Pod Save America - “Kava-not-cool, guys.”

Episode Date: September 4, 2018

The Kavanaugh hearings have begun and Senate Democrats came ready to fight. Do we have a shot at stopping his nomination? President Trump spent his Labor Day weekend attacking union leaders and slashing wages for workers, so that was cool. Then we read our favorite excerpts from Bob Woodward's new book, and Jon and Jon interview former President Jimmy Carter.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in the pod, we'll have our interview with former President Jimmy Carter, who joined us last week from a Habitat for Humanity worksite in South Bend, Indiana. We're also going to take some time today to talk about the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and all of the other news that has broken in the last few hours. Sort of nice to be recording after news breaks and not during it,

but I just jinxed more news probably, right? There's always more news, John. Love It, how was Love It or Leave It? We had a fantastic Love It or Leave It. Mandy Moore and Taylor Goldsmith of the band Dawes came by and performed a dramatic reading as Kellyanne Conway and George Conway. It is one of my favorite things that we've ever done on the show. Plus we had a fantastic panel and we talked about the news.

You should check it out. There's also a new episode of The Wilderness out right now. It's about the ongoing struggle between the party establishment and the grassroots of the Democratic Party. We talk about how to make the Democratic Party more democratic and less reliant on big money, fancy consultants, and party insiders. Check it out. John, do you have any regrets about interviewing Steve Bannon at a festival?

I just thought that he would provide some much-needed insight, you know? Yeah, some advice on how to layer your shirts. Also, a little announcement. The host of Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson, now officially has a book out on the shelves and in your online marketplaces. It's called On the Other Side of Freedom, The Case for Hope. It dropped Tuesday. The publisher describes it as a meditation on resistance, justice, and freedom, and an intimate portrait of a movement from the front lines.

Go out, buy it, read it, tell your friends about it. DeRay's new book. Very exciting. I learned the term online marketplaces. I just came up with that. Okay. The Senate is holding hearings this week, as we speak, in fact, on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh has spent the past 12 years on the bench as a judge on the Federal Appeals Court in D.C. He's also a veteran of the George W. Bush White House, where he worked in the counsel's office and as staff secretary.

Before that, he was part of Ken Starr's team that investigated Bill Clinton in the 1990s. And ever since, he's acted as a fierce partisan who's dedicated most of his career to advancing the interests of the Republican Party. Notably, he's praised former Chief Justice Rehnquist's dissent in Roe v. Wade. His rulings consistently favor the interests of corporations over the public, and his views of executive power could protect Donald Trump, who has been implicated as a co-conspirator in at least two felonies. Remember that? That's something that happened. Tommy, I want to start with you.

The Trump White House sent a letter to the Senate on Friday saying that they were withholding over 100,000 pages of documents about Kavanaugh's record on the assertion of constitutional privilege. They dumped 42,000 pages of Kavanaugh documents on the Senate Judiciary Committee late last night. This led to quite a scene this morning where all the Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee called for the hearing to be postponed. Chuck Grassley wouldn't even allow them to vote on the motion. How much of a big deal is this and what can Democrats do about it? Yeah, happy Labor Day to the Judiciary Committee staff. You have a lot less reading to do this weekend and every weekend. I think this is a big deal. I mean, Kavanaugh worked at the White House for a couple of years. He had two roles. He was in the council's office. He was a staff

secretary, which means he had his hands on every big issue, thousands of documents to the point where they had to create this new system to vet them for public release because it was taking so long. So they hired a lawyer named Bill Burke, who was Kavanaugh's literal deputy at the White House to direct the process. At the same time, the same lawyers representing Don McGahn, Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon, the Mueller probe. So that feels like a bit of a conflict. But like, you know, ultimately, they the Berks team said they had like 600,000 documents to release, and they've only given 267,000 pages to the committee, all of which are from the time as White House counsel, they've refused to even request the documents from his time as staff secretary. So that starts the problem here. And then Friday night, the White House says we're holding back one hundred thousand more pages citing executive privilege.

That has never happened before during a Supreme Court hearing. And then they dumped forty thousand pages of documents on the committee's head the night before the hearing. So substantively, like if you're in this process where you're desperately trying to figure out what this nominee believes and what he's going to do on issues and how he would vote. And he's doing everything in his power to not tell you anything. Yes, this matters. But I also think like politically, anything that sounds like a cover up or documents are being withheld is like a potent political issue. Republicans spent years searching for Hillary Clinton's billing records from a law firm she worked at in Arkansas and turned it to a scandal. So certainly you can get people interested in what they're trying to hide here. And I thought the committee Democrats did a great job this

morning of raising the issue early. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Senator Leahy all laid out the stakes here. And I think, you know, I don't know that this fight is going to ultimately move Republican senators, but it certainly can move political opinion among voters out in states. Love it. Because of the document issue, some Democrats, including former Schumer spokesman Brian Fallon, have urged Senate Democrats to walk out of the hearings and protest. Other people like Joe Biden have said that the better approach is to stay in the room and ask hard questions. It seems like, as Tommy just mentioned, the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee sort of went with the middle ground here. They basically tried as hard as they could in those first, I don't know, hour of the hearing

to basically say, we want to adjourn this hearing. We want to call for a vote. It's funny, Grassley wouldn't even let them vote on a motion to adjourn because apparently a couple of Republican senators weren't there and Grassley wouldn't have had the votes. So instead of even allowing them to vote on the motion to adjourn and to postpone the hearing, he basically just steamrolled them and didn't do anything. What do you think about sort of the Senate Democrats' strategy here? Is there anything more they could be doing? What do you think? Yeah, I think it's a really hard question. I'm of two minds of it. On the one hand, I see the value of staying and asking hard questions. On the other hand, I think we're in this tough position of trying to create the sense

that what we have here is unprecedented. what we have here is a real crisis, that A, we don't have enough information about this person in a way that is unprecedented, and B, there really is a significant chance that Kavanaugh gets elevated to the court and fundamentally changes the rights of women to make decisions about their own bodies. the rights of women to make decisions about their own bodies. And so I think Democrats generally have been struggling with how to get people as passionate, engaged and concerned about this when on the when, first of all, it is perspective, prospective in the sense that we can look at what we know about Kavanaugh, we can make our best guess, but no one does know for sure what happens when Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court. You can count on the fact that he will side with corporations. You government and also the fact that the news media

has just not put that much attention on this, a few seconds in various broadcasts, has made it all feel like a foregone conclusion. And I don't believe that Senate Democrats can solve that in the opening of a hearing. I appreciated that they tried. I appreciated them. I am at a place where I genuinely appreciate whenever Senate Democrats act as though what is happening should not be treated as normal, should not be treated as business as usual, which is what they did this morning. But we're asking them to solve a problem in a hearing that has been weeks, if not months, coming. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I'm trying to just play out in my mind what would happen if they walked out, because I thought there's sort of value to both suggestions here. Yeah. And if the Senate Democrats all walked out of the hearing, there would be a ton of news about it.

It would be breaking. It would be on every channel. They probably hold some big speech outside of the Capitol. You know, they would say this is unprecedented. This is not normal. Right. And so it'd be great. And everyone would cheer them on. normal. Right. And so it'd be great. And everyone would cheer them on. And then thinking of purely like who has the power here, Senate Republicans would pretty quickly then be able to say, OK, you're not going to participate in the hearings. Fuck it. We're going to bring all 50 senators that we have now that they, by the way, you know, Governor Ducey of Arizona just appointed John Kyle to fill McCain's seat. So they will have 50 votes. So we're going to take all 50 senators that we have. And if Democrats aren't going to participate

in the hearings, you know, we'll just vote on Kavanaugh today or tomorrow or next week. So again, it's Democrats are facing this problem where they just, you know, even if every single Democrat is off the fence and is a no, which they aren't yet, which is something we should talk about. They don't necessarily have the power to stop the nomination on their own. Their only hope here is to somehow have enough public pressure on Murkowski and Collins throughout this hearing process that one of them flips or somehow delay the hearings enough, have them be drawn out enough so that somehow the vote happens after November. And then, you know, if we won a majority in the Senate, then perhaps they could delay the hearings even more. But beyond those two outcomes, I just don't know what else Democrats can do that's effective in actually stopping him outside of what they did today, which was great because

they delayed the hearings a lot and they showed that they were fighting. Yeah. And also, I mean, John, you don't need to go as far as them calling a vote immediately. Democrats walk out, that gets some headlines. And now the hearing is just conducted by Republicans. Right. We'll just ask him softball questions and actually will be liberated to go even further, to give Kavanaugh the space to dissemble and tell whatever story he wants to tell about his past, about his documents, about what he's released, what he hasn't. So even before you get to more sort of outlandish outcomes, the immediate afterthought of walking out is not very good. I was thinking about, you look at what's happening right now with Kavanaugh,

and there have been times when activists have sort of pressed the alarm button, and then something happens. That's true around the first Muslim ban. That's been true about family separation. That was true around health care. But for whatever reason, they've been smashing the panic button and there just hasn't been the response that we've seen around other issues. And I think it feels too disconnected from people. And I think a lot of the groups, a lot of women's organizations, a lot of progressives have been really trying to make the case as to why this affects people. But the truth is, it's not on Senate Democrats alone. It's also on voters. It's on people paying attention to make it clear that they care about this. One of the lines of argument that Democrats are going to take during these hearings is about Kavanaugh potentially recusing himself from any matters involving Trump. Sources close to Kavanaugh told ABC News that the judge will not promise to recuse himself from cases involving investigations of President Trump, including a possible constitutional fight over a subpoena of the president that would compel him to answer Mueller's questions.

How much do you think Democrats should focus on this recusal question during the hearings? It's a good question. I mean, I think a lot, a significant amount. I think the Woodward book, which we'll talk about later, has some scenes in it today that I think will create more news around the prospect of Trump participating in the Mueller investigation and or all his efforts to shut it down before it stops. participating in the Mueller investigation and or all his efforts to shut it down before it stops. So I do think like it's a it's a fruitful line of inquiry that is both important substantively, but also will get covered. But I mean, just like one silver lining on the broader Kavanaugh discussion is that the polling on Kavanaugh is actually really bad for Trump. You have in the I think Washington Post poll, 38% want to confirm him, 39% don't. I think 25% are

undecided. So, you know, his approval is especially bad in the Northeast, which should worry Susan Collins. So like to this broader question of like, there is sort of a fatalist sense, I think, among Democrats about this nomination. The Huffington Post reported that Susan Collins essentially pre-approved him during her conversations with Trump before he even made the pick. So the conventional wisdom is that it's a lost cause. But I think like that is dangerous because the conventional wisdom is wrong a lot. We all remember 2016 and politics changed quickly. And so, you know, I think Democrats could raise the recusal issue. They could raise Roe v. Wade. They could raise this document question and make it so that the numbers

for Kavanaugh are worse and worse and worse and completely change the conventional wisdom that, oh, this would be a bad vote for red state Democrats or that, you know, Susan Collins gets more by going along with the Koch brothers and the big special interest groups by voting for him than voting against him and actually standing up for Roe v. Wade. So like we have to make these fights. The D.C. conventional wisdom on these issues changes quickly and is always wrong. Yeah, I love it. I mean, what do you think? As Tommy just pointed out, Kavanaugh has the lowest level of support for a Supreme Court nominee since 1987, when Robert Bork's nomination was defeated by Democrats during a hearing.

And yet, you know, still there are five Democrats who are still undecided over Kavanaugh, even after meeting with him. Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, Doug Jones, Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill. What do you think? What is the best strategy to get these senators off the fence through these hearings? I think it's driving at them hard that everyone's kidding themselves when they say that Kavanaugh won't severely restrict Roe, if not outright overturn it, if given the chance. I think pointing out the fact that this is somebody who may play a role in protecting Donald Trump and then pointing out the fact that they're covering up whatever his record is, I think is all are all the right things to do. I mean,

part of the problem is there is a separation between the politics and the outcome in that Republicans have justified so much of their morally despicable behavior around judges. And so they are going to drive towards getting Kavanaugh on the bench, no matter how low his approval rating is, no matter what they have to do, no matter what documents they refuse to release, no matter how hypocritical they look. This is a heist and, it isn't going well. They've lost a few guys, but this is their last big one before maybe they retire forever and they're going to fucking go for it and they're not going to go to jail. They're not going down for this. They're going to finish the job. So, you know, I separate the politics around the Republicans, which I think are much harder. I don't think it's that complicated. We need to just make it clear to people like Claire McCaskill and Heidi Heitkamp that there is more pain in

supporting this person than there is in not supporting this person. I think there's a very, very good case to be made that the politics of Supreme Court justice has changed. That is an old logic that tells them they need to support somebody like this. And I think we just need to make that case to them over and over again. We just show that their most passionate voters, the people that will help them retain their seats, care about this. And that means calling. That means keeping the pressure on. And that means not accepting the logic of it being a foregone conclusion. We can't control what Republicans can do. That's much harder. But we can make sure that Democrats held the line and drew a really strong contrast, win, lose, or draw. Yeah, I'd also say that those

senators that I just mentioned, those red state senators, are running ads in their campaigns in those red states right now talking about how if Republicans win, they will repeal preexisting conditions. They will repeal the Affordable Care Act. They'll get rid of your health care. So they're running sort of this economically populist campaign. And I think during this hearing, we'll probably hear some very pointed questions to Kavanaugh about his record and his

beliefs around the Affordable Care Act, the president's ability to sort of enforce the Affordable Care Act if he wants or not. And the fact that Kavanaugh in almost every single instance has ruled in favor of corporations over the public, over working people. And so, you know, if you hear from these red state Democrats like, oh, you know, in my state, Roe v. Wade is a tougher sell or, you know, this executive power thing and the Mueller investigation is a tougher sell. Like, you know, we can disagree with them on that, but fine. even on just health care and on economic issues, you can really hammer this guy and then tell your voters back home, the reason I voted no on Kavanaugh is because he is going to continue to stick it to working people as he's done his entire career. So I don't I just don't see unions. Yeah. And unions. Right.

So I just don't see the unions. We have learned in ballot measures in state and local elections. There is a quiet, incredibly strong vote in favor of labor, in favor of organizing. We've seen it in Oklahoma. We've seen it elsewhere. We've seen it with teacher protests. There is a vote for protecting unions out there that is much stronger and not getting enough attention because everybody's interviewing for MAGA hats every day. But that's there too. How will the hat vote on Kavanaugh? This MAGA hat's on board. They don't care about the documents. The MAGA hat testified earlier, and it was really compelling, I thought.

Okay, let's talk about Donald Trump, who... Okay. Who? I've never heard of him. Some guy in the White House. Who spent his Labor Day publicly opining for an attorney general

who would allow him to obstruct justice. Here is the tweet. Quote, Two long-running Obama-era investigations of two very popular Republican congressmen were brought to a well-publicized charge just ahead of the midterms by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job, Jeff. Good job, Jeff.

Good job, Jeff. So the tweet refers to- Wait, but what if he meant it literally, guys? What if he was like, good job, good job. Then there would have been an exclamation point. You ever read it that way? Instead, there was an ellipse, which is very unlike Donald Trump in a tweet. There's an ellipse in the end of the tweet.

The corrupt corporate media won't report it correctly. Right. The tweet refers to the criminal cases against two of Trump's first congressional supporters, Chris Collins, who's been accused of insider trading that he is alleged to have committed in 2017 at the White House picnic. So not when Barack Obama was president. And Duncan Hunter, who's been accused of stealing money from his campaign so that he and his wife could have a lifestyle upgrade. Tommy, why is this tweet so problematic? I mean, it's so funny.

Let's just, again, the insider trading occurred at Donald Trump's party on his lawn. There's literally video of him making the phone call. These guys are so busted dead to rights in these indictments because they're stupid. And there's a paper trail of phone calls and texts and trades. Duggan Hunter's wife's being like, hey, we need money. Can we steal from vets? Hey, can you shake down a wounded warrior organization and get us some cash? So like they're so obviously busted.

And again, I mean, the norm in in past administrations is that the White House didn't interfere with what DOJ did. They let those investigations be apolitical and make decisions on their own. The fact that he is saying my attorney general should have protected the political fate of the Republican Party instead of, you know, running the Justice Department or like putting criminals in jail is insane. And especially remember, remember the lock her up chance. Remember that he was going to be the law and order president. Like the hypocrisy is so glaring and insane.

It's another instance of him tweeting something that would have been a Watergate like story if it had been said in private in a meeting. And we need to treat these things somehow with the gravity they deserve. Yeah. I also, though, I honestly had trouble getting that worked out about it because it actually doesn't reveal anything new about who Donald Trump is. I mean, you know, maybe you could argue in the early days when he started tweeting obstruction of justice and other attacks on institutions or and the fact that he wanted to politicize every facet of the government. It's a bit like the early tweets were kind of he was doing a puzzle, but the pieces were upside down. He kept turning them over. But at this point, like it's a fucking ice cream cone every new puzzle piece you turn it over it's just a little bit more ice cream you know so you are you liking the puzzle are there toppings do you know what i mean though it's like you lost me in the metaphor you know what i mean i didn't quite

get the ice cream okay is it dipping dots no no Soft serve? Is it the ice cream of the future? It's not Dippin' Dots. I mean, I saw that a senior Department of Justice official in Jeff Sessions' Justice Department told Axios this morning, of course on background, it shows that Trump thinks DOJ should be used as a weapon against enemies and a tool to win elections. Both cases are not even close. The facts are very bad. I love the facts are very bad. Jeff Toobin, friend of the pod, Jeff Toobin said that he thinks it actually could be potentially an impeachable offense. I mean, I know what you're saying, but it is it's not necessarily surprising that he would tweet that out. But it is a reminder of like the guy is just

at war with the rule of law every single day. And I do think it might complicate. I'll see what you guys think. I do think it might complicate his efforts to replace Sessions because, you know, you did have it sort of like riled up a bunch of Republicans who usually do their sad tweets and statements and then don't do anything else. You know, Ben Sasse released a harsh statement saying that the United States is not some banana republic and then didn't do anything about it. But I think these senators do have a chance to do something about it when and if he ends up firing Sessions after the midterms and tries to replace him with someone else. Like, they're going to see tweets like these and be like, are you going to, is this next attorney general going to be independent?

I mean, he has created a paper trail that will make the next confirmation hearing a nightmare for his White House, for the Justice Department, for the new nominee, for the Republicans who have to carry water for him on a daily basis. You know, I'm glad I'm glad that Ben Sasse like found the courage to release a statement. I am still in the camp of people that refuses to give him all that much credit. I would love to see some actual real oversight of whether, for example, the White House is politicizing decisions, whether it's been improper contact between White House and Justice Department officials about, you know, seeing to let these things go as he asked Comey to do when it came to General Flynn. So, you know, walk the walk. It would be great. I am glad Sass said something, but it wasn't

that good. It wasn't much. So this isn't the only thing that is going to very much upset Donald Trump this week. Bob Woodward is out with a new book. It's called Fear, and it's about the Trump administration. So the Washington Post, where Woodward is technically still on staff, released, you know, they had a story this morning about the book with all kinds of excerpts. There was also a transcript of a phone call between Donald Trump and Bob Woodward. When Trump learned that the book was coming out, he called Woodward to complain that he hadn't been interviewed, that no one told him. Anyway, the book is very bad for Donald Trump. Does anyone have some highlights that they'd

really like to share from the first Washington Post story about the book? Oh, yeah. I would like to read what I believe is my favorite quote from the piece. It comes from John Kelly, who reportedly frequently lost his temper and told colleagues that he thought the president was unhinged. This is the part that I just I'll remember this quote. In one small group meeting, Kelly said of Trump, he's an idiot. It's pointless to try to convince him of anything. He's gone off the rails. We're in crazy town. I don't even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I've ever had. That's my favorite. That's a running theme of a book, apparently.

We're in crazy town is so funny. We're in crazy town. This is the worst job I've ever had. Trump being very stupid is a running theme in this. We have Kelly calling him an idiot. We have an NSC meeting on North Korea after what General Mattis says. He has the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader. So I'm glad we're sending him in alone to negotiate with Putin and Kim Jong-un.

He's literally so stupid that he thought Senator McCain got out of a Vietnamese POW camp early when he is literally famous for refusing early release and spending years more in captivity being tortured. He also called Sessions mentally retarded. He's this dumb southerner. He couldn't be a one person country lawyer down in Alabama. So this guy is just a fucking monster shitting on everyone who works for him. But like, again, you have these people like Gary Cohn, who literally steal documents off his desk so that he can't, you know, pull us out of treaties or things Gary doesn't want us to do. And he still hasn't said a goddamn word about a White House this dysfunctional. It is fun to read, but also terrifying and enraging. What'd you think, John?

I loved it. I thought it was a great read. I think it's a picture of a perfect presidency. No, I mean, also there's, I had had all those points so that's good i also have uh john dowd the lawyer president's lawyer holding a mock muller interview to try to convince trump why he shouldn't sit down with muller and during the mock interview trump lied a ton and then um dad's like no you can't do this and trump's like i'll be a great witness and he's like no you won't you'll be a bad witness and then he quit the next day, you won't. You'll be a bad witness. And then he quit the next day. He also, oh, one of the worst ones I thought was, so when Trump belatedly gave a statement condemning white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville after telling everyone

that there's good, fine people on both sides. So he's forced to give this speech saying, okay, no, neo-Nazis and white supremacists are bad. And then when he finished, he told aides that was the biggest fucking mistake I've made, meaning the speech where he actually condemned the neo-Nazis and white supremacists and then said it's the worst speech I've given. And then when Gary Cohn tried to resign after that, apparently Trump called it treason. And then Gary Cohn decided, oh, just kidding. I'm going to stick it. I'm going to stick around. Yeah, because apparently my job is to rip papers off the president's desk so he doesn't sign them when it involves free trade.

That's what Gary Cohn's there to stop. More free trade. And then add to that that apparently General Kelly told Gary Cohn that he would have taken the resignation letter and shoved it up his ass six different times, which is colorful language. But again, General Kelly, you have not resigned. You have not said a word. So you have a lot of tough guys beating their chest, peacocking his staff, telling Bob Woodward what he wants to hear. But they haven't done a goddamn thing.

Yeah. I also it is worth worth sort of just pausing on the fact that they are trying to prevent changes in policy by hiding documents from the president of the United States. Honestly, I'm not I think they probably should. I think they should hide documents from him because he's a fifth, sixth grader who has no idea what's going on. But like that is that is incredible. I mean, just imagine imagine reading a story that like, oh, yeah, yeah. David Plouffe went in there and hid something from Obama. Axelrod hid all the pens so he couldn't sign the signing statement.

What are we talking about? It is completely insane. And it is fucking outrageous that these people in the White House and those who have left the White House have decided to wait this long for a fucking Bob Woodward book to come out to say their piece and to let us all know that, by the way, the only thing standing in between the President of the United States fucking launching the nuclear apocalypse is a couple of aides once in a while getting in his way, stealing his papers, and trying to convince him otherwise.

Like, fucking say something. These people are so bad. And also say something that is not you speaking on background to Bob fucking Woodward. These these like they all want to talk. They all want to talk, but they want to do it without paying any personal price or even taking any personal risk. It's also just a great example of how Donald Trump has contempt for everybody. He doesn't like anybody. He's only in it for himself because on one hand, he's sitting there like, you know, trying to he's he's sitting there after Charlottesville being like, no big deal. Fuck that. I don't care. And then he's also, by the way, like how what did we go through during the 2016 campaign about Hillary Clinton using the word deplorables?

And Donald Trump is in this book saying that Jeff Sessions is, quote, mentally retarded because of his southern accent, because he's a dumb southerner. Like it's just it's such a fucking joke that Donald Trump cares about anyone or cares about his base or cares about like working people. Like he doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone in this country but himself also read the transcript that john mentioned where he calls bob woodwork after the book has sort of been written already and pretends that no one told him that he had requested an interview it is the saddest most pathetic thing you've ever read because he's like oh bob why didn't you call me why'd you call my secretary who'd you talk to it was like seven or eight people like who kelly ann conway she's literally in the office like yes sir remember i mentioned this to you got run up the chin and then like

he's like well like lindsey graham i'm he did he mentioned it to you trump's like oh yes graham did mention that you're writing the book so he's pretending no one told him about this book while conceding that people did tell him about the book in the same pathetic call and you're like you were such a small man. It's a lot like the Omarosa. Like, I can't believe they fired you. Oh, man. It's also, this is, the fact that the White House has been allowed to operate like this.

I mean, it's like Nixon's final days, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for two fucking years. days, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for two fucking years. It is not just on the Gary Cohns and Dina Powells and Kellys and all the other enablers around Donald Trump. It is also on the fact that if this book came out about a Democratic president, Congress would grind to a halt and there would be hearings. Those hearings would be important. It would be about protecting the country. It would be about calling witnesses to find out whether or not America is fundamentally unsafe and in danger and in a state of crisis because of the president is we are still in a national emergency. We have been in one since the day Donald Trump was sworn in. And the Paul Ryan's of the world can try to pretend it's not true. But but this book is just another reminder that what is happening is incredibly dangerous. And every day we get

through it, we're lucky. Careful, though, don't talk about impeachment. Don't want to got to be careful. You don't want to we don't want to say that perhaps the president is unfit for office and should be removed. Got Tom Steyer on the other end now. So Trump, of course, had other Labor Day messages. He made sure to tweet an insult to the leader of the largest union in the country, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, because Trumka said that Trump has done more to hurt workers than help them, and then said that not including Canada in a renegotiated NAFTA deal would be a bad idea. Just before Labor Day, Trump announced that he'd be asking Congress to freeze the salaries of the 2 million Americans who work for the federal government, saying the government can't afford it.

This is the same government that just spent $1.5 trillion on a tax cut for the richest Americans without paying for it. And, of course, over the last two years, the Trump administration has rolled back worker protections affecting mine safety inspections, offshore oil rigs, meat processing plants, and the health of coal workers. Happy Labor Day, guys. Tommy, how is it possible for Trump to cut a deal on the North American Free Trade Agreement without Canada and America's biggest labor union? I don't know, man.

That seems like some pretty big pieces of the puzzle here. I mean, I think the answer is he's full of shit. He's not going to be able to do it. The whole thing is absurd. To their credit, I think when he announced this half deal, the press kind of ignored it and laughed it off, and it's not going to happen. Yeah. I mean, he needs Congress for this, and he also needs Canada because the North American Free Trade Agreement involves United States, Mexico, and Canada. I wonder why you don't kick around your allies all the time.

You know, you might need them someday. As a rule of thumb, if there is something that can only be achieved through sustained, disciplined effort and sophisticated thinking and action, it will not take place during the Trump administration. Love it. Trump said his decision to freeze worker pay is justified because it's tied to a, quote, national emergency or serious economic conditions. What's he referring to there? It's ironic because what if the emergency is his own presidency? And that it would be a case in which we will have been hoisted by our own petard because he can constantly justify whatever behavior he wants on national security grounds because he is the threat. It is just it's so crazy. And like I mean,

some people pointed out that, yes, Obama froze the pay of federal workers his first or second year in office. Of course, we were in the middle of a great recession. There was a financial crisis. The government was running trillion dollar deficits all because of the crisis. Trump is out there every single day talking about how wonderful the fucking economy is, how it's never done better, everything's going great, passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut, and then cannot allow a 2% increase for federal workers' salaries to go through. You must have realized how unpopular it is because at some rally last week, he was like, but I'll be studying it over the weekend. And of course, we haven't heard anything from about it again.

Yeah, he tried to walk it back, but he already sent the order in. It's disgusting. It is disgusting to claim it's for fiscal responsibility after passing a massive tax cuts for the rich and corporations that dwarfs it in every way. And it's shameful. It's shameful. That's all it is. Tommy, what do you think Democrats can say and do about all of this? Axios had a story that House Democrats are already

saying that if they win back the majority, they'll start passing policies that focus on jobs and wages, like infrastructure projects and lowering health care costs. Do you think Democratic candidates should be running on this, should be talking about this more? I was glad that they laid out that that platform. I think individual races and campaigns are going to make their own decisions about what they talk about. But I do think it's very useful to have a policy proposal to point to about how you're going to fix a problem if you're going to cite the problem. need for lobbying and ethics reform to have a proactive policy about how we're going to try to fix this in the first hundred days or what have you is useful because voters want to know what you're going to do. So it's a useful messaging exercise. I don't think this thing's going to be

won or lost based on, you know, sort of a national policy platform that comes out of the House or Congressional Committee or whatever the hell it's going to be. But it was smart. Yeah. Okay. So the week after Labor Day is the traditional kickoff to the final election day sprint. God help us all. Here at Crooked Media, we are going to try to do as much as we can to flip everything blue. We're going to have information in a few weeks on votesaveamerica.com, which you can go sign up for right now. We're going to be in battleground states in October for our HBO special. We'll be interviewing some candidates on our pods. And since we don't have time to interview all the candidates in tight races, we're going to be highlighting some of the key races on Pod Save America. So today we're going to start off with Jennifer Wexton,

who's the Democrat running in Virginia's 10th congressional district, which basically includes the suburbs of D.C. She's running against Barbara Comstock, who might be one of the most endangered House Republicans in the country. Hillary Clinton carried this district by 10 points in 2016, and Ralph Northam carried it by 20 points when he won in 2017. So basically, Democrats will not take the House if they don't win this seat. Tommy, tell us a little bit about Jennifer Wexton. Sure. Yeah. And another piece of context that's important to remember is that Trump won Conor Lamb's district by nearly 20 points in Pennsylvania. So if we can pick off those districts,

these ones should be the most likely target. It's one of three big targets in Virginia. So Jennifer Wexton was a prosecutor in Loudoun County. She was elected to the Virginia Senate in 2014 and then overwhelmingly reelected in 2015 and has a pretty good legislative record. She's been talking about Trump's move to get rid of the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act and campaigning on health care. She's also been pressing Congress for their change that limits the number of deductions for state and local taxes that were part of the Republican tax cuts passed last year. So she is actively campaigning against the tax cut. We just talked about this Trump tweet about a pay freeze

in the letter he sent to Congress. That is going to upset a lot of people in Comstock's district, in the district we're talking about right now, because there's a lot of federal workers there. So I think she's a strong candidate. She's got two Labrador retrievers, which we support here at Crooked Media. And, you know, this is a race we should win. Love it. Tell us about Barbara Comstock. You know what? Honestly, this is a situation where we have two great candidates.

Look, you know what to say about Barbara Comstock. What that hasn't already been said. That hasn't already been said by no one. No, look, I think that the simplest way to view Barbara Comstock is she voted for the Paul Ryan tax cuts. And now she is trying to campaign on MS-13. the Paul Ryan tax cuts. And now she is trying to campaign on MS-13. She is yet another one of these Republicans who can't campaign on what they believe in. So they're trying to rile up the base and scare people into turning out based on, you know, fear mongering around immigrants. It didn't work for Ed Gillespie. It didn't work in this specific district in that race.

You know what? That's all I want to say about barbara comstock because i don't think we're gonna have to know very much about her for very much longer i mean like your your initial joke is right though i mean i think most democrats in virginia would say like she's pretty popular she's done a good job showing up in the district doing like constituent services but if this is a referendum on trump people like barbara comstock are going to go down. And so it's one to watch. Yeah. I mean, one number you need to know is she has supported Trump on nearly 98 percent of her votes. So she is lockstep in line with Donald Trump, even though this entire campaign, you can bet that Barbara Comstock is running around Virginia saying, oh, no, I'm an independent voice. I'm not you know, I don't fall in line with the party. It's bullshit. Her record just tells you otherwise.

Well, the other big factor in Virginia is you got Corey Stewart, who's a neo-Confederate Republican running for Senate. So that will likely not give, you know, Democrats in Comstock's district, these more likely to be swing voter type Republicans, any desire to go out and vote for him. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Okay, so we have given some careful consideration and here at Pod Save America, we have decided after a lot of thought

that we are going to endorse Jennifer Wexton. We've done it. We did it. So many hours of meetings to decide. It really, guys, it was touch and go. It could have gone either way and go okay when we come back we will have our interview with president jimmy carter

on the pod today we are honored to have with us President Jimmy Carter. President Carter, thank you for joining the pod. It's a real pleasure. Thank you. You've been at Habitat for Humanity worksites all week long in Indiana. That's where you are right now. Over the last few decades, you've helped build and fix literally thousands of homes in more than a dozen countries for Habitat. Why did you pick this particular project to focus on after your presidency? And from a policy standpoint, what should our leaders be doing about the

affordable housing crisis in America today? Well, we picked this particular one because South Bend, Indiana and this county, St. Joseph, has done a tremendous job in getting ready for us. We tell them a couple of years ahead of time that they could be our host, and they've made superb arrangements. So we've just finished 22 new houses here, and we have about 2,000 workers on the project. And so it's been well prepared, and I think the outcome is good. So these homeowners have been

all very lucky they have to pay full price for the house and they had to put in hundreds of hours on their own house as well so they've become friends with each other so i think the community that we've got this time is going to be one of the closest knit communities and already friends with each other that we've ever had. So it's been a very wonderful thing for us to do. And Rosa and I started this 35 years ago, and we've been doing it every year for one week each year for the last 35 years. Mr. President, you are the longest-serving ex-president in American history. You have seen Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and now Trump.

Did Trump winning teach you anything about America that you didn't know? Well, I've known America, you know, for 90, almost 94 years now. And I've learned a lot about America that I didn't know before. But we've had a wonderful country. We still will in the future. And it's a wonderful country right now. And although I don't agree with a lot of the policies that President Trump has put forward, I pray for him and pray that he'll keep our country at peace and promote human rights,

that he'll do a good job as president, and I hope that he will. So I wish him well, but I disagree with him. I'm a Democrat. He's a Republican. And he's brought out some of the policies that I would never have approved when I was president. But, you know, he has a right to be president, and as long as he's in office, I'll be hoping he does a good job. But Mr. President, one of the reasons I was eager to talk to you is because I view you as being somewhat in stark contrast to this president,

because you're a fundamentally decent and moral man. That is something that Democrats believe. That's something that Republicans believe, that you are guided by morality, that you are righteous in your conduct in this job. And beyond Donald Trump being a Republican, I think it's fair to say that he's an indecent person, that he doesn't carry himself with morality. Doesn't that worry you? Does that trouble you? Does that make you question a country that could elevate somebody like that? I don't question the country. You know, we've been through terrible times in the past with the war between the states or the Civil War. And then with 100 years almost of official racial segregation that was approved by the Supreme Court and approved by the Congress. But we've overcome those now, basically. We've changed the laws, at least. And although, as I said earlier, I disagree with a lot of his policies and don't like them, I still can understand how he was elected. And I hope the Democrats will come back together in the future. I don't see a clear voice for the Democrats yet,

but I think we have an excellent chance in 2018 to restore our control of a House or Senate, one. to restore our control of a House or Senate, one. And I think we'll have a good chance in 2000 as well to elect a new president. Mr. President, you became president just a few years after Richard Nixon resigned and the country was going through a crisis of trust in the presidency and in politics in general. How did that context shape your presidency? And what do you feel that America is going to need from the next president and from all of us in general to sort of rebuild trust in the presidency and in politics in general? Well, I came into office, you know,

after the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. and after the disaster of the war in Vietnam. And at that time, a lot of our leaders in government, including the president himself, had told us things that were not true about what was going on in Vietnam, for instance. And I promised to tell the American people the truth, and I asked individual small groups of voters when I first started not to vote for me if I ever made a misleading statement.

So I went through the same school that John McCain did, the Naval Academy, and in that institution, the truth was a preeminent characteristic of morality and ethics that everybody was looked upon to have as a requirement. If we made the slightest error of judgment or made the slightest statement that was not completely accurate, we were automatically out of the Naval Academy. We were expelled immediately with no questions asked. And I think that that kind of background that I had made sure that we told the truth. And I think at that time, America looked upon telling the truth as kind of a basic indication of your ethics and moral values.

So I think that we'll come back to that eventually in the future. But I think it's been abandoned in many ways, in many times since President Trump has been in office. So, Mr. President, there's been a lot of soul searching among Democrats in the wake of Trump winning, in the wake of a lot of losses up and down the ballot about what the party should stand for. One answer has come from the left saying we need to be less cautious, pushing for Medicare for all, a federal jobs guarantee. from the left saying we need to be less cautious, pushing for Medicare for all, a federal jobs guarantee. Do you agree with those policies? And what advice do you have for Democrats in terms of, you know, how to win, how to win majorities? Well, I think we need to emphasize human rights in all their aspects. And that includes the right of people to have a decent home and to have a modicum of education and, you know,

basically good health care, as well as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and freedom of religion. And so I think that's what the Democrats ought to stand for. And I was a supporter of, you know, Bernie Sanders when he ran in the press election, and I basically agreed with his positions, but I could see that in many ways, particularly one of my neighbors in Plains, Georgia, down in South Georgia, he was looked upon as too liberal by many. But I think we're going to see some test cases in 2018, like in Florida recently. some test cases in 2018, like in Florida recently. We have a polarized group of people, two people running for governor of Florida, and I think that was going to be a good indication in 2018 for

what's going to happen in 2020. And that would be a good guideline for the Democrats on which way to go, either, I'd say, a very liberal or a much more moderate approach to the basic issues that face our country. Mr. President, President Obama has said that, at the end of the day, we're all part of a long-running story, and we just try to get our paragraph right. What do you want your paragraph to say? Well, I hope it'll remember Habitat for Humanity, but generically speaking, I try to keep our country at peace, and I try to promote human rights around the world. And peace not only for America, but for other countries as well. So I reached out to China

to normalize diplomatic relations, and I work to bring peace in the Middle East between Egypt and Israel. And so I look upon human rights as one opportunity for people to live in peace with each other, as well as to have a decent home, which we're working on this week at Habitat. So I think human rights used to be looked upon as a broad thing, but the essence of human rights is to treat each other equally. And since I left office,

there's been a gross change in the relative status of American citizens. We have much more polarized America now than we did before, and we also have a much more disparity between income or chance for future well-being among Americans. So those kind of things are going to be corrected in the future. And I think the Democratic Party is the party

that's going to lead us to make those changes. Mr. President, thank you so much for all your service, not just in the White House, but in all the years after with Habitat and all over the world. We very much appreciate it. And we're honored to have had you on the podcast. Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much, John, both of you. And I'm very proud to be on with you. Thank you. Thanks again to Jimmy Carter for joining us. And we will... President Jimmy Carter. Oh, I'm sorry. Thanks again to President Jimmy Carter.

I didn't know he got to be president. Thanks again to President Jimmy Carter. I call him JC. For joining us. And we will talk to you guys on Thursday. Thank you.