Pod Save America - “Let a thousand obstructions bloom.”

Episode Date: February 19, 2019

Trump’s fake national emergency gets legal and legislative challenges, Andrew McCabe reveals the panic at the FBI and DOJ over the president’s potential criminality, and Bernie Sanders enters the 2020 race. Then the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel talks to Jon Lovett about Bernie and the 2020 primary. Also – Pod Save America is going on tour! Get your tickets now: crooked.com/events.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Lovett's drinking Starbucks and talking shit about Howard Shultz. He's a complicated person. He's a complicated guy. His face is a map of the world. What are we talking about, Jon?

I don't know. We were playing that song earlier. Lovett was. Later in the pod, Lovett talks to the Washington Post's Dave Weigel about Bernie Sanders in 2020. We're also going to talk about the latest efforts to stop Trump's national emergency declaration. Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe's press tour. And the announcement that Bernie Sanders is joining the ever-growing field of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination. Woof. Love it. How was the show on Thursday?

I hear there was a proposal. We had an awesome Love It or Leave It with Megan Gailey, Travelle Anderson, Michaela Watkins. We also had a proposal at Love It or Leave It. You should check it out. It was very moving. It melted our cold hearts. I'm glad you're two for two on the proposals. Hopefully one of them doesn't go badly someday.

Well, you know, Alisa, whenever somebody – we've now had two proposals at Love It or Leave It. And whenever Alisa gets wind of one, she calls the person who's going to do the proposing and grills them, puts them through a full psychological workup. She's like, marriage is a social construct. You don't need to do it. So the person proposing has to ask permission of their partner's parents and Elisa's. Yes.

That's awesome. And Elisa's just like, is this real or is this one of the situations where you're proposing to a stranger at a football game? You know? Yeah. Well, everyone check it out. All right, let's get to the news sure shall we uh on friday donald trump declared that there's a national emergency on the southern border in an effort to bypass congress

and get the money for his wall the white house says they'll be taking the money from military construction like housing and hospitals from efforts to stop drug trafficking, from all kinds of projects that the president is simply not usually authorized to take taxpayer money from. And what I gathered from Twitter was a real sharp press conference. It was. It was on the plane, so I missed it. You guys have to fill me in. The president acknowledged that he was likely to be sued over the decision and then bolstered the legal argument of the people suing him by saying, quote, I didn't need to do this,

but I'd rather do it much faster. Did I miss anything else? Before we get into it, did I miss anything else from the press conference? You should just note that he did sing it like Dame Edna, so that was weird. I knew that because then I sued. I saw Alec Baldwin do it,

so then I was like, what is Alec Baldwin doing? I had to go back to the original impression. I see. I see. You're like memento for that. I was just a low-information voter this weekend. The original was very weird. All right, so a few questions to kick us off here.

Where does the power to declare a national emergency come from? How unusual is it for a president to declare one? And what are the potential consequences of Trump doing this? The power comes from Congress. In 1976, they patched the National Emergencies Act, I believe is what it's called, which allows presidents to declare national emergencies, to do certain things. It's happened a lot of times. Bill Clinton did it 17 times.

Bush did it 12. Obama did it 13. If you look back at the Obama declarations, most of them are like sanctions because of political unrest in Burundi. That's one literal example. This one is very unusual because it's actually taking money and using it to build things. And it was not appropriated by Congress. In fact, Congress specifically said, we will not appropriate funds for these means. So this is very unusual. And that part is unprecedented.

Well, it's not unprecedented. It's happened twice. Bush used a national emergency declaration after 9-11 for military construction, and then it happened one other time previously. I can't remember what it was. Gulf War. It was the Gulf War. But there's no specific.

Sorry, you do it. Yeah, I was going to say, but what's unprecedented is not the, so there's two times the construction projects have happened with the money. What's unprecedented is a president has never declared a national emergency to spend money that Congress specifically rejected. Yes, absolutely. So that's the new territory. And it's a very big deal. It is a very big deal, and it shouldn't be sort of, I think it doesn't deserve to be put into the category of, oh, presidents have been expanding authority for a very long time, which is certainly true. This is a new level because Congress being in charge of the money, Congress being in charge of the purse strings, as people in D.C. would say— Power of the purse.

It is fundamental. It's basically why we have a Congress. It is the organizing principle of our government that the president is powerful, but he can only spend money, he can only use money that Congress has given him permission to use. He's not in charge of the bank. That is a very important distinction

that we are gliding over. It's in the Constitution that the president's job is to faithfully execute the laws, not to make the laws. That's what Congress does. Congress appropriates the money. They make the laws that's what congress does congress appropriates the money they make the laws the constitution that old thing so now the the legal i mean we'll talk about the legal challenge later but i guess what's messy here is the fact that this national emergencies act existed in the first place right which basically congress says it is very vague it doesn't It doesn't define exactly what an emergency is.

There's not criteria to define in the law passed by Congress what a national emergency is. In general, the courts have been pretty deferential to presidents about what they're declaring a national emergency on. The courts aren't usually calling balls and strikes and saying, you know what, that's not really an emergency. Therefore, you can't do that. You don't have authority here.

But I mean, just real quick before we move on. So $3.6 billion comes from military construction. I just want to point out that the DOD budget is big and bloated, but military housing is really bad in a lot of instances. There was a poll of military families living in base housing, and it found that more than half of respondents said they had a negative experience living in privately managed housing some reported living in dangerous conditions that included mold lead paint faulty wiring poor water quality mice squirrels like lead poisoning uh is permanent that permanently damages your child's brain if

they get lead poisoning so like you know this is not a small thing and you know over the weekend lindsey graham was asked about a bunch of money that was going to construct a school. And Graham's gross response was, well, those kids, they don't need a new school. First, they need a safe border. You know, like the rationales are crazy. I was going to bring that up. I would say it's better for the middle school kids in Kentucky to have a secure border than a school. Yeah.

In Kentucky. Yeah. In Kentucky, the border down by Mexico is what he's talking about. If a Democrat said that, that would be the quote that Republicans would paint the entire Democratic Party with

for an entire campaign. And we should, like, that is the dumbest, and it's hard to out-dumb Trump's quotes. Well, all the dumbest people are coming out with their dumbest stuff. It is like open mic night for morons.

So Matt Geitz said, Republican of Florida, human frat paddle, gigantic dickhead. He said, I don't want the next national emergency to be that some Democrat president says we have to build transgender bathrooms in every elementary school in America. So that was him actually opposing the national emergency. Which is, hey, hey, hey, buddy, stop helping. This is a guy who tried to throw out the father of a student who was shot in Parkland from a hearing. That's how bad a human he is. Matt Gates is very, very bad.

So if, you know, if the courts say this is OK, I mean, the potential consequences long term for this are incredible in a very bad way, right? Like that means that a basically future presidents can declare that something, some threat is a national emergency and then therefore spend money that Congress has told them not to spend. Right. And, you know, people are saying that some of these Republicans who have opposed it are giving that as a reason for saying like, you know, as Matt Gaetz did, which is a ridiculous one, but there's a more serious one, which is, you know, climate change, which is a national emergency and it's a global emergency.

An actual one. Gun violence in the United States. Gun violence in the United States. Right. These are, these are real emergencies. The water crisis in Flint. You can come up with a thousand of them. And it's, and look.

Legitimate. Like we've said this and we've been tweeting this like, oh great. Next president can, next democratic president can do a Green New Deal by executive authority. And we're sort of joking because I don't think it's a good idea for any president to be able to spend money that Congress told them not to spend. That is a fucking autocracy. That is not a representative democracy with checks and balances. No, it's very dangerous. And the only reason we are

not current like i think that there has been two kinds of reactions one is this is this actually is this fascism or just fascism for the tv cameras and of course with trump it's always both and i think we're all relying on the fact that oh he's doing it to save face oh he's doing it because it's going to be tied up in the courts and all of that is true but the next republican will Republican will be better at this. Yeah. And everything that's happening now, you know, we've talked about this from the beginning. Like, what are the what are the you know, what are the rules he's bending that will bend back? And what are the rules that he's bending to the point where when you try to get him to be shaped like a hanger again, you can't hang a coat on it. You know, the other thing that's worth mentioning is no one no one believes not donald

trump not the white house not the republicans not anyone else that there is a national emergency at the southern border it is this thing that we're all talking about but like no one who's mentioning it believes it attempted crossings are their lowest level in nearly four decades most drugs are intercepted at the ports of entry. There is no invasion. There is no, like, everyone knows this. And you saw Chris Wallace of Fox News trying to confront Stephen Miller with these facts on Sunday. And Stephen Miller just did his thing where he just, like, yells and gets angry. I'm single.

I mean, Congress can take up a resolution to block this national emergency declaration. And what I think Democrats should do is say, Republicans, this is your chance. You believe in the Constitution. You believe in your authority to do what you were elected to do. Let's block this. Otherwise, this is now precedent. And we will be doing it when a Democrat is president of the United States, period. That is the reality.

Because we cannot play by two different sets of rules. Can't happen. And that just reminded me, you know, in terms of what the courts will do. Originally, the National Emergencies Act just allowed for a congressional vote of disapproval and then it would stop the national emergency. And then in 1983, the Supreme Court gave presidents the power to veto the congressional resolution of disapproval. So that's not a great sign for what the courts are going to do, at least the Supreme Court in 1983. But that's there too. So let's, I want to talk about the reaction from,

we started talking about this a little bit, but the reaction from the party that spent eight years calling Barack Obama a lawless socialist tyrant who abused his power. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who spent the last few weeks advising trump against declaring an emergency immediately announced on friday that he's now for it so far according to account by 538 there are 19 republican senators who are supporting trump on this um there are a couple others who um haven't decided yet why do you think mcconnell and a bunch

of these senators are backing trump on this and would you say this is the most hypocritical thing Republicans have done in the Trump era, or where does it rank? It's up there. I mean, what they're trying to do, one of the arguments you see is, you know, it's just such a shame, right? They're not coming out against it. They're not specifically saying they like the national emergency, but what they're trying to do is claim because of democratic intransigence, you have forced Donald Trump to do this. Right. You're putting Donald Trump in the position of having to declare this national emergency. And then on the other hand, you see a bunch of kind of soft, very lukewarm statements of, you know. I'm concerned. I'm concerned. We should we this ought to give us pause.

And this ought to give us pause. Marco Rubio said something similar. And, you know, it's the story of the last three and a half years, just total capitulation. Totally. Yeah, I think that they know that their base wants the wall because their base wants everything Trump wants. And so they're scared to oppose him. I think that they don't want him to shut down the government again. think that they don't want him to shut down the government again. And they think that he's unhinged and he's partially unhinged because people like Lindsey Graham are making the even crazier suggestion that he tie funding for the wall to the debt ceiling, which could explode

the global economy. So this is the path of least resistance. This is the way out of this mess that Ann Coulter's mean tweets have led Trump to bring us into. Everyone should read Adam Jentleson's op-ed in the New York Times about Mitch McConnell, which I think is fantastic, and I'm sure Jentleson has been writing most of his life. He was former chief of staff to Harry Reid, so he knows McConnell quite well. And he sort of pushed back on this notion that McConnell is some sort of institutionalist, right, who jealously guards the Senate power and the Senate's power. It's like this latest move by McConnell follows holding the seat open for Garland, getting rid of the filibuster for the Supreme Court. He challenged campaign finance laws, wanted to make Barack Obama one-term president, proud

obstructionist, wouldn't sign off on the Russian interference. Mitch McConnell will be known for handing the republican party over to donald trump in order in order to let donald trump do its bidding like that that is what he there is one and he got a bunch of judges through that's like there is one counter example to that which is that mitch mcconnell has not removed the legislative filibuster i'm so fat i would love uh people who know this who know these things things to tell me why Mitch McConnell has not done it. It's a fascinating thing because it really does run counter to that argument. There is whatever he's actually done, there is some interior logic for him to talk to himself about himself.

And I guess the most charitable interpretation of why McConnell decided to back Trump on this is he just wanted to avoid another government shutdown because he knows it's politically unpopular. And he thought, all right, Trump's either going to shut the government down or I back him on the national emergency and that's it. And so I might as well do that. He wants power. He wants to be in charge. I mean, the New York Times profile of him was like just 10,000 words of celebrating cynicism from, from, from the Garland, uh, Supreme court seat to today. I mean, that's what he wants to be in charge, and he will do literally anything.

You mentioned blocking campaign finance reform. He didn't really care about campaign finance reform. He thought maybe it was good, maybe it was bad, but he knew that if he threw himself in front of that train, it would pay him huge political dividends down the road, and he could take a bullet for members who didn't want to fight or were perceived as fighting hard against it. So like he's a cynical Washington fixture. Yeah. I also do think there is, there is, they're not acting upon it because I think they're

craven, but there is a, I think there is a bipartisan consensus behind closed doors that the, that the national emergency powers are being abused by this president, that it's wrong, that it's dangerous. They are worried about Democrats invoking in the future. That is all real, which is why I think even though the president does have the ability to veto this, I guess, Democrats in the House should force the Senate to vote to uphold or not uphold the national emergency. It needs to go to the Senate. I want them on the record. That was going to be my next question.

I mean, so there's eight Senate Republicans who are publicly opposed to the declaration and about 15 more who are in the, I have concerns. But eight opposed is quite a bit. Yeah. And that would be enough with the Democrats to have the resolution pass.

And then, I mean, Trump's first ever veto as president would have to be vetoing a bipartisan resolution of disapproval on him declaring a national emergency to spend money that Congress already told him he can't spend. So even if it doesn't work because they don't have the two-thirds majority in the House and the Senate to then override Trump's veto, you got to think it's worth doing. And it's worth noting, too, that this is something where Mitch McConnell doesn't have the ability to stop a vote, which is fascinating. Within 18 days, he has to vote. The national emergency's powers are really interesting. So the House can decide, if the House passes a rejection of the national emergency, the Senate has to take it up.

There's no way for McConnell to get out of it. So his members will have to be on the record. And I do not understand any argument against making that vote happen. That vote has to happen. Yeah, I agree. I mean, like, bigger picture, Trump is giving Congress the finger every single day. Under the Magnitsky sanctions, he was supposed to submit a report to Congress, I believe last week, that indicated whether he'd put sanctions on the Saudis as a result of the Khashoggi murder and why. He just blew it off. He just gave them all the finger. And all the sad sack Marco Rubio tweets and protestations did nothing. So yes, put them all on the record. If

these eight senators vote with the Democrats on the national emergency, that creates a political problem for them with the MAGA base in their reelections. It's good for us, period. Yeah, I'm interested to see what all the Republicans who are vulnerable in 2020, how they vote on this. Joni Ernst and Tom Tillis and that crowd. If the legislative strategy fails, there's also a legal strategy on monday a group of 16 states filed a lawsuit in a california federal court arguing that trump's move is unconstitutional according to the suit contrary to the will of congress the president has used the pretext of a manufactured crisis of unlawful immigration to declare a national

emergency um what are the legal experts saying about the chance these lawsuits will succeed and what are they hoping for at least in the short term? I think it's complicated. I mean, Trump's little sing-songy assessment of what would happen was pretty good. Spot on, right? I mean, he'll go to the Ninth Circuit first, and he'll probably side against him, and then he'll go up to the Supreme Court eventually, and they're likely to go with him. I mean, there's a near-term challenge, which is getting standing to hear the case,

because it's not clear whether any of the fencing would be built in California or New Mexico, two of the states in the lawsuit, that would have to show that they are being harmed by this decision to therefore get a hearing. Obviously, there's not going to be harm in New Jersey or New York, which are other states in the litigation. So there's a bunch of near-term steps, but I don't know. I didn't go to law school. You took the outsideAT. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, the one, the thing that's frightening about this is ultimately, you know, judges are very reluctant to step in and adjudicate the facts of whether something is an emergency. It's very much like a political question and a question that they will defer to the president on. And so I think, you know, it's all just, we'll have to wait and see. We'll have to see what Congress does. We'll have to see what

happens with these cases. I don't think anybody knows. Yeah. I think, you know, Vox talked to like 11 legal scholars who all seemed mostly doubtful, though some said, you know, the judges will either decide Congress did approve this by passing the National Emergencies Act in the first place. They'll either say that and say, you're right, we can't define what it is. Or they'll say, they'll just look at the precedent and be like, we cannot have a situation where Congress, which controls the purse, says we will not fund something, and then the president says I will fund it anyway by declaring something a national emergency. And by the way, when you declare something a national emergency, what you're saying is,

you know, I want construction funding to help the military with something. Well, the military would be used to help build the wall. The military doesn't need help right now. You saw Stephen Miller's little shitty attempt to get around this by saying, well, now we have troops on the border, so they need to be protected with the wall, which is why we're stealing money for their kids' schools to build a stupid wall at the border where we're forcing them to go. And again, I would not underestimate, I mean, we all joke about this because Trump says crazy Trump says crazy things, but saying I didn't need to do this, but I wanted to do it faster really does undercut the argument in court. Look, you know, the facts are the facts, right?

He had control over both houses of Congress for two years, didn't pass this. He shut down the government to try to pass this. He couldn't pass it. He tried to pass it again, couldn't pass it. And that's when the emergency begins, right? There's no way to look at the facts and not come to the conclusion that this is a fake emergency. The question is whether or not judges would be willing to do that. And to your point, John, whether they'd be willing to go so far as to say, I'm going to step back from this specific example and look at what we're saying here, which is that the president could just spend money any

way that he wants, no matter what Congress says, which is incredibly dangerous. But again, like, as has been the case from day one, we are in a position where we are waiting for Republicans in Congress or judges with lifetime appointments, many of whom are Republicans, on their way up to the Supreme Court, which is controlled by Republicans, to be courageous and to show great moral character, fortitude, and love for the country. Good luck, everyone. Yeah. So let's talk about the politics of all this.

Was this Trump's smartest political move ahead of his re-election? His advisors are saying that the new slogan is, finish the wall, which they said really means, finish what we started and it's about the entire Trump presidency. It's a whole, you've got to get the whole picture. Don't switch horses mid-wall. They also say that he'll use this issue to run against the establishment in D.C. I mean, he has a base-only strategy.

And so everything he does is designed to make his hardcore base happy. Fox News had a poll that has 56% of the country opposing the National Emergency declaration, 38% approving of it. So that would track pretty well with an all-based strategy. I think this silly dance of keep building the wall when they haven't built a single square inch of wall is laughable on its face, but so is the idea that Mexico is going to pay for it. So I'm sure it'll work with the same people. I mean, the question I have is whether the Ann Coulters of the world teeing off on him, calling this a lie, saying the national emergency is actually the fact that he's an idiot. Correct. We'll we'll, you know, cut off little to Washington and send a bunch more Republicans with me so that we can build this wall. He does the national emergency.

If it's held up in court, he doesn't get it done. Now it looks like he's just feckless in a whole bunch of ways. He couldn't get it done to Congress. I mean, I don't know. Who knows? But the one thing we do know is he did try this political strategy before about the wall, and he did it in 2018. Again, we always forget that last month of the 2018 election was all wall, all invasion, all caravan, all the time. He'd had the whole conservative propaganda machine with him.

He had ads that the Republicans are running in every single state, every single race. And it didn't work. It certainly worked with his base, but the base was not enough in 2018. We won a Senate seat in Arizona where there's going to be another race. We almost picked up a seat in Texas. We almost won in Georgia where the only reason Stacey Abrams isn't the governor right now is because of shenanigans. Will Hurd probably only won that seat on the border in Texas because he was against the wall. And it was a massive landslide.

So, you know, I don't know how, you know, trying to attribute too much thinking into their strategy. Donald Trump likes talking about the wall. He likes it. He doesn't totally understand why. He thinks it helps him with his base. He prefers talking about that than the investigations into him, the stalled domestic agenda, the actual doing of the job of president, which he has no interest in. So, you know, who knows?

His staff constructs a strategy around his actions ex post facto. That's how this always goes. He's like, it's like, it's a bit like basically Donald Trump broke into, Donald Trump, it's as if Donald Trump is a baby and he found a paintbrush and a bucket of paint and he's been running around an empty warehouse throwing paint against the walls. And Kellyanne Conway and that guy Brad Parscale and all of his fucking advisors are following behind, like naming each section of the wall. Renaming him Jackson Pollock president. Right. This is called this is the delightfulness of being alive. This one's a darker piece. This one's a story about loss. Like he's just walking,

they're walking around as he's, you know. I think that's not unlike how things go at like Christie's and some of the fine art and warehouses. But it is annoying when you see these tracking polls, when you see his approval tick back up to sort of where it always has been post shutdown.

But it's a reminder that it's incumbent upon us as Democrats to use the shutdown and all the crazy stuff he does as a proof point in a broader case about Trump being temperamentally unfit for the job or corrupt or whatever it has to be. We have to make an argument. Yeah. Well, on that note, too, how should Democrats talk about the wall and border security in 2020? This week, Republicans have been happily pushing around Beto O'Rourke's answer to a question about whether he'd take down the existing wall in El Paso, to which he said yes.

The wall hasn't made them any safer. And in fact, it's made it more dangerous for people who want to legally petition for asylum. I don't know. I mean, I think what Beto's referring to is the fact that back in the day before the wall, workers would come up from Mexico to the United States to do jobs that no Americans wanted to do. And they'd work for six months during, you know, some sort of agricultural season, and then return home to their families. And then'd work for six months during some sort of agricultural season and then return home to their families. And then we built the wall and we made it so hard to get back and forth

that people just started staying and remaining in the United States undocumented. So there is this like original sin of our immigration policy of these draconian steps we took that made things worse, not better. I don't know. I think there's probably the best argument is some kind of

that we need walls and fencing in some places and technology and border patrol and in the middle of the desert we obviously don't need a wall. And that's always been our point. I think that's the interesting thing. It's a 2,000 mile border and people like Beto,

people who live on the border, represent the border, and this is true of some Republicans like Will Hurd as well, know that this is a, like, real security and a real solid immigration system along the border is a combination of some fencing, some security, some human resources, some, like, letting people come live and work and then go back to Mexico. It's so much more complex. And the question is, can Democrats talk about this in the nuanced, complex way in an election where Donald Trump's going to say you either have the wall and everyone's safe or you tear down the wall and they're all coming in and they're going to kill everyone.

And abolish ICE. I think part of this is about finding a way to talk about the border and talking about the wall, but also making sure that you're never just talking about that. You know, we do have a broken immigration system. You know, it's like we spent 30 years, you know, making coming to the United States illegally more and more attractive while trying to make it harder and harder to get in. We built this crazy system. We don't punish the people who are responsible.

it harder and harder to get in. We've built this crazy system. We don't punish the people who are responsible. We only punish the poorest and least able, you know, we only punish the poorest people, the people working the hardest, the people who bear the brunt of the pain of the immigration system, who are just doing it to try to get a job. So I think as long as people are talking in a broader way about their vision for an immigration system in which all the pain is in visiting undocumented people just trying to build a better life, but actually you crack down on companies abusing immigrants, you crack down on the system that pits American workers against undocumented workers, if you make it about trying to have a sane, rational system that doesn't lead to a massive buildup of security along the border while millions and millions of people have to live in the United States under the shadows. If you're

talking about it in that way, I think we're winning. I think whenever we're spending all of our time talking about a wall, even if our argument is better than his on the wall, even on the issue itself, we do better than Donald Trump. When you ask people about it, it means we're not talking about anything else. Yeah. Bigger than the wall, bigger than ice. Donald Trump spent his President's Day accusing his own Justice Department of treason in an attempted coup against him. Very cool, very normal President's Day stuff.

Dude, get a sale on a couch. What set him off was a 60 Minutes interview with former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who's out with a new book, like everyone else.

McCabe confirmed a New York Times report that immediately after James Comey was fired, the FBI launched a criminal investigation into whether the president

obstructed justice and a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether the president did so because he was compromised by the Russian government. I mean, McCabe also told 60 Minutes the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who's now reported to leave his job in mid-March, once discussed the possibility of wearing a wire to record the president as well as invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. A spokesperson for Rosenstein said that McCabe's account is, quote, inaccurate and factually incorrect. Tommy, what is Andrew McCabe up to

here? How credible are his claims about Rosenstein, and why do you think he's making them now? I mean, it would be great if one of these brave former Trump official truth-tellers did so when they weren't hawking a book. So let's just be real honest that he's out there hawking a book. I don't know Andy McC honest that he's out there hawking a book. I don't know Andy McCabe. I have no reason to like or dislike him. But you are not some hero, pal. You are making money off this. The most troubling anecdote in that interview to me was McCabe saying

Trump wouldn't believe his intelligence team when they said North Korea had missiles that could hit the United States because Putin told him that was factually inaccurate. The quote was, I don't care, I believe Putin. That is nuts. That is very knowable intelligence, whether or not the North Korean missiles can hit the U.S. We're talking about ads this podcast, our Lindsey Graham ad. This is my second, this is my new ad.

An ad that just has Donald Trump saying, I don't care, I believe Putin. That's the Trump slogan for 2020. I don't care, I believe Putin. It's the Trump slogan for 2020. I don't care. I believe Putin. It's also clear like McCabe hates Rod Rosenstein. And maybe he has reason to. Rosenstein has clearly been lying to us for months and months and months about this anecdote where he said he would wear a wire to the White House or try to invoke the 25th Amendment. And you know what? Trump has every right to be pissed off if his deputy attorney general was trying to invoke the 25th

amendment against him also how fucking stupid are these jv sub cabinet official idiots colluding in their little doj meeting about wearing a wire on the president united states and invoking the 25th amendment here's what really know your role buddy rod rosenstein didn't even bother fucking googling what happens when you try to invoke the 25th Amendment. He's counting up cabinet officials. Look, this has been the thing. And people on Twitter do this, too. Resistance folks do this on Twitter.

Guys, here's the deal with the 25th Amendment. Yes, it's counting up the cabinet members, right? And if a majority of the cabinet and the vice president vote to remove the president from office, they can do that. Well, then the next thing that can happen is the president can send a letter to Congress saying, no, I am fit for office. And then you know what happens? It goes to Congress to vote. And you need two thirds of a majority in both houses to keep him out of office, just like

you do with impeachment. So stop talking about the fucking 25th Amendment. It's the dumbest fucking thing. No one's ever going to do it. It's for a president who's incapacitated and can't send that letter back to congress um counterpoint uh i respect their moxie i respect uh a couple of guys in the in the dog one of whom rod rosenstein is who helped trump come up with the insane rationale to fire comey which is another weird part of the Rod Rosenstein Wikipedia entry that nobody can really make sense of.

Yeah, my question was going to be Rod Rosenstein, hero, villain, or neither of the Trump era? It is, of course, neither. Yeah, and to Tommy's point, you know, what's really unclear, what's been really unclear about this story, about the 25th Amendment, about wearing the wire from the beginning, is there was one allegation that I was actually just joking around. It's never been totally clear how serious it is. It still isn't clear how serious it is. I don't feel as though

what we're hearing is the truth. I think that there are versions of the truth. I think it's parts of the truth, but the story doesn't make sense. The way they were talking about it doesn't make sense. I can't tell what was just an offhand comment versus a serious conversation. What is clear and what has been true about McCabe for a very long time is, and this is, I think, the most important thing, which is a bit lost when it's part of this fucking book tour, is early in the Trump administration, there was a moment of genuine panic that this could be the worst possible version. Yeah. That what we could be seeing is the worst possible version of an election compromised by a foreign government and that the president himself was compromised legally, compromised by a foreign leader for some personal reason or some secret, and that there was a legitimate concern amongst career officials who were seeing something they never saw before. And I think what's pretty clear now is they didn't handle it well.

Well, yeah, thought experiment for you guys. Imagine if instead of going to a conference room with Rod and McCabe and, you know, kicking around ideas, you know, a college bull session about the 25th amendment, they'd walked out of the building, called a press conference and publicly aired these feelings and concerns then. I think it could have been actually pretty impactful in that period of time. So here's what I've been thinking about. Like, McCabe seemed very alarmed. Obviously, Rosenstein was very alarmed. They seemed alarmed because they're like, well, what if he fired Comey because he's compromised by the Russians, right?

That's just a kind of a crazy thing to just throw out there, unless there is underlying evidence and things that they know that we still don't know. And to me, I wonder if this goes back to just how bad Mike Flynn was, right? Because remember, this all started with Trump told Comey, please let him go. And then when he didn't let him go, he fired Comey. And so whatever Mike Flynn was involved in, and we know now, you know, Marcy Wheeler was reminding us of this the other day, that a judge Emmett Sullivan is the first one outside of Mueller's investigation

to really see exactly what was going on with Flynn, that he said, you've basically sold out your country. You betrayed your country. Yeah, that was intense. So Flynn clearly did something so bad that for Trump to then try to tell Comey to let him go and then to fire Comey, something that they know that we don't yet, I hope, otherwise it's just, you know, random alarmism, but like made then, you know, Comey and then Rosenstein and then McCabe very, very fearful of exactly what you were just saying. Yeah. Yeah. Which is one little thing. So McCabe ultimately got forced out of the FBI because the inspector general did an investigation about his contacts

with the media and it was determined that he had been untruthful about those contacts with the media. So like two quick things on that. One, Trump basically sought retribution and had him fired the day before his pension kicked in. That alone is a big scandal, I think. You shouldn't be able to personally destroy someone's life and financial future like that. It's fucked up. But two, so McCabe got in trouble for leaking to the press that he was trying to push forward on the Clinton Foundation investigation over the objections of Obama's DOJ. So, again, the leak made McCabe look good. Hillary and Obama look bad. It was a pro-Trump leak.

That is always lost in this. Well, that was also part of the insane rationale. Remember, that was what— For firing Comey. And that's why Kushner thought Democrats would be cool with it because he was firing Comey for being too hard on Hillary Clinton. Again, none of which has ever made sense. Jared is so stupid. Everyone was fired for being too hard on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

But yet it's a conspiracy and a coup to overthrow Trump. It makes sense. Got it. overthrow Trump. It makes sense. So also, breaking this morning in the New York Times is a story that Trump told Matthew Whitaker, the former acting attorney general,

to put Trump ally Jeffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for SDNY, Southern District of New York, in charge of the Cohen case even though Berman had recused himself, the hush money payments case. Whitaker refused, which good for Matthew Whitaker, I guess, though he testified before Congress that the White House never asked for promises or commitments

concerning the special counsel's investigation or any other investigation. So here we have another example of, remember, the Michael Cohen crime, Michael Cohen and federal prosecutors, not just Cohen's word, federal prosecutors have implicated Donald Trump in a campaign felony. And in that investigation, Trump wanted his ally to then take it over. I mean,

we have a whole nother obstruction case here. Man, a thousand obstruction cases bloom. There's our title. Trump. Trump, in this case reminds me There's an episode of The Sopranos Where Tony is going to buy

Weed Killer and he goes up to the guy At the counter and he's like I need some Weed Killer And he's like oh we have this guy He's like no no I want the hard stuff Give me the DDT give me some of that illegal shit And I feel like Trump just walks around To people in his orbit Just like hey will will cry for me?

Help me out. No, okay. Just kidding. It's funny you say it that way because there's some parsing on the denial from Whitaker, right, which is never ask for promises or commitments. So it is like Trump being like, what do you think? Do you think you can do that? What do you think of this idea? I got a crazy idea.

What if we obstruct justice in New York too? Thoughts? Comments? I think we often talk on the show about how Trump's tweets, if they were emails or calls, they would be more scandalous

than they were treated. We finally found out what the emails and the calls say. Right. In this long, very long New York Times story that kind of weaves together a whole two years of attempted cover up and obstruction efforts into one beautiful little narrative.

And again, and this instance of obstruction is even worse, at least what we publicly know, than the Russia investigation so far, because he obstructed a case in which he is being implicated in a crime. So it wasn't like the explanation that maybe Trump's just doing this because there's political reasons and he doesn't like the Russia investigation because it makes his politics bad. No, no, no. This time he wanted to obstruct because he committed a crime.

Right. Like this is, it doesn't get more clear cut than that. Can you help me? I may be in trouble with the law. I would like to obstruct it from taking place. I would like to use my power to make sure that this investigation into my crimes

doesn't happen. In a way, like, I'd like to build, like, a, I don't know, some sort of a wall or obstacle for the prosecutor. Some kind of a ballard. An obstacle that justice can't overcome. A jersey barrier, perhaps. Some kind of an obstructing... A jersey barrier.

Anyway. This is bad. One last point. No, bad. One last point. Oh, sorry. No, no. One last point. I think that there's something that ties all these stories together, which is... Crimes. After Trump is gone, sooner rather than later, we are going to have to figure out how to safeguard our government from a president who feels no shame and no scruples and no respect for precedent.

Because that is true of what's been happening with the national emergency. That's been true of what's been happening with the Justice Department. So we're going to have to find a way. Fewer norms, more laws. Fewer norms, more laws. That's the lesson of the Trump administration. Absolutely. And it's going to take a lot, and it's going to require laws that stand up to a Supreme Court, which is why we got to figure out that whole Supreme Court thing, too. People don't know what norms are anyway.

Get rid of them, make them laws. Yes. Laws. Laws. Laws. All right. We have a new candidate running for president. Who is it? Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders announced he's joining the field this morning with a video and a longer interview with CBS's John Dickerson. The 77-year-old socialist runner-up for the Democratic nomination in 2016

begins 2020 as one of the frontrunners, as polls consistently show that he's in one of the top few spots. In his video this morning, he promised to, quote, build an unprecedented and historic grassroots campaign that will begin with at least one million people from across the country. I know we're going to have a more in-depth conversation about Bernie between Lovett and Dave Weigel, but what are your first impressions of Bernie's rollout, his strengths, his challenges? Who wants to go? Let me start by just saying, and I think this is important,

I am for every candidate for about two to three hours after I've watched their announcement video. Sucker for an announcement video. I love an announcement video. Bernie's announcement video was fantastic. I thought he did a great job arguing for the rationale of his candidacy. I think he thought he did a great job also making clear. I think one question I had, something I talked to Waggle about as well is, you know, I think in 2016, he vacillated between somebody who wanted to be president, believed he could genuinely win this

thing and somebody who was in it for morally totally valuable reasons of like, I want to get in here and I want to move this party. I want to make a, I want to stake a claim for a different kind of politics. And I want to push this party to the left, which he achieved and deserves a lot of credit for. But what I took away from this video is that this is somebody that is in the race because he wants to win the race. Yeah, I did too. I mean, there was a lot of Bernie content out this morning to the point where I kind of had a hard time sorting it out. The short version of the video, which is currently pinned to his Twitter feed, is really good and makes a compelling case for all the ways he has moved the party to the left on issues like

Medicare for all. I think that is not only smart to point out because it speaks to the power of his candidacy last time, but also the feasibility of his ideas and the candidate itself, right? Because people like us said there's no way he could be elected. You know, free college is crazy and, you know, you can't pay for it, whatever. All the things that people said in 2016. The Dickerson interview reminds you how, the CBS John Dickerson interview reminds you how consistent Bernie has been and how funny he can be in a moment. I'm going to play, just by teeing up my laptop, his response to a question about Howard Schultz

that had me laughing my butt off. Howard Schultz has now said he would not run as an independent if the Democrats nominated a moderate. Oh, isn't that nice that is the perfect response to howard that is just the right amount of dismissive about this putz who is trying to you know hold the democratic party hostage by saying nominate a moderate or i'm going to ruin it for everybody yeah i mean look in all these announcement videos uh or announcements in general I'm always looking for, you know, this is an incredibly crowded field. Why are you,

why you, how are you standing out at this moment? And Bernie answered that question in the video in a smart way by saying like, all these things that all these Democrats are proposing now, this was, this was me. But then he mixes it with another message, which is I've been waiting for some Democratic candidate to use. Elizabeth Warren has done it a little bit. And you see potential candidates doing it, like Beto did this in the Senate race. You see possibly Kamala and Cory Booker doing this too. But this is about a movement, right? And Bernie said this to Dickerson too. He said, whether it's me, whether it's any of the other candidates, none of these people, none of us are going to be able to get all these big policies passed just by electing us. It's

going to require a movement of Americans pushing over and over and over again. And he's emphasizing the movement. And that, you know, I think eventually the question, because we talk about how hard you're going to fight about things, right? Like, are you going to remove the filibuster? Or are you going to be the type of person who says you're going to work with Republicans, right? But ultimately, we know that all of these policies that we're talking about, none of them are getting passed without mass mobilization of people that continues long after the presidential race is over. And I think Bernie at least recognized that in that interview. Challenges for Bernie Sanders.

He's a frontrunner. Seriously. Bernie's a frontrunner. I mean, it's always hard to be the frontrunner this early. A lot of people have glommed on to his major policy positions, or, let's say it nicely, sincerely have believed these policy positions for a long time and have gotten into the race,

people like Elizabeth Warren. Well, that's, and I think that makes him also a victim of his own success, right? Yeah, I think there's two, I think that there are two big challenges coming for Bernie at once, and they have to do with the difference between 2016 and 2020.

In 2016, basically he said, his rationale is you want an alternative to Hillary and you want someone that advocates for a more left wing vision for the country. And in that context, he's somebody who was getting between 40 and 60 percent of the vote in these races. Right. He was a very popular candidate. He ends up with 45 percent at the end of the primary, starting from starting at the beginning of that race back down by 50. Right. I think one of his challenges is he is one of the frontrunners now. In these polls, you see basically Biden and Bernie and Kamala

sort of in the top three spots. Yeah, I would say he's a frontrunner unless Biden jumps in. I think that changes things. But for someone who only in a recent poll, I think, 16% of people had never heard of. I mean, this is an issue with Biden too. Both of them, both Bernie and Biden have incredibly high name recognition. And yet their numbers in these polls are at the top of the field, but not great. 26%, 25%, something like

that, which means that there's a whole bunch of people, Democratic voters, who know exactly who Bernie Sanders is and what he stands for, who knows who Joe Biden is and what he stands for, and yet are still either thinking, I'm not ready to be with them now, and I'm also looking at other candidates. And I think what Bernie has to figure out is he built this coalition in 2016, and that coalition, there's some composition in that coalition. Some of those people are diehard Bernie fans. And they are going to be with him right now.

They are part of this movement. And they're going to be with him in 2020. And then there were a group of people who voted for Bernie because they did not like Hillary Clinton for whatever reason. And the question is, that group of voters that was withernie in 2016 will they be with him again in 2020 or are they looking around at kamala harris at elizabeth warren at joe biden at any number any other number of candidates who may not have had the baggage that hillary had for some reasons that are not her fault at all but some reason you know so that are yeah and and but also on top of that and does that matter in a race where there's going to be 12, 15?

Who knows how many Democrats? What is it going to take to win? You know, I think it's starting to hit me more and more just how how hard it will be to understand, let alone predict the dynamics of what's playing out in each of these votes. out in each of these votes. It is going to be a chaotic process. And we don't know sitting here right now if, is the winner of the Democratic primary going to be someone who's winning early states with 20%, 25%, 30%, 18%? We don't know. And those differences really, really matter. And thinking about, it was the first time I really thought about that hard this morning when I was watching Bernie, because I was like, this is totally unpredictable what might happen, because this is maybe the first time we've had a field this large with so many really, really strong contenders. Not just people here and there.

2008 was pretty strong. 2008 was pretty strong, but even that boiled down to Edwards, Hillary, and Obama. Why not Dodd? Right, why not Dodd, as the three really strong contenders in 2008. And I think in this field, you could have maybe five or six in the top tier. I agree. And those people and all of those candidates

are building up a real fan base. Bernie has a fan base. You can see Kamala developing a fan base now in some of her crowds. And there's other candidates like that as well. Warren as well. And so how that plays out over the primaries with these votes and who wins, it's... It also means relatively small percentages of voters in a given state could have a huge impact.

And so I think there's going to be a real challenge for Bernie in that a lot of hardcore Hillary supporters in 2016 still blame him for their loss. Or maybe less for their loss, but they are very angry at him for what they feel was a refusal to stop, say, abuse from his supporters online. Look, I'm not refereeing this and saying it did or didn't happen. I'm just telling you that there is a very strong undercurrent of former Hillary people that still have deep-seated hard feelings. And he's going to have to heal that wound because that could be a huge chunk of people in a primary. And I will say, and it's tough to

figure out how much of this is the conversation online and on Twitter and how much of it is real life. In real life, when people poll the field, we have a field of Democrats that are well-liked by most Democratic voters. Very few of these people have very high unfavorable ratings. And that's true of Bernie Sanders. That's true of just about everyone else. So it seems like everyone is well-liked by most people. But you can talk to a lot of Hillary supporters,

and we've seen it too. Bernie Sanders supporters... I've met many Bernie Sanders supporters and campaign staffers in real life. Wonderful people. Like Faz Shakir, who just got named campaign manager. He's a brilliant, great guy.

Brilliant. And, you know, a lot of these people are just great people when you meet them. Online, Bernie supporters, and I know some people are just bots, right? But like some of them are real supporters, can be quite difficult to say the least. And that is the charitable interpretation of it.

And I saw some women tweeting this morning, Hillary supporters, like, I didn't even want to say anything about Bernie because I knew my mentions were just going to get just attacked by people all day long. And it is, look, if you are, and I would say this to Bernie supporters and every candidate supporters, if you are looking to build a movement, if you are looking to bring more people in, you need to persuade people. And to persuade people, you need to be somewhat respectful of them, convincing that your argument is correct. You know, like,

don't call everyone maybe a neoliberal corporate shill. I just think that's a hard way to put a coalition together. It's also, I think that there's, it's, I think it's also. And Bernie doesn't do that. No. I also think it's a kind of failure to recognize success in that there are kind of, I feel like there's two ways that this persuasion to pull the Democratic Party to the left have played out. One is with a positive vision. Right. pull the Democratic Party to the left have played out. One is with a positive vision, right? And one is by kind of relentlessly criticizing democratic orthodoxy for being too centrist, for being

enamored of an old-fashioned way of viewing the electorate, for failing to recognize the change in the country, failing to take economic inequality seriously enough, failing to see the trends that would lead to someone like Trump. And I think that there was a real frustration there. There's a validation there in what we've seen in the past few years. But that is one way of persuading people. And it has a real it has real value. But I think when it runs to its logical conclusion and you're accusing every single person who maybe even agrees with you on policy grounds, but then worries that, oh, maybe it's not practical or maybe there is some reticence on the part of voters,

or maybe that Dave Weigel reports that on the campaign trail, he finds people less ideologically conflicted than there are on Twitter, that even pointing that out, having a conversation about that is somehow seen as giving in or not being progressive enough. And I think it's very frustrating. Yes. We should never make policy decisions based on, you know, what the insurance company is going to say or what Republicans are going to say. We should never be scared of corporate interests or what Republicans might say. But that doesn't mean there's not room for policy disagreements based on substance. Not everyone who disagrees with you on a policy is doing so because they are in the pocket of corporate interests or because they are afraid of what Republicans are going to say. Sometimes

good faith people just have good faith disagreements on the best way to come up with the policy. And people who believe that their goal is to do the most good for the most people as quickly as possible come to the conclusion that, say, a public option or a Medicare buy-in for 50 plus will help more people faster than pursuing single payer right now because they don't necessarily view it as something that's achievable. You can disagree. You can argue on the politics, but you're not going to come around and tell Sherrod Brown that he's not a progressive. Give me a fucking break. There's some value. There is some value to, I believe in single payer. I like Medicare for all. I support Medicare for

all. There is also value in showing a little bit of respect for people who want to say something as simple as I'm for it, but maybe it's harder than you think. Maybe the transition is more difficult than you're imagining because we haven't done this before. And those of us that were in the fight and saw how hard it was just to get Obamacare through and what it took to get through that and the backlash to that have some legitimate questions about the right way to pursue it and a debate about how best to manage that transition is a good one to have. I feel like you're getting something

personal off your chest. Wow. I didn't even know where that was coming from. I don't check Twitter anymore, so I don't even know what that would be. No, that just came spontaneously. Totally spontaneous. It's a big font for those remarks you just read. Shut up.

What is that graph? On my computer right now. He already went through this with me, Tommy. Before the show. So basically, it's a chaos theory diagram that shows you what happens as a system that is stable. As you get further along, it gets more and more unstable. I will share it on Twitter. But basically, I think it's a metaphor for the democratic primary so great it's a it's a

metaphor for the democratic primary here's how you can predict thing when there's one candidate oh it's not so hard to predict when there are two candidates now there's four candidates oh shit nothing's clear see sick graph it was a graph that basically just says when there's a lot of candidates you don't know what's going to happen it's a metaphor shut up tell the future all right when we come back, we will have Levitt's conversation with The Washington Post's Dave Weigel. Our guest today is a reporter

at The Washington Post where he also writes the trailer newsletter about campaigns and elections. If you're into prog rock, then good for you. He's also the author of The Show That Never Ends, The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock. Please welcome back Dave Weigel. Dave, how are you doing? It's good to be here. I'm doing great. And thanks for taking a moment on your vacation to do this.

You're in Portugal, right? Is that public knowledge? I am. The Socialists and the Communist Party are in power here, so it's kind of a preview of what will happen when Bernie wins presidency. All right, well, that's a great segue into the topic at hand. So you've been following Bernie's decision pretty closely. What opening does he and his team see in the field that gives him the confidence that there's a path to the nomination? It's interesting because it's a combination of a narrow path in the primary

and then this extraordinarily broad path in the general. So he's been pretty explicit, and he hates talking about process, and he hates the media asking about process. He calls it gossip. But he's talking about process and saying, look, he won, you know, 45% last time. He, in a divided field, maybe needs to win 30% to win this whole thing. And he has a divided field maybe needs to win 30 percent to win this whole thing and he has a devoted uh group of supporters he has a message that has been consistent where if you're unsatisfied

with uh uh with him even looking at how camel camel harris can't explain why she's dramatic here for all so he thinks a combination of support will get him into the nomination. And then his his politics are so unique that he'll be able to appeal to voters who have not voted Democratic or for anyone in years and like compete across non-swing states. So in 2016, it sometimes seemed as though Bernie was running to win. And then at other periods, it felt more like he was running because he wanted to push the Democratic Party on a key set of issues. So that was what ultimately was driving him, you know, the policy views that he's espoused for a very long time that have now become far more mainstream. It was striking in the video and message that he was delivering this weekend that that ambivalence seems to be gone. Do you agree with that? that that ambivalence seems to be gone.

Do you agree with that? Yeah. He does have this confidence that he didn't have at the start of the campaign last time. I think, if I can go to a tangent that's pretty relevant, I think the problem is there are a lot of people who had seen mixed-up logic last time and voted for Sanders who are not interested in him anymore. So his coalition in 2016 included a lot of diehards who will vote for him again

and say they want to vote for him again, according to polling. And a lot of people who kind of wanted the primary to go on longer or to shape Hillary on the issues but did not think Hillary would or should lose the nomination. And then people who just, like, hated Hillary and wanted to vote for the non-Hillary candidate. And you saw that in, you that in Kentucky and West Virginia. Some states where white voters who then have not voted for any Democrat at all turned out for Sanders.

So in his mind, because he won this big coalition before, most of that coalition must be ready to turn out again. So it's kind of academic whether he's changing the debate or not. And even when I pushed him on this, last time I talked to him was, I think, three weeks ago, and you said to him, you would be running in a race not against the candidate of Clintonism and the establishment, but against several people who co-sponsored all your legislation. And the sense I got from him was that he is so much for far-reaching and consistent on left-wing ideas that he's in this to win but if he's not in it how much do people get away counterfeiting his ideas who don't plan to implement them i think that was a real

work for him certainly for a lot of his supporters and that's why if you turn on twitter and i don't know why you would do that because it's horrible if you turn on Twitter, and I don't know why you would do that, because it's horrible, but if you turn on Twitter, the most anger from Sanders voters is often directed like a Kamala Harris or a Kirsten Gillibrand or somebody they see as like a phony trying to get on his ideas. There's not a lot of faith that they would debate them honestly between themselves, I think, from a Sanders camp. So he definitely agrees with that. So he definitely agrees with that. That's interesting, though, because it almost seems as though it's like looking for the same rationale, right? That that, OK, in 2016, there was a an opening because there was a hunger for more left wing policies. And there was a frustration with who the party was heading to nominate without much of a debate.

Now you have a much bigger field and a lot of the people in that field, they're espousing Medicare for all. Elizabeth Warren just put out a big proposal about child care. The debate has shifted in part, I think, because of Elizabeth Warren, in part because of Bernie Sanders, in part because of Trump. And yet it seems like when you say, oh, but they're not really for these policies, that you're actually going back to that rationale of he needs to be here to keep them honest. And yet they I don't believe those other campaigns would agree with that. Right. They would say, no, we're for this. This is this is what this is where the Democratic Party now is. Like, do you see do you see a struggle for rationale in that? I don't actually think it's a struggle because you can honestly go back and see Bernie Sanders saying he wants a Canada-style health care system

as long ago as the 1980s. I mean, he probably said it even before that, but there wasn't video taking a record of his opinion. And it is true that when other Democrats describe, let's just stick to Medicare for All, and there are Democrats that describe Medicare for All, even if they say they're all in, even if they co-sponsor the legislation, they describe something more incremental. And as a senator, Sanders has said he is fine with endorsing the concept and agreeing that that's where we need to end up someday. You know, if you co-sponsor my bill, you'll think we can't do it for 10 years. Okay, if you co-sponsor my bill

and agree that we should phase it in in two or four years, even better. But he looked at the field and didn't see anyone who actually agreed with him 100% on the policy, on the implementation. Other Democrats, I keep going back to her. It's not just to pump her up,

just that she's the person who had the most recent interaction with this. When asked what she would do with the private insurance industry, got kind of a leading question but a fair question on whether this would eliminate that industry. And she kind of sounded like she said yes, and then she walked back. Whereas Sanders would give a confident answer on something like that. He really thinks that the industry should shrink down to just little supplemental insurance policies. And there should not be Aetna

and all these other big pharma companies, sorry, not just pharma, healthcare companies, striding the earth and determining what you get. Even Warren, who supports Medicare for All, when she's pushed on what she would get done, it's awful incremental. And I think a lot of people who are critical of Bernie Rumling can say, even moving to the point where everyone agrees on this concept and has different incremental ideas,

why would you run again? One of the fear from Sanders supporters that you hear a lot is that maybe a Democrat adopts these ideas, wins, doesn't do anything, and we're even further back than when we started under Trump. That is something that I think Sanders is worried about, certainly something his supporters are worried about. So even if everyone agrees on stage, who do you trust to actually do this stuff? Because I think the way that this is described online is socialism or barbarism. These people believe if you do not go for Bernie's agenda, you will end up with right-wing nationalism.

So, you know, back up a couple of pages, look at people who view the stakes in that way. And of course, they want Bernie to run. Of course, he's in a good position to win their votes again. So do you think that that logic applies to Elizabeth Warren as well? I mean, there was a lot of reporting before they both got in the race that maybe only one would do it, that if Elizabeth Warren got in the race, maybe only one would do it, that if Elizabeth Warren got in the race, Bernie might not, in part because they are colleagues and friends, in part because they do share a lot of views. I mean, in a lot of ways, I think the message about being there first that Bernie is putting out there fairly is one that Elizabeth Warren could

argue for as well. Yeah, and I think, so they never reached a deal. I don't know how seriously they got into it. I don't think Bernie would have run in 2016 if she had. But at this point, he sees himself in a stronger position than her. He certainly is, according to the early polling. Although, actually, I think something else. The thing is that early polling asks about Biden and Sanders, and Biden takes up this huge chunk. One is always in the lead. Two takes up a huge chunk of people who might not support Sanders in the second round. But back up from that, looking at the polling, Sanders didn't see reason to back out if the candidate he agreed with the most was not clearly winning, if he was

not spoiling her chances. He is, despite being a third-party independent candidate in Vermont, he's really interested in not spoiling things for Democrats. That's one of his operating principles. So I do think they could have reached a deal if... I'm not trying to read his mind. If polls showed that Warren was at 40% and clearly beating everybody else in the field, I think Bernie's thought would have had a second thought. Because it's so divided with so many people, he doesn't trust quite as much. I think that created more of a space for him. Yeah, and in fairness to Bernie, too, I mean, in some of the attacks he refused to make in 2016, it was always clear that even though he was running hard to push the party to the left,

he felt a sense of moral obligation to make sure that ultimately the Democrat won. So one thing, you recently wrote this in, that when you were, I think, on the trail with Senator Harris, you said, the Democratic electorate showing up to meet its candidates is far less ideological and skeptical than the one that lives on social media. What did you mean by that? And do you not find Twitter to be as elucidating as we all do? I mostly am here for the memes. I like to take memes that were funny three months ago on TikTok and then make them lame because I'm a man in my 30s. Yeah, make them lame. Political Twitter, there are people who think too much about it, probably. Even in terms of how you reach voters, Facebook is still more effective in reaching new voters

and targeting people that might not be tuned in than Twitter is. Twitter is this raging conversation that I think is influential in how media coverage works, at least for now, but not really that representative of voters. And what I meant in that paragraph is I was about to take off for a week and was summing up what I'd seen so far this year. And after going to all these town halls, I think Gillibrand got her second franking question today or yesterday. But I had seen one franking question for Gillibrand. There was two Native American questions for Warren.

I think that Wesley has said at the Times has a story today about Democratic voters not wanting to talk about Warren scandals. They're not caring. There were almost no questions about the things that were seen as big vulnerabilities in the social media narrative. But at the same time, there were not many questions really grilling people on whether they would implement the perfect version of Medicare for All or the Green New Deal, etc. Yet, these people are, as we saw in 2018, they're not settling for right-wing Democrats or corporate Democrats, as they were called by a lot of Republicans on the left. They just, it's very easy for them to be satisfied with the Democrat who can win and just stop Trump from being president. And when they're pushing on the issues, they have an eye toward that.

I think a lot of Democratic voters are asking not, will you do everything that I'm dreaming of, but will you say you'll do things in a way that you can win a majority of the country? But at the same time, you're in Southern California, if you look at Orange County, the voters in Orange County were not making Medicare for All witness tests for their candidates. The ones who did say they were for Medicare for All at some point or another, that was not what they ran their game on. I think it's the questions being asked of a lot of these candidates for president are the kind of questions people were going to be mobilizing around if a Democrat wins in 2021. They need to tee it up and get it into conversation right now. That's really the point of Green New Deal, right? Like taking climate from something that is barely

discussed to something that everyone has to plan on. But it is not really the people showing up and voting are not as concerned with that. And we have not yet seen what will happen when people debate or when people run TV ads, if an idea is going to take off or not. But for the moment, it really isn't. It's not like what I saw in 2015, the early stage Republican primary, where there were so many litmus tests on whether you fought Obama hard enough on this policy or that policy or this executive order. It's just like very informational kind of timeshare sales events that you see for Democrats where people just have a couple of questions about how they're going to run their campaign.

I mean, you often hear my least favorite questions are reported with the closest stuff is how can we help you or what can we help you? How can we get focused on and not be negative against Trump? That's the final point I make about that, is that no one is just standing up and yelling about Trump and the camps aren't really talking about him. They are kind of asking, hey, you make things a little bit better. And that's not Twitter is, hey, any Democrat who does not support these 10 domestic agenda items is canceled. That's not really what I see out there right now. You know, it's interesting, too, because even pointing out that there is this difference

because it's Twitter is then taken as a sign that you're choosing a side in one of the great Twitter wars, right? To even point out that maybe the electorate is less ideological is in some sense striking a blow against the Twitter left and somehow revealing that actually you're cool with a public option instead of single payer and you're part of the problem. But there is just value, right? You can you can there is value in understanding better the reality on the ground. problem on Twitter where, you know, on basically every issue that if you are sharing a set of facts that don't conform to a certain, you know, clique's views online, that somehow you're attacking them or denying the validity of their arguments.

But again, that's not how people are discussing these issues in the world, I guess. I know what you mean. That's why I kind of try to just plop the audience questions or the candid answers on the page and see what people think, because often there is a desire to make things fit a very clean storyline, and it can be a storyline driven. Let's say, let's look at a week ago or so when there was a fresh round of questions about Amy Klobuchar's staff and how she handles, hence she handles them, not to get into everything about it.

But when I was in the conversation, people weren't really asking that in the crowds for all the reporting I saw. People don't ask that much about Warren and the American stuff, and they don't ask him to talk about other candidates. And the one thing they'll say is, how do you differentiate yourself from the other candidates? But there is also all these events, you know, they're self-started. They're just as self-started as Twitter, maybe more, because it takes more effort to go to a campaign event than it takes to start an account and argue. because it takes more effort to go to a campaign event than it takes to start an account and argue. But there is, I think, an appeal for niceness in public Democratic events,

especially the ones in Iowa and South Carolina. And Twitter doesn't resemble that at all. Like, no rank-and-file Democrat is showing up to these meetings, wants to hear people re-litigate 2016 or talk about how Bernie would have won if he was a nominee. I definitely found over the last years in local Democratic Party groups, the Bernie activists who integrated with the party did very well, unless they kind of alienated everybody by talking about 2016 all the time. Like, Twitter is still having those arguments and still saying,

look at this 30-second clip of a quote, this is a terrible answer. All these examples of Kamala Harris, I'm sorry, Kamala Harris tells her, I think a Fox reporter, that she's not a Democratic socialist and she gets, you know, 10,000 hits of a program for doing this and predictions of how it's going to cost her vote. And it's a risk of anybody who writes in public and takes their opinion seriously to say that person disagrees with my policy preference. That means they lost votes. It's not really clear. Right. Kamala Harris introducing herself to people that that was a problem for her. Right. It's also, you know, it's so funny. Sometimes I wonder if all of this doesn't just boil down to all the sort of the breakdowns of how Twitter is different. Maybe it just boils down to people are nicer in the real world and the niceness has big implications. You know,

in 2016, there was this roiling argument online and then poll after poll showed that both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders had what, like high 80s approval ratings amongst all Democrats, Bernie supporters, Hillary supporters, that the niceness of the world has genuine implications. I want to talk about the Republicans for one second before we let you go. Is anyone other than Bill Weld going to get into the Republican primary against Donald Trump? What do you think? I think Kasich will flirt with it and eventually decide against it. Weld has absolutely nothing to lose.

eventually decide against it. Weld has absolutely nothing to lose. And if he's defeated in this primary by landslide, he still gets a lot of attention, a lot of relevance, a lot of microphones. I think Larry Hogan is also probably flirting with it and going to side against it, because every poll that's going to come out is going to show them losing by 90 points against this guy. And if you care about that affecting your political future, you're not going to jump into this.

I also think the White House has been focusing on a couple issues recently where Republicans are, they're very unpopular positions, or they're positions that, certainly every Democrat has agreed to this, I should say, but focusing on Venezuela and abortion laws and things of that nature, just, I think Trump's given less than opening to get in against him. Yeah. Maybe I would just find Kasich and Hogan and the other never come Republicans

as like, if he's, if he's impeached candidates, if there's some, if it becomes possible that he's incredibly weakened, but nobody wants to challenge him, then they jump in. Failing that, I don't see why they would take the risk, but it's pretty clear why Bill Weld would. Yeah, you know, look, it's Bill Weld's time. So last thing, any candidates making interesting musical choices?

You've been following a bunch of these candidates around. Elizabeth Warren is using Dolly Parton's 9 to 5. Anything that's surprised you in the Spotify playlists? she has a tribe called Quest. She has just a very hip playlist. I think if you already are disinclined to like her, you're going to think it's phony. But around the room, people who have been waiting for a while and are tired are really excited to hear

Can I Kick It? Her trick to rhyme. So she's got that. I think she has the most uncensored F-bombs and songs on her soundtrack. That's the best one. Cory Booker doesn't... No one else really has her soundtrack. That's the best one. Cory Booker, no one else really has a soundtrack.

I wish there were surprises, but no one else has really invested the time or has the kind of events where you walk out and get a big moment, like a big entry music. Once I heard Cory Booker come out to Born to Run, which is a cliche

about how New Jersey's terrible. I don't know why those politicians keep using that as a theme. But, like, it's time for everyone to step it up. Kamala Harris clearly has the best playlist, like, the best I've ever heard, probably. And, like, come on. Like, no one can do fight song again. They have to try harder. She's the first person who's used One Nation under a groove the Parmesan Deluxe song

that's just been like waiting there for a candidate to use it for decades it's temporary people who stick this up you know out there there is a staffer who is a second wave millennial and if they want they can make that playlist at their computer right now

and really make a difference so you know that's your challenge to them, I think. Dave Weigel, thank you so much for joining us. This was really fascinating. Really appreciate it. No, thanks for calling me. I'm going to go back to vacation. Delete Twitter.

I'll talk in English for like a week. Delete Twitter from your phone. Can you take it off your phone? Can you disconnect? I will do that. Thanks, man. Thanks to Dave Weigel for joining us today, and we'll see you again on Thursday.

Bye. Bye. Thanks for watching!