Pod Save America - “March Badness.”

Episode Date: March 29, 2021

The White House press corps whiffs its first presidential news conference, Republicans shape the media narrative about the border, and Georgia passes voter suppression legislation that Joe Biden called “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” Then Tommy presents Jon and Jon with the Evil Eight in Pod Save America’s first-ever March Badness tournament.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 Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, the White House press corps whiffs its first presidential news conference. Republicans are controlling the media narrative on the border. And in Georgia, they just passed voter suppression legislation that Joe Biden called an atrocity. Then we have a very important update from Tommy on the contest we promised last week when we were trying to figure out who's actually worse than Ron Johnson.

So stick around for that later on. But first, Lovett, tell us about the show this week. Great, Lovett or leave it. Danielle Perez, hilarious in the opening of the show. Jason and Renee came by and did a starch madness bracket on snacks. Renee's very healthy, so she won by losing. And then I talked to Alon Levy about infrastructure. The thing I talked about on PSA, we turn it into an interview on Love Early A Bit. There you go. It was infrastructure week, but it was a great show.

Just really trying hard to work for Mayor Pete one of these days, get a job at DOT. I got to update my LinkedIn. Also be sure to check out the latest episode of Hysteria. Speaking of Pete, where amy klobuchar joined aaron and alissa to talk about the for the people act and her budding friendship with secretary of transportation pete budaj check it out weren't they spotted like walking in in the market or something recently i have not heard this i think i read that somewhere i'll dig into it i'll get back to you

spotted spotted amy and pete all right um one more note we are very big fans of dc statehood here uh no one more than the man who produces this podcast michael martinez uh we now have brand new statehood for dc merch in the crooked store great t-shirts uh go buy one as always a portion of every order supports vote riders uh shop now at crooked.com store all right let's get to the news for the first 65 days of the biden presidency in the midst of a global pandemic and an economic downturn much of the washington media has been focused on the biggest story of them all. The questions are piling up for President Biden, who now becomes the first president in a century to not hold a solo press conference. 43 days into his term,

no Biden alone at the lectern in the White House. We see the president frequently holding events about COVID, holding events of vaccination sites, etc. We see him a lot. Are we getting the access for question and answer that the White House press corps wants to see? It's been more than a month now and there's been no solo press conference by the new president. and there's been no solo press conference by the new president. Both of his most recent predecessors, Donald Trump and Barack Obama, had held a solo presser within the first month of their presidency. But why hasn't he carved out some time to answer some tough questions for multiple reporters live about the COVID relief package

or school openings or the immigration surge at the border? Unleashed! Finally! On Thursday, the White House press corps got its chance after President Biden kicked off the press conference by announcing that he has a new goal of 200 million shots in arms by the end of his first 100 days. He stuck around for 62 minutes so that reporters could follow up with around two dozen questions that are weighing heavily on the minds of the American people. Let's hear some. Your old friend, Mitch McConnell says you have only spoken to each other once since you took office and that you have moved far left since taking office. Do you see it the

same way he does? Have you rejected bipartisanship? Have you decided whether you are going to run for reelection in 2024? You haven't set up a reelection campaign yet, as your predecessor had by this time. And if you do, if you do run, will Vice President Harris be on your ticket? And do you believe you'll be running against former President Trump? Oh, come on. Tommy, the Columbia Journalism Review wrote that many of the questions showed that, quote, the political press is more concerned with novelty, spectacle, and contrived outrage than with transparency. Fair? Yeah. I mean, it was bad. The questions were very redundant. Some were vague and confusing. The immigration questions mostly adopted the Republican framing. I thought Biden did a pretty good job, all things

considered. He seemed pretty at ease and comfortable in the job and I thought made a compelling case for infrastructure. But that was not what folks wanted to ask him about. I mean, it does bring you to a larger question about the value of these kinds of set piece events. During the Obama years, there was a conversation about how to update press interactions with the White House, with the president, the White House briefing room, and the press secretary. Those didn't really happen. Those conversations didn't continue during the Trump years because he was so abnormal. He loved shouting lies over helicopter engines. And they basically got rid of the press secretary's briefing for years at a time. And so Biden wanted to get back to normal. But clearly, there's a lot of room for improvement here. I saw reporters complaining that Biden didn't make

news as if that's his job, right? I mean, I would actually argue he did make news about both vaccines in Afghanistan, but OK. It was also a reminder that Republicans can bully the press corps into focusing on whatever issue they want. They made it about the border. They made it a crisis. They made it about this is a political problem for Biden with no context or history.

And that does not lead to an honest conversation about a tough issue. So yeah, I mean, look, these press conferences, they're anachronistic traditions. They could be structured better. Maybe Biden should just do longer one-on-one interviews where he'll be less likely to get the same question 10 times. But asking if you're going to run for reelection and if you predict it'll be against Trump and if Kamala will be the VP instead of COVID, like that is an indefensible waste of time. Love it. Not a single question about the pandemic, which, according to polls, is the number one issue on voters minds of all parties. Yeah. So I'm radicalized. I've been

radicalized. It's happened. I'm against doing these. I think that they're a full waste of time. It speaks to, I think, like there's a fundamental problem here. Like what is the most effective way to ask the president a bunch of probing questions on the key issues of the day? Is it at random having 20 people independently develop one question and hope that a full range of issues are covered and hope that those individuals adapt as those questions are asked? Well, clearly that's not happening because there were multiple questions, as Tommy said, around immigration that were framed along Republican lines, but also there were just questions that

repeated themselves. That was also true on the filibuster. Yeah. So no, they didn't adapt in the kind of questions they were asking. And I do think that there is this, like a lot of the questions, especially around politics or on the filibuster, these were troll questions. Like they won't, they would be offended by it by saying it, but these are trollish questions. You're trolling for a response. Like, I don't, I don't think it's, I don't think they're asked for the same reasons Ted Cruz tries to troll people in everything that he does, but it is a kind of troll move to be like, are you really bipartisan? What happens if you don't fulfill your entire agenda? Will you be a successful president? Straight shooter Mitch McConnell describes you accordingly. Is he right? Come on.

Right. And so where I land is like, well, okay, what is the goal? Like, we have, I feel like, as, you know, citizens and partisans, like, two goals. One is to, like, educate the American people about and hold the president accountable. Also, while making sure that he is, like, fulfilling his political objectives. Like, what's the best way to do both of those things? The town halls with regular people who ask far better questions, plus sit-down interviews, serious, hard-hitting sit-down interviews that run each topic to ground, like, those two things together are far more effective and far more, I think, informative than the thing that we saw.

Not that there weren't, amidst some bad questions, some really good questions and good moments. Not that there weren't amidst some bad questions, some really good questions and good moments. Yeah, we it is totally appropriate and fair for Joe Biden to take very tough, serious, substantive questions from the press. That is not at all what we're saying. But what reporters sometimes do to deflect media criticism is they claim to be speaking on behalf of the American people. The public has a right to know this. The public wants President Biden to take questions. The public this, the public that. They are not representing

what is on the public's mind, these White House reporters. They are representing what is on the minds of producers and editors and reporters that they talk to in their Washington to New York circles. That is what these questions reflect. The public cares about COVID. The public cares about the economy, about joblessness, about homelessness, about racism. Republicans care about immigration. There's plenty of substantive immigration questions you can ask, as we'll get to in a second. So it's not about the fact that like, oh, Democrats don't want them to have tough questions. It's we don't want stupid fucking questions. And they're asking stupid questions. Just this morning at the White House briefing again, Jeff Mason asked Jen Psaki, oh, with the CDC saying that maybe there's a rise in cases again, will President Biden reconsider his plans to travel so much?

The vaccinated president traveling on Air Force One, they asked the question again. They ask it once a week about his travel. What are they doing? I saw some people suggest that the COVID news is too good. The relief bill passed was too positive, right? So that's why I didn't get asked about it. I just disagree with that. There are a lot of tough questions you could still ask about COVID.

School reopening has been incredibly contentious. You could, you know, be annoying and push him on whether vaccination targets have been artificially low and that we should be moving faster. You could ask about literally anything Larry Summers has uttered over the last three months, right? Like there's lots of annoying and tough angles. Potential for a fourth wave, rising Kate. Like there's a host of things to talk about. Inflation concerns.

There's like so many legitimate topics. Do you think you'll face Donald Trump again in 2024? What's the question? That was an embarrassing moment for everybody. So whatever you may think of the White House press, of course, failure to ask a single question about COVID-19, the most glaring omission of the press conference came from the president himself, who neglected to call on the Edward R. Murrow of our time,

Fox News' Peter Doocy. Per usual, the network and their star White House journalists took the snub in stride. Of course, Joe didn't take any questions from our own Peter Doocy. Not a shock there. Naturally, none of the other reporters even dared to ask about the wind knocking Joe Biden down three times climbing up Air Force One. The stairs there, the wind knocked him over. Well, if I had been there, I definitely would have taken or told the president to take to call on Peter Doocy. Peter Doocy is not Jim Acosta. And he's got good questions. Tell you something else. President Trump didn't do.

I certainly did not give him a list of reporters to call out in order. Fox is the only member of the five network TV pool that has never been on the list in front of the president. And I'm just curious if that is kind of official administration policy. We're here having a conversation, aren't we? Yes. And do I take questions from you every time you come to the briefing room? Yes. But has the president taken questions from you since you came in, since he came into office? Yes or no? Unfortunately, only when I have shouted after he goes through his whole list. And the president has been very generous with his time with Fox.

I'm just curious about this list that he has given. Do we need to start a petition? Should we have people call the White House on behalf of Peter Doocy? Never call on Peter Doocy. Never. Until the day. Never. No reason to call on Peter.

Look, Joe Biden, I think, wisely skipped over, I think, two organizations that have done the most to kind of parrot right-wing talking points in their political coverage, Fox News and the New York Times. And I think that that just makes sense. Just like from a base political reason, I think that makes sense. Like kind of you steer away from the kind of more rightward tilting organizations, especially in your first press conference. I just love how they make the news about themselves. It's just like narcissistic, solipsistic worldview that is so ridiculous. Do you think, do I think that Joe Biden would have struggled with a question from Peter Doocy? No. Do I think he should give Fox News a question ever? Absolutely not. Fox News is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party. Treat it accordingly.

Who cares if the son of the doofus on the Trump-loving morning show is upset? And also, by the way, I thought it was stupid and annoying when CNN focused on how Jim Acosta was treated by Trump at press conferences, even though that was clearly worse because he was calling him the enemy of the people and like inciting people against the entire network. But it's like, it's not about you, Fox, but this is all they do. It's all grievance. Like they tried the shit on us in 09.

We caved eventually. Like Biden should just stay tough. Who cares about Peter Doocy? Yeah, my critique of the White House, they're being too nice to Fox. Poor Jen Psaki's up there every day taking questions from fucking Peter Doocy. That's nicer than she has to be.

Yeah, she just gave him a swirly there. Yeah, that is fine. That's actually maybe more fun. But they are. Yeah, they are a propaganda network. I would make an argument for Joe Biden never calling on Fox once the entire time he's fucking president. No reason. They're not a news organization.

Just just going to. I am radicalized. Never call on these people. Never do a press conference in front of them ever again. You want to talk to people, go to, let these, you know, serious news organizations decide internally who they want to interview Joe Biden in one-on-one. We both, we, the three of us know that there's a ton of politics that go on behind the scenes about who's going to get the interview, who's going to do this. And that like these press conferences like relieve a certain amount of pressure they face to like go in front

of these reporters. Fine. Like I understand why inevitably these things are going to happen. But like, man, I am just not at all interested in their complaints anymore. Also, it's like, do you know what the consequences are for never calling on Fox News? Absolutely nothing. You know what's going to change? Absolutely nothing. They're going to whine and lie about you like they do if you take a question anyway. Do you think voters care if you don't take a question from Fox News? Of course not. No one fucking cares.

Keep whining. Peter Doocy. That was amazing. So even though Fox wasn't called on, the network's favorite issue was the subject of more questions than any other topic by far. As you guys mentioned, here's a quick sample of all the immigration questions. You've said over and over again that immigrants shouldn't come to this country right now. This isn't the time to come. That message is not being received.

I'd like to circle back to immigration, please. I've spoken to lawyers who say that some of these children have not seen the sun in days. What is your reaction to these images that have come out from that particular facility is what's happening inside acceptable to you and when is this going to be fixed given the conditions that were just laid out at the migrant facilities at the u.s border will you commit to allowing journalists to have access to the facilities that are overcrowded moving forward. How do you realistically and physically keep these families from coming to the U.S.? So that many questions about immigration was a victory for congressional Republicans who've been trying everything to move the media narrative away from Biden's popular rescue plan,

including a stunt last week where 18 Republican senators made a trip to the border so they could get on camera. Here's Lindsey Graham and Steve Daines telling us what to focus on. Why are 18 senators here? Because it's the biggest issue facing the country in many ways right now. The flood of Mexican meth, Mexican heroin, Mexican fentanyl. 20 years ago in Montana, meth was homemade. It was homegrown. And it had purity levels less than 30%. Today, the meth that is getting into Montana is Mexican cartel. Make meth great again. Stop importing meth. So like, it's easy to mock these Republicans. There's some great Twitter jokes about Ted Cruz posting footage of himself and what appears to be a jungle by the border. But it does seem like they've been able to spin the media into believing their Biden's border crisis bullshit, even though there's no evidence this influx of migrants has anything to do with Joe Biden's policies. Tommy, why do you think Republicans have been successful here? And what should Democrats be saying about all this? I mean, look, here's a challenge for Biden, right? Which is that the humanitarian situation is really bad. It's unacceptable. And the government needs to do

a better job of caring for these human beings. And I don't want to, you know, parrot their crisis language, but clearly the most problematic part of this issue is if there ever, you have the government treating kids, especially in an inhumane way. But treating them well requires infrastructure, money, people, better laws, and a better system. And Republicans are creating a political trap, right? Because they want Joe Biden to say this is a crisis. But on the other side of that omission isn't humanity, it's a harsher response. It's turning the kids away. It's build that wall chance. And so you have Lindsey Graham and his buddies in their little boat. You saw them driving around with like a boat with a machine gun, I guess, to defend against unaccompanied minors. And what they want actually is to bring

back the remain in Mexico policy, which would move the humanitarian crisis over the border a couple of miles into Mexico, right? Because during the Trump administration, asylum seekers had to wait in squalid camps there. So, you know, that's what's so frustrating about this debate is Republicans don't actually want to do any of the things that would solve the problem. They want to build up pressure to push Biden to act in some nebulous way, but all the ways they want him to act make things worse. We went through years and years and years of Trump being as harsh as he possibly could to people trying to immigrate to the United States. And the numbers just went up and up and up. It's like, that's why this conversation feels so broken and frustrating.

Yeah, love it. It does seem that Republicans have duped reporters basically into covering the issue they wanted, the way they want it covered. There's a legitimate story about the conditions at both border facilities and having enough space at HHS that the Biden administration does need to solve. And reporters could focus on that. A lot of those questions weren't focused on that. A lot of those questions were focused on just the general influx of migrants crisis frame that the Republicans have been pushing, which isn't necessarily true. We also like it's also very confusing. Like the Republican rhetoric is contradictory, right? It's like, you know, one, you know, Joe Biden is putting kids in cages, but also his open borders policy is causing this surge. There is a rise in apprehensions. Therefore, we need more border

security. But wait, hold on a second. If it's a rise in apprehensions, that means that the border security is apprehending people as they're attempting to come over. Why are they attempting to come over illegally? Well, because there are still orders in place because of the pandemic that turn a lot of people away. Why are there more unaccompanied minors? Well, because we're not doing a barbarous thing of turning away children who are here alone, but we are still turning away families. Like this is very complicated. And I think this is yet another example, I think, where there's like a really hard substantive problem here. You know, the Trump administration said, all right, cruelty will be our weapon. That will be our policy lever. We will use cruelty as a tool to try to stop people from trying to come

into the country. The Biden administration won't do that. Well, immediately there is still cruelty. There are still too many kids trying to come in. There are still, you know, huge problems at the border. What are we going to do to address that? Well, it's a complicated issue involving a really long-term plan about helping countries where these people are coming from, building the infrastructure, as Tommy said. And we never get to that part of the debate because we've got Ted Cruz in a fucking flak jacket, aiming a gun at, you know, like in a raft trying to seem tough because it's about trolling Joe Biden and retconning what the Trump administration did. It's just this idea that Joe Biden is a nice guy or Joe Biden's policies are somehow causing this when there was an influx in 2019

of the same magnitude when Donald Trump was president. No one thought Donald Trump's policies or Donald Trump's personality was somehow drawing migrants to the United States. And yet there was a larger influx or as large influx at times in 2019. But like, okay, let's say there is an impact of removing a racist, violent, jingoistic administration sending a signal that maybe things are different. What's your answer to that? Go back to the barbarism that we had like a few months ago? Like go back to that impulse?

That's what we need to do? Yeah, because the real difference is Joe Biden's not turning away kids anymore because he's following the asylum laws. It's all laws. And the press has framed this as like, Joe Biden's more, you know, he's changed policies. No, he's going back to like what presidents have done forever, except for Donald Trump. Right. The reality is that most people are getting turned away when they try to cross the border because of a provision called Title 42, which says the government can turn people away from the border for health reasons. In this case, we're talking about COVID.

That means like 80% of people are getting turned away and a lot of them are trying again, which is increasing numbers. You guys made the important point. Biden is not turning away children because that's an unthinkable thing to do, to take a 12-year-old kid and plop them back down in Mexico and say, best of luck. But reporters still brought to the conversation the suggestion that because Biden is more humane, that's leading to a surge. You're always going to be able to find anecdotal evidence of people who say things like that, but it completely ignores the much broader, more complicated set of economic conditions, security conditions, COVID, natural disasters that have led a lot of people in Northern Triangle countries in Central America to try to come to the US over the years.

And simplifying it down to Joe Biden, nice or not, it's an unbelievably facile, unhelpful way to have this conversation. You know what is more helpful? ABC this week, flying their roundtable down to the border. Yeah. And, you know, it's it's the fact the fact that the Biden administration does not want to use deprivation and cruelty to dissuade people in the same way that the Trump administration did does not mean that there aren't terrible conditions that reporters are right to question the Biden administration over. Totally. And then you dig into that, you dig into that and what's happening. Well, it's a really difficult logistical question about what you do to find a place for these kids that doesn't, that, that isn't harmful,

that isn't unsafe, that isn't unhealthy, that, you know, when there's COVID restrictions and that are different in all parts of the country, it's a difficult, thorny, hard problem. And by the way, there's even like, there's that short-term problem. And then there's like the medium-term or longer-term question is like, okay, well, what should this asylum system look like? And what do you do if the Republican argument is the more humane the system, the more people will try to use it. There's like that creates a paradox that nobody wants to address, which is if the if like if the answer is a humane system results in a crisis. Then, like, is your answer, is that what is that where we go? Like the only answer is creating an inhumane border. That's what the answer seems to

be. They want us to force that. They want that to be the political trap, That's the political trap of this whole thing. Which is a false choice. Yeah, they want to chant, build that wall, and they just want to blame Biden for not having success. They're not trying to solve the problem. They don't give a fuck about the problem. It's a political argument. That's right. But ABC News has solved the problem by having a set in a different location with the same pundits in more casual clothing. That's the way we're going to work this out. Nailed it. You know what I mean? Completely nailed it. So one person who refuses to be excluded from this border narrative is Donald Trump, who told Judge Jeanine over the weekend that he feels he owes it to ICE to go to the border himself. This was part of a mini media tour from the former president, which he also told Laura

Ingram that the armed insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, one of whom tried to gouge a cop's eye out, posed, quote, zero threat, saying, quote, some of them went in and they're hugging and kissing the police and the guards. But the most important recent appearance from Trump came over the weekend when he surprised a Mar-a-Lago wedding reception with a beautiful toast to the new couple. Here's a clip. You know, I just got, I turned off the news. I get all these flash reports and they're telling me about the border. They're telling me about China. They're telling me about Iran. How are we doing with Iran? Well, they weren't ready to make a deal. They wouldn't have done anything. They wouldn't have done anything. And this guy goes and drops the sanctions. And then he says,

we'd like to negotiate now. We're not dealing the sanctions and then he says, we want to negotiate. Now, we're not dealing with the United States. They don't want to deal with us. And China, the same thing. They never treated us that way. You saw what happened a few days ago. It was terrible. And the border's not good.

The border's the worst anybody's ever seen it. And what you see now, multiply it times 10 jim you would know how to handle he's the only one i know that might handle the water tougher than me it's jim all right so anyway let's raise a glass to the bride and groom here you you both you look like you love each other anyway uh enjoy the shrimp uh that was part of your deal you got shrimp all right i gotta go there's one of those speeches at every wedding i love it yeah the um yeah he's really in the kind of we are at the late stage xanadu uh you know it's very it's look it's pitiful um i actually hadn't heard

the remarks until this moment uh and uh that's you can't see how from the Laura Ingraham thing, though, how conservative media is going to help him go from being a temporary pariah after inciting an insurrection to a guy who just wishes Joe Biden would get tougher on the border. Just going back to complaining about the president in power, the government power, just throwing bombs from the outside. Nothing controversial about Donald Trump. That's what they're going to do. They're going to memory hole January 6th. That's always been the plan. I do wonder, Trump will certainly draw attention to the border if he goes there. I saw Dave Weigel from The Washington Post tweeting about this. I guess the question is, how will people receive

that? He's historically unpopular. Are they sick of him? Will he politicize the border issue even more than it already is and maybe be less of an effective messenger against Biden than, you know, the images we saw and just the reporting that's getting talked about about the about the border. One place you can see Donald Trump's influence is Georgia, where, as Stacey Abrams put it, quote, Republicans are responding to the big lie by actually doing what the insurrectionists sought by passing a voter suppression law that President Biden called Jim Crow in the 21st century. You might've heard that the law criminalizes offering food and water to voters who are waiting in line.

It also includes tougher photo ID requirements for mail-in voting and limits on drop boxes. But I think the most significant and dangerous reform is that it essentially gives the Republican state legislature control over the state board of elections and the county elections boards, including the authority to suspend officials and disqualify ballots. So I saw some Democratic politicians and election analysts say that this law could create a backlash. You know, Dave Wasserman tweeted, if passed as prologue, Georgia Republicans just handed Democrats their best turnout tool for 2022 and beyond.

I'm not sure about that. Like, it may be true that it could sort of convince a lot more people to go vote because they're trying to be stopped. But if Republicans in the legislature control the board of elections, I'm not sure how higher turnout overcomes that. What do you think? I think there's three pieces. comes that. What do you think? I think there's three pieces. One is efforts to suppress the vote based on the truth, efforts to suppress the vote based on a lie, and efforts to suppress the vote by stealing the election after the election is done. So they're trying to restrict mail-in voting because they've been convinced by a lie around mail-in voting before this election. It was not clear to anybody that mail-in voting was better for Democrats or Republicans. Trump both made that up and kind of made it true in one election during COVID because he idiotically convinced a bunch of people not to vote that way, even though it's perfectly safe and traditionally had not been

seen as having a partisan advantage. Then there's a bunch of pieces of this that are just simply trying to suppress the votes of African-Americans and Democrats. And I do think, to your point, those can be very harmful. Those are pernicious. They can be overcome. They've been overcome in the past. The third piece of this, I think, is not getting enough attention, which is, well, if Democrats win a close election and Republicans decide they don't accept the results, we don't have a Brad Rathensberger. They just kick Brad Rathensberger out. And so we are not, I don't think we are being attentive enough to the threat that in a close presidential election, in a close race, in a state like Georgia, the ability of a legislature,

which is, by the way, filled with more radicals than Republicans in Congress, than state Republicans, local Republicans have been some of the most radical human beings in politics, giving them the power to decide the outcome of an election or who's in charge of overseeing the election is incredibly dangerous. And we might see we are fortunate that we got to the end of this where the close states at the end were certified and the results were counted and we won unequivocally. But in a closer election or even one that's not as close, we might see Republicans send their own electors, for example. And then we're then we're off to the races, especially given we don't know what's going to happen in the 2022 midterms. So it's very, very dangerous what's happening.

Yeah, I mean, you said a close election, but you're right. It doesn't it doesn't actually have to be close. Look what happened in Michigan. Right. Michigan was not a particularly close state. And yet we had, you know, their county board was sort of deadlocked between Republicans and Democrats. And it was only the fact that you had one Republican who was not super Trumpy, and yet we had, you know, their county board was sort of deadlocked between Republicans and Democrats. And it was only the fact that you had one Republican who was not super Trumpy, who said, I'm not going to go along with this to overturn, to try to overturn the election or, or say that we're not going to certify this. You have the Republican legislature in control of the elections machinery, not just at the state level, but on the county level.

And they're able to disqualify ballots. Like the food and water thing has been getting a lot of attention because it's the most like vivid imagery. But I think this is very, very dangerous. Tommy, what are your thoughts on this? Yes, that is a very disconcerting piece of this law. I mean, just to just to explain the food and water thing to folks. I mean, the thing to know is that studies have shown that voters in communities with larger minority populations tend to face longer wait times to vote. Fulton County, Georgia, where Atlanta is, is at the very top of that list, right? So that doesn't happen by accident. Republicans try to make it harder to vote in Black communities. And now what

they're doing is saying, if I go and try to give a bottle of water to someone who's waiting hours to vote, I could be arrested for that, right? So they're trying to create reasons for Black voters mostly to leave the lines. Now, I will say the silver lining a little bit of all of this is it's really good that we're talking about this. We're talking about it candidly. It's good that Joe Biden really hammered home how awful these laws were because I think a lot of times it's the case that voter suppression bills get passed. There's not a lot of coverage. And then when Democrats lose because of them, the like thumbsucker analysis pieces about why it happened is like, oh, the

Democrats are too liberal or whatever it is, right? That's not happening here. We're talking about this honestly. I also think it seems like earlier versions of this bill that had some even more restrictive provisions on Sunday voting or maybe that floated the idea of getting rid of automatic voter registration. Those were curtailed seemingly by some of this media outrage. So that that's look, I'm looking for a silver lining here. There isn't much, but that's good. No, no. Well, you know, the question now is, of course, what to do about this law. You know, we have talked a million times about how the For the People Act would supersede most of these state laws.

So we need to fight for that. It's someone should go ask Joe Manchin what he thinks about the fucking Georgia law that just passed and Kyrsten Sinema, who are still sticking by the filibuster. President Biden said the Justice Department is taking a look at possible actions. Civil rights groups have already filed a lawsuit arguing that the law places unconstitutional burdens on the right to vote, particularly for black and Latino voters. Other civil rights groups have called on major sports organizations like Major League Baseball and the PGA to move the All-Star Game and the Masters Tournament out of the state. Some have even called for boycotts of Georgia-based companies like Coca-Cola and Delta. Lovett, what do you think about this pressure on the Georgia business community? My view is if it's coming from Stacey Abrams, great.

If it's coming from outside of the state, I'm not for it. I think we should be guided by what the local organizations are saying. And I know Stacey Abrams has been reluctant to embrace a boycott just yet. I'm not sure what the right thing to do is, but we need to think about using all the levers we have. Tell me, what do you think? I sort of think there's a subtle distinction between calling on businesses to speak out against this law and sort of trying to pressure them to do so and going so far as to boycott Georgia-based businesses that could have broader repercussions than just the CEOs of those companies. Yeah, no, look, that's fair. I mean, look, this is tough because you want to make sure you aren't hurting the same people who might be impacted by this law. So for example, Major League Baseball,

the Players Association floated the idea of moving the All-Star game out of Atlanta to somewhere else in response to this bill. I could see how that would create a lot of pressure on the state of Georgia to maybe walk back some of these voter suppression policies. I could see how that would hurt a lot of minority-owned businesses who might be relying on people visiting the city and spending money around these events. So I don't know the sweet spot. I agree with Lovett that I want to follow the lead of people in state and see what they want to do. I think at a minimum, the way we beat these kinds of voter suppression laws long term is continuing the organizing that like Stacey Abrams and all these groups have been doing for decades

now. Yeah, I mean, Stacey Abrams hasn't spoke specifically on this yet. She came out against sort of the boycott when there was an abortion ban in Georgia. But the New Georgia Project, which is Stacey Abrams organization, has asked people not to boycott and tweeted that there are ways to fight back that don't double down on harming Georgians, was their quote. Civil rights activist Bernice King has also tweeted that it would hurt middle class workers and people grappling with poverty. So I think the ways to fight this are going to be in court. And of course, with trying to pass H.R. 1 at the national level, those seem to be the two in court. And of course, with trying to pass H.R. one at the national level, those seem to be the two big ways. And of course, calling on businesses to say

something. I think that's that's important, too. But the boycott is not what a lot of activists in Georgia want. And so. So I'm so I can have not to make it. I can have Diet Coke. That's why. So people. So just so busy bodies tweeting at me to not have diet coke i just i can have it right we're all so you can tweet me not to but it sounds like i'm gonna i'm gonna go with i'm gonna i know that you care a lot about this issue because you're tweeting at me that i die coke in my avatar but i'm gonna go with stacy abrams who says i can have the diet coke i want to pressure coca--Cola to do the right thing. All right?

I do. Maybe if you're going to drink it, maybe every time you drink it, you should tweet something at Coca-Cola. Happy to do it. But I'm going to ignore those tweets. Just I'm going to ignore the tweets telling me to stop having Diet Coke. That's just cool. Okay. That is.

We got to the heart of the issue. We got to the heart of the issue. We've elevated some big crises today. Peter Doocy wasn't called on. John Lovitz, Diet Coke. No, no, no, you're missing. There's no crisis because I can have it. Oh, boy. Speaking of bad people, last week we debated where Ron Johnson ranks in the pantheon of worst Republicans, and we promised to follow up with an actual contest.

Tommy, I know you've been doing some work on this in honor of March Madness. What do you got? Okay, John. Yes, you're right. Last week on the show, we promised you guys some bracketology. So the SEO trends available to us are brackets and stuck ships. So just be thankful that we chose this one.

So here we go. The eight worst Republicans. We're calling it our March badness tournament. Here's how this works. Yes. Okay, I have eight teams for you to choose from.

The awful eight. So I'm going to read you two names out of each region, right? So we have the West, the East, the South, and the Midwest. That's how the NCAA tournament works. You guys, you two, you get to debate amongst yourselves and you choose a winner of those two.

Now, in a couple of cases, because we're here to have fun, I'm going to tell you about who was defeated to get into the awful eight, right? We good? Okay. Okay. Yes. Great.

Exciting. We're following your lead, whatever you say. So we're going to start out in the West. We've got some heat coming out of the top of this bracket. Stephen Miller has the three seed. Now, Lovett branded him a C-plus Santa Monica fascist, but Stephen Miller, he played himself into shape over the years. He found some creative ways to be evil,

and he ended up with the three seed, okay? Now, we had a play-in game to get to the second team in the West. Nixon superfan and Trump sycophant Hugh Hewitt went up against a media-killing nerd bent on global domination named Mark Zuckerberg. Now, on paper, guys, on paper, this sounds exciting. But no, not in practice. Zuckerberg is a billionaire. Hugh's loyalty can be bought. So Zuckerberg is the second awful Republican in the West with the 17th.

So now you guys get to choose. Stephen Miller versus Mark Zuckerberg. Stephen Miller. Wow. That's an interesting, it's interesting. That's so tough. It's interesting, right? Good game. Because it's a really, it's a question about flash and sizzle versus fundamentals. Yes. Stephen Miller is the Zion Williamson. He's a raw talent. They both went to Duke. He's a pure scorer. But like Zuck is awful. You just don't really know why. Mark Zuckerberg has done more damage worldwide because Donald Trump would still have been awful and terrible and inhumane and racist and xenophobic

without Stephen Miller. And Stephen Miller, as I've always said, not just a racist, a terrible speech writer. And so I agree with that. I just think Stephen Miller isn't that effective at being that evil. He's just not even that effective. Mark Zuckerberg, he's bad. Yeah, it's acute.

You know, Stephen Miller is acute, is an acute harm. Mark Zuckerberg is a society-wrenching, global negative influence that affects us all in every single day in small ways and large ways. So yeah, I agree. I think Zuckerberg wins. All right. Zuck. Okay, guys, we're going to the East now. Looming large in the East is the reigning champion, Donald Trump, with a one seed. You know him. There's not a lot I have to say here, though I do have some very sad news, which is the Duke of the bracket. The Duke of the bracket. Not this year.

They suck. Donald Trump Jr. I don't know. Broke COVID protocols and he got disqualified from entering this tournament. He's our VCU of this year. Yeah, I know. I know. It's heartbreaking.

So the second spot in the East was also a play in game, guys. OK, we had Politico playbook against Tucker Carlson. Now, listen, I'll be the first to admit that Politico playbook, they got off to a hot start this year. They're cutting and pasting Stephen Miller quotes. They're both sides in democracy. But Tucker puts in the work night after night. He's a grinder. So he's in the four seats.

So your choice out of the East, Donald Trump, admittedly having a down year. He lost his platform. Joyce out of the East. Donald Trump admittedly having a down year. He lost his platform. He got out hustled by Democrats against Tucker. The grinder dominates the offensive glass. Who do you choose? You know, I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to go with an upset here. I'm going to say Tucker Carlson. I'm looking to the future. I'm looking to the future. I know. It's, uh, it's look, Tucker, Tucker has, it's Tucker. It's, it's a young, it's a young squad. Um, but, but has heart and, you know, Trump is tired. Yeah. He has a lot of, he has a lot of experience in the arena, uh, to do harm. Uh, but, uh, Tucker has watched that team play for a long time and he's bringing a lot of what Trump used to do with a kind of a youthful vigor and vim that can't be be. I agree. I also would just love to get it out in the ether that Donald Trump is now nervous about a challenge from Tucker Carlson taking.

I just I like to see that fight in public, too. Maybe in playbook, actually. Speaking of worse. That's a really good idea. Okay. So the South is the blue blood bracket. These are just old school shithead Republicans. So with the number five seat, we've got a man with no principles, no dignity, the sad sack Senator from Cancun, Ted Cruz, as noted earlier, last seen lurking near the Rio Grande, like sort of swamp creature. Okay.

So the second team, again, we had a play in game to get here. We had Marjorie Taylor Greene out of Georgia. Now, Marjorie has been playing out of her mind recently. Some might say literally. She promotes QAnon. She promotes insurrectionists, the 9-11 truther movement. Unfortunately for her, she went up against a blue blood named George W. Bush. And guys, watching loose change a couple times

doesn't help you against the guy who did 9-11. So that's the challenge. I'm obviously kidding. He did 9-11. Yeah, he did do 9-11. He was there for it. It's weird if you think about it. We're joking here.

George invaded Rock Clear winner number two. So now you choose the South. Ted Cruz, who beat Jimmy Kimmel one-on-one in basketball, which isn't relevant but seems like it, against George W. Bush, who has the pedigree, the storied history, though he was a legacy admission. Look, this is easy for me, and I know this might sound hypocritical

because during the Zuckerberg versus Miller match, we said Zuckerberg because he had a greater global impact than Miller. George W. Bush clearly had a greater global impact than Ted Cruz because of the Iraq War. But Ted Cruz is a fucking asshole. It's got to be Ted Cruz. It has to be Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz sucks. It's got to be Ted Cruz. It has to be Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz sucks. Yeah, no, he does suck. He does.

Look, I don't want to disagree with you. I do think he sucks. But it's interesting because George W. Bush. And he's still a threat. I would say he's still a threat too. George W. Bush is not doing anything to anyone anymore. That is true. That is true.

Though the damage done by George W. Bush continues and we anything to anyone anymore. That is true. That is true. Though the damage done by George W. Bush continues, and we continue to pay a price for it. The damage, ongoing destruction of our economy, of our political institutions, of our environment, of the Middle East, like those continue. And George W. Bush represented the genteel version of Trumpism, of Republicanism, that did a lot of damage. I disagree. I just disagree. Ultimately, Ted Cruz is a leader who follows people around and then gets there and tries to run in front and tell them how excited he was to lead them there. So I'm going to say George W. Bush, personally. That's how I feel. That's how I feel today. Ted Cruz left 100 people to die of hypothermia in Texas while he went to Cancun just a few weeks

ago. Ted Cruz would have to do that a thousand times to start competing with the fucking body count of George W. Bush. Well, what we're learning here, guys, what we're learning here is that I should have thought up a mechanism to handle a tie. You decide, Tommy. You break it. You break it. You break it. Listen, if we go Ted Cruz, it's been all upsets. George W. Bush would be my vote. But listen, this is not about me.

This is about the listeners. So let's go to the Midwest, which is just, this is just a brawl. Okay, so we have our eighth seed here. He plays an up-tempo game. He pushes Russian propaganda. He pushes anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories. He thinks Greenland was once green. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, he's in there with the eighth seed. He's also hydroxychloroquine's last best hope.

So the play-in game for the next spot was controversial again, guys. It was all Kentucky. We had Senator Mitch McConnell, the Prince of Darkness, earned himself the nickname Cocaine Mitch, so he is subjected to extra drug screening before these games against Abe Lincoln. Now, I know this. Hear me out. This is controversial. Hear me out. Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in 1861. The 2021 GOP loves that. But Lincoln is famously a pro-Eugen guy. The modern GOP, they want to secede. So Mitch took this one. Tell me on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors deciding school names.

There were a lot of Republican votes that got Lincoln in. I knew, I told you it was controversial. This wasn't me that did this. It was the voters. So again, who do you choose, guys? You got Mitch McConnell. He's a bit like Syracuse. He builds an impenetrable zone around the Senate to stop everything. Ron Johnson is basically playing

a different game out there. He often seems to dunk on himself. Ron Johnson versus Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell. I mean, Mitch McConnell may be one of the most destructive forces in politics of the last several decades. Yeah. I mean, I just think, you know, Ron Johnson is a baby with a hand grenade. I mean, I just think, you know, Ron Johnson is a baby with a hand grenade. I'm not saying I'm not saying I'm not scared, but I don't really know how to finish that. I just think of him as just a picture of a baby with a hand grenade, sort of an image, you know? Yeah, you got that far. That was pretty good. I like that. Okay. So, I mean, that does it. Our fascist four is Zuck, Tucker,

Bush or Cruz versus McConnell. Maybe the listeners can tie break for us. We'll do like a Twitter poll for Bush-Cruz. I love that. I love that for us. Yeah, I love that too. I think that's great. I think that's great.

This is going to be, this is an interesting tourney. This is, I'm excited. So Dan and I can talk more about the final four on, I'm sorry, the fascist four. The fascist I can talk more about the Final Four on... Yeah. I'm sorry, the Fascist Four. The Fascist Four, thank you. The Fascist Four on Thursday.

We'll dig in. Dan's going to be very happy that Mitch McConnell made it. I know that. Thank you for getting the branding right. Dan might actually understand some of the basketball-related puns in here, so that'll be good, too. Playing. A playing game.

A lot of playing games in this tournament. Yeah, I know. I know. It made it fun. But that's what I got. Fuck no. Gonzaga. Gonzaga's very good.

Some of the words I only hear around this time of year. Here we go. Here we go. Well, that's our show for today. Look, we'll be asking you guys to participate in March Badness on the internet.

So look out for that. And we will see you on Thursday where Dan will be back. Bye, guys. back. Bye guys. Bye. Bye. Hot Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

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.