Pod Save America - “Nancy P and Cardi B try to open D.C.”

Episode Date: January 17, 2019

Pelosi tells Trump he can’t deliver the State of the Union until the government opens, Trump advisors tell him the shutdown is hurting the economy, Kirsten Gillibrand announces for president, Sherrod Brown announces he’s exploring a bid, and Beto O’Rourke takes a road trip to help him decide. Then the Atlantic’s Natasha Bertrand talks to Dan about Attorney General nominee William Barr’s confirmation hearings, and the latest in the Mueller investigation. Also – Pod Save America is going on tour! Get your tickets now: crooked.com/events

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, you'll hear Dan's conversation with The Atlantic's Natasha Bertrand, who's been closely covering William Barr's confirmation hearings and the Mueller investigation. We're also going to talk about the latest in the shutdown and the latest presidential candidates to jump in what is becoming a very crowded 2020 pool. Also check out Pod Save the World this week. Tommy and Ben cover quite a bit of international news.

And on Pod Save the People, DeRay chats with law professor Laura Bazelon about restorative justice for wrongly convicted people. Finally, Pod Save America, love it or leave it, and Pod Save the People are all hitting the road in the weeks ahead. You can find more about the cities where we're headed and how

you can get tickets at crooked.com slash events. And if you can't make it, you can always watch Pod Save America online at youtube.com slash crooked media. Smash that subscribe button. That's for Elijah. Okay. You know, we're going to start off talking about the shutdown. I was going to provide an update, but instead of me just doing it, you know, we're going to start off talking about the shutdown. I was going to provide an update, but instead of me just doing it,

you know, we have a special guest who's going to provide the latest on the shutdown. Hey, y'all. I just want to remind y'all because it's been a little bit over three weeks. Okay? It's been a little bit over three weeks. Trump is now ordering, as in summonsing, federal government workers to go back to work without getting paid. Now, I don't want to hear y'all motherfuckers talking about, oh, but Obama shut down the government for 17 days.

Yeah, bitch, for health care. So your grandma could check her blood pressure, and you bitches could go check your pussy in the gynecologist with no motherfucking problem. Now, I know a lot of y'all don't care because y'all don't work for the government or y'all probably don't even have a job. But this shit is really fucking serious, bro. This shit is crazy. Like, our country is in a hellhole right now. All for a fucking wall.

And we really need to take this serious. I feel like we need to take some action. I don't know what type of action, bitch, because this is not what I do. But, bitch, I'm scared. This is crazy. And I really feel bad for these people. They got to go to fucking work to not get motherfucking paid. All right.

That was Cardi B. Saying very eloquently what we all believe about the shutdown. She was, uh, she posted that on Instagram on Wednesday night, I believe. And, you know, as you would imagine, it went viral. I have a lot of thoughts about this. One, apologies to everyone who is listening to this while they're bringing their kids to or from school in the morning. We apologize for what just happened there. Second, I have spent the last seven minutes since Michael told me that we were going to play this audio trying to come up with some sort of government Trump-related pun for Bodak Yellow, and I have failed.

Well, I'm sure we'll get a lot of suggestions. I'm also waiting for the hot take that says that this video was inspired by the social media strategy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Did you see last night that Brian Schatz or Chris Murphy, one of them was going to tweet this, and then they decided against it because Schatz said it wouldn't be senatorial. And then Chuck Schumer replied to both of them on Twitter and was like, hey, you two,

are you going to post the Cardi B video? I thought that was Chuck Schumer's best tweet in history. It was great. Ever? What is going on here? Okay, so on Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote a letter to President Trump saying that he has to postpone his State of the Union address to Congress later this month until he ends the longest government shutdown in American history, as Cardi B told us about.

In her letter, Pelosi said Trump could consider delivering the address to Congress in writing, which presidents used to do back in the day. Trump continues to refuse any kind of compromise or real negotiation from Democrats or Republicans that would actually open the government, even as officials in his own administration are admitting that it's starting to hurt the economy. Dan, let's start with Pelosi's letter. In the letter, she writes that because the State of the Union is designated as a, quote, national special security event, writes that because the State of the Union is designated as a, quote, national special security event, it requires, quote, weeks of detailed planning with dozens of agencies working together to prepare for the safety of all participants. Sadly, given the security concerns, and unless

government reopens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date. First, does the Speaker of the House have the power to disinvite the President from delivering a State of the Union? Yes. Yes, she does. It from delivering a state of the union yes yes she does it is called the speaker of the house because she runs the house and the house is where the speech is given and it requires both the house and the senate to pass some sort of resolution to concurrent resolution to come and so she is well within her rights to disinvite him even if it is uh it's not unprecedented but it is unusual to say the least but these are unusual times we have an unusual president and look you know in the constitution

it says that the president should you know let congress know what the state of the union is but it does not specify that the president has to go to congress um you know presidents for a long long time wrote the state of the union and delivered it to congress um that seems like a pretty boring letter but uh so yeah so she's well within her rights it's obviously you know it's unusual but uh what so the question now is is it a good idea or and are there any risks it is a good i think it is a good idea. I was surprised and impressed by it because it is the sort of strong power play that Democrats usually talk themselves out of for fear of upsetting the etiquette judges in Washington. it. It was bold. And I think it is, here's why I think it is a good idea, which is, and this came even after, in some of the reporting that happened after Speaker Pelosi sent that letter. But if you are someone who is sitting in the White House and you were trying to figure out when to fold your

cards or how to fold your cards, you could convince yourself that the State of the Union is your last best chance to change the political dynamic. And so there's a chance that if the State of the Union were to happen on its scheduled date, you're sort of guaranteeing that the shutdown will continue for at least two more weeks. And then whatever time it would take after that for the Trump and Republicans to see that once again, they were still in the same shitty political position they're in now. And so, yeah, I think it was a good move.

It sends a, no, it says another signal to Trump, which is Trump only respects power politics. And this is the ultimate form of power politics. I think it's a, I think it's a good idea for two reasons. One,

this is now a crisis for a lot of people in this country. And I think at least one party should act that way. And the idea of having sort of the pomp and circumstance of a State of the Union, where everyone's like smiling and sits down, everyone's all dressed up, they go to Congress, while there's 800,000 people working without paychecks in this country, and a lot more people hurting because they're not getting government services. It seems extremely discordant. And, you know, I've sort of been worried over the last week that even though, you know, we've been talking about the shutdown a lot, the media is talking about the shutdown a lot. In this media environment, there's still too many other stories competing with the shutdown. And yet this is something

that is turning into an emergency for a lot of people in this country. And the people who want to end the shutdown, which in this case seems to be only the Democrats, we need to act like it's an emergency. And doing something unusual like postponing the State of the Union sort of reflects that concern. I also think, you know, CNN reported this, that Stephen Miller and Trump in the White House are writing or in the middle of writing a State of the Union that basically lies and blames Democrats for the shutdown. idea that Trump is going to get up there, the state of the union with Pelosi standing right behind him and go on for 50, 60 minutes, um, just lying about how the Democrats have caused the shutdown and lying about immigration like he did on, uh, in prime time the other night is crazy. Like there's no need to let him do that. I mean, there's this, this is really interesting on so many levels. I mean, I've been fascinated by the reaction of the residents of Conventional Wisdom Nation about this. So there have been sort of two strains of thought. One is that Pelosi risks a backlash because people in this country expect the president to be respected, right? And that this is disrespectful.

And I think there is some truth that there is a backlash to being disrespectful to a normal president. But Nancy Pelosi has no obligation, and the public actually does not expect Nancy Pelosi to respect the presidency more than Trump respects the presidency, which is not at all. And we cannot live in a world where Trump spends the last two years stomping on every norm of American democracy, and then the etiquette judges get to throw a flag at Nancy Pelosi for violating some norm. That's just not how it works. And I think the public is too smart for that. The second strain of thought, which is coming from sort of right leaning political strategists in sort of the quasi never Trump world, which is, well, this is a sign of weakness from the Democrats, because if they really thought that Trump had a losing message, then would want him to keep speaking. losing message than would want him to keep speaking.

What? Yeah, it's so stupid, right? I saw this from The Federalist, among others. But it's so dumb because we actually, this is not a theoretical exercise. Trump actually gave a speech to 40 million people last week, and he convinced no one to move into his camp. And I'm not kidding. I mean, there were polls that showed two people. Two percent changed their minds. Two percent were convinced by his speech. Well, mean, there were polls that show two people. Two percent changed their minds.

Two percent were convinced by his speech. Well, they changed their minds. We don't know which way they changed their minds. I mean, yeah. I mean, two people changed their mind. And the polls have moved in the wrong direction since that speech. So Democrats have no reason to be afraid, but they also have no obligation to invite Trump to lie in their house.

Yeah. Also, you know what's disrespectful? Making 800,000 people come to work and not fucking paying them the disrespectful thing is also completely crazy also the letter couldn't have been more respectful about it let's work together to find another time like so what do you think about the security concerns that she raised because it is a national security special event you know we know from um Obama, you know, delivered the State of the Union many times, it is this event where, look, the most important, you know, the entire line of succession, except for one cabinet member, is in one place, all members of Congress. It takes an enormous amount of coordination between federal agencies to make sure that everyone is protected and that the state of the union itself is secure.

So I imagine that's not just some pretext to disinvite him. Like there are security concerns, right? I mean, I was not an expert on this, but I was texting with our friend Alyssa Mastromonaco this morning, who was deputy chief of staff in the White House, was in charge of this, right? She was the person who oversaw the White House's relationship with Secret Service, et cetera, in these sorts of events and says, yes, this is very, very real and people should be concerned. And there is just this discordance between the Trump administration saying that we are all about to die because of terrorists and MS-13 and everyone else pouring over the border and saying that we can put the entire line of succession into one room while people are, while agencies are partially

staffed and people working without pay and we're totally fine. Like you got to, you either, we're all about to die or we're totally fine. You got to pick one of the two narratives for your presidency. So on Monday, we talked a little bit about how badly the shutdown is pulling. And a big reason why is because, you know, this thing is really starting to inflict pain on a lot of people and disrupt a lot of people's lives. The typical federal worker has missed $5,000 in pay from the shutdown so far. The White House's own Council of Economic Advisers had to revise down their economic growth estimates this week. And they believe that the economy has already lost half a percentage point of growth from the four-week shutdown that is huge dan is this something that might finally get through to trump that it's not a uh a great re-election strategy

to tank the u.s economy over a hundred miles of steel slats do you think that's something that might might finally get to him before we get to that that, I had a question for you, which is, so we're going on tour in like three weeks, right? Yeah. And you are a noted and famous nervous flyer. If the government is still shut down and airplane inspections are not happening at their usual rate, are you coming on tour with us? I don't know. I've been thinking about this. And I like okay well it's february what fifth sixth we leave and i'm like it has to be things have to be back to normal uh by then because look

yeah it is fucking scary and i saw people on cnn saying uh it was like a someone uh who runs like the air traffic controllers union you know the the cnn anchor said so do you think it's less safe to fly now that it was a month ago she said yes yeah of course it's less safe and that yeah that made me fucking nervous i mean that is it's ridiculous that air traffic controllers and tsa agents and everything like that that we're putting all this strain on these people who are supposed to protect millions of American lives every single day over this imaginary fucking crisis at the border. Yeah, no, it is scary.

This is absurd. I would bet that Sarah Wick and the very, very smart people who run your company have been planning for this and are investigating the cost of a John Madden-style bus to get you to Charleston in time for that show. Yeah, Charleston's sort of a long flight. Also, we have to take a flight to Charleston. It's going to be a long bus ride, my friend. But what do you think?

On the economic front, this has been Trump's one thing that he likes to point to. The economy's never been doing better. And now his own Council of Economic Advisors is saying that they're going to have to revise down economic growth estimates. I think if I was a person who worked for Trump, which is that obviously is not something I can possibly imagine. But if I were to do that, and you were trying to convince him to get out of this mess, the only way in which I think you would have any success was to say that the economy is historically the biggest determining factor in the reelection of incumbent presidents. And you're taking your single greatest asset and you are single-handedly ruining it. Like, Kevin Hassett, who is the head of the Council of Economic Advisors, who seems to be sort of a moron, which is a hard thing to say about an actual economist, but every time he goes on TV, he suggests that he's quite stupid, said that they failed to include of this really stupid temper tantrum from Trump.

And so that should be the thing more than anything else, since Trump lives in a Fox News information bubble. So he's probably unaware of the short-term political pain he's suffering. And he is constitutionally immune to the actual human cost of the shutdown. The only way to, I think, convince him would be to explain how this affects him. And this potentially affects his reelection in a real way. Also, presidents tend to get blame for when the economy does poorly. They get credit for when the economy does well. And a lot of economists will tell you that linking well. And a lot of economists will tell you that, you know, linking presidents to economic performance can often be tenuous, even though we all do it anyway. It's not often that you can

actually point to a direct link between something that a president did and economic performance. And in this case, if the economy contracts, if we tumble into recession or growth, even if growth slows down, you can point directly to this shutdown, which is caused directly by Donald Trump's actions as the cause of the economic slowdown. That's fairly unique. It is. On top of that, the credit rating agencies have suggested that if this is not fixed in the next few weeks, they could downgrade the U.S.'s credit rating, which could cause the market to tank and cause all kinds of other problems within the economy. And so this would be one of the greatest self-inflicted economic and political wounds in American history. Yeah, since the Republicans brought on the debt ceiling crisis in 2011. That's right. They're on a fucking roll in 2011. That's right. They're on a fucking roll, man.

That is right. So Republicans in Congress, as they should be, are finally getting nervous, and there could be cracks emerging inside of the White House. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that some senior officials have been aiming to make clear to the president that this isn't just a messaging war anymore and that he's, quote, playing with live ammunition. live ammunition no shit huh uh meanwhile a bipartisan group of senators led by lindsey

graham and chris coons of delaware signed on to a letter to trump asking him to reopen the government for three weeks while talks continue over funding for border security uh dan do we think trump can be persuaded here no i mean at least, at least not for, I don't think, the addition of Lindsey Graham on the letter is significant since Lindsey Graham has reinvented himself for the 800th time as Trump's most loyal supplicant. And so that suggests that this is not just like a bunch of moderates trying to solve the problem.

It's that Lindsey Graham senses problems for Trump. And as someone who is up for reelection in 2020, he sees problems for Trump as problems for him. The problem we have here is that even if Lindsey Graham were to get to the president and make his case, or Trump read this letter or whatever else, is that every time there is some movement towards some sort of resolution, Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh tweet or say something that says that if Trump folds, the base will leave him. And he not only just goes back to his original position, he moves further to the right. And we have this problem where Trump has outsourced the presidency to some of the dumbest grifters in American life. And so I don't, it is, I really don't know how this ends or frankly, if it ends anytime soon. Well, here's how some Republicans think it ends. The Washington Post,

Robert Costa tweeted this yesterday. A couple of senior Republican lawmakers tell me the only way this breaks open is if TSA employees stay home and Americans get furious about their flights. That's the only out they say. And they're close to the White House. Like, are these Republican lawmakers aware that their title is lawmaker? That like they have the, they have the power to make laws, to hold votes. I mean, I cannot believe, I cannot imagine going on background and hoping that TSA bails you out. TSA workers bail you out of this crisis because you're too fucking afraid to tell Donald Trump to open up the fucking government. I mean, it's wild.

It is just wild. This isn't some complicated political calculation on the path of these Republicans. calculation on the path of these Republicans. It is the actual mentality of the Republican Party over the last decade at least, which is party over country. It is unfathomable to them that their constitutional duty would exceed their obligation to the Republican Party itself and the Republican president, whether that has anything to do with workers getting paid, itself and the Republican president, whether that has to do with workers getting paid, the safety of our airplanes, the safety of our food supply, the Russia interfering in American elections. It is just they can't even comprehend the idea that they have an actual obligation to

the country, right? These are not patriots. They are partisan hacks. And it has been what has been like it's we're at decades now of this mentality, Republican party, and every generation of Republicans is worse than the previous one on this vector. Yeah. And look, and this especially includes Mitch McConnell here. And and he keeps saying he won't pass a bill that the president won't sign, even though he and his fellow Republican senators have the power to override the president if they choose. And this is just really frustrating to me because you also see a lot of Hill reporters, political reporters,

who, you know, are, you know, they think they're very savvy about this kind of stuff. And they'll say, oh, well, anyone who thinks that Mitch McConnell is going to override the president, like, of course not. Of course. It's like's like yeah i get that mitch mcconnell doesn't want to do this but that's not a reason that the rest of us shouldn't pressure him to do it because he has the power if mitch mcconnell put a bill on the floor to open up the government today it would probably pass in five minutes he's just refusing to do this and it's not okay that he's refusing to do this. Like when he says, oh, of course I wouldn't pass a bill that the president won't sign. Everyone just like

stops there and takes him at his word. It's like, yeah, but in the constitution, it says that two thirds of the Senate and the House can override a president's veto. So you can't lay it all on Donald Trump. I mean, it is a, this is like a structural problem for Democrats on Capitol Hill that's been around a long time. And it has to do with the fact that McConnell has been so cynical, so without principle, so frankly, terrible for so long that that is the expectation. There was no expectation among the Capitol Hill press corps or the pundits or anyone else that McConnell will do the right thing. And so there or anyone else that McConnell will do the right thing. And so there's no pressure on him to do the right thing.

No one says like, but Mitch McConnell, the people of your state are being hurt. That's not the question. It's Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in Democrats get the question is, yeah, I understand that you disagree with the shutdown. And yeah, you're technically right on that, you know, that we should just reopen the government. But people are being hurt. Why don't you don't you have an obligation to solve the problem? No one asked Mitch McConnell that he is like his cynicism is so priced into the baseline of his coverage. And frankly, I'll be honest, this is not true of every reporter on Capitol Hill.

But reporters on Capitol Hill are traditionally, frankly, in both parties, but particularly in the Republican Party over the years, too close to the leadership. Right. Like there there's a lot of source greasing that goes on. And Mitch McConnell has been getting away with murder. Paul Ryan got away with murder. John Boehner got away with murder. These people who have been cynical liars for a long time get away with it because they are not under pressure from the reporters that they pal around with in the halls of the Capitol every day. Yeah, especially, yeah, McConnell staff, McConnell advisors, they're all out there, former advisors, current advisors, it was the same thing with Paul Ryan. They are very close to these reporters. And it's not like, look, it's not like the reporters like want to be biased for

them. But you're right, they just sort of grease the sources and the reporters sort of buy the spin. Or a lot of them, I should say, not all of them. But a lot of them just sort of buy the spin. And like you said, I think the best comment you made there is the cynicism is priced in. They're like, well, that's just who McConnell is. So what are we going to do? What are we going to do? It's like, well, I mean, one thing that people did was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a bunch of other freshman Democrats went over, walked over from the House to the Senate and just started looking for Mitch McConnell yesterday. That was funny. And,

you know, AOC is just saying to the cameras, where's Mitch? But I sort of like, I like the where's Mitch thing. I think everyone should, I think everyone should get in on that. I mean, I do think like, look, it does seem that Donald, it does seem that Donald Trump is immune to pressure. Of course, people should continue to pressure Donald Trump. But McConnell may be immune to political pressure. But at some point, like, you know, Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Tom Tillis, Joni Ernst, Perdue in Georgia, right? Like, there's going to be enough people who are up in 2020 in the Senate,

Republicans who might feel vulnerable to this eventually, or Republicans who have plenty of federal workers in their state who are at least starting to feel the pressure here, and maybe they can pressure McConnell. So the political dynamic here that I believe is going on with McConnell is the following. He is sort of pulled between two political tensions, right? One is that there are, while it's not a guarantee that the Democrats can take the Senate in 2020, they have a shot, right? And so he does have some number, he's going to have to defend a lot of seats. It's a bad map for him. And he has members who are in states that are going to feel much more blue in a presidential election year than they did in the midterm when these people were last elected

in 2014. And he wants to be the Senate majority leader. He's not going to be the Senate minority leader. And so he needs to keep these people elected. But the other problem is McConnell himself is up for reelection in a state conservative, in a state that has had a Democratic governor in recent time, but also has a very conservative Tea Party-esque Republican base. And so he is trying very hard to not be the person who undermines Trump on the wall. And he's been very good about this. He always, when it was Boehner and McConnell, and McConnell was either in the majority or the minority, and we were in some sort of standoff with the Republicans, he always made sure that sort of Boehner had to be the one who took the fall, right? He would wait back to the last minute, let Boehner step on 700 rakes in a sideshow Bob fashion, and then come into the end and fix it. come into the end and fix it. And here, he's in this position where now that Nancy Pelosi's in charge,

if he put something, he could easily solve this problem, but in doing so, he would have to commit what would be considered treason for magnation. And he doesn't want that on his resume heading into a re-election, but in taking

that stance by putting himself over the country, people are getting hurt. And it really does not feel like there is any... The possible solutions for this are McConnell does the right thing, which is not actually a possible solution because that would require him to do something he has not done before. Or Trump has to fold, which would require Trump to do something he does not naturally do, which is why we've been in this stalemate for a very long time how do you think this ends i don't know i mean i don't need it this is what this is i i thought the national emergency thing was going to get us out of it at some point but i mean i still think that that is

like the one thing is trump is not encumbered by his previous statement, so he can still do the national emergency thing. That is still, as authoritarian and dangerous as it is, it still seems like the most palatable solution for Trump, which is he can get out of it. He can say he fought for the wall. He can still lie and claim that he's trying to build the wall. And then liberal courts can stop him from doing it. And then he can complain about liberal courts and then use the judiciary as an argument for his reelection to the people who may be mad about the lack of a wall. But I mean, there was, I think there was a real world where we could be in this for many more months. Oh, God. I don't know how that happens. I mean, people are sort of like hanging on by a thread right now, these federal workers who aren't getting paid. Like, I don't know what happens to folks in another couple of weeks when they've missed two paychecks, three paychecks. I mean, I don't, and the ripple effect now,

when they've missed two paychecks, three paychecks. I mean, I don't... And the ripple effect now, you know, businesses in the D.C. area, businesses in places where there are a lot of federal workers and a lot of other states around the country, you know, are really starting to feel the effects of this. So I don't know. I mean, here's a question for you.

Where the fuck's the business community? Yeah. Yeah, we're... Like, why? I don't understand why're the old economic council that Trump convened. You know, we're all those people. Like, so imagine this. Like, we are not inspecting lettuce right now at the normal levels, right? Like, our food inspections are down.

If you own a restaurant chain or a food company and then you are and there is some sort of foodborne illness that happens on your watch that is devastating to your business if you sell cars or homes or you're in a manufacturing business and the economy contracts that reduces your customer base like like this is delta united the airlines like what yeah i don't like i think they're they there is a world where i don't know that the ceos of the airlines and the food companies and the Wall Street banks or anyone else could have influence on Trump per se. But they could have influence on other Republicans. And they seem to be like this is the problem of everyone who wants to continue to curry some favor with Trump for more tax cuts or less regulations, whatever else, is that they are being strategically stupid and cowards here. They're being strategically stupid cowards because the long-term impact on them, if this

continues to go the wrong way or if something really bad happens, dramatically outweighs the short-term pain of stepping out of line. But we live in a world of corporate cowardice, and it's impacting the economy. I would really like to see some of these companies who, I mean, sure, they're run by Republicans, but they are more responsible for their shareholders and their customers than they are to Donald Trump and Jared Kushner. And so do something, people. You could actually improve your business and improve the country at the same time or protect your business and protect the country if you spoke up. And

the silence has been deafening in my view. Yeah. Hopefully that changes soon. Okay. Well, I sent a tweet about it. So I expect it to happen any time now. It's probably happening as we record this. Yeah. The rts are coming in okay let's talk 2020 uh the field of democratic presidential candidates grew this week with new york senator kirsten gillibrand announcing on stephen colbert's late night television show that she's forming an exploratory committee for a white House run. Meanwhile, Gillibrand's Senate colleague, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, announced on MSNBC that he soon begin exploring a potential run of his own. Let's start with Gillibrand, who will travel to Iowa this coming weekend. Campaign aides told the Washington Post that her platform will be built

around, quote, universal paid family leave, publicly funded federal elections, and a Medicare for all health care system, as well as a number of measures to combat America's racial and gender disparities in education, health care, and criminal justice. Those would be policies like ending cash bail, postal banking, really cool policy that we've talked about before, reducing sexual misconduct in the workforce. She came to the Senate after serving in the House, where her legislative record was quite a bit more conservative than it has been over the past few years. Dan, what did you think of Gillibrand's announcement on Colbert? What's the strategy there? Well, I think one of the things, I've been thinking a lot about these announcements, whether it was Julian Castro's or Gillibrand's or Warren's.

And I think one of the things we have to resist is getting overly worked up or wrapped around the axle about the optics, good or bad, of the announcement itself. Because it is sort of a pro forma element to the whole process and is pretty disconnected from the end results, right? It may tell you something about how they're thinking about their candidacy or what they view their path to the White House is, but whether they said the right thing or delivered it in the right format is, I think, a dramatically... It's part of the theater criticism aspect of political coverage that I'd like to try to avoid, at least on some days. But you ask an important question, like, why do it on Colbert? That seems crazy. That may have seemed crazy like 10 years ago,

and the argument is you want to put yourself in front of as many eyeballs as possible. And being in an unusual format on a widely watched show with a very talented host who brings out the best in his guests gives you a chance not only of looking your best in the moment, but also creating some virality to your announcements will be seen by more than just the people who it'll be seen on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and not just

the people who are watching cable coverage or the morning shows. And so from that point, it's like it's a good strategy. I suspect we're going to see lots of candidates trying to do something very similar. Yeah, I was gonna say it's sort, I mean, we did a lot of this, I think, in 2012, even more than in 2008. It's sort of about getting in front of an audience that's not just a political audience, right? Or people who pay really close attention to politics, which are the people who watch CNNnn msnbc i mean i was saying like if she did a typical announcement where you know you go to your hometown you have a big crowd you give a big speech you probably get a good amount of coverage on cnn and msnbc if you're a democrat uh fox talks about benghazi um and then uh and then maybe you get a couple seconds on the nightly news maybe with you know with 20

candidates possibly getting into the race i don't even know on the nightly news maybe with an you know with 20 candidates possibly getting into the race i don't even know if the nightly news covers every single one so you know it's tough to get that kind of coverage that goes beyond just the activists who watch the political activists who watch cable but you know colbert while he's certainly the most political of the late night shows you could make an argument for, reaches millions and millions of people who don't pay really close attention to politics. And I'm sure Gillibrand's thinking, especially since her name identification is relatively low, she wants to introduce herself to a much broader audience from the get-go. So in that sense, it's a good idea.

It is an interesting way about how much the media has changed. Do you remember in 2009 when we first got into the White House and we were headed to Los Angeles to do some sort of Recovery Act event or something? And we were going into a scheduling meeting and the comms team had come up with the idea, I think led by then-Pres. Robert Gibbs, that Obama, because we're going to be in L.A., should be on Leno. And so in this big scheduling meeting in the Roosevelt Room, it was like, you know, some campaign people like myself and Gibbs and Alyssa and David Axelrod and a bunch of, like, new people who we had hired who had not worked on the campaign but were, you know, sort of more traditional Washington Democrats. traditional Washington Democrats, when Gibbs proposed Obama going on Leno, you would have thought Gibbs proposed Obama delivering a press conference with his pants down. Like it was like, he can't do that. He can, a president can knock on a late night talk show. That is, that would demean the office. I mean, now Donald Trump's president. So it seems like that was an unwarranted concern. I think there was quite a bit of criticism from Republicans and the denizens of Washington about Obama doing too many late night shows. Yeah.

When he actually did it. There was. There was a lot of hand-wringing. Yeah. It was interesting. The other thing I thought was interesting about Gillibrand's announcement is one of the things I think is important in a multi-candidate field is the short-term description of your candidacy. Right. Like candidate X is so-and-so or candidate X is running because of Y. Right. And like, that's probably like a 240 character element. So I was

really interested when the clip of Jill Abrrand making the announcement of the exploratory committee went out to all the press, and I got all these notifications on my phone from The Post, The Times, etc., CNN, etc., that were Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a leader of the Me Too too movement or a strong advocate for women's rights announces she's running for president and which is interesting that she has a very clear like i bet her campaign team thinks that was exactly what they wanted because it was a very clear identification of who she is and what she's running for in a way that will be a way in which a surprising number of americans will consume that information because it's what as far as they will that will be a way in which a surprising number of Americans will consume that information because it's what, as far as they will read, will be the notification they get on their phone or they see in their social media field. I think that's something a lot of candidates will have to think about, which is it's the short-term answer of why I'm running. It's not the Roger Mudd, Ted Kennedy sort of explanation of it, but it is like, who are you? Why are you different than the rest of these people?

of it, but it is like, who are you, right? Like, why are you different than the rest of these people? And I think to her credit, she has a real, she had a very specific identity that came through in that announcement. Well, it's interesting, right? Because it's not just a, you know, a multi-candidate field, but it's a field that, you know, for the first time, we'll have multiple women among the top tier of contenders for the nomination. And so it's interesting because, you know, you're going to have Warren, probably Kamala Harris, Gillibrand, potentially Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard. And Gillibrand seems to be the first woman candidate running who is, you know, intentionally focusing on women's issues and, you know, issues of women's issues and family issues. And so she talks a lot

about, and throughout her career in the Senate, has worked hard on issues of sexual assault. She sort of took that on in the military a couple years ago. She's been for paid family leave and universal family leave for quite a long time now. Like you said, as she sent out her announcement materials, she talked about the Me Too movement. So she's very explicitly identifying these issues in a way that I think, you know, Elizabeth Warren wasn't as explicit about that when she announced. And it'll be interesting to see how Harris or Klobuchar take these issues on as well. And the identity thing is going to be very – and I don't mean identity like gender or ethnicity or religion or anything like that. I mean identity in terms of how you identify your candidacy is going to be really important when there's a massive amount of clustering around the same policy issues. Right. Where everyone who has announced thus far, and I think everyone who will announce is going to be for a Green New Deal, Medicare for all, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, which I think is all great.

But your points of distinction are going to be about what you have done and what your leadership style would be if you were president. How are you going to go about bringing to fruition these policy ideas that we agree about? The other interesting thing she did is she talked about, on Colbert, taking on institutional racism and institutional discrimination. And then she sort of connected that with corruption, special interests influence in Washington. So you see her trying to sort of fuse the economic argument and sort of the corruption argument with issues of race and sexual discrimination and how, you know, she's positioning herself as, you know as a woman and a mother and someone who's faced some of these issues herself

as someone who can take on sort of these big institutional issues of discrimination, corruption, influence. So I thought that was an interesting thing to watch as well. Yeah, I think the challenge for Jill Brand and every candidate is going to be, like this is not a critique of and she did like, this is not a critique of how she did because this is an interview format. He said, why are you running? And she listed off like seven bullet points, right? And that's how you would answer an interview. But over the course of a campaign, you have to weave those bullet points into a story, right? Like,

how are you going to tie all of those things together that tells a story about who you are, what you're going to do and where you see the country going. And that And that is ultimately what makes, what is the difference between a successful candidacy and one that isn't. Yep. And I think that she will probably put more meat on the bones of that story as she goes on. I mean, her initial line is, you know, I'm going to fight for other people's kids as hard as I fight for my own. I imagine that is a line that tested very well, because people love kids and families. But I do think that as she goes on, the question is, can you match up that line and that sort of motivation behind your candidacy with the moment that we're in right now, that Trump has led us to, that the Republican Party has led us to, that our politics have led us to. And I think she started talking about sort of the institutional racism and sort of the powerful forces she's fighting against. She's sort of

getting around to it, but I'm interested to see sort of where she goes from here on that. You raise a really good point, I know, about it testing testing well and if i was running a presidential campaign right now the thing that i would insist that our pollsters not do which is fo is focus group specific language yeah and i don't know if they did because sometimes people say oh that clearly was a focus group line and it wasn't so i don't know but yeah but just like the idea that we're going to ask people to react to a certain set of words always leads you, but it happened to us sometimes, into some Frankenstein version of a paragraph that includes the seven things that tested best, even if they are only connected by the word and. Focus groups should help you understand where the electorate is and how they view your candidacy in general, but should not they should not it should not be speech writing my focus group committee it's just my own personal rant uh amen on that as a speech writer you come in here well this this group of words tested well

exactly how they were together in the poll you're like yeah okay well that's fine great well some version of that in a language that doesn't sound like a fucking robot would probably be okay, too. It happens all the time. John, this speech only has the words middle class in it 70 times. I need you to double that or we lose. Terrible. Terrible. Okay, let's talk about Sherrod Brown, who announced this week that he'd be embarking on a Dignity of Work tour in primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, as well as a kickoff event in his home state of Ohio.

As per the Associated Press, Brown said his goal is for the tour to elevate the dignity of work message as an issue in 2020, regardless of whether he's a presidential candidate in that race. On Wednesday, he told NPR, quote, too many Democrats, the National Democratic Party, see this kind of false choice. The Democrats either speak to the progressive base or speak to working class families regardless of race i think you need to do both uh dan what did you think of sherrod's quasi announcement i think an announcement an exploratory for an exploratory exploring an exploratory i i am curious like how he's actually doing that within the confines of very rigorous campaign finance law. But normally there's this two-step process, right?

The press is required by their own norms to cover you when you announce your exploratory committee. And the only reason people announce exploratory committees in most cases is so that they can then have an official announcement later. So you get immediate – like Jill Abram can go on Colbert this week and then a now, she has talked to the people of America, and she has decided to run for president. And she's going to hold it, you know, the traditional event in her hometown or, or, you know, in some sort of historic location with a crowd and do a speech. But this is a new one turning into a three step processes. It's kind of clever. I mean, look, I think Sherrod Brown would be a very interesting candidate in the race. He has one of the best economic messages. His performance in the key state of Ohio in this most recent election is a strong talking point for him. And frankly, more than a talking point, a strong piece of evidence about his ability to win over at least some set of voters that we need to take back the Midwestern states that we lost in 2016. And to do so while still being liberal on most social and cultural issues, almost all of them. I mean, I think the most fascinating, and so I've known Jared for a long time. I think he is the real deal. He is a genuinely decent, good human being. He believes everything he says. He has worked on these issues for a long time. now. And he does so without moving to the center on, you know, whether it's immigration, whether it's gay rights, whether it's women's rights, like whatever the issue may be, he does not moderate

himself. He does not move to the center in order to win over the very culturally conservative voters of Ohio. He might emphasize economic issues more, but he doesn't, whether it's race, whether it's anything else, he has not done what some of the more brain-dead pundits suggest Democrats do in these states, which is be centrist when it comes to social and cultural issues, and then be populist when it comes to economic issues. And he's won, you know, which is, that's saying a lot. Yeah, I mean, he'll be a very interesting candidate whose presence in the race will impact the potential winning coalitions of a lot of different candidates. I was going to say, I also think it's interesting that Sherrod potentially cuts into the coalition that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and potentially Joe Biden might try to put together. It does seem like there's some overlap in the voters they might be going after.

Yeah, for sure. So all that brings us to Beto O'Rourke, who has very publicly not made a decision just yet and is currently on a road trip figuring it out. This is from Jeff Zeleny of CNN and a story from Wednesday night. Two weeks after leaving Congress, O'Rourke drove north this week on Route 54. He researched his family's history in northern New Mexico, visited college students there and in Oklahoma. Then he described what he'd seen in a travel diary-style post on Medium. So this is a trip that apparently surprised even his close friends in El Paso,

who say they have no idea what he will decide. Dan, what do you think about this? Is it okay for Beto to take some time here, or does he need to make a decision soon? I think the most important thing is to be sure of your decision. Like, you can't jump into— a presidential campaign is a massive commitment, and it is something that—

if you do it without understanding why you're doing it and being committed to the idea, you will fail and you won't embarrass yourself. It is a big deal. And so whatever time it takes to make the decision, you have to take. Now, there are pressures. David Plouffe always used to say the only thing you can't get back in a presidential campaign is time. So every day that he's driving around and not trying to put together the complex organization you need to win Iowa or to introduce himself to voters in California or South Carolina or New Hampshire is a day that he'll never get that time back. And so there is some time pressure. I don't think we're at the do or

die moment. But unlike some of these other candidates, he doesn't have a national network born of previous presidential races or two years of planning. From an organizational trajectory, he's a lot like Obama in 2008. He'd run a Senate race. He wasn't expecting to run for president. So he hadn't spent the last two years visiting Iowa and New Hampshire and creating lists and building a large donor network or anything else. So he's going to be starting from scratch. And that'll put him at a disadvantage. It's not too late, but I think he probably has to move soon. but he has to move soon. Yeah. And I think, you know, from what I can tell, he's trying to sort of figure out, can he run the type of campaign that he ran in Texas, which is very grassroots, very much, you know, sort of like live streamed a lot of it, right? He was driving around the states. He went to every county in Texas um and he sort of like told people what he thought he's very authentic he's very like he tells you what's on his mind and he's he's trying

to figure out like can i run that campaign as uh as a presidential campaign and you know he does seem like someone who's very allergic to political contrivance and stunts and all that kind of stuff. And I think it's very interesting sort of watching him try to figure out whether he can run that sort of campaign. And it's clearly not a stunt at all. I think he is genuinely trying to figure out as he's talking to people on this road trip, should he do this or not? out as he's talking to people on this road trip, like, should he do this or not? And like you said, I think it's important to figure that out because when you do, and we've been saying this with every single candidate, when you do decide to run for president, when you say, I am going to run for president, I believe that I should, you know, should be in this position, this extremely powerful

position, and I can do the job better than anyone else in this country. When you decide that, you need to have a really good reason why you're the person for the job at this moment in history. Why me? Why now? And taking some time to figure that out is a good idea. Why not is a terrible reason to run for president. And it is too often the reason that people choose to run. What else am I going to do? I'm not up for election this cycle. I'm pretty good at politics. Why not? Let's see what happens.

Those people don't win. I think there's been a lot of reaction to the unique way that Beto has been communicating his feelings through this Medium post. And he said that he had been in a funk at times in this post. And the headline of that CNN piece is something that says, in a funk, Beto does this. And a lot of tradition, a lot of political observers, not just like hacky pundits, but smart people have looked at it and said, this seems problematic. Right. Like this is very different. Is this going to turn off voters? Are, you know, the sort of people you need in Iowa and New Hampshire to win, are they going to be concerned about this?

And the answer is maybe, right? Absolutely. And like Harry Enten, longtime friend of the pod, basically said, like tweeted yesterday, like, sincerely, what is Beto doing here? Like, what is he actually trying to do? And I think the only answer to that question is, he's just being Beto doing here? What is he actually trying to do? And I think the only answer to that question is

he's just being Beto. And this is who he is. If it works, it works. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. That's right. When the report came out that he might go on a road trip, everyone who's been in politics

for a long time, their head went exactly to all the other fake listening tours people have gone on. Like, oh, he can go here and he can randomly stop by a hockey practice in Iowa and shockingly the Des Moines Register photographer will already be

there. How did that happen? What are the odds of that? Happens to have a bunch of suburban moms who are undecided. Wow. How did that happen? Just happened to be around a large table with good camera access at a diner in New Hampshire. It's lit so well. It's like, thank God Joe's peach and pie had some spotlights in the background so we get this thing lit. And what he really meant was he was going to go talk to people and he was not going to do it.

And this is who he is. This is how he ran. It was good enough to make himself a national sensation in Texas and almost unseat Ted Cruz. Will it be enough to win the president? I have no idea. But if he were to try to run like everyone else, he would definitely lose. And so I have no idea if it's going to work. It could completely backfire. But the only path to victory is something that sort of looks like this, I think. Yeah. And what he should know in his campaign should know if they do this is it will confound the D.C. press corps and the pundits. And I do not think he will be the candidate of the D.C. press corps and the pundits because they are very allergic to anything that seems different. And they are very cynical. And so, you know, when you're saying I'm just going to talk to people, I'm going to live stream it. And it's going to be about, you know, I'm going to try to inspire a movement, all that kind of stuff. When you say that to people, just to the people who,

you know, make a living writing and talking about politics, they are going to be more than skeptical. They're going to be cynical about it and they are likely going to mock it. And we know this because they did that to Obama for many, many months at the beginning of 2007, 2008. I can remember when Barack Obama went to the DNC winter meeting early in 2007 and said, I think, you know, our greatest challenge is not even the other party or anything like that. It's cynicism. It's the cynicism people have about politics he was mocked mocked by so many pundits for saying that and lo and behold people in the country actually said yeah no that that is actually a huge problem right now is our cynical about our cynicism about this political system and the question is can we do something about it as citizens to change it um and so i do but i think i think his campaign would have to be ready for that and have to be prepared with dealing with reporters because it ain't going to be easy. Yeah, for sure.

OK, when we come back, we will have Dan's interview with Natasha Bertrand. Now we are excited to be joined by Natasha Bertrand, a staff writer at The Atlantic who covers national security intelligence issues. Natasha, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. I want to talk to you a lot about the confirmation hearing at William Barr. Legal Eagle Rudy Giuliani's appearance on Chris Cuomo last night, where he seemed to admit that people within the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, but Trump himself did not, or at least did not know about it. How significant an admission is that from Rudy? Yeah, look, Rudy has been moving the goalposts since he joined Trump's legal team. I mean, his whole thing has

been collusion is not a crime. Members of the campaign, you know, were not necessarily what they were doing wasn't necessarily known by the president. Now he's saying that if they did collude, then the president wasn't involved. So I think that was just the logical extension of how much he's been trying to wall the president off from everything else that may have happened during the campaign. But it does signal something bigger, which is that given everything that's come out over the last few weeks, few months, about the extent of, you know, Paul Manafort's communications with Russians and, you know, for example, giving polling data to Ukrainian oligarchs, everything like that, it really just makes it impossible now for Rudy to say that there was

no collusion between the campaign and Russia, because that is pretty much textbook collusion, right? I mean, when you have members of the campaign like George Papadopoulos meeting with a Russia-linked professor who's promising dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of emails, I mean, what else can you possibly call that? So I think his new strategy here is going to be to divorce the president from the campaign, which, of course, is pretty ridiculous because he was the head of the campaign as the candidate. But it's kind of a last ditch resort. Does it portend anything about what may be coming next from Mueller?

Would Rudy have a suspicion that there was another shoe to drop soon? And is there something you in particular or someone who has covered this as close as anyone is looking for in the coming days and weeks? Yeah, it's definitely possible. Rudy tends to try to get ahead of the news. He did that when he was on with Sean Hannity. And he said that Trump did, in fact, reimburse Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer, for the payment that he made to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet during the election. It later came out, of course, that the president actually did, despite denying that in the past, did actually repay Michael Cohen for that and was involved in those negotiations. So he does have this tendency to try to get out ahead of it and, you know, kind of lessen the

blow when the news does come out that, you know, there is a smoking gun perhaps between the campaign and Russia that just makes collusion completely undeniable. But, you know, right now we're all just kind of waiting to see what Mueller brings next in terms of an indictment. We're still waiting to see, for example, what he's going to do with Roger Stone. We know that he asked for the transcripts of his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, which is usually the first step before you actually bring that to a grand jury and bring an indictment against someone. So we're just waiting. We're just waiting right now. And we'll have to see. Pivoting to the testimony on the Hill from Attorney General nominee William Barr yesterday, what was your reaction to his to his testimony generally? to his testimony generally? Yeah. So he came across as obviously someone very experienced,

someone who clearly loves the Justice Department, a very solid choice among the conservative lawyers that the president was going to have to choose from anyway. But he also kind of unnerved the Democrats, I think, in my conversations with them by several things. The first is that he continued to defend that, you know, bizarre 20-page memo he wrote about how the obstruction inquiry is fatally flawed, even though we had just learned from the New York Times that the obstruction inquiry is part of the larger, you know, counterintelligence investigation that they were conducting to see whether or not Trump is a Russian agent, because, you know, it's a national security issue if he's trying to impede the investigation because he is working for the Russians. So that kind of struck Democrats as a bit odd. It also struck them as odd that he gave the memo to the president's legal team instead of just giving it to prosecutors if he was really just trying to warn them about the unintended consequences of a wide ranging obstruction inquiry. Another thing is that he refused to commit to following ethics officials advice if they tell him that he should recuse from the investigation precisely because of that memo that he wrote precisely because he has prejudged an aspect of the investigation without even being right into the facts. an aspect of the investigation without even being right into the facts. So that really kind of irked them. And then the last thing is that he would not commit to releasing a full report. If Mueller does in fact do that, he said that he would have to see that he doesn't know for upon what those rules and regulations are. But that is something that Democrats now are very concerned about.

If he were to take over as AG, which it looks like he's definitely going to, what's going to happen to Mueller's findings? What explanation did Barr offer for who he shared the memo with and why? So he gave it to Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, as well as various members of Trump's legal team. And he also actually gave it to Jared Kushner's lawyer, which is very kind of bizarre. But his explanation was that he wanted to give advice to everyone involved in these discussions as a former attorney general, as someone who is apparently steeped in these issues, is what he said. But of course, he doesn't know any of the facts about what Mueller is investigating. So the fact that he was kind of, you know, auditioning for the job, really,

for the job of attorney general with this memo, that is what Democrats think he was doing. And I think we have to look at everything Trump does, especially with regard to his appointments, look at everything Trump does, especially with regard to his appointments, through the lens of he's been trying to control the Justice Department and the FBI since the moment he took office, because he's so afraid of this investigation. You know, that raises a good point, because as I was watching this on Tuesday, I couldn't really figure out the answer to two questions, why he wants the job and why Trump wanted him to have the job. Because obviously, from Trump's perspective, he generally has had two criteria for appointments to his cabinet. One is slavish devotion to Trump. And the other is that they, quote unquote,

look the part, like his, quote unquote, generals, right? And Barr doesn't seem to fit either of those criteria. And I also, you know, after what happened with Mattis and every other person who's been in Trump's cabinet, I was curious if you had any sense of why William Barr, who is a card carrying member of the Republican legal establishment, would put himself in this position that it worked out very poorly for Jeff Sessions before him? It's a great question. And it's one that we've all been scratching our heads over for months since he was first named for the position. I mean, this is someone who he already had the job. He clearly has been exposed to the attacks that Trump has waged on the Justice Department. And his explanation, you know, is that he just loves the department, his children work there. He is kind of a creature of it, and he wants to serve his country again. That's all well and good. But you also have to ask the question of, you know, given the amount

of pressure that has been placed by this administration on the FBI and the Justice Department, why anyone would want to go through that. And, you know, added to that is the aggravating factor of his clear antagonism for a central element of this investigation. And, you know, I think we can surmise confidently that there's no way that he would have gotten this job or gotten appointed or nominated for this job if he told Trump or intimated in any way that he intended to recuse himself from the investigation. We saw how that worked out for Jeff Sessions. It was a year and a half of just all-out war by Trump on the attorney general. So there are a number of things to consider here. I don't think that we're getting the full story when he says that he is just doing it out of love for the Justice Department.

Because, look, he was making millions of dollars in private practice. There's no reason why he needed to do this now, certainly not for reputation. It is a very powerful position, obviously. You have a lot of influence as the attorney general. You have a lot of influence as the attorney general. But still, I mean, just given everything we know about his positions, especially his position that the Clinton Uranium One Foundation probe is actually more worth investigating than the collusion probe, which is something he told the New York Times last year. It just all smells very fishy. And what kind of attorney general, did you get any, like, obviously all the coverage,

your story, everyone else's focus very, I think, appropriately on the impact of this appointment to the Mueller investigation. But was there a sense of what, how he would do the job on the other issues? Because Jeff Sessions was, you know, for people who care about criminal justice reform or just general criminal justice policy in general, Jeff Sessions was a progressive's nightmare on voting rights and those sorts of things. Any sense of the perspective that Barr would bring to the non-criminal investigation of the president parts of the job? Right. Yeah. And some senators did ask him about other issues besides the Mueller investigation, obviously. I think he'll bring a standard kind of conservative bent to the position. I don't think that he'll necessarily be a slave to the positions of Donald Trump. I mean, one of the things that he

did emphasize during the hearing, though, is how much he thinks a border wall is necessary and how, you know, he apparently thinks that that is completely within the president's right to pursue. So he does seem like kind of he would align with Trump on immigration issues. But one thing that struck me as well is that he didn't seem to know what the emoluments clause was of the Constitution. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. That was very surprising. Right, right, which is fascinating. I mean, I think he hedged a bit and he said, well, I don't necessarily know how it would apply in this situation. But it seems like he was bringing a lot of the knowledge that he had from serving as attorney general maybe 30 years ago, as opposed to the issues that have

reared their head in the last two years, three years, with regard to Trump's many conflicts of interest that he brought into office with him. So that was definitely a red flag. I mean, he said flat out when he was asked about it, I couldn't even tell you what the Emoluments Clause says. And that, of course, is going to be a major issue for Democrats moving forward, is trying to discern whether or not Trump has profited from foreign governments while in office. During the hearing, you know, some Democrats ask very tough questions. A lot of the Democrats, like Senator Kamala Harris, who are contemplating a run for president, have already said there are no on Barr. But there was a sense among some on the left that the committee was overly friendly to

Barr or even if not overly friendly, sort of was treating this as a fait accompli that he would be confirmed. Is there any sense that any Democrats will vote for him? And were you surprised at how Democrats treated him in the hearing? You know, I think that if anyone is going to vote for him, it'll probably be, you know, someone like Senator Chris Coons, who is pretty moderate and who, you know, in a call that he had with reporters this week, expressed some skepticism about Barr, but, you know, didn't all out say that he would oppose his nomination. He would oppose this nomination. I think they believe that this is the best possible scenario for the attorney general position because of the nightmare that has does have various members of his family who work there, is kind of, you know, an establishment choice and who is not someone who has been the eyes and ears

of the Justice Department inside the White House like Matt Whitaker has been, gives them a sense of relief. And, you know, that's not necessarily a good thing. I think, you know, the shock of Matt Whitaker is still with us just because he was just so unqualified to be in this position. And people were so concerned that he was going to interfere in the Mueller investigation. But there is a sense that now they see that this is someone who is experienced, who is not necessarily a sycophant and will at least, you know, has at least some respect for the traditions of the department. Speaking of Matt Whitaker, is the assumption that he'll be gone if and when Barr is confirmed? Yeah. So he actually said yesterday at an event at the Heritage Foundation that he thinks Barr did a fantastic job at his confirmation hearing and that he would be happy to hand over the keys to

the kingdom. So it doesn't seem like we'll get any kind of fight out of him to hand over the job. doesn't seem like we'll get any kind of fight out of him to, you know, hand over the job. Before I let you go, I wanted to ask you about the vote in the Senate that happened the other day about Russian sanctions. And that vote was notable for two ways. One, it was a proposal from a Democrat that actually got a vote. And even though it failed, there actually were Republicans who voted with Democrats to stop the Trump administration from removing sanctions on a number of entities, including Oleg Deripaska. What is the significance of those sanctions removal? And how, if at all, obviously, about lifting the sanctions on this Russian oligarch's companies. It is Oleg Deripaska's companies, mostly because Oleg Der perhaps tried to influence the election along with Russia and influence the Trump campaign and perhaps served as kind of a conduit there. companies, which of course would severely weaken the sanctions regime that was imposed by Congress in 2017. And that pretty much tied the president's hands on what he could do with regard to a change in sanctions policy. But what started to happen was that this is the number two aluminum producer

in the world, right? I mean, this company that Deripaska owns a large, large stake in. And so global aluminum, the market just kind of tanked and it really started to affect our European allies. And so we started to see a lot of lobbying by Europe and the United States, a lot of lobbying by people who work for these companies to remove the sanctions because the sanctions on Deripaska are still there, but the sanctions on the companies were just hurting a lot of people. So the flip side of that, though, is that Republicans, 11 Republicans who voted for the Democrats, were still very wary about this because they are typically – these are people that are typically Russia hawks and typically hawks on foreign policy, such as Marco Rubio. And they said, look, it really doesn't matter. I mean, we need to keep these sanctions on just because we need to send a signal to the Kremlin that their behavior is not acceptable. Ultimately, though, I think that all of the

considerations about how this was affecting the global kind of market won over. And that's not necessarily surprising just because it really did have a dramatic impact. I think what we have to watch for, though, is whether or not Deripaska does follow through with this plan to actually divest from his companies and actually keep those promises that he will essentially completely divorce himself. Because if not, then that, of course, raises serious issues about whether or not lifting these sanctions was appropriate. Well, we will keep an eye on that. sanctions was appropriate. Well, we will keep an eye on that. And we, Natasha, we hope to have you back on, hopefully when, you know, from our perspective, at least we get some indictments or some new information in the Mueller investigation. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. Definitely. Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks to Natasha Bertrand for joining us today. And we will talk to you... Oh, so next week, Martin Luther King Day on Monday, John and Tommy and I will be doing the pod on Tuesday morning, and it'll be out at the same time Tuesday that it's usually out on Monday. So we will talk to you then. Bye, everyone. Thank you.