Pod Save America - “Mag-a-Lago."

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

The Republican Party’s spring donor retreat becomes a MAGA-fest at Mar-a-Lago, Joe Biden launches a commission to reform the Supreme Court, and Democrats try to undo the damage Mitch McConnell did to the judiciary. Then, an Under the Radar segment that ends with a new filibuster game: “Manchin or Sorkin?"For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, the Republican Party's spring donor retreat becomes a MAGAfest at Mar-a-Lago, and Joe Biden launches a commission to reform the Supreme Court as Democrats try to undo the damage Mitch McConnell did to the judiciary. Then, a few under-the-radar stories we're keeping an eye on. But first, Lovett, tell us about this week's show. Great Lovett or leave it. Emily Heller and I, we're doing it once.

I don't think we can emotionally do it again, but we did a, we just looked, we did a little okay stop with Gutfield, exclamation point. It was a tough watch. We did many more. We cut it down for your own protection, but that was very fun.

And then Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton ranted about DC statehood, some great rants from Shaniqua McClendon about Manchin and from John Milstein about the, we work doc. It was a fun app. Fun app.

Awesome. Check it out. Be sure to also check out the latest take line where Jason and Renee discuss the viewership milestones reached by women's college basketball and put Oscar nominated director Trayvon free in the hot seat for a hilarious round of take survivor. I hear Elijah Cohn did well, and I assume he wrote this promo language.

Elijah is really struggling in the Take Survivor competition. I think we got to be nice to him, you know? He's just getting defeated left and right. Finally, we're now selling possibly my favorite piece of merch at the Crooked store right now. It is a colorful pool float that just says vaccinated on it. It's a great float. There are limited quantities available, but to get yours, you can go preorder at crooked.com slash store.

And just to answer your question, if you got Johnson & Johnson, you can still get it. AstraZeneca.eneca is not funny. All right, let's get to the news. The Republican Party, in its infinite wisdom, chose to hold its spring donor retreat at the home of the twice impeached one term president who single handedly cost them the White House, the Senate and the House. the home of the twice impeached one term president who single handedly cost them the White House, the Senate and the House. So instead of headlines about all the potential 2024 presidential candidates who spoke at the big event, the coverage was all about Donald Trump's off the cuff remarks. Tommy John, I got a quick quiz for you, please.

Which one of these things did the 45th president not say during his speech at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday? He not say. A. He called Mitch McConnell a stone cold loser and a dumb son of a bitch. B, he mocked McConnell's wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. C, he attacked Mike Pence for not helping him steal the election. D, he bragged about the size of the January 6th rally

that turned into an insurrection. E, he called immigrants murderers, rapists, and drug dealers. Or F, he proposed renaming the COVID vaccines the Trump scene. John, he did all of the above. This is a trick question. Tommy, Tommy, you nailed it. Trick question, all of the above. Can't slip one by you. I didn't, I didn't, I did not watch or hear. I watched. I read stories about this thing because I couldn't bring myself. I actually my question is still like I know that

when they invent when they had Rick Scott invent a fake award to present to him, Trump didn't even do them the favor of putting on a suit. He was still in his golf clothes. And what I don't know is, did Trump change into a suit to at least speak to these donors, or did he stay in the hat and the polo? Trump looks like he's getting third place in the Mar-a-Lago Club Championship. It does look like he just came off the golf course to receive this award. Hey, question I have for you guys, though. He also offered some theory about Mark Zuckerberg spending $500 million on a lockbox to mark votes. Does anyone know what that means? So I was going to add that one to the list, but it was so hard to comprehend. And by the way, love it. There weren't, there's no video of it. There's no audio of the remarks. You didn't,

you didn't miss anything. This is all from reports of donors who were there. So this is all from media reports. And having read every single story about this i could not figure out the zuckerberg 500 million dollar lockbox where it's apparently apparently all the all the votes were in the lockbox and mark zuckerberg was walking around with them i don't no one knows what the fuck the guy was talking about yeah i mean he doesn't know i mean like it's it's a translation of a headline into a conversation through the 1970s New York Post into a speech before donors, then translated from those donors to reporters. So I don't think we'll ever know. I think it's lost to history. It's like, it's gone. Yeah. Unless he brings it up again in future stump speeches. So on one hand, Politico reports that the audience panned Trump's speech with one donor calling it, quote, horrible. On the other, not a single

Republican official criticized Trump on the record, not even the people who were directly attacked. Tommy, why do you think that is? What's the party's Trump strategy right now? I mean, look, there's never been a shortage of Republican elites, especially the donor class, willing to criticize him on background. You know, I think that's kind of status quo ante here. The problem for the Republican party is that the base loves the whining, nonstop grievance, open mic night, I should have won the election stuff. So, you know, this feels like kind of more of the same to me. Yeah, I love it. I mean, I think the award really sort of sums it up. Trump calls the top Senate Republican a dumb son of a bitch.

Then the Republican campaign committee for the Senate, the chair, Rick Scott, gives him. They made up the award. It's the first ever champion for freedom award. It's a little silver bowl. It's a bowl. It looks so stupid. It's a dumb little metal bowl given to him just to make him feel great. So they give it to him as he calls the leader, the most powerful Republican in the Senate,

a dumb son of a bitch. Well, I do think it's like it captures something like so essential about like these people, because you know that when they, the first time someone said, should we make up an award? People thought it was funny. You know, like that's, that's, that's stupid. Like everyone knows that that's stupid. And then all of a sudden you got Rick Scott with a bowl handing him the award. And then you have all these Republican donors being like, honestly, we are not catering to this guy anymore. I mean, after I get on the shuttle from the Four Seasons to Mar-a-Lago and sit there for three hours and listen to him ramble and donate more money, both to his PAC and to the Republican Party, I'm out. That's it for me. I mean,

the reason I think this is important is so there's either two things going on. One, the party faithful, whether it's the voters, the activists, the donors, the rest of the elected officials, they all do want him again. And they're just embarrassed to say that publicly, I guess. Right. They're all they're all on board. Right. For another Donald Trump. So that it could be that or it could be that once again, we are facing the same collective action problem within the Republican Party that led to Donald Trump winning the nomination in 2016, which is that they're all afraid to say anything on the record. They're all afraid to go after him. Not one of the Republicans he attacked said anything. Mitch McConnell's office had no comment about this. No one said anything.

None of the other 2024 potential contenders said anything. No one criticized him. And either way, if that's how they're going to be, he's going to be, if he wants it, he's going to be the nominee again in 2024. It's going to be his, it's going to be his fluke unless he decides not to run. If he decides to run, like, I don't know, I don't know in this scenario, we're now months away from the election, months away from the insurrection. I don't know how he, how he loses. Yeah. I mean, look, it's, it's hard to tell if these, if these donors are just like people who view Trump or anybody else as a vessel for their future tax cut. right? Like I think there is that part of the party. You're starting to see people quoted in some of these stories saying Trump is fading. His shelf life after the presidency, you know,

it's shorter than you'd think. Oh, we don't, people around him don't believe he will run again. Again, it's very hard to see if that's wishful thinking, if that's people trying to background quote something into reality or, you know, exactly the kind of, you know, covering your eyes and hoping for the best we've seen from the Republican Party since 2015. My money would be on the guy running again because he has nothing else to do. He's a bored, angry old man sitting at a country club. You can't play golf 24 hours a day. So I guess he'll continue to mess up our politics. And again, just two numbers here that tell you everything you need to know. Reuters poll taken at the end of March, so just a week or so ago, 60% of Republicans believe

Trump's false claims that the election was stolen from him. And 65% say he should run for president again in 2024. So that's it. Like there's no, usually these spring retreats for a party that lost are supposed to be some kind of a reckoning, an autopsy, what happens for the future. They don't think they did anything wrong. They don't think they did anything wrong by nominating Donald Trump because they believe that the election was stolen from him. And that's what the voters, Republican voters believe it well. So if they believe that and the guy that the election was stolen from chooses to run again, why not support him? Because what did he do wrong? Right. It's, it's, so they've, they have accepted a story that he is not politically toxic.

They actually don't believe that anymore. They think that he won the election and they've completely accepted the policy argument, if you're going to call it that or whatever. They view the nationalism that Trump has offered as the future of the Republican Party. So now, regardless of what happens with Donald Trump, the Republican primary is now a machine that takes politicians that are in other kinds of shapes and it extrudes them in a Trump shape at the end of the machine. It's a it's a Trump pasta machine. And they all come out now. Trump, all of them like Like Tom Cotton gave a speech. Sounded just like Trump.

Ron DeSantis sounds more like Trump. Tucker Carlson sounds like Trump. Mike Pompeo sounds like Trump. Ted Cruz sounds like Trump. Ted Cruz. Go fuck yourself. Thank you. Yes.

Yes, Kyle. Yes. Kyle on the ones and twos. Love it. Of all of those 2024 contenders you just mentioned, none of them made headlines over the weekend, except the one Republican White House hopeful who was allowed to share the stage with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who Trump has reportedly told advisers he wants as his VP if he runs again. reportedly told advisers he wants as his VP if he runs again. The New York Times ran a piece about DeSantis positioning himself to be Trump's heir that says, quote, the governor's brand of libertarianism or, quote, competent Trumpism, as one ally called it, is on the ascent. What's the case for Ron DeSantis as the next Trump?

And how seriously do you guys take it? Tommy, what do you think? the next Trump. And how seriously do you guys take it? Tommy, what do you think? I mean, the case for Ron DeSantis winning a Republican primary is that he is the party's number one troll after Trump, or maybe after Donald Trump Jr. I mean, that's the thing he does. He will not listen to any press criticism. He will not cut a deal with any liberals. He's just like the maximalist opponent to everything progressives want to do. He's not a libertarian. The Florida legislature is trying to shove through a bill that would basically criminalize protesting throughout the state of Florida.

He's not a libertarian. Very libertarian. Libertarian bullshit, right? He's just kind of like, uh, a vicious schlub with resting dumb face who is actually like pretty, pretty smart, like Harvard educated lawyer, went to Yale undergrad. He's like all the things that the Republican party pretends to hate, but he, but he dresses himself up as this sort of like toxic opponent to liberalism. And so here we are now, the New York times is talking about how he is, uh, you know, the heir apparent and Politico has declared that Ron DeSantis in Florida won the pandemic because, you know, at times their case count was lower than cities that locked down harder.

So, I don't know. This is the dumb political universe we're stuck in. Just as an aside, anytime anyone asks me what I think about Politico, I'm just going to go right to that headline, which says how Ron DeSantis won the pandemic. I don't care if your state had a good record or bad record. It's not about that. You don't win won the pandemic. I don't care if your state had a good record or bad record. It's not about that. You don't win a fucking pandemic. No, it's just my personal view is that it's like really serious and like not something to think of as like a game that you can win or lose.

Yeah. That was just my read about it. Wow. That's how I interpreted it. Real stick in the mud. Lovett, what do you think about Ron DeSantis? You're a Floridian by family. Sure I am.

Sure I am. Yeah, I love a fan boat. I find like this idea of like a competent Trump is like it gives Trump too much credit and actually gives Trumpism too much coherence. Like Trumpism isn't really a clean ideology at all. Like what you're saying is he's a Republican who will use some of the race baiting and bigotry and anti-media language that was effective for Trump. That's what you're saying. You're saying he's a Republican who has Republican policies and

Republican instincts. He's anti-democratic in all the ways that Republicans are anti-democratic. Republican policies and Republican instincts. He's anti-democratic in all the ways that Republicans are anti-democratic. He is more competent than Trump because everyone is more competent than Trump. And he is going to, when he is attacked or when he feels he's in a politically sticky situation, lash out at what he did at this event. He's going to say, oh, I'll never be afraid of big tech. I'll never be afraid of the liberals. I'll never be afraid of the media. So like, if that's what it means to like be a competent Trump, what you're really saying is he is a Republican. Did you guys know that he wrote a book called Dreams from Our Founding Fathers? Only when I read the prep last night.

Everything is just a troll. I was about to text him. Everything is a troll of Obama. Everything is derivative. Like he wouldn't get a COVID shot in public because like, I don't know why, because they're all part of a death cult and they think that opposing a pandemic makes you liberal. I think he's just a troll. He's terrible. I think that he is quite dangerous and someone who could definitely win the nomination if Trump does not win. I think if now, so if Trump runs, I think DeSantis is screwed because like, why do you want the pale imitation of Trump when you can have the real thing?

Right now, you could argue that people say, oh, well, Ron DeSantis is Trump without all of the as the New York Times would probably say the rough edges. The Trump is a flamethrower or whatever they firebrand bombastic bomb firebrand bombastic style. Right. So he's got he's Trump without the rough edges. But if you're a Republican voter voter you want the real thing you love donald trump but if donald trump doesn't run look ron de santos has a 53 job approval in florida um he was second in the straw poll at cpac he was first in the straw poll without trump um his appeal isn't just isolated to the trump diehards which is the real problem there. His job approval rating among independents in Florida is 59 percent.

Jeb Bush talked about him the other day, said, I'm out of the punditry business, but I am a fan of Ron DeSantis. So you could see, and partly because of what you said, Lovett, that he's just a Republican who does the whole Trump but he fights thing, Republican who does the whole Trump, but he fights thing that Ron DeSantis is someone who could bridge the Trump diehards with some of the more traditional conservative Republicans left over in the party who might have decided that they didn't like Trump because of a few of his fucking tweets. So if you want if you want Trump without the tweets that cause headaches for Republicans, maybe you got yourself Ron DeSantis. Yeah, and presumably you also have someone running without the record of mismanaging a once in a century pandemic.

So like we should all be pretty fucking worried about the next election. Like, yeah, I mean, Trump- No, that's why I'm worried because I think- Trump with the Trump baggage, Trump with Trump came very close. So- 40,000 votes, 40,000 votes in three states

and Trump who presided over the largest loss of American life in modern history, lost by 40,000 votes. So that's how close we are. That's why it's everyone. There's a lot of like I can see online, too, when people bring up Trump again. Why are you still talking about it? Like, no, no, no. We're going to have an election in 2024. So far, he's the front runner. He's probably got the nomination if he wants it. If he doesn't want it, there's someone like Ron DeSantis who could be even more dangerous because he at least appears to be more normal to some voters. We haven't really dug into judicial politics since Biden won, but on Friday, the president announced that he'll be establishing a commission to study possible Supreme Court reforms, including adding seats or instituting term limits. The bipartisan commission, made up of both liberal and conservative academics, fulfills one of Biden's campaign promises, though at the end of the 180 days,

the New York Times reports that the commission will not make formal recommendations, but provide, quote, an evaluation of the risks and benefits of making changes to the court. This fulfills Joe Biden's campaign promise to get out of a bad news cycle in October of 2020. Particularly right before a debate or during a debate. So some progressives like the group Demand Justice and Representative Mondaire Jones criticized the commission as insufficient. Others, like Alliance for Justice, said it demonstrates a strong commitment to taking action. Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell called it a direct assault on our nation's independent judiciary and another sign of the far left's influence over the Biden administration. Lovett, what do you think?

do you think well i obviously want to reserve judgment for the 180 days that commence after the commission first meets a date that i don't believe has yet been set um it's a commission that it says 36 people on it which felt big to me felt like that's a lot of a lot of a lot of mouths a party a lot of mouths to feed but you know, they can't really make formal recommendations. What is striking is just this is we've lost the courts. They're lost. We lost these fights. We lost the Supreme Court. We should Breyer should retire and we should, you know, put pressure on Breyer, at least make the case for why Breyer should retire. But this is a really long term challenge. is a really long term challenge. We do not have the votes to expand the court. Republicans are wise to the fact that democratic interest in this is ideological. We want to shift the balance of the courts. They do not obviously want to help us do that. There may be non ideological reforms that can be made in court. I'm not an expert on this, but there are like non ideological changes that seem to be needed given like just the growth in the country and the pressure on the federal court system. But beyond that, I don't know how you do this without winning more Senate seats, keeping the House continuing to have this conversation.

So like, will this report that looks at a lot of problems without actually proposing solutions make a difference? Maybe in the long run, maybe it starts a conversation. Beyond that, I don't know. Tommy, what do you think? I mean, to love this point, the problem is acute. I think Trump named about 25% of the entire federal bench that's currently sitting. The Supreme Court went to 4-4 to 6-3. He named 54 U.S. Court of Appeals judges. So the bench is completely MAGA at this point. My question is,

I guess, what kind of report is this going to be? They're not going to offer recommendations, but are they attempting to get a consensus view from these 36 members? Will there be dissenting opinions? What's the outcome here? What's the goal? And my concern is, we have 180 days. I mean, time is not on our side. We are one Senate seat away from not being able to confirm any more judges necessarily if Mitch McConnell decides he doesn't want to. If we lose the House, we're not going to be able to pass any kind of legislation that might change the makeup of the court or how it works. So I'm a little worried about just the ticking clock here more than almost anything else. I guess my question is, who's the audience for this commission, right? So there's some really great progressives on this

commission, some great liberals, civil rights activists, et cetera. And then there's some liberal there's some really great progressives on this commission some great liberals um civil rights activists etc and then there's some conservative members really conservative um so you're right tommy like i don't i don't imagine they're going to get to some consensus opinion with this group of people there's 36 people and i don't even think that's their charge so they come out with this commission they offer the risks and benefits like it's not for the american people right like that what's that gonna do it's not for like to convince republican voters you're not gonna get them it seems like is it a commission for joe mansion and and kirsten cinema and the people that you would need in the senate to both get rid of the filibuster and then pass legislation to add seats to the court? Is it for Justice Breyer, perhaps, to show him and other members of the court, perhaps, who are worried

about court packing that as opposed to just doing this out of pure political reasons, you're taking it seriously and you're thinking about the institutions? Perhaps that's what it's about. Either way, I agree with Levitt that like whether joe if joe biden had come up with a commission that was like 100 liberal and was going to come out with recommendations at the end of 60 days instead of 180 days would it make that much difference i don't think so because you're still stuck with what's going to happen with joe mansion what's going to happen with kirsten cinema which is this it's the fucking joe mansion cul-de-sac that we've been talking about the last couple months yeah that you're stuck in once again so

i don't know that no basketball hoop in that cul-de-sac so so as we mentioned one person who weighed in on court reform last week was justice stephen breyer who said during a speech at harvard law school that advocates of court expansion should think long and hard about the risks. Here's a clip. But that authority, like the rule of law, depends on trust. A trust that the court is guided by legal principle, not politics. Structural alteration motivated by the perception of political influence can only feed that latter perception. So, progressives responded by reiterating their call for the 82-year-old liberal justice to retire so that Biden can name a replacement for Breyer, who could be confirmed by the Democratic Senate, demand justice, even had a billboard with Breyer's face on it driving around the Supreme Court.

But the White House told reporters last week that Biden will not pressure Breyer to retire, believing it's Breyer's choice to make. Why is it so important for Breyer to retire right now? And I guess more importantly, what do you think the best way is to get that done? Reverse psychology. Well, no, say more about that. What do you think? So I decided to give myself a treat and watch the two hour lecture at one point seven five speed. That's the that's the gift I gave. I was like, you know what? The man's been on the court for a long time. I'm not a lawyer. Great LSAT score. Commonly known that I had a great LSAT score, but I'm not a lawyer. And I was like, let me watch. Tough start. And I was like, let me just see what this argument is. And what's interesting about it is like he has a true faith in the court.

He has a true faith in the process by which it makes decisions. He has thought deeply about the ways in which the court builds trust despite partisan divisions inside and the way they issued a sense when they issued a sense when they make decisions narrowly when they make decisions broadly. But and I actually think that like, of course, what he is saying is true. I think that like the partisan rendering of how Republicans Republican appointed judges versus Democratic pointed judges rule is a bit broadly drawn, right? The court is not as 100% a political body as we sometimes claim it is. It is, of course, not as nonpartisan as he would like to believe it is. But what he doesn't grapple with at all, to me, is, okay, you care about the legitimacy of the

court and you are an expert in and a practitioner in the ways in which the court itself establishes its legitimacy. What he doesn't grapple with at all in a two hour lecture is what happens when that legitimacy is attacked from without by political institutions, by senators, by Republican presidents, by a process by which the court was stacked. What do you do when the court is a right wing court and five of those justices were appointed by Republican presidents who didn't win the popular vote. Okay. And your staying on the court potentially makes that problem even worse.

And he doesn't grapple with that, I think, because he can't grapple with it. Because the reality is it is a partisan body. And I think we all should be less worried about seeming political by demanding he retire than by the actual problem of what happens when Republican politicians take over the courts because as much as Breyer believes it's nonpartisan, they know it isn't. And it doesn't matter what it looks like. It matters what it is. And he is holding a seat that if we don't get while we have a Democratic Senate, he puts in jeopardy everything he has believed in and fought for his entire career. Tommy, what do you think? You want to drive that billboard around?

I mean, yes. He's 82. He's the oldest member of the court. Obviously, in hindsight, the world would be a lot better place if RBG had resigned in 2013 and Barack Obama had been able to name her replacement and not Donald Trump. I mean, I just think that that's a fact. I understand all the reasons. She's an icon.

She's someone who's an extraordinary figure in our history, but we are worse off because Trump got that seat. And I also just think a mistake we made in the Obama White House was to sometimes try to make decisions or act like there were certain sects of government that were above politics. I saw this a lot on the NSC where it was like, the politics doesn't enter the situation room. Well, in fact, it does, right? Because we're only here because of politics because you got elected. I think the same thing is true for the courts. I mean, there's 677 district court judges.

Every one of them has the power to issue a temporary restraining order that blocks the implementation of federal legislation until a trial can be held about that law, right? Biden immediately saw this happen to him with his moratorium on evictions. So the idea that the judicial branch is not political, I think is on its face not accurate. It's also the case that Donald Trump just like named the youngest people he could find to troll the libs in some cases to the bench. He was naming like 40-year-old anti-voting rights activists, not like seasoned legal professionals, people that were not recommended by the bar associations. So look, I just think there's this sort of purity test bullshit that sort of envelops all of these conversations that I think we have to just

fight right through. And then there's just the obvious fact that we have a small window of time to name another Supreme Court justice if Breyer resigns. And if we miss that window, we do not know what's coming next. And like, you know, we cannot deal with another conservative justice on the Supreme Court. We just can't. No, I mean, Justice Breyer,

I have no doubt that he believes deeply in, you know, the law and institutions and making sure there is trust in the institution of the Supreme Court. And he cares about that. And he's working hard to make sure that people have faith in the Supreme Court. But he's also someone who clearly has a set of progressive values and beliefs that have animated many of his decisions over the years. beliefs that have animated many of his decisions over the years. And he has to know that, like you said, Tommy, that the window is closing and that like, look, here's the difference. If Justice Breyer announces he's retiring soon at the end of this term, we have the 50 senators. We have the 51 votes in the Senate. Joe Biden can name someone to replace him who's young, who's progressive. And then we basically have to wait until, you know, Clarence Thomas retires and hope that there's a

Democratic president to start switching the balance of the court again. If Justice Breyer waits and we lose the Senate or God forbid before before 2022, we lose a Democratic senator somehow. All it takes is one. That's it. Republicans could replace him. And now now we're waiting for fucking John Roberts or Alito. Probably Alito is the next one that we're waiting for, which is a long fucking wait for that person to retire to restore the balance of the court. So this is it's basically like the difference of a generation of waiting for another conservative justice to retire and be and and have the opportunity to be replaced by a Democratic president. Now, if you're asking me what's the best way to get that done, I don't know that driving a billboard around in front of the Supreme Court with Breyer's face on it demanding that he retire is going to convince Justice Breyer to step down.

I just don't know if that's what does it. I do think like. yeah, I think we know what the kind of stick argument looks like, you know, it's retire bitch. That's like, that's the truth. That's it. You know, it's like, and, and similar for, you know, we know what it looks like. It's actually a, it's a similar kind of shaped problem as when we deal with mansion. I do think sometimes we have to like, think about reframing how we talk about this for audiences of one when so many of so many of our problems are like resting, not in like these big campaigns, but just like convincing one person. And it's like, OK, you want the Supreme Court to be legitimate. You want it to be a legitimate body. are Americans who want to feel as though they have a say in the makeup of the most powerful

judicial body in our country and giving them an opportunity to feel like they have voted in a way that redounded to them having an opportunity to have their ideology, their point of view, their view of the Constitution represented is a way to strike a blow on behalf of legitimacy. The other piece of this, too, is a lot of this is rough working. That's pretty good. Like, okay, Breyer, you're telling us that the Supreme court is a non-political non-partisan institution that we can trust, even though it's six, three Republican. Well, let's see, let's see what comes out of these, this court. Uh, let's see what kind of decisions that John Roberts and, uh, uh, can, can get out of this conservative majority.

Retire bitch. Yeah. That might work better. I mean, these guys are just, they all have towering, massive egos. And I do not think that a sign or Jen Psaki's comments from the podium are going to, you know, are going to what makes him decide to retire. But I do hope that there's a pretty concerted inside game

where people who know him well are having these conversations. I assume that's the case. There was with the Obama administration and RBG. But yeah, to your point about legitimacy, Lovett, I mean, when I think about Mitch McConnell stealing a Supreme Court seat from Barack Obama, that doesn't really help me have faith in the institution. When I think about gutting the Voting Rights Act or gutting all efforts at campaign finance

reform and all the damage that's done, that doesn't give me faith in the institution, right? I mean, I think the Supreme Court is doing a very good job of undercutting itself at the moment, and we need to restore a little balance there before it can be fixed. I would bet there are a lot of conversations going on between, you know, members of Congress and staff and the White House and staff and perhaps Breyer's former clerks, current clerks, of ways to maybe ease him out of the job. You know, I do worry, after giving a speech like that, where he's worried about partisanship and the court being viewed as partisan, if there is an increased level of noise from progressives telling him to get out,

like the worry is that it backfires and he decides to stay in there. And so there is, I think there's a, there's a delicate balance here in trying to ease this guy out of the job. Yeah. And it is. And that's like, obviously deeply unfair. It is like, it's again, it's like James Comey, it's, it's mansion. We are, we pay such a high price for this idea that you have to seem nonpartisan, that it's a performance. Nonpartisan is not that partisanship isn't about outcomes or even the process behind the scenes. It's like this display that you're doing for people.

Meanwhile, you look at this, you're like, no one's part of this conversation. It's a tiny conversation about the future of the Supreme Court. Last thing on this, Tommy, you mentioned that the Supreme Court is not the only way that Biden can leave his mark on the judiciary. A few weeks ago, the president announced a diverse slate of 11 judicial nominees to fill some of the 69 eligible vacancies across various levels of the federal court system. Biden's list includes four Asian Americans, a Latina, the first Muslim American to be nominated for a district court seat, and three black women for appeals court vacancies, including U.S. District Judge Katonji Brown Jackson to fill Merrick Garland's seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which many believe will be a short

stop on her way to becoming the first black woman on the Supreme Court. So you mentioned this, you know, Trump filled more than 200 court vacancies in just one term, which is nearly as many as Obama and Bush each did during their eight years in office. What lessons do you think Biden is taking from that? And what does this first slate of appointments say about his strategy toward the courts? Tommy? So far, you know, he's shown it looks like he is thinking about racial diversity and experiential diversity. I mean, you mentioned he named three black women. I heard an expert talking about how on the federal appeals court right now, there are only five black women out of 180 active judges and the youngest is 69 years old. So obviously there was a massive

gap in representation that needed to be filled there. It's the first Muslim federal jury, right? So there's a lot of really important racial diversity that's coming through these picks. There's also experiential diversity, which I think is really interesting and important as well. Five of the picks out of the 11 have a criminal defense background, including some who are public defenders. That hasn't normally been the path to becoming a judge. You go to some Ivy League law school, you maybe clerk for an important judge, and then you become a prosecutor or you become a partner at some white collar law firm. Biden is being pushed to think about people who defended people at the worst moment of their lives who couldn't afford

to pay for it and to bring that kind of point of view to the bench. So I think so far so good. I mean, I think he's getting press from some other groups to name more Latino judges. That's an important step that he'll take as he continues to work through his list. But so far, so good. I think people are pretty happy in the advocacy world about the 11 he picked so far. I think the experiential point is very important about having this broad diversity of backgrounds, too, as well as diversity of the actual judges. Two other points. I think the average age of the Biden picks is 48. We love young judges.

Too old. We want young judges. Let's get that down. Let's get that down. So that's important. speed at which he's doing this, Trump, who named so many judges in his one term, Biden is actually nominating this first slate faster than even Trump did. So his I think he has learned from past administrations and even what Trump did that like pace is important here. And especially, again, pace while you have the Senate and you have the 51 votes you need to get these through.

Now, of course, fucking Joe Manchin has to approve every single one of these judges. Everyone, every one of these judges has to be Joe Manchin. Yeah, but that's better than Obama who had to get 10 Republicans. He had to get 60 votes on all of these. They had to break a filibuster in every nominee, which is why you saw more prosecutors, more people who had not really colored outside the lines in their legal career. Biden, I think, has a lot more running room in terms of diversity of experience and, you know, naming the most progressive people possible to some of these judicial seats in the same way Trump was naming the youngest MAGA zealots he could find and

slapping him on the bench. Think about how differently this conversation would be unfolding even in this moment if Cal Cunningham could have kept it in his fucking pants. Oh, boy. Yeah. Okay. Well, because we have one more vote. That would have been nice. That would be nice. He'd still be a pain in the ass like Manchin. I know, but we'd have some wiggle room.

We'd have some wiggle room. That's all I'm saying. Just something to think about. Perhaps. Or if someone could have figured out how to fucking beat Susan Collins in Maine, we can yell about Cal Cunningham. Think about Maine a lot, too. All right. Let's go around the horn with our under the radar stories for this week.

I'll go first. A few weeks ago, we covered the effort to unionize the 6,000-person Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, when President Biden released a video supporting the workers' right to organize. Sadly, those workers lost the vote last week by a lopsided 71% to 29% margin. The retail, wholesale, and department store union blamed the loss on Amazon's aggressive anti-union tactics

like mandatory meetings, signs in bathroom stalls, and texts to workers with the slogan, do it without dues, an argument that they could have a great job without paying for membership in a union. So question is what happens next? I would recommend everyone go read Noam Scheiber's piece in the New York Times. He's a great piece on how labor leaders are planning on maybe shifting strategies away from union elections and towards a few different tactics. One is walkouts from workers. Two is protests. Three is public relations campaigns that highlight labor conditions and enlist the support of public figures, which helped the Service Employees International Union, SEIU, win wage increases for fast food workers over the last few years. There's also a congressional strategy that includes oversight hearings of Amazon's labor practices

and a push for the Senate to pass the House's PRO Act, which would outlaw mandatory anti-union meetings and impose financial penalties on employers who violate labor law because there currently aren't any. SEIU President Mary Kay Henry also had a great idea when she proposed that Biden and Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh call on big companies like Amazon and McDonald's to come to the bargaining table with labor so that the negotiation is about the entire industry instead of one warehouse. It's becoming really hard to organize single warehouses, single offices at a time when so much of this is about industry-wide conditions. And these companies are so big and powerful that they can use their power on a single warehouse. Whereas if you have the entire industry at the table in terms of labor against

some of these big companies, you're going to have a better fighting shot. So hopefully Biden and Marty Walsh can get on that. Get him, Matty. Tommy, what do you got? All right. My topic today is the insurrection on the Capitol on January 6th, Tucker Carlson and incitement. So avid Twitter users may have seen that last week on Fox News, Tucker Carlson openly expressed his belief in a racist anti-Semitic conspiracy theory called the Great Replacement Theory. Sometimes it's called the White Replacement Theory. This theory is basically that some powerful cabal, sometimes it's the Democratic Party, sometimes it's George Soros or prominent Jews, are trying to import non-white immigrants to replace white people and white voters. Tucker said, this is a

quote, the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate. The voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the third world. He went on to say, every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter. Poor Tucker. This isn't a new theory. It's not surprising that Tucker Carlson would say something racist or vile on his show. But I do think it's important to take stock of the fact that Tucker's rhetoric is getting worse, not better, post-Trump, post-insurrection, and to understand that this theory, this great replacement theory, has been a driver of white supremacist terrorism and neo-fascism. So people like Tucker, they spin up this idea. They spin up this idea that there's an existential threat to white voters, and they

create a narrative that says to listeners, you have to take action. You have to do something about it. So the results are the El Paso shooter quoted the great replacement theory in his manifesto, the Christ church shooter in New Zealand talked about it, the tree of life shooter in Pittsburgh referenced the theory, and people in Charlottesville famously chanted, you will not replace us and Jews will not replace us. This thing from Tucker last week, this segment dovetails with a report today out from CSIS that shows domestic terrorism in the U.S. has greatly increased since 2015. And that increase is being driven by white supremacist right-wing groups. The January 6th was not long ago. I'm not saying that Tucker is to blame for all these incidents, but it should worry everyone,

especially Fox News executives, by the way, that this kind of incitement is happening in prime time on Fox pressure and attention to the fact that, you know, he's really escalating this narrative and, you know, bad things happen when this kind of rhetoric is just unchecked. So that's my under the radar. It's so scary. Like his argument is just simply all immigration is destroying the American way of life. That's it. Right. By saying that any time an immigrant comes here and becomes a citizen, that disenfranchises American voters. It's that simple. It's just no immigration from Tucker and the immigrants who are here, even if they became

citizens through legal channels, they are a threat to your way of life. It's just white supremacist rhetoric. That's all it is. Pure and simple. Love it. What do you got? So depressing. Yeah's all it is. Pure and simple. Love it. What do you got? So depressing. Yeah.

Pick us up. Listen, remember when I saw Lachlan Murdoch at a fancy Oscar party and I ran up to him and yelled at him and then it was in the Daily Mail? Maybe I'll do that again. Think it'll help. Good nerd. Should have yelled louder. Love is trying to get invites.

I think it might have. And after, it's just so uncomfortable to yell at someone at a party. I was just completely sweated through my suit, just completely drenched with sweat from yelling. And then shortly after that, they canceled all parties. Yeah, that was it. That was it. It was one of the last things I got to do.

I don't have an under-the-radar segment today. Instead, now it's time for a game last week prime minister of West Virginia Joe Manchin published an op-ed in the Washington Post titled I will not vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster you see a headline like that and you hope that the headline

belies a kind of nuance in the piece that was not the case the piece was lacked nuance on this matter it was pretty tedious and patronizing and the arguments were rooted not in the hard realities of politics, but in a kind of fantasy about American history and the American president. So now it's time for a game we call, uh, what if now that Disneyland is reopening, you put Aaron Sorkin on the teacups for like five hours without a break. And then you plop them delirious and confused in front of a laptop and said, you work for Joe Manchin now. You work for him. So here's how it works. I'm going to read

you a quote and you have to decide whether it's from our boy Joe Manchin or the twisted mind of Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin or Manchin. Okay. I'll start with you, John. No one in government takes responsibility for anything anymore. We fluster, we obfuscate, rationalize. Everybody does it. That's what we say. That sounds like Sorkin. Yep. That's Jeb Bartlett. Tommy, the time has come to end these political games and to usher in a new era of bipartisanship where we find common ground on the major policy debates facing the nation. Oh, hard. Manchin? Correct.

Nice. You can stop using politics to divide this country. You can show us how much we agree instead of how much we disagree. You can put this country back together. Ooh, Sorkin? Yeah, that's Sorkin. That's Sorkin. I believe that that was a Bartlett consultant

during the reelect. Stopping all bipartisan legislation is like saying, let's blow up the place. Maybe voters will hire us to rebuild it. That doesn't even make sense. Manchin? Nope. That is John Schleiman in the West Wing. Oh, I would have said Manchin too. John, the political games playing out in the halls of Congress only fuel the hateful rhetoric

and violence we see across our country right now. The truth is my Democratic friends do not have all the answers and my Republican friends do not either. This has always been the case. Manchin. Correct. Tommy. God damn it. Manchin? Correct. John, our votes may have been divided, but our country will not be divided because ultimately it's not about left or right.

It's about doing right. Ugh, Sorkin. Well, it's actually, it's tech, you're right, except it's Matt Santos. And as I say that, I realize this is after Sorkin left the show. So incorrect. Tommy, end the logjam. Sorkin left the show. So incorrect. Tommy, end the logjam. End the logjam. End the gridlock.

There's only two choices. I know. Lawrence O'Donnell. It was Lawrence O'Donnell who wrote that one. All right, Tommy. Let's just, I'll end with this. A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool?

A trillion dollar isn't cool. You know what's cool? A trillion dollar infrastructure package. Sorkin? Yeah, sure. It doesn't matter. It's both of them, I guess. Got it. Because John attacked the rules, Tommy, which were not fair, but nonetheless, it's not allowed. Tommy, you've won the game.

You've won the game. I like saying from the twisted mind of Aaron Zorkin. It's like the Senate. The rules aren't fair, but we have to abide by them, John. That's exactly right. I shouldn't have attacked the rule. I basically demand justice, Stephen Breyer, right there. I shouldn't have attacked.

It backfired. Resign, John Lovett. It did backfire. Yeah. All right. That's our show for today. Thanks for, thanks for tuning in

and we will talk to you guys on Thursday. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas.

Our associate producers are Jordan Waller, Jazzy Marine, and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.