Pod Save America - “Kochs, votes, and ostrich coats.”

Episode Date: August 2, 2018

Trump obstructs justice via Twitter, Manafort faces a jury, and the Koch brothers pick a fight with Trump Republicans on trade. Then Dan talks to Nick Thompson of Wired about the fantastic job Facebook has been doing lately. And Jason Kander joins Lovett and Dan to talk about protecting the vote and his new book, “Outside the Wire.”

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Jon Favreau is on vacation. We hope he's having a lovely time in Pyongyang. I'm here with Dan. We're going to talk about the Manafort trial, Trump's increasingly agitated tone on Twitter as Mueller ramps up, and we'll talk about the Koch brothers' feud with Trump Republicans and how that will impact the midterms. Dan talks with Nick Thompson, the editor of Wired, about Facebook

and how cool and perfect it's been. Dan, the editor of Wired, about Facebook and how cool and perfect it's been. Dan, you've been dying to talk about Facebook. I learned a lot just listening in the studio. It is a great conversation. Everybody should listen to that. And we'll also be talking to the host of Majority 54 and the founder of Let America Vote, Jason Kander, about the fight against Republican vote suppression and his new book, Outside the Wire. Last thing on Crooked Conversations, we're launching a series of interviews by Ben Rhodes on his time in the White House drawn from his new book. The first episode is a conversation with Favreau and Cody Keenan about writing

speeches for President Obama. Dan, first question to you, why do you think I didn't make the cut? That was going to be my first question to you. Let's hope I was out of town. You can check that out now. It's actually a great conversation. All right, Dan, let's get into it. On Tuesday, we marked a very special anniversary. It was the one-year mark of John Kelly's tenure as White House Chief of Staff. This is from a year ago in Politico, quote, John Kelly's big challenge, controlling the tweeter-in-chief, the new chief of staff is already shaking up the West Wing, but can he bring discipline to the president's Twitter bursts? What a year it's been. Trump marked this anniversary via tweet on Wednesday.

He said, quote, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, I can't even read it, it's so absurd. Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this rigged witch hunt right now before it continues to stain our country any further. Dan, do you feel, was it stained or strained? It doesn't matter. Do you feel stained or strained by the witch hunt? I feel stained and strained by the Trump presidency. I will say that also to mark the one-year anniversary of John Kelly's tenure, the White House announced that John Kelly would be staying through 2020, to which point I was reminded that John Kelly still worked in the White House because I had completely forgotten about that. Yeah, it reminds me of the old joke, first prize is a year at the White House, second prize is two years.

Yes. I mean, the tweet, like, everything about the tweet is sort of a microcosm of politics in the Trump era. What you have in its, if you boil it down to its essence, is the President of the United States ordering his attorney general to end the independent criminal investigation into the president, his family, and his campaign. And which would be, like if he had done that via a press release or he had said that into a microphone, would be the biggest story in politics in 15 years, right? Right. But instead, it's sort of like that happened, you know, around, you know, early in the morning, our time before people without two months old are up. And by the time I got to my breakfast, people were sort of over it. And it

sort of says a lot about both how absurd Trump is and how absurd we all assume Trump is, which I think is pretty dangerous. Right, right. There's sort of two things going on. There's one piece of this, which is obviously true. So the Times is reporting that Mueller is looking at Trump's tweets in part because some of the more obstruction-y ones, the ones aimed at Comey and Sessions and DOJ came at, and this is a quote, as Mr. Trump was also privately pressuring the men, both key witnesses in the inquiry about the investigation. Mr. Mueller is examining whether the actions add to attempts to obstruct the investigation by both intimidating witnesses and pressuring senior law enforcement officials to tamp down the inquiry.

What's strange here is two things seem to be true at the same time. On the one hand, these are serious. You know, when the president tweets at Jeff Sessions telling him he should do something, you can argue as to whether or not it's an official order, but you can't argue that it's pressure. Of course it's pressure. But then you have Rudy Giuliani saying it's not a call to action. You have his backup goon, Jay Sokolow, saying he doesn't feel that he has to intervene in the process, nor is he intervening. And it's also true, Dan, that we're all used to this. You're right. So how do we, what do you make of that? How seriously should we take these tweets? On the one hand,

they're incredibly serious. On the other hand, as you said, people move on. I mean, I think we should take them more seriously than Trump does. I mean, it is, there's like so many parts of the explanation around this, which is, you know, whether I can remember it was Giuliani or Sarah Huckabee Sanders, but it doesn't really matter. But they said, I can remember it was Giuliani or Sarah Huckabee Sanders, but it doesn't really matter. But they said, it's not an order. It's just venting. And one, the president doesn't get to vent like that.

And everything a president says carries the weight of authority. Jeff Sessions works for him. The president can fire Jeff Sessions. And when a president says these things, it carries weight and has impact, right? Even if it's like some of these other ones about where he's saying the Justice Department should investigate Hillary Clinton or should investigate the Clinton Foundation or Podesta or whatever the crazy QAnon conspiracy theory that he's promoting is, when the president says something, there are people in the government who work for the president who respond to that. And so presidents, it's not great to have a president with verbal diarrhea. That is bad.

And the other part of this, to your point, is the reaction to this is from so many reporters in particular about the reports that Mueller's looking at Trump tweets is, oh, they must have nothing if he's looking at tweets. And I think that's just a really dumb way to look at it. And you've made this point before, which is because Trump commits all the crimes out loud, we think of them differently and less seriously than if he were to do them in secret, as we usually assume crimes are committed. And so if the tweet was an email or a memo to file from Trump to John Kelly saying, tell Jeff Sessions to fire Mueller, then that would be Watergate-style stuff. But because he says it out loud, it is treated differently. But if someone were to just stamp secret on the tweet and slip it to the New York Times, we'd be in a very different place politically. Yeah, it's it's it actually I'll be honest, it does make me nervous because it's exact you're exactly right. He is committing

obstruction out in the open. I think that's something Adam Schiff also said this week. And Robert Mueller is taking it very seriously. But whenever I see a report that says Robert Mueller is focusing on tweets, I get nervous, not because it's not justified, but because I expect the political discussion around those kinds of allegations to go nowhere because people want it to be some kind of mystery that's unraveled or some secret that's turned over from some illicit tape or backroom deal. Donald Trump has a recording with Michael Cohen where he says, pay this woman, and it's international news. If he were to go on Twitter and say, sure, I paid her, it wouldn't make as much of a dent because somehow because

it's done in public, it's seen as somehow less illicit. I mean, the tapes is a really good point, right? Like through much of this discussion, if you remember when Trump started fighting with Comey early on, he said – after he fired Comey, he said, Comey better hope there aren't tapes. And at that time, all of – everyone in politics was like, if only there were Watergate-style tapes. Like that's what got Nixon is the tapes. We're like, that could never possibly happen. No one is dumb enough to get recorded anymore. And then a tape came out. And it's not a tape about collusion or conspiracy to defraud the United States or whatever, however you want to describe that crime. But it is a tape that contradicts the story of the president, his attorneys, his press secretary, his governor about paying hush money to cover up an affair and possibly violating multiple financial disclosure and campaign finance laws. And that washed through the system within a couple of days. Yeah, it led the news for a long time, but when was the last time anyone talked about that? And that sort of, I think,

is important for us as sort of progressives and people who are deeply concerned about the country to set our expectations on what is going to come from Mueller, right? We already have Trump admitting via tweet that he knew that Flynn lied to the FBI when he fired him, contradicting what he said before. We already have Trump on tape saying that he paid this hush money, you know, all these things. And the polling has not changed. The political environment around it has not changed. We've just been sort of stuck in this status quo where Republicans think he's – most Republicans think he's innocent. All Democrats think he's guilty. Independents lean towards the guilty but are not super worked up about it.

And we just continue to churn on through the absurdity. Right. I mean this isn't a movie and impeachment doesn't require a twist ending. There doesn't need to be a big surprise. Nobody has to have been dead all along. The village doesn't have to exist in modern times, right? We can have all the information and it can still be incredibly serious. So let's talk about why we have seen a series of unhinged tweets by Donald Trump. You know, this was this tweet about Sessions came in a fusillade. There was Bob Miller's Bob Mueller's conflicted 17 angry Democrats. Paul Manafort worked for Reagan. These

charges have nothing to do with collusion, hoax tweaks, phony dossier. I mean, it was a best of Bruce tweet storm. One of the reasons this is happening is his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is now on trial. The trial has begun. We have learned a lot so far. Dan, have you ever considered buying a $15,000 ostrich coat? No, but I have been very interested in a matching ostrich vest, which I am told Paul Manafort also purchased. So I think, you know, look, the Manafort trial is unfolding. Adam Davidson in The New Yorker had a great piece walking through the charges and the implication. He said this,

Manafort's earlier schemes, the ones from before 2014, are fairly dramatic, involving tens of millions of dollars and apparently a brazen effort to avoid paying taxes. By contrast, his alleged crimes in 2016 are quite small by international criminal standards. The fact pattern laid out by the prosecutors raises the question, what did this desperate man do when he was handed a lifeline

at the moment he most needed it? He took no payment directly from the Trump campaign. So what did he get? And what did he offer in exchange? Though these questions are unlikely to be answered directly in the trial, Mueller and the public wants them answered. Dan, do you think that Donald Trump wants those questions answered? And do you think this might be a source of his elevated Twitter tone?

I always wrestle with this theory that Trump is angrily tweeting or acting irrational or unstable because he knows something's coming, right? I think much of the Trump presidency is a debate between causation and correlation. Is he just acting crazy and something's happening, or is he acting crazy because something's happening? Right, right, right. And so who knows, right? He is a mercurial, infantile, pretty unstable person with a serious anger problem. Look, he should be very concerned about the Manafort trial because Mueller is putting all the pressure in the world on Manafort in this trial. And whether this happens in the context of this trial or after Manafort might be convicted, the pressure on Manafort to cooperate goes up,

right? That's why, based on what I know from all the various law and orders, that's one of the reasons why you bring these things to trial is to try to put pressure on a potential cooperating witness. That should be very worrisome to Trump. And the Adam Davidson piece hits at something that I think is not talked about enough, which is when you look at Manafort's history, right, working for these strong men, sort of gun for hire all over the world, is that he expects to get paid a lot of money for every single thing he does. So it is very, and suspiciously, out of character for him to go take a job working for free. Yeah, he's not like a pro bono guy. Yeah, he's not. Like there's nothing in his history that says

he just cares so much about the direction of the country that he's willing to work for free. And so what was in it for Manafort here? What, you know, what, like how connected is it to the fact that the Republican party changed its platform to be incredibly pro-Russia in the dark of night? How connected is it to the various meetings that happened with Russians or Russia's efforts to help Trump? Those are all the questions that we need answers to. I think Mueller probably

knows more about them than we do for sure, but Trump should be very nervous about it. Or maybe he's just upset because the DVR didn't work when Judge Jeanine Pirro shook him on. Who knows? But he should be worried. Which leads to sort of what has been going on behind the scenes. So we've had these crazy Trump tirades. We've had this Manafort trial happening. Meanwhile, there have been two big stories moving the ball forward on the Mueller investigation. The Washington Post reports the following. In a letter sent Monday, Mueller's team suggests that investigators would reduce

the number of questions about potential obstruction of justice they would ask in person and instead seek some answers in written form. And then you have in the Times reporting that Trump has told advisors he is eager to meet with investigators to clear himself of wrongdoing.

This is the best. In effect, he believes he can convince the investigators for the special counsel of his belief that their own inquiry is a witch hunt. It is the art of the deal, Dan. Donald Trump can shut down Robert Mueller with the power of his arguments. What do you think? If it helps, yes. I think Donald Trump should do it. He should meet with them. I think he's got a chance. We're all with them. I think he's got a chance. I agree. We're all on your side, Donald. Give it a go. I love that it's also, it's presented as against the advice of his counsel.

And his counsel is terrible. It's not like he's got the best guys. He's got Rudy Giuliani, which is, I think, basically at this point, maybe 75% of 90s Rudy Giuliani mentally. And then you have Jay Succo, who has never not seemed like a criminal. Look, you know, this is a Maggie Haberman piece. You know, she is she's got that place wired. People criticize her all the time. But at the very least, it seems like Trump wants people to think that he wants to talk to Mueller. But I'm also willing to believe that he has gotten high on his own supply here. I'm not sure what to make of it, but there is this conflict. His lawyers have been pushing off this interview for months and months and months, while at the same time, over the course of the last six months, there have been these stories again and again that

Trump is angsting to talk to the Mueller investigation. What do you make of that divide? Do you think it's just muddying the waters? Do you think there's actually a conflict here between TV Rudy and Trump? You know, it's always, you're reading any article about the Trump administration from like a super well-sourced journalist who's well-sourced in all of the various warring houses of the Trump family. It's a little like you can sort of see all the different strains. And so it's a little hard to know. And I think maybe both these things are true. That Trump and his loyalists want people to know that Trump wants to talk to Mueller because he certainly doesn't want people to think he – because they're not dumb.

They're not incredibly dumb politically. If it were to say Trump doesn't want to talk to him, then that suggests that either he's scared or he's guilty, right, just in the common perception of these things. But Trump's attorneys also know that it is insane to have Trump speak to Mueller. He may override them, but they want everyone to know that they were giving him the solid legal advice, right? Every attorney who appears on these cable panels or is quoting these stories thinks Trump is putting himself on a lot of risk to do the interview. So whether it's Giuliani or Jay Cyclone, I thought you were very generous with 75% of 90s Rudy Giuliani. I think that is quite a stretch.

Or maybe it says a lot about how lame 90s Rudy Giuliani was. So I think that that is an open – it's not clear to me which way – whether that's the attorneys or Trump or maybe it's both who are trying to get their side of the story out. That's the attorneys or Trump, or maybe it's and the Republican media to give him a clean bill of health no matter what. So the more he muddies up Mueller, the more he muddies up the investigation, the less damaging the report will be when it comes out. And so I think he wants to put this off as long as possible, not just in the sense you want to put a dentist appointment off, but because it gives him more chance to get his propaganda out there. Right, right. And John Kelly has not succeeded in his

first year to stop Trump from incriminating himself on Twitter. And I don't think he's going to succeed over the next few months either. Okay, let's move on to the midterms. Let's talk about some intra-party fighting that isn't about the Democrats, which is nice. The Koch brothers are planning to spend up to $400 million to make sure they continue to have a red phone into the Speaker's office that he has to answer or he gets a shock. They're picking a fight with the anti-Trump trade wing of the Republican Party. Charles Koch criticized anti-trade policies and divisive leadership over the weekend. Wonder who he was referring to there. They've also declined to support the Republican candidate running for the Senate in North Dakota,

which is a very important race. The network, this is from the Washington Post, the network later announced a surprisingly small list of targeted races. Notably absent are the Senate contest in Indiana, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Koch leaders have expressed concerns about the GOP nominees in those three states. Trump responded by tweeting, the globalist Koch brothers, maybe he thinks they're Jewish, have been a total joke in real Republican circles, are against strong borders and powerful trade. Powerful trade.

I never sought their support because I don't need their money or bad ideas. They love my tax and regulation cuts, judicial picks and more. I made them richer. Their network is highly overrated. On and on and on. I'm going to keep going. Make America, you know, America first, American worker, blah, blah, blah. Though he does compliment them. He says, two nice guys with bad ideas

make America great again. Dan, is this a fight for the soul of the Republican Party? No, because the Republican Party has no soul. That is why. Look, I don't know how to really process this. I will say that Trump's tweet is one of the great cell phones in history, which is he says, I am funding for the working person, the forgotten man, the silent majority. I am the only one who will stand up for the working class. And then he tweets that he made billionaires richer with his tax and regulation policies, which is the exact point that every Democrat is trying to make on the campaign trail. So in that sense, thank you, John Kelly, for not keeping a tighter leash on the Twitter in chief. One of the things that I thought was fascinating is that this feud is taking place this week. We learned of two policies from the Trump administration. One, there's a Trump plan for a $100 billion unilateral tax cut, mainly benefiting the filthy rich.

That's what we talked about on Monday's pot. And then today, the Trump administration outlined an absurdly destructive policy to undo Obama era rules on emissions against not just the wishes of environmentalists, but also car companies that will lower fuel standards, but also stop states like California from setting their own stricter rules. So, you know, we can get to the politics of this fight and what Trump gets out of it. But Dan, is there an actual substantive disagreement here that they care about? Or is this trying to drum up an argument when on taxes and regulations and all the rest, they're pretty well aligned? I think that there is a disagreement on trade. And they disagree with the tariff policy. They disagree with getting out of TPP.

So that is an actual real policy disagreement within the Republican Party. Now, on balance, Trump is governing exactly like the Koch brothers would like him to govern. He passed – despite the fact that he ran against tax cuts for the wealthy and tax breaks for hedge fund managers and everything else, he immediately got in office and did that. And so the Koch brothers won a corporatist agenda that benefits billionaires like themselves. They have mostly gotten that other than this. I think that they have – they don't like Trump. Like they didn't support him in 2016. He would not be the candidate they wanted. They would prefer sort of a real standard Republican like Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney or some other person who could barely beat Ben Carson. And I do think that there is some lingering, I don't know if it's regret, but concern about what the Koch brothers unleashed.

Because it's worth remembering that when the Tea Party movement formed and became very angry and very aggressive, with a lot of racial animus around a black president, the Koch brothers helped fund the Tea Party and in doing so elected a lot of people who would become the foundation for the Trump wing of the Republican Party. And there's a little bit like they've already robbed the bank and now they're going to be concerned about it because they've gotten most of what they wanted. Same thing with the Chamber of Commerce, right, who in – after sort of the Christine O'Donnells and the Todd Akin, these other right-wing Tea Party Republicans were winning primaries, they decided to start getting involved for more establishment Republicans. I think it's probably too late because the Kochs have already lost the battle. They've won the battle policy-wise, but they've lost the battle politically. politically. And I think maybe they're trying to be better accepted at the country club, but I think it's sort of a moot point here. Right. I mean, this disagreement on policy is real, but money is the ultimate unifier for these people. And the Koch wing, the Paul Ryan wing of the Republican Party, which may not have a constituency, because they're getting what they want, they're not going to make too much trouble, which gets to the politics fight here.

You know, Donald Trump has a lot to gain from a fight with the Koch brothers, right? I mean, this is, he clearly sees an advantage in this. Yeah, I think he does. I disagree with our friend Brian's view in the always outstanding Crooked Media newsletter, What a Day, that this is show. I don't think anyone got in the back. I don't think like Jared Kushner and the Koch brothers got in the back of the room and came up with this fight so they would be good politically for Trump and the Republicans. But their fighting with billionaires is good for Trump. It's better

if he doesn't admit to having policies that help billionaires in the process of that fight, but it makes it seem like he is on the side of the working class. So it has benefits for him, but I think it is an actual disagreement between them that speaks to both policy disagreements and disagreements on political and governing strategy going forward. Right. I think it's a case of a good opportunity to pick a fight on an issue where there's a legitimate difference, but what there isn't is a legitimate feud, right? These are people that are mostly aligned. So let's talk about the specific implications of this. They've declined to support the Republican in North Dakota. That is an

incredibly close race. The Senate may hinge on whether Heidi Heitkamp can keep that seat. Do you think this will make a difference? Is this good news for us? No. And here's why. Because one, media is incredibly cheap in North Dakota relative to all these other states. And so it doesn't take a lot of money to make a real difference there. And so if the official Koch brother organizations, Americans for Prosperity, whoever else, do not buy ads there, there's nothing to say that the other donors in the Koch network aren't going to get involved. I think Kevin Cramer, who is the candidate there, is going to have no shortage of billionaire money to help him. So it's a little... The NRA used to

sort of pick two Democrats in races that they were already definitely going to win and endorse them so they could go around and tell everyone that it wasn't about politics, it was about policy. I think that there's a little bit of this here, which is they picked a candidate who their friends can help and they can say, well, look, we care about trade. I will also say that if this is a two-point race and control the Senate hinges on it,

they will probably come in at the end. Well, I'm glad we covered that because that was slightly more cynical than I expected and I enjoyed it immensely. Before we move on, before we get to your interview with Nick Thompson, which everybody should check out, last thing, a quick update on the Ohio 12th. Last Thursday, John and Dan spoke with Danny O'Connor, the Democrat running in the special election in Ohio's 12th congressional district. A new poll shows O'Connor trailing his Republican opponent, Troy Balderson, by just a single point. Donald Trump won this district by double digits in 2016 and registered Republicans outnumbered Dems in the district two to one. Trump announced this week he'll be campaigning for Balderson in Ohio this weekend.

Two things people can do. You can donate and you can sign up to make get out the vote calls through the National Virtual Phone Bank at dannyoconnorforcongress.com slash volunteer. This is a really important race. Nobody thought we had a chance here. And then all of a sudden we do. It's, you know, we got a shot, Dan. Yeah, he's great. He was really great on the podcast last week and is the kind of young, authentic voice

that we need in Congress. And just winning this, it would be fun. It'd be good. And it also makes it easier for us to take the majority, because now we've taken a seat no one else thought we would get before we even get to election day. So this is important. And I would encourage everyone to get out there and do what they can to help. Think about the panic it will instill in the remaining Republican incumbents who are afraid they're going to lose their seat. Even that is reason enough to help. So if you were going to buy, say, a $12,000 ostrich coat,

maybe think about getting an $11,500 ostrich coat and then give $500 to... I can't even finish it. All right, when we come back, we will have Dan's interview with Wired's Nick Thompson. We are pleased to be joined by Nick Thompson, the editor-in-chief of Wired, a contributor to CBS News, and someone who has written extensively about Facebook. Nick, welcome to Pod Save America. Thanks so much. I'm delighted to be here.

We are, like so much of the world, we are talking about Facebook. Nick, welcome to Pod Save America. Thanks so much. I'm delighted to be here. We are, like so much of the world, we are talking about Facebook today. And there's so much to unpack here with Facebook as it's become so sort of central to not just life, but politics. But I wanted to start with the debate that Facebook has been roiled in for at least the last few weeks publicly, which is their confusing or conflicting answers around how to handle InfoWars, the conspiracy theory site run by Alex Jones. What do you know about their thinking? Facebook is in a pickle on this issue. And it's in a pickle because it has a bunch of conflicting values and desires. They very much want to have their platform be free of conspiracy theories, particularly the awful stuff that Alex Jones puts out there. But on the other hand, they don't want to be in a position where they're the arbiter of truth. And we don't want them, or we shouldn't. People shouldn't want them to be in the position to be an arbiter of truth because

who knows what happens when they take on that responsibility. And then essentially, you've assigned them a huge editorial role, probably beyond what anyone should be comfortable with. So they've gone back and forth on this. At first they said, well, you know, InfoWars is not quite so bad that we're going to knock them off the platform, but they're bad enough that we're going to limit the reach of them in the algorithm. And then there was kind of outrage about that. And then they didn't want to respond, I would assume, to the outrage, right? You don't want to look as though you're reacting to just all the bad coverage you've gotten. So they've kind of slowly pushed their position forward and put more pressure on Infowars. So it's a real bind because they have their desire to keep this stuff off the platform, but they also do believe in free speech

and they also don't want to end up having to be arbiters of what is true and what is not. You know, the free speech argument always frustrates me because, I mean, two reasons. One, the word Facebook is most certainly not in the Constitution. Alex Jones has a right to speak. He doesn't have a right to monetize his conspiracy theories on Facebook. But even if you were to take Mark Zuckerberg's answer or Facebook's answer at face value that free speech is the argument for keeping them on the platform. Isn't that undermined by saying you can be on the platform, but then using your secret tech tools to show that speech to fewer people? I'm so glad you said that because I've been making that argument and nobody has sort of been grasping onto it, right? So it's funny, right? If Facebook

had an absolute position on free speech, they wouldn't limit him in the algorithm because they find the speech objectionable. If they had no value of free speech, right, they would take a totally different position. And so they've taken this funny, they've tried to kind of carve this very narrow path between the rocks where they say, we're in favor of free speech, so we'll let him say it. But we're not so completely absolutist on the position that we'll show it to the same number of people as we did before we decided it was objectionable. So yeah, Facebook is in a very complicated and conflicting position, and they've done a terrible job of explaining how they're trying to navigate this. There's always been this debate, right? I was reading

Kara Swisher's piece in the New York Times today about how Mark Zuckerberg originally told her 12 years ago that Facebook was a utility. Facebook has often over time pushed back against the idea that they're a media company, but I think they've been a little more open to that since then. What is the internal view? Does Facebook consider themselves a media company? I ask that because a media company had edits. They have a say of what comes on the platform and they make judgments about what sort of media is available there. Yeah. So internally at Facebook, they definitely don't think of themselves as a media company. But the crucial shift that has happened there, I think probably in the last six months,

is the realization that they're both a platform and a publisher as opposed to just a platform. So very much their early position was we are a platform onto which all information is equal. We don't have any of the responsibilities of publishers. And there are two huge problems with that. One, they don't take any responsibility for the quality of the information on it. They don't take any responsibility for helping readers sort fact from fiction, all of those things that newspapers and media do. Secondly, because they flattened all the hierarchy between different publications, because after all, they're just a platform and everybody is equal, they made it so the New York Times looks exactly the same as a fake newspaper that somebody in Macedonia started yesterday.

So that sort of foundational decision to think of themselves as just a platform is what allowed so much of the manipulation to thrive. And the legacy effects of that still exist. They still are built on a foundation of thinking they're just a platform. But about six months ago, maybe a year ago, they started to realize, OK, wait, we really screwed things up. We have to change it. So they are taking on more responsibilities. But there's also still a divide in the company. The former media people who very much think that they have a lot of responsibilities as a publisher, and they're the engineers and product

people, the old time Silicon Valley people who think, oh no, we're still 98% of platforms. So they definitely as a whole think of themselves as something that combines platform and publisher, but it's still big debate inside the company. Last week, Facebook lost a ton of money based on their earnings report. They came out, market penalized them greatly, lost the largest, I think, if not the largest, one of the largest single day losses. It was the largest in history, $120 billion. It's crazy. Right. And so there are two ways to look at that, right? And I'm not sure. And so my question would be sort of how Facebook looks at it and what's your sense of how maybe the business community or the tech community looks at it. One is, this is a warning sign to Facebook that it has to clean

up its act and solve these problems. The other version that worries me is cleaning up its act and getting itself in this limits growth, and therefore, it's an argument against making the changes that people on the outside and even some people on the inside have argued for. Yeah, I think it's more the latter. I think the market's reaction to that earnings call was looking at the numbers and listening to the comments saying, you know, operating margins are going to be less in the future than they are now. And one of the reasons they're going to be less is because privacy concerns, because

of the expense of tracking all this bad stuff on the platform, all the investment that Facebook has made to try to harden the platform against manipulation is expensive. Therefore, they're going to make less money. And so you could totally read that if you were a Facebook executive or a Facebook shareholder and say, well, wait a second. Why all this concern about privacy now? It's really, you know, it's hurting our profits. So I do think that is a legitimate concern. In reading some of your stories about this, particularly the story on, you know, it's hurting our profits. So I do think that is a legitimate concern. In reading some of your stories about this, particularly the story on Facebook's two years of hell and some of the other accounts of people who really know Facebook, there's some debate about how Facebook got itself in this mess, right? Part of it is, you know, some argument.

And the answer is probably all of the above, but it's some argument of naivete that there are bad actors out there who could use – bad actors, either the Russians or Alex Jones, who could use the platform that way. Another argument is that it's the growth at all cost attitude that not just dominates not just Facebook, but many of Silicon Valley's companies. And I'm curious your take on that. Yeah, I think both of those are important factors. I think the growth at all costs, particularly when you set up a company and you reward employees based on growth numbers and based on stock price, you create an incentive system that rewards, just as you say, growth at all costs. I also think it is undoubtedly true that Zuckerberg and the top people at Facebook did not recognize the way the platform could be manipulated. They had a very naive, perhaps self-centered view that getting more people to use Facebook will just ineluctably bring the world closer together.

Because after all, that's what Zuckerberg wanted. The idea was we'll create Facebook. It'll make the world more open connected. As more people use Facebook, the world will become more open connected, not the opposite. But I think deep down, there are also a couple of other core problems. And these are the ones that Facebook needs to think about the most. And the first is the algorithm. The algorithm is basically a set of rules, mathematical equations that determine what

we see in newsfeed. And as we all know, if you spend time on Facebook, it prioritizes outrage. And that is what created a fertile ground for Russian manipulation. It is what created a fertile ground for Donald Trump memes to spread so quickly. It has created, you know, a fertile ground for a lot of what drives America apart. Secondly, the way Facebook was set up, it pushes people into filter bubbles. Facebook would argue against this point or top executives at Facebook would disagree with me, but I think I'm right. And I think it pushes people into filter bubbles where they only see things that they agree with. And that, again, has a corroding effect on democracy. And again, it is also what made the platform ripe for all the manipulation and all the bad

things we've seen. And then the most complicated question for Facebook, the hardest question for Facebook, is that the business model is effectively based on slicing and dicing people into ever finer groups, so that a toothpaste company can figure out exactly who they can market to, or a shoe company can figure out exactly who will buy their shoes when they'll want to buy them, etc. But if your business model is based on slicing and dicing people into ever finer groups, But if your business model is based on slicing and dicing people into ever finer groups, does that inevitably create an environment where people who want to manipulate democracy can slice and dice people into different groups? Does it inevitably accelerate the filter bubble problem? Does doing all of that inevitably lead to more outrage, chaos, and BS on the platform? And that's a really hard fundamental question for Facebook. So, yes, it's totally the growth at all costs. Yes, it's totally the naivete. But it's also these other three core things, the algorithm, the filter bubbles, the business model, that are the parts that Facebook really needs to think seriously about as it tries to address

what's going on. Yeah, the business model, I think, is really what I think a lot of people who are calling for change in Facebook miss. Because the business model, the algorithm, are all part of the same problem, right? Where it's not just Facebook. Google has a similar thing. YouTube. Everyone's goal is to keep you on the platform as long as possible, right? So they can get as much data from you as possible and sell you as many ads, right? Because Facebook, like Google, is an advertising business. And outrage is what keeps people on the platform, as we've seen. And so I've often compared Facebook to the NFL in the sense that Facebook says it wants to solve the outrage problem. The NFL says it wants to solve the concussion problem.

But at the end of the day, Facebook is about outrage and the NFL is about very large men running headfirst into each other. So there's only so many things you can do unless you're willing to lose money or make, let me say, lose money is not right. Make less money, right? Do you have any, is there, because Zuckerberg is unfireable basically by the very sweet deal he cut when he got his first funding. Do you have any sense that he would be willing to fundamentally change the business model, even if it meant Facebook made less money and investors lost money? So I have two answers to that. And I think the parallel to the NFL is a really good one.

I do think that Zuckerberg would be willing to make less money if he could fix the product. I don't think there's any question about that. I mean, Zuckerberg has flaws, but to his credit, I don't think he cares about money the way other rich people do. He's not trying to get a bigger yacht. He's not counting his bank account. He likes money, but he's going to spend it all when he's older, trying to cure cancer and all of that. He's not motivated by money. It's actually, I think, lower down in the company where people are more motivated by money. And so the question actually having Mark Zuckerberg as dictatorial ruler of Facebook

makes it more likely than in some other companies that they'd be willing to make that sacrifice. But I'd also make a separate case, which is that I don't think that Facebook would necessarily have to lose money by fixing the platform or by getting rid of the outrage amplification. You can actually sell more ads if people feel good about the product. And if people feel bad about the product, they're less likely to spend money on it. Even if they pull it out of their pockets less for that little outrage hit, but they engage with it more deeply and they think of it as a place where they

get educated, where they learn and where where their lives are enriched, and where they really connect with people, that's actually a better platform for making money. I know it's ridiculous for a journalist to go on and say, hey, Facebook, I know how you can make more money. But I do think that fixing the problems on the platform isn't necessarily going to lead to them making less money. It may be less money in the short term, but more money in the long term, I guess. I think that's right. I think there's no question. Public company to do, yeah.

Yeah. You know, another in Facebook's, I guess this question, maybe this is good news or bad news, I don't know. But Facebook announced the other day that it detected a campaign to influence the midterm elections through fake accounts. And, you know, they're coordinating topics around white nationalism, abolish ICE, and then responses to those. Is this a sign that Facebook is doing a better job or that we are still incredibly vulnerable or maybe both? It's both. I mean, Facebook is definitely doing a

better job. They're doing a way better job than they did in 2016, where they weren't looking at this stuff at all. They didn't expect it. So the fact that they were able to find this campaign, presumably a Russian campaign, but we don't know that for sure yet, to find this manipulation campaign, despite the extraordinary efforts that the manipulators took to disguise it, is a good sign. It's a sign that Facebook is onto things. But I also think it's a little bit of a red herring, right? Because the reason why Facebook was able to stop this manipulation campaign is because people were using fake accounts. If this had just been set up by regular people posting the exact same memes and the exact same stuff, it would have been okay,

right? The fundamental problem of Facebook is that it amplifies outrage, pushes us into filter bubbles and sort of degrades American democratic conversation. And the easy way to go after that is to say, oh, there's this small segment of that happening that's being done by Russian intelligence operatives. Let's go after them. Because everybody agrees you should go after the Russian intelligence operatives, or everybody except the president agrees that you should go after them. But their core problem is very closely related, and it's way harder, because it's not people using fake names.

It's just Americans in their filter bubbles putting bad stuff on the internet and that's a way harder problem to solve. So the fact that they're Russians taking advantage of all the problems on Facebook gives us an easy thing to go after and gives us a way to talk about the problems on Facebook. But solving the Russian problem doesn't solve all the problems on Facebook. That's a really great point. Nick, thank you so much for joining us. This was a great conversation. We hope to have you back on soon. Awesome. Thank you, Dan. Have a good day. Dan, that was a great conversation. You know, this is something that's been on our minds at Crooked today. So Elijah Cohn, who runs social media, sometimes he pops into videos,

because he's fame seeking, but he's also in the room. But he runs social media for Crooked. And he found out that Pod Save America was getting marked as 18 plus, and basically being treated as though it had explicitly sexual activity or graphic violence, and basically treating us the same way that Facebook is now treating sort of dangerous right-wing conspiratorial sites like InfoWars. And it seems to us that this is an example of them trying to achieve this false balance and solve this unsolvable problem of appearing neutral without punishing the worst actors on their own site. My question to you is, what are you guys doing on the Monday pod? Listen, obviously, I've been pushing for much more sexually explicit content,

but John and Dan will go along. But look, I think – look, Elijah's piece is great. And it speaks to this debate about whether Facebook is a media company or not, a conversation that Nick and I talked about, which is it is a media company in the sense that Facebook, like most legacy media companies like The New York Times, whoever else, are incredibly sensitive to criticism that they are biased against conservatives. And they refuse to acknowledge that the critique from conservatives is often, not always, but almost always done in bad faith. And so they overreact. Now, I don't know that we know how this happened. Sometimes it could be the algorithm. It could be someone making a bad decision at a low level there, but it does speak to the broader problem where Facebook is very sensitive to critique from the right, which is exactly why they are wrongly making the decision to keep Alex Jones on the platform. Because even though he is an absurd human being and a disgusting human being who says disgusting and false things, the only reason to keep him on

there is to avoid being called liberal Silicon Valley people silencing conservatives. And so when you seek faux balance instead of the moral or honest right thing to do, you end up in situations like these. Yeah. And it's part of the working the rest we see up and down the media. I mean, there have been hearings about Diamond and Silk and suppression of conservative voices on Facebook. Meanwhile, they are deliberately choosing not to distinguish between whatever, the occasional F-bomb and slander and outright falsehood, because, as Elijah says in the piece, it would disfavor a right-wing media culture that embraces conspiracy theories. And I feel like Facebook is running up against a fundamental problem that we're running up against in our culture, which is there isn't an equivalence. There is a toxicity that has taken hold of the conservative movement. And it is simply not possible to treat both sides the same while

at the same time, relegating the worst voices in politics off your platform. Yeah, this is one of the worst, the most damaging aspects of Trump's presidency, from a sort of a national conversation perspective is it has shifted the Overton window where the opposite side of progressive views are conspiracy theories or white nationalism, where in a different world with a different president, that would be considered out of bounds by both parties. But now because Trump puts everything in bounds, then now we have to pretend like,

or Facebook or whoever else has pretended like Alex Jones is the equivalent of the nation. And that's absurd. There is an equivalent of the nation, the liberal magazine, weekly standard, but we have to, we now have to, the things that were once considered agreed upon, at least among like media organizations, polite society, we're out of bounds are now put in bounds because of who our president is. Yeah. And we even back up what we put on Facebook with sources and documentation, which people that make up the news don't seem to have the ability to do. And everybody should check out Elijah's piece. It's really worth reading on cricket.com. When we come back, our interview with Jason Kander.

Our interview with Jason Kander. Joining us on the pod today, we have the host of Majority 54, the founder of Let America Vote, and the author of the new book, Outside the Wire. Welcome back to the show, Jason Kander. Good to be here. Thanks, y'all. So, Jason, I want to get to the book. But before we do, you're running this organization, Let America Goat. You're running this organization, Let America Vote. I've heard of Let America Goat. Let America Goat. I don't know what it would be.

It is time that we start goating. You know, we are in the middle of this campaign for the midterms, but also an ongoing effort by Republicans to suppress the vote, as well as push back from organizations like yours to make sure that every vote is counted and people have a chance to cast their ballot. What is the latest in that fight that people should know about? Well, we're a boots on the ground campaign, and we got a whole lot of boots on the ground doing a lot of great work. You know, we are spread out right now across five field offices across the country. Plus, we have 70,000 volunteers signed up nationwide who are doing phone banks all over the country, calling into important races. Just since June 8th in our field offices, we have knocked well over 150,000 doors.

We've got hundreds of interns and volunteers spread out. And you go into these field offices, and it's just so inspiring. I mean, these kids are a part of the civil rights movement because it never ended. And they're out there knocking on doors and making sure that we create that political consequence for politicians who make it harder to vote by making sure that they don't get reelected. Jason, there was a lot of controversy the other day involving Donald Trump, no surprise. But he was talking about how you needed an ID to buy groceries. Now, all the focus was on sort of the gaffe of that.

But I was wondering if you could talk about the real story about voter ID, which is the point Trump was trying to make and why that is problematic and bad for democracy, small d. Yeah. So this is all part of their strategy of trying to make it seem like this is an ideological difference or like a policy disagreement between the parties. Like what they want it to be is, you know what, Democrats don't think you ought to have to show ID and Republicans do. That's what they want the debate to be about. So they want to portray it as if it's like taxes or healthcare, just a genuine difference. And what I remind everybody is that's not what this is. This is a political strategy by the Republicans. So, you know, we can get into the fact that, one, obviously you don't actually need an ID to buy groceries. And it's entirely likely that the

president of the United States has never bought his own groceries, apparently. But beyond that, it's the fact that there has never been, like in my state, a case of voter impersonation fraud. But if they were to pass a Wisconsin-style photo ID law, which is the only thing that they actually think would prevent voter impersonation fraud, which has never happened, well, you would have over 200,000 people who are has never happened, well, you would have over 200,000 people who are legal eligible registered voters who would be disenfranchised.

So what they're really doing is it's no different than the strategies that they come up with to decide which TV ads or which TV shows to run ads during or which doors to knock on. They do this because folks who are less likely to have an ID in this country, people of color, disabled folks, working folks, young people, they are less likely to vote Republican. And the problem they're solving is that if they can't vote, well, if they're eliminated from democracy, Republicans are more likely to win elections. It's about partisan politics, not fraud. I think you both are being completely unfair. Clearly, he meant that he is trying to buy grocery stores to launder money on behalf of foreign interests. And it's a shame that the liberal media won't give this guy the benefit of the doubt. Everything he says has to be crazy. Yeah, I actually,

you've convinced me. I think that that's probably what he meant. So let's talk about the book, because you have a new book that's coming out called Outside the Wire. Jason, just for people that don't know, what does that term mean and how does it relate to what the book is about? So the term Outside the Wire is how we referred to going off the base in Afghanistan. It's how folks in the army refer to that. And I named it that because while the book is about those experiences for me, what it's about in much larger amount is going outside the wire figuratively in politics, you know, being willing to go out and take positions that people may not always agree

with, but that are in your heart and on the faith that voters will see that and maybe you'll be able to convince them. Really, I wrote the book for people who are thinking to themselves, you know, maybe I want to run for office. Maybe I want to get involved in campaigns. Maybe I just want to go start that nonprofit that I think needs to exist. Whatever it is, and then something has held them back, oftentimes that is a sense that if they get involved in that way, they'll lose a piece of themselves. in politics without becoming a tool. And that's really sort of what the book is. It's 10 lessons that I've learned, and it's the stories as to how I've learned those lessons. Many of the stories are embarrassing for me personally, but they allow people to read them and then maybe not repeat those mistakes. And so it's just about the fact that you can do this without losing yourself. You can do this and you can go outside the wire politically, figuratively, really,

and have it work out. Just be a good person at the same time, be effective in politics. That can work. I wonder if you would use that title, if we could have gotten a copy to Marco Rubio. I actually, that's my inscription to him. I need to mail that actually. So you ran a great race in Missouri. You came close. You didn't win, but you sort of beat the margins that Hillary Clinton had in that state. And everybody sort of looked at that race and said that it was an incredibly impressive feat.

But, you know, you didn't win. Do you look back on that and wonder, you know, what if I had, you know, I tried to do this the way I thought I should do it. I didn't make certain compromises. Do you ever think to yourself, if I had made a few different choices, even ones that I disagreed with at the time, I'd be a senator right now? doing what's right and just trying to be a good person, it turns out is actually the best politics because voters can see through anything else. You know, I have sort of an example I talk about in the book how, you know, the average person, they don't talk about politics or think about it as much as politicians do. It's actually much more like how they think about sports. You know, they'll sit around, they'll say something about how they hate this one team, but one of their

friends may say like, oh, you know, I kind of like this one guy on the team. And nobody gets mad at him or says, you're not a real fan of our team. And that's how most people talk about politics. Meaning, yeah, I took a lot of positions that people in my state didn't agree with. But, you know, the reason that I outperformed and the reason I did so well is because a lot of people said, well, I don't agree with him on a lot of stuff, but he seems to really mean it and he seems to believe it because he cares about me. So I'll go ahead and vote for him. And nobody at their little breakfast hangout circle of friends is like, oh, you're not a real Republican. That doesn't happen.

And so it's just about having the courage not to act. And so it's way simpler than people realize. I have a whole lesson in the book. One of the chapters is just literally titled, keep it real. And it's just about like, have the courage not to act. Just, just go for it. Jason, before we let you go, I wanted to ask you about the never ending debate within the Democratic Party about who we are and what we stand for. And I wanted to ask you, as someone who did very well in a red state and has a history of winning a red state, about the platform and message of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York, who was just the other

day in your neighbor state in Kansas campaigning, and whether you think that sort of message can work or Democrats have to take a different approach depending on the nature of the state or the district. So I think it's all about, you know, standing up and saying what you really believe. I mean, because the whole debate about wanting people to take positions that are, you know, sort of that where they only subscribe to one idea of what the Democratic Party is. What that is, is at some level, it's saying whether you believe this or not, this is what you have to say. Now, I agree with her on a lot of stuff. But regardless of that, when I watched like her campaign ads and that sort of thing,

what stood out to me and I think stood out to the voters in her district more than anything is there's no way no matter what you believe, you could disagree with her on everything. There's no way you watch that and go, she's just saying that. Like, she doesn't really mean that. And I think that is actually the key. And so in the conversation about what Democrats stand for, my argument is, and I point out in the book, like, we should just recognize, one, we give a damn. Like, that's what it is to be a Democrat. Like, we give a damn about people, including people we don't know.

And it's based on this sense of faith and a little bit of a leap of faith, honestly, that those people will care about us, too, if we do it, that they'll reciprocate that. Is that going to be true every time? No. But it starts with us placing faith in that idea. And so, look, I think it is about authenticity. And so, look, I think it is about authenticity. I remember being on Bill Maher's show and saying, doing a good job as a politician is not that different than trying to be a good person. And like everybody laughing at me. And I don't think that's that crazy controversial of a statement. I back it up in all sorts of ways in the book with funny stories.

But it's just about getting out there and being real. It's why, you know, with the book, you know, look, I got known originally because of an ad I did about why I'm for gun control. Well, now I have this book, I have this platform. Every copy of the book that is pre-ordered in the next few days and that is sold next week, Diana and I are making a contribution to Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety. And it's about consistency and being real with people. And for me, in this case, it's just, I have an opportunity to help with something I really care about. I'm not going to miss that opportunity. Well, Jason, thank you for joining us today. And again, you know, he just mentioned it, but proceeds will be going to support really good causes around gun violence. The book is

Outside the Wire. It is honest and personal and fascinating, and everybody should pick it up. He's also, Jason, you're also the host of Majority 54, and people should check that out too. I agree. And thanks for being here. Thank you. Appreciate it, y'all. That's our show. Thank you to Nick Thompson of Wired and Jason Kander, whose new book is Outside the Wire. Dan, we didn't get to it, but they're taunting Jim Acosta at rallies. Trump thinks you need ID to buy groceries. It's crazy out there. I'm saving it for the outro.

There's music. It's fine. Yeah, it's the wild week where the Republicans decided today to, as you pointed out, repeal fuel standards in order to destroy the planet, to own the libs. It's really been a great week. Thanks, Dan. out repeal fuel standards in order to destroy the planet to own the libs it's really been a great week uh thanks dan uh john and tommy are back monday thank god because i gotta tell you prepping for pod save america is a lot of work well i hope everyone enjoyed his vacation then yep bye dan see you