Pod Save America - “Not a scrupulous individual.”

Episode Date: April 17, 2018

Comey renders his judgment on everyone, Cohen has a rough day in court, Hannity is Client #3, and Trump launches airstrikes. Then The New Yorker’s Adam Davidson talks to Jon about his piece, “The End Stage of the Trump Presidency.” 

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Michael Cohen. Oh, man, we got our lawyer here. Hi, guys. On the pod today, I interview the New Yorker's Adam Davidson about his latest piece, The End Stage of the Trump Presidency. That'll be up a little later.

And that piece will either look prescient or not. There you go. There you go. It's a binary choice. Love it. How was the blizzard in the Midwest this weekend? We had two great shows, one in Chicago, then we went to Minneapolis. The Chicago show was awesome, and it's out right now, and you should download it.

The Minneapolis show will be out next week. We did a kind of evergreen show about fake news and propaganda. We had some experts on to talk about it. But Minneapolis was amazing because it was a blizzard and everybody still came out. That's wonderful. Well, a lot of people could. If you couldn't make it, really sorry. I heard there was a blizzard of laughs inside. It was a flurry of ha ha an avalanche of joking wow i have some news guys what is it john i'm launching a new podcast that will be out this summer is that where you've been for like six months yes i thought he was just lazy

that's so cool uh what's it about it's a special series. It's a documentary-style podcast about the history and future of the Democratic Party. Is this our first foray into a docu-series? Yes. Is it called D-Town? No. I have been trying to name this thing for months, and you just did it. Oh, cool. D-Town. Yeah, so over the last six months, I've interviewed dozens of organizers,

strategists, historians, policy wonks, data nerds, party leaders. Get your Hillary people, Bernie people, Obama people. I got them all. Any Kucinich people? Not yet, but there's still time. Okay.

And basically asking everyone the same question, how do we fix what's wrong with the Democratic Party? I even did a few focus groups with Democratic voters and yeah i wanted to do this because and we've talked about this for a while after 2012 the rnc did an autopsy they clearly they followed it to the letter it said embrace the diversity of a changing america yes go elect a racist clown um but democrats haven't done one, and we always talk about the Democratic Party on Pod Save America, but we don't get to do it enough

because the racist clown's making a lot of news every day. A lot of tweets. So this is basically supposed to be the start of a conversation about what went wrong and, more importantly, sort of where we go from here. And not just what went wrong in 2016. No, no, no. We're going to do the history of the party we're talking about the obama years we can talk about 2016 and then mainly like each episode uh after we go through a quick history of the

party is going to focus on a major challenge that the party faces going forward do you talk to chris dodd democrats yeah mostly i talk to chris dodd democrats i talk to a lot of martin o'malley lincoln chafee Democrats. The Doddocrats are still doing this. So what I'm hearing from you is that you're going to definitively weigh in on the Bernie versus Hillary debate. I'm going to relitigate all of my own personal Twitter battles. Oh, good, good. Just on a longer format. Awesome.

And I think that that will endear me to many people on both sides. I'm excited to listen. We'd also like to hear from you as well because it's not done yet. And so over the next few weeks, we're going to have a call-in number and people can call in and leave a voicemail, which no one has done for years. Is that why John's been on the phone going, Sheboygan, hello.

I'm moving, taking callers. Can I text you? Yeah. And so you can call this number and you can leave a voicemail answering the question, what's wrong with the Democratic Party and how do we fix it? The number is 949-667-4524. And if you act now.

I like the idea of also, if it were possible for Joe Biden to leave a message in a mustache that says, not enough Joe Biden. You know, but you can't leave a call with a mustache on. Wouldn't it be great if we got some messages from some notable people? Hillary's like, I think we have a Comey problem. Mostly. Again, with a mustache. Anyway, that's the project that's been taking up all my time.

And hopefully it'll be out in July. Cool. Exciting. Give us a call and tell us what you think. I'll be looking forward to hearing from you. We're jazzed, John. We're jazzed. We're jazzed.

We're jazzed. Let's do it. All right. Let's get to the news. Last night, ABC News aired George Stephanopoulos' interview with James Comey, who is just six feet, eight inches of pure moral rectitude. Sanctimony. That's why he's so tall.

He's actually 5'1". It's 1'7", and it's all made of how fucking good he is. The former FBI director, a Republican, said that Donald Trump is morally unfit to hold office, that he lies all the time, and that it's possible that the Russians had material that could be used to blackmail him.

He also defended his actions in the Clinton email investigation, which we can all agree were perfect. Guys, did anything surprise you about this interview? It's so funny to be, we live in a world in which the answer to the question about an FBI director saying the president is morally unfit

and may be compromised by a foreign government as a real snooze vest. Yeah, like the factual, I guess the tone in the language surprised me a little bit. Like there was nothing new factually that I thought was particularly interesting. Like I was sort of, there's a bit of snake in Comey. Like when he said, look, I'm not one of those guys who says Trump has dementia, that he's like has a failing brain.

I think he has above average intelligence and then goes on to criticize him for being an immoral president. And that's why it's like you're leading with repeating the charge. That is the thing you're then saying you don't believe. It's a little gross. I think like there weren't a lot of new facts in this interview that weren't in the letter or the memos that he leaked. What drove me crazy was the fact that he was willing to render judgments on literally everything but his own conduct. And there didn't feel like there was much introspection. Closest he got was saying, you know, I have problems with my ego.

I'm always worried about that. Like, am I listening to others when I'm making decisions or I'm just doing stuff myself? And so that's what he threw out there is like the him doing wrong stuff. What would you think? There's been one question that James Comey has answered in the past that he answered again last night that has always been the focus of my ire, which is, if you knew that the letter were like

Donald Trump, would you still send it? You're talking about the famous October 28th letter about Anthony Weiner's laptop, which somehow became a thing in the election in 2016, as we all remember. Anthony Weiner. Thanks again.

Thanks again, Anthony. So Comey said to Stephanopoulos something similar to what he said in the hearing, which basically he would do the same thing over again. Yeah. He basically said he would do literally everything he did over again. Which is incredible. So I was really stuck on this,

and John and Tommy saw me kind of working through my thoughts out loud in the room because I was just like so frustrated. He was finger pointing in the air. Imagine a conductor with one of those little sticks. So here's what I was working out. All right. So Comey said he sent the letter in part because he expected Hillary Clinton to win and that if he hadn't sent it, if the facts came out after Hillary became president, it would make her election less legitimate.

If the facts came out after Hillary became president, it would make her election less legitimate. But then he also said he couldn't not send the letter because then that would have been allowing politics to interfere with the FBI, even though sending the letter he's admitting is for political reasons. But OK, so that's confusing. But put that aside. It's important to put it aside. So he sends the letter because he wants to have sent it after Hillary wins.

But he'd still send the letter even if the letter means she lost. So not sending a letter means she wins and therefore he should have sent it. But sending it means she loses. So therefore he should not have sent it. And the reason I think that this is ridiculous. I feel like this is on the SATs. No, no.

But so this is where you find why James Comey made such a big mistake. It's sort of the like logical fallacy at the heart of what he's doing, because he can't just admit that he never should have sent that letter and he never should have revealed one investigation, but not the other. Because I think Comey sincerely believes in his mission. He sincerely believes these are the values that he's trying to espouse. that he's trying to espouse. But what's clear when he says that he would have sent it anyway, even though the only reason he sent it was to have sent it had Hillary won,

is because he's not trying to be ethical. He's trying to seem ethical. And that is the fundamental flaw of what James Comey did at every step of this process. Yeah, I thought one of the most revealing lines from the interview was he said, you know, one of my kids shared a tweet

that's become one of my favorite tweets. And it said, that Comey is such a political hack, I just can't figure out which party. I really took that as a compliment yes and that that is the classic hashtag no labels I was gonna say it's it is it's this very Washington elite mindset that you get from people in government that you get from the media that we saw in 2016 and it's the problem is not just that everyone assumed hillary would win the problem is that because everyone assumed hillary would win the political and media elite decided that

they would be extra tough on her to prove how non-partisan they are because they all celebrate balance as the highest virtue more than truth more than anything else like they must be balanced and what that means is that people on the right, no matter how low they go, no matter how much they lie, they can count on the fact that if they work the refs hard enough, they will damage the other side. Yes.

On top of that, he also says that the fact that both sides hate him now is an illustration of the polarization of our times. No. The Hillary people hate you because you broke DOJ guidelines,

intervened in an election just days before it happened, and maybe tipped it to Donald Trump, the most unfit president to ever hold the office. The Trump people hate you because he savages you by name over and over and over again because he tried to obstruct justice with you and now is mad at you. Like, that's not the same thing. The Trump people don't like you because they were afraid you were going to expose his rampant criminality. You know, that's a different thing. The Clinton people criticize you for your conduct and the outcome, a cause, which is Trump being president. Yeah. And like and by the way, just because he made a gigantic mistake in the Clinton email investigation doesn't mean that the criticisms from the Republicans that he's some like lying hack slime ball are correct.

No, it's not. No, he was. He fell victim to this mindset that he must be like you said, he must appear ethical. And he took even though he said he didn't want to take politics into consideration, even though he said the one rule he's tried to obey is to not do anything that will impact an election. He said that he said in the interview multiple times, but he said in this case, the only option was to either reveal or conceal

this letter. This thing he said for a year. When that was not the option, the option could have been it's DOJ policy not to do anything that will impact an election right before an election, and then after the election if she won, all he had to do was say by the way, we looked at some emails, we didn't find anything, and that was that. And if they did find

something, then they could say, at the time we didn't want to do anything to impact the election because we didn't know what was in the emails., we didn't find anything, and that was that. And if they did find something, then they could say, at the time, we didn't want to do anything to impact the election because we didn't know it was in the emails. Or we hadn't figured it out yet. Yeah, exactly. Figured it out first. And by the way, James Comey, as the Joker would say, you're going to have to break your one rule because you didn't tell us about the Trump investigation, the many Trump investigations, the many different facets of his crimes.

I will say I thought he was persuasive on why it was a little different on the Trump investigation because it was a counterintel investigation involving some Americans that you didn't want to reveal and actually revealing the investigation and who they were would have compromised the investigation itself. And the Hillary investigation was a public referral from the inspector general, so it was already public and he couldn't avoid it but all of that is parsing you said you didn't want to be political but you chose in the week before an election the letter is un-fucking-forgivable in every way you know James Comey said this other thing in the interview where he talked about there was once a day when people were afraid of going to hell if they took an oath in the name

of God and violated it we've drifted away from that day and people were afraid of going to hell if they took an oath in the name of God and violated it. We've drifted away from that day. And so in its place has to be a fear that if you lie and government can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, they will prosecute you in order to send a message. You must tell the truth that matters enormously. Oh, boy. It's self-righteous. It's the way in which James Comey is frustrated. But what I appreciate about James Comey is I believe he is sincerely grappling with what he sees as a culture that doesn't value the truth, a culture that right about that. Yes, he is absolutely right about that. And like we've talked about it. We did not put in terms of God.

We put it in terms of shame. But like, I believe James Comey is a good person. I also believe we should that he was in a difficult position, a difficult position created by Hillary Clinton and a difficult position created by Donald Trump, two people who were under investigation. I just believe it is obvious in hindsight that his fears about partisanship, he got in his own head and he completely botched it and mishandled it. And he's the only person who can't admit it because to admit it would be to concede something so grand and so big about his role in history that he can possibly do it if to admit it is to say that everything you ever did led you to make this terrible decision that caused one of the greatest political emergencies in American history. I thought another small thing that was interesting from the interview was he said that Trump refuses to criticize Putin, even in private.

I love that. Yeah. Even in private. Which is getting corroborated by other officials and other stories. Yeah. I don't even get that one. Like, that was like, okay, all right, Putin's got something on Trump. Does he think he's in the Oval?

What's going on? What are you afraid of, buddy? To me, it was just like the pathology of Trump, like, thinking that if anyone believed that the election was somehow illegitimate and that he didn't win the popular vote and all the crazy things he lies he believes about himself uh that bothers him i mean what one thing that was really interesting that he talked about was the dinner they had uh how essentially it's a trumpian monologue which i always assumed was the case right it was just like trump spouting random lies that the fbi director that he doesn't really know and comey just sort of sitting there and having to listen to it and like i could get how weird and how that could get you into a weird headspace too the one thing i thought was pretty interesting that comey did concede was i credit him for he conceded that

pledging honest loyalty in the infamous meeting where trump tried to demand loyalty from him was a mistake and could have been misinterpreted i thought that was actually kind of a a good thing to be honest about i also also was interested in how tough he was on Rosenstein for his role in firing him. He said that Rosenstein acted dishonorably, but then he said that he didn't think Rosenstein would carry out the order to fire Mueller because he's trying to restore some of his professional reputation,

which is sort of a common... I mean, I could see that, but it's interesting that he just guesses that. But to Tommy's point, it's like James Comey's in the balcony kind of like keeping a little account of balcony. What are you in a baseball thing? Mezzanine? Bleachers?

He's in the bleachers. Press box? Balcony. I'm at the opera. Mezzanine. You know when they keep score during a sports game? Anyway, the point is he's up there being like, oh, Rod's worried about his reputation. And, oh, Hillary had this.

It's like he's this pilgrim in an unholy land meanwhile what is this book man yes it's just an effort to restore your reputation exactly exactly one of the like there's some little lies in there that just annoyed me like he says the one like when he uh put out his memos after trump tweeted you better hope i don't have tapes comey had his buddy release memos he'd taken at the time he said that the reason he had his buddy leaked them is because he didn't want to say yes and talk to one reporter and then tell the rest of the reporters that were at his driveway that he couldn't talk to them. I thought that was just such a ludicrous effort at concocting some moral reason for his choice that it just, it like undercut half the rest of it. Now, it's a classic Comey, frankly. All this aside, like, I don't like Jim Comey very much.

I don't hate him. I do think, like you, that he's a decent person. I think he's terrible political judgment. I think his letter indisputably impacted the election. I'm also reminded that Bill Clinton's meeting with Loretta Lynch was such a mistake and then such a massive inflection point. And like, whether or not it was spun up to something that it should have been oh my god i also was not thinking he was not thinking very well there

no no real really uh screwed the pooch on that one but i also you know to your point in the interview he talks about that bedside moment with ashcroft and which is fascinating which is fascinating you should go read the transcript about it but um james comey is also the person who stood up for principle there and so i what i also think is wrong is because james comey has caused this disaster i think it could be too easy to dismiss him outright and i do think it's important that we maintain a complicated view of james comey yeah i mean look we talk all the time about voters as pundits now it's also something that infects like bureaucrats and law enforcement officials and other people in government like when you see the world like a pundit does and you start judging based on politics and you let the politics get in your head you're not going to make a very good decision

yeah that's i think that's that's james comey stopping fbi director and became a pundit and it may cause the downfall of our country. Jim Comey drafted a letter because he went to 538 and figured out we're good. On the other hand, that means he did see Nate Silver saying that that letter did cause the outcome. You know he read it. Oh, Stephanopoulos brought it up to him. He said Nate Silver has a pretty compelling case for why it cost the election. Let's talk about Michael Cohen because it was a very tough day in court

for Team Crime. A federal judge rejected an attempt by President Trump and Michael Cohen to block prosecutors from reviewing documents and communications that the FBI took from Cohen's office and hotel room. The judge also forced Cohen to reveal the name of the one client he had tried to keep secret,

and that client is longtime friend of the pod, Sean Hannity. Surely not the Sean Hannity from television. The very one. The same. Let's bring out the corkboard and red string here. Where does Hannity fit into this puzzle, guys? He's the piece that the dog got and you didn't need anyway. I mean, in terms of the puzzle. We know Michael Cohen's not a real lawyer.

He's a weird fixer who buys taxicab medallions and does other strange businesses. The two pieces of business he did that are relevant here are essentially hush payments to a very senior rnc official and for donald trump we don't know what work he did for sean but i mean i just michael sound good michael cohen is a lawyer in the same way sean hannity is a journalist right by the way too like all these people on twitter now are like is sean hannity going to recuse himself from talking about michael cohen what is this i'm like yeah no up until today i thought hannity was a real straight All these people on Twitter now are like, is Sean Hannity going to recuse himself from talking about Michael Comer? What is this? I'm like, yeah, no, up until today, I thought Hannity was a real straight shooter.

The James Comey of Fox News. That's what they call him. Recuse himself. What, is he going to swear an oath? What are you talking about? Why isn't Fox News punishing him? Because he's a fucking psycho who goes on the air every night and says whatever the hell he wants to say. He said that Hillary was in cahoots with Whitey Bulger.

night and says whatever the hell he wants to say he said that he said that hillary was in cahoots with whitey bulger oh we're all so disappointed that sean hannity didn't reveal to us that he was using fucking michael cohen's legal services what a shocker they talk on the phone every night yeah oh i'm so disappointed it's so revealing too that no literally no human being on earth was like you know it's just like oh yeah, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Moving on. Sean Hannity's explanation is, oh, I think once I gave him $10 and asked him for real estate advice, and he must have taken that as attorney-client privilege. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. That's what you do when you submit documents to a court.

Well, so how screwed are Michael Cohen and Donald Trump, do we think? Why work so hard to keep federal prosecutors from even reviewing the information seized in the FBI raid before they could review it first? I don't know. I mean, Donald Trump doesn't email. Who knows what written documents he has? I think what we know is that Donald Trump has a business empire that is built on working with a whole bunch of corrupt people around the world. It is a total shell game. I don't think he's actually a successful businessman. I think he's likely engaged in potentially criminal activities via his businesses,

and Michael Cohen would have the receipts. We also know that Michael Cohen is not a very good lawyer. He's incredibly stupid. He created these shell LLCs to make these payments, and he used the same one over and over again, and that's how he got busted. For the hush money payments. Yeah, he's not a scrupulous individual. He's not crossing a lot of T's and dotting them. Tommy's how we got busted. For the hush money payments. Yeah, he's not a scrupulous individual. He's not like crossing a lot of

T's and dotting O's. Tommy's got the understatement of the pot. Not a scrupulous individual. You know, I was also thinking like the Weinstein investigation and what came out of that investigation was that some of the most respected lawyers in the country were engaged in despicable and criminal

or near criminal behavior. What we're learning is just how much criminality goes on every single day for powerful people like Donald Trump. And they just were not ready for this kind of scrutiny. They just weren't built for it. Yeah. I mean, DOJ also confirmed on Friday that Cohen has been under criminal investigation

in New York for months because of his business dealings. Which, by the way, I mean, Donald Trump calling him, whatever he said could have been picked up by the FBI. There's a very good chance it was, if you call from his like random Android phone from the, from executive time, could have been picked up by a half dozen intelligence, foreign intelligence services. I mean, this was a monumentally stupid thing to do. Yeah.

There is a reason that what's gotten Donald Trump the most upset about Mueller and all these investigations is every time the business stuff comes up. This is why the tax returns weren't released. This is why the New York Times said that he tried to fire Mueller back in December because of the Deutsche Bank story, because they were going to get records from Deutsche Bank.

This is why he went crazy last week about the Cohen raid. This is why the New York Times story also said that this is the investigation they're most worried about in the White House, more so than the other ones. His so-called red line that he drew in the interview with the New York Times report of the golf club. There's something about his business deals that he knows are criminal. This is the part of the movie conspiracy theory where we find out that Mel Gibson is crazy because it all really happened to him. And it's all very bizarre. He pardons Scooter Libby

because he was so passionate about that way, the way this man had been abused by the system. Give me a break. And then he calls Michael Cohen and then Michael Cohen just skips court to hang out with a bunch of goons in a park. You know, we have no idea what that conversation is about.

We have no idea what's going through Michael Cohen's dumb fucking head. I went to high school with a bunch of Michael Cohen's, and I didn't know what they were thinking when they were beating the hell out of me. So, whatever. You know, I won't deign to understand. But when the Michael Cohen sitting in front of me in science class and the Michael Cohen sitting behind me in science class lifted up my desk

and then dropped it to the ground just to get the teacher to turn around, I don't know why they did that either. Feels like we just went to another place. Anyway. I don't know why. did that either. Feels like we just went to another place. Anyway. That's just like what happened last week. I don't know why that Michael Cohen killed the fish for my science experiment that very same year. End of point.

Because the Michael Cohen story has just continued. There was also a story on Friday, and McClatchy ran this, that Mueller has evidence that Cohen was in fact in Prague in 2016, which Cohen still denies, which would confirm part of the Steele dossier, which basically says that Cohen went to Prague in order to collude with Russians.

The question about the story is no outlet since Friday has confirmed this. The story was based on two sources familiar with the matter. It seems unlikely that the sources would be from Mueller's team because they have not leaked. So there's been some question of, is this story true? Is it too good to be true? What did you guys think about the Prague affair? I do believe the smoking gun will be the fridge magnet Michael Cohn got for his wife. But other than that, I have no thoughts.

Yeah, one of those little balls you shake and it makes a snowstorm. The Prague Castle. I don't know. I mean, it is weird that no one else has been able to confirm this. It also just feels like the most easily knowable fact. Like, did you go to Prague or not? There will be flight records, records of your phone, like whatever it would be required to run something like this down,

a passport, whatever. Even if he has a burner passport, even if he went through Germany into Prague because he used the Shenzhen visa and you don't have to like get another, I't know whatever like we should be able to know this and it's strange that mcclatchy's out on an island on this one we're so where does this all lead next i mean we're i'm talking to you know adam davidson a little bit about his his piece you know the end end stage of donald trump's presidency uh basically the theory is you know we're about to see now

what's coming with cohen and all the business stuff. Like, this is where all this leads and this is where the crime is and what happens from here. And the question is, look, we have been here very doubtful that Republicans will ever impeach this president ever. And even if the Democrats take back the House and even the Senate, we're needing 67 votes votes 66 votes in the senate to impeach the guy is a tall order is it still a tall order if there are multiple crimes of money laundering and all kinds of business stuff i don't know what you guys think i don't know i think it's you know we have to even on this remember to stay out of the prediction business we have very little control on this to this day we still have very little information

compared to what Mueller has, compared to what's happening in New York. We really just don't know enough. And there's also very little we can do. The only upshot of anything we learn in the next six months is do whatever it takes to win the House. Do whatever it takes to win the Senate. All roads lead back to the House.

Right. No matter what, Whether you're talking about Mueller, tax cuts, health care, whatever else. Impeachment's a political decision and would require, you know, and we know that Trump's approval is locked at around 40, 43%. His quote that he could shoot someone in the middle

of Fifth Avenue has proven to be true time and time again and he wouldn't lose supporters. The people in Congress that we need to vote in support of an impeachment range from crazy to coward and the ones who are relatively brave are retiring. So, you know, I think we need to plan for a huge one in the midterms that gives us a chance to run a whole other series of investigations in the House with subpoena power that can bottle up his agenda and continue to make him just be ineffective. And then we kick his ass in 2020. Yeah. And also just there was this debate about the Adam Davidson piece.

And I'm excited to hear your conversation. And it was, you know, there were the, you know, Nate Silver and some others saying, oh, is this too rosy? Because how is this going to play out in terms of politics? And that's an important debate. But my reaction to it was sort of separate from that, which is after the initial shock of Trump becoming president wore off, there was a period of time that has always been the period of time that to me is the most terrifying. And it is the time

between Trump being out of office and Trump knowing that his days are numbered in one way or another. And the stories are salacious. It feels good to see the words and stages about Trump. It feels good to think that there might be justice, that these people might pay a price. But I do think it's always important to just remember that Donald Trump is the most powerful human being on planet Earth. And it's dangerous and it's dangerous every day. And the more he's cornered, the more dangerous he gets. We've already seen him make decisions on Syria that whatever the merits some people claim about these strikes, we cannot take at face value because we know what motivates him and it's certainly not care for the people of Syria.

Yeah. And so that's just something just to keep in mind and to remember how how bad our situation is, even if things do start coming toward an end. Yeah, because one end stage of Donald Trump's presidency is it's clear that he has committed a number of crimes and yet he remains in office because they won't impeach him and so then we have a real constitutional crisis where the president has decided that he is above the law and he has committed crimes and yet he is still the president i read that and thought like this is certainly one outcome of this piece i didn't i didn't see it as some like rosy prediction no i know you didn't either and the other thing too is we also don't know what happens when there start to be charges at the state level out of New York.

And we don't know if that's going to happen or not. But if that were to happen and all of a sudden Donald Trump realizes that the pardon power he is familiar with and that it knows is his and knows is unlimited basically with the exception of impeachment is in his back pocket to promise people people once that's removed, I don't know what he'll do. We just don't know. Yeah. You mentioned Syria. We did launch an airstrike against Syria on Friday, even though it seems like that's five years ago. Sure does. Let's talk about this. Tommy, why did the US, France, and the UK do this? What was the goal? Will it make a difference? They made the choice to the three countries to get together to launch these strikes because Assad,

again, used chemical weapons, used chlorine gas, maybe a mix of chlorine and sarin gas on a group of civilians and sort of one of the last vestiges of Syria that he's trying to clear. You know, it was a little bit bigger than the last strike. The last strike was on one runway. This one was on three targets instead of one. There are twice as many missiles. It was basically chemical weapons facilities. It wasn't all of his chemical weapons facilities. We avoided areas where, you know, Russians or Iranians could be also be working, presumably to avoid retaliation.

It's good that it was a coalition. But, I mean, I think the key with these foreign policy decisions he's making is we should try to do a better job, the media at large, about judging outcomes and not sort of events as they occur. If this strike prevents Assad from using chemical weapons ever again, I think that's a good thing. Everyone gave him credit the last time he struck in in response for chemical weapons use and it happened again so obviously it wasn't successful despite declarations that this is the night he became president and sort of the the you know

orgy of excitement on cable news panels chemical weapons are treated differently by the international community because they're just horrific and indiscriminate killers of people civilians kids i mean the videos are awful. I think we should be honest. Trump probably did this because he saw it on TV, you know, because there are horrific attacks on civilians every day, not involving chemical weapons, that are killing half a million plus people.

And apparently, like, after the strike, Assad went on and just started, you know, launching his regular attacks. Yeah, they dropped. And killing civilians. They dropped barrels full of bombs and shrapnel that just destroy people, destroy communities, destroy hospitals, whatever it takes. They targeted journalists, we learned recently, and tried to kill foreign journalists. So the criticism of the broader strategy is that he doesn't have one and that the limited presence we have there is involved in taking out isis and he wants to pull them out too there are no easy

answers here you know hopefully this will deter chemical weapons use because it's horrific but you know we should wait and see seems like it hasn't in the past has not in the past love it you any thoughts on syria i don't i don't have any thoughts i think it's um there's a lot of confident people on the internet per usual but this is don't. I don't have any thoughts. I think it's, there's a lot of confident people on the internet per usual, but I don't have any thoughts on it sincerely. And the only argument I did find persuasive is a lot of people noting that if we truly believe Donald Trump is unfit, and we do, if we believe he's not in any way someone with the facility to make decisions of life and death, that he shouldn't have that power,

then it's quite a thing to turn around and say, I support the strikes because you're supporting someone making decisions that you don't trust having this power in his hands. I don't know. I think it's really hard. I don't know what I would think if Hillary Clinton were launching these strikes. I think I'd be similarly skeptical. But I do believe that there is a really strong argument for saying that I will not support Donald Trump taking any military action unless it's for the direct defense of the United States. I also think there's a good argument to be made that many Democrats are making that a president shouldn't be able to launch strikes like this unless they get an authorization from Congress. launch strikes like this unless they get an authorization from Congress. And this is why Barack Obama didn't end up striking Syria is because he went to Congress after Republicans said, you know, strike Syria, launch missiles, whatever. And then he said, okay, well, give me the authorization, vote for it. And they're like, oh, no, no, no, we're not going

to do that at all. And I think the thought behind that was that presidents have built up too much power to go to war whenever they please. And especially in case you have a Donald Trump as president, that the president should go to Congress and get an authorization for war. I think that's right. And I would also, though, point out that Barack Obama did try to have it both ways because what he said is, I would like Congress's authorization, but technically I don't need it. Yeah, and we also took strikes in Libya without necessarily getting authorization. I mean, it's complicated.

Like, I don't feel the need to, like, weigh in for or against. Like, I'm sort of surprised when I see so many people tweeting, like, this was right, this was wrong. I do think, like, we don't know the outcome. So it's really hard. I mean, I guess you can grade sort of an individual choice and say I support that. I don't. I think that's our job. But broadly, like, the situation on the ground is not materially different today.

There is still no strategy. There is no plan to do better. I realize that Obama didn't fix it. In fact, he left Trump a pretty impossibly difficult problem to deal with. I'm not in any way proud or happy of the outcome in Syria. But he let in, what, 11 refugees this year. Like, there's a way you could help people and save lives. It's very easy. That doesn't involve launching $200 million worth of Tomahawk missiles. Yeah. And I just to go back to your point on

military force, I think it's not just because Trump is president. I think Trump exposes just how strange our way of handling military force has become, that we've slowly marched toward a situation in which the president is basically a dictator on foreign policy, can act without any kind of authorization, can wave the hand and say, oh, I have Article II powers. They're kind of in there somewhere. And it's a rare time where you can say a pox on both their houses. Both sides have done this. But it is really over decades that both parties have slowly but surely made it so that the president basically doesn't need Congress to launch a military strike. And because of that, Congress's responsibility and behavior has

atrophied. Part of the reason presidents have not wanted to go to Congress is this understanding that Congress isn't up to it. Congress isn't going to be able to seriously debate this and come to the right decision. It's hard politics. it's hard politics and they won't take the vote. And so not even the Republicans that are on Fox News screaming about the need for an attack. No. And it's really based on who's president. And, you know, the people have been consistent on this are actually people like Justin Amash, who is a right wing conservative, Tim Kaine. But he noted that there were two letters that went out when a Democrat's president, Republicans write a letter that says you need Congress. And it is dangerous.

It is dangerous how powerful we've made the presidency. And we've talked about this before. But if anything positive can come out of Trump, it could be devolving some of presidential power back to Congress and back to the states. Just James Comey that problem. Hashtag no labels. Comey Lieberman 2020. One other thing after that comes from the Syria

issue after the airstrikes UN ambassador I know where you're going UN ambassador Nikki Haley announced that the US will impose additional sanctions

on Russia for enabling Assad's use of chemical weapons and then today Trump says just kidding he doesn't want to punish Russia this comes in the heels

of a Washington Post piece that revealed that last month Trump became furious when he learned that the US had imposed a harsher punishment on Russia for poisoning a former spy on British soil than American allies had. Such curious behavior, guys. What is going on? Not that anything's funny coming out of this, but Trump decided to say mission accomplished for some reason. I forgot about that. Just either reflecting a total indifference

or ignorance of the history of that term when it comes to warfare. And then he tweeted, I knew the fake news media would seize on this, but it's such a great military term that it should be brought back. Use often. It was just such an unbelievably stupid response.

Use often was so funny. Right, me too. Oh, my god. Anyway, but that Russia stuff is... Every time you want to say like, maybe there's no there there. Maybe this is all just a conspiracy

in our heads with Russia. Maybe there's nothing there. He goes and does something. It's just like, what? And I go and I read Glenn Greenwald writing about this, who's been a real contrarian on it and consistently contrarian on it. And I think, OK, maybe I'm part of a collective conventional wisdom. And we've kind of all deluded ourselves into believing there's something going on here. And he just behaves just like somebody might behave if he thought that Russia had a bunch of shit on him.

Yeah. So we'll see. OK. When we come back, our interview with New Yorkers, Adam Davidson. On the pod today, we're lucky to have staff writer through New Yorker, Adam Davidson. Adam, welcome to Pod Save America. Thank you so much. Thrilling to be here. So you wrote a piece for The New Yorker last week that sparked a lot of conversation this weekend called The End Stage of the Trump Presidency. So when you say that the endgame of this presidency

now seems as clear as the endgames were in Iraq and the financial crises, what do you mean by that? the end games were in Iraq and the financial crises. What do you mean by that? Well, I've had this experience now twice in my adult life before as a journalist covering a story where the facts that were available to anybody who was able to see them were stark and clear. So in 2003, fairly early in the US occupation, it was crystal clear to anyone in Baghdad, where I was, that this thing's a disaster. There is no plan, no vision. This occupation is going to go very, very, very badly. And it wasn't like an analysis. It wasn't an opinion. It was clear. It was obvious. It was directly in front of our eyes. And I had a similar experience. I was pretty late to it. But in late 2007, once you really understood the financial products that were later known as toxic assets like collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, once you really do the work of understanding them, you realize, oh, these things can't be valued. There is no way once they start to fail to know how much they're worth. There are trillions of dollars of these that form much of the base

capital of our global banking system. Eventually, people are going to know that and it's going to create a disaster. And in both cases, I didn't know what exactly would happen. I certainly wasn't predicting ISIS or Al-Qaeda in Iraq or that Lehman Brothers would collapse on September 15th and then we'd have this run on all the banks and all the things we had. I didn't know what, but what I did know is I know a lot of things simply because I'm a reporter and I'm seeing things. And everyone who knows what I know knows something really definitive is going to happen. And that's how I feel about the Donald Trump story. I've spent much of the Mueller investigation and very, very curious to see what he finds. But I am sympathetic to those who are who are skeptical that Trump himself can be proven to have colluded with the Russians. Obviously, we already know that many people near him did. But I don't know where that investigation leads. But as soon as the investigation or a separate investigation,

we don't know exactly, turned to Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime, I don't want to call him a lawyer, but Trump's longtime associate and occasional lawyer. So-called lawyer. So-called lawyer, exactly. Once his office was raided, I was like, oh, okay, this story is over. It's a matter of time. I don't know if it's three months or three years. I don't know if President Trump gets impeached and the specific political trajectory. that the Trump organization was, as I say in my piece, a sad small affair that monetized their willingness to do business with some of the most disturbing, corrupt individuals around the world. And I think that we're now on a train that is going to increasingly bring that out. And I don't see how his presidency survives. Now, what specifically about Michael Cohen sort of

triggered this revelation for you? I know he's someone that you've covered a long time as a reporter. For those who haven't followed his part of the larger Trump story, you know, who is he and where does he fit into the larger Trump universe? And why does the raid, the FBI raid on Michael Cohen's office in his hotel room sort of to you signal, okay, now we know where this thing is going. So Michael Cohen's role within the Trump organization was not as a lawyer. There are a bunch of lawyers that work for the Trump organization, you know, 12 to 15 at any given time, who would write contracts and settle lawsuits and that kind of thing. Michael Cohen was another category. He was

a dealmaker. His job was to go around and find deals and bring them back to the big man, to Donald Trump. And then if those deals went well, Michael Cohen would get a big bonus at the end of the year. And he comes into the Trump orbit after an amazing history of, you know, really the some of the bottom feeding is bottom feeding of the New York world. He's involved in some very sketchy taxi cab businesses involved in things that look an awful lot like insurance fraud. He works for a series of lawyers and business people who end up being convicted of all sorts of crimes. And then he comes to the Trump Organization just as the Trump Organization is making this massive shift. So in around 2006, 2007, the Trump Organization basically makes two simultaneous shifts. One is they effectively stop being a real estate developer.

One is they effectively stop being a real estate developer. They're not borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars of capital to buy properties or build properties and then sell them off or rent them off and manage them as they had done. They can't get any money. No banks will lend them any money. So they start doing this licensing stuff where some other developer who's building a building will pay them money to put their name on it. So that's one major shift in their business. The other major shift is they start going overseas and they're not like trying to do Trump Paris and Trump London. They're doing Trump Baku and Trump Batumi, Georgia and Trump Uruguay, Trumpama, they're signing up with developers all over the world in sort of third-tier markets and with, frankly, like third-tier oligarchs. These aren't like the top oligarchs of Azerbaijan or Indonesia. These are, you know, people who even in the context of

those fairly corrupt countries are seen as sort of out of the mainstream corrupt oligarchs. And it's sort of amazing. I mean, the Trump organization was tiny. You know, we're talking about a couple dozen people at the big headquarters. But the people doing these foreign deals, it's pretty much just Ivanka, Don Jr. and Michael Cohen. And they're doing at least having meetings on dozens and dozens of deals all over the world in countries they know very little about and with people who are very, very sketchy.

People who've been convicted and some have been investigated but not convicted for money laundering, bank fraud, sanctions violations, money laundering for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, sort of an amazing cast of characters. guard, sort of an amazing cast of characters. And Cohen is the main person whose name isn't Trump, who knows all this and was involved in all this and recorded phone calls, presumably about this and wrote emails about this. And if you've seen Cohen ever on TV, you know, this is not a guy who's particularly careful about what he says. How do you think the Trump organization and Cohen and the kids have sort of avoided running afoul of the law with all of these deals, with all of these money launderers and other nefarious characters up until now? as a nation get to this. It's really easy to be a white collar criminal in America. I think that is one lesson of the Trump presidency and the Trump cronies. I was talking to someone, a former New York state regulator of real estate and finance, who told me there was an actual discussion at the highest levels of New York state saying we should really cut down on all this money laundering. And the decision was, we can't. It would devastate the New York economy if we didn't let all this money laundering flow

into our real estate. And the same can be said of L.A. and Miami and London. And so one thing is we just don't prosecute white collar crime nearly as much as we should. Every year there's maybe a couple dozen foreign corrupt practices act, like bribing foreign officials cases. I'm willing to bet there's a lot more than a couple dozen Americans who are bribing foreign officials. So that's one thing. But even in that context, the Trump Organization are outliers. They took enormous legal risks, kind of crazy legal risks, really. But they were also fairly small.

really. But they were also fairly small. And if you look at sort of who the Department of Justice has gone after or who New York State Attorney General has gone after, they're looking for, you know, big, big dollar paydays, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, big international crimes, billion dollar crimes. And, you know, the Trump organization was pretty penny-anti, a few million here, a few million there, which just doesn't add up to much. Plus, he's a big loudmouth and he'd be a pain in the neck to prosecute. I mean, some people have conspiracy theories about it, but, you know, and they, who knows, everything turns out to be true when you're thinking about these guys. But I think he was too small. And also, he was really lucky because he's a rich white man and doing financial crime, which is essentially legal in America. story could intersect is obviously business deals made with Russia. Like, I always wonder if there's a possibility that the leverage that Putin or oligarchs in Russia might have over Trump and

the Trump Organization has to do with business deals they've tried to enter in together or money laundering schemes between Russia and the Trump Organization. Has your reporting told you anything about that? Oh, yeah. I mean, there's essentially zero question. I mean, the Trump Organization doesn't even deny it that a lot of Russian money laundering funds and other former Soviet Union funds flowed into the Trump Organization. Now, what they would say is, well, we never knew for sure and we did whatever checks we could do. And they might also say, so did a lot of money flow into all of New York real estate. Everybody was doing LA, London, you know, these kind of big Vancouver, these big global cities. So I think that what will become a key, key question is, what did the Trump organization know? And that's where I think Michael Cohen is so crucial.

You know, based on sort of covering this company for a long time, talking to a lot of people who've worked there, who work there now, my hunch is, my guess is they knew a lot and that they essentially were actively participating in financial crimes. That might turn out to be not true. I can't prove that today. But when you do essentially the same kind of business with the same kind of people over and over and over again, it's hard to imagine. It's just a coincidence that you always are doing business with money launderers and other financial fraudsters. But Michael Cohen knows. And, you know, if he really did, as all reporting suggests, record all his phone calls or many of them have his emails, I think that starts to come out and it starts to look really bad. Some of my friends at WNYC and ProPublica, Andrea Bernstein, and some others did amazing work on this case in New York in 2010, 2011, when the Trump kids, Ivanka and Don Jr., did a financial fraud. They lied about how many people had bought units in the Trump Soho Hotel. And we know there was an email between Ivanka and Don Jr. saying, boy,

I hope no one finds out that we committed that crime. Essentially something to that effect. So these are not people who are obsessed with email security. I mean, so we're learning crazy things from the legal proceedings in the Cohen case. We just learned today that one of Cohen's mystery clients that he hadn't wanted to reveal was actually Sean Hannity. What are you most eager to learn from how the Cohen case plays out in court? What are you going to be looking and how far back is it going? How thoroughly into these business deals is it going? We've heard a lot about things going into Cohen's personal background. So weird deals involving taxicab licenses and things like that. We've heard a lot about Stormy Daniels and all these hush money payments. But I am really hoping we're going to get to the nitty gritty of the deals that Cohen actually worked on. The Trump Tower Moscow that

never happened. The Trump Tower Georgia in Batumi that never happened. And by the way, I'm not saying for sure about either of those deals, but real estate deals that don't happen are actually often a major sign of money laundering. And why is that? Because you can open up the – or we can announce, you know, Favreau Luxury Estates and, you know, Sunny Cayman Islands or whatever. And then we sort of have an excuse to start sending money around the world for architects and engineers and consultants and, you know, labor companies that are going to get our construction contracts. And if we never build the thing, then nobody really ever checks usually. So you can – now that's if you want to launder, you know, a million here, two millions there. If you start wanting to launder hundreds of millions, then you probably do have to start building things.

And, you know, obviously some people did build Trump Tower projects that look really weird. They don't make sense as businesses. There was far too much money spent on them. And so you do look at those projects and wonder what was going on. So that's what I'm hoping for, that we're going to learn a lot about the deals Cohen worked on, how he was communicating with Donald Trump Sr., with Ivanka and Don Jr. He doesn't, you know, Donald Trump, the president famously doesn't use email. So we might not see incriminating emails, but we might hear phone calls.

Who knows that that those are the things that I'm very eager for. So last question. very eager for. So last question. Some people criticize your piece for being overly rosy about the outcome of the Trump presidency, noting that the political dynamics would have to change pretty radically in order for impeachment to be a realistic possibility. I didn't actually read your piece as being predictive in terms of removal from office. But what was your reaction to that criticism? Yeah, I didn't make a specific projection. I mean, I wasn't saying he will be impeached by the end of this year or in the next three weeks. I think, you know, it was sort of more of an essay as someone who has had this experience now twice, and I think now three times

of seeing facts on the ground that tell me a very clear picture and believing that eventually public opinion changes. You know, on May 1st, the day George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier and said mission accomplished, his approval ratings, the Iraq War's approval ratings were 70 percent. And I was seeing something on the ground that told me this Iraq War is a disaster and eventually people will know that. And eventually people knew that and opinions changed. And now I don't think you could find 70% of Americans who say, yeah, I supported it and then I changed my mind. Now they all remember that they were always against it. They always knew it was going to be a disaster. Same with the financial crisis in, say, December 2007 when I was really engaged and finally got it through my thick skull that

this was a real disaster, it was far more common to hear people on TV say, markets are great, everything's going to be fine, that crisis has passed. And I had the strong feeling, no, this is a disaster, and it's going to come home to roost. And I think that there is a truth to the Trump organization, which is therefore a truth about Donald Trump himself, that will come out. And if I had to predict the arrested, indicted. I think that we know that Trump did business with people who seem to have likely laundered money for the Iranian, Iran's Revolutionary Guard, people involved in sex trafficking, people involved in a whole host of really terrible crimes. And yes, I believe that whatever it is, 23% of Americans or something like that are going to go to their graves no matter what, loving Donald Trump and thinking he's the greatest. But I think that, you know, those kind of, you know, the people who didn't vote for Trump in

the primaries, but those Republicans who still support him, I think that my prediction is that will soften dramatically. Obviously, the midterms are going to make a huge, huge difference. But I mean, I'd actually want to ask you, sorry to you set the last question, I want to ask you like how, you know, I've been part of shaping narratives in some sense, like I worked on the movie, The Big Short, I worked on this radio documentary, The Giant Pool of Money that I think did have a role in shaping how people understood the financial crisis. And then with Iraq, it was more like just the accumulation over time of just unbearable news. But what is your sense? Am I too optimistic or do national narratives change abruptly and people who actually know the truth about a person might have an insight?

I kind of framed that question in a way to make you say that I'm right. But no, look, I thought about this a lot when I listened to that podcast, Slow Burn, about Watergate, because I hadn't been familiar with the detailed history of Watergate, right? And in that podcast, they basically say, you know, it wasn't until, like, Nixon had most of his base with him, even through a whole bunch of allegations, it wasn't until there was a realization that there were tapes, and then the tapes were ultimately released, the public opinion turned hard against Richard Nixon. Now, what I could see happening is if a bunch of very senior people start going down, like if Don Jr. and Jared and Ivanka or any combination of those people are actually arrested, if they are charged with crimes and this starts coming out and it appears that Donald Trump knew, I do think public opinion turns against him even more than we're seeing now. I wonder what will happen in Congress. Like, I am very skeptical that this Congress, these Republicans will ever vote to impeach this man. And so,

like, the best scenario I can get to is Democrats take back the House in 2018. And if there are crimes that are revealed, then Democrats could impeach him in the House. In the Senate, you know, you still need 66, 67 votes. And trying to get from the Democrats having 49 or 50 votes to 67, like I can get them to maybe 55, 56, 57. Like, I don't know if I can get them all the way there. So I actually worry about him being impeached over this. I could see like narratives, though, like public opinion, narrative shifting hard against him. The problem is, most of these Republicans in Congress answer

to this very polarized base that is ensconced in this Fox News universe. And so I worry about that. But I took your piece as like, this is going to be the end stage of the Trump presidency. He, this is the truth that will come out. And he will forever be known by history as this person who has, you know, committed all these crimes or been involved in many of these crimes. And either that ends in something truly terrible, which is a constitutional crisis because we have a president that was involved in a lot of crimes who's still in office, or it ends with impeachment or it ends with him ultimately being, you know, not being reelected in 2020. So that's how I took it all. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with what you just said. Just like I didn't, you know, we were still in Iraq for a long, long time after Americans realized it was a disaster. It's not like a month later, oh, boy, okay, let's get out. It took a very long time because it's a very intractable problem. I'd also say, by the way, that I think this is it. Like this is what the presidency is fully,

like Trump's own fantasy. And frankly, my fear that maybe Mueller would come out with something that's like, well, you know, he had a bunch of sketchy people around him, but he himself didn't do anything. And something that could be sold by Fox News as an exoneration would come out. And I didn't think that was likely, but I thought that was a real possibility. But I now think with the Southern District of New York looking into crimes that would also be crimes in the state of New York and maybe other states, that this is it. This is a scandal plague presidency from here on out. And that's not going to change. There's no post-crisis moment for this president. No, I think that's right. Well, it'll be an interesting couple of weeks, couple of months,

as much of this is revealed in court and other places. So thank you for joining us. This was great. And come back soon, Adam. Thank you so much. I loved it. Hannity 2020. Take care. That's our show for today. Thank you to the New Yorkers it. Hannity 2020. Take care. That's our show for today. Thank you to the New Yorkers, Adam Davidson, for joining us. Speaking of the New Yorker, congratulations to Ronan Farrow, friend of the pod, my longtime golf buddy, for a Pulitzer Prize. I'm so proud of you, Adam. It's incredible.

I'm doing an event in LA pretty soon with a Pulitzer Prize winner for his new book. Oh, yeah. What's it called again? It's called War on Peace. The End of Diplomacy. War on Peace, The End of Diplomacy and the Decline

of American Influence. Anyway, that's our show for today. That's our show. And thanks again to James Comey for being our guest. And thanks to...

Oh, did you miss that? We put the entire five-hour transcript online. Thanks to Syass at high school for the chip on my shoulder that drives me to this very day. Thanks, everyone.