Pod Save America - "Midterm Madness with Elizabeth Warren."

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Senator Elizabeth Warren stopped by Crooked HQ to chat with Tommy and since Jon, Jon, and Tommy covered lots of news in the DC and Boston live pods, they dig into the mailbag today to answer some of your questions on the midterms, messaging, favorite DC scandals, and more.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. 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. Wow. Loud. I'm Tommy Vitor, I think. You are. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. Wow, loud. I'm Tommy Vitor. You are. I think you're still Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Senator Elizabeth Warren stopped by Crooked HQ to chat with Tommy. But before that interview, we thought that since we covered a lot of news in our DC and Boston live pods, we'd dig into the mailbag today to answer some of your questions on the midterms, messaging, favorite DC scandals, and more.

We have a great episode premised on the idea that we didn't want to prep on Sunday. Yeah. I just want to reflect on the fact that Massachusetts has gotten a lot of good coverage on this show lately. We had Senator Elizabeth Warren. We had Mayor Michelle Wu. We had Senator Ed Markey. Ed Markey. Yeah. Yeah, we had quite a few Massachusetts politicians. You bet mayor michelle wu senator ed mackie yeah ed mackie yeah yeah we had quite a few massachusetts politicians you bet we did where are you at

uh i mean we can try to book schumer i think we probably will soon let's get him on maybe let's go are we doing booking now at the beginning of the show let's get it go to a gas station on a sunday and see if we get any hits i thought we were talking about testicle tanning today or is that just a tucker carlson you know what if we get any hits. I thought we were talking about testicle tanning today. Or is that just a Tucker Carlson? You know what? If we were doing a normal pod today, we would have. And no one asked about it in the questions. It was an opportunity for you people. It's a mailbag, Phil.

Alright, a few quick housekeeping notes before we start. We talked about this briefly during last week's live shows, but Vote Save America has launched our Midterm Madness competition. It came right after March Madness was was over now we start midterm madness um if you go to votesaveamerica.com slash midterms you can sign up to get connected with actions that you can take right now uh we will host events uh where we lay out midterm

strategy we're going to help train you guys to become organizers you can pick a region of the country to focus on east midwest Midwest, South, or West. Each of the Pod Save America hosts is coaching a region. I'm a coach. I took Canada. I took the West. And the Midwest. I took the West. Arizona, Nevada. Some big races.

A lot of competitive house races. I'm excited. I have the Northeast. And then Dan has the South, I believe. You bet he does. Okay. Well, we're trying to get at least 10,000 signups per region, 40,000 total. At least. Lovett wants to make sure that we emphasize that it's 40,000 total. He wants the big number. I like the bigger number.

By the end of May. I tried to get him to do 50 at the live show, just to kind of keep everybody on their toes. Painstaking process to figure out how many signups. Lovett just wanted to add to it. Yeah. He's doing his Steve Jobs. Absolutely. What if more? What if it was more?

Yeah, Elizabeth Holmes over here. Alright. We're going to save this country with just one drop of blood. We've all been watching a lot of tech scams. A lot of we crashed. So anyway, we need you to sign up by the end of May so we can be ready for November.

Go sign up now. It's votesaveamerica.com slash midterms. You all did such a good job with Adopt-A-St ready for November. So go sign up now. It's votesaveamerica.com slash midterms. You all did such a good job with Adopt-A-State for 2020. We want to basically recreate that again for the midterms. It's a zone defense for democracy. There you go. How about that? Look at that.

That was on the fly. That works. That worked. Sure. Everyone knows it worked. Also check out this week's Offline. I had a great conversation with Lauren Williams. She's the former editor-in-chief at Vox,

who left to start Capital B News, which is a new nonprofit news organization focused on fighting misinformation and distrust in the black community. We talked about how the George Floyd protests inspired a great reckoning in newsrooms, how the media has failed in their coverage of critical race theory, and why Capital B thinks that rejuvenating local news coverage is part of the solution to our online misinformation problem. Go check it out. All right. Let's answer some questions, guys.

First one. What does an optimistic rest of the year look like politically? Best case scenario for what gets done by the midterms? Have at it, Favreau. You want me to do it? Yeah, what do you got? You do that one. Here we go. Mine is to throw my phone into a lake and hide from the news here's on my list i got a i got a list of things that

go well for a laundry list this is the this is to give us again we don't do predictions here this is that all this goes well i'm not going to say that we're going to win but this is to give us our best chance here um one mansion and cinema agree to a bill we won't we won't name the bill. It's just a bill that raises taxes. Then Biden forgives $10,000 in student debt. It's going to be $10,000. It probably won't be $50,000 because he promised $10,000 in the campaign. He didn't promise $50,000. That's the deal. And takes a number of additional executive actions on things like minimum wage.

There's a bunch of other things he can do. Inflation settles down. I probably should have put that first because that's probably going to have the biggest impact on what happens in the midterms. Settle down inflation. Settle down, inflation. Settle down, inflation. Hey. There was some talk that the last report last week was probably the high point of inflation. There was some hope about that, so we'll see.

There are no significant new variants that evade immunity. I think this list— There could be new variants. I love this list. I think what would go better is every time you did one, you dropped a kind of comic fake vase on your head. You know what I mean? See, I was going to say like a magic wand. I mean, you interrupted me.

We could have had a great video of me just saying all those things, and then after the midterms, then you could have dropped the vase on my head one by one. Piano or nandu. So anyway, no new variants that evade immunity. Republicans nominate some real Trumpy candidates in the Senate and the governor's primaries. Trump can't keep himself out of the headlines.

That would be helpful. And then Democrats really drive the choice between the Rick Scott agenda of raising taxes and cutting your healthcare and the Democratic agenda. So that's what I have on my list. The aristocrats. That's a good list, John. It was a really- Did I miss anything?

Hey, John. It was a really nice list. Thank you. I had some similar stuff in there. I talked to Warren, Senator Elizabeth Warren, about... Watch your feet, John.

Names are dropping. Here it comes. Come. About inflation and the arguments we hear from her and from Democrats that seem to explain inflation

but not necessarily win a political argument about it. She had some interesting things to say there. I should say, by the way, she has a big op-ed in the New York Times today about what Democrats can do to avoid midterm losses. Timed, I'm guessing, right to your interview with her. She was like, I got the Vitor interview,

and now I'm going to do the rollout of the op-ed. You heard it here second. That's what we do here at Pod Save America. That's our bed and brother. Hey, you heard it here a second that's a that's a great tagline let's put that on something

Pod Save America you heard it here a second I suppose long term tax credits for renewable energy I'd love that I would like some more progressive taxation

again yeah don't at me I know that Cinema Mansion would be a pain in all this yeah I'd love all these things blah blah blah blah I want as many liberal judges as humanly possible

and I want them to be as young as humanly possible. We can get a teenage judge. What was Dan's joke? Harvard 10K. No, right. Harvard Law 10K. Yeah, right.

The best Supreme Court justice is the most recent winner of the Harvard Law 10K. Fastest time in the Harvard 10K. That's right. Yeah. Some executive action, the climate guns,

whatever we got. I'd love to see some uh january 6th committee results good yeah i forgot about that action there too maybe elon puts trump back on twitter everybody gets reminded what a piece of shit he is here's a world of thing also maybe uh you know yeah putin can sort of come speaking of people settling down what if elon buys twitter and then he and zuckerberg swap and they freaky friday it we just had to cut something that was almost going to get us to 11 anything else i don't know where we are anyway that's optimism i just disavow john in case the the uncut tapes get out and i'm i don't know anything uh but anyway that's the optimistic scenario and that's why everyone should be uh

working hard midterm madness boat save america.com slash midterms because uh if everyone gets to work then all that can you know that possibly come true if the things you listed happened that would be an extraordinary first two years of any administration in history yeah there's a lot of stuff to get right a lot of stuff to go right there yeah a lot of stuff's great all right um phoenix asks you guys spend a lot of time laying out a groundwork city yeah the whole city yeah they all get together cool uh and this is the resolution that they came up with you guys spend a lot of time laying out a groundwork for what democrats can should do but it too often does not line up with what democrats actually do even when they seem like no-brainer obvious choices why do you think this is and how much

does it drive you crazy? And then in parentheses, our producer said lots of questions about why Democrats are so bad with messaging. Because they updated the Apple podcast app and these members missed a lot of episodes. Yeah, a couple episodes in April, I didn't get. I think it's because we have super thin majorities, President Biden does,

and it's really hard to get people to agree to stuff, especially when they're acting in bad faith, like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. I think we need to separate the messaging issue from the policy issue. I think the policy issue is actually easier to explain than the messaging issue. The policy issue is a world in which you have the consensus of 99% of Democrats and you have zero Democrats currently looks the same in terms of policy outcomes out of Congress because we are short two fucking votes in the Senate because of Cal Cunningham's lack of restraint and Sarah Gideon's apparently never been to Maine never been to Maine she's like it's

so great to be here you know this is Bangor how do you say it here she's like I thought it's a Bangor it's not the one next to to Vermont. Never said it out loud before. Bangor. I'm Sarah Gideon. Bangor. The point is, that is all very frustrating. And we've all been frustrated by two years. And I think there's a lot of people who, rather than be adults about the reality that this

requires nuance to understand, just simply blame Democrats online and social media, because I think it's more fun and easier to vent that way. The messaging question is harder, but one reason is everybody thinks of themselves as a messaging genius and everybody sees things a little bit differently. You got to put it on a bumper sticker. It's got to be short enough for a bumper sticker.

You hear that a lot from donors when you go to political events, especially in LA. Two things you hear is you got to be able to put a Burma sticker in. Why isn't there a purple party? I belong. I'm a rich cosmopolitan Angeleno. I'd like a purple party.

Those are fundraising events in Manhattan. And you get some of that in San Francisco too. LA too, yeah. LA you get. I have a creative friend who writes for television. Maybe they can help with politics. It's about the story you tell. This is scathing. Yeah. LA again. I have a creative friend who can do a rights for television. Maybe they can help with politics. It's about the story you tell. This is scathing.

Jesus. Here's the thing on the messaging front. I will say having worked in politics and government, it is always easier to give advice from the cheap seats, which is what we're sitting in right now. It also like, you know, what seems easy from the outside isn't necessarily easy inside.

Like maybe Joee mansion does something and you're in the white house and you want to tear him a new asshole but you know that you need his vote for say confirming katanji brown jackson to the supreme court and which they got right so like there's a lot of compromises that you have to make um so you can't necessarily just yell and scream like we get to do i also think that messaging is hard because even if you have the messaging right, it has to still break through. And Democrats do not have a media apparatus to get their message out like Republicans do. And events in the world, you know, Ukraine is going to dominate the news for the last seven weeks, no matter what. I do think that's actually a really big part of the problem, which is,

you know, we yell at the people who will listen to us. It's easier. It's more fun to yell at somebody who responds. Democrats yell at each other. They respond to each other. They engage each other. They debate each other. When meanwhile, you know, we are dealing with a media environment which there's really kind of like the stories are Democrats on defensive, Democrats out of touch, Democrats evil, Democrats divided.

If it doesn't fit into one of those buckets, it doesn't float to doesn't have stays and float doesn't stay above the above the water. I'll also say Dan always makes this point. We all have agency here, too. We are all messengers now because we all have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram accounts that we can use to post to. You know, I think it is everyone has every right and should push Democrats, push Democratic leaders to pass legislation that they want to push for policies that they believe in. But I would just think to yourself as we head into the midterms, if you look at all your feeds and look at all your posts, like what's the balance between criticizing Democrats for not doing enough and pointing out what Republicans are doing and the choice in the election. Like how many of you went on Twitter today and criticized Joe Biden, but didn't talk about what he did to bring back the Mexican pizza? Right. Did he do that? Under Joe Biden's predecessor, the Mexican pizza was lost. Joe, under Joe Biden's administration, the Mexican pizza is back. This is a Taco Bell item. You bet it bet it is is it good is it good yeah tell me yeah tell me it's pretty good it's a pretty good

item and I will I would just say and I'm not even saying like oh you got to give Joe Biden more credit for shit I'm saying like we're we're heading into an election where we want to frame it as a choice between the Democratic vision for the country and the Republican vision for the country. Republicans are doing a lot of bad shit. We should spend some time talking about that. Yeah, I think that's right. Again, that's not to give up your criticism of Democrats. Do that too.

Just think about the balance. Think about the balance in your daily, in your output. And your input. And your input. Griffin asks, what's your favoritec political scandal and why dj i think we're all probably thinking of the same scandal you want to say it on three yeah one two three teapot dome i fucking knew it i knew he was gonna say teapot dome i was about to say coke orgies coke orgies is my favorite i knew it there's two options for

what that was gonna be was either gonna be teapot dome or xyz affair what's the xyz affair i don't know it involves france okay is that an old timey one you bet it is uh tommy i know you did some research on this so why don't you dig into some of your favorite scandals i mean teapot dome 1920s oil companies bribe warren g harding secretary of the interior to get access to oil reserves that had been cordoned off for the Navy, I believe. Stacks of cash in bags. It was a murder-suicide. It was a murder-suicide? Oh, yeah.

Harding was kind of a creep in his personal life on top of that. Good stuff. Wow. I don't know much about the teapot. I Googled it today. Oh. Love it. You got any others?

No. Mine was also the teapot dome scandal of the harding administration uh i'll just add i'll add two one is more of a it's a political scandal not as much of a dc scandal but uh i was surprised to learn that president franklin delano roosevelt before he was president uh recruited sailors to go have gay sex to prove that there were gay people in Newport, Rhode Island. And they proved it. Yeah, I mean, I would imagine so.

They called them the Ladies of Newport. It's a dark scandal, actually. You want my Iran-Contra notes? Yeah. Everything you researched, I want. Your Iran-Contra notes? You didn't do this for nothing. This is your opportunity.

The one I thought we would chat about that I thought you guys were there for and we all watched happen was the Jack Abramoff scandal. That was my, yes, because the emails were so good. Yeah, it's a good one because it's like- Frothy scandal in 2006. Good old fashioned bribery. But I mean, I think Abramoff, that scandal, Jack Abramoff was a lobbyist and a lawyer who was deeply connected in the Republican establishment. And I think when what he did came out, it showed how morally bankrupt the biggest right wing leaders are.

Right. It was Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Newt Gingrich. And Jack Abramoff was an absolute scumbag. He was getting money from the apartheid South African government. He was lobbying on behalf of the Pakistani military after they tested a nuclear weapon and it was disclosed. Yeah. And he just robbed his clients blind by padding his time schedule. And he put it in emails, be like, add 660 hours to my billing when I did two hours. And then there was like moments where in the emails, he was like, he would just write in all caps, I want their money! Exclamation point, which didn't look great.

Dollar signs, dollar signs. And he was a producer on a dolph lundgren movie none of these scandals are good i think this this one's interesting around country is interesting just because of what it revealed about the broader system and how much money was distorting politics you talking about jack abrams and all the shit he did reminded me of uh paul manafort uh trump campaign manager who got in plenty of trouble and then just recently Playbook interviewed him. What's Paul Manafort up to now and what does he think about how Joe Biden's doing?

That really made me mad. It's like, what? Why are we going to Paul Manafort for a quote now? Great ties, Paul Manafort. I always appreciate his time. I think he's back in Congress. He's got his own consulting firm now. That's DC for you. Jack Abramoff might be back next. Remember when Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face? And the apologized that's power that was a weird one that was a weird one iran contra is also telling one because you have the reagan administration

selling arms to iran despite an arms embargo and then the proceeds are supposed to go to the contras despite a provision passed by congress specifically not allowing that seems clear that reagan was in on it george hw bush was in on it and then george hw bush just pardons everyone no one ever really talks about it there's no political fallout reagan was feinsteining pretty hard by then too i got hung up on favorite dc political scandal and i went to the trump years and started thinking like what was the dumbest but sort of fun scandal from the trump year since there were so many serious ones and i just thought about all i could think of it was trump changing the weather map with the sharpie that was good because he said that the hurricane was going to hit alabama that wasn't the case the

weather service had to correct him and so he's like i'll correct the weather service and he just drew the line around you know it was a little one that we never got to the bottom of it was when sandy berger who was a national security official in the clinton administration was caught stuffing classified documents into his socks and he had apparently done it several times before potentially and we actually never found out why he was doing it or if there's anything he's destroyed that we didn't have copies of we literally never got a full real explanation he just wanted to work from home maybe the elastic on his socks kind of was falling apart. It was the first foray into the remote work. It's like,

I don't want to stay in the office and have to look at the classified documents here. I want to go home. It's a work-life balance. Yeah, Sadie Berger's doing a hybrid thing. Here's a question. Would you rather work in the Trump cabinet or marry into the Trump family hmm how

I mean how far removed that's all they gave us you can take it wherever you want from there Ivanka, Don or Eric Tiffany Tiffany right I always forget so does her family Wherever you want from there. Ivanka, Don, or Eric? Tiffany. Tiffany, right. I always forget.

Literally. Oh, yes. I mean, so does her family. I feel like this is a harder question for me than for you. Because, like, what am I doing here? Where do I go? There's nowhere to go. No, it doesn't say Trump family. There could be, like, cousins.

Cousins? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I could marry Mary Trump. It could be, like like a kind of you know what's that called may december you know i can be like that's called i don't know what you're referring to she's an older gal what's a may december may december relationship you know i'll be like her uh her her like uh what do you call it like a trophy husband i'll be mary trump's

trophy husband oh is that how you think it would go that's awesome and then we'll take on trump together and never have sex not once in the whole history of the thing i just think i'd like work zero times work in the trump cabinet two do whatever i want and then get fired right when anonymous op-ed yeah right then yeah a lot of people thought i'll be like a lot of people thought they could do that next thing i know their husband's not getting endorsed in pennsylvania yeah um this one was paired with a who would you want to be stuck on an island with and i accidentally answered that one and i thought mark meadows because you could very easily trick him into giving you his water and food provisions oh i thought because you wanted like a text buddy or no or wilbur ross because he would just be napping and wouldn't talk this this question is from not

jeff that's why it was the twitter name the top three leadership positions of the house dems have all been the same people since january 2007 and they're all 80 plus years old aren't dems encouraging the notion that they're out of touch and handicapping their own chances isn't the lack of turnover hurting the party in the long run hard disagree disagree. I hope Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are in those jobs 10 years from now. Yeah, it's a huge problem. Don't change horses midstream. Tell me, what do you think? Is this from not Jeff Moulton?

Hey. Yeah, obviously it matters. I mean, think about, we just did a show in boston where we had the mayor michelle wu who i believe is 37 and senator ed markey who is the junior senator from massachusetts in reverse and it was their the experience they bring to bear but their communication style leadership style i mean like they both were super interesting compelling from different ways and i think i guess there are some younger members of Congress like Brian Schatz or Chris Murphy or others who just communicate in a different way, have different priorities, have a different style. And I think it matters.

Yeah. I think having an older senator or an older speaker of the house, that in and of itself is not an indictment at all. And they can be great leaders. Bernie Sanders is an older member of the Senate. He's also one of the more exciting members to a lot of young people. And so is Ed Markey. I was trying to get it. Ed Markey is like super compelling and exciting, but like from a, in a completely different way that I made, like the, the comparison between him and Michelle Wu is so interesting to me.

You can see different characteristics. I think the point, the problem is the fact that so many of the people in leadership are so old as a sim, it is a symptom of a larger problem, which is the failure to invest in young talent, the failure to build up new members of the party and give them powerful positions. And then when you see someone like Brian Schatz go to the floor and deliver a kind of withering indictment of Josh Hawley and is kind of live and on his feet and keeps up and is like sophisticated and thinking in a forward looking way about how we should be messaging and how we should be fighting these fights. And then you look at the chairs of these committees, uh, you know, kind of looking around through gray, watery eyes, trying to figure out what to do to respond to Ted Cruz. Uh, it's, um, I believe it's a struggle. I believe Republicans tried to, uh, put term limits on their committee chairs. Yeah. Yeah. No, but AOC gets to Congress and is doing Instagram Lives.

And it's like a revelation for all of Washington, D.C., but she's just sort of like communicating like someone in that age range would do on a normal day. Yeah. I mean, I think just native to her. I think there's two issues here. One is sort of the younger members of Congress. here. One is sort of the younger members of Congress. I think the class of 2018, there were a lot of young members elected, especially on the Democratic side, whether they were progressive or more moderate, and sort of boxing them out from leadership has become a bit of an issue. And then there's just like the average age of Congress as a whole is older. And that just means

we need more young people to run uh for office and that's just that's something that everyone convicts by just going to run for office and supporting young candidates for office yeah absolutely and run for something is doing that and organizations like that and um so that's that's something to keep in mind all right finally someone asks what's the most awkward thing Lovett said or did in front of Barack Obama? I'm trying to think of what this might be. I'm too. I mean, I think of one embarrassing one, which is when he was on some sort of trip and he was going to a fundraiser.

And it was a fundraiser after the play sister act and he had done a you know a bunch of policy speeches but he was landing in in in new york and going to this fundraiser uh and he came up to me and said like hey i have to go do this thing where this is a weird thing i'm gonna go up after this play has happened is there some kind of joke you can give me he's not doing he wasn't doing a formal speech or anything but hey do you have a joke and i just it was so stupid what i said what was it so what i said i had a very stupid joke and so what i said was i hope you enjoyed it's bad he said i hope you and i said maybe you should say something like i hope you enjoyed sister act now here's here's my brother act it was horrible it was a horrible thing I was on

the spot it was poorly and he just looked at me and he went no and then and then he like looked at his watch he looked at his watch and he's like he said something like I'm gonna be busy for like an hour see if you can beat that and it's kind of like I guess see if you can come up

with something else like kind of like this is my funny guy like this is that was appalling and so then I just like paced around for like an hour freaking out

I have one more chance I can't even give I was like do I give him three I just give him one joke I wasn't even writing anything down I just like had to like say I had, I just give him one joke. It wasn't even writing anything down. I just like had to like say,

I do come up with one good joke for him to use. And the joke, I was like, I need something that I know is going to work. And I was like, okay, wait, a sister at convent.

He likes jokes about his daughters or I have something. And so the joke I gave him, which, which he appreciated and fixed my terrible blunder was it is so great to be here with all of you. Uh, uh, uh, not only do you get to see a wonderful play license like sister act, and fixed my terrible blunder was it is so great to be here with all of you. Not only do you get to see a wonderful play like Sister Act, but I'm doing research on the convent to send Malia after she graduates high school.

I remember that joke. And it was like, he gave me a fist bump. It repaired the damage that I had done with truly one of the dumbest things I've ever said out loud. I'm like sweating now thinking about it not like jokey like in a kind of like i am i am embarrassed to this day i'm glad you could advance that sort of like a patriarchal kind of condescending it is a toxic look is there toxic

masculinity in the joke 100 but i just needed to survive the day okay yeah no and sometimes you and sometimes in a toxic masculine environment that is America next time you do what you do to survive next time I'll tell you the story about how he pissed off Buzz Aldrin oh yeah another day tune in next time pod save America you heard it here second

I thought that you were going to tell the story about the time you broke wind in the cabinet room I've farted in a lot of places but the time you broke wind in the cabinet room. I've farted in a lot of places, but I've never farted in the cabinet room. No, and who was there? Ray LaHood was there? Ray LaHood. He blamed it on Ray LaHood.

I did. That was the problem. Ray LaHood, what did you have for lunch, Ray LaHood? You quaint relic of an era where we put one Republican like you on this thing? When we come back, Tommy's interview with Elizabeth Warren. Poor Elizabeth Warren has to follow this. Yeah, she's been sitting here the whole time waiting for her turn. I am thrilled to welcome into the Los Angeles studio, Senator from Massachusetts, my home state, the Commonwealth. I'm not going to get this wrong this time, Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Oh, and I am thrilled to be here with you. It is wonderful. In Los Angeles. Yeah, it's nice. Is it probably a little nicer here than Boston right now? We never use words like nice. It's a little sunnier right now and a little warmer. But remember, there are always those Yankees who love it gloomy and cold.

For me, it's like I call my mom. I'm like, how's the weather, mom? She's like, you know, we haven't been able to walk the dog yet because the snow's still eating just high in May or whatever. So that's interesting that your mom's version is we haven't been able to walk the dog. My husband, you know, who's born and raised in Massachusetts, his view is you can walk the dog 365 days a year, any one of the 24 hours in that day. It makes absolutely no difference what the weather is doing. You just have to, this is always his, dress appropriately. So I now have the

weirdest assortment of boots and rain gear and winter gear. The jacket that makes you a sausage. Yes, the jacket that makes me look like the Michelin tire boy. And it turns out Bailey totally agrees with him. All weather is golden retriever weather in Massachusetts. Bailey is correct, per usual. Well, it's wonderful to have you. Good to be here. It's good to chat about fun stuff.

Jump into the questions here, because I'm a Democrat. I'm a constitutionally nervous person. There is some polling that suggests some headwinds for Democrats going into the midterms, to put it mildly. There was a poll out yesterday, April 12th. We're recording this on April 13th out of Nevada, for example, that showed President Biden at like a 35% approval rating. Senator Cortez Masto, the governor, both underwater there. So Mitch McConnell is out there salivating. The vampire can predict a bloodbath. He says it's the worst political environment for Democrats since 94. What do you think we do to right the ship between now and November? I think we need to get stuff done. And that's the G-rated version of it. We really need

to finish delivering on some big deal promises we made during the 2020 election and on the ones we can't deliver on because we don't have 50 votes, then we need to be shown swinging the bat as hard as we can. Look, Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Senate and House Republicans want to keep the whole conversation as we roll into 2022 about the militant left and their version of whatever they think they can raise hell about this year. Whatever culture war. Exactly. think they can raise hell about this year. Whatever culture war. Exactly.

Because remember, they do not want to talk about what actually needs to be done in this country because Mitch McConnell's plan is to do nothing. He said this quite openly. I don't have to make this up. He brags about it. Yeah, he brags about it. He says, put the Republicans in charge and we will make sure nothing happens. And that goes to the heart of what his whole party is about. This is a party that has exactly two ideas.

Whatever goes wrong, they have two ideas. One is to cut taxes, and the other is to put a bunch of extremists on the Supreme Court and lower courts who will impose their extremist ideas, their extremist religious ideas on the rest of America. And so the worst that could happen from Mitch McConnell's point of view is if we're actually talking about the things we've gotten done and the additional things we are going to do if you give us a couple of more Democrats in the Senate and hang on to the House. Totally agree with you there. The other sort of challenge looming in the background is inflation hit 8.5% in March. There's a bunch of reasons why that we can get into. I'm sure we actually,

listeners would love to hear your sort of thoughts on why. I've heard you talk about, and other Democrats talk about how corporate greed and record profits for corporations is leading to inflation. The White House is calling it Putin's price hike because we're seeing energy prices go up because of the war. I think both of those points are helpful. Those are good explanations that can help me understand why all of a sudden, you know, commodities are so expensive. But I'm worried that those explanations are less helpful when it comes to winning a political argument that Republicans will make that is going to be basically Democrats are in charge. Everything's more expensive. If you're pissed about how much it costs to fill up your truck, vote Democrats out, vote for us Republicans. How do you think we take on that political fight?

So we do it two ways. One is let's talk about the rest of the economic news as well. A little over a year ago, the economists, pundits were saying it would take about, most were saying around four years for us to get unemployment back to where it was before the pandemic started. Same thing on GDP growth. GDP growth is zooming ahead. And as you know, unemployment rates are at historic lows. The president's administration has created more than 7 million new jobs. That is the most new jobs created in any administration in the first 14 months

in our entire history. We need to be talking about that. Are you surprised by that number, that success? Well, actually, you know, the pieces fit together. I'm not at all surprised. We got out there just about a year ago right now and passed what was called the American Rescue Package. And you may remember it was a lot of money, but it was money that went into vaccines and the kind of the community health center way of getting the distribution out. know, the community health center way of getting the distribution out. It was money that went into getting our schools open again and making sure they would have the resources to do that. And it was money that went into small businesses to keep those little businesses open and to keep jobs open. And it worked. People have jobs. And that 7 million figure, that's not just an abstraction. Those are 7 million people who went home on payday and had enough money to buy groceries, who were able to make rent, whose kids stayed in school, people who didn't have to move, people who didn't get foreclosed against. And yes, putting that money in at the same time that you then turned around and hit shifts in demand because of the pandemic, supply chain kinks because of the pandemic, Putin both driving up the cost of oil and the cost of wheat and soy and other things that are produced in Ukraine. But the other one

is watching the giant corporations, particularly where there's a lot of concentration. These giant corporations said, hmm, everyone's talking about price increases. This, they saw it, was their chance to pass along costs. Okay, that much I get. But to take another dollop on the price scale and just boost their profits. So we've got all these companies that are at record profits. And because of increased concentration, there's no way to compete those prices back down. Right, right. So you've got these multiple threads running through here.

So my view on this, first, is it's not going to look like this in another five months. It will be different. Now, will it be enough? Will inflation be down? I can't make that prediction. But we do know supply chain kinks are working their way out. We don't know what will happen with the pandemic. We do know people have their jobs.

But what we need to be doing is we need to be talking about the good economic news that is in part tied to the challenges of inflation. And we need to be talking about the causes of this inflation. And I want to say here, talk about, talk about. It's not just talk about. Let's give a little credit. The President of the United States, focus in, for example, on price gouging. He's put the dream team in the field. Lena Kahn at the FTC.

Go get them, Lena Kahn. And Jonathan Cantor over at the Department of Justice, fabulous. The president himself has put out an executive order requiring every agency around government to look at concentration, price gouging, competition, encouraging competition. And that's true at the Department of Agriculture. It's true over at the defense contractors that there's a big push throughout government. And the importance of that is to recognize it's been 40 years since there's been any real push to enforce antitrust laws and to remind ourselves that all these folks who purport to love a market economy don't actually seem to want to see a competitive market. Fine for other people, but not for them. And the role of government is to

keep those markets more competitive. And the president's team is already beginning to deliver on that. And they got a lot more in the pipeline. That's good. That's good news. One interesting piece of this economic puzzle that's hopeful, and we actually put out a request for questions from our audience. We got a bunch of different versions of this one, which is, you know, the past month, we've seen some pretty amazing success for organized labor in America.

I was just going to go there. Good. Like, is this so fabulous? You can't believe it. So 7 million new jobs. I put it in the personal immediately. People who could go home at night and know they still had a job the next morning. But the rest of it is enough worker power for the first time again in like two generations where the baristas at Starbucks are making it happen.

The people packing at Amazon are making it happen. Right. 16 locations in Starbucks locations so far. Yep. Two of them in the Boston area. There we go. The ALU organized a warehouse in Staten Island. So those are big wins.

What can the government, the Congress, the administration do to put some wind in their sails and help those efforts? Well, partly we need to be cheering them on, which I'm certainly doing. But partly, it helps enormously to have Democrats over the Department of Labor and have an NLRB, have a Department of Labor that's willing to enforce the labor laws. That's helpful. Yeah, I think it's very helpful because if you're not in the middle of these, it's easy to miss how much when these employers come in with all their muscle, think about what

it's like to try to organize a place like Amazon or- Howard Schultz was calling labor leaders saying, you don't want to do this. You don't want to do this. This is back in the day. Yeah, exactly. No, but it's true. It's true. Same kind of thing at Amazon. They call the workers in and,

you know, in effect have these sessions where they tell them how terrible it's going to be if the union takes over. They've got all these union busting law firms and PR firms that this is how they get paid. They figured out which buttons to push to terrify workers if they decide to vote for a union. And frankly, many times it appears they break the law. Well, we now have an NLRB. We now have a secretary of labor willing to enforce the laws. Wow. So there's more that needs to be done.

There's a proact pending that would make it easier for workers to unionize. I'm all for that. I will push it. I will push it. I will push it. We need to get it through the Senate. But just using the tools we've got available, letting workers say to each other, you know, I think we can do this. And then having the government to say to the Starbucks of the world, hey, back off and let them decide what they want to do. No intimidation. That's terrific. Yeah.

Maybe we could unionize Jeff Bezos' little starship flight crew. There we go. I love it. I love it. Just a thought. This is a long question because it's a hobby horse of mine. So just bear with me. Listeners might have heard of a person named Jared Kushner. There's a long report about him in the New York Times this week. The context for everyone to know is Jared Kushner married Ivanka Trump. His father-in-law becomes president. He appoints himself the shadow secretary of state with no

experience. He becomes the de facto point guy for the US-Saudi relationship. He did a lot of favors for the now Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Most infamously, Jared reportedly helped cover up MBS's role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who is a Washington Post journalist, which is brutally executed. So in the Times earlier this week, we learned that Jared received a $2 billion, billion with a B, investment, in air quotes, from a Saudi investment fund, despite serious concerns from the fund's professional oversight board. Some of those concerns were Jared's company's inexperience, their operations were a mess. The fees were too high. This was my favorite. Jared created a public relations risk for them, the Saudi government,

who brutally executes journalists. Live with that one, Jared. So MBS overruled these objections. He cuts Jared a $2 billion check. In my mind, I read this story and I think, using your White House job to help a foreign dictator evade responsibility for a murder and then getting a $2 billion kickback is one of the most staggeringly corrupt things I've ever heard. Is there a role for DOJ or Congress or any entity to look into this, to scrub this? So the answer is yes. Actually, can we put one more little piece in? Please. You left the little piece of parsley that you put on the side of the plate when you're serving this up. As I understand it, there was also a requirement that, yes, Jared would now be the manager of this fund, but he actually had to hire real people who knew what they were doing to run it. He will just get a management fee, but on what appeared to be the promise that

he will never actually do any work. That's part of the agreement. It is kind of a sweet gig there. Insulting, but sweet. Or just revelatory, maybe is the word. So, look, I think there's a question that the Department of Justice should take a really hard look to see if that fits within any of our current. I mean, it is a kind of shaggy dog version of how you get to what's going on here. Does it violate any of our criminal laws? And I'd want to take a hard look at that. But there's a second thing that maybe I just always go back to what's the tool in front of me since I'm not over at DOJ. I'm in the Congress.

And I think this is a moment when Congress needs to do a lot more about corruption. And I mean, we have to do on corruption. And you've been good inside the House, outside the House. You've been calling for a lot of reforms. I'm hoping you can elaborate on that. Absolutely. So let's just start with one across the board. It wouldn't apply to Jared, but it tells you about where we are if we can't do this.

So I have a bipartisan, did you hear me say that? Bipartisan bill with Senator Daines. And the two of us have a bill that say, if you're a member of Congress, you cannot buy stock, you cannot sell individual stock, you cannot own individual stock, and neither can your spouse. And that's just the deal. If you want to be in the stock market, you can be in mutual funds, in index funds, but that's it. This is public service. So you're saying to them, you can buy all of the stocks if you want. You can buy an S&P index fund. You can buy an s&p index fund you can buy all dow jones index fund have at it you just can't buy individual companies that you might regulate or that's exactly right

you just can't do that anymore what's the argument against that uh well there are some people who say uh but i like trading in individual stocks okay and sure i i. I try. Actually, I don't try to be respectful. I'm trying to think. I try to keep a straight face. But the bottom line is we got to do this. And I use this as an example of we need to start sweeping out the stables around Congress. And let me be blunt. That should be the law for Congress. It should also be the law for every federal judge. It should also be the law for every member, the governors of the Federal Reserve. And obviously should be the rule for everybody who heads up a cabinet agency or of any of our independent agencies and government. This is just how it should be.

And I think of this as this is step one. This is clean up the filth on the floor 101. And we get this done, and then we move on to other questions involving conflict of interest, on to other questions involving conflict of interest, involving taking care of yourself instead of the people who elected you to be here. Listen, I have so much respect for Speaker Pelosi and a lot of members of the Democratic Party, but this is one where I think some folks are just on the wrong side of the issue. Speaking of the stock market, you know, it has been interesting for me to watch the emergence of apps like Robinhood and the gamification of stock purchases, stock trading. There was the fun moment of AMC and GameStop and screwing over hedge funds and Wall Street. We could all cheer for that.

But on every winning transaction on Wall Street, there's a losing transaction. And there's emerged this sort of like, excuse my French, but shit posting culture, right? Where Elon Musk is tweeting about Dogecoin to the moon or buying a huge stake in Twitter and failing to disclose it on time and sort of trolling his way onto the board. Is that a cultural problem? Is there a lack of regulation there? How do you view this kind of new iteration of how stocks are being bought, sold, and traded by retail investors? So I think of this as markets are great, including entertaining. And I'm all for that. Have at it, baby. But there's got to be a cop on the beat. And the cop on the beat says,

there are certain things you can do. You can get out there and you can wag your fanny and do whatever you want. But there are certain other things you can't do. Pump and dumps are illegal. You've got to disclose beneficial ownerships and, you know, so on and so forth. The rules are there. And frankly, for a long time, we haven't had much of a cop on the beat. The Donald Trump years is if there was a cop on the beat, I swear, the cop had a hood over his head, you know, tightly wrapped, could not hear, could not see, could not speak. Saw no evil.

Right. But the second half of this is the half in the crypto world where there's really no cop on any part of the beat because nobody can even figure out who's the right cop in this circumstance. It's kind of like your question about Kisagi about where exactly is this wrong? is this wrong? And it's the reminder, you have to keep changing the laws as the world innovates into new ways of cheating people. And if you think making money by cheating people is okay, then you're in one part of the world. But if you actually think just some basic rules of the road Basic rules of the road that, I'll give you an example. You put money on one of the crypto exchanges and you want to be able to get it out. You put in a hundred bucks. How much is it going to cost you to get it out? The fees are massive.

It can cost you 40 bucks to get your money back out. And that's not always made clear right up front. Or you want to be able to get your money out, and it turns out you want to get yours out because there's a run. A lot of other people are trying to get theirs out. That the exchange can decide to privilege its insiders, its buddies, the people who own the exchange. And you can get yours out in about 28 more hours, after which, of course, the price has gone to nothing. And my point around all this is there need to be basic rules. markets, every market has got to have somebody there who says, hey, here are the posted rules, and here's the cop who's going to enforce those rules. And right now, we don't have that in crypto. And without that, it's a place that it works great for the insiders and it can work great for a little while for some people, but it's also a terrible place for people to get fleeced. have now an enormous industry built around cryptocurrencies and incredibly rich people

and corporations who are now seeking to write these laws, both in the federal level, on the state level. Does that concern you? I mean, I look around at, you know, sort of basic taxation laws and you look at the fact that South Dakota has now become maybe the world's premier tax shelter. You know, we used to make fun of the Cayman Islands or Swiss banks. It's now South Dakota. It's the best place to hide your money from law enforcement, taxes, an ex-husband. You know, I mean, it's unbelievable. Right.

And, you know, the thing is when you talk about creating something out of air, remember where we were in the early 2000s? And so they kept pushing those subprime mortgages, and everybody ends up with subprime mortgages. And then they came up with all those new instruments, the derivatives. And the idea was that somehow you took this big blob of hamburger and you just kind of kept patting it and reforming it and sold it as filet mignon. Do you remember this? Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. The credit default spots. Yes. Steaks all the way down, that it was so valuable.

Everything's AAA rated. It all became, you took a bunch of trash and it all became AAA rated. And the thing always was, well, but this is new. This is exciting. You want to get in on it. And people would always glance in the rearview mirror and they'd say, look how far we've come. Those derivatives were only worth $1.95 yesterday. And today they're worth $9,400,000 million bazillion dollars. Don't you want to be in on the ride yeah exactly foma foma foma and the problem was they didn't have enough to back them up they had something the the homes the ultimately but they didn't have enough to back them up on crypto there ain't no there there yeah there's

there's not always an asset underlying. Not always an asset. I'm sorry. I mean, well, and sometimes the asset that sort of tokenizes like an NFT. Oh, the NFTs. I get you on NFTs. I'm just talking about plain old bitcoins. And even the ones that are stable coins, the ones that say we are pegged one-to-one to the dollar, egged one-to-one to the dollar. There's no cop actually checking, is there a dollar to back this up? And when some of these folks have been challenged on, so show us your paperwork to show us how this is a one-for-one, they can't actually come up with documentation that shows they've got it. So it's a circumstance where it's got every flashing light that a lot of good and decent folks are going to lose everything.

Yeah. And look, every time I talk about crypto on a show, I get yelled at from people on Twitter, usually with laser eyes, which for God's sake, people just come on. But there are applications, I think, to cryptocurrency that are interesting. There's ways you can code ownership into NFTs that's interesting, that helps artists, that helps musicians. I think the NFT, that's a different thing. I think the NFT is interesting. I think blockchain is interesting.

But the idea that somehow they're building wealth through an alternative money system that has nothing that backs it up except we all believe it is valuable. It's the tulip bulbs. It's the tulip bulbs. That's what immediately comes to mind. As long as we all that Twitter, Facebook, all these things we created turned out badly, but trust us again this time. This time it's going to work. Trust us with undoing fiat currency. Right.

Seems like a bad idea. Yeah. Okay. Well, that was uplifting. Switching gears a little bit. So we're starting, the January 6th committee has been doing tons of work behind the scenes. We're starting to see bits and pieces of it in court cases, et cetera. You're also starting to hear some frustration from January 6th committee members and the Democrats generally. I mean, committee members are frustrated that DOJ has not enforced contempt citations when witnesses don't cooperate. Some Democrats just feel like, hey, Merrick Garland, pick up the pace. After the

midterms, this committee might not exist and we need to get a move on when it comes to prosecuting these ringleaders. Do you share those frustrations? I look at it this way. Donald Trump thought that the Department of Justice worked for him. And that was a terrible, terrible moment in our history. The Department of Justice is headed by an attorney general who makes independent evaluations. justice is headed by an attorney general who makes independent evaluations. And I think that's important. And I have a lot of respect for an attorney general like Merrick Garland, who says, I'm not here to be stampeded in a moment of politics. I make decisions based on what I believe the law to be, and I will follow through, whether it's popular or not. And he would say the same thing that he's following in the tradition, think of it the other way around, of Robert Kennedy, who said, I'm going down to Alabama and I'm going to help out people who've been barricaded in Montgomery. I'm going to offer protection, even though it's going to be politically unpopular. There's an importance for insulating because the driving truth of the Department of Justice has to be rule of law and rule of law applied regardless of what your politics are.

So I start by saying plenty of respect on that. But I also want to say hubba bubba for what it is that the House has been up to in their January 6th commission. Can we just put in a short commercial, shame on the Republicans in the Senate who would not permit the inquiry into an armed insurrection against the United States of America. They voted against letting the Senate participate in that. I think that is just wrong and shows both how afraid they are of what would come out and how they are willing to follow Donald Trump like lemmings over the cliff. But having said that, House has gone forward and has uncovered, I mean, just to me, it feels like every day. So what is going to be today's revelation about- Ginny Thomas's hobbies are very weird. Yes, we're learning a lot. Wow. And we always keep rethinking, like, hmm, how could it be that Clarence Thomas was voting on something that would affect whether or not the rest of us learned about what Jenny Thomas, potentially, learned about what Jenny Thomas was up to? So I cheer on what the House has done. Their committee is making all of this public.

Hello, we're out here making this public. That's what they're doing. And I say good for them. And it's an act of self-discipline. I trust, I believe that we have an attorney general who is looking at all of the evidence that gets produced from wherever it gets produced. And that he will make an independent decision based on rule of law that will follow through and hold people responsible for an armed insurrection against the United States of America. Yeah. I hope so, too. Please.

We got, you know, today we're reading about Trump aides, some guy named Jason Sullivan telling a group of supporters that they need to go to D.C. to descend on the Capitol. You got Donald Trump Jr. forwarding along the plans for the insurrection before the votes had, you know, had been, election had been called. You've got to say, they knew, right right that you've got what is it a seven hour gap and the president's uh uh phone logs uh just one piece after another a lot of a lot of smoke there a lot of smoke um final question um you just went through a democratic primary process that you know had iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina. There's a bunch of conversations happening now about whether that process should be

rethought, reconfigured, and whether in particular, Iowa, New Hampshire should go first, whether there should be any caucuses. I had the great privilege of working in Iowa, spending a lot of time with your staff in Iowa. And like, I am, you know, I have a lot of fondness for the kind of politics that came out of a caucus, the community meetings, the way people are forced to talk to their neighbors, when you actually care about being someone's second choice, right? You're not just, you know, beating with a bat every day, you're trying to convince people. Do you think it's time to reform this process? And are there ways you think it could be better? I think it's time to reform the process.

And I say that truly loving parts of what's there and hope that we can genuinely hang on to them. Yeah, that's how I feel too, parts. Parts. Yes. But parts is parts. You know, you've got to hold on to the parts. I love the fact, think of it this way. If the first primary were in California – and I say this, you know, it's sunny out there.

It's beautiful. I love you, California. But if the first primary were in California, then the whole process would be almost exclusively about raising money and going on TV. Because you can't meet enough people in California. It's just too big an electorate, right? If we did a national primary, I know some people talk about national primaries, then it's all, who wins? It's going to be Michael Bloomberg, right? Because he's the only one who has the money from the first day. Unless you get to him first. Well, there is that. But so you've got to think about how do you get it down to a part

where you can still meet people. Some retail politics. Some retail politics. And I think retail politics are important because I think, at least for me, I learned a ton on retail politics. Now, on the other hand, look, the person in our party who lost Iowa pretty badly and lost New Hampshire pretty badly still got the nomination. So I think we have to think about how all those pieces fit together. And yes, it troubles me that you'll be three elections in before there's a significant participation by people of color. And that's troubling. Yeah. So how to re-divide that as Democrats? I don't know. I think it's hard.

And I think, look, I'm going to be blunt. One of the reasons it's hard is Iowa, this is a big deal for Iowa. Oh, yeah. And they make big money. We were in motels that I used to think, I think I know why this motel is here. Right. This motel is here because the caucuses. And that's immediate impact.

Then you get to the ethanol industry and farm subsidies. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's troubling. And the problem is the person who has the most power to change it, by definition, is the one who just won. So they never have any incentive. And most of the people who've really ground through the process, most, will never do it again. So it's kind of, okay, I'm past that and moved on.

again. So it's kind of, okay, I'm past that and moved on. But I think putting some real thoughtfulness into how we get representation and yet keep it as an on the ground, dirt under the fingernails, I'd be ready to help in that conversation. Okay. I lied. Final, final question. Final, final. So we here at Crooked Media, we are trying to get people fired up for the midterms. All right. We have a midterm madness program. We're trying to break people up into regions, get them to volunteer.

Super, super. We have lots of fun stuff. It's a little harder this time than it was in 2018. Yeah. You know, there's some people who feel like, you know, Biden said he was going to get rid of student debt. We haven't canceled it yet. Joe Manchin is really bumming me out. You guys have the trifecta. We haven't canceled it yet. Joe Manchin is really bumming me out. You

guys have the trifecta. We can't get stuff done. What's your elevator pitch to all the folks out there who might be on the fence about getting involved this time about why they should? Roe versus Wade. The other side has been voting Supreme Court for 40 years now. And the Supreme Court has got its toes on the line to end women's access to abortion. Oklahoma just did. Absolutely. And abortion.

You know, can we pause for one second? You think about the fact that Oklahoma just passed a law to ban abortion effectively. It clearly violates Roe versus Wade. They couldn't wait three more months until the Supreme Court tosses Roe versus Wade into the trash bin. They are so confident. They are so sure that they are right. They want to be out ahead of this. And they're willing to thumb their noses at the United States Supreme Court current rule, knowing that this extremist Supreme Court will back them up. Okay. So I just want to say to everybody who's listening, if you care, Roe versus Wade, our only chance to protect a woman's right to an abortion is if we get two more senators on the Democratic side in the Senate and hang on to the House because we can create by statute.

We don't have to rely on the Supreme Court. Roe versus Wade. Second one is climate. The other side has made clear their view on climate is burn some more oil, drill, baby, drill. If we're going to have any chance to save this planet, the Democrats are our best hope. This is what we've got. We've got the plans. We know all the directions to go in. We're ready to spend the money. We're ready to tax the billionaires to spend the money. Again, we need one or two more senators on the Democratic side.

Third one, student loans. President can do it. And I am very, very hopeful that he will do it before the election and remind everybody in this country first that he fights for them. He fights for the 42 million Americans who are struggling with student loan payments. He fights for the 40% of them who don't have a college degree. He fights to help close the racial wealth gap. President canceling $50,000 of student loan debt is the single most effective thing he can do to close the black-white wealth gap among people with student loan debt by 27 points. Same thing for the Latino white wealth gap. He wants to fight on the side of people who need his help,

and he is willing to deliver. And if he does those things, then by damn, we need to show up and be ready to vote, to turn out that vote, to get everybody engaged, because it will be a reminder not only that the president cares, but that your vote matters. So three issues. We've got to do them. You heard it here first, everyone. Senator Warren, thank you so much for coming in. It's great to see you. Thanks for firing us up and see you soon. Let's do it. All right. Thank you to Elizabeth Warren for joining the show. We'll talk to you on Thursday. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez

is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineer the show. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Sandy Gerrard, Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.