Pod Save America - “Katie Porter’s stock tips.”

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Republicans make Joe Biden an offer he can refuse, the race to vaccinate America is on, and the new face of the GOP is a QAnon school shooting truther who believes that wildfires are caused by Jewish laser beams. Then Congresswoman Katie Porter talks to Jon Lovett about getting people access to mental health care during the pandemic and why the GameStop drama should lead to tougher Wall Street regulation.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, we'll talk about how Republicans have made Joe Biden an offer he can refuse, the race to vaccinate America and the new face of the Republican Party, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Then Lovett talks to Congresswoman Katie Porter about why the GameStop drama should lead to tougher Wall Street regulations. Lovett, how was your show this weekend? uh love it how was uh how was your show this weekend great love it or leave it uh alice wetterland joined talked to brian boitler about uh bipartisanship in congress and uh we were

a good person to talk to about that yeah he was like what is that uh and uh then uh we were interrupted by the filibuster oh very good also if you aren't subscribed already be sure to check out our what a day newsletter written by the filibuster. Ah, very good. Also, if you aren't subscribed already, be sure to check out our What A Day newsletter written by the brilliant Sarah Lazarus, who gives you a quick, accessible, hilarious recap of the day's news. Some people are even saying it's funnier in the Biden administration. So subscribe to What A Day newsletter today at crooked.com slash subscribe. And finally, Crooked Media's own Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Subscribe to What A Day newsletter today at crooked.com slash subscribe.

And finally, Crooked Media's own Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, host of America Dissected, is out with a new book today. It's called Medicare for All, A Citizen's Guide. It's a no-nonsense guide to America's most debated policy in waiting. Order yours today at MedicareForAllBook.com. Check it out. There's really a glut of nonsense-filled guides to Medicare for All out there. I'm glad we kind of shaped up here. Don't be fooled.

Don't be fooled, friends. Great to have duels. All right, let's get to the news. On Sunday, 10 Senate Republicans wrote a letter to President Biden that basically said, we see your $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan and we would like to offer people a lot less relief. The $618 billion counterproposal includes $160 billion

for fighting the virus and distributing the vaccines. That's like Biden's plan. Everything else is different. They do $1,000 checks for individuals making $50,000 a year or less, a smaller expansion of unemployment insurance that also cuts out three months, no funding for state and local governments, no increase in the minimum wage, no subsidy for child care. The Republicans also asked for a meeting with Biden. He said, sure. So they're gathering at the White House today for a, quote, full exchange of ideas. What fun. So Joe Biden campaigned on a promise of unity. He said he wanted to work with Republicans.

Now, 10 of them have brought him a counteroffer, which would give Democrats the 60 votes they need to pass a regular piece of legislation. Love it. Why not sit down and hammer out a deal? Make make Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill proud. I don't think there's anything wrong with sitting down. I think there's nothing wrong with having the conversation and then saying, well, this isn't enough because of the crisis, the big economic crisis that the economists all tell us we need to put a huge amount of money in to fill the whole state and local, help people with unemployment, help people with these checks. And what you're proposing is not nearly enough. Halfway between what you're proposing and I'm proposing is not nearly enough.

You don't you're not addressing the crisis. And so in the spirit of unity, I will respect you in good faith, bid you adieu, pass a bill through reconciliation, and then trust you not to burn the Capitol down. Again, my three step process for for unity. Tell me, how do you think the Biden folks should handle this? Because now that the Republicans have reached out, you know, we got, here's the headline in Politico today. How serious is Biden about bipartisanship? We're about to find out. Some Biden advisors are starting to argue that Biden can pass the bipartisan test without Republican votes. You read that, right? There's a lot of skepticism in the media. You read that Republican votes. You read that, right? There's a lot of skepticism in the media. You read that, right?

You read that, right? At a record scratch. Yeah, he's going to be forced into this corner now where everyone expects him to be bipartisan and they're going to call him a failure if it's not bipartisan. How should the White House handle this? Let's go back to the beat him like a drum Joe Biden because he also said that a lot.

I mean, right. Like to love his point. No, no one. I've not heard a single economist, not a Republican. No experts say that 600 billion meets the moment and does enough. Like you said, it's about the same amount for vaccinations and PPE and that kind of stuff. But the unemployment insurance example, I think, is very important because Biden wants to take the amount of unemployment insurance per week and go from 300 to 400 dollars. And he wants to extend that program through September. The new proposal keeps the unemployment, the rate at $300 and extends it through June. No one thinks we're going to have the pandemic under control by June. We certainly won't have it under control if we force people to go to work at jobs that put them at risk and continues the spread of the virus.

And I think that's why the coverage in Washington of this has been so frustrating. I think the press, a lot of folks, a lot of pundits spent a lot of time worrying about bipartisanship as if that is an end in and of itself. It is not. Joe Biden was elected to handle the coronavirus. If what's required, according to experts, is closer to 1.9 trillion, then they should go for that. I think the real risk is that you construct some small bipartisan bill that includes the popular stuff. And then when you try to do a second bill through reconciliation, you might even lose some of the more moderate Democrats and can't get that done. So like, I don't think he has a choice, but to take this meeting, it's good to have conversations. I just think the risk is getting bogged down in a negotiation with these guys, losing time. States are starved of money. We don't have vaccination set up. You know, like that's the disaster.

at least from everything we're hearing from the White House and also from Democrats in Congress, that they're going to waste much time on this. They're all talking about how they need to move fast. So clearly a lot of lessons have been learned from 2009. I am grateful to the Republicans for this offer because I think it does a great job of spelling out the differences between the two parties. Like in 2017, they were all willing to spend a lot of money on a pretty unpopular, partisan, Republican only bill that gave a huge tax cut to the rich. Now they're unwilling to spend a lot of money

on a very popular bill that gives economic relief to the whole country. And so like that's, I also think by the way, so there was eight Republican senators that had been talking to the White House. They tacked on two more so they could make it 10 to show,

OK, if you if all these 10 were on board, we could pass through through a regular bill. But like these 10 Republicans, they're like you got fucking Shelley Moore Capito, Jerry Moran, Todd Young in Indiana. Like Mitch McConnell's not letting these people vote for a bill. It almost would have been funny for Joe Biden to be like, yeah, accepted. Now let's vote on it because probably you wouldn't get those 10. John, I just want to say you could have thrown in a fake name there and it would have just blown right by me. I was I was vulnerable to that.

I could have been. I could have been. I could have been. If you'd quiz me, if you'd quiz me on the two senators from Indiana, I would not know. Or Mike Rounds. Who's Mike Rounds? Senator from South Dakota. Fun fact.

OK, so. Trump or Mike Rounds. Who's Mike Rounds? Senator from South Dakota. Fun fact. Okay. So I also think that when Biden ultimately decides to go the reconciliation route, he needs to just continue talking about how this piece of legislation has both bipartisan support in the country among voters, which we've seen in our poll shows about 70% of people supporting it, including four and 10 Trump voters. It also has bipartisan support among governors and politicians outside DC. You had the Republican governor of West Virginia today saying we need a lot of money spent. Even if we spend too much money, that's not the danger. The danger is spending too little. There's bipartisan support for you. Like he should talk about how the bill has bipartisan support everywhere except among Republican politicians in Washington. Those are the people on their own. And, you know,

I would say like there was like Chuck Schumer put out a statement over the weekend that like said it so plainly is like we're not going to not do enough because that dragged out the recession in 2009. And we're not going to get dragged along for a long process of Republicans because that's what we did on Obamacare. And they abandoned us right at the end. So it's like, yeah, we're not going to get dragged along for a long process with Republicans because that's what we did on Obamacare and they abandoned us right at the end. So it's like, yeah, we're not going to do a long, dumb process to try and get your votes for Hapalov. Fool me once or twice or three times or four times or five times. Yeah, but that's it. But eventually that's it. And then after the sequester, no more fooling. Now we figured it out. Ten years later, we are onto your game a decade later. Hey, better late than never.

So Biden doesn't need a bipartisan bill. He does need all 50 Senate Democrats on board, including more moderate senators like Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia's Joe Manchin. Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris did interviews with local news stations in both those states as a way to sell Biden's American rescue plan. This did not sit well with Joe Manchin, who told a reporter, quote, I saw the interview. I couldn't believe it. No one called me. We're going to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward. I think we need to, but we need to work together. That's not a way of working together. Tommy, what was the White House's strategy in sending Kamala out to do those interviews? And what did you think of Manchin's reaction? Poor Joe Manchin. Yeah, I didn't know they were

manufacturing fainting couches in West Virginia now. Look, this is politics 101. Like the White House, you do local TV interviews to build support for a legislative priority. I saw some of the reporting on this yesterday, like specifically Politico referred to it as an effort to troll Joe Manchin. I was like, oh, my God, what happened in this interview? Like, did she like read an opposition research file on him? And then I watched it. And admittedly, it wasn't the cleanest interview Kamala Harris has ever done. She was asked about Biden's climate change plan and what it would mean for coal jobs and misspoke and said something about clearing abandoned landmines instead of coal mines, I think. So it was like a little clunky, but mostly she focused on job

creation, how the COVID relief bill would work, how the White House wants to prioritize vaccine distribution, how they want to open up schools. It was substantive. And she like talked a little bit about West Virginia specific stats on poverty or small business closures, but it was not about Joe Manchin at all. I don't think his name was even mentioned. And so like, it seems like a wild overreaction by Manchin in the media. He's a Senator from West Virginia. He's not the viceroy sent by the Queens regent. Like, yeah. What's his position? Blow off my local press? That doesn't make any sense. You can't do local news in West Virginia without first getting the getting the say so from from the boss. Yeah. So like the fair question, right, is like, is this a smart way to build support in West Virginia for the policy and make it easier to get Joe Manchin's vote?

Judging by his reaction, clearly it was not. But if you really look at what Joe Manchin is saying about the legislation, he's being pretty positive. He seems focused on targeting the direct checks. He thinks that maybe a married family that makes $300,000 getting a check is too much. He wants to lower it to $50,000. I would argue that's insufficient, especially if you're in a state with a higher cost of living. But those are very reasonable policy discussions to be had and not like some blow up, as you might think, if you read Politico. Joe Manchin's reaction was ridiculous. I will say I would bet that the White House legislative team was not super psyched about the strategy of sending Kamala out to swing states for that

because like yeah you're right like building popular pressure in West Virginia is not the way to get Joe Manchin on board it's probably calling him and making sure like everything is wonderful with fucking Joe Manchin look our the fact that Joe Manchin has all holds all the power here and Kyrsten Sinema holds all the power here is an indictment of the fact that we have like a shitty political system but it sucks right but like that's the reality we're living in joe mansion has an enormous amount of power and you like have to keep joe mansion happy all the time or else a whole agenda that could help a lot of people you know can can die which we don't want um it sort of reminded me love it were you still in the white house when we wrote

um the famous budget speech about the Paul Ryan budget? And he was in the front row. Yes. Barack Obama. Barack Obama was going to deliver a speech at American University on Paul Ryan. I do remember that. And we we had a great time in the speech, like just attacking Paul Ryan on everything by name. You know, he's killing grandparents, all the good stuff. Ryan on everything by name. You know, he's killing grandparents, all the good stuff.

And the legislative team did not make us aware until the speech that Paul Ryan was going to be sitting in the front row. And so and so Barack Obama goes and delivers all these hits about Paul Ryan's budget to Paul Ryan's face at the event, which was not a great way to earn bipartisan support. Just as a just as a lesson that we learned there. Oh, yeah, yeah. He would have been all for the agenda otherwise. One other thing, though, Tommy made this point, but it's like, for years now, the Republican tax cut punished blue states that are more expensive to live in. Their proposal to lower the threshold for where the

checks would go to are designed to punish states with a higher cost of living. And it is a reminder that even when you see someone like Joe Manchin force some policy like that, that the warping that the Senate does in the way that it's anti-democratic happens all the time. Sometimes it's partisan, sometimes it's not. But it's interesting that, of course, a group of Republican senators want to like don't have a problem lowering the threshold to where it would not help people in a ton of places that desperately need that help. bunch of things like filibuster other shit um he does seem like he was in an interview uh even before this interview with the kamala harris interview thing happened uh saying a million times because they were like would you vote for the bill for reconciliation you support this and he said like 10 different times i'm going to make sure that joe biden is successful we want to make sure joe biden is successful which tells you like what you need to know about where joe mansion

stands he's just doing his politics he's doing doing the right thing. He's doing his politics. Is Manchin and Sinema and maybe a few others going to like take the price tag down a little bit from one point nine trillion? I hope not. But they might because, again, they hold all the power. You need their fucking votes. So hopefully, hopefully, though, he comes through and supports the bill as is. So one of the Biden administration's main arguments for the size and speed of their plan is the urgency and magnitude of the crisis. So yes, cases and hospitalizations are falling, and we now have a bunch of highly effective vaccines, but we are also racing against the spread of a number of COVID mutations that are much more transmissible

in at least one case, more resistant to the vaccines. So we can still control these new variants if we vaccinate everyone as fast as humanly possible. But we learned in a few stories over the weekend that the Biden administration has inherited a bigger vaccine distribution mess than anyone thought. Under Trump, the federal government failed to coordinate with states on almost every level, from helping them staff vaccination sites to literally tracking vaccines. Politico reported that the Trump administration communicated so poorly with states that the Biden administration is now trying to track down 20 million doses that are unaccounted for. 20 million. They also found out after Inauguration Day that the companies producing the shots were nowhere near capable of churning out as many doses as the Trump folks had

projected. So, Tommy, we spent a lot of time in the Obama administration talking about the crisis we inherited. How much and for how long should Biden do the same thing with regard to how badly the Trump administration screwed this up? What can he get away with there? Should we just blame it all on the Iraq war? Is that what you're suggesting here? Yes. I mean, I think you can't really talk about where we are and what you're doing to manage the coronavirus without talking about some of how we got here and some of the stuff Trump screwed up. For example, the money for states would be less urgent if the Trump team hadn't actively lobbied against giving states money for vaccine distribution in the last couple of COVID packages. in the last couple of COVID packages. So I think there's relevant context, right? Like our testing regime wouldn't be a disaster if Trump hadn't decided that more testing was bad because bigger numbers made him feel bad. But I think that's more context than it is pointing fingers, if that

makes sense. I mean, I think he's going to eat a lot of political fallout for the conditions that occurred before he became president. But I think every single president does that. I think his focus has got to be on what we're doing now. They want to hear about incremental progress. We all want to hear about light at the end of the tunnel. I'm speaking for myself now. That would be my advice, not to spend a lot of time about the Trump era. And like, you know, if you look at Jen Psaki's briefing today, she got some question about Trump on social media, and she was just like, you know, we don't spend a lot of time thinking about him, to be totally honest with you. And I think that is exactly the right tone.

Love it. To Tommy's point, Biden administration is trying to fix a supply issue, a demand issue, a distribution issue. At some point, they have to figure out like a way to get people booster shots that can help protect against the new variants. So they got a lot going on. get people booster shots that can help protect against the new variants. So they get a lot going on. From a communication standpoint, how should Biden balance the need to be honest and realistic about how long and hard this might be with the need to offer some hope and optimism to a country that is tired of this shit? Yeah. Something we also had to deal with in the Obama White House. I remember like we had to calibrate every speech. Every speech has to be like, we're not out of the woods yet. Yet we've made progress. We've seen strides. Trump, of course, threw that out the window. Yeah. I mean, look, first of all, it's worth

pointing out that January was the deadliest month we've ever had. Right. We're at like 100,000 deaths. So the full consequences of the failure of the past year are still kind of coming into relief, not just in terms of what the Biden administration is learning behind the scenes, but in sort of the ongoing economic devastation, the ongoing sort of spread of the pandemic. I do think in terms of what they've been saying about what they're learning is really just about establishing a baseline, right? They're trying to say, we're going to do our best to get the vaccines out the door and get them as many people, but we do want to make sure there is an accurate accounting

of the baseline when we came in. That all the talk about Operation Warp Speed, here's where we started from. And I imagine that there's some spin in there, right? They're going to go hard to try to make the case that they inherited an incredible mess, which I am sure they did. They're going to go hard to try to make the case that they inherited an incredible mess, which I am sure they did. First of all, on the variant front, I think that there's a lot of very sensationalistic reporting, and it's hard to parse what's really going on. One thing that does seem clear is even as we learn that some of these vaccines are less effective against some of these variants, they are still above the threshold by which we would have declared them a success had we not heard about the incredible success of Moderna and Pfizer at whatever it is, 94, 95%. I do think it is really hard when an administration spent a year poisoning people's minds

about the best way to respond to a pandemic as a society, not from the government. I think that's an incredible challenge that they've inherited. I do wonder if now isn't the time, especially because people are giving up on the ways in which they can help prevent community spread right at the moment in which the vaccine is being rolled out.

Like we've just now crossed the threshold where more people have the vaccine than have had the illness. We were at a million, then 1.3, now 1.5. Like it's rising. Like things are changing. Things will get better. now 1.5, like it's rising, like things are changing, things will get better. And I do think that like, I see them not wanting to over promise and under deliver. Biden goes out there and says, we'll get it to people by spring. And the White House is like, well, we don't know about spring

and Johnson and Johnson. Well, we don't know how it's going to come out. But I do think kind of a saying like we're almost at the end of this. Just hang in there. Just hang in there. There's way too much doom and gloom bullshit about these new strains. Like, look, we're talking about- I was terrified. Some of these stories were terrifying. Let me, then let me unterrify you.

We're talking about reduced efficacy rates on some of the vaccines against the South African strain, but we're still talking about a shot that's 50% effective. That's like a standard flu shot. So the bottom line is all the vaccinations that we've,

all that data is reducing hospitalizations and deaths to basically zero and then preventing 50% of the transmission. That's a miracle. Like we should talk about it accordingly. It's going to be a long couple of months, but I don't think that has as much to do with the new strains than like variants and booster shots and all this stuff we're hearing about now than just the logistics of manufacturing and disseminating the vaccine. If we get that part right, you reduce deaths, you reduce infections, you stop the virus from mutating. So we won't have any more of these conversations because it's not like running rampant, get the economy going. Right. And then in concert with that, you give people economic relief that they need to hang on

through the summer. Like all the pieces are there. It's like, it sucks to read this stuff. Johnson & Johnson is 100% effective at preventing hospitalizations and death, which is huge, even against the South African variant, right? Look, I think when you talk to people at the Biden White House, it's not just expectation setting. It's not just spin. Their concern is, you know, the CDC has already said that in March, the UK variant would be the dominant strain in the country here. It's 50% more transmissible. If a critical mass of people were vaccinated at that point, we wouldn't have to worry as much about it, right? Like a critical mass of people are vaccinated in a country like Israel, the UK strain is all over the place there. It's still working. I think what they're concerned about is over the next six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks,

the UK strain takes over here. It's more transmissible. We still haven't gotten the vaccinations up yet. And so we will see another spike. That's what they're trying to prepare us for, which I think, you know, is a real genuine concern. Again, though, it all, and Tommy, you mentioned, it all comes back to we just they just got to get people vaccinated faster, and they got to move heaven and earth to do it. And I think Biden doesn't have to go out there and be a barometer every day about whether things are good or bad or in between, right? Like we, I think we made this mistake with Obama. Sometimes it was, yeah, here's exactly the state of the economy every single day. Like the president doesn't

need to be talking about that. What Biden needs to be doing is talking every day about what they're doing to fix it. Right. And like, he needs to get pissed when things don't go right. And he needs to show us that he's fighting like hell. And he needs to show people that he's running through a brick wall for people and keep announcing progress. Right. Like today they announced $30 rapid at-home COVID tests that are 95% accurate that they're

shipping to, you know, incremental progress like that is going to be important to talk about every single day. I think that's right. I guess like, I think we're combining two things. Like one is the messaging around what's actually going on. That's realistic and honest. That doesn't over-promise. And I think that's really important.

You know, we can be hope, you know, look, we're not, we're not in control of what strains emerge, right? We're not, we don't know what the future holds, but here's what we know what we can do. But the other piece of it to me that I think is important is, you know, everybody's fucking sick of this and people are giving up. And so what is the best thing to tell a country that has been lied to that the people who have sacrificed feel let down by all the people who haven't. You have healthcare professionals who are at their end. You have like a mental health crisis. You have a financial crisis, all of this happening at once. And I do think that there is some space for just some, uh, like lighted where almost we, the end is in sight if we do these things because the vaccine, yeah, we need to roll the vaccine out of course,

but like mass and social distancing still fucking work. And we've abandoned them, you know, to large parts of the country, we've abandoned them. So I think that's what I'm talking about. It's just like, if you can, if there's value to just signaling to people that the time is short and that if they sacrifice a little while longer, because this seven or eight week period, that's the other piece of this, that like the next few weeks matter even more than the weeks that follow. Right. Like if we can do something for the next four to six to eight weeks, whatever the numbers are based on these studies, like a huge amount of death and a huge amount of pain is prevented if we do it right now as the vaccine is ramping up. All right, let's talk about the future of the Republican Party and specifically whether it looks more like Liz Cheney or Marjorie Taylor Greene. What a choice. Speaking of diseased variants, here we go.

This week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, just a courageous hero in his own right, will help decide the fate of both women. He'll choose whether or not to block a resolution kicking Cheney out of leadership because she voted to impeach the guy who incited a violent insurrection. He'll also meet with Green, who's facing calls to be expelled from Congress after CNN and Media Matters surfaced some old social media activity where she liked a Facebook post calling for the assassination of Nancy Pelosi and FBI agents, heckled Parkland survivors, and blamed the California wildfires on a space laser controlled by a Jewish family. Green also believes the QAnon cult is worth listening to, that Muslims don't belong in government, that 9-11 was an inside job, that the Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings were

faked, and that the Zionist supremacists are encouraging Muslim immigration, is what she said. So, most of these comments were known when she ran and won election to represent the 14th Congressional District in Northwest Georgia. Tommy, what can be done about her now? Already, freshman Democrat Cori Bush has asked for her office to be moved away from Greens for safety reasons. I mean, it seems like there's three options. You can expel her from Congress. That takes a two thirds vote. So it seems unlikely you could censure her, which would just sort of condemn her. I think that has some bipartisan support. And then Democrats are now

saying, if you don't strip her saying to Kevin McCarthy, if the Republican Party won't strip her of her committee assignments, they will do it for them. I think she's on the House Education, Labor, the Help Committee, right? She's on the Labor Committee, uh labor the help committee right she's on the labor committee education and then the budget committee so you know some powerful places yeah i saw um i think i saw in politico today they said if uh if the if the republican caucus in the house ends up uh stripping liz cheney from her leadership post but doing nothing about uh green it'll be a real black eye for them heading into 2022. Yeah. No, I would say so.

I would say that would be a black eye. Two demerits for you, Kevin McCarthy. So, Lovett, kind of a broader question here. Green got a lot of coverage and attention last week. She's bound to get more. What do we do about this going forward? Should we ignore her? Should we make her the face of the Republican Party? How do you balance that? and outrage, and yet also speaks for a huge percentage of the Republican Party at this point.

And as you just pointed out, is more ascendant than the group of 10 House Republicans who had the audacity to tell the truth and vote to impeach Donald Trump. Tim Miller wrote in Rolling Stone about what these 10 Republicans are doing to try to start fighting against this radical, rabid, conspiracy-minded wing, well, really, the Republican Party itself. And you read it, and man, it just has just some very strong Alamo vibes of just a group of people facing this racist, anti-Semitic, conspiratorial group of people and the huge mass of cowards unwilling to take them on. I imagine Kevin McCarthy would be quite relieved if Democrats remove someone like Green from her committees because it spares them the embarrassment and headlines that she will surely create when she's on those committees. That said, I think it's morally irresponsible to treat this person as she just has a different set of beliefs and teach the

controversy. So I think we have to condemn it. I think we have to use all of our power to condemn it. I think we have to isolate it and try to get rid of it. I have not against him. I don't I don't know why you wouldn't have a vote to expel them and get all these Republicans on record as to whether or not they want this kind of person in Congress and speaking for them, especially if they're about to get Liz Cheney off of their leadership committee. So, you know, I don't know. That's it. That's what I got. Tommy, I'm inclined to make her the face of the Republican Party. What do you think? Yeah. So I think the question of how you deal with trolls is complicated. And to be clear, that's what she is.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a troll. She's doing this for retweets. She's doing it to raise money. So is this Madison Cawthorn guy, right? The other famous Republican freshman who says he's basically structured his staffing around communications and not policy. I've been reading a lot about the alt-right crew from like 2015 and 2016. So they derived money and power influence by saying inflammatory things and then

getting well-meaning liberals to get outraged and react to them or share their stuff. And it was effectively a strategy enabled by social media because Facebook and Twitter helped people like Milo or Mike Sertovich go from running blogs that no one ever looked at to getting their views in front of a lot of people. But when they got deplatformed, when they got kicked off of Facebook or YouTube, people like Alex Jones or Milo, it hurt them a lot. And I think, you know, the damage was done because they built an audience and they filtered their views into the broader MAGA world and they like shifted the boundaries of the discourse and politics. But ultimately, that was the right move. I think that Marjorie Taylor Greene has to be deplatformed. She has a platform called Congress. Like they need to draw a line in the sand because it's

the right thing to do. But also, I think it will work. Like when that when the Republicans stripped Steve King of his power, it helped eventually lead to his defeat in a Republican primary. It took too long, but it also embarrassed the party. And like not having Steve King in Congress is a good thing. Not having Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress would be a good thing. To your broader point of like the face of the party, Trump constantly accuses the Democratic Party of being anti-Semitic because of comments by a few individual members. I think we should do the same thing. We need to up the cost

of being associated with Marjorie Taylor Greene and draw a line in the sand and say this person shouldn't be making laws. Like I have no faith in the Republicans to to do the right thing. Trump is injecting himself. He called Marjorie Taylor Greene. He's, you know, on her side. Kevin McCarthy is a coward and a moron. Right. He just went and groveled at Trump's feet at Mar-a-Lago. Mitch McConnell won't provide any leadership on the impeachment vote. I'm sure he won't step in here. They are stuck in this same like cowardly Republican loop. But, you know, someone needs to excise this political cancer because we can't hide from

people like her. It's going to grow. She is the new face of the party. She is the norm now. It is not Paul Ryan. It is not these country club Republicans. It's people like her. Yeah, no. And I think that's an important point to make. Just from a pure political standpoint, pure political perspective, in 2020, most Republican candidates ran ahead of Donald Trump. Donald Trump was seen as more extreme than most Republican candidates. That wasn't necessarily the case in 2016, which is why we got him. One of the reasons we got him as president. In general, if a party is viewed as more extreme, they do worse. That's just that's that's what the data shows. And if the Republican Party is viewed as the party of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, they're going to do worse in a lot of parts of the country. Obviously, not all.

So there's some deep red parts, but in a lot of parts of the country where it matters, they will do worse than if the party is seen as the party of Mitt Romney and Susan Collins. Right. Like that's it sounds basic, but it's true. So you're right. Like, I totally agree, Tommy, on all the stuff about like she should be deplatformed. And it's good to think about that in Congress as well as on social media. But I do think the Democrats should let it be known that she is the face of the party now. that will be the case, right? Matt Gaetz is in Wyoming for some reason, campaigning against Liz Cheney. Marjorie Taylor Greene is growing in influence. Like, I don't like Liz Cheney's politics, but I do like her position on reality and that she is tethered to it. You know what I

mean? It's not just them. It's Ron Johnson, the senator from Wisconsin, who's using his position to elevate conspiracy theories, including about vaccines and attacking social distancing and masks. So, yeah, there's like there's a real problem within that party. It's not good for Democrats to have an opposition party be that diseased. It's worth remembering too that like, man, Liz Cheney, Liz Cheney spread the most noxious, toxic right wing propaganda for years. It just, it was the Bush. It was the Bush type, not the Trump type. You know, she was a she was a, you know, post 9-11 right winger who attacked Democrats in the most pernicious ways to try to undercut their patriotism and all of that. We

dealt with it for a year. She was heinous. And it's a testament to how not just how far the party has moved, but how people like Liz Cheney contributed to that movement, that they are responsible, that they set the tone and they moved the party right. And they ignored the worst voices in their party for years that put them in the situation. civil war. There's no civil war. The reality based side is losing badly and almost done because they're not fighting. It's like Adam Kinzinger is the only one on TV. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, congressman. I don't agree with him on a single policy. He's the only person who has had the guts to stand up to Trumpism and lies and conspiracy theories for years. And like odds are he's going to be attacked and someone's going to try to primary because the rest of the people who know he's right don't have the guts to say so. I guess they would rather just cling to power. He gets credit. Mitt Romney gets credit in the

Senate. And I don't think there's too many others. I would say I think that what I would like to see, though, just about extracting costs for what they've been doing. So Scott Beagle is one of the people that was killed in Parkland. I actually knew him. I grew up with him. And his mother called Marjorie Taylor Greene and basically said, are you willing to tell me right now that my son wasn't killed, that there was a false flag? And she wouldn't. And she said, well, will you come on television with me and say it? Will you apologize? Will you admit that Parkland really happened? That like my son and his heroism is real, that our pain is real. And she refused to do it. And as long as people like Kevin McCarthy aren't willing to do that, like I would like to see these clips paid for these people. Like we, we, you know, there's for

so long, you know, Republicans are like, oh, you know, the media treats us like the away team and you're the home team. And there's some truth to that. But one of the reasons, one of the ways in which it benefits Republicans is that the press treats Republicans like McCarthy. It treats them like antagonists. It treats them like people that can't change, that don't deserve to be confronted, that don't deserve to be held to the same standard that Democrats are held to. Hold them to the standard. Show them the clips.

Embarrass them on television. Make them pay for what they're endorsing by not standing up to these people. Yeah. All right. When we come back, we will have Lovett's interview with Katie Porter. They're just going to give you all some stock tips. She's the Democratic congresswoman representing California's 45th district. Katie Porter, welcome back to Pod Save America.

Thank you. It's good to see you. So we have a lot to cover. So today, President Biden is meeting with 10 Republicans to discuss their counterproposal of a $600 billion relief plan versus the Biden plan of $1.9 trillion. It's obviously inadequate. How should we be thinking about this process? What to your mind is the most likely way to get from this meeting to the most help for the most people as quickly as possible? Pass the Democratic plan.

I mean, I think it's important that Biden meet with these senators. I think this is an important opportunity to set a tone of more collaboration, of more listening, of more dialogue. But ultimately, these Republicans need to be told, because obviously they're not listening to their constituents, so it's up to the rest of us to tell them, that $600 billion will only cause more economic harm in this country and create a deeper recession that is ultimately much harder to get out of and creates much deeper consequences. And this, by the way, is something that's being said by economists from all different kinds of backgrounds.

The only disagreement on this really is coming from a handful of politically motivated people who, as we know, have no problem running up the deficit with tax cuts for their corporate donors. So did they just start with a tiny number and then backfill what they cut from the Biden plan to get there? The economists aren't calling for it. There's an option for Democrats to pass it through reconciliation without any Republican votes. What is motivating these Republicans to try to kind of jam Biden in this way? Is it purely just to undercut the new administration? Do they genuinely have concerns about doing enough to help people in this crisis? Like what what do you think is actually going on here? These are some of my favorite questions. The, um, what do you think is going

on in Ted Cruz's empty head? How would I know? Okay. I'm not at Ted Cruz. He's not at the meeting. These are like your raw, these other people. I can't say what they're thinking or what their motivation is. Cause I'm not, I'm not there, but, but let me just say this. This is not the smaller package with the kinds of cuts that they're making, including to state and local funding, including to some of the support for working families. This is fiscally irresponsible. The fiscally pragmatic, responsible thing to do here is to meet the needs of stabilizing our economy. So I just want to say it's really important that we as progressives champion this and set the record straight. The plan that we are putting forward, the $1.9 trillion plan that meets

the scope and need of what COVID has done to our economy is fiscally responsible. What these Republicans are doing is not. It is going to only deepen the recession and set our country on a path to being not globally competitive with other nations who have dealt with this situation, both COVID and the economic fallout, much better. So I want to dig into that for a second because I think so. So they're obviously trying to do this because they're blanching at the price tag. But you're basically saying that if we don't spend enough now, the hole it creates in the economy over time creates a much bigger fiscal problem than spending enough now would create. If we do, our office recently released a report on the way that women are exiting and being squeezed out of the workforce as a result of COVID-19, plus the economic fallout that it's created. If we don't find a way to, for example, invest in child care, invest in getting schools open,

make sure there are deeper cuts in state and local government and funding, then all we're going to see is more women stay out of the workforce for longer. What does that mean? It ultimately means we're draining talent out of our workforce. We're making women, and particularly single women, women of color, low-income women, more likely to experience financial hardship, to need to borrow, to go bankrupt, to not be able to save for retirement. That is backwards. So what we need to do here is try to right size the relief for the scope of the problem. And the longer this problem has gone on, the fact that President Trump did not deal with this well, did not get vaccines out, did not prioritize health and safety, the fact that we've chronically underinvested in public health is a great example of how this

costs more in the long run. So one piece of the crisis that you've been talking about is the toll this has taken on mental health. That there's a lot of people, we've failed to provide mental health services to enough people long before the pandemic. Now we have people in isolation. We have people who have long struggled with addiction alone and without their sort of support system. What are you trying to do to address the mental health crisis that we're in? Yep. So one of the things that we did was pass at the very end of last year as part of

the COVID relief bill, a bill that we have, bipartisan bill, to create more accountability for insurers to follow the law. Now, this sounds simple, but big companies, newsflash, don't always follow the law. It's cheaper just to break the law and see if you get caught. So the Affordable Care Act had a provision called mental health parity, meaning that mental health treatment should be treated the same way as other kinds of health treatment, whether it's for orthopedic care or something else. Insurers have not been complying with this. Anyone who's tried to make an appointment for mental health, there are no providers in network. The providers don't take insurance because the reimbursement's terrible. There are unclear benefits. So this bill would try to make sure

that we're enforcing, we're delivering on that promise of mental health parity. But we have to do more than that. We also have to address the fact, as you said, that COVID has only deepened some of the mental health needs. This is coming through grief and loss of life. People have lost loved ones in this and lost them in ways that don't allow them to process. It's isolation, it's anxiety. And so we're also calling for increased funding

in our bill stopping the Mental Health Behavioral bill stopping the Mental Health Pandemic Act. And I'm hearing this, by the way, on the ground from providers as I'm going about my day, seeing neighbors, you know, talking to people in my community. They are all telling me that this is a huge problem, that they have wait lists for appointments, that there's a shortage of mental health care, including, and this is really important, the mental health needs of our health care workers, many of whom are being traumatized by what they're having to work with and through right now. You've been tackling so many facets of this that I think don't get the attention they deserve. Another piece of this that you've been talking about is the pharmaceutical industry and the

consolidation that we've seen there. Look, like we've spent a year watching this failure unfold. It was an economic failure to provide people the resources they needed so they didn't have to work. Seeing the failed response by the previous administration. But science and the vaccine development was extraordinary. It happened incredibly quickly. It's a great testament to basic research investments from the public sector. It's a testament to these incredible scientists and what they did.

But you've been looking at the way in which consolidation in pharmaceuticals might raise costs for prescriptions, but also stop innovation. Can you talk a little bit about the kind of consolidation that's been going on that may make developments like this in the future harder? Yep. So we all agree that we want to have innovation in healthcare. We want improved treatments. We want improved outcomes. And that means that we need to create the conditions for innovation. One of those conditions is competition. And what we found is that what's going on in pharmaceuticals, as in many other areas of our economy, is an increasing problem with monopoly

behavior and monopoly problems. So to the extent that these large pharmaceutical companies are gobbling up smaller ones, what they do is acquire the thing, the one thing they want, and then dump and cut all of the culture of innovation. And many of these smaller companies are the very entities that are willing to take risks, who are investing in things that are further out from market development. And so it's really important that we have companies of different sizes with different levels of risk in our pharmaceutical community. And so what we show is we give a really couple powerful examples in the report of exactly what happened when a company,

when a small company making powerful innovations was acquired by a big company. It's not good. The big pharmaceutical companies are going to focus on the profits, on their shareholders. They're not going to focus on those long-term research and development initiatives. Big Pharma spends more on lobbying every year than they do on research and development. Really important for people to understand that we should be pushing big pharmaceutical companies to put more money into R&D. Don't take them at their word. Make them show that that's in fact what they're doing. And none of this is to take away from the amazing work

that scientists are doing. In fact, we want to support and encourage more of that. So, I mean, it used to be, right, that there was Bell Labs, that these companies had these kind of long-term aspects of what they did, basic research, higher risk things. And that's sort of gone by the wayside. The federal government has cut back in terms of by percentage what they invest in basic research. And now what you're saying is basically these small companies that pop up to do something really risk-taking, to do something really innovative, to try to make something new that they get gobbled up by these big pharmaceutical companies.

And then the only thing they keep is the one thing they've already made, making it impossible for them to make something new. Right. They shelve and actively kind of hold back the culture of innovation and the actual innovative projects that were going on at the small company.

And so they're basically just, you know, purchasing the entire thing to get that one thing that may be profitable, but then the rest of the initiatives die in the pipeline. And we've seen pharmaceutical, big pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of money making minor adjustments to existing therapies to try to hang on to patent protection and continue to make profit rather than investing in research and development to identify new drugs and new treatments. And so what is the way to stop them from doing that? Is it more aggressive oversight by regulators around monopoly? What's the way to intervene? What legislation is needed?

Yeah, we put several things in our report about what we can do in this regard. But part of it is before we can even get to that point, we have to educate the public and educate our elected officials that this is a problem. We are also grateful to have development of vaccines by these large companies, but we can't take them at their word that everything they're doing is always about innovation. They are companies. They have shareholders. What are they doing? They're doing what companies do. They're delivering profits to their shareholders. And I'm a capitalist. There's nothing wrong with that. But healthy capitalism

means that you have that market competition. So in our report, we lay out a number of policy things that could be done. But a lot of this, the real barrier isn't that the policy solutions are so complicated. It's that politically, pharmaceutical companies spend millions of dollars every year to convince the American people that if they are subject to any market forces or any regulation, that they will stop innovating. So speaking of capitalism, before we let you go, I did want to talk about GameStop. And I say that as one of their largest shareholders. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. So a lot of the coverage has been about this being the sort of ordinary person versus hedge

funds. It also seems to be about risk and where risk is hidden in our system when it's working supposedly smoothly. What are the lessons you're taking away from this about what it says about the sort of health of our financial system? Yeah. Well, first, and I'm sounding here just like my mentor, Elizabeth Warren, but she's dead right.

The stock market is only one measure of economic well-being or activity. Elizabeth and I have both seen this. You can have a sky-high stock market and also have consumers with sky-high debts who are filing bankruptcy in record numbers. So let's not conflate the stock market with an actual economic fundamental. Similarly, let's not confuse the price of a stock like GameStop, which was run up by manipulative practices, by kind of pumping up by retail investors coming together to flood the market

with actually GameStop being a good investment or not. And yes, some of the hedge funds that were involved, they were in trouble. They had a run. They couldn't make their requirements. They got bought by another company. They got a capital infusion. They had to basically sell part of their company. There are also hedge funds making a ton on this GameStop thing. And there are regular investors who are going to lose a lot of money on GameStop because at the end of the day, this is a company in trouble. This is not a company with sound economic models. And the real issue here is making sure that we're having regulators, an SEC that is doing its job of understanding the risk. This is not, despite the name Robinhood and however much I

don't like the particular hedge fund guy on the other side of it, this really isn't a big versus small problem. This is a problem about risk and the fact that smaller investors are less able to bear that risk. And they've taken an awful lot of it on here. Yeah, I mean, it seems like we do want a system where individual people have access to markets in the same way that big institutional investors do. But it seems that what would be the worst outcome is if all the bad practices and gambling and casino-like behavior of these large entities then trickle down to everybody, right? Like, it seems like what we want is we want to be open, we want it to be fair. But it's this strange situation where the more people behave like it's a casino, the more it becomes one and the more

risky and dangerous it becomes writ large, like for everybody. Right. And look, you know, to short a stock, you're basically betting on the direction of the stock share. You're betting that it will go down. And if you're wrong, the consequences on the other side are huge, right? You can owe way more money than you put at risk in the first place. And this means you need to have a lot of liquidity. You need to have a lot of cash on hand to be able to meet that. You need to have other kinds of counter-risk strategies. This is not something that individual investors are going to be able to do. So look, if you have $100 or $1,000 and you want to see what happens, by all means, short a stock. Maybe you'll win, maybe you'll lose. But understand, you might be on the hook for way more than that $1,000.

And let me tell you, in all my years of dealing with families in bankruptcy and in financial trouble, I've never seen a hedge fund step up and say to a family, to a mom and dad driving a minivan with, you know, a kid or two, hey, we'd like to buy part of your household and give you this money and invest in you. It's not going to happen. These consumers are just going to end up holding the short end of the stick. So I think your point, John, is exactly right. We want an even playing field. We want everyday investors to have access to strategies that will make them money and give them the opportunities to get the upside of capitalism. But the risk is also there, and we need to make sure we have a regulator who's doing the job of understanding the risk. So two ideas that have been talked about recently.

One is sort of addressing this more acutely, which is basically just making sure companies have more money if they're going to be engaging in short selling. But the other is something that's been talked about for years, which is putting some kind of a tiny tax or fee on trades to stop the high frequency trading that some of these hedge funds have made a ton of money on, on the other side of these transactions. What do you think about, what are some of the ways we should be thinking about this in terms of what Congress can do? Yep. So with regard to making sure that there's adequate liquidity, that these entities have backstops, I mean, that's the job of the SEC. And it's as true for Robinhood as it is for any other entity, right? And if stock prices are going crazy,

there's always the ability to stop the market, to freeze trades. What happened with Robinhood is exactly what happens in other contexts with other companies when there's stock manipulation. Whoever is doing pump and dump, whoever is manipulating the market, whether it's big or small, it's wrong. And there are market mechanisms to try to stop that. So with regard to the financial tax, I think there's a couple points here. One is, we just need to think about where do we want to create the revenue that we need to invest in economic growth, right? And we have different places we could put that, right? Right now, we have an effective tax rate on middle-income families that's a lot higher than it is on many

millionaires and others because of difference in capital gains rates and different deduction rules, things like that. The financial transaction tax is one place that we could look to raise revenue. And the larger issue, I think, is, you know, because it's only large entities and complex entities that can engage typically in the kind of really high liquidity, high frequency, excuse me, trading that's going on, we might think that that tax would fall more on those big companies. But I think those are really two separate questions. There's a risk question. And then there's a tax question. I don't think we should be using the tax to try to deter the risk taking, if that makes sense. Yeah. Before we let you go, uh, you, you, uh, ordered vanity license plates that say oversight,

uh, for your minivan, uh, have they come and will they qualify as a waiver to get you back on financial services? Uh, no. So that license plates have not come, but they have been ordered and I'm very happy to report. It's very tough in California. There are a lot of other people, um, that nobody else wanted the license plate OVR SITE. So it's on, it's been submitted,

it's being made, it'll get to me. I'll put a picture up as soon as I can figure out how to get the plates and get them on my van. You know, with regard to the committees, you know, I am thrilled to be on natural resources and to be on oversight. And, you know, part of it is we lost seats in the house. So I was the most junior member on oversight. I could have lost my spot. So I reallocated my committee preferences. I ranked them one, two, three. And in the end, there were, you know, I think 13 or 11 members who got waivers. I didn't. I was one of two who didn't. I'm disappointed not to be able to serve on financial services. But there's, I think one of the things this whole thing has illustrated to me is how much, how confusing and how not transparent some of these things are.

The inner operations of Congress are to the American people. Like the rules of the caucus are so complex that people can't even understand how we get on the committees we get on. And in that being very, you know, opaque and difficult to understand, then there's the potential for, you know, people to get confused and not understand what happened. So I would love to be back on financial services. There may be another opportunity either in a future Congress or later in this Congress. But in the meantime, I'm going to keep working on these issues. You know, I spent my life working on issues of consumer protection, on capitalism. I'm going to keep working on this, whether I'm on the committee or not.

Congresswoman Katie Porter, thank you so much for talking to us today. Thank you. Thanks to Congresswoman Katie Porter for joining us today. And we'll talk to you guys later. Bye, Lowe's. So hi, everybody. Porter for joining us today. And we'll talk to you guys later. Bye. Hello. So hi,

everybody. Hot Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long,

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