Pod Save America - "Making redistricting sexy again."

Episode Date: July 6, 2017

Trump holds a press conference in Warsaw in advance of the G20 conference, where he'll meet face-to-face with Vladimir Putin and talk to the leaders of Japan and South Korea about the nuclear crisis in North Korea. Then Jon and Dan talk to former Attorney General Eric Holder about his redistricting efforts, and Ana Marie Cox joins to discuss CNN vs. Trump.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we are talking to former Attorney General and the Chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Eric Holder. And later, we'll talk to the host of Crooked Media's With Friends Like These, Ana Marie Cox. Be sure to download Pod Save the World this week. Tommy has a great conversation with former ambassador Susan Rice. Go get yourself some merch.

We have Repeal and Go Fuck Yourself t-shirts and Friend of the Pod t-shirts on sale until July 10th, which is coincidentally when the House and Senate get back from their July 4th recess. And that's that. You got any announcements, Dan? How are you doing?

I feel great. I was in Canada for the 4th of July. Our neighbors to the north are doing great. Yeah, is this, you know, Justin Trudeau is just trolling us about what a wonderful government they have compared to ours. Yeah, they definitely feel pretty excited to be finally at the top of the most functioning North American democracies. It's been 150 years in the waiting, but they've gotten here.

I've been trying to nab that top spot for a long time. Yeah. Okay, so let's begin today with President of the United States' press conference that he gave in Warsaw, Poland this morning, where he attacked the American media, America's intelligence agencies, and the last American president, all while standing next to a right-wing nationalist leader, the Polish leader of Poland, whose party has manipulated the Polish press and attacked the courts. What did you think of that press conference, Dan?

You know, this was the first time, probably in the Trump presidency, where I was sitting around on a Wednesday trying to think about what to put in the outline. And struggling, because we had a podcast on Thursday. You guys had a bonus podcast on Saturday. It was kind of a holiday weekend. Podcast comes out Monday. Thursday, Tuesday, it's the 4th of July. Wednesday, Trump's on a plane. I'm like, what the fuck are we going to talk about?

And I cobbled together some shit. And then I woke up this morning to find that our president never lets us down. He found a way in a brief press conference to appease Putin, attack the US media, attack Barack Obama, and basically kind of seemed like a numbskull. And so thanks Trump, I guess. Two things I want to bring up from the press conference. Well, first of all, I noticed Tommy tweeted that 50% of the questions he took were from reporters who actually tried out for jobs in the Trump administration in the press office. So that happened. So first he did, he went on a tear on CNN, of course, an employer of yours.

He said, CNN has been fake news for a long time. Do you have that also, Mr. President? Which is great to say to someone who has also manipulated the media in his own country. And then he said, NBC is equally as bad, despite the fact that I made them a fortune with The Apprentice. First of all, I don't want to just glide past the fact that basically Trump said, if you make a media organization money, they should give you favorable coverage. Let's not just glide past that crazy statement, right? I don't know. What did you think about this?

He's definitely continuing his war on CNN, which we know from the White House that it's a strategy of theirs to fight with CNN. They think that that's a better fight to pick than even with Joe and Mika. So he continues it. I think it's important to note that many times Trump just off on his own goes into the attacks on the fake news. That is not what happened here david martoska or whatever his name is from the daily mail yeah who is a unapologetic trump booster and as as you and tommy point out interviewed for and got passed over by sean spicer for the job of white house press secretary and he asked the question at a press conference in front of the entire world.

He asked him to respond in a fairly incoherent babbling way. The question, the answer was also incoherent babbling, to the controversy, which we will not get into because it's too confusing and ridiculous to spend time on, about CNN investigating the origin of the cnn wrestling meme that was found on reddit that trump tweeted out and so that was a question that was asked we're gonna we're gonna talk to anna about this later i decided to save this topic for uh for the end when we uh when we bring on on because i thought you'd have a good perspective so that was

particularly absurd i'm also it's i think it's worth noting that it feels like they they definitely swerved out of their lane to allow sean spicer's intern to ask a question because normally like there is a thought that goes into this on a foreign trip you try to you're going to visit five countries you're going to do five press conferences that's usually two questions per press conference you'll try to get all the tv networks or the all the wire services plus the major newspapers traveling and it's always a u.s based outlet right it's supposed to be two american two questions from american outlets two questions from the outlet of the host country and the daily mail is as far as i can tell british and so so we went to get a British outlet with the most friendly reporter alive, basically, as far as I can tell.

I'm only calling David Marcos, so Sean Spicer's intern from now on. That's brilliant. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to quit on this podcast. Martosko. I guess it's Martosko is how you say it. Sorry.

I want to give him his due. Yeah, so he went on his tirade against CNN cnn fake news then he was asked about russia so he was asked whether he believed that russia interfered in the 2016 election and he said yes but maybe it was other countries and then he attacked obama for not doing more to punish russia even though russia might be innocent and then the reason obama did nothing about russia trying to help Trump win is because Obama thought Hillary was going to win. But then again, Russia might not have done it. Completely incoherent logically, right? Which is, I know, has never stopped him before. We should just say, you know, Trump's, not just Obama's intelligence agencies, Trump's own intelligence agencies, the people he picked to run the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, say definitively it was Russia.

No one, there is no evidence, there is no one who says, who doubts that it was Russia that interfered in this election. And yet still, still he is up there saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I think it's Russia, but I think it could be other countries too. it's Russia, but I think it could be other countries too. And then, of course, he uses the intelligence agency's mistake with Iraq and weapons of mass destruction to cast doubt on their current conclusion, which is one of his favorite things to do. So, yeah, what do you think about that? Well, my favorite part of that was when he was like, and the report said 17 agencies. And my first thought was, do we even have 17 agencies? So we did some research into that. Turns out it was three or four, which is also completely not true.

And an amazing, just even if you don't know all 17 of your intelligence agencies, just pretend like you do in front of the world. Well, I mean, what it was is, of course, we have 17 intelligence agencies, but only three or four participated in this. And they are, many people know them, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and DNI, the Director of National Intelligence. Those were the agencies that decided that Russia interfered. The other agencies didn't participate in this actual investigation. Just so people know.

Just trying to give people the facts here at pod save america um such a straight shooter yeah you know i'm such but so you and i didn't get the chance to talk about this because i was on my honeymoon at the time but like we should talk about the what briefly about the washington post story about obama and what he did or didn't do uh response to the Russia hack. I mean, I read that story and I sort of came down on the side of like, look, I think that the American people ultimately deserve to know what was going on. And I think the Obama administration should have told them what was going on

and should have been more forthcoming about this. But I do not think Obama's saying more or doing more would have influenced the outcome of the election at all. Because what Obama was worried about was that if he said it, first of all, remember, Mitch McConnell and the Republicans did not want to put out a bipartisan statement on Russian hacking. They did not want to join Obama in saying Russia is trying to interfere with this election and trying to elect Donald Trump. They refused to do that. So they knew that if Obama did it, it would be seen as partisan. Trump would call the election rigged. Trump would say, oh, you're going to believe those intelligence agencies that Obama's telling you about? The same intelligence agencies that got weapons of mass destruction wrong in Iraq, which he did today. Fox News would have said Obama's cooking intelligence to try to

help Hillary win the election, right? And like, Russia's goal, of course, was to elect Donald Trump. And so you have to ask yourself, would anything Barack Obama done, would anything that Barack Obama did have changed any votes? Is there any American voter out there who said, if I knew that Russia was more involved in trying to help Trump win the election, I would have voted for Hillary? Now, again, I still think that Obama should have said more and should have been more forthcoming about this. But when you're talking about whether it would have changed the actual results of the election, I'm highly doubtful. Yeah, I mostly agree with that. But I think there are a couple points.

I'm not going to join you when you're a criticism of Obama. I'm going to support him. You know I'm a tough critic. No, in all seriousness, I mean, that was a very dense, well-reported story. But it's important to know the exact thing we're arguing about. story, but it's important to know the exact thing we're arguing about. The U.S. government said Russia was behind the hacks. Right. They did that. The very specific point that they did not say was that Russia hacked the election for the specific purpose or interfered with the election for the specific purpose of electing Donald Trump. Because that and that's what Obama wanted to say.

But he felt and I actually agree with him on this, that he wanted to say it with in a bipartisan statement in Mitch McConnell, because he is generally the root of all the things that are wrong in American politics. is generally the root of all the things that are wrong in American politics, refused to do that because he put party over country, which is, I think, if he had a tattoo, that's what it would be. And so I agree with you that I don't think votes were changed. I also think if Barack Obama had gone out and said, I have intelligence that says the Russians are trying to help Donald Trump win, and the Republicans were not on board with

that, all hell would have broken loose. And it would have been seen as a unprecedented attempt by the US Intelligence Committee to politicize US intelligence to help win an election. Yeah. And look, if Hillary won, Republicans would have said that the results of the election are not legitimate because Obama stepped in and tried to say that it was the Russians who were doing it, and no one would have ever known. And look, there also would have been leaks from the intel community, I'm sure, because I'm sure there were a few people who dissented. And if there was a leak from the intel community that said, no, no, we sort of, we cast doubt on this intelligence that it was Russia, then all hell would have broken loose as well. You know, so like, I guess what I'm saying is I get where Obama's coming from.

I get why he made the decisions he did. You know, I still think at the end of the day, like voters deserve all the information out there possible before they make an informed decision. Sadly, I don't think it would have changed their decision. But anyway. One more point. One more point on that is we can't forget that the New York Times, based on FBI sources, reported right around this time that they had no evidence that Russia was doing this to help Trump. And they were just doing it for the pure purposes of sowing chaos in our political system.

And so it would not have been a unanimous view within the government if President Obama had come out and said that, because you would have had people in the FBI, for whatever reason, who believe the opposite or wanted to tell reporters the opposite, and all hell would have broken loose. Totally agree with that. Totally agree. Never forget that headline in the New York Times. But anyway, let's talk about the present, because the real consequence of Trump continuing to cast doubt on Russia's role in the 2016 election is that they absolutely will meddle again in 2018 and 2020. And when they do, Russia knows that complaints about the meddling will be dismissed as Democrats making lame excuses for losing. And the people who will make those dismissals will be Donald Trump, the Republican Party, Fox News, the entire conservative media establishment, right? Like, Russia knows that

they're going to be able to get away with it. And we are now heading for a meeting, a one-on-one meeting between Donald Trump and Putin this Friday. Trump aides tell the New York Times they don't know what he'll say. They wanted a official bilateral meeting, which is, you know, when you have Putin and all of his aides and Donald Trump and all of his aides sitting across from each other at a table, so it's all official. The reason they wanted that is because they wanted, quote, as many adults in the room as possible. This is the White House. The White House is saying they want as many adults in the room as possible. Forgetting that Donald Trump is one of the adults in the room, but I don't know if they see him as an adult. But they want to make sure he doesn't say anything crazy. And so they think that the more people from the administration they can put around him, the higher likelihood that he doesn't say something that takes the whole thing off the rails. I mean, that's crazy. I do worry that we have set the bar so low for Trump that if he just simply mentions the fact that Russia may have interfered with the elections, we will call this a Yalta-like moment for Trump and be this huge success. Yeah, I know, I know.

We have dumbed down the expectations on him so low that the most basic thing that a six-year-old could achieve in a meeting, if just asked nicely, counts as a diplomatic success. I mean, look, though, this is like, let's call it what it is. They interfered in the election. Sounds sort of nice. Like, they launched a cyber attack against the United States, right? Like, they hacked into the Democratic National Committee. They spread fake news. They spread misinformation,

they released emails that had been stolen, right? Like, this was an attack on our country. It was a cyber attack on our country. It wasn't a physical attack, but it was an attack nonetheless. And to then, after it happens, to, you know, they were looking to destabilize our democracy in a way they succeeded. And for the new president to then go meet with the Russian president knowing that all of the intelligence agencies in this country believe that they were guilty of this, to go to a meeting with that president and to not raise it, or even to just mention it and not, I don't know, threaten any harsh consequences, is insane.

It is insane. It is insane. It's so pitiful because, I mean, there are a couple of things. One, we have another election coming up. We have one this year. We have one next year. In fact, they come every year. So if Russia thinks that they can get involved in an election and launch cyber attacks on us without any consequence, then they will keep doing it. We know they are going to try to do something. If not, I don't know what their interest is in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections, but certainly the 18 congressional elections. We know this because one of the organizations that was hacked was the DCCC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign

Committee in 2016. Like they were going to try to do this again. And so there's an actual national security thing here. And what is the reason that Trump is not raising it? Is it because he's running some sort of long game in order to build relationships with Russia to put more pressure on Iran or North Korea or to defeat ISIS or encourage a regime change in Syria? No, it's because he gets insecure every time someone brings it up because it makes him feel like a less legitimate president. So we will arrange our foreign policy around the insecurities of the president of the United States. Yeah, that's basically where we are. Doesn't want the legitimacy of his election called into question by admitting that a foreign power interfered to help him win. We know that Putin will press Trump to lift sanctions that are imposed don't know how Trump's going to respond to this. Two people close to Trump said they expected Trump and Putin to bond over their disdain for fake news. So that's nice. They have written briefings for him in tweet-length sentences. What's the phrase used? Tweet-length sentences. Briefings for Trump. used tweet-length sentences, briefings for Trump.

And they're hoping that a woman named Fiona Hill, who is the National Security Council's senior director for Europe and Russia, who has been critical of Putin in the past, is in the meeting, as if that's going to do anything. Well, of course she should be in the meeting. If she's senior director for Europe and Russia, yeah, usually that person's in a bilateral meeting with Russia. But they're acting like this is going to be some big fix. you know. So the one interesting thing is, you're right that the bar is low and the Trump

administration, the White House is aware of this and they're aware of the possible criticism. And so they're trying to do everything they can to avoid an appearance that Trump is cozying up with Putin, even though they don't know what Trump will actually say, because, you know, he just does whatever he wants to do. The tweet-like sentences is so good. Also, it's funny that Trump and Putin are going to bond over fake news, because the fake news in Russia is the pro-Putin news. He has had a long-running strategy to only have fake news, and it's worked out very well for him. I think it's worth noting that Putin is not the

master global chess player that the conservative media likes to portray him as, but he's probably a little sharper than Donald Trump. And I'm going to go out on a limb there. But he also plays psychological games, which Trump seems really ripe to fall victim to.

But this example in the New York Times story was when Putin met with Merkel, the German chancellor, a while back. He knew that she was afraid of dogs so he put a large dog to the meeting what an asshole like i mean what do you think putin brings to the trump meeting a salad oh there's so many jokes there there's so many jokes there um yeah no i mean so i don't know i don't know what we can expect from the putin meeting but you're you're right that the bar is low i mean we were just saying he gave he gave his speech in poland this morning um which you know everyone was wondering will he endorse nato he didn't last time he did explicitly endorse nato in the speech so good for him but also it was basically like this very steve bannon steve

miller type speech where it talked about like you know a war between civilizations didn't say that explicitly but that was sort of the theme of the speech it was like the real question is question of our time is whether the west has the will to survive and it was very like it was uh it was a little bit crazy but you know a lot of the uh a lot of the conservatives really like it because it was um you know it had the whole civilizational struggle theme to it so the axios treatment of the trump speech is so fucking nauseating i I mean, I just can't. Like I say, there's a lot of what happens on Axios I really enjoy.

The format is phenomenal. I think their tech reporting is actually really good. But the, just the, I'm gonna use a Dennis McDonough phrase here, the giant foot rub that they give Trump and Stephen Miller for just really bad speech writing is so terrible. No, I mean, look, I think I said this before. The deal with Axios is I think few outlets are better sourced in the White House than they are.

Right. But it's a fair question to say, what is the value of really good White House sourcing these days? Because the White House, this White House lies like no other White House in history. And so when they're lied to by the White House, first of all, they usually write up the White House spin. And then when they're lied to, they get mad at them, and then it's a negative coverage. But when Stephen Miller and Stephen Bannon tell them, well, look, he's going to endorse NATO, and he's going to do something big, and he's going to stick to the script, and it's going to be a great speech, and then he does that, then they get a lot of praise from that outlet. So that's sort of how the Axios relationship with the White House works.

Like I said, it's really great for knowing exactly what the White House is thinking, even if what the White House is thinking is very different than what Trump is thinking or the White House is ultimately lying. That's basically it. Yeah, where I think they've been pretty good is the things that are happening below the White House political staff. Like all the – we can probably dispense now forever with stories of pending White House shakeups and strategy shifts and war rooms and Corey Lewandowski coming back and Sean Spicer leaving because none of that ever happens, right? It's just all – like those are legitimate reports and that people theoretically,

they know we're telling reporters that, but Axios does like get deep into like what the trade czar is working on, which is probably a really good way to sell a subscription news service. So he's got the meeting with Putin. He gave the speech in Poland. And then we got the G20, right?

The group of 20. this is like the group of seven that we had a couple months ago we had seven major players in the world representative from seven countries that are major players in the world gather together this is a larger one they get 20 countries i don't know why you need a g7 and a g20 who knows but anyway all the lead up to this conference is that it is basically Trump against the world here. It's taking place in Germany. They're worried about, of course, large-scale protests. And you've got this whole backdrop where Trump is threatening protectionism. He's pulled out of the Paris Climate Treaty.

And meanwhile, all the other countries who are there are trying to work together on stuff. The European Union andapan are announcing plans for a new trade agreement merkel's gonna chide trump on paris on pulling out of the climate agreement uh on his stance on refugees so um i don't know it doesn't it doesn't feel good watching uh the united states go to one of these conferences and uh to be not one of the team players, to put it lightly. Yeah, we should tweet out the survey of what countries think the U.S. is doing the right thing in the world under Trump and Obama, where, you know, like under Obama, most of the world, particularly in Europe,

thought the U.S. was doing the right thing and had confidence to do the right thing. And under Trump, it's dropped dramatically in some cases to like 10 points, except in two countries, Russia, shockingly enough, and Israel, where we've had some minor policy disagreements during the Obama administration. Our friend Netanyahu. Right. And I think it's worth remembering that when we were running, when Barack Obama was running in 2008,

one of the messages that was incredibly appealing to voters, particularly independent voters, was the idea that Obama was going to reestablish the U.S.'s place in the world because our relationships were so frayed under the Bush administration, largely because of the Iraq War and all the associated things like certainly torture, that Americans – Bush would have tremendous protests. Americans abroad were sometimes embarrassed to say where they were from. And that changed at the drop of a hat when Obama was elected in large part because he opposed the Iraq War. And so that gave him some legitimate credibility. And then we went about on a very deliberate diplomatic strategy to undo the damage that was done and trump has redone that damage in like two and a half minutes which i guess it's impressive i don't know but it's it's pretty shocking really severe way fallen

yeah i mean i think i i i often think that like if we can survive Trump, if we can get out of this at some point, repairing the damage that he caused both, you know, to our belief in institutions at home and to what the world thinks of us, our reputation around the world is going to take quite a bit of time and effort. Like it's not going to be very easy because Um, because you know, it's, I don't know. It's, it's weird because in a way, like obviously Bush did tremendous damage to the country's reputation by going into Iraq. A lot of times you could say, well, that, that was, that was Bush's choice. Bush did that. It was Bush and his administration. The tough part to face up to is that, you know, a little less than half of our country voted for Trump, sort of knowing what kind of character he is. And that's tough. This is a self-inflicted mistake. And repairing the damage from that is going to take a while. But that's if we can avoid any

major crises, which of course brings us to North Korea, another exciting, inspiring topic. One of Trump's meetings, I believe tonight, is going to be with the leaders of Japan and South Korea over what's happening on North Korea. So a couple days ago, we learned that North Korea successfully tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile. It's capable of hitting Alaska and possibly Hawaii. We now know that they have nuclear weapons. They have the long-range missiles. We still don't know if they can fit the nuclear weapons on the long-range missiles, but experts expect that they may get that capability over the next couple years. So, I don't know, this is about

as serious as it gets. Most experts in this area have said that this basically changes the calculus. It limits our already limited options for how to respond. The concern is not necessarily that North Korea would launch a preemptive strike against the United States. A lot of people think that's very unlikely. But of course, who knows? Kim Jong-un is a madman. But it does mean that we can't effectively protect our allies in the region or the thousands and thousands of American troops who are stationed in South Korea near the demilitarized zone, near the border of South Korea, North Korea. And the reason is because if we launched a preemptive strike against North Korea now, it wouldn't be a strike that could take out all of their nuclear weapons or all of their artillery at once.

And the first thing they would do is launch an immediate counterattack against Seoul, the capital of South Korea, which has 10 million people in it. And of course, like I said, our troops with thousands and thousands of troops stationed on the border and could kill thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands. So it's a real, real problem. And, you know, when you have a crisis like this brewing, it's, it's pretty scary to have Donald Trump as president, right?

Because you just don't, I mean, look, not saying that this crisis would have happened, like, you know, Barack Obama could have faced the same exact thing. George Bush could have faced the same exact thing, but this happens to Trump. And of course the first tweet is North Korea just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? No, he lives in North Korea. Like, no, he doesn't. This is the coolest thing he can do. It's so bad. I would encourage people, I'd say two things. One, we're really just sitting on Tommy's corner right now, just with all this foreign policy talk.

I know. So I'm sure he's not nervous about it, given our tremendous depth of knowledge. Second, is I would encourage everyone to go back and listen to the Pod Save the World with Mark Lippert. It was one of the earlier ones, which is the – A, Mark Lippert's an awesome guy. He was our ambassador to South Korea. Yes, he was our ambassador to South Korea, one of the longest-serving Obama foreign policy advisors, all around good dude. But it's also the best explanation of what a how we got in the situation and what an incredibly tricky, challenging foreign policy issue that it is. And I think, you know, if you talk to some of our

foreign policy expert friends, it was a North Korea may be the the hardest problem to solve because North Korea is not responsive to the normal sorts of pressures that you can put. As you point out, military options are incredibly difficult and they're not responsive to diplomatic isolation. They seem very comfortable with millions of their people dying of starvation. And so it's just the normal levers to pull are not available here. And you were right. We are not in this situation because of Trump. This has been building for a very long time. It was building under George W. Bush, building under Obama, but he is the guy in charge now. And that is scary. Yeah. I mean, and he also, look, he, he, Trump responded to this and has reacted to this. Like once again, he's a Fox News viewer.

He's a random commentator or observer of the news, right? Like, he watches this from afar and thinks, well, you know, China can solve this problem because, you know, China trades with North Korea and they have somewhat of a relationship with North Korea. And so, I don't know, I'm Donald Trump and I'm going to make a deal and do a negotiation with China. And it's going to be great. And then he tweets, his second tweet after this crisis was, trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter. So much for China working with us, but we had to give it a try. It's like, he might as well be a pundit on one of the cable shows, right? Like not the President president of the united states it's just you you watch him learn that every problem that he thought was so easy when he was just someone yelling at the news is actually much more complicated and difficult than he thought and yet he doesn't really want to learn you're right he is a passive observer of what is

happening in his own government on a fairly regular basis. Like he's like Japan is not going to put up with this much longer, which came right after the does this guy have anything better to do with his life tweet. Right. Like you can pick up the phone and call Japan. Like they will take your call. Everyone in the world will take your call. So you can do something instead of just tweet about it. And I think in his head, he thinks that his tweets put pressure on Japan and China.

Right. I don't think his tweets put pressure on Japan and China. I do not think the Japanese and the Chinese think that. No. And the truth is, too, like, North Korea probably studies his statements quite carefully and tries to infer certain things from them because they think he's, maybe they think he's a rational actor who's trying to send the messages, right? And when Kim Jong-un reads a tweet that's like, doesn't this guy have anything better to do with his life? Like, yeah, he's probably going to take that as a personal slight, right? I mean, so the danger is not like, like you said, it's not that trump got us into the situation he didn't um but the danger is when you have two nuclear armed countries with nukes

pointed at each other um even the slightest miscalculation or misunderstanding could lead to massive destruction and casualties and that's that's the real fear of him being in power while this is going on. Yeah, it is. I mean, you think about the process by which a simple statement from the press secretary goes through on a foreign policy issue in this government. Every, the Defense Department, the State Department,

the NSC, the White House Chief of Staff, everyone signs off on it to make sure that you are not potentially starting a major global conflict. And I suspect that the full approval process for the Trump tweets is Trump and Dan Scavino talking to each other over around a golf somewhere. Yeah, you don't think there's a heavy vetting process there? You don't think it's pretty stringent in this White House? There is not extreme vetting for trump's tweets no um so yeah so the north korea thing's pretty scary but you're right it's so funny that you mentioned that about tommy because uh as we were leaving work yesterday i

asked him a bunch of questions about north korea and then i was like you know what we just got to tell people to listen to your leopard episode we'll tweet it out after the pod it's gonna be a lot better than dan and i can do and it's and I can do. And it's a great episode. It's a great episode because Lippert is very, very smart on all this stuff. Okay. Let's talk about wealth care. A little update. There's a lot of good news. You know, we saw some reports. First of all, everyone who showed up at a parade, who tweeted us pictures over the 4th of July, thank you. You're doing great work. There was a great Washington Post story yesterday or the day before about a lot of these parades. They interviewed Susan Collins and she said, you know, there was only one issue that people came up to me and talked about at this parade, which is unusual

because usually I hear a lot about a lot of issues from my constituents. And this time I heard over and over and over again, encouragement for my stand against the bill. People were thanking me over and over again. So that's great. That means the pressure is working, right? And again, like if we have Collins, we need Heller to stay in O and then we need one more. And then it's dead. So we also saw in Nevada, speaking of Heller, Republican Governor Sandoval said that the Senate plan remains a major threat to Nevada. He hasn't seen anything that would make him change his mind, and he's been talking to Mike Pence about this.

And that statement was yesterday, Wednesday. So it seems like, you know, the danger of will Heller flip and be a yes is, does Sandoval say, okay, well, I'm supporting the bill, too, and if he does, then maybe Heller goes with him and says yes. But as long as Sandoval's against the bill, there's a very good chance that Heller's against the bill as well. So that would be two. Heller also today, by the way, got a real challenger, Representative Jackie Rosen, who's a congressman who represents a swing district at the Nevada 3rd. She has said she will challenge Heller, and that is a very tough challenger. So that also makes it more likely that he will remain a no on the bill. So pretty good news, but again, no resting, no stopping.

Everyone's got to put all the pressure you can on these senators, because if it ends up that it's just Heller and Collins as no's, and Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and all the conservatives decide to just cave to Mitch McConnell, then we lose. You know, we need three. So you got to keep the pressure up on Portman, on Capito, on Murkowski, on Flake, and all of these, you know, wavering Republican senators who might still vote against this bill. You know who's really getting off easy here? Who?

Flake. I know. Like, no one's talking about Flake. Everyone's talking about Capito and Portman because of the opioid issues in their state and Medicaid expansion states. Flake is one of the most endangered Republicans. He has kept his head down here, which has been a pretty good strategy. But we need to put real pressure on Flake because I think that he kind of moves with Heller. And so we got to keep him in place.

And I think he's getting off easy here. And so I don't know what Flake is up to this weekend. But if you live in Arizona, find him. here. And so I don't know what Flake is up to this weekend, but if you live in Arizona, find him. And if he's not around, go to his office, you know, go to a parade, do what people have been doing. We have one more weekend here before people go back. So we can't let people feel like it is, we can't let the Republicans think that the pressure is waning, right? It has to seem like we are, like it is getting more intense, not less intense. Apparently, I saw that the disability advocates

who staged a sit-in in Cory Gardner's Senate office in Colorado, that same group is staging a sit-in right now in Flake's office in Arizona. So again, if people who use wheelchairs, who have disabilities, if they can sit in an office and demand answers from their senators, then so can you know, so can you. So, so get to those, I'll get to put some pressure on Flake. I do. I totally agree that he's gotten off easy. I think one of Flake's issues is Arizona is the type of state where he is not yet worried that having a tough democratic challenger is more dangerous to

his chances of reelection is having a primary challenge from the right, right? Arizona is a state where you could get some super conservative right-wing Republican to challenge him for voting against the bill and trying to knock him off in a primary. And it seems like that might have to do a little bit with his calculation on this. But like, you know, Arizona is, it's becoming more and more of a swing state. Hillary Clinton, even though she lost the election, did better in Arizona than Barack Obama did. It's trending in that direction. I definitely think that Flake is a target and he hasn't gotten much attention yet. Can we talk about John Cornyn's tweet for one sec?

John Cornyn, man, that guy is such a fucking Twitter troll. He's like one of the biggest Twitter trolls in the U.S. Senate. Do you think he runs his own Twitter account or he just has like a junior Dan Scavino who's doing it for him? It's a very good question. I don't know. I don't know. I'd like to know that, though. We also point out that he was almost the FBI director.

Yeah, that would have been crazy. Yeah. out that he was almost the FBI director? Yeah, that would have been crazy. Well, just so everyone knows what his tweet was, someone tweeted something about a reporter about 22 million people losing coverage via the Senate Trumpcare bill, and Cornyn tweeted

they were not losing coverage, they were choosing not to have it. Much like starving people choose not to eat. This were choosing not to have it. Much like starving people choose not to eat. This whole thing, like, a bunch of people are going to get kicked off Medicaid. You have the freedom to buy something that you can't afford, is basically what he said. And you just choose not to buy it because it would bankrupt you. But you have the freedom to try to buy it. And Stephen Dennis, who's a Bloomberg reporter who's pretty well-sourced on The Hill.

Yeah, especially on health care he yeah he responded saying that this is a talking point that's been gaining more currency among set amount republican aides in the senate which is a terror i mean a it is deeply cynical and dishonest so but that's sort of table stakes with the senate republicans but it is incredibly politically stupid. It is so easily caricatured. And if you want to seem even more insensitive than you already are, this is the way to do it. Because one strategy would be just to say, to argue, also dishonest and cynical, but that it's not really going to be 22 million people aren't really going to lose their insurance, that it's bullshit, CBO's wrong, et cetera.

But the new Cornyn strategy is to accept the CBO's findings, but say those people chose to do it, which the CBO also says they're not doing, but these are desperate times, right? We should also say, by the way, that Trump's own Department of Health and Human Services, We should also say, by the way, that Trump's own Department of Health and Human Services, actually the CMS, the Medicare agency, has a report out that admits that Obamacare markets are stable and not in a death spiral. This is an organization run by a conservative health policy consultant that was appointed by Donald Trump, and buried in the report is an admission that these markets are not in a death spiral, which has basically been the entire case against Obamacare and why they're trying to repeal it as fast as possible. So that's not good for them either. So we have a lot of good, a lot of hopeful signs here, a lot of good ammo to use in our arguments against this bill. And now we just have to keep it in the headlines and keep the pressure up in the next week. And when we come back, we'll be talking to the former Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder.

Don't go anywhere. This is Pod Save America, and there's more on the way. On the pod today, we are very lucky to have the former Attorney General of the United States and the chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Eric Holder. Welcome to the pod. Hey, it's good to be here. And I prefer to be called the 82nd Attorney General of the United States as opposed to the former Attorney General of the United States. We can do that.

I like that. 82. We'll just call you 82. I think about former that takes me to the present, and then I get real depressed about that. Okay. So let's just go with 82. Let's go with 82 then. So tell us how you got involved with the redistricting committee and what the goals are.

Yeah, we talked about this. The president and I have been talking about this for some time. A big concern about how after 2010, the Republicans, after the census in 2010, really kind of, you know, did a whole bunch of inappropriate things and came up with districts that don't really, that are safe for Republicans, and therefore you have non-representative districts. We've always decided we wanted to do something about it, and I guess shortly before the convention we got together and talked about coming up with a mechanism

by which we would fight this and be prepared for the census that's going to occur in 2020. And so that's how this committee was formed. The president asked me to chair it, and that's what we have been all about since then. And what are some of the strategies that you guys are employing to get ready for the census in 2020? Well, I'd say first off that our work is grassroots driven. We want to make sure that the Democratic Party is focused in the states. When I announced this back in January, I said the Democratic Party was going back into the states because the reality is that state legislatures, governors are the people who tend to draw these districts.

And if we want to have fair redistricting, we have to be successful at the state level. And so we're looking on a state-by-state basis at the people who are most influential when it comes to redistricting in a particular state and focusing our efforts on making sure that those people get elected. Governors, obviously, all the time, secretaries of state. In some states, it's the Supreme Court. In Pennsylvania, judges are extremely important. And so we're going to be focusing on the races that are going to matter after the census in 2020.

82, I guess I'll call you. Which are the key states in 17 and 18 that folks should be focused on? Well, certainly in 17, Virginia, I think, is the place where everybody needs to be looking. There's a governor's race there that is obviously very important. The governor who is selected in this year will be the person who will be helping to draw those lines in 2021. The Virginia legislature is also something that we want to focus on. We want to put as many Democrats in place as we can. New Jersey is also a place that we want to look at. Now, our hope is that given, you know, where the present governor, what his approval ratings look like and the

association of the candidate who is running on the Republican side, that New Jersey should be a place that we do pretty well. So we're going to be really focusing on what we think will be a more competitive race in Virginia. Ralph Northam is the sitting lieutenant governor, and I spoke at their J.J. dinner, oh, I guess about three or four weeks ago. So we've been talking about sort of the electoral strategies around redistricting. What are some of the legal strategies that you guys are employing as well? Because I know that's part of the platform.

Yeah, I mean, we have a number of mechanisms. We're going to be filing lawsuits and have filed lawsuits in places where that's the only way that you can break gerrymandering. We have filed lawsuits in North... in north carolina uh... many in other other states uh... we're also going to be doing electoral things as i have described but we'll also be looking for um... places where state constitutions allow for the formation of uh... nonpartisan commissions that they have in california and where the responsibility for drawing lines has done on a commission

basis and those if done well uh... more also effective mechanisms to have um... fair welfare line the door we are our hope is to have you know not to do produced with republicans did in twenty ten and gerrymander for democrats we just want to have um... fair lines drawn and make this a battle between republican ideas and democratic ideas and if we do that democrats will do uh we'll do just fine you said the part of your job here in addition to figuring out electoral and legal strategies uh is to make

redistricting sexy again which i think that's the first time those two words have been used in the same sentence um how do you do that because you know there's a lot of people out there who you know maybe they don't know what gerrymandering is they don't know much about redistricting it has flown under the radar for so long which is part of our problem right which is why we haven't focused on it so how do you how do you sort of make it an interesting story you know i think what we have to do is make people understand especially at the state level and this is not something i mean people have to understand gerrymandering is not only about what kind of congress we have it's also about what kind of state legislatures um that we have and if you look on a day-to-day basis these gerrymandered um state legislatures that we have are the

legislatures that produce these crazy gun laws uh that produce these anti-choice laws that are responsible for these voter suppression laws these these bogus photo ID laws. So on a day-to-day basis, people's lives are impacted by these gerrymandered state legislatures. And I think that's the message we have to get out. This is not only about Congress, and obviously Congress has a huge impact on people's lives, but state legislatures, as I said, on a day-to-day basis are impacting how people go about their daily lives. How can our listeners who may, after this interview, find redistricting sexy, how can they get involved with your organization? What can they do to help out?

Sure. Well, I think it is, in fact, sexy, and people need to understand that. But you can certainly visit our website, which is www.democraticredistricting.com. I'd also suggest that people volunteer on campaigns today that impact on gerrymandering. Like I said, the governor's race in Virginia, the New Jersey governor's race, Phil Murphy is running there, Virginia State House races. And third, I think people should just get involved in local elections, and you can reach out to us to learn how you can host house parties or fight back against gerrymandering in your home state. And that's www.democraticredistricting.com.

And what's our old boss Barack Obama's role in all this? I know that when the story first came out that you guys were doing this, and you've talked about that he was sort of thinking about this with you for a long time. What's his role now? Is he going to be heavily involved? Yeah, he's going to be heavily involved. This is something that we both have decided is going to be our primary post-office political activity. post-office political activity. And so he's going to be with us both in terms of raising funds and getting out there and campaigning for Democratic candidates who will have an impact on the redistricting process. And so I expect, as has already been announced, you'll see him out there

campaigning for Lieutenant Governor Northam in Virginia. Excellent. Moving beyond redistricting for a sec, I know when we worked together in the Obama administration, one of the things that you were most passionate about were reforming our criminal justice policies. And I just want to get your reaction to the things that have been happening in the Trump administration on that front.

Yeah, as I said, after Sessions announced that he was reversing some of the things that I had put in place. We have gone from what we call smart on crime to what I've called a dumb on crime. You know, they've put us on a path to take us back to a path that simply didn't work, and that is not fiscally sustainable, and it draws a wedge between people in law enforcement and the communities that they are supposed to serve. I'm not exactly sure, you know, what it is that drives them in that way, because the reform efforts that we put in place were actually one of the few things in Washington, D.C. that had conservative and progressive support, Republican as well as Democratic support.

But, you know, this kind of extreme part of the Republican Party that now controls so many of the executive branch agencies or hell-bent on taking us back to, I think, a discredited past. And so it's painful to see what's happening, and it's also good to see, however, that the states, state AGs, state governors are saying that the federal government may be doing that, but we're going to stay on the path of reform. So I have to ask, your last tweet was a little mysterious, caused some head scratching.

It was like it was sent at 3 a.m. Eastern time. I don't know where you were in the world, but it said, to the career men and women at DOJ, FBI, your actions and integrity will be unfairly questioned. Be prepared, be strong, duty, honor, country. Was that about anything? Was it referring to anything specific? Some people said, oh, he knows something's coming. I doubted that, but I don't know.

Why did you tweet that? Well, I was reacting to what I had seen happen and what I know is going to happen, which is that those in you know those in the the trump administration or attacking the uh... the investigators uh... going after bob moeller uh... questioning you know the integrity of people who were assigned to the inquiry because of who they voted for who they make campaign contributions to when i know who these folks are

and they may be Republicans, they might be Democrats, but they are first and foremost members of the Justice Department bent on finding the truth and applying the law in appropriate ways. And I wanted to call that out and to let them know that they ought to be prepared for some unfair attacks, and let them know also that the former Attorney General of the United States was still with them, still support them, and that it urges them to be strong in the face of what is going to be unfair. We've only seen the beginnings of it. I can guarantee you that as this investigation, this inquiry goes on,

you're going to hear more and more of what they've already tried to rule out. Based on what you've seen and read so far just in press reports, do you think there's a case here for a possible obstruction of justice? That's a good question. I mean, I'm obviously not aware of all the facts that, you know, that Bob Mueller has or that the team has, but I have to say that you are getting, I think, you know, pretty close if you look at what the president himself has said about the reason for the firing of Jim Comey, apparently the entreaties that he made to a couple of people who are in the administration to go to Comey,

I think that you're getting pretty close to an obstruction case. It's certainly something that is worthy of investigation. And I think all the reports are probably correct that, in fact, that he is being investigated for possible obstruction. You obviously work very closely with Bob Mueller throughout your time in the administration. Could you tell people a little bit what kind of person he is and how you expect him to approach this investigation? Bob Mueller is the straightest, most honest guy you'd ever want. He's an ex-Marine who will take no crap, and if he's allowed to do his job, he'll do it extremely well. Let me give you a short example of who this guy is.

I was a U.S. attorney here in Washington, D.C. Bob Mueller was the former assistant attorney general of the criminal division in the Bush administration. He called me up when he was working at a law firm and said, look, I want to come work for you in the U.S. attorney's office as a homicide prosecutor. At that time, D.C. was the homicide capital of the country. And he said, look, I'm concerned about what's going on in Washington. I don't want a title. I just want to come and be a regular assistant U.S. attorney and try homicide cases. And I said, are you kidding?

And he said, no, I want to leave my firm. And that's what he did. He came over, no title, and just tried homicide cases very effectively in Washington, D.C. And that's an example of who this guy is, how he's made up. And I think the American people should have great faith in him and be very concerned, be very, very concerned if any movement is made to remove him from his position. 82, thank you so much for joining the podcast. We really appreciate you giving us the time.

Always good to talk to you guys. I miss you. I miss working with you guys. Miss you, too. Miss you, too. We'll have to have you come back on, especially as we get close to some of these elections, to talk more about redistricting. We appreciate it.

Sounds like a plan. I'd be glad to. Okay, take care. Okay. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye now. Okay, so when we come back, we will be talking to the host of Crooked Media's

with friends like these anna marie cox this is pod save america stick around there's more great show coming your way on the pod today we have the host of crooked medias with friends like these anna marie cox anna how you doing? I'm okay. Okay, that's good. You always ask me and I always have to like think about it because, you know, it's the Trump era. Relative to other people, I'm doing great. I think we can say that for sure. Like that other people are suffering.

Dan and I have been having a very inspiring conversation about North Korea, Putin, interference in the elections, all kinds of exciting stuff. Yeah, the short version is don't buy green bananas. Oh, God. Actually, I think about stuff that Tommy and I have talked about with regard to North Korea all the time. And yeah, I shouldn't do that. I should probably just concentrate on enjoying my semi-retirement,

as you guys know like i now i'm down to two jobs so uh i have more time for you guys but so that's the good that's the good news for us yes yes it is mtv's loss your game that's right media's game so we were talking about trump's press conference this morning and of course he used one of the questions to go off on cnn and uh the one thing we haven't talked about today is the little controversy that was brewing yesterday over andrew kaczynski at cnn because the the reddit user who first came up with the meme of donald trump fake wrestling a guy with a cnn logo superimposed over his head i can't even fucking believe that i just said that sentence story like i can't it sounds short circuit this

so fucking crazy saying the sentence um so the meme gets created trump shares it on twitter and then cnn goes and looks and and and apparently this Reddit user has left enough biographical information on his Reddit feed that Kaczynski then tracked down who it was on Facebook, right? Then the guy decides to apologize, gives this big apology that he's sorry he didn't do this, blah, blah, blah. CNN writes it up, doesn't reveal the guy's identity, says that he apologized say whatever and at the very end it says cnn reserves the right to to change its mind on this and publish his identity at some point and all hell breaks loose everyone on the right

donald trump jr all the right-wing trolls even a lot of you know respected conservatives they all decide that cnn they start the hashtag cnn blackmail and uh and they all decide that CNN, they start the hashtag CNN blackmail, and they all start going after CNN. So all of this is, makes me crazy that we're even talking about this, but I guess it raises the question, like, what is the journalistic responsibility CNN has to, I don't know, choose to reveal or not reveal the identity of someone, a private citizen who has, you know, oh, by the way, we should say this guy is also behind a whole bunch of very racist and anti-Semitic memes and posts and everything else, right? So this is not a, there's not an innocent person right here. But what is the journalistic responsibility with respect to this guy? Do can you reveal an identity should they have said

they might reveal it at some point what do you think about this i am so sad we're talking about this i know like i i mean it's just like layer upon layer of like what like we shouldn't even need to be talking about it i mean first of all donald trump should be president and we shouldn't have a president that like gets off on like i think probably literally gets off on bashing the media like that is his snuff porn right um so we shouldn't be talking about it trump shouldn't have tweeted it and also cnn's a bad actor here too um and not just in this weird quasi threat that they made to this guy but in also they're the other side of this professional wrestling rivalry, you know,

I mean, they're playing into this. Like they, I like, I, they're talking about it a lot. I have to say, I believe in the media.

All right. And I, I believe that, I mean, what my job is, is part of the great, you know, system of, you know,

gears and levers that keeps democracy in balance. I believe in the fourth estate, you know, that we should not be the story and we should avoid making ourselves the story. Right. And CNN just kind of took to this like a professional wrestling participant would, you know, I mean, it's the perfect meme for this particular moment in history because like you know cnn is not innocent in this in this affair and i don't mean just in the way that they promoted this gif and sort of played the victim and i don't all and i don't just mean in the way that they threatened this guy cnn helped make trump happen you know and jeff zucker admits it

oh yeah like this this is he they are are the opponent in the ring for Trump. I mean, again, it's almost not a metaphor what they did with Trump in terms of professional wrestling. Yeah. I did notice in the New York Times story about this today. There's an interview with Jeff Zucker and he was like, he did make sure to slip in there that they've never had better ratings in the 25 to 64 demographic, and their profits have never been bigger. Yeah. I mean, we all know good people that work there, right?

Oh, yeah. They have some outstanding journalists. One of them's on the phone with you. Yeah, one of them's on the phone with us, Dan Pfeiffer. Okay. I mean, they do good work, but as an institution, I don't think they're innocent. And just to drill down just a second on the Andrew Kaczynski, is that how you say his last name?

Yes. Issue, which is I read in BuzzFeed that he didn't write that sentence, which rings true to me because I think Andrew's a pretty, let's say, straight shooter respective of both sides of the aisle. Maybe not quite both sides, but he's a straight shooter. I don't see him doing that. i think the mistake there was that sentence you either reveal the guy's identity um or you don't you make that choice contingent on your judgment of news value not on whether or not he does what you want yeah that's the story i guess cnn cnn's explanation

it definitely seems like a lawyer or someone put it in there because what they intended to say was, we didn't make a deal with this guy, which would also be untoward to make some kind of a deal, right? Right. But it reads weird. I mean, my whole thing on this is, like, Andrew Kuczynski is an excellent reporter, right? But he's not the NSA, right? Like, this Reddit user, like, left a whole bunch of biographical information. Like, if you want to say something anonymously online, you should have the right to do that. You should have a right to privacy to try to say something anonymously. Right.

But if you leave a bunch of biographical information about yourself throughout your Reddit threads, that can easily be traced with anyone who has Google to your Facebook page, then like, I don't know. Hey, it's, it's loving. He couldn't control himself. He's been here. And I'm here now. I kept looking at him like, you're going to wait your turn. You're not going to say anything.

You said straight shooter. He almost did it there. Now here he is. First of all, the idea that like the Trump people have no accountability for like a year of endless streaming lies and bullshit and attacking people by name and whatever, doxing Lindsey Graham, years and years of just total garbage. And we are now holding CNN accountable for every little tiny sentence. The difference in standards that Trump people, you know, that Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds for herself and that they hold for other people is extraordinary. That is all that I wanted to say, John.

Also, by the way, one more thing. What kind of name is Han Asshole Solo? As somebody pointed out online, it should be Han Assholo. I was saying it like that. Oh, that is a good point. I really hadn't even thought about that. He should be doxxed just on that alone, right? I mean, we should force him to change the name or reveal who he is.

That, I think, is probably the real tip. I'm prepared to reveal who it is right now. It is me. It is you, John Lovett. I am John Asolo. That's how we know it's not Lovett. It's because the name would have been better. Also, Donald Trump Jr.

And it would have been a Star Trek name, not a Star Wars name. Donald Trump Jr. and all these conservatives were also spreading the misinformation that this was a 15-year-old, which it's not. This is a small little thing, but of course that just went all around the internet. I saw Patricia Heaton of

Everybody Loves Raymond is also a vector for this lie now what's unbelievable what is this world is he also but is he also the 400 pound hacker that you know broken probably i think that's what we really need to know but you know i think it's probably all this guy right can i just say something also you're so you're you're right that like cnn is in the ring too right they're part of this fight but the reason that cnn is never going to win this fight is that they can't fight it like Donald Trump can fight it. They are still holding it.

There's three really respected journalists that worked at CNN that got a story wrong about Russia and they fire them. And they fire them and they're like, okay, well now we're going to get our respectability back and this is great

and we're going to held to a higher standard. What does Donald Trump do with that? He sees it as weakness and he pounces right because like cnn is not fighting the the same fight that donald trump is right like they're trying to be an unbiased news organization he doesn't give a shit he's going to win every time listen in a way they're playing by his rules yes so we've already lost and also by even talking about this we are playing by trump like we have finally got a guy in office that is obsessed with the media

as the media is obsessed with the media. And he is happy to play along with us. He will do this all fucking day if we let him. He will just tweet anti-media memes and the media will go nuts for the anti-media memes. And meanwhile, the EPA is undermining climate science. And Texas is basically outlawing all abortions. This abomination of a healthcare bill still might pass.

All this, the voter registration, the voter fraud panel. We got nukes pointing at Juno. I know you guys are talking about that. Boring, back to the tweets. Dan, what were you going to say? Sorry. I was going to you going to say? Sorry. I was going to just make one point for CNN, and I think just to be fair. Dan has to go to his panel with Jeffrey Lord.

Was it uncomfortable for you, Dan, to be having this conversation while sitting next to Jeffrey Lord? Sorry, Dan. Go ahead. Yes, Dan. Go ahead. sorry dan go ahead yes dan good there i said there is no question that if this was if trump had tweeted out a meme of msnbc being beat up by in a wwe match andrew kaczynski also would have spent time to find out who did that mean that's true like that guy he that's what he does he digs deep to find things and so i don't think i don't think anyone here was suggesting that but

i think it's unfair to think that he would he went on that task on some sort of vengeance mission for cnn of course he's fantastic he's one of the best reporter researchers in the media like yeah like he's an amazing guy it's cnn's lucky to have him it's insane he's also a cat person so i mean you know like he's golden in my book. He's one of the smarter moves CNN has made in the last couple of years. Dan Pfeiffer, Andrew Kaczynski. Yeah, on one side. And then you've got, well, I'm not going to do it.

I'm putting myself on notice. Don't say the name. Don't. You give him more power. So don't do it. If you say it three times, he appears in your living room. And blames partisanship. And tells you you're wanted in your office.

and blames partisanship. It tells you you're wanted in your office. Anyway, so, I mean, I just wish CNN would get out of the ring. I wish that, you know, if you watch CNN for any length of time, which I unfortunately do because my husband's developed an interest in politics and that's what he,

I guess it's like CNN's your your starter kit you know um it's in it's insanely repetitive and it is almost anytime they get a chance to talk about themselves they will you know yeah and i again i believe in the project of a free press obviously um i mean i think that's you know an american value but we have to start using our freedom to do actual reporting and not just complain about being oppressed. And I also think, and you guys probably talked about this, like they should definitely get rid of the White House briefing. Like people should just stop going. Like that's what I mean by they should get rid of it. I think reporters should end the White House briefing.

That's so funny. Because you were still playing by his rules if they go. That's such a funny thing because like we are naturally in things like John Tommy and I and Dan, I don't know where you are on this, but we've all been just sort of like been sad about the decline of the briefing. But then every time a reporter talks to us, they're like, end it, let it die. Well, it serves you guys better than it served us. You know, I mean, it serves the purposes of whoever's in power at the White House more than it serves reporters. I mean, think of it like does Maggie Haberman go to the White House briefing? I don't think so. I don't think she does.

Like I think that and she's probably responsible for more like hard hitting Trump pieces about the interior of the White House than any single reporter out there. You know, and all the big stories about the Trump administration have been broken outside the White House. I mean, I think there's a purpose to the White House briefing. I do think there's there is a reason to have it and have it on camera and hold them accountable in real time. But if they're not going to play by the rules, then we should take our ball and go home. I really think that.

We're the ones who have the power to just deny them coverage, and I don't see a good reason to continue playing along. I think for the White House briefing, 95% of them in a normal presidency are a gigantic waste of time for everyone involved. The press secretary in the press office spends hours preparing for it. The reporters ask fairly basic questions. They all ask the same question over and over again. And by the end, they're just like making shit up because they've been called on.

But there is the 5% of the time when it is incredibly important for the White House to go out and have to answer questions, either because Trump fired Comey or North Korea launched the Mitchell or whatever it is. And so it's, we all sort of just do it every, every few days, and then wait for the day when it's actually going to matter. And that's why I worry about, I worry about the fact that whether that now trump makes it so it's like a voluntary activity we'll decide to do it the day we want to do it and we won't decide to do it the day we don't want to do it and that's not how they should play their car just to not attend the day that they want to do it the press should refuse to do it it should be done on the press's you know time not on the white houses you know like i mean i just and also i mean they should

start just filming when they when they're being told not to film i think the image of the secret service dragging a newspaper person or 90 percent of it the secret service dragging a reporter out of the white house briefing for the crime of turning on a camera like would say a lot about this administration united airlines i feel as though i feel as though that photo of jim acosta is coming um and we should just be prepared to see it very soon yeah and also it'll be david martasco you know and that it's not just limited to people who are doing outside reporting people you know jim acosta is fine you know fantastic there's a bunch of people who cover the white house on a daily basis you know hallie jackson bless her heart you

probably talked about her earlier like trying to get a straight answer out of trump i mean i do think that if they got rid of the white house briefing he might do more press conferences because he starred for attention you gotta you got it he would just be dying to have someone pay attention to him yeah so and also he he would have nothing to watch in the afternoon since apparently like that's what he watches so that's his tv i don't know who's on the who's on with friends like these this week oh i mean a really got a really really a big get guys i got near a tandem i don a tendon don't be too impressed don't just i mean hold off i know like you guys are jaws are hitting the floor but yes friend of the pod nira and we talked mainly about the health care bill okay um she was one of the people i visited when i was in dc a couple weeks ago along with john ward i'm glad

you guys like that podcast by the way i want to encourage people to go back and yes go listen to the john ward episode. It was great. It was really, really good. Yeah, no, he's a fantastic human being. And he's honestly one of the people that I was thinking about interviewing when I first started thinking about the podcast. Because he was raised evangelical Christian and was sort of a rarity in the, you know, D. world, as far as being someone who was temperamentally conservative and Christian and reporting, like, not reporting for National Review, you know. And he's just been on an interesting personal journey, let's say, about his faith and about

where he falls. I don't want to use the word politically, because I think he would say it's bigger than politics. But he's done a lot of thinking, not a spoiler really, about race. And it's brought him to some really interesting places. So I would like people to listen to that. John is a very smart, interesting guy. So go listen. Okay. I think that's all the time we have for today, guys.

We're signing off. A reminder, you can hear all the Crooked Media podcasts on Spotify. Oh, that's nice. Isn't that exciting? Our favorite place to stream music. I love Spotify. Me too. Also, there have been advertisements in the New York City subways about how we're available on Spotify.

And I think that's so cool. What big deals we are. It's finally happening. Anyway, go to Spotify. Find all of our podcasts. Everyone have a great weekend. We'll see you all next week. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts.

I have nothing to add. I wasn't really supposed to be here. And yet, here you are. The magnet of a microphone to me is incredibly powerful. The space between me and this microphone is very dangerous. Pod Save America, signing off.

Bye guys. Goodbye Dan. Bye guys. Goodbye Dan. Bye guys. Bye Anna. Bye.