to Tyrion, so she's like, no, no, I don't want to be queen of the ashes. So she listens to Tyrion. She does what he says. Tyrion has stupid plans. Causes her to lose two dragons. Causes her to go north for some fucking, I'm going to capture a wight to show Cersei. It's all about negotiating with Cersei.

And finally Daenerys is like, what is trying to negotiate with this woman got me? I mean, the hole in this explanation is she could have flown her ass over to the tower and torched Cersei and been done with it and not killed literally every person. This is the problem. Right, but I think she was like, I want to send a fucking message. These people will only like me if they fear me because otherwise they love Jon Snow and they're about to know that Jon Snow is the true heir to the throne. Look, everybody knows that if the person who's not true to the throne murders everybody in the city, that's how you get them on your side. That's a tyrant.

That's what a tyrant does. Fear. This is the problem. Everything you're saying is true. The broad strokes of her transition are all there. The problem is I don't think they did the work to set it up in that moment. What would we have needed, do you think? What would we have needed, do you think?

I don't understand why, after all these years, we've built up these two characters. Cersei, the supervillain of the show. Daenerys, who is a merciless, ruthless person who, after one child dies, locks up her dragons for a year. Someone who contains both good and bad. They set this up for years and years and years. We have two episodes of conversation. We have a massive battle. We have last week's episode that I don't know what it did. And then we have this confrontation. Cersei's basically watching the episode with us. She's sitting on her couch, you know, turning on HBO Go to see what happens to King's Landing. She has absolutely

nothing to do. And then Daenerys wins, not challenged by Cersei, not pushed to be evil, not taken to her extreme. She wins. The bells are ringing. And then looking up at the Red Keep, by the way, set up for episodes of a place where Cersei has surrounded ourselves with human shields, a place where if Daenerys really wanted to do what you're saying, prove that she's ruthless and instill fear, could have gone right to the Red Keep, killed everyone around Cersei and killed Cersei, which still would have resulted

in this debate, or, well, I just think this undoing we're about to see of this person who was too ruthless to be supported by someone like Jon. But instead, she looks up at the Red Keep after the battle is won, and then she kills everybody.

And I just don't buy it. How many times has Cersei tricked her? How many times has circe played like she you know for all daenerys knew going right to the red keep is exactly what circe wanted to do but all of this i think at some point she was just like fuck this shit i have been so screwed by my advisors by everyone else i'm gonna burn this place to the ground because that's how i know i can rule through fear and And that is, and that is reading into her facial expressions, a bunch of motivations and understandings mixed together that may in

together make sense, but aren't shown by the show. And I know it's not shown by the show because they had to do something which I had never seen a show do before, which is in the previously on in the final moments before the episode begins, they show you a scene from last week in which, in which we see all the voices that was added voices from years week in which we see. Yeah, they have all the voices. That was cool. They added voices from years and years of the show. And I believe something that hasn't happened yet maybe. I'm not totally sure. They added voices behind her to make the argument for what we're about to see because they knew they hadn't successfully done it through the actual episodes.

They invented a scene. They knew everyone wouldn't fucking remember everything because people's memories are like fucking two days old. They gave her a motivation. They put a motivation. They put a motivation behind her eyes, which we had not seen before. And they just. It was there. Fire and blood is her fucking family.

Her family motto is fire and blood. Another episode. And they could have done it. They made her. I don't agree with either of you. I just think they made her look like she turned crazy. And the whole flip of the coin all the family like you're either crazy or not it's 50 50 they made her look insane in those moments and then she heard the bells and she went nuts but this is the point right like we don't know we don't know because it's not set up

but like i guess it's all like to to your point love it john thinks what he thinks i think what i think neither is grounded in anything that we learn from the show. It's all just an instinct. Totally. And this is my problem because I just think they could have – look, I understand not wanting to be in Iceland and making more episodes and I understand being done with the show. But to me, what I'm seeing is basically characters. And in part, I don't even blame them.

In part, I blame the fact that we're outside of the books, books that maybe never will be wrapped up because it was too sweeping, too big, too broad. I mean, George R.R. Martin is like, see you next Christmas, eight Christmases ago. I think it's unfair to say that this is all about them wanting to finish early. We don't know.

Like Tommy just said, it's sort of whatever you read into it, good storytelling does that sometimes. I mean, who knows? We could be right. Maybe they just wanted to finish. But this could be exactly how they wanted to finish the series.

These characters are being rushed around the map. They're flying around. There's so many silly devices. For sure. Finally, the confrontation between Euron and Jaime we've all been dying to see since he washed up on the shore by coincidence five seconds earlier. That one really didn't make any sense.

Why are they fighting? Well, to your point, I would have liked one more scene of Cersei being evil or doing something. I would have liked one more scene of Cersei for sure. She literally scoots by the hound. She is so extraneous to her own undoing that she's like, this is what Dan said last night. He's like, if you'll excuse me, I just want to get by. I'm trying to beat the rush. Oh, scoots.

I would have loved to have seen the hound just bust out a sword and hack her head off. It is so out of character that he would wait and let Arya take care of it or whatever the thinking was. Arya, Arya, years and years, she gets within a hundred yards of her final mission and she's like...

Oh, I think that was totally within her character. I think it was totally earned. I actually agree. I agree it was earned. I take back what I said. I'll give you Jamie and Euron meeting. What are you doing on this beach? I'll give you them meeting. I'll give you Cersei walking by

the Hound for sure. I'm sorry. I was going to try to get by. Sorry. You guys look like you guys. I don't want to get in the way of a brother conversation. I feel kind of out of place. I'll give you that for sure. I'm all in, though, on the Daenerys thing. I think it was well done. But anyway, we'll see what happens when, you know, Samwell Tarly's on the Iron Throne. The other thing, too, is I'm justly's on the iron throne. I just, the other thing too, is I'm just knocking out my hopes up anywhere. I said this to Tom here earlier, but like a random Dothraki guy is not going to be every time.

Every, every time I think this final season has a trick up their sleeve, a dead dove falls out. So I am bummed. I'm just going to admit it. I loved it, but I will tell you, I still,

my prediction for how the series ends right now. I still believe in you too. Democracy reigns. Yeah. John's got the happy ending yeah i don't think it's very i think i don't think it was pretty happy to get oh no democracy reigns should not be taken as a happy ending it should be taken as we had to endure years of mass slaughter to get to this point where we're sort of going to now fucking get by yeah democracy going really well over here in reality right that's exactly right

yeah i didn't say that was a happy ending. I said that was an ending. Chernobyl, you know, after the Soviet Union falls, right, a bunch of American scientists go over to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states to kind of secure the nuclear material. And as I was watching Chernobyl, I was like, who's going to come to America to secure our nuclear material? Fuck.

All right, well, can't wait until next week. Bye. Bye. Thank you.