Pod Save America - “Kim Jong Un is not your BFF.”

Episode Date: June 12, 2018

Trump lashes out at our closest allies while kissing up to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. Then, former Solicitor General Don Verrilli joins Jon and Dan to talk about the Trump Administration’s decision to stop defending the Affordable Care Act’s pre-existing conditions protections in court.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, we'll be talking to the former Solicitor General of the United States, Don Verrilli, about the Trump administration's refusal to defend the Affordable Care Act in court. We'll also talk about Trump's decision to pick a fight with all of our closest allies while cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. What a great day, Dan.

I should also say, as you've noticed, we've switched pod hosts this week. John Lovett is on vacation. And on Thursday, our friend Ben Rhodes is in Los Angeles. So he will sub in as a co-host in studio with me and Tommy on Thursday's pod. And then Dan was flexible enough to make today work. So thank you, Dan. Welcome to the Monday pod. Happy to do it.

How many days to the book release, Dan? We're about a week out, right? By the time you hear this, we'll be one week out. And so I got a couple things to say about this. All right. First, you know the saying, practice makes perfect? That is apparently not true, because I have been just hocking this book left and right on this podcast,

and I have gotten no better at it, because as many, many, many of you pointed out on Twitter, the last two times I have tried to pitch the book, I have failed to say the title, which is basically Book Pitching 101. So the title of the book is Yes, We Still Can, Politics in the Age of Obama, Trump, and Twitter. So there you go. It's said. It makes it easier to

find on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indie bound and all of your other places. We can find the books. Second, last week, we challenged people to get to 10,000 books pre-sold before release date. And I don't have final numbers yet, but based on the quote unquote early vote of pre-sales, uh, we are getting close, but we are not there yet. But if we keep quote unquote early vote of pre-sales, we are getting close, but we are not there yet. But if we keep it up, I think we can hit this goal by Tuesday, blow through it. And that is good because I get to go to New York and tell my publisher, I told you so. And more importantly for everyone other than me, we get to write a slightly bigger check to our friends at Swing Left who have been wonderful partners

in helping win the 2018 elections and in working with me on trying to leverage the book pre-sales to help the greater good here. So please buy the book. What's the book called? Please do it before Tuesday. I think we can get to 10,000. Maybe we can get to 11,000 or 12,000 if we keep going at it. What's the book called, Dan? Yes, We Still Can. There we go. Politics in the Age of Obama, Trump, and Twitter. All right.

Let's talk about the temper tantrum that Donald Trump and his senior staff threw at the G7 meeting in Canada, which is an annual global economic summit that includes all of our closest allies. A couple things happened. First, Trump told reporters on his way to the summit that Russia should be part of the G7 again. Specifically, he said, Russia should be in this meeting. Why are we having a meeting without Russia being in the meeting? And then he followed up later by saying, quote, something happened a while ago where Russia is no longer in. Of course, he's right. It used to be the G8. But the something that Trump was referring to was Russia invading the sovereign nations of Georgia and then Ukraine in 2014, where Putin annexed Crimea, which, of course,

was a violation of international law. Dan, what possible reason is there for Trump to say something like this, other than the one we all fear, which is that Vladimir Putin has some kind of leverage over our president? What kind of leverage would that be? I'm trying to think. What would Brian Buechler say right now? Yeah, Brian would go right to the pee tape. Yeah, he would say that leverage is worth its weight in gold if you will um so so i mean i have no idea i really have no idea other than he just feels

more comfortable with putin than with merkel mac Trudeau, Theresa May, or others. I think he feels pretty comfortable with his quote-unquote buddy Shinzo, the prime minister of Japan. But it is a truly bizarre statement. And it's worth noting, it's not just the annexing of Crimea, which was a complete disregard for the world order, but also that then Russian separatists shot down an airplane, killing hundreds of people, a crime to which the Russians have continued to cover up for years now. And the idea that we're just, we're going to go into this and just reward Putin.

I did laugh when I heard him say that he, why would we have a meeting without the Russians? Which is exactly what Don Jr. would say. Also, they interfered in our fucking election. Oh yeah, there was that. And they probably interfered in the Brexit campaign as

well. I mean, it's just like, I mean, the only other thing I can think of if Putin doesn't have some kind it's just like, I mean, the only other thing I can think of if Putin doesn't have some kind of leverage over Trump, because again, I'm like, I don't want to go to the conspiracies. I want to, I want to try to really think this out. Like maybe Trump is just trying to troll all of us because he knows everyone thinks he's too cozy with Putin. So he wants to say fuck you to everyone who believes that. I don't know, but it's like, it'd be, it would be one thing if he was the kind of

president who wanted better relations with every country. But then it's like, why didn't he say, why isn't China in the meeting? Why isn't Brazil in the meeting? Why isn't India in the meeting? He didn't pick out other countries around the world who aren't part of the G7, who have gigantic economies, who could probably play a role in these kind of conversations he only singled out russia why the fuck would he do that yeah i guess the most generous explanation which i do not believe i do not but i guess the most generous one would be russia is here they're playing an important role in the world. Some would argue for good. Some would argue – most people would argue for ill. And it seems dumb to have all the other countries together but not Russia. That's a bad reason because there have to be consequences for actions. And Russia has done nothing to try to get themselves back in the good graces of the G7. They have instead been more aggressive,

causing more problems. And so it is, I mean, maybe he was, I mean, maybe instead of just trolling the libs in America, he wanted to troll the other leaders of the G7. It's sort of mind boggling. I mean, so the Russia thing becomes even stranger when you consider how the rest of the summit went. On Saturday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a press conference. And in this press conference, he basically announced that all of the G7 countries, you know, they had a lot of different disagreements over the course of the weekend. But they all agreed on a joint economic statement that they would put out together. And he said everyone was going to sign off. And the White House told reporters on Air Force One that Trump was going to sign off and

they'd be getting this statement. Then when a reporter asked Trudeau how Canada would respond to Trump's tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, Trudeau reiterated that Canada would be imposing tariffs on American goods as a response. And then Trump responds on Twitter by calling Trudeau dishonest, weak, and then said that the U.S. would refuse to sign the G7 joint statement. And then one of Trump's top economic advisors, Peter Navarro, said that there is a, quote, special place in hell for Justin Trudeau. Dan, how big of a deal is this?

And what kind of consequences can we expect from this sort of thing? I just, it's so mind boggling. It's just, it's mind boggling. It is so, like, you just have to wonder. Like, you sort of go down, like, the tree of possibilities for how we got to this place. Like one is Trump is up, was concerned about the amount of coverage, his invitation to Russia to rejoin the G to turn the G seven back into the G eight. He was concerned by how much coverage that got.

So he wanted to do something to distract. So he decided to pick a fight with Canada, which did, which, I mean, it seems weird. Canada is not necessarily who we should be fighting with, but it did knock everything else off the front pages or the headlines or trending on Twitter or whatever metric

we use to decide what is newsworthy these days. And so we talked about the fight between Trudeau and Trump instead of Trump coasting up to Russia once again. So that's one possibility. And that's sort of the Trump is strategic in a sense, right? Maybe it's gut instincts, right? I always say it's intellectual. It's instinctual, not intellectual.

Or he's just a never-ending maul of insecurity. And the slightest thing sets him off. And it's one thing where he's just in the campaign and he's sending angry tweets about Ted Cruz's father or whatever else, which are all terrible things, but they don't have actual policy consequences. Now, this will have actual consequences on our relationship with Canada, our economic relationship with Canada, the economy itself, the cost of goods and services in America, the cost of goods in America. And I just, it's mystifying. I do, here's the thing where I think it matters, which is, you and I know this from

the White House, which is you can never get to the bottom of your inbox in the White House. There's just not enough time and energy to do the things that need to get done. Your policy challenges, policy opportunities, legislation, regulations, et cetera, the presidency is zero sum. And we're now spending time and energy as a White House, a government, and a country fighting with Canada. Who are our friends? Our closest friends, some would say, both geographically. I mean, they have a team in the NBA. What are we doing? It's so nuts. They're also our big... Canada and Mexico are two of our biggest trading partners in the world.

And we have now pissed both countries off. Like that is going to have economic consequences for Americans who buy products that have, whether the whole product or part of the product is made in Canada and Mexico, which is a lot of shit that people buy in this country. I read this Politico story and it says, you know, for Trump, the decision may be a political winner. The president's base is deeply skeptical of international cooperation. Okay. I understand why that's like the top level, most shallow analysis possible. But like, I think his base might be skeptical of international cooperation only in the sense that they think that trade deals

that we've made with other countries over the years do not do anything for American workers and American consumers. And, you know, as you go into some of these deals, there may be some truth to that. But now that this is a different thing. Now that Trump is engaged in a trade war that he started, by the way, him imposing tariffs on, as we've said before, Trump imposing tariffs on, as we said before, Trump imposing tariffs on other countries really means that Donald Trump is charging American consumers more money when they buy foreign goods. And guess what? Every time we go to the store, we are buying foreign goods or we're buying stuff that has parts that are made in foreign countries. And so everything now from beer cans to soda cans to automobiles, even U.S.-made automobiles have parts that are made with steel and aluminum that are made in other countries. So this is going to cost people. And I don't think his base is going to like that.

It is. And there are consequences on the world stage here. I don't think this was taken too seriously, but someone said – I can't remember – I apologize for this, but I can't remember which world leader said it, but it's like maybe we could be the G6. Right. And the idea that – which is not – I don't – I mean, Tommy or Ben Rhodes or some of our other foreign policy expert friends could correct me. I can't imagine a world in which the US expert friends could correct me. I can't imagine a world in which the US is not part of the G whatever, but it just says so much about how we are now, we instead of being who the world turns to when they need leadership, whether it's diplomatic, moral, military, it's not something we've always lived up to, but that is the role we have played. And so instead of doing that, we are now a problem for other countries to manage.

And that just has consequences across the board for how we're seeing. Whenever we have our next president, whether it be in 2021 or, God forbid, 2025, the next United States president, secretary of state, and diplomatic corps are going to have to dig ourselves out of what is the absolute low point for U.S. relations in the world in the modern age. And Trump has done that in record time simply by just being an asshole to the people who are our friends. For no good reason. I mean, this is also, you know, talking about the political consequences. For no good reason. I mean, this is also, you know, talking about the political consequences. You know, in the latest Fox News poll, which came out last week and, by the way, showed that Democrats, I think, are up nine points in the generic ballot. So that lead has opened again. But, you know, they have the main reasons that people approve of Trump who approve of Trump are sent.

You know, one of the main reasons is, you know, the economy is doing well. One of the main reasons is the economy is doing well. Well, the main reasons that people disapprove of Trump is that they don't think he's capable of doing the job and they don't think he has a good temperament. And his reaction, his temper tantrum that he threw about Justin Trudeau's remarks sort of demonstrates both of those worst qualities. Does this sort of validate the critique that was made of Trump way back when in 2016 by Hillary Clinton, by Barack Obama? I mean, as you toss up that softball for me to swing away at, actually, I think in hindsight, we dramatically understated the dangers of Trump's temperament. Yeah. Because I think even I, I mean, I think maybe even you as well believed that there would be he would should not be president under any circumstances and is a bad person on every level. But that there would be some machinery of government and that would hem in some of the insanity.

Right. Like, I really didn't think that in the same week we would be fighting with Justin Trudeau and picking up Kim Jong-un's hotel incidentals at a Sunday. Like, it is – I mean, it is – it's bonkers what we're doing here. And I think that the point you make in that Fox News poll is critically important to Democrats. One of the best arguments that we had against Republicans in the fight to repeal the ACA during the Affordable Care Act during Barack Obama's presidency was that it was a distraction from other things. Like why would we – there are so many things the country needs to be doing. Why are we voting for the 50th time to try to repeal a law that's been on the books and is helping people? And I think that there is an element. I've been arguing this for a while now that I think the two elements of the critique against Trump and by existential Republicans is to argue against the chaos and the corruption.

And we have to, but to make the chaos thing work, it can't just be an aesthetic view like, man, I'm so tired of all the news and the tweets. It has to have consequences to people's lives. That's right. And I think that there is an opportunity in the tariffs and in this trade war with Canada that it's going to affect people in their pocketbooks and that we have real things we need to be doing, whether it's fixing education or improving healthcare or infrastructure, whatever it is. And we are, instead of doing those things, we are fighting with Canada. And I think that that is, that has to be part of the argument against Trump, but we have to make it, we have to show how, we have to show a cost, both in people's pocketbooks and an opportunity cost for the country on the things that people

really on a bipartisan basis agree need to be dealt with. Yeah, I think that's right. I think drawing the line from the chaos and corruption to actual real world consequences for people is critical here. There's also this larger question on foreign policy, right, which is, you know, a few weeks ago, a senior White House official told Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic that Trump's foreign policy doctrine can be described as we're America, bitch, which is just really something. Sort of his like, I don't care about the rest of the world, no apologies kind of stuff. And that's certainly how he has acted towards our allies and how he acted towards all of our allies at the G7. And yet when it comes to dictators and autocrats like Putin and Kim Jong-un, you know, as you were just saying, Trump couldn't be nicer or more accommodating.

Like he's paying for Kim Jong-un's hotel. He's making coins. He's not imposing sanctions on Putin. Why do you think that Donald Trump is more comfortable with autocrats and dictators than he is with sort of the heads of democracies around the world? I mean, I think it is simply though, I mean, from a, from a attitudinal perspective, he feels closest to them. He doesn't care about the things that most leaders care about. He cares about accumulating and maintaining power and power is in, in it is a good in and of itself. It is not to be used for something. We are one way, he'll do that. The other way, he'll – and if they're different, he would change. He does not – all he wants is power.

And that makes him very similar. That is what he has in common with Putin, Kim Jong-un, with Xi in China. un um with uh she in china and in there is just like they are he and trudeau or macron or merkel or um brock obama or hillary clinton or anyone else they're like they don't speak the same language he doesn't even he cannot inside that little brain of his he can't fathom the idea that you do these jobs to do something. He does these jobs to have this job and keep it as long as possible. And that's because there is no – I mean you see this in the fact that there is no coherent governing or policy ideology. He doesn't even know what to – the reason that everything is about owning the libs and doing what Barack Obama does is because he has no other framework by which to make a decision.

And so I can't even imagine what the conversations are like with other world leaders because they're not speaking. Even though they're using translators, they're not speaking a language the other one understands. I also think it just comes down to the fact that he is lazy and ignorant and a narcissist. And democracy is messy. It requires compromise. It requires diplomacy. It requires not taking all the credit yourself and working with other people. It requires dealing with the media and the press, which also can be very critical.

with other people. It requires dealing with the media and the press, which also can be very critical. And all of these things that are required in democracy, which is really hard work, he doesn't want to have anything to do with that. He's used to being the head of his business and the head of his organization and snapping his fingers and getting everything he wants. And when he looks around the world and he sees Putin or sees the head of China or any of these autocrats, all they have to do is snap their fingers and something in their country gets done. And if they don't like their coverage, then they, you know, then they shut down the media because they have state-run media. Or like what Putin does, he, you know, does something to journalists, you know, kills

journalists or at least, you know, controls the media. And Trump sort of looks at that and he's like man that's probably a pretty good deal and that's very dangerous it's not like he it may not be that he started off as this like sinister you know dictator and waiting here where he's trying to like take over the world but but he's just he's a lazy ignorant narcissist and he wants everyone to do what he says and democracy is not that democracy requires a lot of work. And so he looks at all these leaders that are trying to like work with other people. And he's like, fuck that. I mean, there's all these reports that he went to the G7. He didn't want to go. He went late. He

left early. He was falling asleep during some of the meetings. Like he doesn't want to do any of this shit. He just wants to like snap his fingers, get stuff done and take the credit. Yeah. You hit on a really important point, which is other leaders of both parties in this country and frankly, other parties in the traditional liberal democracies that make up the G7, they believe that the fundamentals of democracy are things worth protecting. Trump views them as simply annoyances that prevent him from doing what he wants to do. them as simply annoyances that prevent him from doing what he wants to do. And so, I mean, he has – like I sort of hate – it's like cheap to do that.

Trump's a fascist or he's an authoritarian or he's a dictator. Like we're not living in an authoritarian government yet in the United States. But he has the approach. If he could, he would be an authoritarian because that's just, he doesn't care about democracy. And it is, I mean, it's not good. That's what it is. It's just simply not good. Yeah. And I do think though, what that requires is for Democrats and whichever Republicans, if there are any out there want to join along, it requires a defense of democracy itself as we fight against Trump. And I do think that as we look towards the election, obviously, the economy has to come first and health care and all these issues.

But what he's doing and what he's trying to fight against here is it's something larger. And it's a defense of why democracy still is the best system of governance in the world, which is not something that we'd ever think we'd have to defend internally, at least not in our lifetime. But I do think that's necessary with Trump. And speaking of other Republicans, after this whole G7 debacle, Jeff Flake, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, John McCain, all the usual suspects, they all tweeted their disapproval of Trump's behavior and, of course, did nothing else. What else could some of these Republicans do if they wanted to actually do more than just tweet about it? The tweets make me so angry.

It's like don't even tweet. We're tired of your tweets. Sad tweets are the new thoughts and prayers from Republicans. And it is – like they are in charge of committees. They could propose laws. They could have hearings. They could use subpoena power. They could call witnesses.

They could ask for documents. There is a – like they have – they are a separate but equal branch of government. And so they have powers that extend beyond 280 characters of sadness. And so, I mean, but they don't – I mean, and some people say, well, Mitch McConnell won't let him do anything. Well, yeah, that's probably true because he's terrible. But you could still use your committee. You could try to do things. You could push legislation. You could work with Democrats, God fucking forbid. But you could work with Democrats to try to bring some of these bills to the floor because there will be majorities on some of these things. You could do a Senate.

Saying Canada is our friend, not our enemy. And so like they have a set of tools. Like let's be honest, the power of the executive, despite what the constitution says, particularly in areas like foreign policy, exceed the ability of Congress in a lot of ways to try to hem it in. But there are things they can do to make an actual policy difference and raise holy hell beyond a tweet. And so, I mean, it is available to them. They just won't do it because they are all, it is a party of Trump supplicants now. That is what they are because that is what they now believe to be the best politics. The only potential check on Donald Trump is a Democratic Congress. That is it. There are zero Republicans who have shown that they are willing to check Trump at all, even the ones who are tweeting. Because like you said, the tweets don't matter

anymore. It was one thing, like the first time Jeff Flake got up on the Senate floor and made a speech or the first time that Susan Collins did something. Then you thought, okay, maybe they're starting with the speech. Maybe then they'll graduate to some real action. Now, it's clear that these people don't want to do anything, or they're too afraid to do anything, maybe they're starting with the speech. Maybe then they'll graduate to some real action. Now it's clear that these people don't want to do anything or they're too afraid to do anything or they're unwilling to do anything or they're secretly happy with the agenda. Whatever it may be, they're not doing anything. If you want some kind of a check on this president, if you want to curtail his power in some way, even in a small way, the only option you have is a Democratic Congress in November. That's it. So thanks for reminding us of that, Jeff Flake, Susan Collis.

Vote them all out. Every single one of them. Okay, so we're recording this before Trump's post North Korea summit press conference. But let's talk about all the expectations and potential outcomes heading into this thing. Trump's people are basically saying that his main message to Kim Jong Un is, you know, give up your nukes and we'll make sure that you and your people are rich and safe. nukes and we'll make sure that you and your people are rich and safe. So my first question is, no matter what happens here, how does Kim Jong-un trust Trump to keep his word on any deal? And second, how do any of us trust whatever Trump and Kim say about what happened during

the summit? Well, John, I think you're being deeply unfair to Donald Trump. Donald Trump, when this is over, when the summit is over, he is going to sit down with one of America's toughest journalists for a hard-hitting half-hour interview about the summit. And the truth will come out from the question, the deeply incisive questions of one Sean Hannity. Well, there we go.

So no, everyone is a liar. Why would we believe anyone? We have two guys who are known for their dishonesty, who are going to communicate to us, to their people through state TV. That is what's going to happen. So there's no real way to know. And it's deeply dangerous that we sent in an ignoramus to have a one-on-one discussion with a murderous dictator about the future of nuclear security in the world. It's crazy.

It is absolutely crazy. It's just ridiculous. I mean, the meeting is supposed to be one-on-one. They're not going to have any staff present, what I read. And so Donald Trump, we know the one consistent thing about Donald Trump is that he lies to us all the time. We've caught him in a million lies. The press has caught him in a million lies, whatever the fucking debate about whether you want to call it a lie or not a lie. They are misstatements. They're lies. He doesn't tell the truth to the American people.

That is the one thing we know about him. So whatever he has said in this press conference, which you all know by now, but we don't, we have no way of knowing if it's true. And we have no way of knowing if Kim Jong-un's story is true either because he's also a liar. We have two liars meeting about the fate of the world and nuclear weapons. And then they're going to come out and they're going to give press conferences. And we're all going to pretend like this is going to tell us something about what happened. Why would we do that why would we pretend that this is going to give us any information that we can rely on i don't understand like we obviously we're not the prediction business

so we don't really know what's going to happen um but it it does feel like both sides are more interested in the spectacle than the substance yeah and that they both have real incentives to at least walk away in the first day with a win of some kind like even if there's no agreement that we'll meet again right um you know so it's like i think they both do not want this to blow up in their face so it's's possible that Trump's like, we're dealing with two fairly unpredictable beings here. So, I mean, let's not forget, as we just mentioned, Trump is fighting with Canada right now. So he can fight with anyone, but on its face, it feels like we're going to, where people are, they're going to sit down, they're going to have a discussion.

They're going to make some measure of a decision to keep talking, which is how even with normal leaders, this is how this would most likely happen. Or at least it's a little weird because we're sort of putting the cart before the horse by bringing the two principles to speak to each other so soon in the process. But usually people, the discussions don't blow up in the room. They may blow up later when you get to the actual details. Because I can't speak for Kim Jong-un, but I do know that Donald Trump is not a details guy, so it doesn't feel like he's getting into the nitty-gritty of the inspections regime we would be interested in in exchange for sanctions relief. Which Trump admitted. Trump said he thinks he's well prepared

because he doesn't have to prepare much. It's all about attitude. And this is what Axios calls his... Go ahead. Can I say this one thing about this? Which is, and his evidence for why he didn't need to prepare was that Hillary Clinton prepared for the debates

and he won the presidency. Yeah, great. Okay. Great, smart. this is this is what axes calls his his great man theory trump's great man theory which is trump thinking this is all about personalities um is that what diplomacy is all about just two personalities in a room making a deal um that is what a lot of the media would like to think it is about. Yeah, which is why this plays a trumpet's vantage is because the media covers spectacle and they do not – and they cover individuals and personalities and they do not do a good enough job covering like systemic conditions that lead to certain decisions being made. Yeah, we cover it like Shakespeare and not substance, right?

Yeah, we cover it like Shakespeare and not substance, right? So there has to be a narrative arc and there has to be a protagonist and an antagonist and a hero's journey and all the other things you learn in Creative Writing 101. And what gets lost in that is, as you pointed out, the broader forces that are the things that actually drive political sentiment and world events as opposed to just two dudes in a room, which is how the Trump people are pitching this. Yeah. And we can look at that and say, what brought Kim Jong-un to the table? Well, a couple of things. One, it may be that the sanctions on North Korea have gotten to a point where their economy is suffering so badly that Kim Jong-un wants the sanctions to go away. Number two, Kim Jong-un is at the table because he has finally developed the capability to launch a nuclear weapon and potentially strike the United States. And so now that he has that power and thinks he can be taken seriously, he will go to the negotiating table and start talking. So these are – it wasn't – I saw somewhere, you know, I think this was in Axios as well.

They were like even some Democrats have said that Trump's madman routine on Twitter, calling him, you know, Rocket Man and all this kind of stuff has brought Kim Jong-un to the table. Bullshit. I don't know which Democrats said that, but they're stupid. to the table. Bullshit. I don't know which Democrats said that, but they're stupid. There are broader systemic conditions that brought Kim Jong-un to the negotiating table, and it was not Donald Trump's fucking tweets. Yeah. I mean, there are a couple of things on the Democrats here. One is, part of the argument was, that's how we got the hostages back. So what crazy tweets of Barack Obama's led to the hostages that came back during Barack Obama's presidency? Or George Bush's or Bill Clinton's.

How many administrations have gotten hostages from North Korea? Right. And second, I do think that the Democratic response here is not to try to get to the hawkish side of Trump on North Korea. That is correct. We can point out that he has given away the store at the front end. He has given Kim Jong-un recognition on the international stage that he would never otherwise get from agreeing to this summit. And that's a critique of his strategic approach of achieving a diplomatic solution. But we should be for a diplomatic solution here. I don't want to get to the world where our sort of partisan

polarization suggests that, well, if Trump's going to do diplomacy, then we're going to call diplomacy soft and we're going to try to be even tougher On North Korea than Trump I think there's no political point in that But it's also just stupid Like we can You know the RNC today To commemorate Trump's

Historic summit Sends out an APOA research document Trying to compare Trump's success to Obama's Fairs in North Korea Let's be better in the RNC here and just let's be forthright in our critique, but let's not try to choose a political position simply because it's the polar opposite of Trump's on North Korea. No, I will praise the willingness of the Trump administration to say, you know, there's nothing wrong with engaging in diplomacy, even if it's with a dictator with nuclear weapons, that we should meet some of these leaders one-on-one. What I'm

critiquing is the fact that we sent a fucking moron to go do the job, who is bragging about how he's not prepared, who has not studied the issues at all, who doesn't care, who hasn't prepared for the meeting at all. That's the problem with this. It's not the problem – the negotiation and the diplomacy itself is not the problem. The problem is who we're sending, and that's always going to be the case. Would you – given a choice, would you send – you can send one of these three people. Donald Trump, Dennis Rodman, or the person who came up with the idea of renaming the International House of Pancakes to be the International House of Burgers?

Definitely the IHOP person, because I don't know. It got them a bunch of attention today, so who knows? But that's a tough one. Certainly not... I love the whole Dennis Rodman storyline coming back into play here. Who was the person? That's great. Donald Trump, Dennis. Oh, was it? It was Trump, Flack, J. Hogan, Gidley who explained that Dennis Rodman and Trump had some sort of relationship because Dennis Rodman was the greatest rebounder in NBA history, which is a debatable but arguable point. And Trump was the greatest negotiator in the history of the world.

So the two of them had something in common, which was basically North Korea-style propaganda emanating from our own White House via our own state TV, Fox News. Yeah, no, it makes total sense. Okay, let's do worst outcome, best outcome of these negotiations. What do you think? I mean, the worst outcome, I don't know if we have to say it out loud. I think we can all guess what the worst outcome is. Yeah, we know what the worst outcome is.

I mean, best outcome is, ironically, the Iran deal, but for North Korea. Right. And I think that is the test here, is does what comes out of this. And look, I don't think we should – again, we need patience here. Negotiations and diplomacy require patience. I don't think that out of this summit anyone should necessarily expect, especially since they're only going to meet for a few hours and they've already moved up their departure and leaving early, that these guys are going to walk out of here with a full deal. Maybe it's just the beginning of many different negotiating sessions. But I think at the end of the day, we have to say,

does this deal match or is it better than the Iran deal, which had tough, verifiable international inspections? It's probably even harder for various reasons for international inspectors to go into North Korea and make sure there are no nuclear weapons or nuclear weapon production anywhere than it was even in Iran. Is Kim willing to give up all of his nuclear making capacity? Iran, of course, we don't think they had a bomb by the time that the deal was done, but they had a lot of uranium enrichment capacity. And so the question is, can we have that same verifiable result with North Korea? And I think that's, and look, Trump didn't think that the Iran deal was any good. So now we'll see if he gets a deal that

is as good or better than the Iran deal. Somehow, I feel like the right-wing critics of the Iran deal will not hold Trump in his deal with North Korea to a similar standard they held Obama's. I feel like for this brief moment, they will walk away from their long-term intellectual consistency on issues of foreign policy. Yeah, of course, because they're fucking hypocrites. I saw some already complaining today that Trump has decided not to bring up any human rights abuses in this meeting at all, which I'm not terribly surprised because I know that Trump is not a human rights crusader. A lot of the criticism of the Iran deal was, okay, well, what about all of Iran's state-sponsored terror around the Middle East? What about their missile production? What about all this other stuff?

And it's like, yeah, we know Iran does a lot of bad shit. These negotiations were about nuclear weapons and the potential for them to develop nuclear weapons, which would change the game in the Middle East. And our idea is not – our thought in the Iran deal was not, you know, we'll do this deal and then suddenly everything in Iran will be wonderful. It's that the worst threat here is a nuclear-armed Iran. And I think – look, I think with North Korea, the same thing. The worst threat here is North Korea having a whole bunch of nuclear weapons, especially nuclear weapons that can strike the United States. And if for some reason we can neutralize that threat, there's probably still going to be awful human rights abuses in North Korea and awful other things that they do that we should also continue to try to take care of and to stop. But this focus is on nuclear weapons. But this focus is on nuclear weapons.

I absolutely think he should have brought it – he should bring it up or should have brought it up depending on what timeline you're resisting in right now. It would be perfunctory at best even with a different president who actually seemed to care about human rights. Right. But we should get the best deal we can that makes the world as safe as possible. And to your point, that's not going to get – that's not going to solve all the problems in North Korea for sure. But, but I think it is important in how the president of the United States addresses, responds to tweets about someone who runs death camps in his country, that we don't lose sight of that fact in turning this into some sort of bromance. That's right.

Right. So I think like that has – that should be – it won't be, but it should be in part of the context for how we discuss and how Trump discusses Kim Jong-un and the North Korean regime. When you walk out and say he's a great guy. I respect him a lot. Way better than Justin. like that has consequences. It sends a message to human rights abusers in other authoritarian regimes all over the world. Right? We have to have and not I'm not for any way saying the Obama administration was perfect on this. We absolutely were not. But we we need to value the idea of standing up for human rights. And if you're just going to give a real pat on the back and some Twitter plaudits to a guy who runs death camps and stars his country, that's a bad thing. And I think Trump should be criticized for that if and when he does that. Kim Jong-un is not your BFF. All right.

Let's talk about some health care news. Last week, the Trump administration's Justice Department said it would no longer defend the Affordable Care Act in court, specifically the part of the law that protects up to 130 million Americans with preexisting conditions from being denied coverage by insurance companies. The Justice Department took the position as part of a case in which Texas and 19 other conservative attorneys general are challenging the Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional. We are going to talk about what an unusual and dramatic step this is by the Justice Department with our guest, Don Verrilli, whose job it was to defend the ACA to the Supreme Court when he was Obama's Solicitor General. But I thought you and I should talk about sort of the political aspects of this story first. First of all, just another example of how unbelievably awful Jeff Sessions is as Attorney General. There was this decision that happened, I think this came out on Thursday night. Today, on Monday, Jeff Sessions,

by the way, also decided that the United States will no longer grant asylum to victims of domestic violence or gang violence, that those will no longer be categories by which we look to people coming here from other countries fleeing violence and say, we will grant you asylum, which is just beyond despicable to me. And we should just take a second to talk about that before we get back to the healthcare thing. It runs so counter to who we as Americans at least thought we were prior to this moment, that it is. It is sickening. And I think it is a reminder, and I don't want to get overly dark here, but we get caught up in the tweets and the Mueller investigation and what crazy thing did Trump do today or where is Melania or all of this. And what we are missing underneath even the

policy travesties of this administration is just this fundamental shift in what it means to be an American, what it means to be America. There's some very basic things that have been at the core of our national narrative to ourselves of why we thought our country was exceptional and different. And like I said, I say this all the time, we have very often failed to live up to that belief in ourselves. because the president is, for better or worse, sets the moral tone for the country. And we have an amoral human being in that office right now. And so the idea is we're now going to polarize the country around this idea. It will now be, for a significant portion of the Republican Party, a sign of weakness to care about the most vulnerable immigrants, the ones that, despite all the other fights about legalization, the Dreamers, anything else, the one thing that

there has been some measure of bipartisan agreement on was asylum seekers. That was truly at the core of what our country was about. And that changed today. And it's going to take a lot of work to get that back. It really is. This decision also reveals that Donald Trump's immigration policy is not about fixing a broken immigration system. It is not about protecting Americans from crime or from gangs or from drugs. It is not about protecting American jobs. Because if it was, there are a whole bunch of policies that they could have pursued that would have maybe done those things. This immigration policy is about cruelty. It is about telling people from other countries, you do not look like we do, and we do not want you here. We are going to separate, we're going to tear away children from their parents when they come here, fleeing from violence. For all the talk about MS-13, we want to protect Americans from gangs.

These are people who are fleeing from gangs, fleeing from gang violence, fleeing from domestic violence, coming to the United States saying, please save me. Do not send me back here. Save me. Save my children. And we are saying, no, go back. We don't want you. And there is no good reason for

that. There's no reason for that other than pure fucking racism. It is despicable. Despicable. The message and belief of the Republican Party under Trump, and the message we're sending to the world, is that empathy is weakness.

That's right. That compassion is weakness. That if you feel for these people, then you are soft and you are not welcome. And that is a lesson that we are teaching to a generation of Trump supporters. Yeah. And it's – I mean the – we are digging ourselves in this country. Trump, let me put it this way, Trump is digging America into a deep moral hole that's going to take a long time to come out of.

Yeah. And by the way, you know, everyone, we've said this before too, why does Jeff Sessions still keep his job after Trump attacks him on Twitter all the time about the Russia investigation? Well, Jeff Sessions keeps his job because while Rod Rosenstein is dealing with the Russia investigation and is in the spotlight, Jeff Sessions can go off and do all the horrible things on immigration that he's been dreaming about doing his entire career. And this, and now back to this Affordable Care Act decision, this is another thing that Jeff Sessions gets to do, And now back to this Affordable Care Act decision, this is another thing that Jeff Sessions gets to do, which is take this very unusual step, very not unprecedented but almost unprecedented step of saying that the Justice Department is not going to defend the law of the land.

And I have to say politically, last week we were talking about how to keep health care in the news since it's the top issue for most voters. Is this an actual gift for Democrats, this decision? And how should we talk about it? How should Democrats talk about it from now until the election? I think the simplest message is the Trump administration, the Republicans, want to make believe that protections for people with pre-existing conditions is unconstitutional. And they want to take those protections away from tens of millions of Americans. Yeah. If you want to stop that from happening, elect Democrats. Yeah.

And look, that's a message that that's not just going to be popular with Democratic voters or even independent voters, but Republican voters as well. I mean, Donald Trump himself at the beginning when he first became president said, well, the pre-existing condition part of the law, I like that. That's good. Of course, he then did everything he could to undermine it because he either doesn't care or he's a liar or he's too stupid to understand how the law works, probably a combination of all of the above. But now you're right. His administration is on record saying that pre-existing conditions, they believe that the law that protects people with pre-existing conditions is unconstitutional and they are siding with insurance companies that want to screw people over. That's where the Trump administration put themselves.

And even Donald Trump, by the way, can't believe that this is politically smart because of all the things he talks about on Twitter, of all the comments he makes, he has not said a word about this. A word. Because he knows how unpopular it is. But this is going to be one of those things where this is a gigantic, massively consequential thing. We're talking about it here. Our guest is going to talk about it. But it's also happened in the week of the summit, the week of the war with Canada of 2018. And it is going to be incumbent upon, we will do our part with our little microphones here, but Democrats are going to have to carry this last week, but Mitch McConnell and what would be a bit of massive, but somewhat impressively strategic cynicism, cancel the August recess so the Democrats who need to go home and campaign cannot do so. And Senator Schumer and the Democrats said they were going to spend that time, they were going to make that healthcare month and spend that time talking about healthcare. So this will be the test. Can they leverage that month to draw attention and focus to healthcare? And I think that's the

exact right approach to what's a pretty tough deal that McConnell's handed them. But they'll do that in August, and they got to do it every day between now and election day. Yeah, that's smart of Schumer. And one more thing. We were also talking last week with Ron Klain about how the court should be a top issue for our base, for Democratic voters in 2018. Well, now we've seen how Trump and the Republicans are trying to use the courts to undo the Affordable Care Act. And we also had a ruling today from the Supreme Court that said the state of Ohio is allowed to purge voters from the voter rolls just because they haven't voted in a while, which is something that will disproportionately disenfranchise people of color, people who are

poor, people who don't vote very often. And it is an awful decision. I saw Tim Miller on Twitter say, you know, I'd love to hear the MAGA people or even conservatives actually try to defend why this is the right decision to say it is okay for a state to take people who have registered to vote off the voter registration rolls just because they haven't voted in a couple years. And I didn't see any good responses to Tim. I didn't see any good defenses there. It is just unbelievable. I had the answer, which was it helps them win. That's the truce answer.

There's no other argument. That's what this is about. Nothing more. Yeah. And look at this. If you don't think the court's important, you don't think this court is a big issue, we have one of these justices retire. We are going to have, and Trump gets to appoint, a justice like Neil Gorsuch.

This was a 5-4 decision today. It was down to 5-4. We get another justice like Gorsuch. Things like the Affordable Care Act are in jeopardy. Things like voter protections, voter enfranchised, people voting rights are in jeopardy here. It is, you know, Jeff Sessions and his Justice Department, they get to do whatever they want. It is a bad, bad combination. And people should very much care about this issue as we head into November. But now, when we come back, we will talk more about this, the decision

of the Justice Department not to defend the Affordable Care Act with a man who knows this issue very well, the former Solicitor General of the United States, Don Verrilli, when we come back. On the pod today, we have the former Solicitor General of the United States, Don Verrilli. Don, welcome. It's great to be talking with you. How are you guys? We're good. We're good. We miss you.

We miss you, too. We're good, all things considered. Yeah, exactly. Right, exactly. Don, we wanted to bring you on to talk about the Justice Department's decision not to defend the Affordable Care Act in court. This is obviously a law that's been challenged many times before. You defended it before the Supreme Court in 2012. What was your first reaction when you heard that the current leadership of the Justice Department no longer wanted to

defend critical sections of this law? Well, it was really sad. You know, I try to be fair-minded and think, put myself in the other person's shoes and think, you know, is there some way you can justify this? But I've got to say, I just don't see it. It's the job of the Justice Department, and it's the job of the Justice Department to defend statutes when they're attacked as constitutional, and we can talk about why. And it's really hard to see a good reason that would justify them deciding that they weren't going to step up and defend this law. Yeah, I was going to say, so how does it work when the Justice Department reaches this kind of decision to not defend a current law?

What kind of precedent is there for this? How unusual is it? And, you know, why is there sort of this precedent in place that the Justice Department is supposed to defend laws even if they don't necessarily – even if the current administration doesn't necessarily agree with them? Right. Well, we can descend into legal wonkery but basically it's a pretty common sense notion which is that in our system, the congress makes the law. And if you want to change the law, you go to Congress. So if a new president comes in, a new executive, and they don't like a law in the books,

the answer is go to Congress and try to change it. And of course, that's exactly what President Trump and the Republicans tried to do. And the Congress refused to repeal the ACA. The problem with not defending a law in court when someone's challenged it as constitutional is that there's a way in which you're really taking the law into your own hands and deciding that you're going to change the law by not defending it and allowing the courts to strike it down rather than going through the process under our constitution that you're supposed to go through, which is having Congress pass a new law. So that's the basic principle and there are some occasions on which the Justice Department

won't defend the law but they're very rare and the basic standard that the Justice Department historically applies is the standard of whether there is a reasonable argument available to defend the law against constitutional challenge. And if there is, then the Justice Department is supposed to defend the law. It's only when there isn't that the Justice Department goes in and says we can't defend the law. And so it has happened sometimes in our history, It has happened sometimes in our history, but it's very rare. And I think the real problem here is it's very hard to get to the conclusion that there's no reasonable argument to defend the law in the face of the challenge that Texas and these other states have brought. Don, I think this was before your time as Solicitor General, but I may have my timeline wrong. But how would you compare and contrast this to the decision of Barack Obama's DOJ to not defend sections of DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act?

Yeah, right. Everybody's bringing up that comparison now. And I wasn't yet SG, and I actually didn't play any part in the decision not to defend DOMA because the law firm I had worked for before going to the government brought one of the challenges to DOMA and so was within two years of me coming in. And so I didn't participate in that decision. But I think I understand it pretty well. And I think I can explain the difference. And I think there are two really big differences. And the first one is this. That decision was made not to defend DOMA in 2011. And DOMA, of course, had been passed some, what, 15 years earlier. And there had been really important developments in those 15 years. One was I think as a society, we came to have an

understanding that a law that we maybe thought in the mid-1990s was an acceptable law came to have an understanding that a law that we maybe thought in the mid-1990s was an acceptable law came to be understood as something that was totally unjustifiable discrimination against people for no good reason. for this conversation. In 2003, the Supreme Court decided a case called Lawrence against Texas, which said that it was unconstitutional to criminalize consensual same-sex relationships and basically recognized the premise of constitutional dignity for gay and lesbian people. And so when you come to the question of whether there's a reasonable argument to defend the constitutionality of DOMA in 2011, didn't have health insurance under the ACA. That law was signed by this president just a few months ago. Presumably, he didn't think the law was unconstitutional when he signed it into law and there hasn't been any intervening change in the law or in society or in factual circumstances that's anything comparable to what happened

with respect to DOMA. And then there's another point too. Again, this is kind of a wonkish point but I do think it's really important that even if you think that zeroing out the tax for not having insurance makes the mandate provision of the law unconstitutional standing alone. And even if you think there's no reasonable argument for that, that doesn't mean you bring the entire ACA down or you also wipe out the prohibition on discriminating against people with preexisting conditions. The question under the law is whether Congress would have wanted those other

provisions to survive even if this invalid provision was found unconstitutional. And the answer to that seems to me to be blazingly obvious because the Congress in 2017, it zeroed out the tax but it left all the rest of the law in place. And that's not an ideological thing. That's just a neutral principle that Justice Department is supposed to apply and courts are supposed to apply in adjudicating these cases. It says that you try to respect the intent of Congress as the body in our system that makes laws and you preserve as much of the law as you can preserve consistent with holding the other provision unconstitutional. You know, I mean that's exactly what happened in the ACA itself with the decision of Chief Justice Roberts about Medicaid and the Medicaid expansion in 2012.

Remember, he struck down the mandatory character of that. He said that Congress couldn't require every state to adopt a Medicaid expansion. But then all he did was strike down the mandatory part of the expansion. He left the expansion in place and made it optional for states to accept it. And that's an application of this principle, which as I said is just a neutral principle. It's not really even about what your views of the Constitution or substantive law amount to. It's about how courts are supposed to behave in a situation like this and respecting the judgments of Congress, which after all are a reflection of the democratic process and have that democratic legitimacy to them.

Trevor Burrus Don, I don't know if you remember this, but in your confirmation hearing, a senator who looked a lot like Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that the Solicitor General should have resigned over the decision not to defend DOMA. So he either, as we know from some of his comments, he has a short memory or no sense of irony. So I found that in the research I found pretty amusing. Yeah, I do remember that, Dan. So, Don, what are the next steps with this case? What happens now that the government is not defending the law when this case goes to court? The case is before a federal district judge, trial-level judge down in Texas, and it was brought by these 20 states.

And, of course, you now have DOJ coming in and it's not just that they didn't defend. They filed a brief saying they thought the law was unconstitutional and that you should also strike down the ban on discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions. But a number of other states led by California have intervened in the case to defend the law's constitutionality. So I suspect what will happen, pretty sure what will happen is that California and those other states will take up the role of providing a vigorous, aggressive defense of the constitutionality of the law. And I'm quite sure as this case goes through the system that ultimately that's the view that's going to prevail. What concerns you most about the precedent that this current Justice Department is setting by taking this kind of action? What do you think is at stake

for the rule of law here? Well, I do think it goes right to the heart of the question of respect for the rule of law because the risk of allowing this kind of a decision is that you'll just make it as an administration on the basis of political considerations and not really be applying the standard that the department historically applies, which is whether there's a reasonable argument to defend the law. When laws that you don't like are challenged, you'll just make a judgment that you won't defend them. And then you'll go in and you'll tell the court you don't think there's a reasonable argument. But it will become increasingly clear that what you're doing is essentially making a political judgment to allow

the courts to take out a law that you don't like rather than going through the process that our constitution provides for, which is having the Congress consider whether to do that. And the more you do it, the easier it's going to get to do. And then when one administration does it and the opposing party comes in later, then of course the risk is that they're going to point to the precedent of the prior administration and say, well, if they did it, we should do it too. And you're going to point to the precedent of the prior administration and say, well, if they did it, we should do it too. And you're going to go into one of these downward spirals that we've seen over and over again with respect to the norms that really matter and really hold our constitution together and make it work. Now, Don, I read that three Justice Department

officials registered a protest over this decision. You obviously worked in the Justice Department a long time. A lot of your colleagues, former colleagues are there. What do you think about this? Yeah. So what they did was they withdrew from the case. They took their names off the brief. That was an extremely unusual thing to do.

And while I don't know what was in their minds, I haven't talked to them, it's a years and came to have just incredible respect for them because they are apolitical. They do put their political views aside. They serve Democratic administrations and Republican administrations. And they very often go into court and argue on behalf of the United States for a position that they don't agree with personally and they take great professional pride in their ability to do that. So assuming as I think it's fair to assume that they did find that this one was over the line, that's really something. It's quite significant. It's really something. It's quite significant.

Yes. Well, hopefully as this case moves on, the courts will find that the lawsuit is somewhat frivolous against the ACA here. Well, you know, but we need to be careful about that because you remember back with the initial challenges to the ACA when they were filed in 2010, a lot of folks on the progressive side, they had kind of a similar reaction saying, well, you know, this challenge has got no substance to it at all and didn't really take it seriously. And on the right, the machine whirled into gear and the argument gained more and more steam over time. And what seemed like a fringe position in 2010 became a mainstream position on the right in 2012. And we came within a hair's breadth of losing that case. So I think we need to be on our toes about this too because I imagine that we're going to see something quite like that as this goes forward.

Good thing to keep in mind. Don, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. My pleasure. Great talking with you. All right. Thanks to Don Varelli for joining us today. And we will see you again on Thursday.

And it will be me, Tommy, and Ben Rhodes right here in studio talking about the news. Talk to everyone next week. All right. See you later.