Pod Save America - “No blood for ego.”

Episode Date: October 16, 2017

Democrats look to stop ACA sabotage with a shutdown fight, and Ben Rhodes joins to talk about Trump’s Iran Deal sabotage. Then Preet Bharara joins to talk about Mueller’s investigation, and DeRay Mckesson talks about the NAACP’s Census lawsuit and how DeAndre Harris was charged with a crime after white nationalist beat him in Charlottesville. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the host of the new podcast, Stay Tuned with Preet. Preet Bharara. Everybody's got a podcast. Everybody has a podcast.

Then we'll talk to the host of Crooked Media's Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson also has a podcast another person who has a podcast, John Lovett would you like to promote your show from Friday? oh sure, yeah this is the part where you promote your show Love It or Leave It, we had an awesome Love It or Leave It with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, we had a great conversation

and she played a game about sexism throughout history it's very funny and we had Jenny Connor and Simone Sanders who was a hero for coming in to do the show, and Neil Brennan. We had, I think, a really interesting conversation about the Weinstein shit, but also the culture in Hollywood and elsewhere that makes these kinds of things possible. It was a great episode. And then this Friday, we have Jenny Slate, Zoe Lister-Jones, and Chris Kelly from SNL. So a great show this Friday too

Jill Barron was great she was great Emily's like ready to go work on her campaign I got a lot of that I got a lot of very I think I think

Kristen Jill Barron is so smart I think she's really great she's excellent also everyone if you haven't already subscribed to our new podcast Crooked Conversations please do that

first episode should be up early next month and of course check out crooked.com bunch of great pieces there and sign up on the website for some exciting developments we promise we will not

spam you with garbage oh yeah sign up on the website we will not send you emails that say end of the quarter donate money or we'll die

there's not going to be a subject that says if you don't respond we're talking to you we're talking to you DNC there won't be a subject that says re-hey. Take that old yarn out of here.

Nice try. Nice try, D-Trip. Okay, but first, let's start today with the Iran deal, and we have a very special guest on the line with us, Crooked contributor, Ben Rhodes. Love that title. Ben, welcome to Pod save america hey guys i've never been introduced like that before yeah forget the really important title you used to have from deputy national security advisor to crooked contributor the sad descent of the obama

administration does that mean i have to get the cash app yes it does god damn it yes are you have you not switched yet then okay we'll talk about this we'll talk about this offline okay kick it off tom uh ben so i kind of want to help people understand like the the iran deal itself was a but yes. Have you not switched yet, Ben? Okay. We'll talk about this offline. Okay. Kick it off, Tom. Ben, so I kind of want to help people understand the Iran deal itself was a singular achievement, but it took like five years, six years of work to get us to a point where it could even be possible. So I was hoping you could talk to people a bit about that process, like the painstaking work of pressuring allies to put sanctions in place, to enforce those sanctions, like cripple Iran's economy, to build up the security infrastructure in the Gulf and in Israel and other places, because I think that context is important. If people think that we can

actually tear up the Iran deal and start over and get some sort of meaningful action with this administration in charge. Yeah, Tommy, it's a good way to phrase the question because it does foreshadow where we are today. First of all, it took several years of sanctions to finally pressure Iran to come to the negotiating table. And the only reason those sanctions were effective is because other nations voluntarily went along with our sanctions regime. Europe voluntarily agreed to not purchase any Iranian oil. China voluntarily reduced its purchases of Iranian oil. We had to build a coalition of countries to come along with us in the sanctions. And then when there was sufficient pressure on Iran, we had to hold that coalition together throughout the diplomacy. This was not an agreement between Barack Obama or even

the United States and Iran. This was an agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the European Union, Russia, and China with Iran, an international agreement. And again, it took about six years of first building the sanctions that imposed the pressure on Iran, and then two years of diplomacy to get to a deal that has worked in significantly rolling back Iran's nuclear program. So Ben, another piece of context, like you've been in a lot of situation room meetings, many more than I have at a much higher level. Is there a secret military plan somewhere being debated that would permanently stop Iran's nuclear program? Like, because that seems to be the choice we have, right? It's a diplomatic solution to manage this. Or if you believe President Trump, that he will prevent Iran from getting a nuclear program, it feels like we're

talking about military action to stop that program. Realistically, like, I know you can't say everything, but what are the options looking like here? Yeah, so, you know, there are really three ways this goes. You have a diplomatic agreement, which we have. Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, as we've seen North Korea do, or you use military force to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Now, there are all kinds of problems with that, the military option, that is. Number one, this would be an incredibly costly war. Iran is bigger, more influential, more resourced than Iraq and Afghanistan were when we initiated those wars. Iran could retaliate across the region, launching attacks at Israel or attacks on our soldiers inside of Iraq or other acts of terrorism around the world. And importantly, the military option

doesn't even solve the problem. You can't bomb away the knowledge that Iran has. They've mastered the nuclear fuel cycle. So in all likelihood, if we were to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, they would just restart them. And frankly, we'd have to be in some type of permanent state of conflict with Iran unless we were going to really go into all that war, try to change that regime. Just to take one example of what's absurd about what the Trump people have said, even though the Iran deal has a permanent prohibition on a nuclear weapon for the Iranians, there is some activity that they're allowed to do in 10 and 15 years from now. So some of the provisions start to relax in terms of how much they can utilize nuclear technology 10 and 15 years from now.

Well, first of all, if you got rid of the deal, they could do those things right now. And second of all, 10 and 15 years is a lot longer than the military option would buy you, because most estimates, and there's been public testimony on this, are that you can only really set back the program by a year or two with a military strike. Right. I think that's really important context, because there are these provisions that sunset. Well, let's talk about what the deal did. So it was estimated that in 2015, Iran had, what, 20,000 centrifuges spinning. They're used to enrich uranium. They can make a bomb. They had a stockpile that I think people estimated could have made eight to 10 nuclear bombs. So they shipped out 98% of their uranium stockpile. They limited the number of centrifuges theypile. They limited the number of

centrifuges they had spinning. They limited the kind of work and R&D they can do on their nuclear program, right? So those are the achievements of the deal. Trump says this deal doesn't address Iran's other malign activities like supporting Assad, arming rebel groups in Yemen, its general support of terrorism and destabilizing behavior. They also hate the parts of the deal that you talked about that sunset after a decade and that it doesn't include limits on missile testing. Like, what is your response to people who say, hey, man, look at North Korea. They've been testing ICBMs and they've advanced an enormous amount and it is destabilizing

for the region and a problem we're dealing with now. We're just kicking the can down the road again. Well, look, number one, North Korea is the example of what happens when you don't have a nuclear deal. North Korea tested its first nuclear device in 2006. There have been no constraints on their program. They've tested not just ICBMs and ballistic missiles, but they've continually tested nuclear weapons. The Iran deal significantly rolls back Iran's program. As you said, they were at the doorstep of having enough nuclear material to make a weapon. We have taken out two-thirds of their centrifuges, shipped out 98% of their stockpile, and converted their reactors so they can make plutonium. So the

first point I'd make is that the Iran deal prevents what we have in North Korea. Second, it has the most intrusive monitoring and verification regime ever negotiated in this type of arms control agreement. There are inspectors. There is access to facilities. There are literally seals on the centrifuges that they've put away so that we can tell the moment that they might try to reuse the centrifuges. the moment that they might try to reuse the centrifuges. So we have significant ability to monitor and verify that Iran is complying with this deal. And thus far, the international agency responsible for that has continually found that Iran is indeed complying. On these so-called sunset provisions, I'd make a couple points. First of all, if your biggest concern about this deal is that Iran can do certain things in 10 and 15 years,

installing somewhat more centrifuges, engaging in more research and development, why do we have to deal with that in a manufactured crisis in October of 2017? If we're talking about things happening in 2025 and 2030, why on earth is Trump creating an international crisis today in 2017? Why wouldn't we just pocket all of these constraints and all this rollback and all of these inspections for the next decade? And then if you're worried about something in 2025 or 2030, you can deal with it then. All the same options are available then. You can do sanctions. You could even engage in a military option,

by the way, informed by a decade of inspections, where you essentially have the blueprints for the Iranian program, which, by the way, we don't have in North Korea. So he is manufacturing this crisis. And to blame it on the sunset provisions is kind of the definition of insanity, because you're saying, I don't like what this deal does in 2030. So I'm going to make that happen right now, by blowing up this deal. When again, you'd have all the options to deal with that at the end of the process. So I want to talk about what Trump did and sort of what the plan is to deal with the mess he's now created. So there is no substantial evidence to suggest that Iran has not been in compliance with the deal. We know that because General Mattis has said that.

Rex Tillerson has said that. General McMaster has said that. Despite all that, Trump decertifies the deal. That doesn't mean he pulls out. He decertifies, right? So on Sunday, on Sunday shows, both McMaster and Tillerson said that the administration would stay in the deal. McMaster and Tillerson said that the administration would stay in the deal. And McMaster said they were hoping to negotiate an additional agreement with Iran that, quote, can lay alongside the Iran deal and address its fundamental flaws. So what the hell does that mean? Is there anything that

exists between staying in the deal or just reimposing sanctions and breaking the deal? Is there anything that Congress can do that's a middle ground here? No. And here's the thing. I mean, what's pretty obvious is that they, the administration, had to contort themselves into some non-existent plan in order to satisfy Trump's desire to decertify the deal. That was clearly not the recommendation of his senior team. Clearly, he told them, you know, he certified twice. He didn't like doing that because he'd called this the worst deal ever. And, you know, Barack Obama did it. And so he kind of made them come up with some patchwork policy to justify decertification. Here's what happens now. Under the law passed by Congress, this now goes to Congress. If there's not a certification,

then Congress has a period of time where they can consider whether or not to snap back sanctions. They've already essentially seemingly ruled that out, the full snapback of sanctions, because that would be unilateral withdrawal from the deal. I think the reason why is simple. Tommy's first question about allies. Sanctions only work if other countries cooperate. If other countries don't cooperate, then you have to sanction them. So we would have to sanction Europe or China, which would blow up the global economy, essentially, and provoke a crisis because those countries are not going to go along with us. Trump's plan was essentially dead on arrival with the Europeans.

You saw unprecedented types of statements coming out of Europe, blasting what Trump had said from Merkel and May and Macron and Mogherini, the head of the EU foreign policy. So they know it's not practical to try to reimpose sanctions. So now they're trying to come up with alternatives, like what McMaster said, where they essentially are going to have potentially Congress see if they can pass some legislation that says, well, we think these other things should be in the deal. But here's why that doesn't work. That's Congress unilaterally renegotiating a deal, not just without the Iranians, but without our allies who don't want to renegotiate the deal. allies who don't want to renegotiate the deal. So essentially, they're all talking to each other, Trump and Congress, the Republicans in Congress, when our allies, the Russians, the Chinese and Iranians are all saying, we don't want to change this deal. So he's initiated this kind of bizarre

process where Congress has to consider how to show that they're going to get tough on the Iranians and get tough on this deal, when in fact, the rest of the world is saying, no, this is the deal. And look, if you want to talk about other issues, that's all well and good. We can talk about Iran's other behavior, but the deal has to stay in place. And ultimately, that's a black and white question. Do we have the Iran deal or do we not? We can keep the Iran deal and express all kinds of concern about other Iranian actions, but frankly, it's better to have that deal in place because a country that supports terrorism and that has a ballistic missile program,

you don't want that country to have a nuclear weapon. That's the whole point of this deal. You know, you don't make a nuclear deal, as I said in my piece with Ireland, you make a nuclear deal with countries that have bad behavior, so you don't want them to have that behavior magnified by a nuclear weapon. So hasn't Trump painted himself into a bit of a corner here? Because if Congress doesn't do anything, which sounds like you expect that they won't do anything, then Trump has basically said last week, well, if Congress doesn't fix this, then I will pull out of the deal. So what happens if 90 days pass, Congress doesn't pass any legislation, they don't reimpose sanctions, then what does Trump do? Can Trump reimpose sanctions on his own? Can he just pull out

of the deal? Like, what happens then? You know, he actually can reimpose sanctions on his own. Well, I hope I didn't just let him know that. I don't think he's listening today. They have to waive, the president has to waive certain sanctions on Iran as part of the deal. Trump waived those sanctions in September to make good on our side to comply with the deal. So what you could have is Congress either can't pass anything. That's one scenario. It's best case scenario. Congress passes something that does kind of violate the terms of the deal because we are imposing new conditions.

And then we're in a bit of a Mexican standoff with the allies, and we're betting that Iran's not going to call our bluff and just restart their nuclear program. Or maybe Congress passes some bill that expressed lots of concerns about Iran but doesn't really get into the deal space and kind of muck through. If Trump just tries to kill this deal, to pull out of it, to reimpose U.S. sanctions, he's only going to completely isolate himself. Because like I said, the Europeans aren't going to go along with those sanctions. So the sanctions will have no bite. The U.S. will be totally split from our closest allies. The Iranians will exploit those divisions. Maybe they'll restart elements of

their nuclear program because they'll say we violated the deal. And then Trump will have the worst of all worlds because Iran will be out from under its nuclear constraints. He won't be able to enforce tough sanctions because he will have blown up all the international unity that we've had. And he'll be totally isolated and left with, again, the choice that the Iran deal avoids, which is do we have to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities or can we prevent this through diplomacy? is, do we have to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities? Or can we prevent this through diplomacy? So it's pretty clear that like, even the people that were against the Iran deal are against the Iran deal to recognize these pitfalls that you're talking about. Doesn't seem like Congress wants to do anything. It's pretty clear if you read between the lines that all the people around Trump are trying to kind of, I don't know, distract him with a shiny object. And the certification process was

a big hang up for him personally, because, you know, he's a narcissistic dingus. So is there any way that Congress can do nothing and Trump can declare some kind of dumb victory? So today, for instance, on health care, he said, Obamacare is dead. We killed it. Moving on. Right. He wants to say something that basically says, I fucked Obama. I did it. Is there some way we can help him say that? I'm half kidding, but like, is there some way he can claim Congress failing to act or passing some sort of concerning resolution is a victory for him? Yeah, I mean, that that could be the way, like Congress passes some resolution saying that Iran is really bad, but it doesn't do anything. And then Trump says, see, I got Congress. Never

mind. Congress does that every few months as it is. But yeah, you could have something coming out of Congress like that. And I think the danger here is that you don't want Congress to pass something that gives him a predicate to say, well, Congress agrees with me. I'm pulling out of this deal. Right. So you're playing with some fire here. But there are any number of ways for him to say, you know, I'm getting tougher on Iran without killing this deal. And is there anything that a faithful Republican who is looking to strengthen the deal could do without getting us out of the deal? Is there anything that a, like McMaster or Kelly could start some kind of a process with allies to work towards some kind of solution in the future that would allow Trump to say,

Congress expressed disdain. I'm not certifying it. Congress won't act, but we're going to try something down the line. I'm just like trying to look for like, it's like it's a safe facing operation, safe saving operation. Yeah. And look, there's plenty of things you can do. I mean, you can impose sanctions, more sanctions on their ballistic missile activity. You can put more resources into interdicting Iranian weapons shipments across the region. You know, the deal doesn't restrict you from confronting all other kinds of Iranian behavior. And frankly, we did that. Congress has done that. They already passed an Iran sanctions bill this year. So there are ways to be, you know, quote unquote, tough on Iran without blowing up this deal. The problem is when it starts to bleed into the space of the deal. And again, the problem there is both that the Iranians could just say, we're out, we're going to restart our nuclear program. The problem

is that the other countries in the deal aren't going to go along with that. And also, we already saw in Iran, this was a gift to the hardliners. You know, you saw kind of this unify the Iranian public around kind of a hard line towards the United States more than anything that's taken place in recent years. So as usual, you know, what we see is Trump's actions are dividing us from our allies. And they're frankly, leading our adversaries to a more hardline position, which is what we've seen in North Korea and in Iran. I mean, one of the most dangerous things about this deal is if you're North Korean, you're watching this. Why would you ever make an agreement with the United States? The president of the United States just went and declared that he doesn't think the United States should abide by even this type of agreement that is working for us.

Why on earth would the North Koreans ever make a deal with the United States on nuclear issues right after Trump did that? Well, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully every interview this weekend with, oh, fuck. Hopefully, hopefully the world can get together to save this deal and appease the ego of one man. Well, the final thing I'd say for you guys is I heard a question of one of your guys on your tour about how does national security matter.

Like, national security, number one, it doesn't matter until it does. And if we look up and we're in a war with the Iranians, that's going to swamp everything else, never mind a war with North Korea. The second thing I'd say is that we shouldn't be,

as Democrats, kind of always on defensive crouch on this issue, you know? I mean, I've even noticed in a lot of the statements, which, you know, I get, you know, Democrats leading as well, Jim Mattis thinks this is a good deal. So, you know, like, this is a good deal. Like, the Republicans couldn't stop Iran's nuclear program from advancing. It advanced throughout the Bush administration. It advanced into the Obama administration. We stopped it. We rolled it back through tough, hard-nosed diplomacy that unified the rest of the world and made America safer. And we should have the confidence to know that we're right about this and have that argument. And the third point is, this is an issue that people can do something

about, just like on health care. This is in Congress. You know, he had repeal and go fuck yourself, and now we have decertify and, you know. Die in a conflagration. Yeah. Thank you. That's more articulate. You know what?

People are going to have to vote on this in the Senate. And they need 60 votes, right? Yeah. They need 60 votes in the Senate because they're not just doing the snapback. So they're going to need 60 votes in the Senate. And they need 60 votes, right? Yeah, they need 60 votes in the Senate, because they're not just doing the snapback, so they're going to need 60 votes in the Senate. You know, the House matters here, too. There'll be a lot of pressure from the other direction on this issue, and so people should be hearing from their constituents that, I don't want another war, and that I think that we shouldn't pull out of agreements that benefit America. So this is something that I think people can care about and can feel

agency of. Ben, thank you for ending us on a positive note there. I like that. Is that what it was? It was. Fighting note. Certify and go fuck yourself. No blood for ego. That's pretty good. Trying to name an episode here. There you go. Alright, Ben.

Thanks for joining us and for making us smarter. We appreciate it. Thanks, Rhodes. Thanks, guys. All right, Ben. Thanks for joining us and for making us smarter. We appreciate it. Thanks, Rhodes. Thanks, guys. Take care. Bye. Bye. Okay, let's talk about the ongoing sabotage of the Affordable Care Act.

On Thursday, Donald Trump announced that he was immediately ending cost-sharing subsidies that reduce the cost of health insurance for low-income people. What are these subsidies? So there's a provision in the Affordable Care Act that says insurance companies must reduce out-of-pocket expenses like deductibles and copayments for low-income customers. The law also says that the federal government is authorized to reimburse the insurance companies for those cost reductions. However, the legislation

never explicitly appropriated the funding to do that. It was clearly a drafting error. So the Obama administration paid the money anyway. The House Republicans then sued the Obama administration and a federal judge sided with the Republicans. Obama administration appealed and the appeals court said the administration could continue making the payments until the higher court made a decision. Then Trump becomes president and he's been making the payments every few months until now, until Thursday when he said, that's it, no more payments. Lovett, what did you think about the decision? And what to do next? Yeah. So it's obviously, it's a very bad decision. And it's a very bad decision, even if you agree with the Republican argument, which actually is in this case quite reasonable that this goes above and beyond the president's authority to make these payments. authorized and spending being appropriated. Congress does have the power of the purse. That's really important because it was an error, because it was a gray area of the administration, the Obama administration, in order to prevent the markets from imploding and given incredible

recalcitrance from Republicans in Congress who refuse to do what Congresses have done in the wake of every major piece of legislation in American history, which is even with ideological difference, allow for technical fixes because the Constitution is not a suicide pact. It's their job as patriotic Americans to not allow an ideological difference to sink the entire healthcare market. They refused to participate. So Obama did this extraordinary thing. It was moving through the courts. You can have a legitimate disagreement about the right thing to do there. However, the court stayed the ruling and allowed the payments to proceed until either, you know this problem in the law. Absent that, given that Trump already found it quite within his power to make the payments when he came into

office and that the court had stayed the ruling, those payments should have continued. But of course, Donald Trump, who has this sort of facile notion of what his role is as a negotiator, always decides to shoot the hostage. And so he, even threatening to end the payments would have been a more legitimate thing for him to do, saying Congress better get its act together, do this repeal or fix it. But instead, he's like, I'm ending them. Yeah. I mean, if he was acting in good faith, he would have said, look, there's Lamar Alexander, one of the top Republicans in the Senate and Patty Murray, Democrat, working on a bipartisan solution to fund these payments. I have decided that legally I can't make them anymore, but we have a bill to solve this.

It's bipartisan. Great. Send it to my desk. I'll sign it. That's what would happen in a normal world. A normal Republican. We're normal Democrat, normal Republican. That's what happens if everything was working correctly.

It was not. Tommy, you said this made you particularly angry when you were reading this. I mean, a bunch of things. It's very frustrating how this is getting covered. There was a piece over the weekend about how trump's frustration with congress has reached a breaking point it's so annoying how you know this is being covered as congress's failure he's in charge of the party they they control all branches of government and because he did a terrible job pushing his legislative priorities forward because he spent

more time golfing than trying to whip this bill or create a political movement behind it, they have failed to repeal Obamacare. So now he is undercutting payments to subsidize healthcare for people who are at the poverty line or just above it, people making like 12 grand a year. And the impact of that is going to be to harm those individuals, but also to increase costs for middle class consumers who don't get government aid and increase the cost to the government of funding these programs because premiums will go up. So this is a this is horrendous policy on every single level possible. And like even Republican governors and members of Congress who are relatively moderate are out there making that case. But he doesn't give a shit. He just wants to kill anything that has Obama's name next to it.

Yeah. Once again, what gets lost in the coverage is this is not Democrats versus Republicans again. This is Democrats and Republicans versus Trump and some Republicans. And Steve Bannon, who's like, we're blowing up the exchanges. Right. We should say Steve Bannon at the Value Voters Summit, which is just aptly named for all the language that was used. Sebastian Gorka is there saying he's going to attack private citizens. Well, they don't say what values.

Right. That's a very good point. But Bannon gave up the game and said, yeah, we're blowing up the Obamacare exchanges. And he started laughing maniacally. The effects of ending these subsidies, insurance companies will either raise premiums to make up the difference, which some already have in some states, or insurance companies will exit the Obamacare markets altogether, leaving some people without any choice of an insurance company.

If you are low income, you're still going to get the discount because the law tells insurance companies they must provide the discount. And if you qualify for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, which most of the people who buy into the exchanges do, by law, your subsidy rises as much as your premiums rise, so you're okay. The people who get hurt here are middle class people who don't qualify for subsidies

or for the cost-sharing reductions. That's who gets hurt. When their premiums go up, they're going to get screwed, and if insurance companies decide to leave the market, everyone gets screwed. That is the practical effect of what Trump has just done. It costs it shifts costs around in the system it puts it onto it and like tommy said the government's going to have to pay more in subsidies to match the premiums so the government so taxpayers are going to pay more because of this right like this federal

government's going to spend more money because of what trump just did right as is always the case when you make like obamacare was written uh it is a complicated law but when you you look at something like this, it's like, well, why was it written like this? Well, it was written this way to get the most bang for your buck. So you target people who need help the most to help them cover the cost of their health care rather than having a wider increase in premiums, which is what we're going to see now. So, you know, it's a purely destructive act. And that's all there is to it. Yeah. But like you said, Tommy, there's like, maybe four or five Republican congressmen who immediately came out and opposed this. A couple of Republican senators, Susan Collins said that it would hurt people. Governor Sandoval, Republican of Nevada.

Can I read his quote? He said it's going to hurt kids, it's going to hurt families, it's going to hurt individuals, it's going to hurt people with mental health issues, it's going to hurt veterans, it's going to hurt families. It's going to hurt individuals. It's going to hurt people with mental health issues. It's going to hurt veterans. It's going to hurt everybody. That's Brian Sandoval, a Republican governor from Nevada. And, you know, part of one of the real problems here is there is. So this is not a fucking partisan issue. Don't let's not like. And again, and this is the I think that it is it is not a partisan issue, even if you believe the Obama administration overstepped their legal authority because the ruling was stayed and Congress could work on a fix, which is exactly what the court was hoping would happen. We're past that. There's a legislative fix to this in the works. It's sitting,

Patty Murray and Lamar Alexander have worked on it. It's right there. And if Donald Trump really wanted to fix this, he would say, fine, let me look at that bill. Instead, Mick Mulvaney, his OMB director, rejected the Murray-Alexander bipartisan compromise right after they did this, because they want to blow up the markets. That's the intention here. They don't want it to work. And keep in mind, one of the reasons the negotiations have taken this long, it's been a long time that they've been having this conversation. But every time Republicans have gotten close to passing their repeal, Mitch McConnell sends a diktat that says, don't do the bipartisan negotiation. We don't want that on the table.

We want our plan to be the only plan, whether it was ACHA or Trumpcare or Graham-Cassidy. Every time one of these things has come up for a vote or been close to coming up for a vote, all of a sudden the bipartisan talks mysteriously break down. Yeah. So when it happened, Trump tweeted trump tweeted you know said that democrats should call him and negotiate if they want to fix it because again he's thinking he thinks he's taking the hostage even though he shoots the hostage and but like what negotiation does trump have in mind here like hey i'll only stop sabotaging obamacare if you help me repeal obamacare that that's what he's saying when he has like when he's talking about democrats meeting with them he's like

i will stop these acts of sabotage if you help me get rid of this bill. Yeah, it's taking a crowbar. It's saying a crowbar to the windshield and saying, do you need a ride? You know, it's ridiculous. And I mean, maybe there's some way in which this is a way, again, to like save face for some kind of bipartisan. If the Alexander Murray talks lead to something that he can claim some kind of victory that he drove just like iran some kind of just some face saving it's again like it is always important to remember like what i won i won an obamacare you know i wrote you know right that throughout this he was always looking for a way to claim victory and so if by claiming that

he killed these payments and that it forced the republicans and democrats to come together to pass he can do a signing ceremony maybe there's some way to eke out something positive out of this. But I don't know. He's like throwing the most incompetent Congress we've seen in a very long time. So many huge pieces of business to deal with over the next month or two, too. Like we're going to we're going to fix Obamacare. We're going to, you know, update the Iran deal. We're going to fund the government.

We're going to fix the debt ceiling. I don't know what he thinks is possible here, but it doesn't seem like most of these things are going to get done. He's just shifting blame, right? He doesn't want to blame. He wants to blame his former buddy, Mitch McConnell. So what can we do about this? There's a group of attorney generals who are suing the government because their claim is, despite the fact that the money wasn't appropriated, the law still authorizes these payments. And so where's the payments?

The other option here is Democrats in Congress do have some leverage. So I want to talk about shutdown politics. If you recall last month when Trump was the independent bipartisan dealmaker shaking up Washington, he reached an agreement with his pals Chuck and Nancy to fund the government and extend the debt ceiling by three months. Big, huge historical deal, right? So for a whole bunch of boring reasons. He's a deal maker.

He makes deals. That's what he's done his whole life. So for a whole bunch of boring reasons I won't get into, it looks like the Treasury Department can hold off on another debt ceiling extension by more than three months. So that gets pushed to the spring because they can do all kinds of things. They have a lot of tricks in their bag. Extraordinary measures. Yeah, exactly.

Tricks in the bag at the Treasury Department. No way to run a government. No way to run a government. But the government needs to be funded by the end of December or else we have a shutdown. And Republicans who control the House and the Senate do not have enough votes within their own party to keep the government open because the Freedom Caucus is demanding all kinds of drastic cuts that even other Republicans think are crazy. So this means that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell need Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to give them some Democratic votes in order to keep the government open. This gives

Pelosi and Schumer leverage, or does it? The question is, should we be saying we will withhold votes to keep the government open unless you pass the dream act fully fund obamacare etc etc daca csr are no votes i'm in i'm in too i know i know you've been all in on this on the tweets and people are like well john doesn't sound like those two democrats said back when you were saying you shouldn't shut up you know what that's the voice i heard that voice in the tweets too we're a party we either stand for something or we don't And these are the two biggest things we should be standing for right now. Keeping health care for people who are low income or not letting premiums get blown up. And like protecting kids who are in the military or in jobs or in school who were brought here when they were two years old.

I also and there's an important distinction between government shutdown and debt ceiling. We're not saying I'm very against. We're playing around with and debt ceiling. We're not saying to- I'm very against playing around with the debt ceiling. We're against playing around with the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is a farce, should not exist. You know, it's not a hostage situation. When you threaten to block the debt ceiling, you're holding a gun to your own head. It doesn't make any sense.

But on government shutdown, this is something Trump said he wanted to do. These DACA kids are in trouble because of a bipartisan failure over decades. The CSR payments in the law it's something that there should be a technical non-partisan fix to make sure these payments are done we will not we're not trying to shut the government down if you can have the votes without us we're not in charge of anything yeah we have nothing we have failed to win enough elections to be in charge of anything but we have two things we're going to stand up for we're going to stand up for the docket kids and we're going to stop this ridiculous csr payment nonsense and and uh look nancy pelosi

said the right thing uh axe interviewed her over the weekend on the axe files and she said we're not about shutting the government down but she's right we're not about shutting the government down now if nancy pelosi was speaker of the house right now we had a majority or chuck schumer was the majority leader in the senate we could have some kind of debate about whether it's responsible then for Democrats to say, do these things or we'll shut the government down. But we don't need to have that debate because the people who are threatening to shut down the government right now are the Freedom Caucus lunatics. They are not giving Paul – now maybe this – the only thing I was wondering is maybe this changes. Maybe the like suddenly Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell find the votes in their caucus to vote for whatever Trump wants them to vote for,

because it's more important for them to piss off Democrats than to even stick with their own belief of drastic spending cuts. So who knows? Maybe this is a moot point. But if the Republicans can't find the votes in their own party to keep the government open, which, by the way, has never happened in the history of the United States. There's never been a government shutdown when one party controls Washington. It never happens because they can always find the votes. So if they can't find the votes. It's also very rarely for a party to do as poorly as we've been doing. If they can't find the votes and they come to Democrats and say,

we need your votes to keep this government open or we can't do it ourselves, even though we're the majority. I think it's entirely fair to say, keep your fucking promise on the Dreamers and keep your promise on making sure that low-income people, middle-class people aren't screwed by premium increases. I wonder though, it does raise the question as to whether

right now our posture should be, we're not setting any ultimatums for our votes. Maybe you get them for some other stuff. Maybe you don't. It's because otherwise you know that let the freedom caucus let the freedom caucus eat itself you know i think that's the next it's reporters should go interview the freedom caucus and those people again because they did a couple months ago what are you guys going to do you guys going to vote for keep the government open what are your what are your demands they're too busy walking across the flat earth i also think like the good thing they falling off. They keep falling off the corner of the flat earth.

Into one of those dragons. Very distracting. The other thing I like about like putting a flag in the sand on this thing is it focuses the attention of the political establishment, the press, everyone else around something very important and very big. Because we're all constantly getting whipsawed back and forth by tweets about the NFL or like whatever idiocy he's focused on on a given day. And we need to just lift up these big issues. And it unfortunately requires something like this to do that. Yeah, this will focus the mind. And it's about something big. It's about millions of young Americans possibly being expelled from this country and millions and millions of middle class people who are going to have to, you know, could be bankrupt over medical costs.

If Americans don't side with us on this, in terms of public opinion, we probably shouldn't have a party. Because these are the things we stand for. And if they don't want this, they don't want Democrats. We're not shutting the government down over lowering the top marginal tax rate or letting heirs to great fortunes keep their money.

You know, we're shutting it down over something principal and important. And again, the people making demands here are the trump administration themselves i mean mick mulvaney when he was interviewed about this said he doesn't think trump will sign a government funding bill unless it funds the wall yeah so it's not even about like do the democrats want the dream act and the bill or the funding of obamacare the trump administration is still saying they'll shut the fucking government down if they don't get their wall which no one

wants that's the threat all we're asking for is for people in congress to operate in reality and not in trump's reality trump's out there today saying obamacare is dead you shouldn't even mention anymore boehner and paul ryan and others have said obamacare is the law of the land because it is right and the other thing too is these are not ideological divides that we can't bridge these are not huge huge differences these are places bridge. These are not huge, huge differences. These are places where on both of these issues, there's actually alignment. So there is a compromise on immigration on DACA, which is, you know, it's not about building a wall, but it was always going to come with some kind of border security.

There is an old fashioned compromise, like two parties coming together. You know, one, you know, Mulvaney goes out there and makes his crazy demands. We say we're not in favor of them. And then you end up landing somewhere in the middle. The same for CSR payments. There is. It's called the Murray-Alexander bill. Yes. It funds CSR, funds other stuff. And then Murray said Democrats are willing to give states a little more flexibility. You know, we've gotten, I think we're all just sort of, we're so used to the total lack of responsibility and decency on the part of the way Congress has behaved during the eight years of the Obama administration. And of course, we've seen the way the Trump administration has

behaved that we've forgotten the basics. Like, this is governing. This is politics. Like, Mulvaney should go out there and make some crazy demands. And Democrats should say we won't vote for the wall. And then the point is, you're supposed to fight it out and end up with something that both sides can sort of reluctantly agree to that is possible on health care. It is possible in immigration. And given that Democrats don't have the power to decide, don't control the government, us making these demands is the way we exact that compromise.

And I think it's like what Tommy said. We need to stand for something as a party. We need to represent the people who sent us there and show that we're fighting. And we really do need to fight because it fucking matters and i would tell everyone don't worry too much about the media narrative on this because what always happens is at the beginning if schumer and pelosi don't threaten this it'll be all democrats are too weak democrats are too chicken to actually do this and then when they do it's oh now democrats are as bad as republicans it just it's vibrating with it goes one way or the other.

Stop being pundits. It's the right fucking thing to do. Yeah, just don't care about that. They're going to complain either way. Yeah. Okay. When we come back, we will talk to the former U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara. On the pod today, we are very lucky to have the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the host of the new podcast called Stay Tuned with Preet, Preet Bharara.

Welcome to the pod, Preet. Thanks very much. It's good to be here. It's good to have you. Even though I'm not with you. Technology. be here. It's good to have you. Even though I'm not with you. Technology. So I was just saying on our last pod that, you know, Democrats can't just wait around for Bob Mueller to save us. And you gave an interview a few weeks ago where you said that, you know, we should be ready and respectful of the fact that Mueller may not bring any sort of charges against the president. But

that said, based on everything you've seen and read, what pieces of publicly available information make you think he's more likely to bring charges? And what pieces of information make you less likely to think that he'll bring charges? So that's the most cleverly formulated question in that regard that I've gotten. So congratulations on that. That's very, very well done. I just want to say it's an honor to be here in the presence of podcast veterans since I'm a rookie,

so maybe you can give me some advice later. You can say greatness. Did I not say greatness historically? Look, there's a lot of podcast veterans. Everyone except for Lovett never responded to my tweet from the other day. Lovett never responds to emails, tweets. Look, he's very busy just building his brand.

Yeah, I mean, also I like to create. Or just stating outright that he's the best that Twitter ever had. To which I responded, my mother begs to differ. And then I thought we would get into some kind of a, whatever you call it on Twitter, back and forth, I think is the official term. And nothing, nothing Lovett. Preet, here's the thing, I think is the official term, and nothing, nothing love it. Preet, here's the thing.

I think I gave that a fave. One way in which that I am the best at Twitter is I create a sense of emotional distance because I sort of am above everyone else in some kind of a tower looking down on all these lesser tweets. Right, but also below. I'd like to use my 280 characters to ask you to answer the question. Yeah. Enough of this.

I'm prepared to look, look, the, the, the things that are publicly available are not the full range of things that obviously Bob Mueller has in, you know, the various files that he and his team are maintaining,

no doubt at their office. I think almost, people might expect that the firing of James Comey and the circumstances under which he was fired, and that pretextual memo that was created by Rod Rosenstein, which we don't have a full explanation of, and then the later interview that President Trump himself had with Lester Holt, where he said that what was on his mind, in part, was the Russia investigation when he fired Jim Comey. All of that, I think, is very damning stuff, ordinarily, when you're talking about obstruction of justice. So, you know, I think we don't know what all the facts are. We don't know what all the other

evidence is that points to what was in Donald Trump's mind at the time. And we don't know what the appetite is for making a referral to the House of Representatives or bringing a charge, which is hard to do, something impossible against a sitting president. So I would put that in the category of very significant stuff when you're talking about the president. Now, if you're talking about some other folks like Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, then there's other things going on. On the other end of the scale, the fact that there may have been what some people call collusion, which is not a criminal statute that says if there's some collusion that you go to prison for that, right? So people are

often conflating this idea of what kind of things happen with respect to the election with whether or not there might be criminal liability on the part of a particular person like the president. So the collusion stuff in many ways is a little bit more amorphous. And from what we know publicly, seems less likely to lead to a criminal charge against a person versus some of the obstruction stuff, just in my view. So on the on the obstruction stuff, I was going to ask you about that. On the obstruction stuff, I was going to ask you about that. There was a Brookings Institution analysis last week that concluded that they thought that Trump likely obstructed justice when he fired Comey. This is, you know, one of the cases where a lot of the potential evidence of obstruction is public, which is sort of unusual. Like you said, some of it includes public comments by the president to Lester Holt and other places. If you were Mueller, how would you go about finding out whether he obstructed justice? And what's the standard? I've been confused by this. A lot of different lawyers

have said a lot of different things. Like what is the standard for obstruction of justice in something like this? Well, the standard of proof is always beyond a reasonable doubt to a unanimous jury if you're going to make a criminal case. But on the question of whether or not he intended in his head, which you have to prove, right, criminal intent in your head, to obstruct an ongoing investigation or an ongoing proceeding, that's basically, in layperson's language, the standard. So, yeah, it's true that a lot of these things are public. But it's also true that lawyers can bring other evidence to bear on what other kinds of things were going on in his mind. I know, look, to me, it seems very strong in a lot of ways. I just don't know what all the other evidence shows. That's the problem.

Pre, you said that you believe based on information you've seen, where the president was talking to Jim Comey about Michael Flynn and trying to make that case go away, talking to Jeff Sessions about Joe Arpaio's case as if he wanted that to go away, that you felt like if you had not been fired, that Trump would have continued to cultivate this personal relationship with you and ask you to do something inappropriate untoward, what have you. Can you talk more about that? Like what got you to that assessment? And what do you think that means for people who are still serving in this administration who might get the same kind of inappropriate call that you feared you might have gotten? on November 30th, he then just would pick up the phone and call me up, oddly, while he was a president-elect and shot the breeze with me a few times, including two days before the inauguration.

And I hoped and expected those calls would end because it's weird and inappropriate. And as I've said, the number of times that Barack Obama called me in seven and a half years was zero. And then he called me again on March 9th after he was the president, and I didn't return the call for various reasons because I thought it wouldn't look right, and I thought it was inappropriate. But based on all these other things and how he operates and the oddity of his being one of the busiest men on the planet

and calling the sitting United States attorney in Manhattan who has jurisdiction over various things, the only, I think, logical, common sense conclusion, if you've lived in the world, is that at some point, he was going to want to have me either do something or not do something, whether it related to him or to an associate, because that's how he operates. And the evidence of that, as you mentioned in your question, is what he said to Jim Comey about Mike Flynn and what he said to Jeff Sessions about Joe Arpaio. And who knows how many other conversations like that he's had. And then with respect to the second thing

you said, what does this mean for other people? I have some worry that there are people who are getting calls from the president or pressure from the president that we don't know about, we may find out about later. I don't know whether or not he is putting pressure on nominees to the U.S. attorney positions around the country, whether he's meeting with them and trying to establish a direct connection like he did with me. That would be inappropriate, and we should all worry about that. Hey, Preet. So talking about prosecutors being called inappropriately, it's a reminder that a lot of what protects us are not just laws, but norms and institutions and the fear that there'll be political repercussions for not respecting rules that aren't enshrined in law.

How do you think right now, what's your assessment of how we're doing on the rule of law? Is it holding up? Is Trump bending things but not breaking them? Where's the score at? So on the one side of the coin, this is maybe more than two sides, this particular coin that I'm talking about. On the one side, I think the courts are very strong. I think the founders are very smart. And we're appreciating, at least I am appreciating for the first time since reading the Federalist Papers as a government major in college, how important some of the structure of the Constitution was. Separation of powers is very important. the Constitution was. Separation of powers is very important. And even though there's a lot of annoyance and concern and worry that Donald Trump, either from the vantage point of his tweeting or from a podium at a rally, badmouthing, mocks, humiliates federal district court judges by name, they're very strong. They have life tenure. When you have life tenure,

you can do what you think is right and you have the job for the rest of your life. You don't have life tenure, on the other hand, for example, you start a podcast like me. So I think the courts, with respect to the rule of law, I think the courts are very strong, and they can withstand pressure unless someone does something like FDR did. He was a liberal president who a lot of people liked. He tried to pack the courts. So far, no evidence of anything like that. I think that Congress is a mixed bag and how they look at enforcing the norms of the presidency is unclear, but you're already seeing, I think, there a move from just believing in the honor system, the honor code of how our government often operates with respect to the executive branch and the soft norms of discl disclosing your tax returns, or staying away

from conflicts of interest, like the emoluments clause, stuff like that, or not firing a special counsel or an FBI director. And you're seeing bills starting to circulate in Congress with respect to the special counsel, and you'll see things about tax returns, I think. So there is, I think, some reaction to this president to try to harden soft norms into concrete laws going forward. I bet there'll be a lot more of that. So I have a little bit more optimism about the Congress. What I'm most worried about, as you might imagine, is what I think the traditions have been within the executive branch for policing itself. I mean, the Justice Department, the FBI, the DEA, the U.S. Attorney's Offices are all in the executive branch in a particular agency that's different from all other agencies.

It's the Department of Justice. It's not like the Department of Education or the Department of Weights and Me I think, norm, you know, that sacred standard that allows people to have faith in whether or not justice is being done and is seen to be done is being eroded. And so that's my chief concern. I wanted to ask you about something that was in the news over the last couple of weeks. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance passed on prosecuting Don Jr. and Ivanka for fraud, then passed on prosecuting Harvey Weinstein for sexual assault, and in both cases accepted donations from connected and interested parties to both of those people. How unusual is that? And do you think those were defensible decisions? money, so I don't have familiarity personally with how that works. Second thing I'll say is, with respect to whether or not those cases should have been brought or not,

I was the United States attorney for seven and a half years. And I may have a personal view about how other people do their job, but I don't know all the facts. I don't know what the witnesses said. I don't know what the standards were. I wasn't in the grand jury with witnesses if they were put in the grand jury. And so in the same way, I thought people who were armchair quarterbacks on my decisions to bring a case or not to bring a case, I'm not in a position to judge whether those decisions were correct or not. That said, I think the one thing we can conclude is that money in DA races, which is the case in most states in the country, it's not the case in New Jersey where the governor appoints the district attorney. It's terrible. We talk about money being awful in politics generally. I think it's particularly odious in a DA's race. And I understand that the system is such that that's the only way you can campaign and raise money. Cy Vance and others, even though it's the current system, should not take money from criminal defense lawyers because what's going to end up happening in virtually every case is that that lawyer, some other lawyer, is going to have business pending before the district attorney's office. And whether or not – look, do I think – I've been friends with Cy Vance, and he was a former colleague of mine, and I think he's an honorable person. There's a difference between getting cold feet on a case and being corrupt on a case. I have no reason to think that based on a campaign donation, he and his office made a particular decision on a case. What I do think is that the

perception and the optics of taking money from people who have cases before your office, when you may make a decision that's helpful to that donor, it looks terrible and we should change it. How hard is that, by the way, to deal with or to know that you're going to deal with armchair quarterbacks when you decide to not bring a case? You've said recently that most of the criticism you've received when you were U.S. attorney was for not bringing certain cases, right? You obviously prosecuted a bunch of Wall Street firms, but sometimes when you didn't, you know, you get all kinds of criticism. How do you deal with that? Is that in the back of your head as you're trying to decide

whether to bring a case or not? You know, what's your thought on that? Yeah, no, it sucks. The armchair quarterbacks, they're worse. Yeah, they're worse than even the real quarterbacks these days in the NFL. Look, you got to make sure if you don't have the stomach, They're not great. of what Bob Mueller is going through. I think there's no better person to be in that position. And there's probably no person who's going to have to withstand more anger, no matter what he decides, right? Literally, it's the case. If he decides to bring a certain kind of criminal action or referral to the House of Representatives against the president, there's going to be tens of millions of people who think he's the devil

and horrible. And if he doesn't do that, there are going to be tens of millions, perhaps more, given what the polls say, who think he's the devil and a horrible person. And so if that's going to be true, and this is the way I thought about it, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. And if that is so, then you better just focus on what you think is right and what your team thinks is right and what the facts allow and what the law says. And I've talked about this a couple of times on my podcast called Stay Tuned with Preet, which, you know. Good plug. If you want to hear more about that, you can tune in to that. But look, it's a great question.

And look, you also want to make sure that the people you're hiring into the U.S. Attorney's Office or that he's putting into the special counsel's office can take criticism like that. Because no matter what you do on any high profile case, there are going to be some say he went too far and some say he didn't go far enough. You mentioned your podcast, Preet. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to treat you as a hostile witness. You are a competitor now. We wish you nothing but ill. Not really. No, everyone should

listen to Preet's podcast when they're finished with all of the Crooked Media offerings. I'm sure it'll be fine. I was listening to it this morning. It's excellent.

Everyone really should go. Oh, here comes this one. Here comes John. I'm just trying to do what I think is right. I think Lovett is actually the best guy on Twitter ever. Lovett has been influenced by Big Blue Apron and a series of other donors. I'm the only good on Shark Quarterback.

Preet, thank you so much for joining us. Everyone go- Thank you very much. Stay tuned with Preet is the podcast. Go subscribe. And we'll talk to you later. Come back again. Thanks, guys.

I appreciate it. All right. Take care. Bye. On the pod today, we are joined by the host of Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson. DeRay, how are you? I'm good. I'm good. How are you guys doing? Not bad. Not bad. We're good. So who's in the show this week and what are you guys covering? So we have a conversation with the NAACP and the Yale Law School about a lawsuit that they're filing against the Census Bureau or like the people that run the census. So Trump.

So that's interesting. We didn't actually talk about it on the pod this week. So I wanted to talk about it here is Charlottesville and the followup to Charlottesville is that the black man who was in that famous picture with the flamethrower, he has been charged. And then DeAndre Harris, the guy who actually got beat up, has also been charged with a crime in Charlottesville. So it's been fascinating to see how even with the white supremacist fatigue torches, like they didn't get charged in mass at all. But these two black guys who were just at the very least defending themselves against white supremacists have been charged and deandre harris

got charged with unlawful wounding that was crazy he got beat up and that was and so the unlawful wounding charge was they're saying because he swung a flashlight at them as he was being charged with a flagpole, right? Yeah, nuts. I don't mean to sound naive here, but how is that possible? When there's video of men beating others on the ground with sticks, when you have this ongoing social media effort to identify the faces and names of these individuals involved, is this just a refusal from local law enforcement officials to press charges? Like, is there something people listening could do to try to help right this wrong?

I think the people can contact a state attorney and see if there's an opportunity to drop the charges. You know, I do think this is, I think the white supremacists have always tried to use the courts as like another battleground to push their agenda. And this is like another example is that the MF wandering doesn't make sense quite long being he was the guy the flamethrower they're saying that he made like an illegal weapon and it's like what about all of the people who are heavily armed who like pushed the police somebody died like nothing happened to

those people and the double standard is is shocking, but not new in this country, right? Yeah. I mean, the guy with the flamethrower, in that same video, an individual with a gun fires a round at that general area, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, you know, we should call Terry McAuliffe and ask McAuliffe to talk about it. You know, he's been on the pods before, but I thought that was wild. He's been on the pods before, but I thought that was wild.

And with the census, what was interesting is, so we all know that the census is really important, that a lot of federal funding is predicated on it, a lot of decisions are predicated on it. But what I didn't know, what you'll hear when you listen to the episode, is how the Trump administration is actually dismantling the process step by step along the way. And it could have far reaching implications on communities of color, poor people, the way that they're taking apart the apparatus to prepare because it only happened every decade that there are like some things that have to happen in order for it to actually be implemented correctly. And they're sabotaging it, which I have no clue. What is the NAACP hoping to achieve with the lawsuit? Are they trying to get information? Are they trying to compel the Trump administration to conduct the census properly with the proper funding? Or what's the goal of the lawsuit? Good question. And we talked about this

on the episode in full, but in short, it's like discovery. So they're trying to figure out what is happening and what is not happening, and the administration will not comply. So they won't release any documents about parts of the preparation and what's not being prepared. So that was interesting. You know, there's so much, as you know, that happens with Trump every day that some of the small, some of the seemingly small things that are that have far reaching implications go unnoticed. And I think that this is, this is one of them. Yeah. No,

this is huge because, and people might not understand this, but the census determines, you know, legislative number of legislative seats, like things will happen. Results will come from the 2020 census that have an impact for years, if not debt,

you know, until the next census. And it's hard to reverse those impacts once they occur. And so the time to, you know, freak out about the census and what the Trump administration is doing to the census is now as the NAACP is recognized. It's just especially frightening because there's been politicization of the census in the past, but we've never had someone like Trump before and their efforts to delegitimize whole swaths of the electorate, whether through voter disenfranchisement or this voter fraud commission, it is of a piece, which is what I think makes this especially

frightening. And you all worked in the government. I was talking to somebody else yesterday who has had close proximity to the government in another way, and they were talking about how it seems like the middle of the road people are being shaken out of government at this point. So the only people left all across are sort of the diehard people on their side. And it's like, that is frightening. So I'm hopeful that we'll see something. I don't know what Mueller is doing. Speed it up, buddy.

Go a, slow. I don't know if Obama has some secret weapon that we just don't know about. He's going to come out and do a press conference every day and just drive Trump insane. DeRay, a watch Mueller never boils. That's just the thing. We just talked to Preet Bharara, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and we were asking him all these questions like, what's Mueller doing? Is he going to bring charges? And he reminded us that it's very possible that Mueller, he's taking his time, he wants to do it right, he might not bring charges. And I think the message for all of us is we have to just focus on elections. The elections

in November in Virginia and elsewhere, elections in 2018. Like we just got to get these guys out of office the good old fashioned way with some organizing, as you know. There's a real question, though, about like who is, you know, people and I'm on the DNC transition team. I get it. But there's a question about who are the voices on the left that even have the resonance to stand up to somebody like Trump. So you think about Maxine Waters as a high profile, Cory Booker, Kamala, but there seems to be still an opening for more leadership to emerge. And do you all have any ideas about who those people might be? So I don't have a good idea on who right now, but I have a better idea on what that person needs to do. Like, I think everyone in the party and on

the left has the why Trump is awful shtick down pretty good. And I think what we need now is someone to, or multiple people, hopefully, who actually inspire people to get involved because of, you know, a positive vision for the country. And I don't quite think we have that yet. And also someone who can sort of bring together all the different factions of the left and make sure that people understand that, you know, we have more to gain by coming together than by, you know, continually attacking each other, which we're prone to do once in a while. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard. You know, it's Barack Obama leaves a giant space because he's

a once in a generational figure. And I think the conversation about the future of the party will help shake out who the best person is to lead that conversation. And as that person comes forward and learns from the big party conversation we're having now, it's sort of someone out there's job to figure out how to weave all these things together. And so I actually think right now it is much less about who, as John was saying, the most important thing we can be doing is having the debate about the future of the Democratic Party, talking about vision, talking about big ideas, because the person out there who's going to be our nominee in 2020, or who's going to be more the leader of the party, they're

listening, and they're going to be figuring out right now how to piece all this together. Yeah. That does seem like a distinction between Bernie and Hillary for some people, that Bernie sort of focused on the what is possible and sort of skipped the how to some people. And Hillary focused so much on the how we make it happen. And for some people didn't offer a vision of what it could be. That's exactly right. That's a good way to put it.

And both of those elements are so important. And both defenders on both sides would say, oh, she did have a vision. And Bernie people would say, oh, he did tell us what to do. But clearly, neither of those things broke through enough. So I think the third component is making sure that whatever the message is, it actually breaks through the circus that we talk about every week. Cool. All right, man. Well, so this new episode drops tomorrow, Tuesday.

And everyone go subscribe, rate, listen to Pod Save the People. DeRay, the news crew, everyone they talk to, doing excellent work over there. So thank you, DeRay, for stopping by. And we'll talk to you soon. Cool. See you later. See you, DeRay. All right, take care.

Thanks, DeRay. All right. Thank you again to DeRay McKesson and Preet Bharara for joining us today. And Ben Rhodes. And Ben Rhodes. See you later. See you. Take care. Thanks. All right. Thank you again to Doreen McKesson and Preet Bharara for joining us today. And Ben Rhodes. And Ben Rhodes. What a day we had.

What a day. I couldn't even remember all the stuff we had. I barely got a word in edgewise. We had great guests, particularly interesting

and intelligent conversations. We've been in the studio a while, too. Yeah. I don't want to go back to work. This is fun.

Anyone got anything else? Tommy, how are you i'm great let's do a fun outro where we kind of talk about things i bought a uh i bought a acoustic guitar for the office that's right i walked in with a guitar this morning i treated myself to having come back from the tour and having a weekend to uh i ordered a pizza and i just ate my way around it until it was gone. That was my Sunday. One pizza. One pizza. Okay, cool. Cool outro.

All right, guys. We'll talk to you later. Bye. Bye, guys. Thank you.