Pod Save America - No Evidence, No Problem: GOP Votes To Impeach (Live from San Jose!)

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Guest host Addisu Demissie joins Lovett, Tommy, and Dan live in San Jose! Who needs details?! House Republicans unanimously vote to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Biden but have yet to state the official charges or prove any allegations, while Hunter Biden refuses to sit for a closed-door deposition demanded by the GOP. Then California's youngest assembly member, Alex Lee, talks about his battles against tax evasion and unaffordable housing. Plaformer's Zoë Schiffer joins to talk about Elon Musk letting Alex Jones back on Twitter, Silicon Valley giving up on content moderation, and whether the tech bubble is back. Finally we play a round of Silicon Valley trivia and take questions from the audience. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Hey everybody, welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Tommy Vitor. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Adisha Demessi. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Jon Favreau can't be here tonight because he and his wife Emily are expecting a baby any day now, which is very exciting. We're excited for him. Of course, we'll miss him, but we have a great show for you guys. We are so excited to have Adisu joining us tonight. Adisu, you managed Cory Booker's campaign, your governor Gavin Newsom's campaign in 2018, worked for Obama, Clinton, lots of folks. We're thrilled to have him. 2018, worked for Obama, Clinton, lots of folks. We're thrilled to have him. Our first guest is the youngest member of the California Assembly, Alex Lee. Give it up for Alex.

And then for our second news section, we're going to try something a little different. We're going to focus on the intersection of tech and politics, and we'll be joined by Zoe Schiffer, a fantastic tech reporter from Platformer who's going to help us make sense of this town you guys call home. Yeah. So you guys can applaud while you try to pretend you don't have your fucking day jobs. Say hi! But first, after a year-long investigation into vague and unfounded claims, House Republicans voted today to formally launch an impeachment inquiry into president biden boo for that it was a party line

vote all republicans voted yes all democrats voted no you get the concept uh as a reminder republicans haven't stated the official charges they want to bring against biden and they haven't proven any allegations but that didn't slow them down. Here's Republican Senator Chuck Grassley talking about this open and shut case. I have no evidence of it, and I'm going to just follow the facts where they are. And the facts haven't taken me to that point where I can say that the president's guilty of anything. They got him, guys. In related news, Hunter Biden was subpoenaed by Republicans who demanded he appear today in front of the House Oversight Committee hearing in a closed-door deposition. Instead, Hunter defied that subpoena and held his own press conference outside the Capitol,

where he said he would only testify publicly so Republicans can't cherry-pick and leak his testimony. So, Dan, it's tempting to treat this impeachment inquiry as a joke because the process is so clearly politicized. But let's talk about what happens next in the political risk here for Biden. How do you think Biden's team figures out how to respond to this impeachment inquiry? And what would you be worried about most if you had your old White House job? I would just note that everyone here just cheered the defiance of a subpoena? We were here in 2019, right about the time Mark Meadows was defying a subpoena in Trump's impeachment. No one applauded that. I'll tell you that right now.

No, this was, the show we did in San Jose in 2019 was the opening of Trump's first impeachment inquiry. Nice. And you guys had a much different take. So I think this impeachment inquiry, like so much Republican politics over the last decade or so, is just like one really unfunny joke. But if I was in the White House,

I don't know that I would be worried about this. I might be excited about it. I think if I was sitting in my old office, what I would try to convince the president to do, and I understand why he would not do this because this is obviously very personal to him. This is about his son. But from a purely political perspective,

I would spend every single day beating the Republicans up for this, right? There's nothing Joe Biden could use more right now than a fight with a bunch of extremist, unpopular Republicans. And that's exactly what this house is. And so I would go out every day, I would say, here are the things I'm working on. Here's what they're doing instead. I would do press conferences. I mean, if I really wanted to play a big card, I would call for a joint session of Congress. Go up there, say, here's my agenda to lower your costs and raise your wages.

And what are you doing instead of that? Take them on. Make them pay for us. This is a huge political mistake on their part. And be aggressive about it. Like the there's I think a big, huge fight with these people, with these Republicans would do Joe Biden so much political good right now. And they've given him a gift and he should take it. Well said. Speaking of gifts, let's watch a clip of CNN's Jake Tapper interviewing the Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer. And my concern is that Weiss may have indicted Hunter Biden to protect him from having to be deposed in the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. He indicted him to protect him. Yes. The classic rubric. He indicted him to protect him. I got it. Well, look, this whole thing's been about a cover-up. You know, you've got two serious

concerns. That's why he indicted him to protect him, to cover it up i love jake man wow i love not having to deal with jake as a flack uh love it obviously no president wants to get impeached but history suggests that the political impact of impeachment is not necessarily a given right yeah i mean look uh the crimes are supposed to lead to the impeachment. The impeachment isn't supposed to lead to the crimes. So they fucked that up. They got the order wrong. Huge blunder.

You know, I do think that, like, the point Dan's making is, like, really important because I think people have a lot of assumptions or they've sort of taken a lot of conventional wisdom about what impeachment means, but impeachment means exactly what we fight to make it mean i think there are people that say oh you know uh bill clinton's approval ratings went up but you could you know tell that to president al gore uh you know uh donald trump you know oh all of these accusations impeachment it washed right off of him did it Or did those weeks of attention hurt him politically in that moment? And we have the memories of fucking goldfish.

I think that there's sort of, there's two ways to think about it. And I think one actually does have a pitfall that we should just be cognizant of, which is we should not be in the position as Democrats of defending kind of quotidian corruption in Washington. Like, I don't think there's anything to be bashful about when you just say, look, Hunter Biden seems like he's quite a sleaze, but they're trying to attack Joe Biden for committing the sin of loving his fuck-up son. And I think a lot of Americans have fuck-up kids and they have fuck-up relatives. And we all know that it's the act of a good person to try to find a way to love that person,

even when they're fucking up and dragging your name through the mud. I'd rather be that than anyone going out of their way to pretend that, like, some of the shit that goes on in D.C., including Republican members of Congress and what their spouses do and what their family members do to trade off the names of their own politicians, I think is worth keeping in mind. Um, beyond that, you know, uh, Hunter Biden thinks he's going to have some kind of moment in a press conference where he's like, have you no decency,

sir? Uh, I'm not sold on that. I'm not, I'm not excited for his public hearing any more than I was excited about his private hearing. Um, I want to say something. Uh, Is this the joke back there? We finally found the joke Here's what I would say Look I would say to Hunter Biden The same thing I would say to George W. Bush Or Hitler

Which is stick to painting. Leaving space to cut that. Well, there's a piece of this. It's like purely financial, right? And then there's the piece of this that's about Hunter Biden's addictions. And he's been very honest about his struggles with addiction. And I think Republicans had the discipline to focus solely on the financial piece of this and the way he potentially used his father's position in office to make money, that would be one thing. But we know they don't have any discipline and they're attacking him for

addiction problems. And I don't know anybody, there's nobody in this country who doesn't have a friend or a relative or someone they care about generally who has a struggle with addiction. So I do think that's a real risk for Republicans. But Adisu, so even if we concede that getting impeached during an election year is not ideal, Donald Trump has been charged in four criminal cases. He was impeached twice, by the way. Do you think voters will see the criminal cases as materially different? Well, first, I will concede that nobody wants to get impeached, but I'm not going to concede that this impeachment is actually going to happen. We only need three or four Republicans to realize it's political suicide to vote for this, for the articles never to actually come to fruition.

So this inquiry is going to take place. I think, to your point, Dan, there will be a moment for the president to stand up there in the State of the Union whenever it comes towards the beginning of the year, but I'm not sure it's actually going to happen. With that said, there is something materially different between the Trump indictments and this Biden impeachment inquiry, and that is that one is bullshit and the other is actually based on facts. And the reality, I think here is that the Republican are trying to blur the line between reality and fantasy, and we can't allow them to do that.

We can't allow them to do it because talking about this and talking about, you know, indictments and impeachments together is actually going to serve their purposes, as it were. And, you know, they know that this is bullshit, right? You showed the clip from Chuck Grassley. I took a quote that I pulled up here from Chief Clown Matt Gates, who called Comer and Johnson's investigations failure theater. Fox News' Chief Clown Brian Kilmeade called the impeachment ridiculous and a waste of time. Ken Buck, a Republican congressman, wrote in the Washington Post in September that Republicans in the House who are itching for an impeachment are relying on an imagined history. They know this is bullshit. And I think voters, to answer your question,

voters are smarter than we give them credit for it sometimes, particularly the voters that I think we need to stay on our side or come back to our side next year. Voters of color, college educated voters in the suburbs. And once indictments turn to trials, turn to potentially convictions, I think the difference is going to be clear. But these are not the same thing. One is based in evidence and one is based in absolute fiction. Yeah, there's just no doubt that like... Like if you're one of the dozen or so Republicans who won in Biden districts that you are deeply unpleased.

Yeah. You're deeply unhappy with this situation. This is not what you want to be talking about. This is not what you want to be answering questions about. This is not what you want to be dealing with. And yet they all fucking voted for it today. Including Ken Buck, who wrote that op-ed. You quoted.

The ink was not dry on that op-ed when he turned around and voted for the thing that he said he was not going to vote for in the Washington Post. But maybe it is actually very believable. Yeah, it's very believable. You forgot about my guy, Dusty Johnson, from South Dakota,

who said, there's not evidence to impeach. I don't like the stonewalling the administration has done, but listen, if we don't have the receipts, then that should constrain what the House does. You guys know I've been hard on Dusty Johnson in the past, but that's a pretty solid quote. I don't listen to you. I just wait for my turn to talk. I just think that's a funny name. All right, love it. So Hunter Biden is refusing to sit for this private deposition. He's instead demanding that he be allowed to testify publicly. During a press conference Wednesday.

He said, quote, Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry or hear what I have to say. What are they afraid of? I'm here. I'm ready. What do you think of this high stakes game of political chicken? Here's what I think. I think he's making a lot of good points. I'd like someone else to make those points. Like this, this idea that we're heading to like a a big confrontation where hunter biden's going to clear his name that's not how this goes i i just i would like this to be i would like him to answer questions from republicans the way those college professors answered the questions from a lisa stefanik like lawyerly cold and dead just quiet fucking shitty boring answers uh we have to make the argument that everyone's talking about right that like republicans are in are you know joe biden is president as an antidote to republican

chaos extremism and corruption this impeachment inquiry is a distraction from that fight that joe biden's success as president is not something republicans can run against what they can run against is trumped up charges efforts to do what what Comer is doing, which is, if you watch Comer, he has been doing these interviews with Jake Tapper for literally a year now. And he goes on and he talks in that fucking high-pitched Southern accent for 15 minutes, never saying a goddamn thing while Jake smirks and smiles and says, you don't have anything. But Comer doesn't care because they're doing what they did with Benghazi. They're doing what they've done over the years to try to make it to just, even if there's no fire, they're going to do everything they can to create the illusion of smoke. So our job is to fight

that. What Hunter Biden does, I don't really care. I would like it to be quiet and in his own home. That's how I feel about it. I think it's worth talking for a second about why they're doing this, right? Like, how did, like, there are, as Tommy and Lovett just mentioned, 18 Republicans who are in districts that Joe Biden won. And that number is actually probably going to go up because New York, there's a court case in New York, and New York is going to redraw its districts. So a bunch of these...

We have cheered subpoena defiance and gerrymandering. My health. But when we do it, it's good. The short term political imperative for why they're doing this is there's a the law of republican physics is if you do one sane thing which is what the republicans did when they voted to prevent the government from shutting down you have to do one much bigger much more insane thing and that is this impeachment now there's not like edison was right there may be a chance they will never vote to actually impeach Joe Biden, but they want to keep the investigation going the entire time so that there can be some level of suspicion, and suspicion in a political environment where the overwhelming majority of Americans think most politicians are corrupt. And, you know,

one thing that we, you know, in the impeachment of Donald Trump, there were all these subpoenas that were never actually enforced because the Democrats were on a clock. They were trying to get it done quickly, so they never pushed it to the envelope or they would force there to be, go all the way up the Supreme Court, some of these subpoenas. Republicans would now have a year or 11 months to try to do that. And that's what they're hoping for is to just keep this out there. Maybe they find something that is totally unrelated to Hunter Biden that can be some moment in the campaign. Hillary Clinton's emails did not come from investigation into her email protocol. It came from an investigation into a totally bullshit special committee investigation into Benghazi. Yeah. And the Bill Clinton impeachment grew out of a decade older investigation out of

Whitewater. The other thing, too, just part of the reason they've pursued this specific investigation is Donald Trump ran an incredibly corrupt White House where his family members profited off the administration, where people who were working for him were doing shady fucking shit to position themselves to get, say, $2 billion from the Saudis after they left office. This is also about neutralizing a critique of Donald Trump to try to stir up something that seems to have the contours of the kind of corruption that actually took place when Donald Trump was president. That is what they're trying to do with Hunter Biden. That is what they were

trying to do when Donald Trump says Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. It is the I'm rubber, you're glue 2024 campaign. And I, and I, the only thing I would add is obviously we're talking about this because this happened today on Capitol Hill. It's news. But one of the things for the listeners, for the folks in the audience, like they want us to keep talking about this because it takes up space from all the other things we could be talking about, not just about things that President Biden and Democrats have done in Washington or elsewhere, but the things that Trump did in the're going to do it to Biden. Impeachment, impeachment. And try to get voters out there who are paying less attention than the listeners of the people in the audience to just say, throw up their hand and say they're all the same. And so I think it's incumbent a little bit upon us to, sure, talk about it. It's important news of the day. But also not to let this become the defining issue of the next six months because it's probably not a good place for us to be fighting this uh this election especially when trump becomes the nominee in a couple weeks i

don't know i mean yes i don't think we want to spend the next six months on this but i i think they are going to want to have this vote they did very little press on the vote they're not going to talk and they did it there's a reason they did it right before they went home for the holidays right just to get it done with now none of them have to get cornered by Jake Sherman in the hallway of the Capitol and answer for this. They're not going to see voters for weeks. They want to keep this kind of a little bit under the radar. Like they're going to go on Fox News and talk about it.

They'll be on Newsmax. I want anyone else to know about it. This is why I think that it's worth having a fight over this. And there are political merits to having the fight. Like there's going to be a moment where Donald Trump's a nominee and we're going to pivot hard. And that is going to be the thing. The next few months,

there's nothing that would be better, in my view, for Joe Biden's political standing than to get Democrats angry at Republicans. And this worked for Donald Trump because Donald Trump's poll numbers, we all cheered that day in December of 2019 when that impeachment was filed. Donald Trump's poll numbers went up over the course of that for two reasons. One is his approval rating among Republicans went from 80% to 90%. So that jumped his approval rating up significantly. And one of the only times Donald Trump has ever been above 50% with independents in the entire time of his presidency was when the Democrats were impeaching him.

Because the voters thought that that was not what Congress should be spending their time on. And so to your point, they want to make it about something, we should make it about something else, and we should have that argument, we should have it loudly. Yeah, maybe it's about not debating the facts. Oh, yes.

That should be more interesting. Exactly, that is exactly right. The facts of the matter are not, we shouldn't be debating it. If we're talking details, if you're explaining you're losing, is like super extra true when it comes to Biden impeachment. Yeah, no, what the voters, if you ask an open're losing is like super extra true when it comes to biden impeachment

yeah now what the voters if you ask an open-ended question to voters what are the most important issues facing the u.s it's inflation immigration democracy like those are the things they want us to focus on biden has to make the case that this impeachment inquiry is politicized and it's happening because donald trump their m said, Democrats did this to me, so now you have to do it to them. But Adesu, for a while, I mean, the reason we know the politics of this are a little unsteady for Republicans is because for a while, they were hesitant about impeachment. It was the Marjorie Taylor Greene's of the world pushing for it, while the kind of normal elements of the caucus were saying,

I don't know that we have the evidence yet. Now the support is unanimous. What do you think changed to get us here? I think Republican congressmen are more afraid of Donald Trump and the MAGA base than they are of anything else. And when the rubber meets the road, that's where they go. And luckily, next November, we're going to have a chance in those 17 districts or 18 or however many there'll be to show them the opposite. But I also think that the idea that the Republican Party hasn't been wholly taken over by the MAGA extreme right is just not true. There are a couple, sure, that hopefully those couple that end up voting or

intending to vote against articles of impeachment, thus it never moves forward. But the super majority of Republican Congress is now MAGA Republicans. And we just have to acknowledge that. And I know all of us, myself included, for the good of the country, for the good of the world, wish that there was a sane opposition on the other side. But it does not exist. And I don't think it will exist as long as Donald Trump is still in politics. It's why I still am in politics. Because I said the day after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, until that fucker is gone, I'm not going anywhere. And it's because he's a threat to democracy. But anyway, that's where i think i think ultimately the republican party

has been taken over by donald trump that is that starts at the top but it's it's the members of the house in particular and even honestly uh the rest of congress i think because they're they're mega now and we just have to acknowledge it and the rest of them have resigned okay we're going to take a quick break but we come back you'll hear from from California State Rep. Alex Lee. Have you ever asked yourself, do I have enough Dan Pfeiffer content in my life? Every day. Well, now you do.

Today, Dan's brand new series, Polar Coaster, drops its first ever episode. Plus, Dan's brand new series, Polar Coaster, drops its first ever episode. Plus, Dan and Alyssa team up in the second monthly installment of Inside 2024, dropping next Wednesday the 20th. In light of the Trump versus Biden campaigns, the two will be exploring the strategy behind running an incumbent campaign. To listen to both of these Dan-infused episodes, Head to crooked.com slash friends to sign up now. Please welcome to the stage your own state representative, Alex Lee. Hello, San Jose.

These are your people. I know. This is my home city, too. So it's really awesome. You're ending the tour in San Jose. It's awesome. All right. You were 25 when you ran for the seat and won.

I was 23 when I ran. Oh, there you go. I was sworn in at 25. Okay, there you go. I was sworn in at 25. So you were 23 when you started to run. I know what I was doing when I ran. I was sworn in at 25. So you were 23 when you started to run. I know what I was doing when I was 23. Running for office too?

No, no, absolutely not. Talk to me about how did you come to the decision to think that this is how you should spend your early 20s? And what gave you confidence that you could win? Yeah, so I'm 28 now. So that's three years into office.

So you're basically old now. Yes, I'm very old. If you ask my very young staff, they'll say I'm at death's door now. I'm basically at 30. But three years in, it feels like I've been in office for three decades, frankly. I started during the pandemic.

I won my primary two weeks before this county shut down because of the COVID pandemic and was the first ever in an entire country to do so. So you're like Joe Biden in that way? I think so too. I think we were both leaders in our own time like that too. I mean, hey, Joe Biden started very early too. I don't know if I could be president at his age too, but frankly- We'll get to that. We'll see. We'll see we'll see right but you know one thing that really motivated me to run for office and i was a legislative staffer before i ran for office is that i was frankly tired that we had a democratic super majority in california democratic control of all the executive office and yet we were surrendering to fucking incrementalism

we have some of the worst problems in the entire country, and people rightfully sometimes lampoon us for it, but we have to be really innovative in how we tackle these problems. And maybe it's because I'm from, I grew up here in Silicon Valley, but I went there, I disrupted things. I said we should think about things differently. We should tax billionaires. We should actually get people housing. And frankly, annoyed a lot of people with status quo. But I wasn't going to surrender to incrementalism. And that's why I ran. And how have your new older colleagues taken to your non-incrementalism message? I think at first, a lot of people were taken aback by my approach. You know, frankly, I've been in the legislature. I understood that a lot of things were true compromise, right?

But it was really nibbling away at the edges of so many things. But I am excited as we constantly have a refresh of new members. We are more and more bracing of new ideas. And frankly, it's also because how dire the consequences are or dire the issues are now. I mean, we, even though the wealthiest state in the entire country, have the largest population of unhoused people on the streets. And that is a symptom directly of our inequality.

So as more and more people understand how dire the issues are, I think more people are turning to issues. And frankly, I even got the governor to say it once, that I was right on something. And he doesn't usually say I was right on something. What was the thing you said you were right on? It was this year we actually investigated the gas gout the gouging prices on by gasoline companies and i proposed last year a windfall profits tax and then we had a special session to do just that so we adopt that proposal it changed along the way but i was really happy to work with governor gavin newsom on this issue too all right as you mentioned i think this is probably your signature

legislative effort has been introducing legislation to increase taxes on the wealthiest Californians, people with a net worth of $50 million or more. Apologies if any of those people are in this audience tonight. Can you walk us a little bit through that legislation and why you introduced it? Yeah. So very much like Senator Elizabeth Warren's proposal to tax mega millionaires and billionaires, just 1% of every dollar of their mega fortune, that proposal at the time when we created it, and we worked with a lot of smart academics and people worked in policy, worked on Senator Warren's proposal too, would have generated $22 billion a year, $22 billion a year. And you know, the funny thing about that is it unequally skewed

towards the billionaires, even amongst super rich people, the very, very rich people we pay. And we're talking about the Jeff Bezos's, the Mark Zuckerberg's, the Elon Musk's of the world, which I know you're going to talk about later. But those are the people that we pay an enormous amount of money. And I want to highlight to you why a wealth tax, an asset tax is so important. Because our taxation system, even in California and in the country, is very good at taxing if you make a paycheck. But once you no longer make a paycheck, especially the very rich people we know as household names today, when you own everything, and which is the most classical and ancient form of power, is ownership. You own everything you need. You can leverage more stuff because you own more stuff. And that's where the rich can forego paychecks and salaries and stuff

like that because you don't need anything. You own everything. That is true power. And that system goes unchecked. And that's why wealth is so imbalanced. And especially now, as you've probably seen the headlines, California is facing a budget crisis. We can continue to support our social services, our schools, our educators, all the great things that we want if we just said, let's tax the people that are already evading a taxation system now california has a lot of very politically active rich people how and we're gonna talk about some of them later um some of them like are are quite conservative but many of them are huge supporters of democratic politics in the state. What has been the response to your proposal in Sacramento? I think, you know, you have a lot of people who are very scared of the T word. And I encourage my fellow party members of Democrats to obviously always talk about taxes.

Because we, and we talked about, and you talked about this in the previous segment, we have to be the responsible adults in the room. We have to have a true fiscal responsible conversation. If we want the best schools in the world, actual healthcare system that serves people, we have to talk about how we're going to pay for it. Republicans always say there's no such thing as free lunch. I agree. So how do we together figure out what's the most equitable way to pay for lunch? And yet we're so afraid to say, how do we pay for things we enjoy? And one other thing of why a wealth tax is so important is that for more than half of Californians, they already pay wealth tax on their

most important source of wealth. It's called property tax. You already pay that. But with rich people, you own more than just one house. Well, they own a lot more than one house. They own a lot of things. And that's what a wealth tax gets at. One of the critiques that people have had to your proposal is that it would trigger an exodus of wealthy people from California, and that that would diminish the tax base during a time of, as you say, a budget crunch. What's your response to that? The reality is two things. The outbound migration of Californians tends to be upon working-class Californians. People that can pay the premiums being California, whether or not they

bitch and moan about California, they pay the premium. They stay here, frankly, because you can pay the premium. It's people who are squeezed in the middle and squeezed at the bottom who have no other options but to leave the state. Those are the people that leave the state. And we also know from history, under Governor Jerry Brown, who was a fiscal conservative, we raise income taxes on people. And yet the migration of high income people was not this exodus that people complained

about all the time. So frankly, all the times I see people complain about, well, if we do this, the rich will do this, or the rich will do that. I thought we live in a democracy, folks. I didn't know we live in an aristocracy where we did what the nobility wanted us to do. Let's talk a little about housing, right? It is every conversation you have with people all across the country, frankly, is about housing, but particularly as it relates to here in California. What have you been working on to try to address the lack of affordable housing in the

state? Absolutely. So when I ran in 2020, and just a small plug is that no one thought I was going to win in 2020, including myself, okay? Because I had $32,000 in a half a million people district to just knock on doors. But the most pressing issue that I talked about to people is housing affordability. I've shared this often. I am one of the five renters in the entire state legislature, five out of 120 people. And I'm also probably the only person that lives with their parent. Because in my area, it costs one,

well, it's actually now $2 million. $2 million to buy a house, last year's $1.6 million. And housing affordability is so critical to the very fabric of California society. Because think about this, if I, as someone who works in government and gets pretty decent well-paid, cannot afford to be a homeowner in my own community, as many people do, then what's our long-term hope in this place? Are

we going to be priced out and so it's only people who pay the premium can be here? So in the legislature, we're focusing more and more on housing affordability, a really active step. And under the leadership of our new assembly housing chair, Chris Ward from San Diego, my favorite tree hugger if he's listening, I'm really excited what we're going to do because we can thread so many different issues, climate justice, homelessness, social justice, through land use, through housing issues. It is very nerdy oftentimes. You talk about zoning or exclusionaries, policies or stuff like that. But the heart of it, what I try to tell voters, is that the way your community looks and feels is because of land use, is because of housing. And I believe that housing is human rights, so we should be doing as much as possible

as a government to make sure that everyone has a home. This is probably not fair. I don't mean to make you the spokesperson for your entire generation. But one of the biggest challenges... Often my colleagues do, but... That's right, that's right. But one of the biggest political challenges for President Biden and Democrats, frankly, across the country right now is that the young voters who propelled our election victories in 2018 and 2020 are becoming more disengaged, more disengaged from the Democratic

Party, not necessarily disengaged from issues. frustrated with President Biden. That's probably the group within his coalition where his approval ratings have gone down the most. What would your advice be to Democrats about how they win back and re-engage the younger voters who are so critical to any Democratic victory? Yeah, I don't, look, as speaking as also a strong progressive in our state legislature, and I'm also chair of the Progressive Caucus, you know, I'm someone who's frustrated with the Biden administration too. But sometimes as a young person, I'm puzzled why political analysts are so struggling with how to engage with young people. If you approach us just like every other demographic, it would make sense. Because

what we're asking is, what are you going to do for us? We've asked for student loan relief. We've asked for a decisive climate change. We've been asking very plainly for decisive action, material change, and yet we fall short, right? Especially in the student loan conversation, where it's been paused and a little bit of cut off, a little bit of this, right? People get very frustrated by that. So I think if there is decisive material benefit that's affecting us, I think that's what we want to see. And I think this president, as being the most progressive president in our history and the most pro-union president in our history, can deliver on those things. And like in a time when the Republicans, all they want to do is impeach or besmirch his family,

all these things, why not show him and say, hey, you know what? I'm just going to, like that, you're doing loan debt, it's gone. I'm'm gonna make health care for him i'm gonna do all these things i'm just gonna do it because it's also just as important as to brag about our victories and do press releases and i know as a politician we also have to deliver on these things and make people feel the change because if people feel that this government's working for them they really will vote for it they will turn out for that but right now i think a lot of people are disillusioned and they feel there isn't that moral clarity or that decisive action. And that's what, you know, Democrats want. We want decisive social change. And if we don't see that,

it's hard to be inspired. Well, I think that's a great place to end it. Please give it up for Alex Lee. All right. Since we're in San Jose, a city that is sometimes referred to as the city that's an hour south of the capital of Silicon Valley. Just kidding. I'm just, that's fine. We thought we spent the rest of the show

talking about the intersection of tech and politics. And to help us sound smart for once, we are joined by Zoe Schiffer. She is the managing editor at Platformer. Excellent, excellent site and the co-author of the forthcoming book, Extremely Hardcore

Inside Elon Musk's Twitter. You can pre-order it today, I imagine. Right? Zoe, welcome to the pod. Thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful to have you. Okay. Wait, before, can we just get a gauge of the audience so we know who we're dealing with here?

How many of you are current Twitter users? Can you raise your hands? No shame. And how many of you pay for X premium? Applaud if you do. Okay, we're among friends. We can go on. Does any one person in this room pay for X premium?

If so, please leave. Zoe will scorch you out. Speaking of X, premium or regular. So this week, I guess this is premium now. Elon Musk continued the race to the bottom by reinstating none other than Alex Jones. You remember Alex Jones, the guy who claimed that Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax and got his band of followers to harass the families of the victims. So not only did Elon

reactivate Alex Jones's account, he invited him to appear in a live Twitter space, whatever you call that, space thing with Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Here's a clip. Gentlemen, I have to go. Yeah, I just want to be clear about my position. I'm super pro-human, and I mean all humans. You know, humans in America, humans in Africa, Asia, and everywhere else. Somebody's got their phone open in the bathroom.

Yeah, that's Vivek. That's your phone, Vivek. I'm not to put his phone open in the bathroom. Yeah, that's Vivek. That's your phone, Vivek. I'm not able to mute you. Vivek. All right, perfect. Go ahead, Elon. Sorry about that. Yes, we did play that clip on Tuesday's show,

but Democrats have been promising you guys a pee tape for six years. And it's time we finally delivered. Our producer wanted us to try this one. That Vivek's a real whiz kid, huh? Got some booze, Alona. So obviously reinstating Alex Jones is basically a way of signaling you don't actually care about trust and safety or content moderation or anything. But it's also part of a broader trend where tech companies like Meta and YouTube have changed their policies on political advertising. They've relaxed restrictions on disinformation, like claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Zoe, do you think these companies are basically giving up on content moderation as we roll into 2024? Yeah, I mean, none of this is an accident. I think that there is a legitimate attack on free speech happening, but it's not the attack that most people think. There's an effort from conservatives to make the work of content moderation seem dangerous and downright illegal. And this is the culmination of that plan. Have any tech companies done a good job with content moderation that you've seen? I mean, X has now set the bar pretty low. So I would say anything above having Alex Jones of the background, a Swami peeing on air is pretty good at this point. How's LinkedIn doing? Are they crushing it? The well, like, like, the Republicans in Missouri,ouri i believe are now going after media matters right

so like they claim to be for free speech but then basically they target people who just simply want accountability or to hold people accountable for their speech yeah the thing about free speech on these platforms is it doesn't mean that all speech is allowed because what happens when you allow all speeches that most people actually cannot speak because they're brutally harassed. And so you need some level of content moderation. And there's a real effort right now to make that seem politicized when it's honestly not. Yeah. So DC, I mean, Democrats in particular have gone back and forth on whether we should be on these platforms and fighting it out, whether we should starve them of users and revenue, I guess. Where do you land at this point? Yeah, maybe an unpopular position for the room, but I actually,

I'm not paying for premium, that's for damn sure. But, you know, our job in campaigns to win elections at some level is to take the world as it is. And if people are using a medium, it's very hard to just take yourself out of the game of talking to the people who are either getting their information, political or otherwise, from that medium. And so I had a couple debates when I ran Senator Booker's campaign for president in 2020. Should we go on Fox News or should we not? I know there's been talk about the president getting off of some of these platforms. People are there, right? And when you, again, when you're in a campaign in particular, your job is to communicate your message to people

where they are. So my general position is, should we be supporting with advertising dollars? Probably not to the extent that we, certainly not in the corporate sense, but on the campaign side, it's really hard to say, no, don't spend any money talking to voters on meta when that's where they are and you are basically ceding a battleground to Trump and the Republicans. It's interesting though, like I have no disagreements at all,

but the debate that Elon Musk and these sort of guys want to have is one about kind of like abstractions and ethics, which kind of makes sense because they're the worst people at college, right? Like that's, that's what this group is like the worst people you met in college grown up. Uh, but like from a business perspective and just from a user perspective, yes. Like what are the ethical bound? What are the more, what is, what is, what are the, like the, the like Kantian categorical imperatives around free speech? Like put that aside. Like who cares about any of that?

Like, is this a place you want to spend your time? Is this a fun and exciting and cool and, and rewarding and enriching experience? Like the answer is no. And so like, you can have a debate about like the, the limits of free speech on the internet, but from a business perspective and for us as users, I don't care what that ethical line is. I got off of Twitter and I'm a little bit happier. And so when they go after Media Matters or they go after the left

or they claim like Elon Musk claims the Anti-Defamation League is silencing him. He's like, how dare these Jews claim I'm an anti-Semite? These fucking Jews won't stop saying I'm an anti-Semite. How many times do I have to tell these fucking Jews to get off my dick? I'm not an anti-Semite. It's just these Jews won't shut the fuck up. When will these sneaky fucking Jews stop telling me that I'm an anti-semite i'm gonna sue these rich sneaky international cabal of fucking jews for calling me an anti-semite because everyone knows i love humans that's what you could hear in the fucking background of that asshole peeing. And so the point is, this intellectual masturbation around

free speech is not Elon Musk's problem. The problem is that people who treat other people like dicks, who treat other people like assholes, who make other people feel bad, that's a platform people don't want to be on, which means it's not a platform businesses want to advertise on. And that's not an ethical question. That's just a product question. Yeah. I mean, you can have a platform that has Alex Jones, or you can have a platform that makes money from advertising. You can't have both. Yeah. I mean, there's a reason that content moderation on these platforms generally always ends up

at the same place. You start out saying you're a free speech absolutist, and then a foreign government says that you're going to be booted out of the entire country unless you take down speech. And so if you're Elon Musk, you take that down real, real fast. And this keeps coming from every angle. Is child sexual exploitation allowed? Absolutely not. Is this other kind of speech allowed? Absolutely not.

Oh, this person's getting harassed and doxxed, and now their life is in danger. Is that allowed? And then you end up, well, like Meta or the other platforms, or you end up, as you said, with Alex Jones. And then one day, an impulsive man-child buys your company for $45 billion, and this is where you are. When you talk to people who work at other tech companies, the Metas, the YouTubes,

are they like, thank God Elon bought Twitter. This is the best thing that's ever happened to us. No one talks about us anymore. They don't say that, but I would think that that is the general feeling because the bar has been set at the absolute ground level at this if i worked at facebook comms i would buy that man a drink i don't know i mean mark zuckerberg can we talk about his reputation like he looks incredible he's had a summer of all summers i mean the pr team there

is like tybo and taranace yells and no one cares. He's popular now. It's like, you know, he's like an ex-boyfriend. And it's not that he's better. He wasn't a better boyfriend in hindsight. It's just that the boyfriend after him was so awful. Exactly. It's like, yeah. You're like, he looked really good, actually.

What? So Republicans and conservative media like to attack the Bay Area in the tech industry as this lefty liberal paradise. And while it's certainly true that a lot of tech company employees are progressive, their bosses and their investors are often more right wing or assholes like elon musk or peter teal or david saxe the list goes on and on even twitter founder jack dorsey in between yoga retreats uh endorsed rfk jr for president so i mean zoe do you have a sense of are you people surprised or disappointed or both both Both. Disgusted. Disgusted. That's the right response. I heard a disgusted. All right.

Do you have a sense of which candidates the kind of like big money players in Silicon Valley are supporting? I feel like they've been kind of dabbling in a few along the way. I mean, yeah, I think we can watch like the David Sachs's of the world and they seem to be trending towards Vivek

and RFK Jr. I know, but I mean, that does seem to be like, if you follow where the money is and where the fundraising is happening, that seems to be it. I mean, Peter Thiel, I guess, has decided to sit out this election and not donate to any more candidates in 2024. And to get himself there, he did this long interview with The New Yorker to announce his decision because he said it would force him to not change his mind. I guess the New Yorker is his accountability partner, as Speaker Mike Johnson might say. Like, wouldn't it be easier to just like tweet it out, dude, not spend like 18 hours with Barton Gelman or whatever he

did? That's a weird move. I mean, if you were to tell me that if I did an 18-hour interview with The New Yorker and I would never get another fundraising text in my life, I would do that. That does sound pretty good. You know what? Dan, you raise a really important point. We're in San Jose. I'll do my pitch again. It's called Democrat Plus.

You pay a monthly fee, and then you never get a text again. Join Democrat Plus today, and then you don't get text again. Join Democrat Plus today and then you don't get another text from a House candidate you've never heard of with a picture that says, I'll kill myself if you don't donate right now. The sound of those cheers means you just raised $30 million.

Hell yeah. It's happening. It's happening. It's already vaporware. I mean, this is a hard question, but is there a political ethos in Silicon Valley? No. Really?

This guy says no. That drone said no. I feel like there's, I mean, I think there's a big difference between, like you said before, the people who have money who are supporting the Vivex, the Rondosantis of the world, and then the people who are like on the ground working at these companies and are pushing for more progressive policies. But I think Silicon Valley kind of has its own ideology and it's like industry first in a lot of ways. But that's, I wouldn't say that's reflected in the rank and file employees. There's also a weird amount of paranoia. And I can't tell if the paranoia comes with the industry

or the paranoia comes when the industry or the paranoia comes when you have lots of money and you're worried about losing it. For example, in that same New Yorker story about Peter Thiel, Sam Altman is quoted the CEO on again, off again, CEO of OpenAI. And he said that in a global catastrophe, he and Peter Thiel were going to wait it out together and Peter Thiel's sheep ranch in New Zealand. Yeah. The prepper community. Are you new to this? Why are there so many preppers here? Tell us more about the prepper community. I don't really know. Yeah, I think it's a, from what I can tell, it's like an exciting ideology that men in this industry, this is a generalization, but it's what I've seen,

seem to feel like if the end of the world is nigh, then that's a very energizing way to go through life. And it justifies a lot of decision-making along the way. I mean, you know, it's just my opinion. There's a little bit of something where I feel like some of these wealthy tech people feel as though they got away with a heist. You know, they feel like they got away with something, so it feels a little ill-gotten. And so psychologically, it's about to go,

it's like they're like mobsters putting cash in their, like it's like the money that's buried with Havana on the golf course. You know, like, you know Trump put valuables down there because on some level he knows it can all go away because it's ill gotten. And if it's, and if he got it and if he got it the wrong way, it can go just as quickly. And I feel like there's that, there's some little broken part of that brain where it's just like, I got away with something. And at some point the world is going to catch wise, which is why part of the end of the world is trying to figure out how to

get their super soldiers to wear the neck brace that'll explode if they don't follow orders, if money doesn't work. You know what I mean? I mean, I hear you. I do. It's very polite of you to pretend you know what he means. You guys remember that story? That the billionaires didn't know what to do when their money stopped working, so they figured out they'll put little bracelets, they'll put things around the neck so that the guys keep listening. I think they got to go outside. Bring us back, Tommy. Good luck. I'm here. The last few years haven't been the best for some parts of the tech community. You had higher interest rates, making it harder for venture capitalists to raise money for the

next round of whatever. That's what that parade is about that's that we're gonna do that walk-a-thon for them yes silicon valley bank collapsed you had these major crypto exchanges going bankrupt you have leading figures like sam bankman freed potentially doing jail time uh but now all of a sudden the price of bitcoin is back up. The New York Times just wrote an article about a 27-year-old who raised nearly $20 million to build a crypto city in the Mediterranean. I'm sure that'll pan out. Is the tech bubble back? I mean, have you heard of artificial intelligence?

Tell me more. Tell me everything. Yeah, I think we have a new bubble. You have a new bubble and it's AI? I mean, I think the tech, there's a lot of money in Silicon Valley still tell me everything yeah i think we have a new bubble you have a new bubble and it's ai i mean i think the tech there's a lot of money in silicon valley still and we will find ways to funnel and we i'm not part of this they will find ways to funnel it into various projects and i think artificial intelligence you know has more legitimacy i would say than crypto but definitely

it's where the money is at now i mean just feel like there's this real urgency because there hasn't been a new thing since a smartphone was invented. So we're at 15 years from now. So it's like, we're waiting for the thing that's going to create all this new wealth and crypto was supposed to be that thing. Yeah. And then it wasn't. And so now it's AI. And so if you just put, like, there are all these, I mean, you've written many of these stories with these people who just basically put AI in a deck and people are throwing millions of dollars at them. It's like it's AI for dog food.

And you're like, AI-powered dog food? Take my money. Well, the alternative is that Apple's like, now the phone has four cameras. Why? It's like, hey, people, I don't know how much time you spent with your Alexa recently, but I think I'm going to be smarter in 15 years. I want to read you an email I received from my friend Samir on May 30, 2011. This is real.

Speaking of crackpot financial schemes, anyone want to buy some Bitcoins? I want you to know that we decided not to buy Bitcoins that day because we had a different stock we were interested in. It was TiVo. Adisu, you're still in politics. That's real. You're working on campaigns. You're cutting ads. Or you were before tonight. The hope and the anxiety and the Democratic Party

is all about the impact of AI potentially on campaigns. Are you seeing any of this play out in this cycle? Yeah. If I'm not mistaken, yesterday in a Pennsylvania House race, don't ask me why I know this, AI was used to phone bank for the first time. Really? Like a conversation with a voter via a robot, basically.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it probably wasn't that effective. But I think we're, yes, the short answer is we're at the beginning of But I think we're, yes, the short answer is we're at the beginning of what I think is going to be potentially a scary, potentially a exciting, you know, revolution of every industry when it comes to AI, but politics as well. And so it's not, I think, you know, I think back to 08, was it Facebook in 08 or Twitter? Maybe it was Facebook in 04. It was Facebook. Facebook in 08 and Twitter in 12.

And, you know, there's always something in a cycle that becomes the next big thing until it's not. In 2020, it was COVID. That stuck around for a while. But I'm not sure if this is going to be the AI cycle or another one, but I do think it's coming because I actually think it can be potentially very helpful to our industry. I also think it's very dangerous because, you know, when it comes

to jobs and, you know, we usually have human beings making phone calls, for example, and if AI gets really good at phone calls, goodbye field organizing, right? It becomes a lot cheaper to do that, et cetera. And so we're not there yet. I don't think this is the cycle probably where it takes over. But we're all gonna have to figure this out, just like we figured out every other tech thing for the last 20 years I've been doing this. I do. I do worry that like, we see with, you know, artificial images that the threat isn't people thinking fake things are real. Well, that is a threat, but just as big as the threat isn't people thinking fake things are real well that is a threat but just as big as the threat that people start seeing real things as fake that you start

to doubt whatever you see and whatever you hear already i think i know that i am deluged with text messages and phone calls that i don't answer and even if you have an ai phone call that can just as effectively reach people really what you're doing is creating a device to make phone calls more ubiquitous and then less useful as a result. We've been talking about this in a bunch of different ways, but so much of what politics is now is figuring out how to break through the noise and break through the clutter. much of what politics is now is figuring out how to break through the noise and break through the clutter and for years and years like we basically built a kind of information system that values almost true kind of dull kind of uh um uh semi semi-emotional things that like that feel true but aren't necessarily true and that's a perfect thing for artificial intelligence to generate vast amounts of.

And so we kind of devalued information and then built a system that can make it even cheaper. And I don't know what happens on the other side of it, but maybe the only way out is through. The intersection of politics and AI is incredibly fascinating, right? There's all the dangers of deep fake videos and all of that. And I think love it raises a really important point, which is,

and I'm sure you've seen this, but people are so skeptical right now of politicians and political ads that the only ads that really work are the ones that use a politician in their own unedited voice, where it's just like footage of Donald Trump saying something or a voter making a regular person. Who's not a politician explaining why it would be bad to take the affordable care act away.

The Biden campaign as an ad up like that right now. And AI actually has the potential to render the first one, not actually, I, but the prospect of a Donald Trump has already said that a very legitimate video of his was a deep fake. And he's going to do that throughout this campaign. And so that's a big thing. But then there's some other really bad ways in which AI or annoying ways that AI has affected us, which is the only thing that's preventing us from getting more fundraising

emails and texts is the time it takes to write those. And then when you take that friction out if you're just asking chat gpt to send you an insane text about you know how why the entire world's going to come to an if you don't give money to a pack you've never heard of five minutes ago like that's and it's going to reward the worst like most grifty players but there are other ways in which i think it's incredibly it could be incredibly useful because ultimately politics is the is the marriage of art and science and words and data and their ways to think much more to understand what politicians are saying and at every level right whether it's where there's all this scrutiny on what comes out of president biden's mouth in the campaign like what like what is that the right message between the speech

between the ads but you could use you could then take the data you're using to inform that and apply it across every conversation that every voter is having not by this is not saying we're going to create a fake chat bot to add that conversation but by sort of smoothing out the process by which you're using the most optimized messages in every single uh interaction and that is like a very very interesting thing and my my DMs are open on LinkedIn if anyone wants to talk about it. So interestingly, like for all the anxiety about AI and deep fakes and things ahead of us, it does seem like a lot of people have been driven off Twitter recently, not because of deep fakes, but because of like people surfacing old videos and saying that they were from Gaza when really they were like Syria in 2015. Is that a Twitter specific problem or what do you think is happening there?

Yeah. I mean, Elon Musk has promoted a crowdsourced fact checking tool as the first line of defense between telling fact from fiction on his platform. And I think we've seen more recently that that's woefully inadequate in times of crisis. We need a multi-pronged approach, especially during an election. And that's going to take inadequate in times of crisis. We need a multi-pronged approach, especially during an election. And that's going to take human content moderators and it's going to take AI and it's going to take sophisticated tools. And the trust and safety team at X

is a shadow of its former self. They've really devalued and under-invested in all of these things. And I think that's going to be an enormous problem in the coming election. I hate the community notes thing. It's obviously a ridiculous thing. But I will say that someone attacked Taylor Swift for when she was named the Time Woman of the Year saying, how could this billionaire person who could end the war in Gaza with one Instagram post

get this award? And the community notes thing was, traditionally, Instagram posts have not ended century-old conflicts. That was truly a great one. What a ridiculous thing to think Taylor Swift could do. That's not what she could do. What she could do is solve a lot of unsolved murders. On Tuesday, a jury in San Francisco ruled in favor of Fortnite maker Epic Games in their lawsuit against Google. Epic Games claimed that Google had an illegal monopoly in the Google Play Store.

After the win, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney told The Verge, quote, It's a great day for all developers to see that the Sherman Antitrust Act works in the new era of tech monopolies. How big a deal do you think this decision is? And do you think it's going to impact other antitrust cases going forward? Yeah, I mean, it's a really big deal. Although I will say we're a few years out from knowing exactly what the final answer to this is. Google has already said that it's going to appeal. If the ruling stands, then I think we can expect to see a more robust app ecosystem where smaller developers are able to circumvent Google's in-app fees, which are 30% right now. And we might see multiple app stores and all of that is very good for consumers.

But I do think it's a little early to know what this could mean for Apple and other big tech companies. Because Epic lost the same suit against Apple, right? Because Apple makes the phones. So they had a different set of rules. Is that right? Yeah. And also Google won a similar case that was decided by a judge last year. And so I think it's still a total question mark. This was a jury trial, which ended up being quite important. This is also a case where I think President Biden has gotten a lot of credit for putting in place regulators who have a track record of writing and thinking and saying things that I think are a lot tougher on tech monopolies. Do you think the toughness of those appointees has played out in practice in terms of, I don't know, even changing behavior in Silicon Valley?

I don't know. I mean, when we think of the FTC, we certainly have a much stronger FTC and more aggressive FTC than we have in the past. At the same time, Lena Kahn, like there have been a lot of losses. And I think that was part of the strategy. You all might know better than me, but my understanding of her approach was we're going to take really big swings and there will be a lot of losses along the way. But we have to take a stand for consumers and change the definition of what the FTC is really here to do. So I think it's actually, it's kind of yet to be determined what all of that looks like, but people are definitely paying attention. It's interesting because Donald Trump, you know,

likes to pretend he's like this big populist, but there are a lot of these tech companies who are basically putting on pause the idea of merging or acquiring someone to see what happens the election because if donald trump gets in that'd be much better in their view for big tech monopolies right and that's actually gonna i think a uh that's not the exact argument but it's part of the overall populist case that biden can make is that donald trump is going to that they're rooting for him because it is better for monopolies and big, huge companies under Trump because they're scared that Joe Biden is going to enforce antitrust laws. Yeah. I also do think sometimes this debate,

like the risks posed by these companies being so big and having monopolies, like that creates one set of very big challenges. And I think it's really important that we have aggressive antitrust laws and regulations, but I also think it sometimes is a quick thing for, I think, politicians to say to like kind of wave off some of the issues that actually don't have as much to do with the size of these companies, like issues of misinformation, privacy issues. I think the fact that these companies are so enormous and have so much power impacts the ways in which they don't have to respect consumer privacy, consumer rights. They don't have to worry about regulation, in part because of their influence and their lobbying. But regardless of whether they break Amazon in half or spin off, allowing WhatsApp to be under, who bought that, Meta? Meta. Regardless, we need a privacy law. Regardless, we need regulation of these companies.

Yeah, 100%. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're back! Thank you all for joining us this evening. The most American questions are the questions the people of San Jose ask every day. Can we squeeze any money out of meditation? Would people pay a monthly fee to access

extra features on their smart blender? How can we brand our toilet camera in a way that assuages privacy concerns? What if we could make life a little better and worse while getting filthy fucking rich? So it's time for a game we're calling, cue the slide, Tech Tech Boom. Zoe and Dan will be one team. Disu and Tommy will be the other.

I will alternate asking each team a weird tech industry question. If they can't answer the question, the other team has the chance to steal. Are you ready? Yes. Born ready. Question, first we'll start. Do we have to buzz or something? No.

We'll alternate. Don't worry, I got this. Okay. I believe you. Ish. You question. If it was Ken Jennings, you would just trust him. I happen to be a drunk idiot.

Just yesterday, the New York Times profiled a 27-year-old NYU dropout who is raising money to build a crypto city for tech bros and tastemakers in the Mediterranean. What is that guy's name? And what is the name of the tech utopia he reportedly tried to build in Ghana before pivoting? Praxis is the... Yeah, that's the current one. His name is Dryden Brown. That is correct. I was going to give you multiple choices. No, no, no. Shout out to Santa Barbara. He's from my hometown.

We are screwed. Tom and Adisu. Bill in the blank. One of the internal slides revealed by the Wall Street Journal's Facebook files is a slide titled user experience of blank

is exacerbated by our platform complete with the graph outlining how teen girls experience severe negative mental health outcomes by using Instagram. What is that user experience?

Is this multiple choice? No. I think their experience of blank... I'd like to phone a friend. Do you want to steal? That friend is Zoe. Is it filters?

No. No, no. No, no. It's an emotional experience. Wait, wait. Can you... Sorry. Can you read that just one more time?

It's their... The user's experience of blank is exacerbated by our platform. And it's about teen girls experiencing negative mental health outcomes. Something to do with B? I heard body dysmorphia.

You're in the ballpark. Oh, okay. Body image? It was just downward spiral. Their experience of downward spiral. I feel like I need to work on the mad lips.

Yikes. That's sad but hard to guess. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. And so is hard. Who cares? Who tweeted, Tommy and Adisu,

the coronavirus panic is dumb on March 6, 2020? Elon Musk. Elon Musk. Starting a nearly uninterrupted four-year string of being awesome. Dan and Zoe. I'll read my book to find out more. Which startup launched by Jeffrey Katzenberg is considered one of the biggest failed startups in history? Yep, you got it.

They were in our building. They were in our building. Tommy and Adisu Juicero, a flop sold a $400 wifi connected juice press that used proprietary packets of pre-mangled fruits bottomed out because Y. A. You could buy juice at the store B. There were more affordable juicers

C. You could squeeze juice with your hands or D. You could eat a piece of fucking fruit I remember this story well because i was a little drift in my career at the time and i had a meeting with a really smart really nice person i should think dan connected me with the life story we talked about a bunch of different interesting things happening in silicon valley i lived in san francisco at the time and juicero came up and i was like that sounds cool but i'm not like a juice guy but it turned out

you could just squeeze the pack. That's correct. You could just squeeze the juice out of them. You didn't need the $400 like timed release system that sat in your kitchen

to squeeze the pack. Insane. Insane. And remember it was also, it was like, it was end user license agreement like fucked with so that like

if your juice packet was past a certain date, the machine wouldn't squeeze it for you? But your hands still cook. Yeah, the machine would be like, no, no, this juice is not for you. Get other juice. Are the other answers incorrect, or is that one just super correct? Because I think you can just eat some fucking fruit.

Oh, yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. You got the right answer. I don't know why you're arguing. Take the points. I'll take the answer. I don't know why you're arguing. Take the points. I'll take the points. I didn't think of that. Which disgraced tech mogul's lawyer told the media this week

that his client may be at the very top of the list as the worst person I've ever seen do a cross-examination? Sam Bankman-Fried? That is correct. His lawyer said that to Bloomberg. Is he in jail currently or is he on home arrest?

He's in jail. Wait, I thought he was in jail but I'm hearing home arrest. But I'm not a crypto gal. I think he got sent to jail for doing too much internet. Yeah. He's like talking to Michael Lewis

like 500 times. That is accurate. It's a good Democrat you're talking about all right tech weirdo brian johnson made a splash this fall by insisting he had actually lowered the biological age of his penis by 15 years how did he claim to do this hint it's your second thought hint. It's your second thought. I have no idea. How did he claim he lowered the age of his

penis by 15 years? Like the weights that kind of pull on it? So that's your first thought. What's your second thought? You guys want to steal it? Nope. Kegels. I feel like it's all them. Anybody out there want to steal it? Nope. Kegels. I feel like it's all them.

Anybody out there want to guess? That's right. By electrocuting his penis. According to Johnson, there's this technology. You have a wand and you sit in a chair. And the technician uses the wand and basically shocks your penis. Hey, remember when smart people used to invent airplanes and antibiotics?

No one got that one. I also just like, why did he think it worked? During her trial, jurors heard... Who's up? Let's go this way. Tommy, pay attention. This is our last show of the year, guys. During her trial,

the thing they use to shock me, John has it. During her trial, jurors heard Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes make a number of false claims to journalist Roger Parloff, who recorded their interviews for Peace and Fortune. Which of these was not a lie?

Which was not a lie that Holmes told during those interviews? A, that Theranos had worked with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. B, that Theranos had worked for foreign governments. That C, Theranos had worked with border security. D, that Theranos had worked for foreign governments, that C, Theranos had worked with border security, D, that Theranos had worked correctly

when performing over 600 tests, making it competitive with Quest Diagnostics. That one's a lie, right? Yeah, it's gotta be. Well, they're all, which is the lie she didn't tell? Oh, okay. It's such a confusing question. She told? It's like jazz. Afghanistan? No, because she would do... No, the Afghanistan one I think is

real, because that was part of their... They had Jim Mattis on the board. Yeah. Oh, there you go. Who was Afghanistan... Defense Secretary. I think it's the... They worked with people overseas is my guess.

Yeah, let's go with that one. Incorrect. It was the border. I thought we had to steal it. Did you know the answer? Border Patrol, obviously. You got it. I believe you.

You're trusting. You have a trustworthy face. Dan and Zoe. Which of these unfortunately named failed apps is a real unfortunately named failed app? In other words, one of these is real. A. Hitler, no vowels.

A music app designed for users to upload their hits and have them reviewed by other musicians. B blow me, a balloon delivery startup. C fascism, a fashion app designed for users to upload their looks and have them critiqued by other fashionistas. Or D, F My Dog, a pet finder app that seems to have been pretty normal except for that rank name. One of those is real. Which one? Is it Hitler? Blow me.

Fascism, or F my dog? What do you think? I'm between fascism and blow me, which I don't like to be, but... That's what it's like to be on Twitter right now. You're always stuck between fascism and blow me. Let's go with fascism? Yeah. You got it. What? And Ashton Kutcher

and Mila Kudas invested in it in 2011. Of course they did. And finally, and anybody can take it, who wrote this tweet? I just gave a squirrel a piece of bread and it straight smashed. Travis Kelsey. You got it. Zoe got it. It was Travis Kelsey? I just gave a squirrel a piece of bread and it straight smashed. Travis Kelsey.

You got it. So we got it. It was Travis Kelsey. I just gave a squirrel a piece of bread. Every word spelled wrong. Squirrel spelled in, I guess, the British way. That's actually how we spell squirrel now, though. He decided it then and that's the correct.

I, not before E, a piece of bread and it straight smashed all of it. I had no idea they ate bread like that. Ha ha, hashtag crazy. That was Travis Kelsey. Zoe and Dan, you've won the game. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, they did.

Congratulations. You've won two tickets to Praxis. We found it on, I quote, traditional European Western beauty standards in which the civilized world at its best points has always found success in cool it's like I always say

inside every techno libertarian millionaire is a tiny little fascist waiting to pop out like an alien through John Hurt's abdomen give it up for Zoe everybody applause applause applause before we go we thought it would be fun to take a couple questions

or maybe hear a couple tech horror stories we're just going to open up did you work at Hitler? that was a fake one did you work at fascism? we want to know did you work at Juicero? you pronounce the E do we have a mic out there?

I think Austin's out there. We can bring the lights up. Ben's going out there. We open to questions or what's that website, Demois, the one where you get gossip? Anonymous gossip about tech freaks also welcome.

Or questions? I have none of that. Isn't this your fifth anniversary? Is it what? Your fifth anniversary. Fifth anniversary of what? Your company. Is it?

I don't think so. No? No. I think we started in seven. Early 2017. I don't remember before this. I've always been here. I've always been here. I'll always be here.

Here's my question. When you look back on the founding of Crooked Media, is where you are now where you thought you would be? Did it grow the way you thought? I remember that first meeting when Tommy just wrote on a cocktail napkin, San Jose. Here's what I'd say. When we were doing the podcast

that was on the ringer and we decided to do Pod Save America and try to launch a company around it, we were protected by just how little we knew. We had the confidence of ignorance. True, true ignorance. And that gave us, I think, the freedom

to believe that this could work. And I think we thought there were a lot of other people that felt like we did that would want to be part of a community like this. But I don't think, A, we understood just how hard it would be to build a company and how much smarter the people would have to be who would ultimately need to do it. And then, B, I think, like, no, we could have never anticipated that we would be here all these years later. I, you know, look, we thought we'd give it a year and then I'd be on some kind of failed Roseanne reboot writing jokes for. Didn't that almost happen?

It did almost happen. That's my other fucking path. She got canceled, right? Yeah. We sat in Jon Favreau's kitchen for months, which Emily did not like. And we created a Medium website, which we barely knew how to do, announced it and called it a company. You bet.

We had to use the website getcrookedmedia.com because Crooked Media and Crooked.com, there was a guy in Prescott, Arizona. His career was in porn, but his passion was taking on the liberal media. So eventually we had to, remember that? The porn king of Prescott, Arizona? What happened to that guy? Anyway, we got it, the website, eventually. Oh, man. What else we got? My question is actually for Dan. I'm sorry. It's not a tech question either. I was just reading the, some of the bios and in yours on, uh, it stated that you are banned from going to Russia because of Putin. I sat back and like, is that really true?

And if it's really true, what the hell did you do to Dan? Dan dated his daughter. In the early 80s. Ugly breakups. Messy. It is true. And the reason I am banned to this day from traveling to Russia is when Russia invaded Ukraine the first time in 2014, I was previously scheduled to go on Meet the Press to do an interview about something else. Because no one sends me on TV to talk about major foreign policy.

But it happened basically after I was already scheduled. talk about major foreign policy, but it happened basically while I was, after I was already scheduled. So our friend Ben Rhodes, whose time is... A lot of Roldos here. He gave me some very aggressive talking points about why Putin's decision

to invade Russia was really a sign of weakness, not strength. And so when the Russians banned a whole bunch of people, a bunch of Americans in retribution for the U.S. sanctioning a bunch of Russian officials, I got added to that list, which answered the mystery of which people in the world still watch the Sunday shows.

Wow. Great. Very observant reading of the bio. Well done. What else we got out there okay i have a question about relational organizing versus ai let's hear it do you want applause for the topic okay so the question is do you think that relational organizing is going to become more important like walking out and canvassing in person versus the phone calls

and texts? Wow, that might be a question for me. It's a great question. It is a really good question. I actually haven't really thought about the implications of AI with it, but that's really interesting. For those of you who don't know, relational organizing is really just, you know, in the old days, like five years ago, you would get a list of your neighbors or what have you, or you'd walk into a campaign office and they'd give you a list of voters and you'd go knock the doors and you'd talk to them about your candidate. Now, sort of in the last two or three cycles, the organizing hot thing du jour, which I actually think, to answer your question, is the right way to do organizing is basically tapping the contacts in your phone and allowing you to sort of define who within your own

iPhone or Android or whatever it might be. Contact list is a target voter and communicating with them presuming if they're in their phone you already know them. I think it is a more effective way to organize because organizing is all about relationships and if somebody's in your phone that presumes you already know them and you already have a relationship

with them and so your communication with them will be more effective than a stranger coming to their door. I don't really know how AI, I mean, I feel like AI could help sort of accelerate it ultimately, but it still comes down to the core power of relational organizing

is that you know the person you're talking to before you show up and talk to them about politics. And thus they are more likely to accept what you have to say, pick up the phone, whatever it may be, and maybe AI can just help make it basically a little more efficient. All right.

Well, listen, thank you, San Jose. Thank you, Adisu. Thank you, Zoe. Thanks, Alex Lee, for being here. Great to see you. Have a great night. Night, everybody. If you want to get ad-free episodes,

exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. And if you're already doom-scrolling, don't forget to follow us at pod, save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes,

bonus content, and more. Plus if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Give us your own takes. Give us a review. Give us your takes on our takes. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.

Our producers are Olivia Martinez and David Toledo. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Writing support from Hallie Kiefer. Reid Cherland is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Tolles, Kiril Pellaviv, and Molly Lobel.