Pod Save America - Pardons, Prosecutions, and Perfume: Trump Unveils 100 Day Agenda

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Donald Trump sits down for his first big interview since winning the election and unveils his plans for mass deportations, pardons for January 6th rioters, and revenge against his political enemies. Jon, Lovett, and Tommy explains what they’re watching for when his second term begins, the social media frenzy over the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and how the end of Syria’s dictator Bashar Assad’s regime could impact Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence. Oh, and just in time for the holidays, Trump is launching a new fragrance: Fight, Fight, Fight—the perfect gift for anyone who wants to smell like grievance and power!

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Donald Trump sits down for his first major interview since winning the election and lays out his plans on deportations, tariffs, healthcare, political retribution, and more. The killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson

crosses the barrier from cultural fixation to political debate, though it's still a cultural fixation. And in some incredible news, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad flees to Moscow, ending two generations of his family's sadistic rule. We'll get into what this means for the world and for America's new president. But first, President-elect Donald Trump sat down with Kristen Welker at Meet the Press for a pretty newsy and substantive interview that lasted one hour and 16 minutes.

I wonder how long his staff was trying to call it. 30 minutes? 20 minutes? I didn't long his staff was trying to call it. 30 minutes? 20 minutes? I didn't know it was that long and I just started reading the transcript and I was like, why does this keep going? I know.

It must have budgeted an hour. It's crazy, it's very long. There were a few big topics they went in depth on and we're just gonna take them one at a time, play some clips so you can get a feel for what it was like without having to suffer through the whole thing like we did. Yeah, that's a service we provide.

You do not, we watch the whole thing so you don't have to. Let's start with immigration. They covered a lot here, including big questions on deportations and citizenship. Here's a sampling. If they come here illegally, but their family is here legally,

then the family has a choice. The person that came in illegally can go out or they can all go out together. You promised to end birthright citizenship on day one. Is that still your plan? Yeah, absolutely. So even though Trump wants to end birthright citizenship, he also said he wants to work with Democrats

on a solution for the Dreamers, who he spoke favorably about. Let's talk about birthright citizenship first, which I think is the big headline here, ending it at least for the children of undocumented parents, something of a right-wing passion project. It's also birthright citizenship is also guaranteed in the Constitution and the 14th Amendment. Do you guys think he actually can end this? I think he wants to fight. I don't think he knows or particularly cares if he can end it. It's yet another place where the Constitution is unequivocal

and yet we're having this debate because we don't know if six conservative justices will agree anymore. That's the reason we can have this debate. But I think he wants the fight. So you think he would just do something, test it in court, see if the Supreme Court, not go through like the constitutional amendment process?

So he said both. He doesn't have the, he wouldn't get the votes. He doesn't have the discipline. But he says that, he said it's, you know, throughout this interview, it was a lot of moments of Welker trying to pin him down and his whole sort of stance throughout the interview was just refusing to be pinned down.

So this is one of the places where he did that too. And he said, well, we may have to bring it to the people. But then he brought it back to the executive order and talked about the executive order he was going to issue when he was president. It's just a listener note, it's very hard to amend the constitution just to propose an amendment to the constitution.

You require, you need support from two thirds of both houses of Congress or two thirds of state legislature. And then the bar is higher to three fourths to ratify it so yeah not gonna happen. Supreme Court said something about this back in 1898 they ruled that birthright citizenship is part of the 14th Amendment they said the ruling there was the 14th Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory including all children here born of resident aliens. The only qualification, the reason that the

right keeps talking about this and has for a while, is there's a qualification in the 14th Amendment that says children born in the US have to be quote subject to the jurisdiction thereof, but of course undocumented immigrants are subject to US jurisdiction and that they can be sanctioned for violating the law. Right, they're not ambassadors. Right, that's what I'm saying. The only people who aren't subject to US jurisdiction are foreign diplomats with diplomatic immunity.

That's why that exception is in the constitution. Something I am sure Donald Trump has ranted about when all those ambassadors were racking up tickets in Manhattan over all those years, there's no doubt that Donald Trump fucking hated seeing those diplomatic plates parked in the fucking fire zones. There was also a Trump appointee on the Fifth Circuit

that just ruled in 2015 that the clause covers, quote, the vast majority of lawful and unlawful aliens. So it is a pretty, I mean, again, it's this Supreme Court, so who knows, but you could see Roberts, you could see, I mean, it seems unlikely. What do you guys make of the cognitive dissonance between saying he wants to protect the Dreamers

who are children who were brought here, undocumented children who were brought here by their parents as kids, but he also thinks that kids born here shouldn't get citizenship? Yeah, so it's interesting. I actually thought the dreamers, the part where he talked about the dreamers

was the most interesting part of this section because he actually was more compassionate in his language than he's been in a very long time. Yeah, not ever, but a long time. Not in a long time. He used to say, that answer that he said to me was like, you gotta do something. Some of them are great people.

We're gonna do something for them. That's what he used to say when he was president. Yes. So he has not, he did not talk that way throughout the entire campaign. So I think the contradiction is that he doesn't care and he's not thinking about it that way. When he talks about birthright citizenship,

he's talking about, you know, he's ranted about tourists having babies from Asia. He's talking about people that just got here. When he's referring to the dreamers, he's actually acknowledging what has been at the core of the Democratic position on this, which is you need to have a system of rules and laws going forward,

but you need to recognize that people have been in this country for a very long time. It's sort of acknowledging both sides of that. Yeah, I just think he's a liar. If he wanted to protect the Dreamers, there's a deal on the table with the Democrats that he could pass tomorrow. Just do it, protect mean, if he wanted to protect the Dreamers, there's a deal on the table where the Democrats said he could pass tomorrow. Just do it, protect them, go for it.

I mean, he got that, there was an offer in 2018, 2019 that was basically protection for the Dreamers in exchange for billions of wall funding, and Democrats walked away from it because of the wall funding at the time, but again, they could pass a narrow fix for the Dreamers. I think what- Man, wish we had taken that deal. I do too.

Well, I think that, but I think that tells you like, liar or not, like, I think he would take that deal. I think that can still happen. Yeah, maybe, I'm just saying- He would love the win. I think he's a guy who doesn't wanna get blamed for ugly images on TV, but ultimately supports an incredibly radical

immigration agenda that includes mass deportations of tens of millions of people. Yeah, it feels like a past versus future thing, you know, that he, you protect the children of undocumented immigrants who are already here, millions of people. Yeah, it feels like a past versus future thing. Yeah. You know, that he, you protect the children of undocumented immigrants who are already here, but you don't allow the children of future undocumented immigrants to become citizens. Because like you said, he believes that this birth tourism, that people come here illegally and have children is like, this is the whole quote unquote anchor babies that I mean, it's

just. He wants, he doesn't want people, right Right, he wants to have after a certain date, be able to deport people without having to consider the fact that the children born here are American citizens. He wants to have a date after which he doesn't have to worry about that anymore, but unfortunately the constitution says otherwise. Also there's a bigger challenge here.

Like if you, there's bigger consequences here. If you suddenly decide that citizenship in the United States is not granted because you're born here. Like the amount of people that you could start stripping citizenship from is just, it goes on for, it's crazy. Getting rid of birth, sex, or gender is crazy. But we'll, I mean, they're gonna try via executive order.

So we'll see. Or they won't, like we don't, like again, like it's just like, this was an interview where. I mean, it seems like they're, the Wall Street Journal says they are drafting an order. So it seems like they're gonna at least try, but whether, like it's just like, this was an interview where- I mean, it seems like there, the Wall Street Journal says they are drafting an order. So it seems like they're gonna at least try, but whether, what happens to him remains to be seen. What happens next we don't know.

Yeah, I just like, he is, it was a strange interview in that like basically on a few different, few different places, Welker was like challenging, did you really mean this? And every single time he said, of course I did. Of course I did. But then he does this sort of more moderate sounding language on Dreamers, on a few other issues.

So it was like an interview where he was making himself hard to pin down. It sounds like the deportation plan is to start with immigrants who've committed crimes here in America, but then go far beyond that to include undocumented immigrants who've been here for years, have jobs, pay taxes, live with American citizen family members. We've talked a lot about Democrats not becoming the defenders of the status quo, but obviously immigration was one of the defining issues of the campaign. How do you guys think Democrats should fight this or can fight this really?

Well, I mean, we know there's a bunch of states where the attorney generals are preparing legal challenges. Groups like the ACLU will challenge in court any effort to use the military to deport people. And then there will be cities that will refuse to work with ICE and prevent deportation operations. So that's kind of the policy side. Then I think part of it as Democrats, I mean, this starts to happen. You start seeing families ripped apart. You start to see, you know, who's going to go well beyond criminals, these sort of deportations, it's gonna be farm workers, students,

people who served in the military, teachers, I think you have to like lift up those stories and talk about the impact on communities. Yeah, there was a moment in the interview where he said something he hadn't said before where Welker's asking about all these, about the kind of impact of all this kind of mass deportation. He says, well, you know, there are these criminals,

they're hiding, they're in our cities, they're on our farms. And it was a strange, like, wait, you don't, he doesn't talk like that, doesn't reference the fact that undocumented people do a ton of the labor on farms in this country. And it was, it felt like reflective of some kind of conversation you had

where it's clear that this rounding up of people is gonna impact the nation's food supply. And so he's starting to think about how to message around the impact of that. I don't know, but it was strange. Yeah, I think the hard reality of this is that it's very difficult to fight deportation since Trump is well within the law

and past presidents of both parties have deported undocumented immigrants. Cities can try not to cooperate with ICE. You know, Tom Homan, the new borders are said if they don't cooperate, I'll just have my agents do it. It's whatever we don't need their cooperation. But I do think you show, like Tommy said, how cruel and unnecessary and harmful it

is to the country to expel people who are doing nothing more but trying to live their lives, do their jobs, haven't committed any crimes. Who are giving back a lot to the country, contributing to the economy, to society, in a million different ways. Oh, paying, paying, by the way, also just one other lie and all of this undocumented people are paying into Medicare and social security and not able to ever recoup it.

He also lied and says we're the only country in the world that does birthright citizenship. That is totally wrong. Dozens of countries do it. The Canadiansoup it. He also lied and says we're the only country in the world that does birthright citizenship. That is totally wrong. Dozens of countries do it. The Canadians do it. Chile, like lots of countries. I think that another challenge for Democrats is

because they are gonna start with criminals or people who have committed crimes here in America. Obviously you break the law if you cross the border unlawfully. But for the people who've committed crimes here in America, they're going to make a big deal out of them and then sort of try to bait Democrats into, you know, look, the reason that there are, to the extent that there are people who've committed violent crimes or either other

crimes in America who are undocumented, the reason they're still here is not because the Biden administration or other Democrats just didn't want to go after them. Part of it is because either they can't find them or you know law enforcement's been looking for them but can't find them or sometimes people are here because we don't have agreements with the countries that they came from to send them back to those countries and so this is there's a number of challenges just logistical challenges the Trump administration is going to have to grapple with just in order to do some of these deportations. I read that they're actually thinking of sending some of these undocumented immigrants back I read that they're actually thinking of sending some of these undocumented

immigrants back to countries that aren't their home countries, uh, because they don't have the agreements with the, with, with all the countries, which is just. Well, and this is where Tom Homan's full of shit. The, the immigration czar sure ice could go to a community and find someone and take them and deport them, but they're going to have a hard time finding them. That that's the part that you need the local cops for, is the law enforcement piece, tracking people down, knowing where they are. Yeah, but it's gonna be hard.

And I also think the Democrats just need to be clear in laying out the alternative, right? Which is we of course support going after criminals and people who've committed crimes in this country, and also people who've just arrived here, or like we're fine with removing people, recent arrivals, right? But people who have been here for years,

who just want the chance to become citizens, we should give them the chance to become citizens. We should bring them out of the shadows so that they can contribute, which is what they wanna do in this country. I think you just have to be very clear about the message. Yeah, I think you have to, I also think like, this interview that Trump gave is an opportunity for Democrats to say like,

okay, we will do your, we have a conservative border bill right now, we will tie that with protections for finally letting these dreamers who did nothing wrong and who only know this country to become citizens, which you now say is something you wanna do. So let's do that right now. How about that's the first thing? That's one of the first things you can do

when you become president. We should be out there taking him at his word. All right, let's talk about what to make of Trump's answers on whether he'll actually go after his political enemies. Here he is answering questions about the January 6th committee. I think those people committed a major crime. And Cheney was behind it.

And so was Benny Thompson and And everybody on that committee, for what they did, honestly, they should go to jail. So you think Liz Cheney should go to jail? For what they did. Everyone on the committee you think should go to jail. Anybody that voted in favor. Do you want Cash Patel to launch investigations into people on that list? No, I mean, he's going to do what he thinks is right.

If they think that somebody was dishonest or crooked or a corrupt politician, I think he probably has an obligation to do it. Are you going to direct him to do it? No, not at all. Not at all. I'm not looking to go back into the past. I'm looking to make our country successful. Retribution will be through success.

All right, where do you think we are on the spectrum of a rule of law to Trump decides who goes to jail? Just some pure uncut fascism there. Yeah, you know, it's funny, again, like if you could, there are, he, before that section, he's saying the right things. He's saying, I'm not, I don't want, I'm not gonna tell Cash Patel what to do, I'm paying bond, He's saying, I'm not gonna tell Cash,

but tell him what to do. I'm paying bond, he's great. I'm not gonna tell her what to do. They're gonna do what they wanna do. I don't wanna go backwards. That's what Biden did. I'm not for that. And then the second Welker brings up the select committee.

He's like, jail, jail for every fucking one of them. Who voted for it. Who voted for it. Jail, well, we don't hear the end of that sentence. I think maybe it meant on the committee, because weren't there- On the committee vote, yeah. But that's what it's, you vote against me and you go into jail. I think maybe it meant on the committee because weren't there- On the committee vote, yeah. But that's what you vote for, vote against me

and you go to jail and it's just pure adulterated fascism. Yes, also the constitution has protections specifically designed to protect legislators from the executive for doing their jobs. Not something that comes up in the interview. It also reminded me that there was a part in that Atlantic profile of Patel that said he's the kind of guy you don't have to tell him to do it. That's why that there was a part in that Atlantic profile of Patel that said he's the kind of guy

you don't have to tell him to do it. That's why that question was dumb. That's why you chose Cash Patel. Right. He has an enemies list in his book. Like why you chose Pam Bondi to, well, I guess Matt Gaetz washed out, but why she was your second choice.

Cause you don't need to tell these people what to do. They know they're there to punish your enemies. Yeah. You could read it two ways, I think, which is one, exactly how we just talked about it, how you guys just talked about it. The other is, he genuinely doesn't wanna go back and doesn't want this,

doesn't wanna have all these investigations, but you bring up things that he's pissed about and that he's talked about before, he's gonna set them off because the man has no control of his emotions. And also he's never been someone who's like, oh, you know, I changed my mind actually, like Liz Cheney, let's all let bygones be gone.

Like he's always gonna be like, yes, she should go to jail, but I'm not gonna make anything happen, right? Now, again, the huge problem here is whether or not you believe Trump, whether or not he means he really is going to make them go to jail or he doesn't wanna go back to the past,

Cash Patel and Pam Bondi are the problem because they'll either take his comments as a green light to go investigate and prosecute, or they may just decide to do whatever the fuck they want knowing that Trump either won't care or he will approve and they will curry favor with that. Glad they're doing it despite his lack of intervention, which is sort of an ideal outcome for him.

Yeah, just stepping back, this was the most unleashed Trump in this entire interview. It's an hour and 16 minute interview. It was much more like Trump on Rogan where the clips are taken out of context to make it seem like the most dangerous and kind of unhinged version of Trump. But for the majority of this interview,

he is trying to seem as reasonable and mainstream as humanly possible. And he, I think, does succeed in a lot of places. This was one place where it was like, whoa, he's definitely going beyond his, whatever goals he had for this interview, he has left those behind to start railing against Liz Cheney. The one thought I had while watching it,

I'm curious, it was a little galaxy brain, which is like, man, this is not somebody, like this is baiting Joe Biden into pardons. That's what I, I was like, why would you go so hard at these people right now? You're so careful throughout the rest of it to try to seem more disciplined. I think he just has no impulse control.

Yeah, I agree. I understand this. I think Liz Cheney is bait. I think it's like that, it's just, he's just triggered by hearing Liz Cheney in January. Same thing when she mentioned 2020, like it's wild to me that one of the questions was like, do you, did you win the 2020 election?

I'm like, oh, we're going back there now. But like, there are certain things, not certain things, there's a lot of things you can say to Trump to- To set them off. To set him off. To set him off. He is also very mad that the January 6th committee destroyed all their records and evidence and thinks that's prosecutable now.

The whole thing, he's very mad. I think he's seeking retribution. He was trying to be serious, but the minute you push him, like he's electrocuted. But I do think, I guess where I come down on this is I would not be surprised if they do launch investigations and try to do everything he had said during the campaign he wanted to do.

I would also not be surprised if nothing happens. Yeah, it's all, look, Joe Biden, it's- But if I was Biden, I think I would, I would do, I think really hard about preemptive pardons and blanket pardons for the J-6 committee and Jack Smith and his team. And I would do the team and I would do the staff. I would do like for, for anyone who was caught up in federal employees who were investigating Donald Trump

in some way, I would think seriously about pardons. Yeah, I just, it's like an umbrella. You know, you're, it's okay, if you have it, you don't need it. Better than to need it and not have it. And we don't, we will not, we do not get to go back and man, Joe Biden, look, I think it's why he pardoned Hunter. He doesn't want to look back and realize he had this chance to save his son, didn't take it. Well, it's time to use that in the same way for the rest of us.

He also talked about pardoning the January 6th protesters, rioters who have been convicted, who pled guilty, who are currently serving time in prison. He said that's a day one thing that he's gonna do. Do you think people are gonna care about that? I do. I mean, I don't think the voters want to look back. And this is looking back. And I think, you know,

here's what I think we have to do. The Republicans are very good at picking out a couple specific stories and examples and lifting them up. Right, like Lake and Riley, any sort of incident of horrible crime against an individual by an undocumented migrant, Trump will tell that story at Nazium, we need to not just look at the statistics around January 6th or talk about it in the big picture, we need to find individuals that he pardons

who are hitting cops or beating people up or being violent and get the footage of that and the stories of those individuals out on day one. I do not think that people, I mean, I think the polling on this was like 30% support for pardoning January 6th insurrectionists. Yeah, I saw, I saw, Tariant had this on CNN. It was like 33% said they were patriots.

64% were opposed to pardons. 1% wanted to be a priority, which he's clearly making a priority if it's on day one. And 53% think that what the the riders did was an insurrection. So the public opinion is clear. I totally agree with you, Tommy, that like you've got to, and he kind of danced. She goes back and forth. This is what I was going to say.

Yeah. She goes back and forth on the police officers. There's like, what about the people who violently assaulted police officers? Some of the way that was written up had Trump responding by saying they had no choice. It was, he wasn't saying, I don't think he was saying they had no choice to assault the police officers. He was referring to a different part of her question, which was they pled guilty. And he's saying they have no choice to plead guilty

because it was like a forced confession kind of thing. Well, it's amazing how realistic Donald Trump can be about the criminal justice system when it's his own fucking people. Like, oh, the jail is not fit for people. And oh, well, you understand that people take plea deals just to get out of something and confess to things that they didn't actually do.

Incredibly generous to his own people. Yeah, I think it matters. The other thing he did throughout this section was bounce around who's gonna get pardoned. Is it, who's gonna be affected? He really didn't give any straight answer. He avoided it completely. So I think it matters who ends up getting these pardons, right?

If it's a blanket pardon for a bunch of people that assaulted cops, like, we should. So I think it matters who ends up getting these pardons. If it's a blanket pardon for a bunch of people that assault the cops, we should be fucking talking about it for years. But- Huge issue, we should make it, I think this is the one you make a really big deal out of. Trump is letting violent criminals out of jail

to roam the streets in your neighborhood. This is when you go from, yeah, Democrats shouldn't be talking about democracy because it doesn't really resonate with people, but criminals in your neighborhood who were committing political violence and assaulting cops? Yeah, people don't care about that. All right, Trump also talked about his economic plans, including a lengthy back and forth on tariffs with Trump saying he quote, can't guarantee Americans won't end up paying more.

He also said, I can't guarantee that I can't guarantee tomorrow. Yeah, it was very, very, very metaphysical. Very funny. Very funny. He also talked about how his other big priority is extending the Trump tax cuts, which mostly benefit the richest Americans. He was also asked about raising the minimum wage, but didn't sound as favorable on that, even though he said he would consider it. We've talked about how Democrats need to focus on working class voters issues, very early, of course, but how do you think Democrats should respond to the Trump economic agenda?

What I took from this, as you would say, Donald Trump has just told us what his priorities are as president, to free people that assault cops and cut taxes for the rich. Those are his two big priorities, right? It's not raising the minimum wage, it's not protecting access to healthcare,

it's not even lowering costs, it's tax cuts for the rich and freeing the people that assaulted the cops on his behalf. And that should tell you something about what you can expect from Donald Trump over the next four years. Yeah, I would hammer the tax cut issue. I was reading a report on the 2017 Trump tax cut.

It found that large US pharma companies saved about $6 billion in taxes over the course of four years. And during that time, they expanded their workforce by less than 1% globally. So they saved a ton of money on taxes and they created no jobs. In 2023, Pfizer made over 27 billion and paid zero federal income taxes,

thanks in part to the Trump tax cut because they make the bulk of their money in the US and then they use loopholes and tax avoidance schemes to recognize that revenue in Ireland or whatever. So this is the opposite of populism. This is the opposite of the bullshit that Steve Bannon and his types try to tell us that the Trump MAGA message is about.

And I think we need to really push it hard. I mean, again, like the riches 0.1% of taxpayers got a $250,000 tax cut. The poorest quintile in this country got a $70 tax cut. That's the story of the 2017 Trump tax cut that he's trying to extend. Yeah, and I do think much like your point, Tommy, on the J6 rioters, Democrats are going to have to work hard to publicize and lift up the stories of like who's going to benefit from the tax cuts.

Because my guess is that the Trump folks will sell the tax cut extension as middle class tax cuts. In fact, I wouldn't even be surprised if they gave, if they tried to propose, you know, especially with JD Vance and that crew in there, like larger tax cuts for the middle class. So they actually are bigger than the $70 they got last time. And I think that we need to lift up the stories of the, you know, big CEOs and billionaires who are getting the tax cut. I also think, by the way, look, there's already companies that have said they're going to raise prices

thanks to the tariffs. I think every time a company announces that they're gonna raise prices because of the tariffs or every time they do raise prices, we need to make a huge fucking deal of it. We need to make a huge deal of who's getting, the rich people who are getting tax cuts. And I think we should also talk about people

who are making minimum wage and can barely afford to get by. And I think we should also talk about people who are making minimum wage and can barely afford to get by. And I think the frame of this is we took Trump at his word, you know, he's, he, he ran on making life more affordable for people and cutting costs. And he's breaking his promise. He's betraying the people who voted for him. And you know, what I wouldn't do is say things

like, oh, well, too bad. This is what you voted for people or they're idiots or they deserve it. Cause you already see this on, people are already posting this is like the same people who are like, well, the Latinos and immigrants who voted for them, they deserve it if they get deported, right?

Like this is not, when he does this, he is breaking a promise to people that he made. Yeah, Chipotle just announced that they're raising prices next year. And then you look and they had an incredible increase in profits over the previous year. They're raising costs because they think they can get away with it. Corporations and Donald Trump and the billionaires around him are conspiring to raise prices. They are not focused on what you need.

They are focused on each other and you will pay the price. Another big topic in the interview is healthcare. Welcome, Preston, on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and on RFK Junior's plans for childhood vaccines. Let's listen. Sir, you said during the campaign you had concepts of a plan. Do you have an actual plan at this point for healthcare? Yes, we have concepts of a plan that would be better.

I'm not against vaccines. The polio vaccine is the greatest thing. If somebody told me, get rid of the polio vaccine, they're going to have to work real hard to convince me. I think vaccines are... certain vaccines are incredible. But maybe some aren't. And if they aren't, we have to find out. Before we get to vaccines, what do you think is the answer to their signal about how serious he is about taking on healthcare reform

and going after the ACA again? I don't know that he cares about health policy as much as he hates Obama and acts accordingly. I don't know, it seems like he wants credit for all the good parts of the ACA, but maybe doesn't wanna touch that hot stove again, but I don't know, what do you guys think? I agree.

I took it, he spent a while talking about how much he did to make Obamacare work, which is his new lie. It's not true. He sued to get rid of Obamacare. And he even responds to his Welker point setting. He says, well, that's what I was doing to try to get rid of it, but actually administering it. He was trying to sabotage it internally,

sabotaging the enrollment periods, making it more difficult to sign up. So he was trying to undermine Ob it internally, sabotaging the enrollment periods, making it more difficult to sign up. So he wasn't, he was trying to undermine Obama care at every turn. But it does seem like he doesn't want that fight. He also, Yeah. I mean, I think he understands that the appetite for ACA repeal isn't there. It's popular.

It's like 60% approval. It's the most popular it's ever been. Only 38% of people disapproved. The appetite isn't there in Congress either. I do worry about Medicaid a lot because I think Republicans will want to gut Medicaid as part of the budget bill they're going to use to extend the Trump tax cuts. So I think we should watch that.

Obviously Biden did, uh, the inflation reduction act as part of a budget reconciliation bill. We talked about that, uh, more than enough when it was happening, but I think Republicans are going to now do something similar with the budget bill, and they're going to try to do tax cuts and then all of their other cuts to the budget. And I worry about healthcare programs that can be just, you know, cut or radically reduced, it just in the budget. I don't think they're going to have the votes to actually repeal the insurance protections or the law of the Affordable Care Act, but I think a lot of the money that goes to making healthcare affordable for people,

I really do worry about that. Right. The places where they'll look to make cuts that they think they can get away with will be Medicaid and will be food stamps. They will go after the programs that target the poor, especially because in this interview and previously, Trump has said that he wants to carve out social security and Medicare, he knows politically it's toxic. And so where are you gonna find the money

to pay for a $200,000 tax cut for a person making $5 million? You're gonna cut food stamp increases by $20 a month. Yeah, and the Doge bozos like Elon and Vivek are like learning in real time on Twitter that most of US spending, federal spending is entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, social security. And they're likelement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.

And they're like, amazing, look at this, quote tweet. It drives me fucking nuts. It is. It's like, hey, did you guys all hear about this? The Elon posting, Elon posting something like, we're paying so much for health care, but we're not really getting a good value for it. Like, you fucking suck.

We've been dealing with this. This is a real, talking about this for fucking 20 years. Good thing a brilliant man like me has looked into this. You guys know that. No one has done that before. You don't know the administrative cost on private insurance versus Medicare. It's out of control.

Deletons. Brief exchange about abortion. Welker asked if he would be restricting access to abortion pills and he made it seem like he would not. I think the question is, like does he come under more pressure from Republicans in Congress now that they have a majority in both houses to do more on abortion than he might be inclined to do?

Or, you know, she asked the question about the abortion pill, that would be an administrative action. Does some of the loons he has put in charge of his government decide to move on that? That's the big question. I think clearly Republicans want a national abortion ban. This is part of their project. There are a bunch of right wing zealots in the house in particular who will stop at nothing to get a federal abortion ban. The question is whether Speaker Johnson will keep those people under wraps if he and Trump have cut some sort of deal. I don't, yeah, I think that the votes aren't

there in the house. The Republicans don't have a big enough majority, and the frontline members are not in districts where they're going to, especially since the frontline members are, a lot of them blue state Republicans, they're not gonna wanna do that. I think it's not, the appetite's not there among enough Republican senators to do that,

they're not gonna vote in the Senate either. I worry about, you know, the Comstock Act and what happens within the within the administration Yeah, the question is always on abortion with Trump has been not what does he want to do? But what is he willing to stop? That's why the most important question during the election was would you veto a bill? That's that's why the questions around what he would do administratively are so important and he has evaded those answers I think he clearly understands how damaging politically This has been for him and does not want the fight,

but a lot of people around him do. All right, let's talk about the vaccines. Uh, all over the place there. He says that Kennedy won't be upending the system. That's, that was, yeah. But if you watch or read through, it's also pretty clear he's bought into the idea that there's been a huge spike in autism in America

and that it has to be attributable to something external, maybe vaccines, who knows, let's investigate. He also mentions at one point that it could be chlorine in the water, presumably meaning fluoride, which we know RFK wants to get rid of. Oh, that's what he meant. Yeah. Okay.

That's what he meant. Got it, cool. Anything, unless he's worried about public pools, I don't know, I took it to mean fluoride. Yeah. It seemed, the danger to me seems again, that like Trump is at risk of just getting convinced by RFK Jr. to make these major public health changes.

And by the way, if RFK goes off on his own and does some investigation, it's just an investigation, like, oh, I wonder what's going to turn up, you know? This is the problem. RFK, this is what he cares about. This is the only thing he cares about. In 2021, he did a podcast interview where he said,

he goes hiking. If he sees a parent carrying a little baby, he'll say to them, better not get him vaccinated. Like literally, like he says to strangers on the hiking trail. He said this. So that is not a nuanced perspective that includes a carve out for polio.

This is an ideologue who is dishonest, who is sloppy, and if he gets access to a big bunch of data, he's gonna find what he wants to find. And in the process, I don't know where Trump will land on all this, but in the process, the US government, sowing chaos and making people hesitant or scared to get vaccines, like that is gonna do damage. Yeah, to me that's like, the best case scenario is a huge fight over vaccines

and whether, you know, RFK's bullshit study is right or wrong, you could get a whole bunch of people in HHS who whistleblowers saying, no, this is bullshit, blah, blah, blah. If there is conflict about it, that is gonna increase hesitancy, that's gonna do damage enough. Yeah, I'm, I think RFK Jr. coming out

and trying to withdraw vaccine approvals causing a kind of giant national debate over this. Do I think that's necessarily gonna happen? No, I worry about the kind of quiet power this guy's gonna have behind the scenes to decide what gets funded, what doesn't get funded, who's in charge of overseeing these investigations.

It's going... The ways in which... For a long time on abortion, the question was, would the court overturn Roe v. Wade? And what they did was... The headlines would end up being, court upholds Roe v. Wade while undermining abortion all along the way. And I worry about what happens when you have somebody like RFK Jr. in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, and it comes out,

RFK Jr. will not be banning vaccines, but the policies that are now coming down from the top throughout HHS are undermining vaccination campaigns, undermining public health research, undermining the institutions that are not just making sure people are getting vaccinated now, but investigating and doing the research into the next generation of vaccines. Like, I'm worried about the, like, what happens when the headlines fade because but investigating and doing the research into the next generation of vaccines.

Like I'm worried about the like, what happens when the headlines fade because he's not doing the big, terrible thing. And we just live with the slow degradation of what is the incredible public health apparatus, like the incredible achievements of America's public health system. Yeah, I think he's gonna do both.

I mean, he's already said, I mean, there's some quote out there we said, I'm gonna tell the researchers that we're gonna hit pause for eight years on basically R&D on some of these vaccines and things. But what always happens with these anti-vax advocates is they get a mound of data and they find in what they want.

And then the scientists on the other side are left having conversations about correlation, not causation and other variables and the uncertainty of the scientific process, and yada, yada, yada, and we just lose that public debate. And in the process, a bunch of parents are like, I don't know, man, this measles thing is scary, and what do you do?

I heard this story, and I read something online. There's this awful example of a child who, you know, got the shots, and then all of a sudden wasn't responsive, and, you know, that stuff is really powerful. Yeah. Next thing you know, they take away your Diet Coke. Never. He's not stupid enough to go after my and Donald Trump's Diet Coke. I know, I know. That's where he draws the line.

Foreign policy was not a major focus of the Meet the Press interview which Trump recorded on Friday morning two days before Assad's regime fell in Syria. Though the issue did come up when Welker asked about Tulsi Gabbard's nomination to be director of national intelligence. Gabbard had a couple of infamous secret meetings with Assad that reportedly have a bunch of senators worried about her nomination with good reason. Let's listen to Trump's response. Let me ask you about former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.

You picked her to be the director of national intelligence. Right. In 2017, she had two secret meetings with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Do you have questions or concerns about those meetings? No. And he's got bigger problems right now. Well, do you think it makes it hard for her? His country is collapsing.

Yeah. I mean, do you think it compromises her ability to handle that? You know, look, I met with Putin. I met with President Xi of China. I met with Kim Jong-un twice. Does that mean that I can't be president? When you were president, they weren't secret meetings. Do you have confidence in Tulsi Gabbard?

I do. I mean, she's a very respected person. Before we get into the politics of it, Tommy, can you just walk everyone through what actually happened this weekend, since this is now the biggest story in the world? I know you and Ben did a bonus episode about this for Pod Save the World that everyone should check out.

We recorded something Sunday. We'll do another one on Tuesday for Wednesday, but check them out if you want the longer story. I mean, the short answer is that in Syria, these opposition forces toppled 50 years of Assad rule and 13 years of the civil war, and they just drove them out of town. It was lightning speed.

The rebels basically started coming south from Northwestern Syria, and over the course of eight days, took city after city after city until they just rolled into Damascus, and Assad had to fly to Russia, from northwestern Syria and over the course of eight days took city after city after city until they just rolled into Damascus and in Assad had to fly to Russia where he will now live out the rest of his life hopefully in some squalid conditions. So it's just a truly historic moment where one of the most brutal regimes in modern history fell and Assad, Bashar al-Assad came after his father, uh,

who was just as brutal and took power in a coup and, um, uh, Bashar killed, you know, 500,000 of his own people, uh, through the course of the civil war. He's just a truly horrific human being. Sounds like when push came to shove, uh, Iran and Russia really weren't there for, uh, their pals in Syria. They were not there. They were either tied up in Ukraine or tied up in Lebanon or Hezbollah had been decapitated by the Israelis. So his benefactors were not around to bail him out this time.

Well, then let's talk about his other friend, Tulsi Gabbard. What do you think this means for Gabbard's nomination? Anything? I mean, that's a good question. So the kind of hit list on her, they mentioned it there. She met with Assad twice. She flew to Syria to meet with him in 2017.

Then she got this kind of PR tour around Aleppo after it had been bombed to dust by Assad and the Russians. She said Assad is not the enemy of the United States. She refused to say Assad is a war criminal. She also refuses to believe that Assad used chemical weapons on his own people, which he very much did. And so there's all these other weird examples. Like in 2018, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a closed-door meeting with a Syrian defector

who had smuggled all this evidence of Assad's brutality and war crimes out of Syria. And bipartisan groups of staffers were so worried about Tulsi being there that the guy wore a mask in like closed door hearings. And then there's this, that same NBC report that talked about that, mentioned a trip Tulsi took to the Turkey-Syria border 2015.

There she met with two little girls who had been horrifically burned from airstrikes while they were living at this IDP camp. And she asked them, how do you know it was a Russian's and Assad who bombed you and not ISIS? And the answer is ISIS doesn't have an Air Force, you fucking moron. So it's like, are you an Assad fan?

Are you just that stupid? You know what I mean? Like how do you get to these? Neither speaks very well for qualifications for DNI. No. Yeah, there's also the, she embraced the conspiracy theory around biolabs in Ukraine.

And like, you know, this has become like ideological and because like, and John Bolton has been one of like the most like fervent opponents. But the point he made, which is just like, this isn't, she just seems like she has terrible judgment. Like it's not ideological, she's a fucking kook. And like whether or not the fact that she was so solicitous towards Assad and like the specific situation in Syria aside,

like the fact that all this is unfolding as she's about to go into these hearings is a reminder that like this is a serious and important job. Like the Trump, one part in the Welker interview, Welker says, you know, you said you would end the war in one day if you were president. So how's that going? And it is like, to me, like it is a, the Hegs stuff,

the Gabbard stuff. It's a reminder to me, like Trump has won twice as a challenger, he has lost as an incumbent. It is easy to say how, to say how you will solve every problem and understand how to turn every key when you are a candidate. But when you were president, these are serious, real, and complicated issues that demand serious, capable people.

And Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, these are not those people. Yeah, you need a team. And I get where Tulsi's coming from on not saying Assad is not the enemy of the United States. She's just trying to make an argument that we shouldn't go to war in Syria or on behalf of the Syrian opposition. I understand that. But in service of that goal, she became an apologist for this evil war criminal who was

using chemical weapons on his own people, who was throwing people in these gulags and torturing them for years and years and years. And so there's going to be the Gabbard hearing, but but then there's gonna be a set of policy questions for Trump. There's 900 US troops sitting in Syria right now, working with these Kurdish forces to keep ISIS at bay. There's Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles that are kind of littered throughout the country still. These Israelis were bombing those over the weekend.

CENTCOM was hitting all these ISIS targets. There's gonna be this need to make sure that this isn't just chapter one of the Syrian Civil War, but that something good comes out of it, some sort of viable state, because the Syrian Civil War led to five million people, I think, fleeing beyond Syria, who are living as refugees.

Most of them are in the sort of neighboring countries, like Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, et cetera. But I think Germany took like 800,000 refugees in. A lot of those people want to go home. A lot of that migration destabilized the politics in these European countries and led to the rise of these far-right parties. So there's a huge opportunity right now for the international community to step up, help Syria, help people come home and make it a viable state and not let it devolve into just another fucking nightmare

for these people who have lived through hell for the last decade. And the question is, what is Trump gonna do? Cause his tweet is like, not our problem, that's his take. And then his DNI is like an Assad fan. And then you have Rubio, who's been a hawk. Right. It's just like, the contradictions get resolved

when you're governing. They can exist while you're campaigning. They don't get to continue to exist when you're governing. Yeah. Did you see in Playbook today, they were reporting that, you know, Gabbard's defenders now are going to say, well, she once called him a brutal dictator. And also she has top secret clearance.

So if there was any problems, this would have come up then. That process is always perfect. Right. And then she was just promoted also to like, to be a lieutenant colonel, uh, in the army reserve. So that's, that's, you know, all of this stuff is like qualifications for that. But I'm like, I don't, I don't think the army reserve

process probably isn't geared to look into international fucking trips to meet with Assad. Like I'm sure she did what she needed to do to earn that promotion, but like, it's a ridiculous defense. Yeah. They're the, the air force reservist named Jack Tashara was the kid who leaked all those top secret documents on the Discord to his gamer buddies.

So I don't know that that's the bar we're gonna hold the DNI to. Seems wise. ["DNA Theme"] We've been following the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, like everyone else, a story that now clearly has a political angle. Well, because he's running for the 2028 primary. Correct. Yes.

We don't know which party. As of this recording, Monday afternoon, LA time, police have a quote, strong person of interest in custody, 26 year old Luigi Mangione, who was apprehended at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania with a backpack containing a gun, a silencer, fake IDs matching the ones used in New York, and a handwritten manifesto that didn't give the health insurance industry the best reviews. This was after the bullet casings found at the scene had the words delay, deny, and depose written on them. The reactions on social media, which is why this is one of the reasons why this is a big story, have ranged from people joking about the murder to celebrating it.

United Health Group had to shut off the Facebook reactions to the announcement of Thompson's death after nearly 75,000 users responded with a laughing emoji. The reaction inevitably reached the point where politicians got asked about it. Here's California Congressman Ro Khanna on ABC's This Week on Sunday. Let me just say it was horrific. I mean, this is a father we're talking about of two children and my sympathies to the entire family. There is no justification for violence.

But the outpouring afterwards has not surprised me. Look, I, as a congressperson, had UnitedHealthcare deny a prescription for a nasal $100 pump spray, and I couldn't get them to reverse this. So imagine what ordinary people are dealing with. The biggest denial comes when it's cancer treatment. People are getting denied on cancer treatment. And my view is very simple.

Why can't we have a rule that if a doctor prescribes something and if Medicare, traditional Medicare is gonna cover it, then private insurance companies should be forced to cover it. I mean, it's absurd in this country what's going on. I think that's a good idea. What do you guys think of Ro's answer

and what's your general take on this story? So, like when I saw that the shooting had happened, I was just, I was like, okay, so here's what's gonna happen next. I just was waiting for it. Like there's gonna be a round of people celebrating it. There's gonna be a round of people criticizing the people for celebrating it.

Then a round of people criticizing those people for not understanding the pain that people are experiencing in their lives. Everybody- Next thing you know, universal healthcare. Right, like, right. It's sort of like- Medicare for all or else.

Right. That was the worst ideas I've heard. But the kind of like performative, the way you demonstrate you really understand what's broken in our healthcare system is by performing this lack of empathy. That's how you demonstrate you really get it. And if you don't have that lack of empathy,

that means you don't really get it. All of that, I was just sort of like, just sort of waiting for it, of course, like unfolded actually worse than I expected. It was all pretty ugly. The thing that I, there was a lot of like earned vitriol, like insurance companies, some are better than others, plenty play games, even break the law

to try to avoid paying. We have a cruel and broken system. Like that's what we have. Like this guy, well compensated, is have a cruel and broken system. Like that's what we have. Like this guy, well compensated, is a tool of a broken system. This insurance company exists and benefits from a broken system. And like that to me,

like I wanna have a debate about the broken healthcare system and why we have this ridiculous system where half the people get insurance through work, which creates these incredibly convoluted and broken incentives, where we have publicly traded companies that exist to create a difference between how much they pay out in health benefits

versus how much they recoup in premiums. Like their job is to maximize that differential. We built a whole system around it that's fucking stupid. That is terrible. That causes all kinds of harms. But like the idea that we're gonna associate the murder of a health executive with Medicare for All, to me, does not bring us anywhere closer to Medicare for All. We're not going to shoot our way to universal health care.

And it ends up becoming a kind of vicious and negative and divisive debate, a debate we can win without kind of needing to resort to this sort of like ridiculous kind of performative, I don't know what you'd call it, theatrics, heroics, I don't know. Yeah, people can make jokes. The reason I don't make them is because I just think that people all have families and, you know, let's think about it on a human level.

And then also, you know, deciding that we're so tacitly supporting targeted assassination is the slipperiest of slopes in my view. And I saw people saying, well, you know, deciding that we're tacitly supporting targeted assassination is the slipperiest of slopes, in my view. And I saw people saying, well, you know, UnitedHealth, health care is responsible for more deaths because they deny claims. Well, what if someone decides that rational applies to like, you know, abortion rights groups,

goes after their CEOs, right? And I just, I think copycat violence is a real problem. So let's just not celebrate this stuff. That said, everyone has had a terrible interaction with the insurance company, every single person. The insurers reject one in seven claims for treatment. ProPublica had a really long investigation in February of 2023 that's worth reading

about UnitedHealthcare. It's one story about the treatment of a patient who finally found an effective treatment for a debilitating disease that was wildly expensive He was denied his family then sued and they got access to all these You know recorded calls and documents and things that just outlined the way United Health Care Put profits ahead of his health care or anything else and lied and did all these horrible things So but I think the net effect of this incident

is probably gonna be that a bunch of corporate CEOs getting armed security and their customers pay for it. And that's the frustrating part. Yeah, according to the New York Times, some people on social media said that people who have information about the killing shouldn't share it with authorities. The hostel that he was staying in

was cooperating with the authorities and they got threats because they were cooperating. Some people posted names and pictures of other health insurance executives. I'm gonna take the, I'll take the neolib squishy centrist position that murder- That's it, let's hear it.

Murder is bad. Yeah. Also denying people life-saving healthcare because they can't afford it, bad. How about that? Wow, that's incredible. How about that? Isn't that's incredible. How about that? Isn't that crazy?

Incredible, incredible. To start the third wave. I hope all the murderers are caught and punished. Also hope we pass more laws to make sure that everyone can get the healthcare they need without the insurance company putting them through hell, which insurance companies frequently do. Yeah, I feel like the other question,

like why do we have a system where all these people have horror stories, like terrible stories about what it's like to engage with these companies. These companies exist to deny claims and make life harder. And, you know, Barack Obama used to tell stories about what it was like when his mother had cancer and how you're dealing with the worst moment of your life

and you're on the phone with insurance companies. Like, why does this system exist? And the debate online, fine, it's not real life, but I do think it captures something that is real about the healthcare debate, which is there are all these people that are screaming, like the system is fucking stupid, it is stupid, right? And yet when you try to change it, you run into this buzzsaw.

Now part of that is because the insurance lobby donates a lot to campaigns, they run a lot of ads, there's a lot of anti-government, anti-Medicare propaganda, a lot of right-wing propaganda about this. But the reality is when you ask people, do you like your insurance? The vast majority say they do. Even when a majority of those people say

they've had problems with their health insurance, that one in six say that they've had claims that they could never resolve. That they could never resolve. Just to put some statistics there, like Kaiser Family Foundation did very large poll June of last year, June of 23, 81% of people give their health insurance

a rating of excellent or good. Now, if you're in poor health, that number falls, but it falls to 68%, still pretty high. 58% said they've had a problem with their health insurance in the last year, though half of those people say it was resolved to their satisfaction. And then 27%, so one in three people insurance in the last year, though half of those people say it was resolved to their satisfaction. And then 27%, so one in three people, say in the last year they've had a specific issue

with a claim denial or the insurance company paying less than they had hoped the insurance company would pay. Clearly a problem. To your point though, let's talk about what the barriers are, right? What happened in when we tried to pass the Affordable Care Act, right? Which was a Herculean effort that cost a lot of Democrats their jobs, a lot of House

members. Everyone talks about what happened in 2010 and like why didn't down ballot win and was it OFA or this or that? No, no, no. A bunch of people took the vote, knew that they would probably lose because they took the vote for Affordable Care Act, but they thought it was important enough to do anyway and they did it. The Affordable Care Act, which didn't even pass with the public option because we didn't have the vote for public option, which still isn't single payer, we passed a bunch of insurance company reforms that put a bunch of new regulations on insurance companies, but we couldn't get more than that. Fast forward to the 2020 Democratic primary where the central debate in the primary was over Medicare for all and what happened there Medicare for all ended up less popular than it

started at the beginning of the primary because when you ask people should the government guarantee health insurance people say yes like 60% say yes when you ask people do you think it should be a government run system or a private insurance system more people want private insurance than they do government. That number has narrowed now, but it's still. So it is a problem with the insurance industry. It is a problem with their lobbying. It is a problem with the money in politics.

It is certainly a problem with the Republican Party. But it's also, we have work to do convincing people to change this system. Well, it's also, I think, look, I think the fact that profit is in the healthcare system is the original senior. Yes. And the thing that we would all want to get rid of. But the challenge- If we were doing it over again, we would have it without profit in the system.

For sure. Single payer, Medicare for all type system. The challenge that you outlined though is getting people to trust that the government is going to competently administer that system is also a great challenge. I imagine that challenge was not aided by the rollout of healthcare.gov during the ACA fight and rollout in the second Obama term. So well, and let's talk about why that was such a challenge, right? In 2013, as part of the Affordable

Care Act, we said, look, if insurance companies try to give people these shitty plans that don't cover anything, where they're paying a lot of money, but they still can't get good coverage. What the government's gonna do is say, we're gonna cancel those plans. And the government canceled those plans and suddenly there was a fucking uproar

like you wouldn't believe because people said, I thought I could keep my health insurance if I liked my health insurance. Because of a line that you had to include when you were campaigning to reform the health care system, which is, if you like your plan, you can keep your plan, which was gonna be true for 98% of people. But also the website didn't work too.

Well, that wasn't great. But I was saying the bigger one was the real political problem was why did we get all these cancellations? And now people are like, well, everyone hates their health insurance plan. Well, actually, no, we tried to cancel a bunch of really shitty plans

that didn't do a lot to cover people, and there was a fucking uproar. So that's not to say that we, of course we should try again, but it is much more complicated with actual people. The other part of this is like, oh, people also say they're comfortable with expanding insurance by the government.

They just, like, I do think like, okay, so half the country roughly has health insurance through their employer. That is the system we built. That is a convoluted broken system that creates a bunch of perverse incentives. It means that insurers don't have much of an incentive to cover preventative care.

Cause if you change jobs, you change insurers, creates a whole host of problems. Small percentage of people buy their own insurance, about 10%. The rest are either uninsured or in the public systems. We already have a huge chunk of the country in public healthcare. And that poll that John talked about,

it said that 81% of people like their private insurance. It's even higher for Medicare. Medicare is extremely popular. And I do think like the point that Ro Khanna makes in that interview is smart, right? Like that private insurance should cover anything Medicare should cover. He's thinking about the ways in which

to make private insurance more like Medicare, basically, which costs far less to administer, right? The huge percentage of private insurance costs go towards administration. What's administration? It's paying the staff that reviews claims, tries to make their costs low, right? It's like, it's money that goes to getting worse healthcare

than actually paying providers. But like part of what happens when you end up only debating, when the debate becomes about are you for single payer or against single payers, you don't have other debates. A debate like should we lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60, how about that? Or I was gonna say to your point about people liking Medicare so much,

I think that the plan offered in 2020 that was both the best plan but also the most politically palatable plan and that most people liked it was remember Pete Buttigieg proposed Medicare for all who want it. Yes. And so basically it would allow anyone if you really want Medicare and you want to be covered by Medicare, you can choose that. And if you really don't want that and you really want your private health insurance plan, you can choose that. And the idea would be that Medicare would be so popular that more and more people would buy in,

and we would eventually transition to a system where Medicare covers everything. There's a lot of, yes, that was a sort of a form of a public option. But like, you lower the Medicare, like, you know, the public option was killed from Obamacare, and it was killed by a bunch of centers. They all hid behind Joe Lieberman. It was killed by a bunch of people. But one thing that Joe Lieberman personally killed was the Medicare buy-in for people. And that was just a policy to help. Like if you were between the ages of 60 and 65, that is where your health, you're not yet in Medicare,

but you still are in the age where you're starting to have more and more health problems. It's extremely expensive group to ensure if you get laid off when you're 58, you're incredibly expensive. Like there's a huge bunch of problems that happen there. And Joe Lieberman personally killed a Medicare buy-in. But like if we could get the Medicare age down to 60,

it costs about $25 billion a year, but a tiny, tiny fraction of the budget. And that alone would bring healthcare costs down for fucking everybody just by dint of getting this pool of expensive people to insure off. But like, these are the kinds of things I think we should be talking about, like simple fixes that get us on the road

to Medicare for all. Because if you're, if you, be talking about, like simple fixes that get us on the road to Medicare for all, because if you, if you, like Ro Khanna said, like, you're not surprised by the reaction, there's an incredible amount of anger and antipathy towards health insurance companies. We should target it, we should direct it towards a political aim that could actually help people as soon as possible.

Well, guess what, if there were democratic majorities in Congress and Democratic president, we'd get a public option. We didn't last time around, even though Joe Biden proposed it because we had Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. If we had won the Senate this time around and won the House and won the presidency, then we'd be talking about a public option

for a second time. And these should be part of the like, when we talk about like, what are Democrats for? We spent a long, you know, what is our big agenda for the future? Like these kinds of big changes had to be part of it. All right, before we go, if anyone's looking for a last minute stocking stuffer,

we do have a gift for you. My new Trump fragrances are here. They make a great Christmas present. I've named them Fight Fight Fight because they represent winning. We all wanna be winning. We have to win as a nation. We wanna win as a family. This fragrance is all about strength and success

and confidence for men and for women. Get yourself a bottle, and don't forget to grab one for your loved ones, too. They'll thank you, and they'll even smell good. It's like, is that real? I hadn't listened to the end, but it even smelled good. Hey, did a raccoon with Axe body spray wander into McDonald's?

No, no, that's my new cologne. That's my new cologne, it's fight, fight, fight. Fight, fight, I'm wearing, it's my Donald Trump scented cologne, it's fight, fight, fight. Donald Trump was in Paris this weekend at the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral. The First Lady was there, Jill Biden.

Apparently they were sitting near each other, they spoke, it was a pleasant exchange. There's a picture of Trump there, Jill Biden. Apparently they were sitting near each other. They spoke, it was a pleasant exchange. There's a picture of Trump talking to Jill Biden where she's smiling. Trump posted that picture with a caption that said, a fragrance your enemies can't resist used as an ad for fight, fight, fight.

Look, I think, I think you don't want to, the fucking liberal media is want to face it. Jill Biden wants to fuck Donald Trump. That's in Notre Dame cathedral in a holy fucking place. That's what, that's what the news won't fucking cover it. The news won't talk about it. The news won't talk about it. It will say there's a lot of laughter from the coach.

Ferris draw dropped. It's like he kept rolling out these products during the campaign and I was like, maybe he thinks he's gonna lose and just getting like one last grift in, but now he's president and he's rolling out a fragrance. Come on, man. You have so many avenues for corruption.

You're gonna be just fine. You don't need a fragrance. I always want more. I always want more. Get the crypto, get the. It's called fight, fight, fight because it represents winning. That just doesn't make a lot of sense.

You gotta smell, listen- You smell like a winner. You gotta smell- There it is. That would have been a better tagline. Trump fragrance, smell like a winner. You gotta go in the store and smell the fragrances. You gotta trust it based on a brand.

It could smell like anything. Yeah. There needs to be some place to buy this stuff where the money doesn't go to him, like a secondary sale, you know, kind of used fragrance store. I don't want to give him money. But I would want a bottle.

You do want a bottle around the office and squirt it on you guys. Fight, fight, fight. Fight, fight. That's our show for today. If you have smelled Fight Fight Fight Cologne, please let us know what it smells like. If you bought it, sell to me.

Yeah. And if anyone's looking for a present for me, you know what to get me. That's our show for today. We'll be back with a new show on Wednesday. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free or get access to our subscriber discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our friends of the pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple podcasts directly from the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends, or subscribe on Apple podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed.

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