Pod Save America - “Pierre Delecto, Welcome to the Resistance.”

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

Trump cancels his plan to host the G7 at his struggling hotel amid growing Republican criticism on everything from Ukraine to Syria, Pete Buttigieg is making moves in Iowa, and AOC endorses Bernie. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes joins as a guest co-host, and then Susan Rice chats with Tommy and Ben about her new book, Tough Love.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Jon Lovett. And joining us as a guest co-host for the day is the host of the podcast Why Is This Happening? And the Emmy award-winning host of All In with Chris Hayes. Chris Hayes? Hey guys, I like the fact you led with the podcast. You know, we're on a podcast and you led with my podcast. Outstanding podcast too.

Thanks, man. I want more people to listen to it. It really is. It makes you smarter. So we have a lot of news to cover today from Trump backtracking on his decision to hold the G7 at Doral, to updates on impeachment, to all the latest primary news. And later, we will have an excerpt of the interview that Tommy did with Susan Rice on Friday about her new book. Ben and I, Ben Rhodes and I spent some time with Susan on Friday. You can hear part of it today and then the rest on Pod Save the World on Wednesday. Love it. How was Love Your Leave It? leave it it was fantastic john thanks for asking uh we had uh michaela watkins

and moshe kashir who were so i love i love moshe kashir so much they were both so funny you know his back his background is amazing wild yeah it's he's like worth it off you know yeah no i we we began the show by remarking about on the fact that the three of us were in temple together and uh uh and then uh we made a joke about something that happened in temple and then the temple official instagram messaged it so they're basically saying like we're everywhere you know we're everywhere and then also john gonzalez seems a lot more chill than the catholic church famously famously temple's very chill and uh we had john gonzalez from the ringer who uh walked me through the nba china fracas oh that's good 2.3 point foul shot thing too uh yeah no i i went over all the details primer uh lebron's whole

thing yeah you know some of my other favorite teams The Spurs Spurs Big Admiral Knicks Finally some big news from us on the podcast front We can finally announce that Kruger Media Has a brand new daily podcast What a Day Which you'll be able to hear starting next Monday, October 28th

Every morning, Monday through Friday With new episodes available at 5am Eastern Our new hosts are comedian Akilah Hughes and politics reporter Gideon Resnick, who will help break down the biggest news of the day, help you understand what matters and how you can fix it, all in 15 minutes or less. You can subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or go to crooked.com slash whataday. Very excited about this. That's a tough production schedule to get that out of 5 a.m. Eastern.

Yeah, they're going to do it at night. Overnight. See, that's West Coast advantage. My first thought is like, what's the workflow there? Yes. Who's ours? Is that a 1 a.m. wake up?

No. Really good point, Chris. A lot of people are working very hard, some weird fucking hours, to bring you this awesome show. Yes, exactly. Yes, subscribe out of guilt. We've been listening to all the test pilots.

They're fantastic. They're very funny. All right, let's get to the news. About a month after the Ukraine scandal broke, the Washington Post's Phil Rucker summed up where we are in a piece headlined, Trump's Season of Weakness, that said the president, quote, whose paramount concern has long been showing strength, has entered the most challenging stretch of his term,

weakened on virtually every front, in danger of being forced from office as the impeachment inquiry intensifies. showing strength has entered the most challenging stretch of his term, weakened on virtually every front, in danger of being forced from office as the impeachment inquiry intensifies. So some people might see this and think, I've read a version of this before. I've read a version of this like a hundred times before. A hundred times. Several hundred times before. But then, you know, on Saturday,

he backs off his decision to basically give a government bailout to his failing hotel in Miami by hosting the G7 there. And then you wonder, is this time different? What do you think? Yeah. So I'm torn on this, as I think a lot of people are. I think that when the impeachment inquiry started around Ukraine, I felt like there was a little bit of people felt like the outcome was overdetermined. around Ukraine, I felt like there was a little bit of, people felt like the outcome was overdetermined.

Like the smart thing to think was like, well, the Senate will never remove him as if like the future is foreordained. And I've always thought that it's a more, it's more dynamic than that. Like it is just not a fait accompli that this all goes, like the impeachment in the House and the acquittal in the Senate and then everyone moves on. Like that's not to me a fait accompli. At the same time, it is the case that I have read 200 articles about that. And like I look, his approval rating is basically the same.

Like what's happening right now in the polling is so fascinating to me, which is that the impeachment question is essentially approaching asymptotically the approval question where it's like there's literally no middle ground. So it's like, you know, 52 41 41 is his approval and it's that's what like should he be impeached and removed from office it's like there's no no one in the middle it's like you either think the guy is a menace and needs to go tomorrow or you like him and that's it those are the two positions yeah were you surprised by the durell reversal i was i was surprised why do you think it happened it's's really interesting. I guess, like, you know, stepping back, I am always pleasantly surprised when the old political rules apply to Donald Trump. Totally agree. Now, one thing that we have learned over the last three years is that the old political rules apply to a lot of people around Donald Trump.

You can ask various cabinet secretaries who've had to resign in disgrace. You could ask Mick Mulvaney, who spent the weekend in a barrel. But it's been surprising at the moments where the political rules apply to Donald Trump. And this is an example where they do. And I think, you know, it is true that we've read story after story where, you know, Donald Trump's season of weakness, you know, he's, you know, the White House is once again, you know, unraveling to the barricades, what have you. But I think sometimes it's I think it's sometimes too cynical to say, oh, we've read this story before. We have read this story before. But each time it gets a little bit worse for them.

And this was a period of time where Donald Trump is acutely weak. I can't remember the last time he has backed off a decision that has been so heavily criticized. You know, the thought I had was child separation, which was another one of those moments I completely agree with you were like, oh, gravity exists. It's like, oh, you're ripping children, you're kidnapping children. And the nation is just horrified by it. And you have to walk it back. And there's also a court suit which sort of forced them to do it. also a court suit, which sort of forced them to do it.

But the reporting from The Times and The Washington Post both indicate that like there was this, you know, get together at Camp David of moderate, so-called moderate Republican congressmen like the Tom Coles and your Peter Kings and those folks who were like, no, no, we can't defend this. It's utterly indefensible. And like that was and again, that's like, yes, it does matter. Like he understands he's about to get impeached. Like the political calculations here are have changed. Yeah.

The galaxy brains that said he would support impeachment and welcome it and see it as politically beneficial are not. Like you can't pile this many scandals on top of each other. And it does seem like a bunch of moderate senators said, you know, Esperanto, why don't you come to your senses? You know what I mean? Took you a minute. Particularly strong intervention from Senator Pierre Delecto. How fast can someone get a Pierre Delecto reference? To your point, Chris, there is an interesting Twitter thread by Nate Cohn over the upshot where there is actually a little bit of a delta in swing districts between those who support an inquiry into President Trump or those who support impeaching and removing him.

So, like, maybe he's still hoping for that little bit of division. I mean, again, the margins matter, as we learned in 2016, when it's 77,000 votes across three states out of 140 million votes cast. So like the margins do matter. But I just think that like the Doral thing is also just fascinating because Mulvaney came out and it's like every defense of this guy revolves around two ways of defending. One is like he literally can't control himself.

That's the defense. And then the other defense, which is always given in this kind of like petulant, aggrieved manner. Like, why are you asking me these questions? It's like Marco Rubio's like real strength. Yeah. Is like. Sanctimony. It's just what he like.

It's like he it basically comes down. He cannot in the same way that I can't speak Arabic. He can't understand the difference between right and wrong. Like you can you can talk to me in Arabic all day long and it will go nowhere. I don't speak Arabic, he can't understand the difference between right and wrong. You can talk to me in Arabic all day long and it will go nowhere. I don't speak Arabic. He doesn't understand. There's no malintent here. Yes, that's literally...

It's just Trump being Trump. That's who he is. Do you think this increases the chances that Democrats will add some of this corruption and emolument clause violation stuff to the articles of impeachment because my thought was now that they have backed off this they have basically admitted that this kind of self-dealing is wrong and yet there is there are so many other examples of them doing this we just had the fucking scotland controversy couple weeks ago, which we've, you know, already Trump Hotel in D.C.

How many times has he visited these properties? There was another story over the weekend about how he can't stop bragging to foreign leaders about his hotel properties in private. I would say I actually I I don't know. I don't know what the right strategy is in terms of what how how narrow impeachment should be in terms of the specific crimes. I do believe that in terms of how they're described, they need to be described in the broadest possible terms of Trump's corruption and abuse of power. But what I do think we are what is being validated is the theory of those who supported impeachment for a long time, which is if you don't do this, he will be unbridled. He will be unbridled because imagine what would have happened if Trump announced that that the G7 would have been at Trump Doral while we were still in the kind of murky semi impeachment world four months ago. Nothing would have happened. So it is showing you that the lever of impeachment is actually making a difference and making our society less corrupt. was really taken aback by that dural announcement precisely because it felt to me like whoa this is this means these guys are just like whatever we want to do yeah and dural is gross and to me clearly unconstitutional criminal and corrupt but then it's like there's a lot of way worse things

they could do if they just say to themselves we're doing whatever we want to do and i got this sort of like panic when i saw this like and to me, I completely agree with you. Like the presence of the impeachment inquiry. To me, the strongest argument for impeachment was always that it is some kind of restraint on his behavior. And restraining him is almost a kind of like collective social and political project for the entire country right now. Which, by the way, at the time was a hard argument to make. Because making the argument that we will do something that will restrain Donald Trump is going to get you laughed at by people all across the political spectrum. It creates a process and a context through which you can actually do it because if they're just, if they have no shame and they're refusing all oversight, there was just no way to

hold them to account. I just want to, on top of the emoluments issue, I just want to just note that it is insane to try to have a G7 in miami okay yeah can you talk about you're you're securing seven of the most important world leaders on the planet they have massive footprints security sometimes like they do them at camp david because it's it's entirely secure they did it on sea island so you could take over an entire island right like plopping a g7 down in miami is it's impossible to do. It's insane. It's also, it was so funny because

what was so funny about that announcement, about the Melvania-Mountain was, at one level it's like, we're doing this and we don't care. But then at the other level, he had to pretend there had been this like rigorous process where it's like, we looked high and we looked low and we looked east and we looked west and we,

we set these teams and then it was like, Miami in June. Miami in June is – He was still doing that defense. He was still doing that defense. Even while saying they weren't going to do it, he was saying like, look, we looked. And I know it kind of seems like a coincidence,

but it's the best place to have it. Famously, the hotel right near the airport is always – I also like that it was – Yes, exactly. He was touting that. And also like, yeah. Right near the airport is always... I also like that it was... He was touting that. Right near the airport. It's the only one, by the way. It's like the Hilton Garden and this. You can't find a hotel near the airport other than Trump Doral. But the other piece of it, too, is I like that

the ball was in the air long enough for Marco Rubio to catch it and defend it. And then the Marco Rubio defense of like, oh, you know, I'm strong on Syria, but I don't you know, you're all angry at me for not not picking a fight under all. But I'm right on this other issue. And it's like, OK, man, what percentage of the time do you need to show integrity for us to be quiet? I will say the Trump second order excuse now about how, well, it was going to be free. I wasn't I was going to do it. I was going to be free.

Like, why do I need to do this? That's his argument, right? Which you can see some people being like, oh, well, that's interesting. But like, first of all, it was clearly a branding and marketing opportunity for this. Also, I don't trust him to tell me what that's the, there was a report that they were charging $18 for a glass of bourbon that costs $55 a bottle, right? Like drifting. Fuck. It's also, I don't trust him on hard costs and I don't trust him on soft costs. charging $18 for a glass of bourbon that costs $55 a bottle, right? Like, these are grifting fuck. I don't trust him on hard costs, and I don't trust him on soft costs.

To your point earlier, I really do think Mulvaney's appearance expedited the downfall of this thing, because Trump has managed to stay at this same level of gravity. Mulvaney is prickly. He's disliked by a lot of people within the caucus. And when he goes out and says something stupid, they wanted nothing more than just a slap. It also was a reminder to me because I feel torn about, you know, there's this kind of, oh, what happened to the presidential daily, you know, the press conference, you know, with the press secretary come out and there's this and I'm ambivalent about that. It's like it was a waste of all of our time. But there is a kind of

transparency interest in doing it. That's the argument for it from a sort of First Amendment, like civics perspective. It was a reminder, like, there's a reason they don't come out every day. I mean, what the hell are, you know what I mean? So, like, the one time they send someone out to do what that press secretary person would do, which is, like, kind of defend indefensible decisions, that's what happened. Like, no wonder they're not coming out. Well, yeah, that's why Trump does all of his press conferences like with helicopter blades behind him.

He's always like, I'm sorry, I can't hear you. I miss it, I gotta go. I'm just gonna scream some crazy shit. He's also right that he's the only person who can be his spokesman because like you see in Mick Mulvaney's eyes like the lingering part of him that used to not- Feel shame.

Right, right. And you know, Spicer felt shame. Huckabee Sanders did not. Which is why she was good yeah she was and now this new person's like i can't go well and i i'll never forget the moment when we're talking about like when the rules of political you know normal politics apply and they apply to other people there was a moment that tom price scandal when that was blowing up right he's taking all those flights and i remember he did he had some event that he had to do that day oh yeah and he's sort of walking off and getting chased with questions and i saw in his eyes the human experience of shame.

I was like, he's done. I just saw, I just saw shame in him. He's out. And like a day or two later, he's gone. It's like, if you feel that. You know who else was dead-eyed this weekend? Just, I'm sorry. I don't know.

We're moving on. It was Mike Pompeo. If you ever want to see a human balloon deflate on air it happened in this question that he got from george stefanopoulos it was just i've never seen an interview there's a pause in that which is five seconds pause followed by like a whimpering voice it sounded like that there's a clip we always play always play which is um uh paul maniford talking about like whether they have relation oh yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I said. That's what we said. Obviously what our position is.

What we actually said, I said, I said. That's what I did say, say. Classic of the genre. We do have the clip of Mick Mulvaney attempting and failing to walk back his remarks from the White House briefing room on Chris Wallace's show on Fox on Sunday. So let's play that. Why? Here's my first question. Why did you say in that briefing that President Trump had ordered a quid pro quo that investigating the Democrats, that aid to Ukraine depended on investigating

the Democrats? Why'd you say that? Again, that's not what I said. That's what people said that I said. Here's what I said. I'll say it again, and hopefully people will listen this time. There were two reasons that we held up the aid. We've talked about this at some length. The first one was the rampant corruption in Ukraine. Ukraine, by the way, Chris, is so bad in Ukraine that in 2014, Congress passed a law requiring us to make sure that corruption was moving in the right direction. So corruption's a big deal. Everybody knows it. The president was also concerned about whether

or not other nations, specifically European nations, were helping with foreign aid to the Ukraine as well. We've talked about that for quite a while now. I did then mention that in the past, the president had mentioned for me to time to time about the DNC server. He mentioned the DNC server to other people publicly. He even mentioned it to President Zelensky in the phone call, but it wasn't connected to the aid. And that's where I think people got sidetracked this weekend at that press conference. Two reasons for holding back the aid. Let me pursue that, though, because I believe that anyone listening to what you said in that briefing could come to only one conclusion. Let's play what you said. Did he also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about that. But that's it. And that's why we held up the money.

This is a quid pro quo. It is funding will not flow unless the investigation into the into the Democratic server happened as well. We do we do that all the time with foreign policy. You were asked specifically by Jonathan Karl, was investigating Democrats one of the conditions for holding up the aid? Was that part of the quid pro quo? And you said it happens all the time. Go back and watch what I said before that. I don't know if you guys can cue it up or not. I guess my question is, what do we think Mick mulvaney thought he was doing when he came out to the briefing and started talking about like what was the strategy in his head well there's two there's two things happening one is that he got confused they have they've oscillated between two messages we didn't do it and we did it and it's

fine yeah and he just forgot which one they were on right like he and we because because they rick perry did that the other day in an interview in the same sentence almost. Like, this has been the, like, the call is perfect and also it's a witch hunt, whatever. So he got confused between those two. He was trying to offer a plausible cover story. One thing I will say that drives me a little crazy because this is like,

this doesn't even crack the top 1,000 of what's crazy here. It's statutorily, the money, it's not theirs to uphold. Right, right. The money has been passed by Congress and signed by the president. You don't get to sit around and just be like, oh, we think they're too corrupt. Like, that's not the way it works.

DOD actually did a legal analysis inside the Pentagon and found it was unlawful to do so. Like this idea that the premise here is whatever gets passed into law, we just sit around and decide, like, are they corrupt or not? It's just bullshit. Two things. One, it seems like this whole thing could be solved if someone just explained the concept of the cloud to Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Honestly, I was just going to say this. It's not a physical server, dude.

There's no server. It's like Amazon Web Services, right? So that's one. Do you know how email works? Maybe a piece of it is in Ukraine. In 2019. What do I know? Two, right, like Mulvaney's right that quid pro quos are at the heart of diplomacy.

But the quo has to be something valuable to the United States of America. I can't say I'll give you a military aid in exchange for a million dollars. That is corrupting, as is the promise of dirt on Biden or future super PAC. Like it's it's just so like they're they're little linguistic games. Don't pass even a tiny bit of scrutiny. They treat voters like they are stupid. Yeah, I actually think I think like so when I when I first saw the clip, I thought, oh, maybe they have a new strategy, which is to concede that he was doing sort of political

interference of some form looking backwards that what he was. Yes, that that that and that they were kind of they were seeking seeking a tiny bit of shelter in the last part of their of their kind of whatever misinformation hut that was OK. Yeah, there was a quid pro quo. Yeah, we can't deny that part of it anymore. But there was nothing about Biden moving forward. It was just about looking backwards. And I think what he fucked up is the way that he could have maybe gotten away with that and say, like, of course there was a quid pro quo. We are our quid pro quo was corruption in Ukraine for the money. We're not giving you money unless you investigate corruption. And one example is the conspiracy theory Trump brings up. But he but he but he but he wasn't able to kind of land the plane. Well, the other thing he's doing there, and this

is what they're moving towards, is the Attorney General, William Barr, is running this investigation into the origins of the Mueller investigation to try to see if everything's on the up and up, to track down all the conspiracy theories. And because this has some air of legitimacy to it in their mind and in the press, in some parts of the press, they keep going to that by saying, well, when he was talking about this,

they don't want to mention what the server was or CrowdStrike because they know that's fucking nuts. Too nuts. But they want to just say, oh, this was part of the bar investigation, which then was ruined by the Justice Department saying, we have no idea what he's talking about. That was, yeah, he got too specific because he said, at one point, he said cooperation. That was yeah. He got too specific because he said like at one point said cooperation.

He was like too loud and too specific. It was like a cooperation like with the Department of Justice is one of the things he says. And then DOJ is like, that's the first we've heard. Yeah. And I think it was Aisha Roscoe at NPR also pointed out at the briefing that if you're investigating the DNC in 2016, there's still a relevant entity in the 2020 election, right? Like they're still your opponent. You're still investigating your political opponent. There were a bunch of stories saying like, oh, the White House, very unhappy with Mick Mulvaney.

In a lot of ways, he was probably on the way out. Jared Kushner deeply disappointed his performance, which honestly, if I were Mick Mulvaney, I was like, you fuck you, you little turd. The idea that you could have gone out there and handled this. You disappeared because you're garbage. But I also think like they're like trying to act like Mick Mulvaney. He's just some guy like Mick Mulvaney was the golden boy that they had run two agencies at once because

he was one of the still is still the head of the OMB. Right. Mulvaney was one of the people that they viewed as their serious adult that was willing to stick around and do Trump's bidding. And so they put him into everything. So the idea now that Mick Mulvaney is like, ah, you know, that classic Mick, this guy nobody likes is ridiculous. Well, apparently he got a round of applause at the morning staff meeting this morning at the White House, too. Yeah.

I don't know why. Dead man walking. It's like Green Mile or whatever. I mean, round of applause. Way to go, Mick. How much strategic or political benefit do you guys think there is in the Mulvaney get over it defense? We like you said, there's two different strategies. I think that's the only thing they have.

I mean, it actually worries me because I think that's all they have. And I think it's also it's what Trump's instincts are. And I think his instincts on this are probably better than the people around him in some weird way, just because he has like that shamelessness that almost no one can replicate like the the the problem is the facts are they've they've got locked into a situation where they admitted the crime it's like the first i said like the first page of the novel is like the crime is committed and we know who did it and then the novel is told in flashback of like oh well how do we end up with this like at the crime scene? And so they're in this weird place where they're trying to kind of deny things that keep coming out. We keep seeing how big and expansive this entire effort was. The only thing they will end up being able to do and what the Republicans

will take shelter in is it was inappropriate but not impeachable. Or like the Rob Portman statement is the way to sort of thread the needle if you're a Republican, particularly in the Senate and not in a crazily plus 25 Trump state, is to say this was not appropriate, but the money did flow. They didn't actually dig up dirt on Biden's and everyone learned their lesson and it's not impeachable. The problem is if you say that you incur Trump's wrath. Right.

So they're they're sort of stuck because the smart thing, I think the argument to make is just like concede the facts. I think it's stipulate the facts of the facts and the behaviors of behavior and then argue over in the same way that Democrats did with Bill Clinton, a very different infraction. But the argument with Bill Clinton wasn't it was awesome and perfect that he had this relationship with an intern. It was, this was not cool, but not impeachable. Which I think is an argument for the Democrats to broaden the impeachment inquiry to various

impeachable offenses by Donald Trump. Because I do think part of what's hurting him here, as we saw the last couple of weeks with Ukraine and then Syria and then Doral, is the continuing development of these events over and over again of Trump's wrongdoing. You have to prove a pattern here. And I do think like the, Tommy, you mentioned Nate Cohn and the New York Times polling in these six swing states. And one of the numbers that sort of gave me pause was, I think 46% of people said they believed this kind of, what Trump did with Ukraine was bad, but it's the kind of thing politicians do all the time.

And 42% said, no, no, it was uniquely bad. And I think there's a danger that people could fold this into people who are very cynical about politicians in both parties in general saying, yeah, it's bad, but everyone's corrupt and he's our corrupt guy and that's that. I also just think another difference, it's funny to look back at the impeachment is one thing that Democrats had that that Republicans don't is Bill Clinton had some really inappropriate conduct that wasn't criminal and then obstruction and

perjury to kind of cover up that misconduct that that that, you know, to varying degrees, everybody said was wrong, but there was no crime. With Trump, the underlying conduct is criminal and incredibly dangerous. And then the cover-up is also a process crime to keep that concealed, which makes it much harder for them to go back to the kind of Clintonian avoidance. To Chris's point on Trump's instincts, I think that's exactly right because his starting place is, I'm corrupt, you're corrupt, we're all corrupt, who gives a fuck, right? But he is, I think, struggling in part because he's staffed by the D team that is overworked, that are not being replaced. And so, like, they released the Ukraine transcript.

They released a letter from Trump to Erdogan that made him sound functionally illiterate. They released a Nancy Pelosi photo that will be hung at her memorial service in her home in her speaker library right it's like their political instincts are off right now yeah yeah well and he and that's why he is i mean he every time a surrogate gets sent out like he's the only one who can do this he's the only one who could pull it off because he's the only one again it's it's shame it's it's not it's like it's biologic it's constitutive who he is it's like there's no other place in his mind that thinks that like everyone isn't as corrupt as him like he and so he can pull it off in a way that almost no one else can so final

question on this you know mulvaney's comments cause republican congressman frank rooney to say he won't rule out impeaching trump uh he then later announced he's going to be retiring. John Kasich called for impeachment. McConnell's out there writing an op-ed, very critical of Trump on Syria. Pierre Delecto, formerly known as Mitt Romney, has been obviously heavily critical. CNN reported over the weekend that many Republicans they talked to

have used the phrase turning point. These are Republicans they talked to to talk about what's going on right now. Do we buy this or is this just like... I think we don't know. But to go back to something Chris said earlier and something that I kind of I've thought for a long time, it was, I think, too cynical for a lot of Democrats to say, I know what Republicans will do. I'm from the future. I can predict how this will end out and end up. And I think one thing that is just generally important for our posture is don't do the Republicans work for them.

Let's be surprised. Yeah. Right. By what they do. Well, let's not sit back. I think it shows that like political pressure works here. There's also the fact that, you know, in this whole mix, because you just mentioned it is that in Syria policy is I've just found it so fascinating because to me it's like it's so revealing with someone like Lindsey Graham. It's like, oh, this is your project. Like Lindsey Graham's project is maintaining a certain form of American military hegemony throughout the world, particularly the Middle East. And he believes in that project with his very fiber of his being. And that project is being betrayed before his eyes. And he is genuinely pissed about that. And a lot of other Republicans are. I think like some, I think for legitimate reasons, like we're betraying this ally that fought side by side with their soldiers. And I think some for illegitimate reasons, the lyncheneys of the world who see this as a sort of American retreat and we're pulling out.

But to the extent that doubts begin to be sown in the minds of Republicans about what this individual with this baggage and this judgment and this staff is doing with the American ship of state in this sort of grand sense, that to me is extremely worrisome and dangerous for them politically. I sadly believe that a lot of voters don't care that much about foreign policy and they're probably the rank and file. People in the world don't know much about the Kurds and aren't as worried as we wish they were about what Trump's doing in Syria right now. But what Syria was, was the first moment a Fox only viewer saw criticism of Trump that was real and sustained and personal. Yes. And from voices that they were like, wait, wait, wait. I thought he was our team. Yeah. And I think that matters.

Yeah. That matters a lot. And that's where I think the Trump weakened story in the post was great and smart. But they said at one point that he lost the media. And I just don't think that's true. It's, you know, we the Trump media. There's a there's a dirty deal that the Republicans have made, which is we'll tolerate all of these abuses. We'll tolerate his inhumanity and vulgarity and criminal abuses and deception and racism as long as we get our list of things. abuses and deception and racism, as long as we get our list of things. And for a lot of these Republicans, yeah, that's taxes and deregulation. Yeah, that's judges. But there's a foreign policy code, like a shibboleth for them that this violates. And I think like, okay, let's say Trump was a Democrat who was just as corrupt, but he campaigned on Medicare for all, and he campaigned on cutting taxes for the middle class, and he campaigned on all the things we believe in then he comes into office and he starts denying climate change you know and all of a sudden it's like hold on a second man hold on a second yeah i'm i'll i'll i'll i'm on the take here but i need my fucking cut

yeah you know i'm not going to be corrupt and not get my beak wet the other thing is at the end of the day every one of these republican senators is going to make a purely political calculation in a way, right? Which is, is the public pressure on Trump? They're going to look at the polls. They're going to look at the polls in their state. They're up for reelection, at least the ones who aren't retiring. The problem with that, I mean, that I totally agree with. But the problem is, if you ask me, and I'm not a political consultant, and I don't think I'd be a particularly good one but if if you ask me in an alternate universe in which i was like paid for advice to republicans i would say the benjamin franklin quote during the revolution we should we

almost hang together or we will surely hang separately yeah is true like you will in the short term it would be a political disaster to vote to remove for the republican party to vote to remove donald trump now the second thing i would say is Watergate was a disaster, and, you know, 74 and 76 were disasters, and then it was like Ronald Reagan four years later. Like, nothing lasts forever, and there's an argument to be made to like- You need a cleanse. Exactly. No, really.

Like, there's an argument to be made to just take your medicine and cleanse. But in the short term, I don't think, I don't see any argument on the other side, purely amoral, just talking about political strategy here, that turning against Trump would be anything other than a just like extinction level event for Republicans. Yeah. The only thing I wonder is when you see that Joni Ernst town hall and how like how difficult it is for some of these Republicans when confronted by non-Trump media reporters or constituents to defend this, like, does that figure into the calculus of a Susan Collins, a Joni Ernst, Corey Gardner, Martha McSally, some of these Republicans that are up in 20? Now, I don't know if you can—you need to get to 20 Republicans there, and I don't know if you can count to 20.

And I think there's a universe—I mean, that's a fascinating, like, micro version of the political question, and that is, I think think a really hard call like if you're paid to advise them how to vote on this trial like that's a tough first of all we can all agree it's a vote they don't want to take yeah they do not want to take absolutely not that's a tough vote like if you're cory gardner like what's the upside what's the downside if you you know like you you you the people that you need to turn out for you are going to be furious at you and probably view you as a traitor. But also you're in a state that is, you know, he's underwater. You can't win with your base. Let me rephrase the question.

Think about this question. Okay, so hang together, hang separately, fine. If all the Republicans removed him, they would be protecting themselves. If all the Republicans vote to not remove him, they're protecting themselves. What would you rather be? Would you rather be a Republican senator who voted to remove and he stays in office? Or would you rather be a Republican senator that voted for him to stay while he's removed anyway? Oh, definitely the former. You don't want to vote.

No. Yeah, definitely the former. Yeah. So that tells you something. Yeah. Although, again, like part of part of what's so weird about the way our politics work now in just in terms of like how deep the sort of structural polarization is,, is we're talking about two different universes of people. If you're a senator from Alabama, none of this... This is a hard one. It's not a hard one. You're just dealing in a different universe if you're Richard Shelby than if you're Cory Gardner. And the worlds in which this sort of question at the margins in the middle apply

is such a narrow set of people, particularly in the House, where all of those people are Democrats now. I mean, the 40 seats that are those kind of seats, most of them are now occupied by Democrats making these judgments. There's maybe another 10 marginal seats there, but everyone else is just living in a world where like this stuff is just. There's collective and individual breaking points, and I don't think that there will ever be a collective breaking point as a party where they decide that politically it's beneficial

for us to get rid of Trump, even though I think you could probably argue that a cleanse at this point is needed. But for individuals, there's Cory Gardner, right? He's looking at polling. But to your point about Lindsey Graham and his like global military project, today, the Trump administration announced that they had secretly brought 2000 U.S. service members out of Afghanistan. That's an interesting thumb in the eye of Lindsey Graham in this moment of maximum tension with him around Syria. There's also this amazing little human drama that's happening, which is a Gulf War between Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham.

You can literally see it. They have both invested so hard in flattering this guy into getting what they want. And Ted Cruz, when I spoke to Ted Cruz recently, the first thing he said, he had said this to me once before, and then he said it again, he said, look, he's not a complicated guy. If you flatter him, you can get him to do what you want. And if you criticize him, he hates you. And he just said that. I was like, right, this is the, and so you've got Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham who have both just been like, you know, just throwing themselves at Donald Trump, golfing with him to get him to buy their vision of American foreign policy.

And like now Rand Paul's winning and he's like these sort of celebratory treats and poor Lindsey Graham, all his golf is for naught. Yeah. Well, it's very slippery to try to nail down Trump. Well, that's the thing. I mean, but I do think like one political benefit of impeachment, you know, we may not get him removed, of impeachment, you know, we may not get him removed, but I do think all of these senators who are up in 2020 in these purplish states, their plan has always been to try to distance themselves from Trump at some point in the general election to show some kind of independence. And if they have to vote on impeachment and they vote to exonerate him, then they're never going to be able to separate themselves from Trump.

And I think it's going to make life even if he stays in office, it's going to make life much harder for Susan Collins and Cory Gardner and all of them. And if that's all we get from impeachment, then that is very much worth it. I think that's right. And I mean, when you think through this sort of psychology, when you game it out, you keep gaming it out.

It's like, so what's the Republican Party going to do with Cory Gardner in Colorado? Like, you can't send Donald Trump to Colorado. Nope. Like, you know, it's not Texas. The altitude alone, he can't handle it. He's probably not going to Maine.

He's probably not, I mean. No, I don't think he's going to Maine either. So it's like, again, that, yeah, the base only gets you so far, and for the people for who that doesn't carry the day, they're not in great, they're in a bad position. All right, let's talk about the Democratic primary. Big news this morning is a new Suffolk USA Today poll out of Iowa that shows Biden at 18%, Warren at 17%, and Pete Buttigieg surging seven points since their June poll to 13%. Bernie Sanders is at 9%.

Everyone else is between 0% and 3%, and the winner is undecided at 29%. So only one poll, but we do know that Iowa polls in general have been better for Buttigieg than the national polls. We have seen a slight bump for him in several polls since the debate. What do we think accounts for the surge here for Pete? Obviously, he's been spending a lot of time in the debate and since the debate, you know, drawing contrast with Elizabeth Warren on Medicare for All. I think, you know, it has always seemed to me the case that, and I think the Lane metaphor really collapsed and didn't work in 2016, but it does seem to me that like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both have, you know, both have strong ideological stories. They both clearly

believe them down to their toes. Like that, you know, like they, they believe in what they're saying and they have a vision for the project. So there's those two at the top. And then there's Joe Biden, who is Joe Biden, right? Like that, that is why Joe Biden is Joe Biden. You know him, you love him or you don't love him. He was Obama's vice president. He has a clear story whether he's articulated that story or not. Yes. And that gives you the top three. There's always been a question of, like, who is telling a story, the primary field, a story, a vision, a kind of camp of, like, I'm the person who does not have this ideological vision that these two others have, maybe some people in the primary you know grassroots don't like but i do have another vision and i could be a kind of like

essentially a non-biden centrist to be overly reductive and i think there is clearly a space for that in the race and it just seems to me that buddhich edge is like that in in a sort of remarkably abrupt way well that that was what i get to. to just be like, just like, swerve the car over to do that. But from a tactical perspective, it makes us... Just blowing up a blow-up doll

so he can use the HOV lane. Swerving. I'm using this lane whether you fucking like it or not. I guess that's... So that, that I think is what accounts, you know,

that's what I think. And he's a pretty good retail politician, I think. Yeah, for sure. I guess that's my question and it's been my question since the debate is, is what accounts. You know, that's what I think. And he's a pretty good retail politician, I think. Yeah, for sure. I guess that's my question, and it's been my question since the debate is, is it too abrupt? And maybe the answer from this poll is, no, it's not too abrupt because he's getting some traction.

I just think that this surge has actually been a long time coming. Yeah, that's the other. And it's showing up in multiple polls now. I mean, when I was in Iowa in August, like, he had a pretty big crowd for a tuesday afternoon at the state fair bigger than others and people were sort of noticing he he got hot early right and like who the fuck thought that a cnn town hall super early on was going to lead to sustained momentum and money over time it was the dan pfeiffer interview one sorry the dan pfeiffer interview cut that just kidding the dan pfeiffer interview was going to lead to all this money but like you know they they have been

building and organizing and they've been on tv in Iowa, and it's actually mattered. And he's been in the national mix through the duration, which has been, I think, a reason that people like Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker and Beto O'Rourke have had a harder time. Two things I want to say here. One is that the race part of this is a huge part of it, too. Why is he doing he's zero with black voters? And so like, I was a place that he can perform. But like, unless that changes, he's not going anywhere. Right. The second thing I would say is that it just seems to me and again, I'm like sort of talking about this, not in terms of my own ideological commitments,

but just sort of a descriptive sense. It's like, if you're looking for like, who would be a person who's not Sanders and Warren, because I think they're too far left or whatever and who isn't Biden, who I think doesn't seem like he's at his sharpest. Like Amy Klobuchar is a United States senator. She, in terms of an electability argument, just looking at the numbers, probably has the best argument in the field just in terms of how she performs in Minnesota, the Republican districts in which she overperforms in, she overperforms in rural parts of that state. I don't think anyone's like right now getting like super fired up about Amy Klobuchar the way that there are some people about Pete Buttigieg. But let's keep in mind, Pete Buttigieg won his last election in a race in which there were 10,000 votes cast.

I mean, that's like a large housing development in the Bronx where I grew up. Like Amy Klobuchar has won in a state that remember Hillary Clinton only won by 10,000 votes last time around. That's a competitive state. Like I just feel like on the numbers and the metrics, if you're making the tactical argument about this sort of like centrism combined with electability, she's got a stronger case just in the data than he does. Well, it's also why I think Pete is leaning so heavily on this

Medicare for all argument to draw a contrast with Warren, because he can't really get into an electability argument with Elizabeth Warren because for the reasons you just mentioned. But what he can do is present himself policy wise as the more centrist alternative. The difficult part, of course, as he found out over the last week, is he sort of burst onto the scene as much more of a progressive truth teller, even though it was sort of, I mean, in fairness to Pete, he's been talking about Medicare for all who want it

since February of 2019. So it's been there. But he said things like, you know, I mean, Jake Tapper on Sunday interviewed him and was like, well, you know, you criticized her about tax increases. But you've said to me at a debate in the second debate, premiums or taxes, it's the same thing. Right. So I wonder how much of a hard time he's going to have. You know, I think we're also look, we're we're in it and we've seen all these sort of adjustments along the way.

all these sort of adjustments along the way. But I also think it's worth remembering, too, that I think Pete became a national figure by offering a non-ideological idea of what he was trying to do. It was a generational shift. It was what he represented. He leaned heavily on democratic reforms, like the Supreme Court and the filibuster, which are also in a way non-ideological. Yeah, well, they're big progressive ideas, but they're not on the kind of, you know, left, right, how much do we tax, how much do we spend hinge. And I think so he's sort of he's he's now made some really specific statements that put him more in the sort of center left of the party, despite what he said in the past. And the other piece of this about Klobuchar, too, is I do think it doesn't speak to what Pete has been doing. It kind of speaks more to what Amy Klobuchar wasn't doing. I think this fourth debate was the first time she really was strong

in a way that was sort of made a case for her own candidacy. She was, I thought, energetic and emotional in defense of her worldview, which she hadn't done before. And, you know, I think that's partly why she hasn't been able to kind of get a toehold into the polling. I think it's also hard, though, like making the reason that Biden is sort of uniquely, it's still the case that the squishiness of what Mayor Pete was talking about, and I agree that it wasn't ideological per se, but it was like big at the same time, that the problem for people that want to occupy that space is like how to make an argument that feels big that isn't big in an ideological sense. Because otherwise, then you're just John Delaney getting his butt kicked by Elizabeth Warren.

You never want to be the wet blanket. You don't want to be the wet blanket. And you also don't want to be like, yeah, we can make these little marginal reforms and we can do things at the edges and like better things aren't possible. You know, the tweet. And like that is a real challenge it's a real challenge and no one i think no one yet has figured out how how to do that how to sort of paint a narrative that feels big and and um rises to the scale of the issues that we all see in front of us and sort of fills up the scope of the times that's independent from an ideological vision that

Sanders and Warren have a very clear message. Well, for example, like Obama in 2008 and that primary, right? Like there were classic example, the classic example, because on healthcare in that primary,

Barack Obama was further to the right than Hillary Clinton or John Edwards. And yet he was seen as, although the thing I will say about that and you guys lived it, but, but I, I covered it. Is it like the war did so much of that work that's exactly right it just did all that work because it was like that was the number one issue for so long in politics and he was on the right side of it and

the person who's right against the wrong and he was on the left side of it and that did so much of the work that pete doesn't have a thing like that that's exactly right to point to yeah i mean i think that like when you look at the distinction between klobuchar and Pete, I think a lot of it could be boiled down to the fact that Pete broke through into the national conversation early. And he has a set of qualities that's particularly appealing to the donor class and the people who are really interested in talking about and diagnosing the challenges in our politics and the Democratic Party. Whereas. Which is why he has so much money, too. Why he has so much money. Whereas Klobuchar went a more...

They had a harder time until... I think she had a great debate recently, a harder time breaking through nationally, and was doing the more traditional grind it out in the early states strategy, which frankly hasn't worked for anyone this time yet. She also was, I think, more... She was stronger and more critical of... She was better at making a sharper contrast with her opponents when she was off the debate stage than when she was stronger and more critical of she was better and making a sharper contrast with her opponents when she was off the debate stage than when she was on it. She was reluctant

to kind of throw a punch in the debates. And, you know, we can talk endlessly about whether throwing punches is always a good idea. But for her specifically, it was like, come on, you're there. We have seen center left candidate just fall by the wayside, just getting absolutely brutalized by Elizabeth Warren. And I think this was the first debate and Bernie Sanders. This was the first debate where you act like Mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar are more sophisticated debaters than what the left has faced before. And I think the debate was stronger because of it. Right.

Yes, I totally agree with that. I mean, that rather than the Delaney sort of stand in. But I also think, I mean, and this, I think this is a more ideological question, but I also think it's the case that like there's a reason it's hard to spell out this vision that feels equal to the scope of the times that's not ideological because politics is about what the ideological vision is for the country. Like there is a reason that the Sanders-Warren vision feels big. It's because it is big because they believe believe that a lot of shit is fucked up.

Correctly. And if you speak to the scale of the challenges. And if you don't agree with them, the only way around that is through it. You have to make the case that that's not either politically feasible or from a policy substantive standpoint, it's not the right way.

But so many candidates, I think, have danced around it because they're afraid of the criticism. And so I think, you know, Pete sort of head down charging into the fray. And I think that like I have tended to feel like most of the debates so far have largely revolved around like what I would call like clean hits like like like substantive fights about things that people have like you know there's a big difference between universal single payer health care as opposed or like adding a public option those are distinct things that people can make good faith arguments substantive arguments the one thing i will say not to get too policy here but like there's a little bit of hand waving that's happening with the public option or medicare for all who want it and and daveen at The Prospect pointed this out, which is like, so there's two possibilities. I know.

Either it's a really good option that people want, in which case a ton of people are in it, and then you're dealing with a cost that looks a lot like Medicare for All. Or it's kind of crappy and no one wants it. Good point. And then you could be like, well, we don't have to spend a lot of money on it. But it's like, well, what have you succeeded in doing? So David Remnick pressed Buttigieg on this point in an interview they did, I think, over the weekend. And I think the way that Pete thinks he's getting out of that is because there are still premiums, copays, deductibles, and Medicare for All. You have to buy.

It's not like automatic enrollment and everyone gets, you know, it's not like Bernie's plan. It costs less than Bernie Sanders, even apples to apples. Even if everyone's in. But you're right that if everyone loves Medicare for all who want it and everyone jumps in, they're going to have to find a financing mechanism that is greater than what Pete has already proposed. Yes. And actually it also gets at the argument Pete's trying to make against Warren because what does that mean? Well, it means that the government is going to have to spend a greater share on health care

as the amount people spend out of pocket on things like premium slowly starts to fall, which is the ledger math that we've argued about in every single debate. Exactly. Yeah. OK, so another big development over the weekend was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's endorsement of Bernie Sanders at a rally in Queens that drew approximately 26,000 people. In her endorsement video, AOC said this is not just about running for president. This is about creating a mass movement of working class people. How big of a deal is this endorsement? I thought, I don't know how much endorsements matter, and I don't think it was necessarily that surprising. I do think that like, I do think there was a little bit of, after Bernie Sanders, a 70-year-old man who had a heart attack. And I do think there was a little bit, and I think you saw it in the polling of like, o like, is he going to be cool? Just physically, not a politics substance, just literally physically.

And I do think it was important for him both to have a very strong debate performance where he seemed energetic and not like a man who's weak and just out of the hospital. And then to have this rally to remind people, yes, he's in it. He's there. And the other thing I'll say is I just thought the ending of that speech yeah it was great it was so moving and beautiful very powerful like really powerful but like it just like really i was like right this is the project the project is like look around and find someone that isn't like you and like are you willing to fight for them and are we all willing to fight for each other and i just thought it was like a very beautiful piece of rhetoric that captured what i want the project to be for all of us it was inclusive it was inviting of other people to try to build a

movement which i think i think bernie has always been pretty good at i think sometimes his supporters are not as inviting yes exactly no some of the supporters i'd say a lot of people who work for him are different right but like yes so you know the online conversation and when you hear him talk like that and then i thought AOC's endorsement videos was one of the best endorsements I've seen. She's incredibly powerful. She's so good at this. So I feel like the case he made

and the case that she made is the best case for Bernie Sanders that's out there. Yes, it's like, go with that. Exactly. I completely agree. Go with that. I think this will actually turn out to be it. Like, I normally would agree

that endorsements don't mean much, but I think this is a big deal and it will mean more over time. like, obviously she helped him draw this huge crowd in Queens and she did an incredibly compelling video that I thought made a better case for Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders often makes for Bernie Sanders. Like she will she knows how this works. She will hit the road. She'll work for him and she will draw huge crowds everywhere she goes. And the one question I had as I looked at the event was, why do this in Queens? Why not do this in Des Moines? Right. And I talked to some some of Bernie's folks and their argument was basically like one. We kind of give endorsers the respect of coming to them first. So don't be surprised if you see her in Des Moines down the road. But also like the national narrative, as you said, Chris,

has changed a lot over three weeks. It's kind of an amazing whipsaw for them. But they think that the way you show that you're the biggest, baddest grassroots campaign in town is to pull off an event like that. And I certainly like, that was a brushback pitch

to the Warren campaign, to everyone else that's trying to say, this is a movement. And I will say that Warren, brushback pitch to the Warren campaign to everyone else that's trying to say this is a movement. And I will say that Warren also doesn't hurt to do something in the national media's backyard. Like the Warren event in in Washington Square Park did that very well. It's like, oh, my goodness. Like it's right there. You can't ignore it. I will also say, I mean, the funny thing about Western queens at this point is that like it's the beating heart of like the words of revived democratic socialist movement. And in a real way, like you can lose sight of it in the world of online and Twitter, but there are both in the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaign. And then the campaign for the Queens DA, Tiffany Caban, my brother was a campaign manager on that.

So I have some insight into it. Like there are just a bunch of people who are just non-political professionals who go knock on doors. Like there's a real organization that has been built there. It's a remarkable thing. It's not just like a bunch of people in people's Twitter mentions. There are people that like get off their shift from work and then they go hit doors for socialist candidates in that part of the borough and throughout the borough. And it's like, in some ways, there's something being built there that's a very real thing. It makes sense to go to the heart of it and i do wonder from this endorsement you know we just talked about pete surge and now we talked about sort of bernie's sort of mini resurgence here if the warren campaign is about to go through sort of a challenging part of the

race right now that they haven't really been challenged like that since the beginning the very very beginning. And we, you know, I think we talked about this for the last couple of weeks, like what is it going to be like when Elizabeth Warren faces a real challenge? Because every candidate who does go on to win the nomination goes through that. And so I'm sort of wondering now, in addition to what happened at the debate now, you know, for a while, it seemed like, oh, maybe Bernie's not going to be much of an issue, but he's, he's there. He's got AOC. He can still pull off a 26,000 person event. He is not going anywhere. That's I think the most important part of this. So it, you know, if, if AOC had endorsed Elizabeth Warren, it might've transformed the race, right? It would have shown Bernie would have continued to lose support. It would have meant that the left was now Rallying behind one candidate

To make sure that Joe Biden Or someone in the Joe Biden lane You know people who just Fucking tailgating Joe Biden honking his horn Saying get out of here With his blow up doll Get out of my lane You get out of here I'm fucking clear

You're driving 40 miles an hour While telling a story to no one. But this, I think, will allow Bernie Sanders to find whatever his maximum is, right? And I think that's been the question from the beginning. Is it, you know, what is the Bernie Sanders vote? What is the Bernie Sanders vote absent an anti-Hillary vote? Is it 25? Is it 30?

Is it 25? Is it 30? Is it 35? And I think he's going to get to find out what that is because now he has this incredible kind of launching pad for a revive campaign. And here's the thing about the Sanders campaign. It's always struck me that it's like it's self-testing. Its theory of the case is actually like will be tested by the primary, right? Because the theory of the case is like there's lots of people that you can who are marginal or disaffected and you can organize to bring them together to build a political coalition that's powerful. If you can like you can either do that or not in the primary.

Like if you can do that, then that shows that you're correct and have something really remarkable and powerful. If you can't, then the theory doesn't work. Right. That's exactly right. And I was sort of like, you know, there was a lot of coverage of why is AOC doing this? Why is she doing that? And then you watch the video and you listen to what she has to say and you realize like,

because Bernie Sanders seems to have meant a lot to her. Right, right. And sometimes it's nothing more. She called Fazz, she called Bernie's campaign manager while Bernie was still in the hospital to say, I'm in, I'm ready to endorse. That's a pretty goddamn principled time to do it. Yeah, and I do think, yes. And I

do think also, I think part of the dynamic inside of this primary, I think it's true for some Warren supporters. I think it's true for Bernie supporters is you look at this political landscape and you say like, can we have what we want? You know, is it possible? Is it possible to like this time, like we made the worst person in our country president, politics was upended. What if we can have a person that doesn't, that we don't have to like hold our nose to vote for? What if we can have the person of our dreams? And I think for a lot of people, that's Bernie. I think a lot of people, that's Warren. And I think for a lot of people are looking at this and wondering just what does it mean in 2020 to

choose a candidate? How much do we get a say, not as pundits, but as people who want something from politics. So that brings us to Tulsi Gabbard. We should briefly mention what's going on with her and Hillary Clinton. In an interview on David Plouffe's new podcast, Campaign HQ, Hillary said, quote, I'm not making any predictions, but I think the Russians have got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her. John's holding his hands over his eyes. That's sort of how I feel about this entire news site. I love that. I'm not making predictions, but here's something I think is going to happen.

And are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She's a favorite of the Russians. She was not talking about Amy Klobuchar. No, she was talking about Marianne Williams. Yeah, right. So Tulsi Gabbard responded with quite a tweet. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.

It's now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly. It was such a journey following these three tweets because at first she's like attacking Hillary and then you're like, wait, she's challenging her to get in the race? I'm surprised there wasn't a duel. It read like what you read to someone as someone lights the pyre on which they are about to burn. You, the queen of warmongering!

I mean, was it a... Do you think it was a specific reference to Game of Thrones and Daenerys Targaryen? Probably. Because it seemed very... Why do we think... Let's start with Hillary.

Why do we think Hillary said that? I listened to the podcast before it broke and it's funny it was it took a little while because you know pluff's got this new podcast and i was like i was listening to it wednesday on my drive home and i'm like 25 minutes in and she just casually drops this and you hear pluff just sort of sits there in silence doesn't say anything and kind of just moves on to the next topic because I think Plouffe's like, what was that? And then at the very end of the podcast, Plouffe comes on himself and he's just like,

so that was an interesting conversation with Hillary Clinton. I do think that bit about Tulsi Gabbard might make some news. You think? I mean, my thoughts on this are she shouldn't have said that. There's a certain part of the discourse that is obsessed with hating on people that talk about Russia. Yeah. But the kernel of the point they have is that it is insidious to the political culture of the country to view everything through the kind of like as like some marionette puppeteer issue that the it it replays some of the most toxic insidious tropes of the cold war and all that came with that and like it's just not a good way to talk about our politics i think that tulsi gabbard's politics are strange yeah indescribably

strange in some ways like i literally don't know the term bad i think the way i view her as i really view her as like the ron paul of the democratic party in in in that you can't quite say what like what is the project as a whole is less well defined with her than ron paul but also in the way that like ron paul was right about some things and really right about some things and horribly wrong about some other things and that was the that was the ron paul contradiction like that was always the case. He was right about the Iraq War. That's a big thing to be right about. He was wrong about a lot of other things.

So Gabbard's sort of political and ideological profile is her own and weird and distinct. I think the thing that Clinton said was bad and she shouldn't have said it. The response, though, is just like, again, what are you doing exactly here is is really what's at the root of this why are you going on tucker carlson you do not you are not comporting yourself as a person who is attempting to win a democratic party primary you just are not so you're building your profile for your ideological movement fine but what is that ideological movement aside from getting out of regime change wars which again again, not wars, regime change wars, which is always an interesting tell because she's for the global war on terror and she is for the use of the authorization to use military force in many spheres of combat in which we have. We're killing people like Somalia, like she thinks that we should keep doing that.

She's very specific about regime change wars. And it's like, I just don't get what the actual project you are trying to boost here is fully. I don't either. And she's also, I mean, again, she was, you know, she's had some weird politics in that she was against the Iran deal. She was criticizing Obama

for not saying radical Islamic terrorism. She was against more Muslim refugees coming to the country. She was like the lone Democratic vote against increasing the amount of Syrian refugees. There's plenty on the substance to criticize Tulsi Gabbard on for sure. I also just think like I personally find the constant this is helping Putin Twitter, you know, conversation to be exhausting.

I also think, by the way, those people are ironically helping fucking Putin by giving him credit for every bad thing that ever happens in this country. Now, I don't think like what what is now been ascribed to Hillary Clinton that she called Tulsi some sort of secret agent for Putin is not at all what she said. No. Right. She said she thinks that the Russians would love a third party spoiler in the race the way Jill Stein is. All of this, to me, just understandably boils down to a deep-seated anger about the 2016 election and what happened. And by the way, I think David Plouffe will be the first one to tell you that you're not going to roll out big breaking news on his third episode of his podcast at minute 35. Yeah, the people thought it was some plan. It clearly wasn't a plan. No, no, no, no.

Now, Tulsi, her campaign, smartly, was like, oh, fuck me, fuck you. I'm going to lean into this and get the most press I've gotten. But to your point, Chris, about winning a Democratic primary, you don't delay your event with Iowa caucus goers to go on Tucker Carlson. Right? Like, that's not how you win a Democratic primary. And I do think the larger conversation that Plouffe and Clinton were having, which was about the danger of a third party candidate in 2020, is a good conversation to have. And it's something that is very scary. Right. But it's also self-defeating to phrase it in this way. I mean,

the point is that like, there are people who are not Tulsi Gabbard, who support Tulsi Gabbard, who are gettable Democratic Party votes that you want as part of the majority coalition to defeat Donald Trump. And like, this is not a good way. Well, also, Hillary Clinton is incredibly smart, right? And even if she is very concerned that the Russians or Russian bots or right-wingers or whoever it may be are boosting Tulsi Gabbard, right? Are boosting Jill Stein because they want this. And it's true. There are weird-ass right-wingers boosting Tulsi Gabbard.

Like Richard Spencer. The problem is the word grooming, right? Because it's true. There are weird-ass right-wingers boosting health care. It's very – she's right about that, yeah. Like Richard Spencer. She used – the problem is the word grooming, right? Because groom – it's a weird word. But I think if you're worried about that, one way that that's going to be more true is if you talk about it and elevate it. So even from – just purely from a strategic point of view. Yes, exactly. Even if Hillary Clinton was exactly right in what she was saying, saying it and making news about it, now we're all living in it. Yeah, I do.

I do think, though, too, like part of this is, I forgot 2016. I think there's so much anxiety about 2020, about how the primary is going to turn out. And, you know, Tom Steyer gets the first applause of the night by saying any person on this stage would be a better president than Donald Trump. And I think, yeah, people are going to make, you know, Mayor Pete going after Elizabeth Warren on how she's going to pay for health care. It's about Mayor Pete, right, doing something helpful for him that's hurtful to her, even if she's the nominee, let's say. But that's politics. That's what happens in a primary. They duke it out.

They try to hurt each other. And the idea is everybody gets stronger along the way. But Tulsi Gabbard goes out there and threatens to quit the debate for reasons that are kind of strange. You know, there are, you know, you wonder, like, how far is she going to take her campaign? What are her interests? And I think, I think there's a fear that Tulsi Gabbard's lack of any ideological kind of clarity that's confusing to people, her, her kind of reputation as a bit of a chaos candidate leads people to fear that this is someone who doesn't understand or isn't bought into the collective project of whatever happens is we have to do everything we can to defeat Donald Trump together. And that is, I think that's, that is a completely legitimate fear. I mean, I think, I think I don't know, even if I've never had the chance to, to,

to interview her since she started running, I've talked to her a bunch before then she was much more of a kind of like part of the democratic party previously. And I say, and I say, I'm sorry, I should say like, I say that not know, like I see, I don't know. Right. I just genuinely don't know. I don't know what that's like. An honest, good faith question of like, do you actually feel that way?

Do you feel the way that Tom Sire felt? Do you feel that like the, the Democratic nominee and the Democratic Party and the, and the coalition that's represented by this, in your mind, very flawed, rotten and corrupt party, which, okay, that that is the only alternative to the continued menace of this of this person and also the ideological project of the Republican Party, which is menacing in its own right. Like, that's obviously a thing that everyone, I think, shares 100 percent on that stage. And I think it's not a crazy thing to ask if that is her current position.

There's also just a weird thing this time around where the DNC rules that allow you to get on the debate stage mean that support is support for some of these guys. Andrew Yang dealt with this early on that he had some support from like the 4chan Joe Rogan world. He was constantly asked to disavow these individuals. And to his credit, he did. But does anyone think that those people kind of liking universal basic income or some interview he did made him a bad guy or an extremist? No. So it's like it's very hard. Just like putting my like I'm a Tulsi staffer hat on.

If you're constantly asked to denounce the people that are giving you TV airtime or saying nice things about you, of course, at some point you're going to you're going to balk at that. The thing I will say, though, about Yang, and I think it's interesting to compare the two because they're both both of them are people that are in our Democratic primary that are carving out a space, I think, in their rhetoric, their ideological vision and their support that is different than a standard Democratic candidate. Quite different. Right. Is that it just seems to me that like Yang has his posture is like additive and coalitional building as just like a rhetorical posture and as a personal posture in a way that it doesn't feel like Gabbard's is. Gabbard's feels like process of elimination and like who the sort of like, and then partly that's populist rhetoric and who the kind of corrupt insiders are.

But Yang strikes me as someone who really is like trying to build something, trying to additively build something out in the democratic party that speaks to a part of the democratic party. And I friendly to the other candidates. Yeah. Tulsi in that moment was trying to go after Elizabeth Warren for a supposedly supporting wars in the middle East. And Warren actually made a bit of a flub.

She said, yeah, I'd get all troops out of the middle East. Obviously she meant Syria, but it got changed to mean all these. And again, that's a fair, again,

that's a totally fair and good debate. And her playing that role is good. It's just that I don't – I just can never quite – and maybe there's not an answer to it, and it doesn't matter that there has to be some box and label that's wrapped around the whole project of Gabbardism. But I just – when you look at the policies, you look where she's been on a variety of things, it is just very hard for me to just figure out what the project is. Yeah. So before we go, I want to talk about your outstanding podcast, Why Is This Happening? And you have a live show tonight at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles while you're

here. Yeah, we're doing a live show tonight at the Ace Hotel, which is an amazing venue. I think you guys have done something there. It's a great venue. We got Adam McKay, the legendary Adam McKay, head SNL writer, co-founder funny or die anchorman talladega nights and then uh he's on the big short and vice and part of this originated in the dinner i had with adam where like he it was like after a screening of vice in which like he spent much of the drink dinner haranguing me about not covering climate enough and i was like dude make a climate movie like i cover a lot of climate, like why are you?

But he is really obsessed with climate and also thinking about how do you represent the climate crisis as film, art, TV. And the other guest is a guy named Omar Al-Khad, this incredible guy who was born in Cairo, lived in UAE, and then he grew up in Canada when he was 16, and he was a war correspondent covering the war on terror for 10 years and wrote this novel called American War, which is set in this sort of dystopic future America after climate change and the banning of fossil fuels and a second civil war. as a cultural phenomenon,

the central crisis of our times, which is a very hard thing to kind of get your arms around, and isn't being represented, I think, it's fair to say. Yeah. Like, corollary to the level of import it has. Well, speaking of that,

I thought one of your most fascinating recent episodes is you talked to, you interviewed Ted Cruz in Texas. Your mentor. And you guys, and I thought it was,

first of all, that was a fascinating conversation. I did think like, you know, a lot of people would be like, why are you interviewing Ted Cruz for? But it's like,

it was an interesting conversation. Good for him for sitting with you in front of a crowd that was very progressive and like having generally a good faith discussion with you about all these issues.

But I do think Ted Cruz on climate change, man, that was wild. I expected him, you know, Mitt Romney put out this climate thing the other day. Like there's a way to just be like, yes,

this is what the science says in the world. World is getting warmer. And then there's a lot of yada, yada, yada. And you can do after that because it's such a hard problem. Well, but China and India,

but we shouldn't, but also there's all these jobs in natural gas. And what are we going to tell those people? You can do all that. But he went with the like circa 2005 inhofe with a snowball on the floor of the senate like oh but the satellite is incomplete and actually there's we're gaining ice and like he was hitting me with all these sort of like tropes of denialism which i was just surprised to hear um in 2019 because it's just like i I said afterwards on Twitter, I was like, let's make a bet,

donated to the charity of your choice, of will there be more record highs or record lows in Texas in the year 2020? Let's just bet on that. Are there going to be more record highs or record lows in Texas in 2020? Actually, let's make that bet for 2021 and 2022 and 2023. Like, what are we doing here? It's clearly... I thought it was fascinating when

you said, okay, so why are all these scientists and everyone all getting together to try to invent this conspiracy of global warming and climate change, you know? And he said that from a political angle, and I imagine a lot of conservatives think this, that what this is about is a lot of the solutions or most of the solutions to climate change involve the government. And this is basically a backdoor way for liberals and progressives to get what they want. To have a socialist takeover of government using climate as the fig leaf, which I was like, wow. But you know what? That makes sense for all of them.

Oh, that's a completely widespread view. And to give it a little bit of credit, like it's not it's not a crazy view it's a crazy view if you think that's what like that's why the scientists are doing it particularly if you've ever like met a climate scientist is like you know like oh i've been tracking the latitude of where butterflies mate in england for 32 years of my life and then i looked at the data and like oh it turns out they're mating higher and higher, like lower and lower on the on the map because of, you know, the change in climate. And it's like, that's not a person who's involved in some crazy like scheme to, you know, like that's a person who's like literally went into it for the

butterflies. How much does Soros pay you? Well, it's the same conspiratorial mindset that they think that all Democrats support immigration reform because we want to register millions more people of color in this country so that we can win. Imagine if Democrats were so political. I know, right. But yeah, it goes back to what you were saying, too, about the cultural impact of stories about climate change, because I think one of the challenges, and I think, you know, people say that to us, you talk about climate change more, talk about climate change

more. And I do think we all should be talking about it more. But one of the challenges is you say to yourself, who is getting this information? Because there's the consumers of the kind of content that talks about the importance of tackling climate change that is reaching people that already understand that and want to do something and aren't sure how to get the political system to change. And then there are Ted Cruz and all the people that support Ted Cruz that we need to figure out how to change their thinking about this and their behavior about this. Although I will say this, I mean, a lot of that change has really happened. I think partly it's just because of what's happened on the face of the earth. But it's been two things to me. It's been the fact that like the signal has emerged from the noise and the data to the extent that

people feel it and see it in their daily lives. I mean, I was in, my wife and I both turned 40 this year. We took a little like trip to Paris and we went to the Loire Valley, like an hour and a half outside Paris where they've been growing, they've been, had wine and grapes for a thousand years. And it's like, these people, this is all they do. This is all they think about for a thousand years. And they're like, yes, it's changing. And like, this is what's happening. We have to start planting new grapes. They're making a joke about like how everybody's grapes are going to like move up one tier so like we're going to start growing what southern spain was growing and then like england's going to start making wine because like they're going to be warm enough and it's like it's just there like the

people that deal with the the earth every day like see it so there's that and there's also i think the activism of the movement has been so profound and powerful that like the persuasion question to me is almost a kind of distant third to those two in terms of mobilizing the political constituency you want. But it was still shocking to me in that Ted Cruz conversation. I was genuinely surprised that that was the rhetorical route that he was taking. He's still arguing about the data. Yeah. All right, everyone. Thank you, Chris, for joining us and everyone go check out why is this happening uh if you're in la and you hear this pod come tonight there's still a few tickets left yeah come by the ace theater it'll be uh i think 7 30 7 30 come by

buy a ticket the box office all right and when we come back we'll have uh tommy and ben's interview Ben and I are honored to have our guest here today, Ambassador Susan Rice. She's Obama's former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. She was the National Security Advisor, and she is the author of a fantastic new book called Tough Love. Everyone who's listening is going to buy it. Susan, great to have you here. And she's my boss. Both of our bosses. Come to buy it. Susan, great to have you here. And she's my boss. Both of our bosses. Come on, man.

Both of our bosses, yeah. It's great to be with you guys. I want to separate this into pieces, right? Because there's Benghazi, the incident that happened. The terrorist attack. A horrific terrorist attack that tragically killed Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glenn Doherty, and Tyrone Woods, right? And there was, I think, a pretty well-documented series

of investigations into what happened that day. Eight investigations by Congress. But a lack of security. There are a lot of things that I think were important and real and deserve reckoning, right? No one here worked on any of those things, right? You were at the United Nations at the time. We were in the White House. We just, none of us did security. worked on any of those things, right? You were the United Nations at the time we were in the White House. We just, none of us did security. Then there's hashtag Benghazi, which is the right wing fever dream, uh, the swampy soup of bullshit cooked up by Fox news that decided to make you the target of all their attacks, all their animosity, all their cruelty. And reading this book again, it was really, it was hard. it was hard to read those chapters like hard for

me having been feeling like one uh we were all there in this too but you like it was hard for us watching you in the barrel as much as you were in the barrel we were in the barrel too right all of us trying to like deal with this bullshit but like you were attacked so personally. And also knowing that you felt like you were not sufficiently supported by the White House team. Like the only person who was getting your back on a regular basis for a while was Barack Obama. And like, I just think, I don't know. Hashtag Benghazi is a parable about the madness that we're now seeing all day, every day from the Trump administration. And this is why it's important to read. Because you haveenghazi to understand trump right because lindsey graham isn't just a piece of shit now he's been a piece of shit lindsey graham i said it i said it damn

it finally he was he's a piece of shit he's lying lying lying lying and raising money off of the death of four americans so anyway that's my little speech. It was just, it made me so infuriated. Well, and I guess the other, I mean, one way to enter this conversation too is one of the things that's interesting in your book is, okay, so, you know, I was the guy who called you, right? And said, I mean, I still remember this,

like Jen Palmieri calls me into the press sectors. I was like, hey, we really need someone on the Sunday shows, right? I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. It was like, hey, we really need someone on the Sunday shows, right? I'm like, you got to be kidding me. Why? The world is on fire. You know, like literally there's because of this video, like I'll say that, you know, there are protests. The innocence of Muslim videos.

There are violent anti-Muslim video. There are violent protests. There's not just Benghazi's happened. They're all over the Muslim world. And we're all super busy. And they're like, well, but it looks like the world is on fire and we need somebody out there to kind of give a steadying message. And also, Bibi Netanyahu, who's booking himself on Sunday shows, preparing to attack our Iran policy.

So we anticipated that we were going to have to deal with that. So I said, okay, I'll reach out to Hillary. And, you know, that didn't happen. But let's – because we've talked about this. We haven't talked about it much yet. So you called me first after you had already reached out to Hillary. happen um but but let's look because we've talked about this we haven't talked about it much yet so you called me first after you had already reached out to hillary yeah and you said we've asked secretary clinton if she'll go on the shows we haven't heard back yet but in case she won't

would you be willing to do it that was the first call it's like four o'clock in the afternoon yeah and it's on like friday friday yeah it's close to the day it's right and that friday is the day that everything is burning in the middle east because friday prayersiday yeah it's close to the day it's right and that friday is the day that everything is burning in the middle east because friday prayers right days that people protest and so literally tommy i have a split screen on in our office that shows like there are people torching a hardy's in lebanon black flags raised over our embassy in tunisia where people were killed um the the the perimeter of our embassy being breached in Khartoum. I mean, it is scary.

Really scary. So I say to you why, you know, when you call me back a couple hours later and said, Hillary said no, you know, would you do it? I said, well, why did she say no? And you said, well, you know, I think they're— She's tired. Yeah, tired. It's been a rough week.

What I should have asked was, did you ask Donalyn? So I did. The National Security Advisor. But knowing, look, Tom is a great guy. His favorite thing to do wasn't necessarily to be in front of the cameras and interviews. He hated doing TV interviews. Going into his office and beginning to raise- He doesn't seem so reluctant now.

Well, none of them are now. It's very weird seeing John Brennan do an hour of 1 p.m. cable on MSNBC. Actually, this... You know what? Thank you for saying that because I'm going to get a little thing off my chest too, which is like...

Because I always said to go out on the worst stuff, you know, and it's like, oh, we need someone to talk about Syria. Like, Ben, can you do these, like, five cable hits, you know? And all these guys are now like Brennan and Donilon.

I feel like we're a little down the rabbit hole. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's just talk about this. But this is something that is uniquely our conversation. So Tom says no. So then you said to me, okay, I'll do this if you do my prep, is what I remember.

And so I think what's important for people to get is, to us, this is like, because the reason it's important to say this is, to the right, to the hashtag Benghazi, we then set about between Friday evening and Sunday morning. A scheme. Creating an entire conspiracy theory. Literally, to try to understand what Lindsey Graham and Mike Pompeo and all these these lunatics like think it said we invented this. The video didn't even exist and we invented it and we somehow got the entire U.S. government to agree to be a part of this conspiracy theory. And we somehow orchestrated the CIA writing talking points.

And when in fact what happened is we asked the CIA, hey, can you give us the latest points on what you think happened? And they were doing that anyway for Congress. So they sent that to you. I took our press guidance, which is what Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, used. On other issues. On other issues. On other issues. Dropped it into a memo, sent it to you.

I remember we did one phone call on a Saturday afternoon where we went through these questions. After my football game at Ohio State. Yeah. I remember I was in the parking lot of a liquor store. I was in the airport at Columbus. Yeah. I mean, this is not- With my kids running around wondering what the hell I'm doing on the phone. So this is not a conspiracy. The point is, and the reason it's worth reading this part of the book, and these are not like, we were going about our lives dealing with all kinds of stuff, multitasking 10 things at a time, and just having to deal with the fact that you have to go on these Sunday shows, you above all.

And yet that has become like a creation story of some conspiracy theory. Well, my mother was right. That's the moral of the story. Listen to your mother. Because after you called me and I said, you know, reluctantly, I was taking my kids to Ohio State for this football game. But, you know, if nobody else will do it and you're asking me to do it as the White House, I'll do it.

And my thinking was, you know, we're a team. We had a really bad week. I've been asked to play a role. I thought I could play it and I agreed to do it. So I get to my mother's house who just had her fourth or fifth cancer surgery and was just coming off of a stroke. And she asked me, so what are you doing this weekend? I said, well, I'm taking the kids to Ohio State and then I've agreed to go on all the Sunday shows. And she's like, what? Why?

And I said, you know, I explained the whole thing of how you asked me. And she said, I smell a rat. Where's Hillary? Why are you doing this? I was like, come on, Mom, don't be ridiculous. I've done this before. Yeah, it'll be fine. And, of course, it wasn't.

So, yes, always listen to your mother. But she had the intuition that I suspect others had, however tired or bad weeks they'd had, that, you know, whoever's going to be out in the middle of a political campaign or any other hot crisis and is trying to provide the best current information, which inevitably will change, is going to be targeted. And not just for the message, but the messenger, him or herself. And that's what happened to me. And my mom perceived a risk that I didn't fully perceive because I wasn't thinking about myself. Right. Yeah. So one of the hardest things to read was after you left the White House, you had a friend who worked for Fox and you asked that individual, I mean, so much of this Benghazi nonsense was cooked up in Fox News. And in hindsight, it's even more insane to me that people listen to Sean Hannity and let him create a narrative, given that he lives in an alternative universe. But this Fox producer told you when you asked, how did I, Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., no oversight role over the embassy or the consulate in Benghazi or embassy security generally, how did I become the villain? And he said, individuals make great villains.

Right. How did you receive that information? It was fascinating to have an inside perspective on how Fox operates. So he was even more forthcoming than that. on how Fox operates. So he was even more forthcoming than that. He said, look, Fox has this very deep bond with its viewers, and it knows how to energize and rile up its viewers.

And making them angry is how they get ratings. And a way to make them angry is to create villains that they can target and vilify. And you always need fresh villains and you know the he explained how the original fox villain was in fact bill clinton and then barney frank and some others and you know we were sort of new iterations as a jv villain and hillary of course became a major fox villain yes but uh i had given them all the wherewithal, he explained, to be villainized because I'd given them five different sets of video on these shows. And they could loop them and they could turn me into a new villain. And now on Fox, many years later, they just need to say my name and it's like, you know, like people start twitching.

It's like an automatic, you know, trigger point. It's like an automatic trigger point. So it was fascinating to learn from that person's point of view how they engage their viewers. And now you can see it playing out. And Trump is the master of it. He makes people angry every day. How cool is it to see Mike Pompeo and Trey Gowdy, two of the most vicious, aggressive Benghazi conspiracy theorists who demanded oversight all day, every day, now helping Trump cover up his crimes. It's really rich. Yeah. Pompeo in particular. Yeah, Pompeo in particular. One of the things, so you write about in this book,

one of the things I was fascinated by was you kind of grew up in this Washington that no longer exists where, you know, people were friends across political persuasions and there was this kind of, you know, civility, if you want to call it that. You know, the caricature of you is this, you know, from Fox is you're this kind of hotheaded, obstinate, hotheaded, you know, partisan person when actually i've always you're very warm and and generous and you look out for the people around you including me even though i asked you to go on the sunday shows um and but you've also i've noticed you've been able to work with people who uh you disagree with very strongly one of the more interesting things in your book in terms of characters and diplomacy is Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations. You know,

you didn't, we didn't clash with Russia in the first term quite as hard as in the second term, obviously, when you had Ukraine and, but, you know, they're still on the other side of most issues or a lot of issues at the UN. How did you, how do you set about building a relationship with someone who's an adversary, but you have to make a partner on some things and you have to be able to agree very stridently, but still not have that screw up a diplomatic relationship? Just talk about that relationship you built with Churkin and how that was both personal and also allowed you to get things done. Well, by the time I got to the UN as ambassador, Churkin had been there five years already, and he was sort of a legend. He understood how the system worked. He knew all the tricks of the

trade. He knew all the other ambassadors. He was very smart and very charming and very combative. He could be a complete asshole, or he could be a fun person to hang out with on Saturday night. And I think what began between us when I got there and realized that, you know, I was either going to allow somebody like a churkin to bully and intimidate me or I was going to do as my father always taught me, which was not take crap off of anybody. You know, this was a classic case where I had to be assertive from the very beginning and let him know that I could give it back to him as well as he could dish it. And I wasn't going to be intimidated by him. And by the way, I could be as funny as he was too. And, you know, like there are two kinds of bullies, right? They're the ones that are really insecure and find people who push back that much more intimidating. I put Holbrook in that category.

And then there are the Churkins who actually say, OK, I get this. She and I are on the same page. And, you know, I respect her. And, you know, and then it came to be and I like her. We liked each other. We had a good personal relationship even as we fought like cats and dogs. And even as you know, I relate a story in there about how he tries to expel my son Jake from a security council in behind closed door meeting where staff and other people can participate. where staff and other people can participate. And he was just sitting there listening because he loved,

just absorbed everything like a sponge at the UN when he ever, he could get up there. And so finally Churkin tries to break up the meeting and saying, you know, I'm not going to allow this young person to be in here. So we take it out into the hallway. Jake's standing with me and Churkin's yelling at me going, why do you allow your child to watch Security Council debates I'm like why not it's a learning experience it's the international community what's the problem he goes do you let your kid

watch pornography these debates I was like okay that's it that was like we're screaming at each other, red-faced. And that was the way we fought. Yeah. You know, but also then we could just, you know, he and his wife and me and my husband, Ian, go out for dinner and have a wonderful time and laugh and joke. So the point is that where you're dealing with people who are multifaceted, as he is or was, sadly he's passed, you know, he's smart. He's working for his country. I'm working for my country. We got to get along and work together on some things.

We're going to fight like cats and dogs on other things. But, you know, he's a human being. Yeah. being. And taking the time to understand him as an individual and what animates him and moves him is how I think you have to deal with people that you're working with, whether you're on the same side or the opposite side. And taking it back to what you said about my upbringing, you know, I grew up in Washington, D.C., born in the mid-60s, grew up in the 70s and 80s, born in the mid-60s, grew up in the 70s and 80s, went to schools with children who were the sons and daughters of the elite, people who were members of Congress and ambassadors and all of that stuff.

But it was bipartisan. And one of my very closest friends growing up was the daughter of a Republican senator from Tennessee. And, you know, in my cohort were the daughters and the sons of people who served in the Nixon administration and went to jail for Watergate. And this was a time when members of Congress brought their families to Washington and lived there. People knew each other as human beings. And it's really hard to demonize and hate people when you actually know them as human beings. And so that's what we've lost. And it's what I argue we really hard to demonize and hate people when you actually know them as human beings. Yeah, absolutely. And so that's what we've lost. And it's what I argue we really need to try to get back. In 2018, you toyed with the idea of running for the U.S. Senate against Susan Collins in Maine,

who, by the way, was particularly annoying during the period of time, Benghazi, to when you decided not to be a candidate for the secretary of state job. You ended up not running. But I was hoping you could sort of tell us a little bit about why and what your thoughts are about, I don't know, any other future government service. Well, I impulsively tweeted from the Phoenix airport as I was about to get on a cross-country flight that I would, you know, Jen Psaki tweeted, who's going to run against Susan Collins? And somehow my fingers hit my iPhone and typed two letters, M-E. And I really, I don't know what, you know, what made me do that, except that I'd been watching Susan Collins on the television in the Phoenix airport declare her vote for Brett Kavanaugh, which was in a long list, I think, of betrayals of the people of Maine and the United States of America, her most egregious. And I've long had family ties in Maine, and I have a home in Maine,

and I love the state. But I thought about it quite seriously because I forced myself to by having that impulsive moment. And I consulted with my family and I consulted with folks who knew Maine politics very well. And at the end of the day, I decided that this was not the time for me for very personal reasons. My daughter is a junior in high school. She's our last child at home. Our son is already in college. And I had spent eight years away from my kids, you know, whether I was living in New York and they were in Washington when I was UN ambassador or when I was national security advisor and living under the same roof, but seeing them very infrequently.

I did not want to either uproot my daughter and pull her out of high school at that critical point or leave her again. And so at the end of the day, of all the factors, that was the most important one in causing me and my husband to agree that this was not the right time. So future, I don't know. We'll see. Future, TBD. I like that. That'll leave us hanging. Well, the book is amazing. The book's fantastic. I mean, you've always been just such a big personality with such immense experience and

kind of caring about the right things for the country and having compassion for the people around you. And it's all in this book. The history of your family is like, for me also, was kind of a history of a certain African American experience in this country. The history of your government service like, for me also, was kind of a history of a certain African-American experience in this country. The history of your government service, you'll learn about Africa. You'll learn how the State Department works. You'll learn also what it's like to become a young mother, a woman in a man's field, unfortunately, although that's changing over time.

And, of course, our administration. So people should really check it out. Learn who Susan gave the middle finger. Learn who the Furies are. All kinds of cliffhangers here at the end of this interview. It's a great book. That's for Susan Rice. Wonderful to see you.

Thank you for being here. Thank you both. Appreciate you, Tommy and Ben. Thanks to Susan Rice for joining us. And thank you to Chris Hayes. And we will see you guys on Thursday Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media The senior producer is Michael Martinez Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller

It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Somanator, and Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmel Cohnian,

Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.