Pod Save America - “One step away from drooling on himself.”

Episode Date: July 20, 2017

Trumpcare is dead and alive and dead and alive again, and we discover from a terrifying New York Times interview that the President doesn’t actually know what health insurance is. Then Jon and Dan talk to Montana Governor Steve Bullock about his vision for the party and the country, and Ana Marie Cox joins to talk about Trump’s elimination of teen pregnancy prevention programs. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Today on the pod, we have Montana Governor Steve Bullock and the host of Crooked Media is with friends like these, Anna Marie Cox. Also, don't forget to go subscribe and listen to this week's Pod Save the World. Tommy had a great conversation with julia yaffe from the atlantic she's a russia expert and they talked not just about the russia hack but you know what was putin's motivation did he just get lucky or is he going to try it again seems like he might and she also tells the uh the crazy story of how she was harassed after her

piece about uh melania trump by a bunch of online trolls. It's a really good episode. Check it out. You can also find all of our pods now on Spotify, all of Crooked Media's pods, which is great. I go to Spotify all the time. I just opened it up the other day, and there was Pod Save America, a suggested podcast. Very exciting, Dan. Their algorithm is top-notch. It is.

Yeah, their Discover playlists are phenomenal. Okay, so it's Made in America week here in the Trump administration. Seems like they've got that message through. We're basically waiting for the CBO score for the Trumpcare 2.0, 3.0. I've lost count at this point. But this is the bill that won't fucking die, Dan. And we thought it was dead earlier this week but uh it appears to be showing a little bit of life right now can we be clear on this point that you thought it was dead and i have reverted to my naturally negative ways i know

and now i'm and now i'm with you i thought it was dead man it's like well i mean look it's well let's let's get into it here first let's talk about how it fell apart, right? So, Susan Collins and Rand Paul were hard no's on this bill. And that meant that one more no would kill the bill. Remember, three Republicans against this bill, it doesn't go anywhere. So then Monday night, Mike Lee and Jerry Moran, Jerry Moran's senator from Kansas, Mike Lee from Utah, released simultaneous statements saying that they both oppose the bill. So that killed it for the time being. Lee's reason is because it didn't get rid of enough insurance protections. For him,

the Cruz Amendment was too liberal. Tells you where Mike Lee's coming from. And Jerry Moran, you know, unclear exactly why he was against it, but he was getting a lot of pressure from constituents at his office, his town halls. So, you know, he was unhappy with the Medicaid parts of the bill. So that was Moran, right? So they kill the bill. After they kill it, McConnell seems like he's retreating, announces he's going to hold a vote on repeal and delay,

which is the worst possible option because it keeps all of Obamacare's regulations, because you can't eliminate those through the reconciliation budget process, but it just guts all the funding in Obamacare, and it doesn't go into effect for two years. But this, of course, would immediately destroy the insurance markets because no insurance company would stick around in a program that's going to be gone in two years. We have a CBO score for that scheme. It says 17 million people would lose their insurance by 2018 and 32 million would lose their insurance by 2026.

Oh, and by the way, your premiums would double. So then on Tuesday, Collins, Murkowski from Alaska and Capito from West Virginia, and ultimately Portman from Ohio, all came out and said they will not vote for repeal and delay. And by the way, none of them really liked the earlier version of Trumpcare either. So then it seems like it's all over. But then Donald Trump jumps in. And what was Donald Trump's reaction, Dan? Well, Donald Trump, he had several reactions. First was just repeal the thing, then repeal and delay, then repeal and replace. He told Republicans to stay in through the August recess to do it. He had a part of his usual coherent tweet streams on this one.

Yeah. But he sort of threatened Republicans and brought them back to the table of sorts, which is alarmingly what happened over time after the first House version of wealth care, Trump care, ACHA, failed is Trump's browbeating somehow got them back to the table. And that's sort of what happened here with a lunch in the White House, with a lunch in the White House and then a meeting soon thereafter. Yeah. And at that lunch, he sat Dean Heller right next to him. I'm sure that wasn't an accident. And at one point during the lunch, he goes, and this guy wants to remain a senator, doesn't he? And then Heller laughs. I have to say, Dean Heller, man, this guy, it's like, I get the political position he's in, which is, you know, if he opposes Trump care, then Steve Wynn, casino billionaire for Nevada, Trump,

all these other rich Republican billionaires have threatened a primary challenge. And, you know, really smart people like John Ralston in Nevada, a reporter in Nevada, think like he's going to lose in 2018 if he opposes this. But he's also probably going to lose in Nevada, which is a blue state that Hillary Clinton won, if he votes for this, right? So, like, Dean Heller could be a dead man walking either way, but you've got to at least take a stand. Everyone who has asked Dean Heller what he believes about this bill cannot get a straight answer from the guy. He is too afraid to say what he really believes. It is just like, my view on politicians is always like this, come out against the bill,

come out for the bill, but take a fucking stand, man. Like, because if you don't take a stand and you're squishy, you're definitely going to lose. You're definitely going to lose re-election. That is exactly right. And this is where political consultants

and politicians are too clever by half, where it's like, well, just duck. And we will not be the person who killed Obamacare. We will not be the person who saved Obamacare. We'll just pretend like the voters forgot we existed. But voters can smell weakness in calculation. And that's exactly, Dean Heller, I think, did himself some good a few weeks ago when he came out with Sandoval and said that he was going to oppose that first version of the bill. And when he did that, he seemed strong. And now he seems like he's ducking and voters can sense that. And so he's taking a, he is a tough hand to play and he's playing it as poorly as possible.

Yeah. I mean, I've always believed this about, like, this is like way back to John Kerry voting for the war in Iraq and then trying to vote against the $87 billion that would keep funding the war and thinking he could and D.C. consultants thinking he could split the difference and no one would notice. Right. And politicians have done this over time. Right. And just it never fucking works. It is a D.C. consultant mindset that does not translate to voters and actually assumes that voters are fucking stupid. You know, it drives me nuts so anyway so trump's got this lunch with heller and all the rest of them um he also by the way for one of his tweets uh the republicans never discuss how good their health care bill is

keeping my donald trump called their bill mean um and it will get even better at lunchtime he's talking about the lunch meeting and then he writes the dem scream death as ocare dies which very shakespearean from uh from donnie trump what this guy we found out that this guy knows so little about health care health care legislation which we always believe but in the last couple days we had some evidence of this um i don't know if you saw there was one daily beast story that said that during the campaign he would often confuse Medicaid and Medicare. Yes. He didn't know which program was which. And then, and we'll talk about this when we get to Russia stuff, but the New York Times interview that Donald Trump gave to Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker, I forget who else was there, Mike Schmidt?

Michael Schmidt, yeah. Is one of the most terrifying documents you'll read and a series of terrifying documents from the Trump presidency. Here's what he said about health care to the New York Times. Quote, But what it does, Maggie, it means it gets tougher and tougher. As they get something, it gets tougher. Because politically, you can't give it away. So pre-existing conditions are a tough deal.

Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you're 21 years old, you start working and you're paying $12 a year for insurance. And by the time you're 70, you get a nice plan. Here's something where you walk up and say, I want my insurance. It's a very tough deal, but it is something that we're doing a good job of. Dan, can you dissect that for us? I think it's a tough deal. I think healthcare is a tough deal. The thing that I find mind boggling about Trump is not that he doesn't understand healthcare,

although he certainly should. It's the, he hasn't even bothered to learn how to fake it. Like if he would just memorize like five terms like growth in healthcare costs, bending the cost curve, there's like just – you can – healthcare is very, very – it's one of the most complicated domestic policy issues that you can look at. And to truly, truly deeply understand it takes time and energy and brainpower, none of which Trump will allot to this, but at least learn how to fake it. It is as if he has never read a single memo or paid attention in a single meeting about this. Just through osmosis alone, you would think he would be able to say a few words that would pretend like he doesn't say. He can only talk about the politics of it. He cannot talk anything about the policy. And I think it's worth noting, you pointed out the Medicaid-Medicare confusion, which is there is this theory we've talked about before where when Trump tweeted that he would not cut Medicaid during the campaign, he actually meant Medicare.

He just didn't know the difference. I do wish the New York Times reporters who gave a very thorough interview had asked him about reversing his position on cutting Medicaid, because that's one of these things that is, it is a read my lips type pledge that he is dramatically backed away from and no one seems to try to hold him accountable for it. It is very unfortunate. Look, and I get, I think Maggie and company have a pretty brilliant strategy when they sit down and interview Trump, which is they give him enough rope to hang himself and just sort of like lead him on knowing that he'll say something crazy, you know, but you can try to cover a bunch of different topics and probe in different places that are of huge importance to the American people. And look, maybe them trying to get him

to say something crazy on Russia and in the investigation and all that is on top of their mind. Fine. But I really wish they had done that as well. So Trump has no idea what he's talking about. Like he thinks he thinks that health insurance is life insurance. That's what that description was. And he probably thinks health insurance is life insurance because he sees life insurance ads in between Fox and Friends segments because they run all over cable. I mean, that's actually what I believe about this. I don't. A hundred percent. He's just. Okay what I believe about this. I don't. 100%.

He's just. Okay, so forget about Trump. Trump, basically, his role in this whole thing is when he doesn't get a win or he thinks he's not getting one on health care, he screams, yells about things that no one can understand. And Republican senators, for some odd reason, listen and say, okay, he's mad at us and he might finance primary opponents against us. So let's try to get in a room and figure something out. So that's basically what happened. So last night, they all met, or at least some of them met. Importantly, Susan Collins, Rand Paul were not in that meeting that they had last night, which is, and it was, and a lot of staff wasn't in

the meeting, so it wasn't like serious negotiation, but a bunch of Republicans met in the Senate last night. They left the meeting saying that they were a little more optimistic that maybe they had bridged some of their differences on this bill, but that there was no real progress. They hadn't thrown around real dollar amounts. Pat Toomey said, hard to say if we're closer, I'm fine voting next week. Privately, they said they doubted they could still get to 50. But they're trying, which is the important thing for all of us. And there are rumors that McConnell will spend or could spend up to $200 billion extra to shore up Medicaid and appease some of these senators with Medicaid expansion states, which is very scary. Even though throwing $200 billion at a problem where you've just cut $1.2 trillion from Medicaid and from the subsidies,

adding $200 billion back in is really not going to do much, right? Last night, we're in the middle of a fight for family vacation right now. And I was at dinner with my family and I glanced at my phone and I saw your text about – your doomsaying text about the $200 billion. And so I pulled out my phone and obviously just started intensely reading the Twitter feeds of like Topher Spiro, Andy Slavitt to try to get the facts. And became – was basically – ended up being so rude at the table that uh hallie elbowed me in the side to basically tell me to put my phone away and i was like health care is in trouble and so the my mood i'm the same way man my mood like noticeably changes when i think the bill is alive versus when i think it's dead like i was having trouble preparing for the pod last night because all i was doing is like reading dylan sc Vox's feed and reading Topher and Andy and Julie Rovner,

all these people who cover healthcare. I think this is probably, the fact here is this will never be truly dead until Democrats take back the house. No, I saw your tweet on that and it is very correct that tweet was set in response to your uh it's dead all dead in all caps uh tweets about it i did i did a very nervous i did a follow-up tweet that said let's keep working let's keep fighting i saw that i saw that i appreciated that but look so i don't know if this 200 billion is going to work like i i talked talked to Andy Slavitt. He must be annoyed by all the times that I DM him.

But he thinks, you know, he thought that McConnell would spend this money the last round, right? He was surprised that he didn't. One of the reasons McConnell didn't is because a lot of these senators who are in non-Medicaid expansion states, they don't want the Medicaid expansion states to get a bunch of money that they don't. And, you know, he also said, you know, Collins is not going to be a yes. It doesn't seem like they can get Paul to yes. So they are still, you know, they still don't have the votes, but basically all they need is one, like Murkowski or Capito or Portman, or they need all three of them, right? Like if one of them says no, we're fine. But if, you know, and the other thing we should say too, is of course,

John McCain, very sadly diagnosed with brain cancer, we found out last night, and which was just really sad to see. Like, so, but he's also not in the Senate right now. And he did tweet this morning, which was a really great tweet from John McCain. He said, you know, to my all my Senate sparring partners, like, I'll be back soon. Don't get too excited. But as long as he's not there, they also don't they don't have the votes to proceed because they are down one, two. McCain will do when he comes back because he was sort of against the he he basically released a statement as he was recovering from surgery saying we need to get back to a bipartisan process, you know. So we don't know what will happen. CBO score will come out today. And, you know, I don't I think that will still show like 18 to 20 million probably will lose their insurance. So I can't imagine the CBO score would help that much. The CBO will not include the Cruz Amendment, which is crazy

because the Cruz Amendment would destroy the insurance markets. So you'd think they'd think we'd want to know that before Republicans voted on the bill. Do you understand? I've been trying to get to the bottom of why they're not including the Cruz Amendment. Oh, yeah, because they don't want us because it would what the Cruz Amendment would show were that like premiums would spike just unbelievably that more people would lose their coverage. It's also I think, well, there's two things. One, it's really hard to score the Cruz Amendment because a lot of health care experts on both sides of the aisle think it's completely unworkable. Like you just can't do it. So they're having a hard time figuring out just what kind of impact it would have. But they also know that, oh, also, the extra money that McConnell has added to the bill so far would likely go to helping clean up the mess that the Cruz Amendment causes. So the Cruz Amendment will spike premiums for just about everyone because it will cause a death spiral in the insurance markets. And to fix that, it would give a little extra money to people to afford the higher priced insurance. But do you know why the CBO, is the CBO not scoring it because it's too hard to score

or because McConnell didn't give them the Cruz Amendment to score? Well, he finally gave it to them, but they had this thing where they decided to delay giving it to them because they wanted to hold it off as long as possible. They are shady motherfuckers. Yes, they are shady motherfuckers. That is true. So why do you think this is? First, we'll talk about the problems Democrats have and Republicans have.

But why do you think this has been so hard for Republicans to get to an agreement on this? There are a couple of reasons for it. One, we've talked about this before, but they've spent they had eight years to prepare for this moment and never came up with anything other than straight repeal. There was never – I mean we were in this White House. Paul Ryan would come out and say the Republican healthcare plan will come out in three months and then three months would come and it would not come out. And then the next year he'd say the same thing. come out. And then the next year, he'd say the same thing. And they were very comfortable in opposition, but they didn't want to put anything forward because healthcare policy is very

politically tough because it involves trade-offs. And so that's part one. Part two is, you know, this point has been made before, but once people – it's very hard to take things away from people. And what they really want to do is have – is not – the Republicans actually believe the government should not provide health care to people. Yep. But they cannot say that. is one of the – on the large – sort of on the longer timeline accomplishments of the – or elements of the Obama legacy is shifting the window on the conversation in this country is that health care is a right. Because Republicans – and this is why they're totally confused and fucked up here is they don't believe people should have health care. They are afraid to say that. So they are operating from within the Democratic-Obama framework that people should

have healthcare, but then they're putting in place policies that take healthcare away. And so the whole thing is a scam, you know, wrapped in a lie, wrapped in bullshit, or whatever you want to call it. And that makes it incredibly hard to do because they can't talk about what they actually want to do. Yeah. And to the credit of some of these Republican senators who have been wavering on this in a real way, as they've learned more details about health care and how it works and what it's like to actually try to legislate a bill, they've realized that even though they've had all these criticisms of Obamacare, the only way to fix what's wrong with Obamacare is to spend more money or to further regulate insurance companies, both of which are things that Republicans don't want to do because they're philosophically or their party is philosophically opposed to that.

You know that you either up subsidies for people, you increase subsidies, you add more people to Medicaid, you tell insurance companies that they have to, you know, not charge people for preexisting conditions, whatever it is, the government has to not charge people for pre-existing conditions. Whatever it is, the government has to step in in some way. But a lot of Republicans believe the government should not step in. Well, that's fine if you want to have that belief. If you believe the government should not step in to help people afford health insurance and it should be a completely private market, that's a fine belief to have. But a lot of these Republicans know it's an argument they'll never win with the American people. The Republicans have no coherent ideological agenda, right? Especially now.

Whatever else you want to say about Obamacare, about how the bill came together, the flaws it may have, Obamacare versus single payer, Medicare for all, whatever else, is the Democrats have had a long-held view that healthcare is a right. Everyone should have access to quality, affordable health care. And then we – when we have the legislative opportunity to do so, we put in place the best bill the political system – what we believe was the best bill the political system will allow at the moment. Republicans don't have that sort of goal. They have it on taxes, which is cut taxes for everyone, particularly rich people. But on health care, they have no – well, I mean it's not even just the eight years against Obamacare. I mean we're at 40, 50, 60 years of Republicans fighting against every attempt to provide health care to people.

And so there's not a thing that unites them here, right, other than the fact that it's Barack Obama's health care bill. That's the one thing that unites them. They don't care about anything else other than this is an element of the Obama legacy that we can take down. And they say that they've made this promise that they would repeal Obamacare for like the last eight years. And Trump and some of these other people, Republicans, keep telling them, if you don't keep that promise, voters will punish you. Right. Which I think even if I was just giving political advice to Republicans, I'd say like, yeah, I realize you made that promise, but your voters don't want to lose their health insurance either. If you were a Republican, if I was a Republican in a state with a huge Medicaid expansion, I'd go back and say, yeah, I know I've been saying repeal Obamacare for the last seven years, but I also know that there's some things right with the law and it's covered a lot of people. And so I'd rather go try to improve the law with the other party than to take it away from people. And look, that's what governors like John Kasich said that, governors like Brian Sandoval in Nevada said that.

So, like, there are Republicans who've done that. It's just they don't exist. Enough of them don't exist in the teens in some of these polls. And Obamacare is twice as popular as the Republican alternative. And so the everywhere, like the public, the voters are waving their hands saying, do not do this. And they are proceeding ahead for reasons that are quasi mysterious to me, but I think they probably boil down to fear of the bright parts of the world, fear of Sean Hannity and the fact that basically Republican politicians and Republican staff get all of their information from Fox News. And if you watch Fox News, you get a very different view of how the world looks. And not a particularly good view, to be honest.

No. The bank bailout, more popular than the Trumpcare. How's that one for you? I saw the poll said that the other day. So what have, it's not, you know, how did Democrats win this fight? Because we did not win it yet, but what have Democrats been doing right so far, do you think? And are there any lessons for the future? Yeah, I think unity is the big thing. And there are real divides in our party that are ideological but sort of boil down to the Bernie wing versus the Hillary wing or the rest of it. And what has been interesting is that Bernie Sanders, who obviously has been believed – huge

advocate of single payer, very critical of Hillary Clinton for not being for single payer. But he and his allies in this have been just right in line with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and everyone else fighting hard against Trump care and not using this opportunity to just, you know, if you were using this to run down, if liberals who believed in single payer, as many of us do, were using this as an opportunity to also run down Obamacare, I think it would undermine the ability to preserve it. And so the unity here, you know, despite a party that feels fractured at times is encouraging. And I think it's also a roadmap for how we're going to defeat things going forward, at least over the next 18 months until we get to the midterms. I agree with that. Breaking news here, just in from the CBO, breaking news here just in from the CBO 22 million will still lose coverage under the latest bill they did not improve the score

at all wah wah un-fucking-believable okay well that's that 15 million more uninsured by 2018 18 million more by 2020 22 million by 2026 great job Mitch McConnell

great job can we talk for a little bit about the legend of Mitch McConnell? Yes. Yes, we can. We keep reading all these stories that are like, this is a blow to his reputation as a master legislator. And Mitch McConnell, to his credit, is much more competent than most of the other numbskulls in the Republican Party. And we did some deals with Mitch McConnell over time to prevent taxes from going up, those sorts of things. And he is someone that if you cut a deal with him, he is capable of executing on it, unlike John Boehner, who just didn't have the strength to muscle his caucus somewhere. But let's not pretend he is like Ted Kennedy, because I don't remember, there's not like there's not going to be some monument to Mitch McConnell for all the things

that he passed to make the world better. I mean, he's basically been a guy who has no ideological beliefs other than the accumulation of power. And so he may succeed here, so I'm not dancing on his grave prematurely to be very clear to the karma gods. But the way, the sort of the legendary status that has been bequeathed on him by the Capitol Hill reporters is pretty nauseating for someone who's nothing more than a political hack. Yeah, I mean, what I'll remember for Mitch McConnell is that he successfully stole a Supreme Court seat that Barack Obama should have filled. And he withheld bipartisan support from Barack Obama for issuing a statement that Russia was

interfering in our elections, even though every intelligence agency in the government that looked at it said that they were. So that's what Mitch McConnell has done. And let's not forget, he said his top priority was defeating Barack Obama. Well, guess what, buddy? Yeah, he didn't do that. He did not do that. You did not succeed. He did stymie quite a bit of his agenda, but he did not defeat him. Yes. So back to the Democrats for a second, what they've been doing, right, totally agree on the unity front, too. I also think encouraging activism and sort of letting activists and organizers and people sort of take the lead on this fight, and not just politicians, has made a really big difference. And look, as soon as when we thought the bill was dead, you know, a lot of people were saying resistance worked, activism worked.

And there's some people throwing cold water on that because like Mike Lee is too conservative, whatever. Jeff Stein from Vox has been doing a great job on all this health care reporting. He actually talked to some of these Republican senators about whether sort of the resistance and people showing up at their office and protests made a difference. And Rob Portman said those voices are heard. And yes, I think it's made a difference. Tim Scott, senator from South Carolina, said, of course, it's made a difference. And Rob Portman said, those voices are heard. And yes, I think it's made a difference. Tim Scott, Senator from South Carolina said, of course, it's made a difference. And of course, like Jerry Moran from Kansas, who no one would have expected to oppose this bill. You know, he had had he was the only senator to hold a town hall over the last couple weeks. And so it's no

coincidence that a lot of people showed up at that town hall and told him not to vote for it. And he didn't. So I think that activism really matters here i also think dan that this is an issue that we didn't have to just talk about trump all the time and say annoying you know and talk about trump's offensive comments or crazy things he said it was a real issue that we got to talk about you know and it was like we had stories about real people's lives and we talked about things that would matter to people's lives and i think democrats probably need to do that going forward you know we can't make everything lives. And we talked about things that would matter to people's lives. And I think Democrats probably need to do that going forward. You know, we can't make everything about Trump. And this healthcare debate wasn't. He was a side player in this whole thing. And we've made it

about the issue itself. Like you said, we still might not get there. They still might pass something anyway. But the fact that it's been this hard for them is a direct result of the activism that Democrats have shown. Yeah, I think that's interesting because, you know, part of the – I was at a – you know, a couple months ago, I was part of a strategic discussion about how to think about healthcare and Trump with some other Democratic activists. And one of the arguments was how do we – from some folks who were working with The Hill directly was how do we get Trump more part of the healthcare story because Trump is so unpopular that it would sort of slow things down? But it's turned out to be the actual opposite is that by not making it about Trump and by Trump actually being too undisciplined and too ignorant to actually talk about healthcare in any way, shape, or form and having it really be just about the people who would lose coverage, the people whose premiums would go up or the people with pre-existing conditions is – has been much greater success because it has managed to cut through the Trump – our national attention deficit disorder when it runs to Trump. When it comes to Trump and to actually focus on one thing and the impacts of it on people for six months now.

And that's pretty, you know, I think that's also something we'll have to look at going forward in some of these other policy fights is what is the actual impact and not get pulled into the Trumpification of every topic in America. Yes. And before we get pulled ourselves into the Trumpification of everything by talking about his New York Times interview, Ben Wickler from MoveOn emailed us before the pod. We always take our marching orders from Ben. He told us to tell people sign up if you want to host or join a demonstration. They're happening all across the country on July 29th. Sign up at ourlivesontheline.org. And there's plenty of opportunities for protests, for rallies. Visit your office, visit your senator's offices. This thing is still very much alive right now. The vote is scheduled on Tuesday. So that's a very big day. You know, like you said, Dan, it's not completely dead until Democrats win. But if the vote fails on Tuesday, you know, again, the percentages that it might pass decrease even more.. So keep fighting on that. But let's talk about that New York Times interview.

Oh, man. I mean, God, I read it last night, and I was like, I just cannot believe, I cannot believe we are in this mess. So the headline was, and this is a Trump quote, direct Trump quote from the interview, Sessions should have never recused himself. And if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else.

Seems obstruction-y to me. Yeah, I think the best part about it is, and he's pretty clear, is he's mad at Sessions because if Sessions had still be in charge, he could have cover up Trump's misdeeds for him. But now Trump is annoyed because he had to personally obstruct justice, exposing himself to legal liability to try to stop the Russia investigation. And so in that sense, Sessions screwed him. If I had known the campaign stooge I installed as attorney general would refuse to help me obstruct justice, I would have appointed a different stooge. That's basically what he was saying. He also attacked his Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, because Trump mistakenly thought that Rosenstein was from Baltimore.

And he said, quote, that city doesn't have a lot of Republicans. And then he accused Rosenstein of having conflicts of interest. He wouldn't rule out firing Bob Mueller, the special prosecutor, and said that investigators would cross a red line if they looked into Trump family finances unrelated to Russia, which, spoiler alert, found out this morning they are. One of my favorite things that came of this is friend of the pod and long friend of longtime friend of ours david ploff re-emerged on twitter oh i didn't see this election yeah post-election he has spent a lot less time on twitter i think really purifying a lot of his life and just out of nowhere tweets there are 144,043 republicans in baltimore county but he's not even from there

so ploff who is a numbers guy by nature went deep into the voter file to get the number registered republics baltimore county just to prove trump wrong oh and rosenstein's not even from trump from baltimore he also accused uh you know for good measure accused jim comey of perjury and blackmail he says that uh he said that comey only briefed Trump on the P-tape dossier because he wanted to keep his job. Now there's one really funny thing that Trump said in this interview that made me laugh pretty hard. They asked about, you know, getting the meeting where Don Jr., you know, said went because he wanted dirt on Hillary Clinton. And Trump's like, well, why would I need dirt on Hillary Clinton? And he said, quote, there wasn't much I could say about Hillary Clinton that was worse than what I was already saying. Unless somebody said that she shot somebody in

the back, there wasn't much I could add to my repertoire. It was like a genuinely funny thing for Trump to say. And insane, completely insane. I think it's worth talking about how it appears this interview happened which is hope x who is who sits outside of trump's office was his press secretary in the campaign has a communications title but does not seem to be part of the she doesn't she seems to report to trump directly and to no one else. Organized this interview and was the only staffer in the room for it. And if you believe some of the reports, most of the senior White House staff, including Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, found out about this interview afterwards. That was nuts.

Yeah. interview afterwards that was nuts yeah i figured you i figured you that you and and tommy and our our old comms people would have particular horror at that at that little detail i mean could you just imagine if i was just like walking by obama's office and the door was closed i was like what's he doing he's like doing an hour-long sit down with three top reporters in the New York Times, including the one who has been on the Comey obstruction of justice beat, which is to show how naive they are, which is I'm sure what Howard this happened. I'm sure Hope called Maggie and said, we want to do it. Trump wants to talk to you. And she's like, hey, can I bring Mike Schmidt, the expert on all things Comey, FBI, DOJ? And they're like, sure, why not? More the merrier.

I mean, it is bonkers. And it's just, I mean, it goes without saying, everyone should go read this whole interview. It's very long and it's very, very confusing. But like the guy does not have the mental capacity to serve as president of the United States. I like, look, I know we've gone through this. Lovett always talks about like he's in some state of decline or something. I don't know. We're not doctors.

No one can diagnose this man. No one gets it. But like whether it's because he has some sort of condition or whether this was always the case, I don't care what it is. The result is the man cannot speak in full sentences that anyone can understand. I would like to talk to Maggie about how did you even understand what he was saying? The sentences don't make sense. The context doesn't make sense. He refers to things in vague terms that no one knows what he's talking about. It was really disturbing to read the transcript.

The amount of times that the transcript says garbled yeah which is like almost every answer it's like sentence sentence garbled garbled sentence and that's different like in interview transcripts there are two things cross talk is what they people put in the when, as we often do, two people talk over each other and you don't know what it says. But Garbold means that they listened to what Trump said on tape and could not understand it. And so they wrote Garbold. And I'd like to see what is in there. I'd like to read the – I've only read the excerpts.

I haven't seen a full transcript. Oh. But there's one other thing i the excerpts i read were like took me like 15 minutes um the thing that is interesting and there's something inappropriate about this but at one point in the transcript peter baker at the time says since we're on the record here which is a which means in my view that at they were at one point they several points they were off the record. Right.

Because since we're on the record is what reporters normally say just to make sure – if you've been going on and off to make sure that the subject knows we're back on the record so there's not a dispute about what they say later. And it's totally appropriate to go off the record. Obama has done it. We all do it. totally appropriate to go off the record obama has done it we all do it but i'd be very just curious like if the the insane things he said knowing they were being transcribed and put in the nation's paper of record is one thing like what how crazy are the things he wouldn't say publicly i mean who knows right like i did the collusion i don't know um yeah i did it i did the collusion but just keep that between us it's i mean it is the entire interview is a letter to america to be very fucking afraid

of the person in charge yeah it's a fucking red flashing light to america um so he did at one point in the interview he talked about the um the the secret Putin meeting that happened at the G20, which is basically... So this is how this went down. There was a dinner at the G20 for the leaders and their wives or partners. And so everyone's sitting at a table. And at those dinners, they usually separate the couples. And at those dinners, they usually separate the couples. So Trump's sitting next to Prime Minister Abe from Japan and I think the wife of the president of Argentina might be.

Anyway, so he's not with Melania and Melania is sitting next to Putin down the other end of the table. So Trump gets up at one point, goes down there, does not bring a translator and so it is just trump melania putin and a russian translator and they proceed to have a conversation that ranges anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour depending on various reports and um no one knows what the hell they said what they talked about because we didn't even have an english translator so why is this why is this a problem, Dan? Well, one is Putin is a pretty savvy player on the world stage, and Trump is always one step from drooling on himself. So it's like there's no – I don't know what lunch money Trump had when he started the meeting, but it's in Putin's pocket now. One step from drooling on himself is the winner of the uh title for the episode we've had a few contenders in my mind as we've been talking but that's gonna be it

i mean it like it you need you would even in a good situation with a ally you would want and a competent prepared president you want a u US note-taker there to be able to have a record of the events or everything else. So if there's a dispute, if Putin were to characterize it one way, you would have a first-person witness to characterize it another way for the US president. And you also want your own translator because your own translator knows whether the translator is saying the right thing, is accurately translating your words to the foreign leader. And so basically the – like Trump has no idea what was happening and was just potentially giving away the store without anyone in the US government knowing what he's agreeing to with a leader of the front country. I would also say it is pretty – a lot of thought from the host country goes into the seating chart at these tables. And I think it's pretty devious that two things happen. One,

they sat Trump next to someone who does not speak English. I think so because probably no one else wanted to sit next to Trump. And Abe's wife, therefore, would not be forced to speak to him because they could not communicate. And then it's pretty amazing that they put Melania next to Putin. Yeah, I know. Was that just like Merkel having fun? I don't know. That was someone deep in the German protocol department, fucking with Trump. Having a good time. So so and in terms of the investigation it also looks like jared kushner will testify before the senate intelligence

community in a closed hearing next week on tuesday whether junior will testify i saw conflicting reports that they're not sure he will yet though he's been invited to and so why does this matter well on the trump junior and manafort they have been invited and the and the judiciary committee has said if they say no they will subpoena them and possibly have u.s marshals escort them so so to chuck grassley's credit he seems pretty serious about this yeah but i mean this is these people lie about what they had for breakfast, all of them. And so they are now going to, I believe, testify under oath. I will be very interested.

I think Trump Jr. and Manafort will have to testify under oath because it will be an open session. I will be very interested to see in the negotiations between Jared Kushner's ever-evolving legal team, whether he will be put under oath before he speaks to the Senate Intel Committee. But every time they open their mouth, they put themselves at greater risk of obstruction of justice, perjury, and a myriad set of other crimes that involve conspiracies to work with our adversaries to influence elections. Bad stuff. Okay, we'll check that out next week. When we come back, we will be talking to the governor of Montana, Steve Bullock. This is Pod Save America.

Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. On the pod today, we are very lucky to have the governor of the state of Montana, Steve Bullock. Governor, how are you today? You know, I'm doing pod today, we are very lucky to have the governor in the state of Montana, Steve Bullock. Governor, how are you today? You know, I'm doing great today, John. How are you doing? And Dan? Not too bad.

We're doing great. Not too bad. So you recently created a political action committee, Big Sky Values Pack. That's the kind of thing people do when they're thinking about running for president. So do you want to be the first presidential candidate to announce your campaign on a podcast? So do you want to be the first presidential candidate to announce your campaign on a podcast? No, you know, I recently created that. You know, I've been both. We've done some great things in Montana, and I think there's some of it's a message that you can certainly share around the country. The way it works here, once I was done running for governor, I have to close out all the campaign accounts and things like that. So this affords me the opportunity to be part of this conversation of sort of what we've

done in Montana, how we've done it, and the lessons, not just for the Democratic Party, but for the entire country that hopefully folks can learn, because we've listened to people, we've worked across the aisle, but we've been able to move some real progressive things forward. So, yeah, let's talk about that. You won Montana by four points on the same night that Trump won it by 20. We also just saw Democrat Rob Quist lose the state to a guy who body slammed a reporter. So what's your secret? What are some of the lessons that you can share that, you know,

why you won by four points on a night where Trump won by 20? Yeah, there were more ads run in the governor's race here in Montana than any other governor's race in the country, and we ended up doing pretty well when Trump won by 20. I mean, I think a few different things, one of which is showing up, meaning getting out to places that maybe Democrats don't always go. Another that I think that we did well was that at times it's an assumption that either different places in the country or different places in the state that we want different things.

If we begin with sort of this base concept that everybody has the same hopes and values, right? You want a safe community. You want good schools, clean air, clean water, a good job job fundamental belief you can do better for your kids and grandkids if you begin with those values i think some of our differences disappear a little bit and also it's i believe one of the things that really helped out was the way that we'd run government when i first came in my first day of the state and my kids are young i said let's all act like our kids are watching, learn from us, be respectful, because they are. We did that, and typically, I mean, and it doesn't work everywhere, but my focus has been on what I call kind of both the great equalizers and the public good versus narrow self-interest in Montana. One thing, it doesn't

matter how big your wallet or checkbook is, it's our public lands. Another area is public education. Now there's public participation in our democracy and making folks feel like their vote is their voice. If you focus on those versus narrow sort of self-interest, be that some of the tax issues and things like that, I think that it resonated. You know, the Democratic Party has moved left in recent years. Are you concerned it's moving too far left to reach the sort of voters that you've had success with in places like Montana? You know, in a state like ours, and it was interesting, if I hearken back to my last

campaign, one of the first things that I did when I took office is formed an Equal Pay for Equal Work Commission. I took office is formed an equal pay for equal work commission. Because on the one hand, you know, it's still, it's unacceptable 50 years post Kennedy that we're still have this sort of pay discrepancy. And when I was running, folks were saying, oh, well, that's a national issue that may be too far left. Well, my TV ad was with my 14-year-old daughter talking about what a difference it makes for them. So from the standpoint of making sure we have equal pay, making sure we have quality education, making sure that we're moving all Montanans or all Americans forward,

my concern isn't that we go too far left. It's what we're talking about that actually resonates to all folks. I mean, people in Montana or people in the country need to know that the Democrat Party is fighting for them. And I don't know that they always do. Why do you think that is? What do you think that Democrats talk about that doesn't resonate with people in Montana and in other parts of the country? Well, one is talking about it, and two of which is actually showing up.

Meaning that, and I'll never forget, I was running for Attorney General in 2008, and President Obama, after our primary, because Montana was one of the last primary states, so at the time, Senator Clinton and Senator Obama were off and out in Montanaana which you don't always see but i'll never forget being at the fourth of july parade in butte butte america and there's the president and his family remember that yeah and and the idea that first of all i mean we as

democrats need to be in places and say you know, first we can't assume that the values are that different from Manhattan, Montana, which is 1,500 people outside of Bozeman to Manhattan, Kansas, or any other Manhattan. And second, which we have to go there and say, you know, we will fight for your values to make sure that you can get, climb up the economic ladder and that your kids and grandkids will be doing better. If we're not even showing up at those sort of places, we're not offering any sort of notion that why should they support us? It's just some, you know, guy or woman from a coast or elsewhere. Governor, I wanted to get your reaction to what's going on at Washington

right now with the Republicans' efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. You know. Your thoughts about what they're trying to do and where Democrats should go from here. From my perspective, so Montana, and again, my legislature is almost two-thirds Republican. We were one of the last states, other than Louisiana, to pass Medicaid expansion. We did, in a way, the work for our state. Right now, I can look at 79,000 more Montanans covered. state. Right now, I can look at 79,000 more Montanans covered. My insurance rate went from 20% uninsured in 2013 to 7% today. I'm a state that has 147,000 square miles and a million people. You know, when I was out at the governor's meeting recently, I figured out 121 Rhode Islands could fit into Montana. And to have a vibrant rural area you

have to have health care if you lose your hospital you've lost um that community so what they're talking about not only my 79 000 montana is covered by medicaid i mean when we're talking about 22 million americans losing health coverage as a result if you did their proposed repeal and replace. 32 million if you just repealed. This is no way to go forward. That's one of the reasons. I mean, I joined with five Democrat governors, five Republican governors, an independent. And we put out a statement a couple days ago that said, let's actually work on stabilizing the market and adding certainty. But what the Republicans are doing in Washington, D.C. might make a good statement. Like, they may

be able to run around and say, oh, look at what we did to the Affordable Care Act. On the ground, this is where it matters. And at the states, it's the people that are impacted. So what I'm hoping is they'll actually start listening to folks. And boy, if we can find five Democratic and five Republican governors to come together with some commonality, you'd think if they don't want to talk to us, at least they'd try talking to one another. A lot of Democrats, as we look towards 2018, 2020, what to say about health care, what to run on when it comes to health care is a big topic of conversation. What do you think about, I mean, there's some Democrats who are advocating single payer. There are others who are saying, you know, people should have the option of buying into Medicare,

or the option that people in Nevada, the legislature tried at giving people the option to buy into Medicaid. Would any of those interest you, any of those plans? Well, I think it's a part of the discussion we should have right where the only industrialized country in the nation that isn't providing health care but by the same token let's talking in the realities were living in when we're also fighting tooth and nail just to try to make sure i mean montana would lose five billion dollars between two

two thousand twenty two thousand twenty six billion dollars between 2020 and 2026 as a result of the House and Senate plan. We need to figure out ways to make health care affordable and accessible and available to all. How can I recognize the devil in the details? Right. Probably a little early to say this is the way you fully get there. But how you don't get there is when you've actually made some significant steps forward. There still has to be work done to fix the markets on the Affordable Care Act, but how you don't get there is like destroying it all right now without

any sort of thoughtful replacements. Aside from Democrats not showing up in places, which, you know, certainly they need to speak to people in every part of the country. What do you think about the message itself? What's the story Democrats should be telling specifically about the economy and, you know, their positive agenda for the future when they go to some of these places? I mean, I think that Democrats need to be providing the message and telling people that I will fight for you. I recognize that at the end of the day, your financial stability and security and the thought that you have a decent job and can actually climb up the ladder is other than making sure your kids are healthy and your community is safe,

the most important thing that you can do or most important to you as an individual and that I will fight for that. So that's as we talk about college affordability. But we also should be talking about other pipelines to get people good jobs. We've done a lot with apprenticeship and work-based learning here. We need to be able to say that we are actually going to represent and reflect your needs. Public education. I mean, this is one of the great equalizers that allows, I mean, allowed me to get to where I am. We need to be saying that we are going to be investing

in your children and give them hope on that. I think that there are public money. I mean, certainly as a Democrat and as Governor of Montana, I'm pleased with the fact that I've been careful with taxpayer dollars. And I think that we need to do that and make people say that we will be investing in you and your communities. All right. Well, Governor, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you calling in. And hopefully we can talk to you again soon. Sounds great. You guys have a great day. Thank you so much for having me. You too. Take care, Governor. Thanks, Governor. Bye. Hey, don't go anywhere. This is Pod Save America, and there's more on the way. On the pod, we have the host of Crooked Media is with friends like these, Annamarie Cox. Welcome. Hello, gentlemen. How are you? Quite well in Trump adjusted terms. have the host of crooked medias with friends like these anna marie cox welcome hello gentlemen how

are you uh quite well in trump adjusted terms which is that is that the leading t-shirt for the poll of t-shirts last i checked it was um i'm fine in trump adjusted terms and jesus loved the poor assholes um not poor assholes, although he loved them too. That's the thing about Jesus. Like he loved everybody and the assholes, but the assholes I believe is a directive rather than a descriptive in that particular t-shirt idea. I do think in Trump-adjusted terms

is the clearer message of the two, but I gather that some people don't want to even have Trump anywhere on their person. It could be confusing. People might not, you might end up like being seen as a Trump supporter. So I understand, I understand the risks,

particularly in California, you get like a tomato thrown at you walking on the street accidentally. Yeah. No, I mean, I think in some ways, like this is a really tricky shirt. All of the options,

all of the options are a little problematic. I will understand just a little behind the scenes info for people like you know the ultimate decision will be by the crooked media brain trust and i i'm there my if there are some edits uh from the top i think that will be understand it under understood um so but anyway you guys want to hear about the pod yeah who's on this week what are you talking about and who's on well i'm real excited about this week's. It is a very, very awkward couple of conversations in the sense that they're about uncomfortable subjects. One of my guests is a woman who is a comprehensive sex education instructor in the Chicago area. And she would be interesting to talk to, you know, at any point in time, because that's an important subject and a controversial one.

Yeah. But I am talking to her this week because over the weekend, the Center for Investigative Reporting, in fact, on their Reveal publication, broke the news that HHS cut over $200 million in funding for research into preventing teen pregnancies, which is crazy on many different levels. First of which is that they basically wasted money because what they did was cut funding that the Obama administration had already given for five-year grants to research the scientifically validated ways that we can reduce teen pregnancy. By cutting the funding halfway through, they've made it impossible for researchers to use the data that they've collected

to try and do this, which is, by the way, teen pregnancy falling, that's great, but America still has a higher rate than other industrial nations, and also we have pockets of teen pregnancy rates in the country that are really high in the places where you'd expect. That part really stuck out at me. We have results that show that over however many, last however many years, 10, 20 years, teen pregnancy rates have been falling. You would think that that would be enough evidence to say, oh, something's working, these programs are working, know perhaps we should let them continue their research that they're in the middle of right or in because

none of these programs by the way had anything to do with abortion you know none of these programs like touched the things that we normally associate with you know religious right outrage they do however cover the fact that you might get pregnant and what you might do to prevent that. They're not abstinence only. But there was research into preventing teen pregnancy and looking at what programs worked the best. And the woman that I talked to, in fact, they did fund some of the education because they would see let's see what education programs work right she was doing um comprehensive sex education in classrooms that where she was the only person handling that duty and if now that she's not there it's going to fall back to pe coaches you know which i i don't know about you guys but my my physical education instructors in middle school

were not the best source for information on teen pregnancy prevention, I didn't think. I'm pretty sure that holds true today. Well, this is, I mean, this is part of a larger strategy. You know, this is just like the refusal, the legal prohibition against doing research into gun violence, because, like, the idea is, if research happens, then we will be forced to adopt a policy position runs counter to our current beliefs based in

ignorance. So we'll just remain ignorant so that there's no danger, we'll be forced to change our position. Right. And it's also like, you know, the other thing that happened this week, or that we learned about this week was the scientist, the whistleblower who came out in the washington post to say that he had been reassigned from doing climate research to doing like accounts receivable which is another way of just shutting down the research that makes them feel bad right just talk about snowflakes right like well geez guys did you guys did you guys also see the uh sam stein's story in in the Daily Beast today about how Health and Human Services has also been using taxpayer money to basically fund anti-Obamacare propaganda? They've been taking helpful information off the HHS website that tells people how they could go enroll and get healthcare coverage. And they've been filming people doing testimonials saying why they don't like Obamacare, all with taxpayer money.

And this is the Department of Health and Human Services that's supposed to be nonpartisan. Yeah, I mean, this is the other. So I actually talked to, so I talked to this woman who's a sex education instructor. And then I also talked to Michelle Goldberg for the podcast. We have kind of an extended conversation about something that I know you guys have covered and I've talked about it a lot, but it's a daily issue, which is like what it's like to have a sexual assailant in, in the white house, you know, that, that daily insult that we can't,

I personally can't contemplate for too long because it just, I could, could not work if I actually thought about it at a top level every day. But what we talk about a little bit is this gets to this, which is that these are not conservatives. These are nihilists. Right. These are people who do not believe in anything.

They want to destroy. They do not want to create even a theocracy, which would be almost understandable. Right. They're not even trying to remake the government in the image that like a pence government you know might be it's just a government that seems to be about ignorance and destruction and not even a thinking dismantling of what's happening, but just like this defunding of these teenage pregnancy prevention programs, I mean, are wasting money by doing it, you know?

And they don't seem to care. It just was a heedless, heartless, nonsensical thing to do. Well, and not only that they not care, but they don't really know a lot, which was proven by the president himself during that interview. You and your segues. You're good. I'm really getting the hang of this, guys.

talked about this earlier but i wanted to get your take on it is uh trump confusing uh health insurance with life insurance in his uh interview with maggie for the new york times i think he did right like that's the only thing that makes it even make a little bit of sense and i know we tweeted about this earlier but like so he said that like he said insurance costs 12 a year which is crazy right give me that deal but if you think of it as life insurance it makes a little more sense you know like i i said on twitter it brings the the lucille bluth level of ignorance about pricing to just maybe a single lucille if we want to judge it in lucille's how off are you from the standard price of something i tweeted that gif last night as soon as i read the read the story which is it's one of my favorite jokes from arrested development if you guys don't

know it's she says what does a banana cost like ten dollars yep how much could a banana cost yeah um apparently apparently the new season of arrested development um is going to take on the bush administration or bush uh they'd already took on the bush administration yeah it's a fantastic iraq war subplots um but it's going to take on trump administration it's already like the most memeable you know sitcom or sitcom but comedy ever when we someday have when we someday launch like a culture politics podcast from crooked media like the one show that probably depicts the trump family better than any any other show is arrested development

like the bluths you could make an argument that the bluths are the trumps you know the trumps without a michael right that's right i saw someone on twitter say this we're the michael i see every other i see every other one of them uh but not not them right i mean i think that makes a lot of makes it make more sense if we assume that he thinks he's talking about life insurance and he's made this um weird comparison of like the cheap insurance that you somehow benefit from when you're older before so i think he doesn't understand what what health insurance is but of course that just adds us to the long list of things he doesn't understand right like the fact that there were two napoleons um that's another thing did you guys just go through the times interview line by line because that

we could close you could have done that for an hour we went through a lot of it we did not get to the napoleon bit um or the mcconn handshake thing or the like there's just too much to cover so yeah well he gives us something new every day. What do you think? So you guys are the political professionals. I like to turn to you for analysis on what people in the White House could be thinking. What do you think the plan for that interview was? There was no plan. What do you think? Was it the Made in America week? Was he supposed to be talking about Made in America? What do you think? I think this was Trump's idea. And he periodically has to talk. He has some chemical need to talk to Maggie Haberman for 45 minutes to an hour periodically, and this was it.

There was no – this had nothing to do with health care. Like, I think we always try to ascribe strategy to Trump, and there is no strategy. It's just – it's impulse. He would feel better if he was talking himself, so he decided to talk himself. And from what I can tell, there was no meeting on this i think trump told whole ho picks to schedule it so they scheduled it yeah that's good is maggie haverman covered underneath the senate health care plan that's at this point i mean i'm sure yeah okay well everyone should download the latest episode of With Friends Like These. Drops tomorrow. I'm interested to hear that conversation about the awkward conversations

about teen pregnancy. And who's the other person you talked to again? Michelle Goldberg. And we'll be talking about the daily insult to women that is the Trump presidency. Oh, yes. Okay. Well, great. Everyone go download that tomorrow. Thank you guys for having me on and yes everyone tune in it's a great conversation yes and uh and thanks everyone for joining today and uh john lovett's here we got he's gonna do love it or leave it tomorrow night yeah sarah silverman sarah silverman's coming to love it or leave it we are getting the guests we we should have

excellent um all right everyone have a good weekend we'll see you next week bye bye bye guys bye a guest we should have. Excellent. All right, everyone. Have a good weekend. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye. Bye, guys. Bye.