Pod Save America - “Owned in the Oval.”

Episode Date: December 13, 2018

Trump throws a tantrum over the wall in the Oval Office, Michael Cohen is sentenced to three years in prison, and more Democrats throw their support behind a Green New Deal. Then Stacey Abrams talks to Jon about her race for governor in Georgia, her new lawsuit to uphold voting rights, and her future plans.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Today on the pod, my interview with Stacey Abrams, who's part of a new lawsuit to uphold voting rights in Georgia. We'll also be talking about the Oval Office showdown over the shutdown, the latest in the Trump family crime syndicate, and the politics around a Green New Deal. Also, while we're talking voting rights, we should say it's absolutely worth checking out the new episode of Crooked Conversations, which features an interview by DeRay McKesson with reporter Ari Berman, who's been all over this issue. He's written a lot about voting rights. It's a great interview.

Check it out. Also, go to crooked.com and check out the new Love It or Leave It tour dates. Love It is going on the road. It is the funniest political show you'll ever see. You should go buy tickets. Help get them out of the office. It's great. Check it out. Crooked.com

It's incentive enough, I guess. It's a great, I mean, it's incentive for us to buy tickets. I don't know about anyone else. Is Tommy just on the website buying like 600 tickets for a show in like Green Bay or something? That's right. That's right. Love it. You sold out another one. I think he's going to Radio City in September. He's right. Love it. You sold out another one.

I think he's going to Radio City in September. He's got a DC show. All kinds of great shows. So go check it out. ACA reminder, the deadline for signups for the Affordable Care Act is December 15th. It is almost here. Go to healthcare.gov. Tell your friends.

Donald Trump doesn't want you to know about the fact that you can buy a very affordable health insurance plan so um piss them off and go buy one okay let's get to the news in just eight days the federal government will run out of money to fund about a dozen agencies including the department of homeland security the department of justice and the state department democrats have offered to keep the government open by passing a continuing resolution that would simply fund those agencies at last year's levels. But Donald Trump's threatening to shut down the government unless he receives $5 billion to build a wall.

This led to a meeting Tuesday in the Oval Office between Trump, Mike Pence, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi that ended with the president taking full ownership of a potential shutdown, ranting in front of a bunch of television cameras. And I believe we have a clip of this that we'll play now. You know what I'll say? Yes. If we don't get what we want one way or the other, whether it's through you, through a military, through anything you want to call, I will shut down the government. And I am proud. And I'll tell you what to call, I will shut down the government. Okay, fair enough. And I am proud.

We disagree. I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don't want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it. The last time you shut it down, it didn't work. I will take the one to shut it down I'm not going to blame you for it The last time you shut it down it didn't work

I will take the mantle of shutting down First of all I will take the mantle? What the fuck are you talking about? Dan, why do you think This spun out of control so quickly? What did you think about this Little interaction in the oval?

Because the president is a short-tempered toddler with no sense of how to be president or even the issues he cares most about. I mean, he threw a temper tantrum that had a lot more to do with Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, and Bob Mueller than Chuck and Nancy, if you will. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess we should tell people the way this started is Pelosi and Schumer thought they were going to the Oval to engage in private negotiations over the government shutdown. They didn't know that there were going to be cameras and press there until they literally walked into the Oval Office. So then it was pretty great. You know, they start talking to the press and Pelosi's like, look, we're here because we wanted to negotiate in good faith to avoid a Trump shutdown. And as soon as she said that, you just see Trump perk up and he's like, what did you just say? What did you just call it? Trump shutdown. And from there, it was just like all hell broke loose.

How do you think that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi handled the whole situation. Before I say that, I have to say I do respect Trump for throwing sort of a surprise press conference. In hindsight, I wish to God we had done that with Boehner and McConnell because America should see their combination of evil and idiocy in full display. And so it's bad for them. It's not great negotiating etiquette, but it would have been probably a net benefit for democracy. Had we done that to your question, Nancy Pelosi dominated the meeting as she usually does. And I've actually been in a handful of these meetings over the years when

Obama was president with Nancy Pelosi and the rest and the bipartisan congressional leadership. And she always crushes them. Like she is playing chess and they are like figuring out where to put the checkers on the board on a daily basis. And she did it in this meeting. She did great. I think there's two ways to look at how Schumer and pelosi approaches there is the optics in the room which are less consequential but they matter some and then there is yeah the sort of longer term view of how it sets up this fight if you take the latter part first they did everything perfectly they basically went in that meeting and walked out with Trump accepting blame for a shutdown that has not yet happened.

And that is exactly what you want because the politics of a shutdown are always centered around who is to blame. And historically, it has always been the congressional leadership, whether it was the Republicans when Clinton was president, the Republicans when Obama was president. It was the Republicans when Clinton was president, the Republicans when Obama was president, and then the Democrats in the very brief – you might miss it if you blinked – shutdown of 2018. And here you have Trump declaring repeatedly that he is the one shutting the government down. So then that is a huge win, and they set forward both in the meeting and the press afterwards very reasonable positions and put trump in a very it like basically in a box and so that was very good in the room you know i it's hard like trump makes everyone act like trump and when you have chuck schumer yelling uh north dakota and indiana adam like it's just it's not it's not it's not a great look also another just like classic you know uh example of people who just can't get out of washington dc in their headspace

uh is chuck schumer kicking it off by talking about how donald trump got so many fucking pinocchios from the washington post like go Schumer, go take a poll of how many people in the country know what the fuck a Pinocchio is from the Washington Post. I agree with you there. I will say that claiming the Washington Post fact checker demerit system around the term Pinocchio was very effective because I bet they don't know what the Washington Post fact checker ismerit system around the around the term Pinocchio was very effective because I bet I bet they don't know like what the Washington Post fact checker is but I bet they do know what it means if someone gets four Pinocchios that is true and of course as we all know uh the Washington Post recently added an extra um level to their rating system and so now you can get four

Pinocchios but if you continue to tell that lie, you will get what's known as the bottomless Pinocchio. That's, be more clever. I mean, the whole thing is so tortured. You should also know that if you tell the truth and it is a factually proven thing, you get a quote Geppetto check mark. So it's like just bottomless,

but I am sad that they were not more clever about what a something better than bottomless pinocchio which sounds like like an add-on to a brunch at a not great restaurant i will say too like it's easy to over exaggerate this like schumer did fine right i mean like you said the most important thing is they both got out of there with the upper hand in these negotiations and they they got Trump to admit that he owns the shutdown no matter what. But you're right. Like, I think Schumer was more easily baited into sort of Trump's bullshit than Pelosi was. And that, you know, Trump says, well, I did win the Senate.

I won Indiana and North Dakota. well, I did win the Senate. I won Indiana and North Dakota. And then Schumer's like, it looks at the press, looks out at America and says, when the president's bragging about winning Indiana and North Dakota, you know he's in trouble. He's kind of like smiling, laughing about it. It's like, I don't think this little fight really benefits anyone at all. But Pelosi was there and she's just sort of she seemed like because she was the most reasonable person in the room. She's telling the president, if you have the votes for the wall, call the votes for the wall.

This is Article one. We are Congress. This is how we legislate. We put out a position. You tell us what's wrong with the position. I mean, she just like very calmly kept laying out the facts of the case and the facts of negotiation and also was able to piss Trump off without sort of going down to his level um also by the way i think it's funny that mike pence was there the whole time because he didn't say a fucking word i know he was sitting in the corner looking back and forth as if he was watching a tennis match it was just it was bizarre He's like looking around the Oval Office thinking like, how will I replace those drapes when I'm here? Also, Mike Pence always, in every situation, looks like he has no idea how he got there. He probably doesn't. Yeah, he sort of looks like he woke up from a nap.

Like, like oftentimes with our daughter, like she falls asleep in one place and wakes up in another place. And she wakes up being like, I fell asleep in my room. Why am I a car right now? I feel like that's how Mike Pence is. It's like one day he was governor of Indiana and about to his re-election. They like wakes up from a nap and he's like in the Oval Office watching some absurd display from Trump. Hoping he's not ensnared in a criminal investigation. So here's the here's the Washington Post description of the meeting.

Here's the Washington Post description of the meeting. The three leaders pointed fingers, raised their voices, and interrupted one another repeatedly as they fought over policy and politics, laying bare their differences for all to see. And then the analysis from some of the D.C. civility police was about how this was a preview of divided government and both sides are to blame for all the fighting. And shouldn't everyone be throwing back a cocktail like Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill? Blah, blah, blah. Dan, was that your general take on the situation? Woe is politics. Pox on both their houses. I have so much to say about this.

I'm so glad you brought this up. First, it is true that Trump got an introduction to the next two years of his life because in a meeting with the leader of the house under Republican leadership, he would have gotten an agreement on his wall and Paul Ryan probably would have shined his shoes while we were there. So like, this is going to be different. Nancy Pelosi is not going to do what you say. She's not going to say how high when you tell her to jump. So that is very different. But if you watched Trump throw an absurd temper tantrum where he did not even have the basic understanding of facts on the, his signature policy initiative on the issue that he says is the greatest threat to the country. And you watch that and you're like, Oh, both sides. Then you are terrible at your fucking job.

You should turn in your pundit card. You should leave town and go write recaps for the Real Housewives of New York because that is the only thing you're qualified to do. I have bad news for you, Dan. I don't think they'll be doing that. Well, I actually, in fairness, I hope they don't because I sometimes enjoy my Real Housewives recaps. I hope they don't because I sometimes enjoy my housewives recaps. And if it's being polluted by overly cynical political reporters, I'm going to be pissed. No, I mean, you can see even the pundits that didn't go so far as to say both sides are to blame here. Just the general framing of this fight is like a preview of divided government and both parties butting heads and rancor.

of divided government and both parties butting heads and rancor and like you can't paint a picture of like you know bitter partisanship and rancor when the president united states is yelling and lying in the oval office and then the other party is just sort of responding to his lies and trying to correct the record like that's not fucking both sides uh but this is this i mean i do i do worry about this for the next two years is that, like, the press only has a few,

like, frames, political frames to put various situations in. And right now, they are in the divided government frame, right,

where one party is in charge of one house of Congress, another party has the White House and the other house of Congress. And so,

therefore, everything's divided government, so everything's going to be seen through the prism of divided government, both parties bitterly fighting each other all the time. And even though Trump is an extraordinarily different president and that he lies and tells conspiracy theories and doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about on anything and is as extreme right as they come, that's still not going to factor into our analysis. It's just it's not great. Also, divided government is good in this situation because we had one party rule government for

two years and it was a fucking cesspool of corruption and incompetence. And this is what Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer's job is for the next two years, which is stop this dangerously unfit man from ruining this country. That is their job. Nancy Pelosi seemed very comfortable in that role on Tuesday. Yeah. Do this. Get it.

Call out his bullshit. You don't do not give make him fight for everything. Do not give him what he wants. Do not compromise with him. Do be a check against this man. Look, if the two parties are in the oval office arguing over some infrastructure bill and uh you know they're like 10 billion apart and they're still fighting and yelling about the yeah then you can write about how it's divided government as usual and both parties can't

come to an agreement all that shit that that's fine but this isn't that you know this is like the government could easily be open here say for five billion dollars for a fucking wall that nobody wants, except for Donald Trump and his very shrinking base. So there were also a lot of takes, by the way, that sounded like this CNN headline from Chris Eliza. The reality TV president just got beat at his own game. Do you find this analysis about reality TV to be a bit stale at this point? I hate this so much. And everyone has been doing this for four years since Trump decided to run for president. And I recognize that he is a reality TV star. And it is true that he does view the world through television. And that is an important point. And it's tiresome sometimes, but he's a weirdo, but he does pick his cabinet nominees based somewhat on how he thinks they would look on TV.

There's no accounting for taste, but he does do that. And he thinks about optics a lot. And that is an important aspect of a discussion of how Trump thinks about things but when you compare everything to reality tv your one are just just plowing over used grounds just over and over again like have a fucking original thought in your life but there was something more important than that which is you can call it reality tv and compare it to reality tv if you have no skin in the game, right? If you – like it understates the stakes for – these are for real people. Like real things matter here. Like this is – some of these policy choices are life or death for people.

They are the difference between having healthcare, not having healthcare. Having – you'll be able to send your kid to college, not send your kid to college. All of these things. And when you compare it to reality TV, a TV genre whose entire premise is that it is fluff, that it is brain candy, that you can enjoy it without having to deal with the real emotional stakes of real life or even more complex drama. It is the idea that you can watch it without having there be consequences. So when you compare politics to that, it is just as bad as comparing politics to sports all the time. You have to understand and talk about the stakes.

And I say this as someone who really enjoys a lot of reality TV and thinks that Below Deck is one of the best shows on television right now. I saw that tweet, Dan, yesterday. That was a bold tweet about Below Deck. That got a lot of – that really surprised a lot of people. And really, apparently there's a very aggressive Vanderpump Rules hive on Twitter who were offended by my choice. We won't get into that. Okay, so the question now is, where do we go from here? Republicans in the House are planning to vote on a government funding bill that includes Trump's $5 billion for the wall.

They may not have the votes, although now some of them are basically saying, well, since Pelosi said that we didn't have the votes, now we have to vote for it just to prove her wrong, because that's the best way to make policy decisions. So if they do pass this in the House, the bill goes to the Senate, where it definitely doesn't have the 60 votes it needs to pass. So it dies in the Senate. And then if nothing else changes and no one else budges, the government will shut down on December 21st, or at least it will partially shut down.

A bunch of different agencies will shut down. So question, can anything be done to avoid this? And how do you think this ends? I think it's highly likely that there is going to be a shutdown at some point, because there's only so long you can kick the can down the road. I do think there is a chance that there could be a short-term extension here to just, because people want to go home for the holidays. And this is constantly, our old friend, Pete Rouse, who was the quote-unquote 101st Senator who worked for Obama's chief of staff in the Senate, worked a lot else with him, always used to say, when it comes to the Senate, there's nothing stronger than the smell of jet fumes. So when it comes time to go home, people will compromise.

And so, and Republicans do not, there's a story in the post today about Republicans are not super excited about Trump's plan shutdown. So you can see a world where maybe they're like, we'll come back and have this battle later. And it seems like the Republicans and Congress are probably betting on Trump just forgetting about it and moving on because I don't think they want to have this fight in any way, shape or form. And the question is whether Trump and Trump's base will drag him to the fight. But there's a chance that we could see some sort of short-term continuing resolution to get us to a later date. Yeah. I mean, also, if that happens, by the way, and we come back, then we'll have a new Congress. We have a new House. Pelosi controls the House. The House will pass, the Democratic House will then pass a continuing resolution to fund the

government at current levels. It will go to the Senate. There probably will be the votes in the Senate to pass what Pelosi passed, which is just funding the government at current levels that a lot of people can agree with. And then it goes to Trump. And so then does Trump just continue to veto bills, bipartisan bills that came to him from the Senate and the House, from Congress, and leave the government shut down as a bunch of federal workers don't get their paychecks and don't government shut down as a bunch of federal workers don't get their paychecks and don't come to work and a bunch of services for the federal government just shut down because he wants his fucking wall? I mean, I don't know. Maybe he does, but how long can he keep that up? There is a plus and a minus to Trump of kicking this down the road. The minus is,

as you point out, is that Nancy Pelosi controls the floor come January. So no bill with the wall in it will ever be brought to the floor of the House. That's the minus. The plus is also that Nancy Pelosi controls the floor and no bill with a wall in it will come to the floor of the House in the sense that now, if you want to have a shutdown, it is easier for Trump to have a shutdown in a time of divided government, not in a time in which Republicans control all the levers, which is what would happen. It would be complete Republican control of government if they shut down next week. If they shut down a month from now, he has a more ready foil in a Democratic House. And McConnell will be in a weird position because Nancy Pelosi will pass denouncing resolutions till the cows come home. And the question is, will McConnell

take those up or will he refuse to bring those to the floor and try to force some sort of negotiation where Trump can get a fig leaf? Like that will be where this probably ends. I don't think – there is no world I think where he gets his $5 billion for the wall or anything similar. It would be, is there something that he can convince the MAGA base is a victory on the wall? I mean he's already claiming previously built fence to be a sign that he has won. So, I mean, he will not be restrained by credible arguments. Right, which might in this scenario be the positive here. He could basically, I mean, there's already like 1.3 billion 1.4 billion on the table which is just

how much the the dhs the department of homeland security would get for border security in general not for the wall under a continuing resolution and so the difference between that and the five billion he wants for an actual concrete wall like you could see it end up somewhere in the middle and the government stay open and it's still a fucking complete waste of money. But then we don't have a government shutdown. But I think like, the important point is here is like Democrats have all the leverage because like if Trump wants to keep the government shut down, and Pelosi says, Yeah, well, we're trying to open it by just passing a bill to keep the government open. And he's saying no, unless he gets his way. I think that's a pretty

strong argument. Yeah, it's a it is as strong a position as the congressional wing has ever been in a shutdown. For sure. Now, so there's also something I just think interesting about this whole argument that sort of reveals the game to everyone about how Trump's views politics, because Trump takes credit for everything, right? He takes credit for the economy. I mean, remember when he took credit for planes not crashing during the Obama presidency? It is his natural instinct to take credit for everything. And there's a different world where he could say, I am now president. Look at the statistics on border apprehensions, deportations, border crossing, all of these statistics and say,

on border apprehensions, deportations, border crossing, all of these statistics and say, I solved the problem or I made this huge progress on the question of undocumented people coming to this country, right? I stopped the caravan. He could just take credit for that and say he fixed the problem. But instead, he needs the fear of a quote unquote invasion of brown people coming to the country to get his base going, which is why he needs to keep having this argument as opposed to just doing what he does on every other thing, which is take credit whether he deserves it or not. And in almost every case, he doesn't. Well, yeah, Ezra Klein made this point the other day is that Trump doesn't want the wall.

He wants the fight over the wall. If he wanted the wall, if he wanted an actual border security, there's a way to work with Democrats to make sure the border is secure. We do it all the time. We did it during the Obama administration. We did it for every administration preceding the Obama administration. And where there are holes, we can fill them with more border security. We can do that.

We can keep the border secure. He doesn't give a shit about keeping the border secure. He gives a shit about making sure that his base is scared of an invasion, like you said. And so there's no scenario where he's happy over this, because if he doesn't have that issue, if he can't during an election year or whenever he wants go tell people there's an invasion of immigrants coming into this country, then he doesn't have anything to get his base excited about. Yeah, because remember, he could have had the wall a year ago when Schumer offered him the deal of DACA for wall funding and he didn't take it.

That's right. Do you think, so he obviously thinks this is great politics for him. Do you think that this is good politics for Trump? And maybe demanding the wall and threatening to shut down the government over it is not good politics. At least, you know, we can see that in polls now. NPR, PBS, Marist had a poll out yesterday. By a 21-point margin, 57% to 36%, Americans think the president should compromise on the wall to avoid a government shutdown rather than stand firm. And more than two-thirds do not believe building a wall should even be an immediate priority for Congress.

Half don't believe it should be a priority at all. Trump, of course, thinks this is good politics. Do you think there's a case to be made that border security in general is good politics for Trump? It depends on how you view politics. And Trump views politics very differently than everyone else. And I think what is important to understand is that when you see a poll that says two-thirds don't like this and one-third fucking loves it, Trump sees that and says, I want the one-third. His goal is to keep the one-third of voters who love Trump in love with Trump because he needs that. He needs that to fill the own ravenous hole of insecurity in himself, but he also needs it because that is what protects him from being tossed overboard by the Republicans

who wish he had never been elected. It is the thing that protects him in an impeachment trial in the Senate. It is the thing that protects him from Republicans walking away from him on every issue. And so we tend to think about politics of how do you get to 50.1? How do you get to a majority so that you can win elections? Trump thinks about it in a more short-term way, which is how do I keep one third of people fired up about me and will run through walls for me. And in that sense, this is good politics for him. It's not good 2020 politics, but it is good politics to get him to 2020. And I think we have to understand that he's not insane when he thinks about this. He just thinks about politics differently. It may be a bad, like a not the right approach if you want to be reelected, but it is

based on his sort of strategic framework. He is achieving what he wants to do. And you and I have spent approximately 30 minutes now, and we have barely touched on the rampant amount of crime news that's come out about Trump, and that is also to his benefit. Well, let's get there then. On that note, good segue. Let's move on to today's edition of Hot tub crime machine former trump attorney michael cohen was sentenced to three years in prison on wednesday for what judge william polly called quote a veritable smorgasbord of criminal conduct including this was the judge uh including tax fraud bank fraud and conspiracy to defraud the united states by hiding hush money payments to trump's mistresses that should have been disclosed as campaign contributions, payments that, by everyone's account, Cohen, the prosecutors,

the judge, Trump himself directed Cohen to make. At his sentencing, Cohen said he's been living, quote, in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the day he started working for Trump, to whom he was blindly loyal. Cohen said that he felt it was his duty to cover up for Trump's, quote, dirty deeds. Dan, did we learn anything new from the sentencing hearing? I don't know that we learned anything new of consequence. But what we learned or what we've been reminded of is very importantly, which is, were Donald Trump not president today, he would be indicted for crimes and likely headed to the same place Michael Cohen is headed. And that is just such a monumental thing that it's

almost too big to truly fathom in the constraints of actual, of how we think about politics, right? It is, the president is a criminal criminal and the only thing that is keeping him from going to prison is being president. And that is fucking weird. Yeah, I mean, that's one thing we learned. That's a big one. Jeannie Rhee, who works for Mueller in the special counsel's office,

also said Cohen provided, quote, credible information regarding any links between a campaign and a foreign government. So that's the second conspiracy that also Trump might be, should be possibly indicted for, that we'll maybe find out more from Mueller as the months go on here. Meanwhile, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Ruse,

part of the New York prosecutorial team from SDNY, said that Cohen's, quote, charges portray a pattern of deception, brazenness, and greed. And he added, most importantly, that these crimes harmed free and transparent elections. And in committing these crimes, Cohen has eroded faith in the electoral process. Now, as the prosecutors are saying all this about Cohen, they're also saying that Trump directed him to commit these crimes.

So by association here, the idea is that Trump has undermined faith in the electoral process and undermined free and transparent elections, which I think is probably going to be a theme of the indictments that come down here, both in the Cohen hush money case and the Russia case, importantly. I mean, one of the many incredible things about Mueller here in the special counsel investigation is he is weaving together a very cohesive narrative about Trump's crimes. They are not random here. They all go to the central point that Trump and his campaign and his associates

have undermined our electoral system with their crimes. Yeah, it's not great. It's not great. And the other thing that's important, by the way, is like this is not, everyone should say this because this is Trump's defense here. This is not Cohen's word against Trump's. The prosecutors would not have brought this case. The judge would not have accepted the sentencing memo and the sentencing recommendation if there had not been hard evidence.

They know that Cohen doesn't always tell the truth. There is evidence of this, too, which is also the more much more incredible because Trump is just like tweeting up a storm this morning about like all these defenses that sort of fall apart on a closer look. And I don't think he realizes or maybe he doesn't doesn't care that there's evidence here. For the people who have paid close attention to what has been happening related to all of the various Trump crimes, whether it's related to these payments or Russia or various people lying before Congress or lying to the FBI, we have sort of known that – like there has just been this lag between what the evidence says and sort of the general view of the press and political world about the legal and political peril that Trump is in because of these investigations, right? I think up until this past week, if you were to put truth serum into a bunch of DC reporters, their sort of view would be, yeah, Trump probably did some things, but the campaign and he are too dumb to actually engage in any real criminal conspiracy. And it doesn't really matter because his base won't care and probably the Congress won't do anything. And you feel a little bit, maybe it's the rounding the corner to the 2020 election cycle,

or it's just that all these things tend to happen slowly and then suddenly. But like in the last week, and I think the Cohen sentencing memos, like, were the sort of one of the tipping points here. People were like, oh, there is a lot of real criminal, real credible allegations against Trump and real, very serious legal jeopardy for everyone involved here. And I think that is different. And that does affect his ability to transact politics in Washington between now and the presidential election. Yeah. And one more piece of evidence that came out this week to that regard. Prosecutors also announced on Wednesday that the parent company of the National Enquirer is cooperating in their investigation of the payments that involved Cohen. From the New York Times, quote, according to prosecutors, American media company admitted that its $150,000 payment in August of 2016 to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who said she'd had a 10-month affair with Trump, had been made in coordination with the Trump campaign and was intended to suppress allegations about the candidate.

Under the agreement with AMI dated in September but previously kept private, federal prosecutors in Manhattan agreed not to charge the company in return for its cooperation uh ami's chief executive david pecker provided testimony as prosecutors investigated cohen this year in exchange for immunity how big of a deal is this this is actually the biggest deal of the things we've learned over the last two weeks in my view. Because the argument that Trump has made is that – I mean, put aside the fact that he lied to the country about these payments for a very long time. But just in the last week or so, he has shifted his story to say these payments were not campaign finance related, right? So he's essentially saying, I made these payments because I didn't want the public and my family to know about these things I had done without regard to the presidential campaign that was happening. That is essentially, as I understand it, the defense that John Edwards used to avoid criminal penalties for a very complicated scheme to pay off the woman he had an affair with and had a child with during the 2008 presidential campaign. But here you have David Packer, one of Trump's best friends,

you have saying that this was very explicitly done not in coordination with Trump's personal attorney, but with the Trump campaign, and was done for the express purpose of, to use a term of art these days, defrauding the American people in the election. And that is a huge deal and will be, if and when Trump goes to trial, either in the Senate or some other point in time, this will be very important, I think. And by the way, granting AMI and PECR immunity here is no small thing because the crime they committed was an illegal corporate campaign contribution, right? Like again, Trump is allowed to donate as much as he wants to his own campaign. His crime and Cohen's crime is not disclosing that contribution. It's a violation of disclosure laws.

closing that contribution it's a just it's a violation of disclosure laws uh ami's crime here is you can't pay 150 000 if you're a corporation uh to influence a campaign like that you just can't you just can't donate the it's like an in-kind contribution so to to not prosecute an illegal corporate campaign contribution means that they must have that pecker and ami must have given prosecutors quite a bit here and they must have gone up Pecker and AMI must have given prosecutors quite a bit here, and they must have gone up the food chain. And that means further implicating Trump or giving evidence to implicate Trump or Trump's family in the Trump Organization. And that means one of his kids.

Because Allen Weisberg, who's the CFO, who's the only other executive at the Trump Organization, has also been granted immunity by prosecutors. The Allen Wesselberg thing is really important. And I wish I'd brought it up last week when we're talking about what are the things that Mother knows that we want to know, which is what does Alan Wesselberg tell people? Because he has run the books at this low-rent criminal syndicate for years. And so he knows everything. He's like the, let's not forget,

that's how Al Capone went down is when his accountant turned on him. So I think that Welsenberg thing has historical precedent that should be alarming. And it is also worth noting that AMI and National Enquirer has been the closet where Trump has been storing his skeletons for a very long time. So there could be a whole host of things that happen that we don't yet know about that prosecutors know about because of this deal. So let's talk about the question of indictment. The former acting Solicitor General of the United States, Neil Katyal, tweeted on Wednesday that the only things keeping Trump from criminal prosecution are the Department of Justice guidelines that say a sitting president can't be indicted. Neil thinks that there may be some exceptions to this rule,

but he also argues that those guidelines could ultimately hurt Trump because, quote, if indictment is off the table, impeachment has to be. Dan, what does he mean by that? Can Trump be indicted and should he be indictable? I think it, as I put on my faux attorney cap, and just really rely on the couple of con law classes I took in college, but is that this is Justice Department guidance. There is no – this is an interpretation of the law and the constitution. There's no law on the books somewhere.

There's no amendment in the constitution. There's no provision that says a president cannot be indicted. It is the opinion of the legal analysts at the Justice Department many, many years ago, and has remained as such for a very long time. So it is an opinion. Opinions can change. And it does put, if you believe this to be the case, and Mueller believes this to be the case, and SDNY believes this to be the case, it does put some pressure on Democrats to have to eventually move on opening up impeachment proceedings at some point because you have these very obvious crimes that were they not committed, perhaps Trump would not be president.

And then a whole host, whether that is collusion, whether that is his payments, you have a whole host of other things that may be revealed in the Mueller report or in further sentencing memos or indictments in the Southern District of New York investigation. And if the only recourse, the only way to hold Trump accountable for those crimes or to have a proceeding for that activity is in Congress, then the pressure will go up on Democrats and increase the likelihood that Trump will be one of our few presidents who has a scarlet eye by their name. Yeah. I mean, two things from what Neil was tweeting. One, he said he believes the guidelines don't necessarily apply to crimes that go toward obtaining the presidency itself.

So you mentioned this because basically you want to avoid incentivizing a world where the prize of winning the presidency is a get out of jail free card for crimes you committed to get there. So that makes sense. Like, yeah, the reason that the DOJ guidelines say that a sitting president can't be indicted is, OK, well, the president can't be going through this trial while he's got to run the country. There's important duties here. It could hurt the American people, could hurt the country if the president has to be distracted by this lengthy trial. Of course, we know that Trump doesn't even get up and go to work until three o'clock, which is what happened on Wednesday. So it's not like he's that busy to deal with the trial, but in a usual case, that's the deal. But the idea that you can commit a crime in order to obtain the presidency, and then once you win the presidency, you can't be touched, you can't be indicted, it does. It incentivizes people to commit crimes to get the presidency, and that's clearly not what the founders intended. That's clearly not what the DOJ guidelines intended.

that's clearly not what the founders intended. That's clearly not what the DOJ guidelines intended. The other point that Neil made, and Neil, by the way, wrote the special counsel regulations back in 1999 that sort of set up the special counsel's office. Mueller can seek a departure from DOJ policy and ask for permission to indict Trump. He asked the acting attorney general. The acting attorney general either says yes, which with these goons in there seems unlikely unless it is Rod Rosenstein, which we don't know who the acting attorney general overseeing the case right now is because they won't tell us. But if the acting attorney general says no, you cannot indict the president, then it triggers this.

Mueller must report all of the information he has to Congress, both the majority and minority parties. So in a way, Mueller asking for an indictment of Trump, if he so chooses, and if he has the evidence to do so, could trigger making sure that the public knows what Mueller knows. And, you know, the report doesn't get quashed by some Trump toady in the attorney general's office, which I think is a pretty big deal. It is – there are a couple other elements to this, which is – like Neil's point is very interesting, both as it relates to crimes committed to get the presidency. But also what about crimes committed before the presidency right like not let's put trump aside so we're not but like if you have a present like under the way this is currently interpreted right if you elect a president and then that president is suspected of committing a murder you know within the statute of limitations

you know within the statute of limitations that president could not be indicted for said crime right and so that i mean that there it is just it does create this very perverse uh set of circumstances whereby the president is the president has a special privilege that makes them immune from the legal accountability that everyday citizens face. And that is interesting. Which is crazy because the president is not above the law. It makes sense because what you don't want is to be able to have a political in that, right, which is they elected these representatives and they will have the opportunity to reelect them or send them home if they abuse that privilege as essentially happened with Republicans who impeached Clinton. And so it makes sense. And then you're like, but Trump, but this president, this situation is different. It kind of explains why the policy is there to begin with, because some other time down the road, it'll be done in a way which you don't agree

with the exception. And so I tend to side with the fact that this is the right thing to do. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're only talking about this because we see that there's a broken Republican party that will refuse to impeach this president no matter what crime he commits but the reason that it's set up the way it is is because an indictment is a way to take care of uh everyone in the country except for the president where impeachment is the remedy that's like an indictment right and then so you have impeachment proceedings in the house if the president commits a crime and impeachment proceedings in the House and voting to start impeachment proceedings isn't necessarily expelling the president from office. It's not

convicting him. It's merely saying this is going to be our version of a trial that every other American gets when they are indicted. And that's supposed to be the process. So we'll see if it happens. Okay, I want to talk about climate change before we get to our Stacey Abrams interview. Over the weekend, Politico ran a story about how climate activists are reconsidering whether carbon taxes are the best tool to use to combat climate change. This comes after protests in France over a fuel tax and after a carbon-related ballot measure in Washington state that was just defeated that would have charged $15 per ton on greenhouse gases

and used the revenue to help communities suffering from the effects of climate change or the closure of fossil fuel industries. So, Dan, is a carbon tax politically viable? And I guess more importantly, is it necessary? I am not enough of an expert in climate policy to know whether it is necessary, whether it is the only solution or so much better a solution. Everything else is what we should do. What I do know is that basically no one has made a political argument for it ever. Right.

The process always begins. Let's run up. Let's have a poll, and we see it, and it tests terribly. And so let's put that to the side and not do it. And while you have Al Gore and Tom Friedman and people who write New York Times op-eds and speak at Davos arguing for it, no one, very few people, if not no one, who has been running campaigns and facing the will of the voters has made a strong and consistent case for it, which is sort of like, no shit, no wonder it's not popular because you only have people making negative arguments and no one making positive arguments. So it's sort of hard to make no argument for it for a decade

and then try to put it in place like that never works when you do that you will always face a serious backlash so there are a bunch of proposals around a carbon tax you can design a carbon tax a million different ways so it's hard to talk about it as one specific policy but for example you could institute a carbon tax so that people you know the idea here is that if gas the price of gasoline is a bit higher, people will be incentivized to buy fuel-efficient vehicles so that they're not paying as much at the pump. So you could institute a carbon tax where in order to make people whole who are paying higher taxes at the pump, you cut their payroll taxes. So you give a big payroll tax cut to working-class people, to middle-class people and then therefore they're in in some they're really not paying any more at all so there's all kinds of ways to design this but there's also by the way the way to design this

where you say this is a tax on corporate polluters right because what the main source of dirty energy here are like coal plants and it's in electricity and it's stuff like that and so you you mainly place the tax on corporate polluters and i bet if you pull that it's going to pull a lot better than saying average people who are driving around have to pay more at the pump and all the money that they're paying is going to go towards reducing the deficit yeah that's crazy well look there's a whole bunch of i mean carbon tax is one way to do this there's a whole bunch of other ways to to regulate the emission of greenhouse gases. And you can, all the way up and down the chain here, and you can start with the companies that are polluting.

And I do think that's probably a more politically viable solution, which brings us to the Green New Deal. There are now 35 House Democrats signed on to a Green New Deal, House Democrats signed on to a Green New Deal, which is a series of investments that would get us to 100% renewable electricity by 2035 and zero net carbon emissions by 2050, while creating 10 million jobs over the decade. And that includes, by the way, a green job guarantee for anyone who's transitioning out of a dirty energy job. Now, there have also been activists protesting outside of Pelosi's office, who's now promised to reestablish a select committee on climate change in the House, which was last there in 2007. And we also know a full 69% of Americans think the U.S. should work with other nations to fight climate change. That number's up a little bit. So what do you think of

the Green New Deal? Is it more politically viable than a carbon tax? And how hard should Democrats be pushing this? I think it certainly seems to be more viable than a carbon tax. It is, like, it is not, it seems to me to be, put aside the politics for a second, it is substantially and morally the right thing to do, right? It is a bold approach to two huge problems facing this country and the planet, climate change being one of them, and also the transition in our economy from a manufacturing fossil fuel-based economy to something new, which if we don't have a big, bold, New Deal-esque plan for, we're going to end up with a bunch of low-paying service jobs with no benefits while all of the manufacturing is happening in countries other than the United

States. And so you need bold solutions. We have to get beyond just a simple soundbitey tax incentives for X or a tax cut for Y. Like we need a bold, holistic solution to address these problems. And, you know, with the devil will be in the details of all of these, these things, right? How does the green jobs guarantee work? How does the, like, what does it look like to actually transition out of fossil fuels to fully renewable by 2035? All of that matters, but it seemed like this is a bold solution to a huge problem that people should get behind. And I am curious about some of the politics here that have made some Democrats not jump on right away. Yeah, I mean, look, I think this has been the challenge with climate politics for a very long time.

You know, most people do believe in climate change. Most people are not in the camp of the climate deniers but when you ask them what to do about it most people in the country don't want to be paying a bunch more for you know paying more taxes paying all this money for something that they're like they can't see the tangible effects of at least in their lifetime this is this is just a problem we've seen this in polling for a long time even but what we do know is people want clean air and clean water they want a clean environment they like that kind of stuff that that's all that's incredibly important to a lot of people especially when you talk about you know protecting the the

earth for the next generation protecting the environment for people's children like that is all very very popular i think i think that the smart aspect of this Green New Deal here is tying climate change and climate policy to economic policy in a way that's telling people we can create good paying jobs. Like you were saying, we can transition from the economy we're in now where we have a lot of low paying jobs and jobs are getting automated out of existence, to this economy with a lot of good-paying jobs. And if you're worried, if you're in the coal industry, we're not going to just say something like, oh, don't worry, we'll give you some training for your next job.

We're going to guarantee that one of these, that there's a green new job for you. There's a green job for you. And what that could mean is retrofitting buildings. That's construction jobs um that's you know working in a revitalized auto industry that's making fuel efficient cars right there's it's everything from like cleaning up community gardens to i mean there's there's a million different kinds of jobs here that you can guarantee people and so if you if you present this plan to people as a way to protect the environment save the the planet, and also, by the way, build this

new economy with millions of good-paying jobs, then that's going to be a popular agenda item. I'm guessing some of the hesitancy from some Democrats is around the price tag, which whatever it is, is going to be quite high in the short-sighted traditional way in which we think of spending, where we think of it as money out the door and not as investments. If you measured spending as an investment, if you measured federal spending like you measure investments in construction, investments in the stock market, where you calculate the return in the end, then this would be a great thing to do. And I think we should not be scared by the CBO or whoever else offering dire budget predictions on this for two reasons. One, Republicans just passed a trillion dollar tax cut to fatten the pockets of the Koch brothers and help solve the national crisis of Apple's tax burden. And so it seems like giving people jobs and making efforts to save the planet seems like a better use

of money. And frankly, what are we going to do if we have a balanced budget and everyone is living on homemade rafts? Well, but also one of the dire predictions that is being made by people who study this by climate scientists and others is a dire economic situation where climate change is already climate devastation already is hurting economic growth it's going to put people out of work it's going to cost us more money like so we're either going to pay we're either going to pay a smaller price now to transition this economy from a dirty energy economy to a clean energy economy and save the planet and create new jobs so we're either going to pay a smaller price now for a lot of benefits or we're going to pay a devastatingly large price both in the environment being destroyed

the planet being destroyed and by the way a whole bunch of people being out of work and a lot of economic output disappearing because there's climate devastation all over the planet so we can pay now we can pay later and if we pay later. And if we pay now, we save the planet and we create a lot of jobs. So I think, but you're right that I don't think enough Democrats have sort of, at least in the last couple of years, we used to talk about this all the time. We talked about it in the Obama administration, the Clinton administration talked about it, but like, we haven't talked about it in a way, haven't made the case for a Green New Deal yet, and we haven't made it in a big way. And I think Democrats would be wise to make that case. Two points on this. One is, I think it is important to do this in the context of a moral

argument for addressing climate change. I think one of the things that Democrats, ourselves included, have been guilty about at times is trying to get climate-friendly policies passed on the political cheap, right? By simply framing it entirely around clean air and clean water, which is true and very important and polls well. Or trying to simply talk about only green jobs, right? Like, we're doing this thing. about only green jobs, right? Like we're doing this thing. We're going to ignore some of the harder parts of it. And we're going to tell you who's going to create these jobs as opposed to making a broader moral argument about climate change, because people are smart and they get it. And we do have to move the politics on climate in this country in a big direction. And we have to do

it very quickly. And so I think that that isn, you can't just simply say this is only about the economy. This is like, you have to just be transparent and honest about what you're doing and make a forceful case for climate change. And you have to be honest about like, these are the costs of transitions. There are going to be some people who are hurt and some industries that are hurt. And here's how we're going to help those people and help those industries, right? I think you need an answer for the people who say, okay, well, am I out of a job now? I work in the coal industry. What do I do? You need an answer for the people who say, okay, well, am I out of a job now? I work in the coal industry. What do I do? You need an answer for those people. Yeah, and it's going to be – there will be pain here. It will be messy, but it is 100% necessary, and you're going to have to – like in any big policy transition, whether it's healthcare or Green New Deal or whatever else it is, there are winners and losers, and you're going to have to talk about, explain who those are and talk about what policy you haven't placed up to losers for sure. The other part I

think is important is I hope there is not one green new deal. I hope that there are, that every candidate running for president is articulating some, some, their version of a vision like this. Yeah. Right. So it's like what it, what will be dumb is, and I think a disservice to the voters was like, here is the officially sanctioned Green New Deal. Get on this specific Green New Deal or you are a traitor to the party and the planet. Right? That is not the way to approach it. We should have a big debate around climate policy, economic policy, and how we address this.

address this? And if the framework is within a Green New Deal, and if all these people run of Kamala Harris has one version that does this and does this, and then Bernie Sanders has a different version that maybe does something differently or moves things forward, that is the conversation to have. And we talked last week about a healthcare-specific debate. If there is not a climate energy-specific debate in this Democratic primary, it is such a missed opportunity for the voters, the public, and everyone involved. And so I hope that we have a debate in this Democratic primary, it is such a missed opportunity for the voters, the public, and everyone involved. And so I hope that we have a debate like this where really smart people who know climate policy, who can call bullshit on pablum and talking points, conduct that debate, and people have to articulate their plan for how they do this.

It'll be better than the debate that is happening on Twitter. We know that for sure. Climate Twitter is pretty good. Every once in a while you dip in, like if you check out like Dave Roberts's mentions or something, it's like,

there's a pretty smart, there are these like little niches of Twitter where they're like really smart conversations where just are rarely exposed to them. Yeah. We're like in the general political Twitter Slack channel

and it's pretty terrible it is uh it's pretty garbage okay when we come back my interview with stacy abrams on the pod today we have the democratic candidate for governor of georgia this year she previously served as minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives. Stacey Abrams, welcome back to the pod. Thank you for having me. So you gave the best non-concession speech I've ever heard. And in that speech, you said,

Pundits and hyper-partisans will hear my words as a rejection of the normal order. I'm supposed to say that? Was it hard? Were your advisors freaking out? Well, it was not hard. I think the difficulty was just making sure I found the right words. But I'm the daughter of two people who were involved in the civil rights movement as teenagers. I was raised to revere the right to vote and to respect it. suspected. And not only through my campaign, but watching in the 10 days after the campaign, the 40,000 phone calls we received from people who were thwarted in their ability to fully exercise their right to vote, reading through the narratives and the affidavits that we'd received

in 10 days, but also my experience in this campaign, I said that I was going to fight for voters. I said I was going to fight for democracy. And part of fighting is doing so when it's not just difficult in a campaign, but when it's difficult for your future. There certainly are those who advised me to not continue to fight or worse, to just accept the consequences. And what I said is this, I acknowledge the legal end to the campaign, but the responsibility for democracy is an ongoing obligation. And for me, there was no question, but that I was responsible for doing so. So you're now leading a lawsuit to force changes in Georgia's election system. What specifically does this suit target and what are your hopes for what will change in

the best case scenario? Sure. So in Georgia, we have a number of laws that were passed by Democrats and Republicans that are ostensibly designed to maintain good working order in your election system. The problem is those were bastardized and willfully misused for the last eight years. And what we argue is that what has happened is that there is a systemic erosion of access to the right to vote. So individually, purging voters because of non-voting as a generic idea is not a bad thing. If people have left the state, if they're dead, they shouldn't be on the rolls. But what happened is that people were unlawfully removed or aggressively removed

to the point of absurdity. Having lines when you go to vote, that happens. But in Georgia, four-hour lines that could have been anticipated and stopped were not. Not having power cords for machines that are 16 years old. Having polling places shut down in communities where people don't have access to public transit. Each of those problems, and I'm only listing a few of them, when they are amalgamated, they constitute a systemic erosion of the right to vote. And in fact, disenfranchisement, because when you have to jump so many hurdles to exercise a basic freedom, then it is no longer a freedom. And so our argument is that while individually,

any of those one things could be permissible, tied together as a electoral system, they are impermissible and violate the Constitution, 14th and 15th Amendments, the Voting Rights Act, the Help America Vote Act, and the Georgia Constitution. What do you think that Democrats should do on a national level about some of these problems that we're seeing? Obviously, you know, states run their own elections, but, you know, and, you know, you have a lawsuit going, too. But, like, are there, do you think it's time to sort of have a new Voting Rights Act nationally? Or what do you think Democrats should be doing on a national level here? I think it's three things.

Number one, we have to talk about it. Republicans have weaponized the myth of voter fraud, and we have been complicit in the extension of voter suppression. And we have been complicit in the extension of voter suppression. And when I say we, I mean all Americans, regardless of party, often because voter suppression affects communities that are the least likely expected to exercise their right to vote. And typically, that suppression cannot be directly linked to the victory or loss of an election. But what we have seen happen over time is that it is becoming more and more evident that the very communities that are asserting their right to vote are the ones who are being suppressed.

And we're about to hit an inflection point where that suppression really does fundamentally alter our democracy. So, number one, we have to talk about it. And we have to talk about it as vociferously as the Republicans talk about voter fraud. We know fraud is a myth. We know now electoral fraud is fraud. We know fraud is a myth. We know now electoral fraud is true, but voter fraud is a myth. But we do know that by and large, voter suppression is true. And yes, there are a couple of examples of voter fraud every few years, but not to the extent that for any listener who's about to send an angry tweet saying, I don't understand what I'm talking about. Number two, we have to

pass a new Voting Rights Act. We have to recognize that protecting the right to vote is necessary because there are always going to be those who seek to narrow the electorate, especially those who are at risk of losing elections because they are not liked by the expanding electorate. And that could change depending on partisan stances. But we have to actually pass laws. And three, we have to stop assuming that because each state has the right to run their elections, that they're doing it correctly. And that means we have to have a national conversation about where we as Americans hold every person responsible and every legal official responsible, regardless of their state, because

the erosion of democracy in North Dakota affects me as much as the erosion of democracy in Georgia. Right. And we cannot allow this to be seen as a disparate set of conversations. Yep. So you're now the top Democratic vote getter in Georgia's history. What can other Democrats running in Georgia learn from the campaign you built? John Barrow, the Democrat running for Secretary of State, just lost his runoff by a greater margin than you did. So what can other Democrats running in Georgia learn about your campaign, your organization? Number one, talk to everyone. We had the largest and most intensive grassroots campaign in modern Georgia history.

We went everywhere. grassroots campaign in modern Georgia history. We went everywhere. And as a result, I outperformed Democrats, not simply in burgeoning communities and emerging electorates, but actually, I had the highest total for the percentage of the white vote since 2004. And so we have to go everywhere. We have to talk to everyone. But two, we have to be authentic in our messaging. I did not run a different campaign in the primary than I ran in the general. I was unequivocal from beginning to end about who I was and what I wanted to see happen. My job was to make sure everyone understood that and to convince them that they wanted what I was offering, as opposed to trying to mold myself into whatever

seemed to be the flavor of the month. And three, you have to start early. Our campaign started in 2017. And if you look at my work, I've actually been, I've been working on building out Georgia's electorate since I became minority leader in 2010. We cannot run elections up two months or six months before a victory. We should be running for 2022 now. We should be running for 2020 now.

Even if we don't have a candidate, we know who we are, we know what we want, and we need to be working on it right now. Now, one message that you took everywhere you campaigned was about Medicaid expansion. Democrats across the country focused their campaigns on protecting the Affordable Care Act. Looking ahead to 2020, we now have a good number of House Democrats and Democratic presidential candidates who are proposing some form of Medicare for all. What do you think about that proposal? I think Medicare for all is an important conversation. We have to have a continuation of moving the health care conversation forward in America. It is difficult for any individual state outside of California to solve this problem on their own. And I don't think they should, because your health care should not be contingent upon which state you live in. We are the United States of America. Therefore, this is a federal responsibility.

part of that conversation. I think that we need to be having that debate and that conversation. I think we have to be practical in the sense that we have yet to actually achieve the basics of the Affordable Care Act in every single state. And so, yes, there's more to be done. And certainly, given the composition of the White House and Congress, it's an important debate that needs to be had, but not to the exclusion of making sure we continue to protect and expand for those who are currently even left out of that system. But I do think that's an important narrative and an important idea for us to flesh out. Campaigns are an opportunity to debate ideas. The problem is when those ideas become so sacrosanct that we either can't talk about them or everyone has to say the same thing. And that's the problem. Yeah. What other issues do you think Democrats should be talking about in the lead up to 2020 that will specifically bring out non-voters, you know, bring out voters

who might not have voted in a long time? What should be the center of the platform? We talked about voting rights, talked about health care. Are there other issues you think should be front and center? Poverty is continues to be a dominant issue for those communities who don't vote. And I'm speaking about not just the abject poverty that we try to address through our social welfare system, although we have to, I think, fully restore the responsibilities we have there. But we have this class of people who are considered working class. And these are people who are working every single day. They are just above a technical poverty line.

But for real purposes and practical purposes, they do not exist in the economy in a real way. You shouldn't have to work two or three jobs to barely cling to the economic ladder. And so we frame it sometimes as income inequality. But the question isn't, am I equal to the next person? The question is, can I do the basics that I should be able to do in a country as wealthy as America when I am doing what I'm asked to do, which is contribute my labor and work hard and yet fall further and further behind. which is contribute my labor and work hard and yet fall further and further behind. Addressing the income challenges and the economic challenges in America, that is fundamental to me. And I think that then speaks to why it's so important to address not only voting rights, but health care. What do you think some of the big proposals are that could really address poverty in sort of a systemic way?

that could really address poverty in sort of a systemic way? I look at what Michael Stubbs is doing out in California. I think Michael, as a mayor, has just done extraordinary work experimenting. There are questions about whether UBI works, and I don't know that it's something that is scalable, but we have to be willing to think about it. Child care is a transformative issue for women in particular who are shift workers. Having access to childcare, having a childcare tax credit, having paid parental leave, being able to take care of your family is essential

and it is one of the biggest economic drains. We talk about, I mean, I don't pay for childcare, but part of my economic challenge is the fact that I'm responsible in large part for supporting my parents and my niece and my grandmother. And that makes a difference. It makes a difference in the decisions you make and how you can live. Having a real conversation in America about not just the minimum wage, but a living wage that is calibrated to the economic capacity of a community, but also to the expectations of the work they do. And right now we've become very comfortable with paying the people we rely on the most to keep our country running, paying them the least amount we can get away with, knowing that it is far below the cost of actually living in this country. And that's, I think, being able to address that conversation in a practical way is very important. How are you going to decide for yourself what's next? You've said running for governor or senator in Georgia could interest you. Is there a scenario where you'd get into the conversation about the presidential race? I am focused on Fair Fight Georgia, making sure that we are fighting for fair elections in the state of Georgia and making sure that anyone running for president understands that Georgia has to be top of mind. I appreciate the conversation that's out there about me.

And, you know, it's nice to be included. It's a bit frustrating sometimes to hear yourself bandied about as proof points for just about everything. I imagine. But, you know, my responsibility is to think about what I want to do next when I've gotten past what's just happened. Look, I'm still very angry and not in a mad black woman way, but in a, this was not a fair fight. And there are 1.9 million people who invested and were not given full access to their democracy. And I believe that there is certainly a rage that can be directed into fixing that for us. Because whether it's my election or the election of the Republican who was denied, they had to do a do-over election

for him, we should all be deeply angry about anyone's ability to undermine our democracy. And so for me, it's always been a bad idea to make decisions when I'm not in a better frame of mind. So I'm going to give myself a few weeks to decompress and process, and then I'll make a decision about what's next. It's interesting, you talked about rage, obviously, there's a lot of anger out there. And there's sort of this debate now, as we're looking towards 2020, you know, what what kind of a democratic candidate can go all the way in the presidential race? Is it about sort of channeling this anger against Donald Trump? Is it about sort of this inspiring vision for the country? I do think that in your race, at least from what I saw, you do a very good job of both

channeling the anger, but then channeling it into action and channeling it into a positive, inspiring vision. What are you looking for? What do you think a successful Democratic presidential candidate should sound like? Well, first of all, thank you for the compliment. And I try to do that. I try to channel outrage, anger, disappointment, despondency are best served when they become action items, when you are trying to solve for the problems and not simply talking about them or wallowing them or accepting them. president who is going to be successful cannot run as the antithetical Trump. Because at that point, which part of him are you responding to? And there's just, there's too much there. Right. But it's also not a clear sign of who you are and what you're going to be. My campaign did not rely on a conversation with, about, or referring to Donald Trump except in very specific policy oriented ways, in part because people don't care about that. They know

who he is. They know whether he is supportive of their needs or whether he is, you know, ignominious. What they care about is do you have a vision for how their lives can get better? And that's the person who needs to be the next president, someone who understands how to make life better. And that's realizing that the president can only do so much. And as we've discovered in the last two and a half years, the president can be very responsible for making things worse, but we have to remember that the president can also make things better, can create the space for better, can make it easier for governors to do better, and can make it harder for people to do bad. I want someone who understands that, who believes in that, and who has a, not just a

positive vision, but has a clear and articulable vision for how that happens, but who recognizes that it's going to be different for each person and that what makes America work is that we understand that not everyone has the same experiences, but everyone has the right to set their own course. Well, that sounds good to me. Stacey Abrams, thank you so much for joining us. Please come back again soon and keep us updated on everything you're up to. John, thank you so much. And please tell the guys I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

Thank you to Stacey Abrams for joining us. Everyone have a good weekend, and we will talk to you next time. Bye.