Pod Save America - “Planes, Trains, and Matt Gaetz.”

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

Infrastructure Week is finally here with President Biden’s $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, Republicans continue their quest to rebrand as a Working Class Party, and Congressman Matt Gaetz is under investigation for sex trafficking. Then Tommy joins to talk about the next round of Pod Save America’s March Badness tournament, the Fascist Four.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, your infrastructure week joke has already been made, but Biden's plan is finally here. Republicans continue their quest to rebrand themselves as a working class party. And human frat paddle Matt Gaetz is under investigation for sex trafficking. Then Tommy joins to talk about the next round of our March badness tournament, the fascist four. But first, Dan, welcome back. How's Jack Pfeiffer and how awake are you right now?

Jack Pfeiffer is great. He is a very, in my very unbiased opinion, a very sweet, cute kid. And things are, everyone is happy and healthy. He's sleeping like a baby, as they very incorrectly say. And Kyla is, despite, I would say, some outsized expectations about what newborn babies could do, since she told me for weeks that the first thing they would do

when he came home was do a puzzle together. She has fully embraced big sisterdom and is constantly making sure that every time he cries that Hallie and I are taking good care of, quote, her baby. So we are good. It's really cute. It's very nice it is very very sweet we have spent I spent a lot of time on the internet between the hours of like 12 and 5 uh which I would let you know that twitter is much better in those hours the worst people sleep as if as it turns out it is funny like

sleeping like a baby I don't know why people have said that for so long. I mean, once I, once we had a baby, I was like, what the fuck are they? Yeah. I think it's like a cool joke that people forgot about at some point.

Is it like, so Charlie is now at eight months sleeping through the night and it's almost like easy to forget those first couple months. It must just come roaring back really fast. Yes. It is remarkable how quickly you can transition to a place where like two and a half consecutive hours of sleep feels like 14. So you do. It's a very familiar feeling to be sitting in that chair holding a baby in the middle of the night. And if you're lucky watching TV, and if you're not, you're just rocking furiously

until someone falls asleep. Well, congrats to you and Haile and Kyla. And welcome back. Few quick promos before we begin. Check out this week's Pod Save the World, where Tommy and Ben dig into the results of the Israeli election, Biden's policy towards Cuba, the politics of space exploration,

and what makes a bald man sexy. I just read what I'm told, folks. I don't make this up. Don't make it up. In the latest episode of Take Line, host Jason Concepcion and Renee Montgomery talk all things Elite Eight with Tate Frazier, who also happens to be the original producer

of Keepin' It 1600, a little podcast we did before Pod Save America. How about that, huh? It's amazing. Big day. Big day. original producer of keeping it 1600 little podcast we did before pods of america how about that huh it's amazing big day big day uh and as always check out keep it but especially now with the oscars just around the corner uh so to stay in the know tune into the hilarious award season experts on keep it recent guests have included oscar nominee reza med uh tony award winner del roy lindo and one division star kat den All right, let's get to the news. President Joe Biden announced his American jobs plan in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.

Two trillion dollars aimed at rebuilding the country's infrastructure, tackling the climate crisis and reducing inequality that would represent the most significant federal jobs investment since World War II. So what's in it? The White House says the plan has four parts. One, investment in transportation infrastructure like roads, highways, public transit, and electric vehicles. Two, investment in home infrastructure like affordable housing, universal broadband, clean drinking water, and a better electric grid. Three, investments in what the Biden folks call care infrastructure, which would help seniors, people with disabilities and the workers who care for them. And four, investments in the kind of infrastructure that makes America competitive, like research and development, manufacturing, clean energy and job training. Finally, Biden is proposing to pay for all this by partially rolling back Trump's tax cut for corporations, cracking down on foreign tax shelters and ending subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. All right, that's my best shot at a quick summary that still captures all the

major elements of the plan. But tell me if I missed anything. And on that note, I guess my first question is, what do you think about the size and scope of this plan? In some ways, the size is surprising because this Congress and this president just passed a very large American rescue plan that also came on top of trillions of dollars in pandemic relief, economic stimulus during the last year of the Trump administration. But it is ultimately a price tag that is very commensurate with the challenge we are facing. I mean, every president has been talking about doing something about infrastructure for a long time. It was the one thing that even when the parties were divided,

they would come together and pass a highway bill or roads bill. And then that fell by the wayside as Republicans decided that they cared passionately about the deficit, but would not raise taxes to pay for spending. And so our roads crumbled. You know, it is listening to you talk about the care infrastructure is shows just sort of the sort of maybe the perils of broadening that term to mean so many things like, should we just add in democracy infrastructure as well and throw in the John Lewis Voting Rights Act? But you know, it's a big, it is a big, bold bill. And we'll talk about this, very, not just substantively necessary, but politically popular. Well, I mean, talk about putting everything in this bill, like there is going to be another bill coming, we're told, that's going to include some of like, you know, education,

affordability, healthcare, other stuff like that. So even with that other bill coming, they still included like the care infrastructure stuff in here, which just goes to show, I think, how much of Biden's agenda, domestic agenda, he feels that he needs to include in this reconciliation bill, the one that was just passed and perhaps one more now, because he, I think, correctly realizes that if you don't get everything you want done or as much as possible done before the 2022 midterms, you may never get it done, particularly if you get a Republican Congress after that.

Yeah. And your point about reconciliation is really important. There's only one and maybe two more trains leaving the station before then, if the filibuster remains in place and Republicans continue to oppose everything. If you want to deal with quote unquote care infrastructure or other things involving health care, it's got to be on this bill or it is not going to happen. And so that lends itself to instead of several bills of moderate size, you end up with a couple of bills of very large size, even if the overall price tag of spending is not higher than it would be in a normal functioning Congress. It's just it has to happen in these big chunks because of how broken Congress is thanks to the Republicans. What do you think about the decision to include tax increases as opposed to just

spending $2 trillion over eight years? Absolutely the right thing to do substantively and politically. It is, you know, there was a story in the Washington Post that said that originally it was going to be almost all spending, and then they came back and decided for, according to the Post story, primarily substantive reasons to put these tax increases in to show that we were not being fiscally irresponsible in just spending, spending, spending, spending without revenue. These are not outlandish revenue requests. We're raising the corporate rate to something it was very recently before Trump undid it. You're raising the capital gains rate in a way in which people have been talking about for a very long time to try to bring into balance investment income versus income from labor. And so all of that makes sense. It certainly does help on the politics too, because raising taxes

on the wealthy and the corporations is every voter's, Republican and Democrat's, first choice for how you pay for government spending if you think it needs to be paid for. Yeah, I would argue it makes sense even more politically than it does substantively, because theoretically, you know, $2 trillion over eight years is a couple hundred billion dollars every year, especially with infrastructure spending. You can get away with not actually financing some of that. But tax increases on the wealthy are popular. We have both seen polls over the years. Sometimes they're even more popular than actual spending and investment because people think that the wealthiest individuals and corporations in this country should pay their

fair share. And you're right. I mean, it's not even fully rolling back the Trump corporate tax cut. I think the I believe the corporate tax rate was at 35 percent. Trump took it down to 21 percent. This would take it back up to 28 percent. So it's still giving corporations are still paying less than they did before the Trump tax cut. So, you know, these are not crazy tax increases. The Republicans will, of course, paint them as crazy tax increases. But most Americans, tax increases. The Republicans will, of course, paint them as crazy tax increases. But most Americans, when you explain them to them, are in favor of tax increases like this by healthy margins. Oh, hugely healthy margins. I think on the substantive point, I am less, I think it makes substantive sense less because, and I am so far out of my depth here, because of dealing with the federal balance sheet and interest rates over the long time, but more dealing with the problem of widening economic inequality in this country.

Corporations should pay more. The wealthy should pay more. Capital gains should be taxed at a higher rate. That is good broadly and less about specifically trying to avoid a bunch of people screaming about America becoming Greece or any of that stuff. I think it's the right way to bring a larger, very troubling economic trend a little more in a balance. So American Rescue Plan had a lot of different parts to it, but it boiled down to shots in arms, checks in hands. Simple, immediate, tangible.

This American Jobs Plan is a bit more complicated. I will say that when I was prepping last night for the pod, it took the longest time to go through the plan, the White House talking points, the pieces about the plan to boil down to that paragraph that I read at the outset of the pod. It reminded me of writing a State of the Union and trying to get all the policies into the State of the Union in a way that still told a story and people could understand. Like, if you were still sitting in the White House being communications director, senior advisor, how would you sell this plan? What would you focus on? Jobs paid for by asking the wealthy to pay more in taxes. I mean, I think that you're going to, the actual physical infrastructure, rebuilding roads, bridges, airports, and the

jobs that come from that is something that is commonly understood by voters. It's something that government should do and taxes should pay for. It's what they experience in their daily life, in their city taxes, in their state taxes. And so focusing on that part makes the most sense. And then taking the Republican opposition to this and putting it around, they would rather have crumbling roads, fewer jobs, because they don't want to ask the wealthy to pay more, to ask Amazon or Facebook or ExxonMobil to pay more in taxes, is a very powerful argument. And I would say as narrowly focused on that part as I possibly can, just as

in a very different way in which the American rescue plan passed. It really was. There are a lot of things, American rescue plan, some of all very good, some a little harder to understand, but what was it about shots and checks? And so I would keep this about roads and bridges paid for by asking them if they pay just a little bit more in taxes. It's tricky too, because I think for a lot of progressive groups, there's a lot bit more in taxes. It's tricky, too, because I think for a lot of progressive groups, there's a lot to like in here. And we can talk about this in a second. But like, there's a lot a lot of Biden's climate agenda is in here, right? Not just on the spending side, but he has a clean energy standard in here, which requires a certain percentage of Americans

of American energy to be clean and renewable by 2035. There's a lot for the labor movement in here. He's calling on the PRO Act to be passed, which makes it easier for Americans to join a union and collectively bargain. That's part of this bill. So there are a lot of elements of this bill that I think could excite progressives. And there's just a lot of different things. I mean, from, you know, the care economy stuff, helping seniors and people with disabilities, getting rid of lead pipes so there's clean drinking water,

electric vehicle charging stations. I mean, there's something for everyone in here and it could be very easy, I think, to get lost in the different elements of this plan. And I imagine the White House will probably do discrete events to highlight different parts of this plan. But I do think if you're just selling it quickly, which is the way that most Americans will probably process the American jobs plan, jobs is the way to focus. And I don't think you should shy away from climate and the environmental impacts of it at all.

I think that that should be part. You should wrap that into the rebuilding bridges. We're going to rebuild in a way that is cleaner, better for the planet, and safer as a way to do that. And this is an interesting bill because lots of bills are filled with some things that are very good policy and very popular politically, and then other things that are very good policy and less popular politically. Most, the overwhelming amount of this bill that we have seen, and when we keep saying bill, and it's actually just a plan, the bill still has to be written, which is a big hurdle that we will talk about, are all popular things. They are like all the care economy stuff is good, and people are going to like it. It's not particularly partisan, but you're just going to

have, you need your 280 character tagline for what the bill is or you're going to or the forest is going to get lost for all the very popular trees. Right. And that is the challenge. The other big challenge, as you mentioned, is passing this thing. The White House says they'll invite Republicans to talk about the plan, but they already seem pretty opposed, especially to the tax hikes. That means Biden needs just about every Democrat in the House and every single Democrat in the Senate. So on the left, you've got progressives like AOC and Pramila Jayapal saying they think the plan should be bigger, that they like the direction of the plan, they like the spirit of the plan, but they think there should be larger investment on just about everything in there, particularly around climate. In the center, you've got moderates like Josh Gottheimer saying they won't support the deal

unless Biden restores the state and local tax deduction that Trump took away, which mostly benefit the wealthy. So how does this all get done? This is a very different process in the American Rescue Plan in two ways. The first is the American Rescue Plan was built on the structure of the CARES Act, CARES 2. Maybe there was a CARES 3. I can't really remember. But we already sort of economic aid, UI extension, PPP. And then they added some things to it, but it was built on an existing structure. So you didn't have to reinvent the wheel to start it. Second, it was on a ticking clock. In addition to just the general momentum

of passing the newly elected president's first piece of legislation, you had to get it done before unemployment benefits expired. And so there was less time for jockeying. There was less time for intra-democratic party negotiating and posturing and all of that. If the train was going to leave the station, you're either going to be on it or you're going to get run over by it. And every single Democrat except one got on board. And this is going to be harder. It's a longer process. There isn't an immediate clock. There isn't sort of a cliff, as we like to think, as sort of legislative people like to think about it. And so you're going to have a whole bunch of committees doing their things. You're going to have a House bill that's probably going to look different than a Senate bill because the progressive voices in

the House have more sway and power than they do in the Senate necessarily, where everything comes down to Joe Manchin. And I think it is something that is likely to get done. How much it looks like what President Biden announced earlier this week is an open question. How long it takes and how messy the process is, is an open question. But it is going to be a challenge to get done. And so one of the catch-22s of being president is you really want to get things done. You have to get things done through Congress. And the more the process goes through Congress, the more politically problematic it is. We went through this many times. And so this is going to have a lot of twists and turns and be somewhat messy. I don't think it's going to look anything like the Affordable Care Act for a whole host of reasons, but mostly because healthcare is so personal to people. And so every little change that was

happening in that process, people viewed through the question of whether they could keep their doctor, how it would affect their premiums. And roads and bridges is a little more disconnected from everyone's personal life and therefore a little less about insecurity. But yeah, there's going to be a lot of jockeying, a lot of work, and it's going to move at a very different timeline than the American Rescue Plan is my guess. Yeah. I think if you're the White House, you need to both create and maintain and maintain a sense of urgency about why this bill is needed. And you want to move quickly because I think the longer the negotiations drag out, the more politically problematic this can become. I think for Democrats in Congress, the key is going to be like, don't draw lines in the sand just yet

until like the very end of this. Because if you start saying this must be in here or I'm going to vote no or this must be, then you're going to start tripping everyone up early on, which I should say progressives haven't done. Progressives saying they want it to be bigger, but they haven't drawn lines in the sand. The fucking problem solvers caucus are the only ones who've drawn lines in the sand so far. Gottheimer and a couple others who said that they said no salt, no deal.

Salt is the acronym for state and local deductions, which is sort of like, look, there is some way to reform the state and local deductions so that the benefits that don't go to millionaires and the wealthy can return to sort of the more middle class people who benefit from that deduction. So there's a way to reform it. But I think getting, you know, restoring a tax deduction that mainly benefited millionaires, and I know that some Democrats tried to do this in the House before, I think it's politically insane, personally. Like, Republicans are out there trying to say that we're actually the party now of the wealthy, that we, you know, are in the pocket of our wealthy donors. And we're going to give them a talking point that we tried to restore a tax cut that mostly goes to the wealthy.

What the fuck is that? Yeah, it doesn't seem politically wise. No. No, it's stupid. So Mitch McConnell is calling the plan a Trojan horse for tax increases. Some Republicans criticize the size of the plan. Others said it's not just about traditional infrastructure. There's too much focus on climate.

It's a progressive wish list. Donald Trump released a rambling six paragraph statement that hit all of the above, plus called the plan a giveaway to China lobbyists and special interests. That man really needs an editor now that he's off Twitter because his statements are long and boring. Which of any of these attacks should the White House be worried about? Definitely not the Trump one, which I could not get through. I would like to say that I've dedicated enough to this podcast that I could read all six paragraphs for it, but I could not. It was unintelligible. Some people are like, why are you signal boosting the Trump statement?

Because no one fucking cares what's in that. I dare anyone to get through the statement and think that there's anything in that statement that could cause anyone harm. It's a fucking word salad that is one of the most rambling statements I've ever seen. And just if you want us to read a six paragraph statement, post it online. I'm like, it's on my phone. It's a screenshot from Josh Dossossi and I'm like expanding it. And it fell asleep after the first one. I'm like,

I don't want to read this. Who cares? Anyway, it's not great. It's not tax increases. I think it is this, the most risky thing will be over the course of time. Republicans picking out things that seem disconnected from the actual intent and are sort of the typical special interest,

you know, insider dealing Washington shit, right? Like the very famous from, well, it's probably only famous people our age, the bridge to nowhere that was being built during the Bush administration. There were some things in the stimulus that money went to that became very easily understood. This is sort of the equivalent of the overpriced hammers in the Reagan administration where you can find these – it's those sorts of anecdotes. And this is where there's this balance for Pelosi and Schumer in doing what you can to provide – to entice moderates or anyone, frankly, to get on board with sort of local projects and not tumbling into this looks like a bunch of quote-unquote earmarks that is a bunch of Washington corruption. And so the bigger – this is a very, very, very popular thing at 10,000 feet talking about the overall intent and how it's paid for. It's in the details where it gets in trouble. I am not worried about Mitch McConnell

complaining about tax increases on the wealthy and corporations. Do that all day. Signal boost the shit out of that. Please. Yes. That, like if Mitch McConnell, what he's doing when he says that

is he is basically sending a public email to his corporate donor friends. But from a broader macro political perspective, he is doing us a favor and keep doing it. Yeah, I mean, we should say, you know, Politico and Morning Consult had a poll from last week before Biden actually announced the plan. They just pulled a theoretical $3 trillion infrastructure plan paid for with higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. trillion infrastructure plan paid for with higher taxes on the wealthy corporations, 54% approval, only, you know, 27% disapproved of the tax increases, additional pieces of Biden's plan, including boosting electric vehicles, universal pre-K, low income housing, and more. That's, of course, some of that could be in the next bill as well. It's not all in this bill,

but that also pulled very well. I completely agree that sort of the Democratic wish list is probably the most, could be the most effective part of their argument because it comes down to they are spending a bunch of money on their friends, their constituents, their lobbyists, their special interests, and they're not spending any money on you. And so I think the Biden administration, it's going to be incumbent upon them to really emphasize the parts of the bill that, which is most of the bill, in fairness, that benefit everyone, right? They've got broadband for inner cities that don't have high-speed broadband and rural areas that don't have high-speed broadband. I mean, they did this really well with the American Rescue Plan. They said, you know, they define bipartisanship as both what people in the country thought of the plan, including Democrats and

Republicans, and also who the plan was benefiting, which is Democrats and Republicans. So if I were the Biden administration, I talk about all of the Republican constituencies who would benefit from this plan just as much as Democratic constituencies are, because the Republicans, their mission is going to be to say this bill is not for you. It's for their people. And they're going to turn it they're going to try to turn it into a culture war and take it out of the frame where it's a bill that raise taxes on the rich to help create jobs for everyone, because that's not a frame that they can win. Yeah. One more question on this before we move on. win. Yeah. One more question on this before we move on. What does the focus on the American Jobs Plan mean for the passage of the For the People Act? Does it make it harder to pass how do Biden and the Democrats do two things at once here? This is something I am worried about.

In an ideal world, we would not have to choose among any of these things. You would pass the American Rescue Plan. You'd pass the American Jobs Plan. You'd pass the HR1. You'd pass guns. You would just go on down the wish list up until the moment the polls closed in 2022, right? But that's not how it works. And as we know, the congressional will to do hard things is often sat before the public appetite for those hard things. And this is going to be – if we are doing this on budget reconciliation, it is going to be a very tough vote. They're going to have to do everything they can to hold on to that very narrow group of folks in the House, both the quote-unquote problem solvers caucus, which is about as ironic as sleep like a baby, and progressives who very – want very important things, many of which we agree with in terms of the climate spending. And you still have your Joe Manchin problem in the Senate. And that is going to be hard. And so every hard thing you do makes the next thing harder. political will, political appetite, political capital, is there left to push through a change in the filibuster rules to allow the Voting Rights Act and H.R. 1, et cetera, to pass?

And that is a real open question. And I think you don't have to choose between those things right now. The process that we mentioned for this plan is going to – there's a lot of committee work and bill writing and all of that. But all of us who care so passionately about all of these democracy and voting rights reforms have to keep the pressure on. We can't get distracted by what's happening because Congress can walk and chew gum, but they will only do that if forced to do it. And we have to keep that pressure on going forward. Yeah, I think I read that Pelosi said she wants the American jobs plan to pass through the House by around the 4th of July. So obviously there's going to be a lot of time.

You know, Biden introduced the plan yesterday. It's gonna be a lot of time between now and July where committees are just doing their work, writing the bill, passing it through committees. During that time, I would imagine that's where the fight over for the People Act happens. And hopefully it gets through committee and there's a fight on the floor during that time before we even consider the American jobs plan again. So Republicans are opposed to Biden's tax hikes on big corporations, but they're still trying really hard to rebrand themselves as working class heroes. Axios reported on Wednesday that Representative Jim Banks, who leads the right wing Republican Study Committee in the House, sent a memo to Kevin McCarthy titled, quote, cementing the GOP as the working class party, where he argued the Republicans need to

embrace Donald Trump's opposition to illegal and legal immigration, embrace Trump's protectionist trade policies, go after what he calls wokeness, which he claims was cooked up by elitist college professors and big corporations, go after big tech for censorship and anti-competitive practices, and go after Democrats for COVID lockdowns, arguing that they hurt working class Americans but helped wealthy Democratic donors. arguing that they hurt working class Americans, but helped wealthy Democratic donors. He also argued that Republicans should learn to rely on small dollar individual donations so that they can attack Democrats as in the pockets of Wall Street and big business. So what do you think of the memo and the strategy? I am in. What's this guy's name? Banks. Jim Banks. Had no idea this person existed before this. Me neither. Banks literally one day ago, I will say that this plan is exactly what Republicans on paper should do. This is their best plan to build a majority and sort of push back against the demographic doom they are facing as their

base becomes a shrinking part of the overall American electorate. Just because it's good on paper doesn't mean it's possible in practice, but this is actually a game plan for what a coherent Republican party should do if it wants to have power. Yeah, I think we should take it very seriously as Democrats, because I do think, look, we have seen this because of Trump. Populism is a very powerful force in politics. And I'm not just talking about economic populism, which was pretty fake coming from Donald Trump. It turns out when he was president, didn't really follow through on any of that. president, didn't really follow through on any of that. But a cultural populism too, right? This idea that big, special, powerful interests in distant places are against you, are preventing

you from living the life you want to lead. They're helping people who aren't like you, who don't look like you, who don't talk like you, who don't come from where you come from, whether those people are rich and wealthy or whether those people are immigrants or people of other races. It is a very powerful force in politics. And what Republicans are trying to do now is say, OK, we kind of had cultural populism down by railing against immigrants and black people and a whole host of other groups in this country that they have attacked over the years. And now now because we know that we've been in the pocket of Wall Street and we've been the party of big business, but we know that's sort of a powerful argument for Democrats. Now we're going to turn

that on them, too. Now, it's not easy for them to do because they're out there fucking, you know, opposing tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy. Their big proposal so far in the Biden administration has been to fully repeal the inheritance tax, which goes to multimillionaires. So like their policy isn't lining up with this. But I do think Democrats should be aware that if they if they really go through with relying only on individual donors, small dollar donations, and Democrats continue to take money from corporations and PACs, and to the Democrats' credits, a lot of them have stopped doing that, thanks to a lot of the progressives on the left.

If they continue to do that, they're going to be able to make, at least to the country, a more plausible case that they are on the side of working people, even though their policy is not. Yes, there are, as you point out, that this is a plan that does not deal with the actual massive contradiction at the heart of republicanism, which is a party whose base is largely working class and their donor class is corporatist and they have they've trump was able to obscure that contradiction through just being oblivating bigot with like real messaging power and it's not

obvious that anyone else can do that and because he, yeah, he was a self-funder, which is partly why he was able to do that. Well, he was a fake self-funder. He was the billionaire. So he said, I'm not going to be in, he's a fake billionaire, right? But he was able to say, I'm not in the thrall of donors

because I don't have any, I don't need them. Now, of course, he had plenty of donors, but that was his message. A serious version of this memo would wrestle with the contradiction between building your margins with working class non-white voters

and a lot of the very racist rhetoric that is taking place at the top of the party. with the contradiction between building your margins with working class non-white voters and a lot of the very racist rhetoric that is taking place at the top of the party. There is a larger reform project than just putting in some anti-big tech tweets with the traditional racism. While Trump made gains, there is a ceiling on that with the way in which the party is currently and sort of actively perceived. And the way they're going to handle that is, I imagine, what they did at the Republican Convention in 2020, which is look at these Black Americans, Latino Americans who are prominent members of the Republican Party, and we will put these Americans on display to show that we are not racist or, you know, in fact,

and that the real problem is just wokeness in America, right? Like that's going to be their argument on that part. And then they're going to show sort of increasing margins that they had in 2020 among some black Americans and especially Latino Americans. So that's going to be their play for that. But the donor thing, I think, is really interesting because, you know, Jim Banks says in this memo, Eli Lilly, the big drug company, blacklisted him because he tried to overturn the election. And what he did is use that to his advantage. He and he suggests send, you know, the following message from Republicans. He should say, I'm asking for small donations so I can continue to represent your values, not the values of liberal multinational corporations. And he told Republicans to advertise how much corporate cash their opponent, their Democratic opponents received. So you can see, too, where like like, yeah, it's good that Eli Lilly, of course, blacklisted him after trying to overturn the election.

But like who's going to really if he wants to be against Eli Lilly, massive drug company, multinational corporation, that's going to be pretty popular. People don't like drug companies. They don't love big multinational corporations. I mean, it's interesting because I would imagine Eli Lilly is by far the largest employer in his district. It's the largest employer in the state of Indiana. And I mean, that is, we've seen that shift over time as sort of all politics has become nationalized, where even being supportive of unpopular industries within your state is bad politics. The question here for Republicans is, do they have the grassroots fundraising muscle to make up for the very large super PAC and 501c4 contributions from

billionaires and corporations that fund the party and keep the two parties in balance from a fundraising perspective. You are also, I think, seeing a little bit of generational shift that happened in the party, both in one iteration in 2008 and another iteration in 2016, where a younger generation of Democrats forswore lobbyist contributions and corporate PACs, and others, largely the Clintons, Hillary Clinton, both in 08 and 16, sort of did not want to take on that sort of reformist mantle when it came to contributions, and therefore raised less grassroots money than Obama in 08 and Sanders in 16.

And McConnell is just swimming in the trough of every gross special interest in Washington. And Kevin McCarthy is as well. And then you have this younger group of people who've seen the power of, if you say you're against these corporate donations, these lobbyist donations, you will raise more money online

than you would just raise from the corporations to begin with. Also, there's a middle path that they can take here, right? You could swear off corporate donations from big blue chip, very recognizable companies and big tech companies and then go for small dollar donations and still have the conservative billionaires who are all, you know, in the shadows, the Sheldon Adelson's and stuff like that fund a lot of the Republican Party. So you can still have really rich donors who just happen to be right wing

assholes who the base loves fund the party while you tell all the like, you know, other corporations that most Americans know to go fuck off and say, Oh, they're in the pocket that they're, they're in the pockets of Democrats. I think getting Sheldon Adelson to fund the Republican party would be quite a feat since he died. Oh, Democrats. I think getting Sheldon Adelson to fund the Republican Party would be quite a feat.

Since he died. Oh, that's right. I do that all the time. Whatever, whatever Sheldon Adelson's of the world are still breathing. Yes. I guess the wife is still funding it. Right. There was a good example of this happening this week. In fact, just Wednesday night, of this happening this week, in fact, just Wednesday night, the Georgia House voted to take away a tax break for Delta to punish them for speaking up against the voter suppression law. Now, it died then in the Georgia Senate. The Republicans in the Georgia Senate didn't want to carry through on this, but the Georgia House decided to do this purely to punish Delta. And one of the lawmakers said, quote, you don't feed a dog that bites your hand, And one of the lawmakers said, quote, you don't feed a dog that bites your hand, which is just like it's not just like sort of this new working class populism from the Republican Party. That's just like fascism now. Right. Like the Republican Party is basically just going to say, if you're not with us, if you don't do us favors, we're going to use our power to punish you in any way that we can.

It is like this all comes down to the Trump, the Jim Banks, whoever you may be. Your memo was all performative populism is all we're saying. Because ultimately, like everyone, like Josh Hawley included, like we are against big tech. Like we're going to take on big tech because they're woke and they cancel us and shadow banning, blah, blah, blah. But also we want to cut the living shit out of Mark Zuckerberg's Texas. That's not a coherent message. And that is one that Democrats can drive a truck through. And so I think the point is we

have to remember to do that, right? Like we have to keep the frame against them in, you know, the realm of they are for the wealthy. They are for big corporations. Look at their policy. Look what they fight for. Look at Mitch McConnell. He's still running the party. He's still the most powerful person in the party who's elected. And all he wants is to cut taxes for rich people and gut Medicare and gut health care. That's what's on his agenda. And we have to keep up that message and not sort of get lost in all of the details because they are going to be trying to flip this on its

head. Yeah. All right. Speaking of working class heroes, let's talk about Matt Gaetz. You might remember the man described as Trump's best buddy in Congress from such moments as kicking the father of a Parkland victim out of a congressional hearing, bringing a Holocaust denier as his guest to the State of the Union, appearing on InfoWars, trying to overturn the last election, and blaming the ensuing insurrection on Antifa. Well, on Tuesday night, shortly after Axios reported that Gates was telling people he might not run for re-election, the New York Times reported that in the final months of the Trump administration, the Justice Department opened an investigation into Gates that is

still going on today about whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him in violation of federal sex trafficking laws. So very serious charges, very serious crime. We have no idea what the investigation will find. But believe it or not, story gets even crazier when Gates goes on a publicity tour to deny the charges, which includes the claim that he and his family have been victims of an extortion scheme involving a former DOJ official seeking $25 million to make the sex crimes investigation go away. And that his father has been cooperating with the FBI to catch the culprits. Part of this unfolded during a truly bizarre Tucker Carlson interview. Here's a clip. It is a horrible allegation and it is a lie. The New York Times is running a story

that I have traveled with a 17 year old woman and that is verifiably false. People can look at my travel records and see that that is not the case. I'm not the only person on screen right now who's been falsely accused of a terrible sex act. You were accused of something that you did not do, and so you know what this feels like. You know the pain it can bring to your family, and you know how it just puts people on defense when you're accused of something so salacious and awful. I only know what I've read in the New York Times. I can say that actually you and I went to dinner

about two years ago. Your wife was there and I brought a friend of mine. You'll remember her. You know, again, I really saw this as a deeply troubling challenge for my family on March 16th when people were, you know, talking about a minor and that there were pictures of me with child prostitutes. That's obviously false. There will be no such pictures because no such thing happened. But really on March 16th was when this got going from the extortion standpoint. If you just saw our Matt Gaetz interview, that was one of the weirdest interviews I've ever conducted. I'm not really sure where to begin here.

What's your reaction to this story? I'm kind of mad about it. And here's why. There's just not time to go down every rabbit hole to learn about everything. And Matt Gates is one of those things I just decided not to learn about. Like I was aware of his existence. I knew he was a MAGA buffoon, seemed like a fraud. Like I was aware of his existence.

I knew he was a MAGA buffoon, seemed like a fraud, but I didn't really dig deep into him until we decided to put this on the pot agenda. And I read all the stories. Oh no. Holy shit. Like it is, it is.

I don't see the bulletin board in your background with a lot of red. It's not even conspiracy. It's just, that's what you need. No, that's what you need no that's what you need to just keep up with all the different twists and turns and the like apparently the extortion scheme also involved like the the people that that uh approached the gates's saying that the 25 million dollars would be um for information regarding the whereabouts of robert levinson who's a former fbi agent daa official who had been captured by the Iranians and presumed dead.

Like there's so many different twists and turns to this story. It's bizarre. I was just shocked to learn so much about Matt Gates, like that he created an entire internet controversy by putting quasi salacious comments on Tiffany Trump's Instagram page. He was dating a 21 year old who posted a lot of photos. And there was some pretty amazing texts that somehow ended up in the press from his aides to him about what was on that

Instagram page, the gas mask. I mean, it is a wild thing. And that he is basically the son of a like Jeb Bush establishment Republican, former Florida State Senate president. I mean, it is. Matt Fuller at the Daily Beast wrote a story today and he said he's been sort of wanting to write this story for years about how other Republicans have always sort of looked askance at Gates and worried about his alcohol use,

alleged drug use, the women he's been with. Like, so these were like, I mean, I think the point of the story to me at least is that the Republican party continues to tolerate people and not just tolerate, but embrace and elevate, right. People who are just the fucking scum of the earth. Yeah.

And it is, and it's not tolerate for the purpose of this person is an effective legislator in the way that like sports teams will keep people on the roster who are terrible people because they're good at their job. It is actually that being a terrible person are the exact skills you need to rise to fame in today's Republican party. So he's not, he's not a terrible person who happens to be a powerful Republican. He's a powerful Republican because he's a terrible person. And that is sort of played itself out when you read about everything he's done. But this entire situation, as you point out, we have no idea what is actually happening.

There are some things that I think worth sort of trying to unpack from this from based on what we know from news reports. The extortion scheme is, if it is true, and we obviously do not know that, is not what the investigation about. It is like, I think you said this to me in a text, it's like a C-plot to the story. He was under investigation for sex trafficking. Someone found out about it and then tried to extort him. The fact that he is being extorted is not the reason why he's being investigated. He's being extorted because he was being investigated already for something, which he's didn't really deny.

Like, it seems like. Yeah. I think the point is the extortion scheme part, if true in no way, exonerates him from the larger investigation into sex trafficking. That is the important point. And the New York times reporters that wrote the story made that point.

The Washington post has confirmed that point. So like the investigation has been going on for quite a while beyond the extortion scheme, the alleged extortion scheme, part of this story. And again, just because, you know, his first instinct would probably be like, oh, that's the deep states after me. The investigation started in the Trump administration. Bill Barr knew about it. The president at the time, Donald Trump, was briefed on it. And Bill Barr and everyone let it keep going.

So this was not some partisan witch hunt against Matt Gaetz, whatever it comes up with. Well, I mean, in fairness, are there two people who are more hands-off in a political investigation than Donald Trump and Bill Barr? I mean, they would never just interfere. Like the fact that-

Also, I just want to say too, like I'm no lawyer, never went to law school. Apparently Matt Gaetz is a lawyer. I think he's his own lawyer. But like, I don't know if I would be giving a client of mine advice who's under investigation for sex trafficking

to just start tweeting about whatever and going on tucker carlson and also like volunteering more potential crimes he's like some people say there might be pictures of me with child prostitutes that's crazy too like just volunteering stuff on tucker trying to rope tucker into the whole thing was also i have to say of all the serious things in this story very funny to watch tucker carlson do his sort of stupid confused face, but this time really mean it as he's talking about Tucker being at a dinner with him and Tucker's been accused of a sex crime himself once. And even Tucker Carlson, who was reportedly furious about this interview

after the fact, has to throw him onto the bus after commercial and say, yeah, that was pretty crazy. If we were to find out a week from now that Tucker Carlson is now under federal investigation for murdering a Booker, I would not be surprised because that whole time he has this look on his face. Like, how did this happen? He's like,

Tucker, you met her at that dinner. We went to him and he's like, I want to be very clear. I have no recollection of what you're talking about. I've never had dinner with you. I don't really have dinner. I stopped eating at three.

The first time I've ever met you, Congressman. Anyway, wild story. I just say one thing that is funny about it is there are all these stories. There's one in Politico. That's like Gates leans into the Trump playbook for scandal and crime management.

And it's, let's like, stop, read your lead, pause, think about it for a second. Do you think one of the differences between why certain things would work for Trump and they may not work for Matt Gaetz is the Department of Justice has a actual legal opinion

that says Trump can't be indicted. So all he has to do is go on TV and convince Fox News viewers to convince their elected representatives not to remove him from office while Matt Gaetz is actually building a body of evidence can be used against him by prosecutors and a jury who are not necessarily members of Congress. It's like, yeah, it's not the same thing. They aren't the same situations and it may have worked for Trump, but it's fucking insane for Matt Gaetz to do it. Sadly, I do not think he's going to be getting that Newsmax job that he was thinking of taking instead of running for Congress. So that is unfortunate for Matt Gaetz. All right.

In addition to not getting that coveted job at Newsmax, Matt Gaetz also did not make Pod Save America's first ever March Badness Tournament. But here to tell us who made the fascist four and hash out the championship game, our own Tommy Vitor. Thanks for having me, John and Dan. John, thanks for stepping on my joke for later. But welcome back to Crooked Media's first and probably final March badness tournament. In case you didn't listen to Monday's pod, you don't know what the hell we're talking about. We rank the eight worst Republicans in

the country, the awful eight, and then we have Lovett and Favreau vote on who advances to the fascist four. Today, John and Dan will pick two god-awful people to compete in the national championship. You ready? I want everyone who's just listening to this podcast and not watching it on video. Tommy is in the office standing up holding a microphone. You guys, I have a coffee table on top of a desk with three shoeboxes to make this work. So good stuff. Very real here. Very real. It's also amazing that in it's, we should know that your backdrop is cut out pieces of paper taped onto a wall in 2021. Yeah. Dan, this is super

Tuesday for you. That was the last time we were all in the office. How dark is that? It is Chernobyl in here. It is, it is Pompeii. It is so funny. How dark is that? Very sad. It is Chernobyl in here. It is Pompeii. It is a time warp. Okay, so again, this is not a serious competition. We're just trying to make you laugh, so please don't yell at us on Twitter. Good luck with that. Tommy, here's who made it into the awful eight.

The eighth seed was Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. The seventh seed was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The sixth seed was cocaine Mitch McConnell. Five seed, Senator Cancun Ted Cruz. sixth seed was cocaine Mitch McConnell. Five seed, Senator Cancun Ted Cruz. Four seed was Tucker Carlson. The three seed was unemployed white nationalist Stephen Miller. The two seed was George W. Bush. The one seed was Donald Trump. So Dan, what I've learned since Monday is that a lot of people are suffering from recency bias and have forgotten how bad George Bush is. And as John mentioned earlier, Matt Geitz was a glaring omission from this tournament. Do you have any hot takes on the awful eight before we get to

your fascist four vote? I thought you did a great job. I'm 100% with you on George W. Bush. Everything bad that has happened in the 21st century can be traced back to George W. Bush, Donald Trump, the economic crisis, which is also George W. Bush's fault. George W. Bush should have succeeded. But as we know from March Madness, the best team doesn't always win. Sometimes there's upset. John, Dan's standing for Ted Cruz. How do you feel about that? I just want to say something about this.

You don't pick your bracket based on which team has had a historically excellent basketball program. You pick it based on who's been the biggest threat that season. And in the case of George W. Bush versus Ted Cruz, it's Ted Cruz. Who's George W. Bush hurting at this point? He's painting some pictures. He's giving Michelle Obama some mints. He's releasing statements that obliquely criticize insurrection, shit like that. He ain't hurting

anyone now. Ted Cruz is a threat. He could be the Republican nominee in 2024. That's why I picked him. Is that the judge? Is that our standard here? I feel like maybe that's my standard. That's how I'm looking at this tournament. Dan, none of this makes sense. I thought it was who's the worst person. I was like, who's the worst person or who's done the worst things? Your mistake was thinking this is well thought through. Favreau's point is, you know, you go to the brackets with the Republicans you have, not the ones you wish you had. So, okay. But let me get to the point here. So after votes from Lovett, Favreau, and like 25,000 people on Twitter, including whoever runs Ted Cruz's Twitter account, the fascist four is, out of the West,

Mark Zuckerberg. In the East, Tucker Carlson. In the South, Ted Cruz. In the Midwest, Mitch McConnell. So our first fascist four matchup is Mark Zuckerberg versus Tucker Carlson. So the question for you guys is, who is the Gonzaga of this matchup? Is it Zuck with his global platform that supercharged the spread of fake news and QAnon? Or is it Tucker Carlson, who radicalized millions of boomers who then share Tucker's clips on Facebook? Dan, you go first. You go first, since I've been talking about this for a couple episodes now. I think this is about as obvious as it can be. Four to five million people watch Tucker Carlson on any given night. Billions of people around the world are on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg is not just the Gonzaga of this tournament. He is the 1991 UNLV running rebels of college basketball. Wow. CBT. Most dominant team in history by far. This isn't even close. Tucker Carlson, very, very bad. Had a good season. Went as far as he could go, but he is outmatched by the tremendous talent

of terribleness of the Mark Zuckerberg team. Wow. John, do you want to embrace debate? Do you think that Zuck can avenge Adam Morrison? That's a deep cut for the Gonzaga fans out there. What do you think? I'm going to go with, this is a matchup that's sort of intention versus impact right

obviously mark zuckerberg like dan is correct there's there's more people that are on facebook um but um but intention wise like tucker carlson has a path to becoming the 2024 republican nominee i believe and if he is successful there is a chance he could become a more dangerous donald trump i think he is more dangerous than even Mark Zuckerberg, because I think Mark Zuckerberg is kind of goofy and has no fuck idea what he's doing half the time. And, you know, you can sit down, he can sit down with a bunch of Republican strategists and Ben Shapiro, and they can convince him of one thing. And then a bunch of establishment people can convince him of something else. I don't think he knows what the fuck he's doing. I think he's just sort of a sad goofball who let everything get out of control.

Tucker Carlson, he knows exactly what he's doing and he is very dangerous to this country, I think. So I'm going to go with Tucker here. Can I can I push back on that briefly? Please. Yeah, sure. So, yes, it is possible that Tucker Carlson will be the 2024 Republican nominee. Not if Matt Gaetz has anything to do about it, but... Fair point. But I will say that Mark Zuckerberg has greater control over whether Tucker Carlson is a 2024 Republican nominee than Tucker Carlson does. And for that reason, you have to pick Mark Zuckerberg.

Wow. Well, once again, we are laying bare the fact that I didn't think of a tiebreaker mechanism that we can do live. So we're going to have to throw this one to the people for their votes. Right? We're all about engagement here. This is great. This is a win for Elijah. This is a win for our social team. This is a win for everybody. So our second fascist four game is Ted Cruz versus Mitch McConnell. Again, Ted Cruz is such a

desperate troll that he voted for himself to advance in this tournament in the Twitter poll that I created. That is almost as sad as endorsing Donald Trump after he accuses your father of killing JFK. Now, Dan, as you know, Mitch McConnell is the Dikembe Mutombo of the U.S. Senate. He just swats everything. The rumor mill in Kentucky is that Mitch was cleaning the glass for a variety of reasons. So again, he's subjected to a lot of PED testing. But where do you guys land on this one? Mitch McConnell versus Ted Cruz? Well, first, I will be forever banned from any sort of Georgetown basketball game

where we ever do return to sporting events if I do not point out that it is horribly offensive that Dikembe Mutombo and Mitch McConnell be using the same sentence. Although I do understand the point of the sports metaphor you were using, but I think it has to be Mitch McConnell. Okay. And without a question, Ted Cruz, when it comes to terribleness,

Ted Cruz is like that Butler team that made it to the final four. He doesn't have a lot of natural talent, but he works really hard at being an asshole. Mitch mcconnell just that doesn't even have to work for he just shows up on the court laces up his shoes and is just an asshole ted cruz has got to work he's practicing in the mirror as we know from every interview he does he's practicing saying asshole things in the mirror i promise you he wrote 17 versions of that very sad pod save America tweet just to try to get it right. He is the typical like Bill Raftery in the gym, gym rat sort of guy. But Mitch McConnell's got the talent to blow him out of the water. Yeah. He called us Marxist, which is funny for all the people who call us

neolibs. Yeah. Ted Cruz is that Duke schmuck, that kid who used to slap the floor. What was his name? Well, he's probably Grayson Allen, who i think actually looks like of course yes he's grayson allen yeah that is the that is the perfect ted cruz duke basketball metaphor but uh uh what's his face steve wachowski yeah which is the four slapper i believe before the good watch so john sorry your your take here i do not think we're gonna have to pull this one because i think mitch mcconnell is the easy answer here and i think this is like a one seed finally rolling over a worst seed that had a few upsets early on in the tournament this is just it's there's no contest at mitch mcconnell

much more powerful than tent cruise um much more dangerous you gotta give it to me you know this is this is the eye test you know what what I mean? A lot of people want to fall in love with a UCLA or a Michigan, but it's like, look, you've been watching Mitch steamroll people all season. And what are you going

to do? So, OK, so, Dan, we're going to vote on the national championship on Monday. It's going to be Mitch McConnell versus either. You know, I wanted to

get your take on this today. We obviously have some indecision here, but it's going to be Mitch McConnell versus either Zucker Tucker. I mean, do you think that Mitch is such a runaway favorite that he is your champ? I don't, I think he is the favorite in this situation

for some of the reasons that John articulated in his very vehement defense of Mark Zuckerberg's goodness. I was careful. Do not tweet at me that I like Mark Zuckerberg. goodness. They hang out a lot. Do not tweet at me that I like Mark Zuckerberg. John's trying to get invited to the... Elijah, I think I found your social clip to put out on Snapchat. John wants to get invited to the house in Hawaii.

Yeah, right. Maybe cricket media doesn't work out. I'm going to need a job. I think Mitch McConnell is the favorite, but this is a close matchup. I think if we were looking for a recent final two analogy, it's probably that Villanova UNC game where Chris Jenkins hit the three to win it.

These are two very terrible people with very similar talents of terribleness, but I would pick Mitch McConnell as the favorite in that. Wow. Okay. Well, that's exciting. Well,

what I think we'll do here is we'll throw up another poll. We'll let the people decide. And then, you know, we can walk through this again on Monday. But, you know, I think it's been a great tournament. You know, I just want everyone to remember, like these are amateur unpaid athletes. You know, you can't come down too hard on them. So, you know, don't yell at us on Twitter again.

But thanks for playing. Zuck v. Tuck. Zuck v. Tuck. Zuck v. Tuck. That's where we're headed. There we go. Back to you in the studio. Tommy, thank you. Thank you for that.

That was a great one. Thanks for having me. As always. And we'll talk to you on Monday. And everyone else, have a great weekend. Dan, welcome back. And we'll talk to you Monday. Bye, everyone.

Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producers are Jordan Waller, Jazzy Marine, and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yael Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.