Pod Save America - Pod Save America Takes Los Angeles

Episode Date: May 18, 2017

Jon, Jon, Tommy, and Dan talk obstruction of justice and all the rest at the Ace Theater in Downtown LA. Plus Mayor Eric Garcetti joins to discuss the Democratic agenda and the lessons we can draw from success at the local level.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome John, John, Tommy, and Dan from Pod Save America! Hey guys! Hey Los Angeles! Hello! All right. Hey, guys. Hey, Los Angeles. Hello. All right. I love you, Tommy. I love you, too.

I knew that was. That felt like a plant. Guys, so we have a great show. Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, is here. Okay, so we have a great show. Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, is here. Okay, so big week. Awful week. Crazy week. Let's get into it. No, it's actually pretty good.

Information's coming out. We like that. Jim Comey has receipts. Which is great. So we were talking about how to start tonight, and we were going to start with Comey and talk about the meeting and the memos and all that. And then we realized that the day before the Comey story,

there was another story about the president casually divulging classified information to a foreign adversary just during a chat in the Oval Office. So I think we should probably start there. Standard. Was that, I'm getting confused. Was that one where he was joking, where he taped it, where it didn't happen, where it's not a big deal,

or where it's a liberal conspiracy theory? All of the above, I think. At first, it didn't happen. It was fake news. It was disloyal leaking. Haha, just kidding. And he did it on purpose the whole time. It's like, you guys relax.

So, Tommy, you handled classified information when you worked at the National Security Council. What happened here, and how bad was it? So, I think the first thing to know is that a lot of the intel we get is not necessarily collected by the CIA or the NSA or the US. It's collected by partners, the UK, the Mossad in Israel, other liaison services. They do a lot of work. We share intelligence and we do it under sort of unwritten rules that if we give you the intelligence, you can't divulge it to others

without permission. So according to news reports, the Israelis gave us information about a plot to take down airliners by putting bombs in laptops. And they got it from a source, we assume a human source, that they have inside ISIS that is our best source about external plots on ISIS, period. Trump decided to brag about how great his intel is, even though it's not his intelligence service. It's just something someone fucking told him like everything else in the world and he told uh lavrov srj lavrov and kislyak the ambassador to russia all about it does kislyak have a dual role yeah he is he he is thought to be a spy as well uh invite a spy into the oval you share some secrets and so then they go report it back to like a thousand russian goons who can reverse engineer what they learned and could blow the source. So Trump's own staff was so worried about the fact that he divulged this information that they called the NSA and the CIA to warn them.

So we could have gotten the most important source on ISIS plotting killed. Kind of a bad thing. But the bigger problem is like the president of the United States has such poor judgment that he would brag about this stuff in a meeting with an adversary, which should make you worry about basically any conversation he has with anyone. Because I can't imagine anyone worse to just, you know, spout off about intelligence to than the Russian ambassador. So here's my question. Like, the Russians, we all now know, interfered in our election. They launched a cyber attack against the United States. Why did they get a meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office in the first place?

I think that question answers itself. Does anyone know the answer? Putin asked Trump for the favor. It's a favor in return. Putin's like, they're coming to Washington. He's in town. They're meeting with Tillerson, the Secretary of State.

Would you also mind meeting with them in the Oval? And he said, sure. I just... This is the second biggest story this week. It could be like the third or fourth by now. It's barely at the top of the websites. It's fallen down. The info, and first, so the explanations.

First they said, no, the story's not true, right? Completely false. Washington Post story's not true. Which is weird because the Washington Post and the New York Times purposely decided to withhold information because it was so sensitive. So they didn't want to publish it in the paper. So the news media basically had more, they were more careful than Trump was.

Yes. They treated code word level intelligence, which is so secret that it's above top secret. It's literally compartments. You're read into these various code word with special action, whatever, channels of information that are held with tight little circles. with special action, whatever, channels of information that are held with tight little circles. And the Washington Post was more, treated it with more respect than the President of the United States. So, I mean, so it's obviously, it is, we should say it's legal, right,

what the President did, because the President can always declassify information. He can declassify whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He usually goes through a process where the intelligence community reviews all the information, figures out what sources and methods could be jeopardized what the various equities are and then you then you proceed or you don't proceed we've done it a number of times um it just shows incredibly poor judgment on the on the part of the president yeah and well one thing that was interesting is there obviously the trump white house uh leaks constantly leaks to the russians about the russ leaks about leaks. There's also a story about how the White House meeting

where they were all yelling at each other about this was audible to reporters, which was them not protecting information about not protecting information about not protecting information. Until your head explodes. Until your head explodes. But one of the stories said that people on the inside

were saying that they weren't actually allowed to tell the truth about what happened, which is Trump really couldn't leak anything that sensitive and couldn't do it on purpose because he reads too quickly and he's not smart or sort of with it enough to keep up with the information. But they use that as an excuse, like, give him a break. He's not smart enough to know.

He's just a dotty old racist in decline. So that's not good. Second biggest story of the week. Related to that, did you read the story that said the NSC, National Security Council, who would like Trump to read their briefings, have now started inserting his name into more paragraphs because he only reads the parts about him? Yes.

First it was like, more pictures, more charts, more Trump name, double space, 48 font. It just needs to be a glossy headshot that says, don't mention ISIS to the Russians.

Thumbs up. With like an 89% approval rate. Keep up the good work, boss. Nailing it. Sir, we have the latest Rasmussen numbers here. So as the staff is cleaning this mess up, and this is leading all the news reports, the New York Times,

Michael Schmidt at the New York Times reports yesterday at like 5 o'clock that Jim Comey,clock that Jim Comey, our friend Jim Comey, has kept memos of all of his interactions with Donald Trump. Yeah. This is applause for

Jim Comey at a Potsave America show. And I want to be very clear about something. I was right about Jim Comey the whole goddamn time. Love that guy. Very tall. Very, very trustworthy. I challenge anyone to do a research operation on Lovett's tweets.

Dig in. You will find a consistency of a Jim Comey. That's how consistent. The rock-solid integrity of a Jim Comey. So, let's review what happened. Okay.

Sure. On February 13th, Donald Trump's batshit crazy national security advisor, General Michael Flynn, who we now know tonight, this broke like a half hour ago, who Donald Trump knew at the time was under federal investigation. And he was under federal investigation because he was paid by turkey he was a lobbyist for the turkish government and when he was national security advisor he uh delayed an attack on isis because the turkish government wanted him to bad bad so on february 13th uh, Flynn resigns because there was a report that he lied to Vice President Pence about the nature of his conversations with the Russian ambassador that he did during the transition.

So Flynn's gone. The next day, Jim Comey happens to have a meeting in the Oval Office. At the end of the meeting, Trump sends Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General, and Pence out of the office. I have to talk to my friend, Jim. Go get a Coke. Go get a Coke. And he says of Flynn,

I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go. Like he was greasing a Jersey City Councilman. I hope we can look past these OSHA violations. Yes. Fucking clown.

He's the head of the FBI. Do we need a ramp, or do you need this suitcase full of money, Jim Comey? The best now is the staff and some Republicans will say, oh, he was just joking. Because usually when you tell a joke, you're like, okay, I need everyone to leave the room.

I have something really funny that I'm about to tell the FBI director. I would say, in Trump's defense, it doesn't seem like Jeff Sessions or Mike Pence have very good senses of humor. Well, the thing that sucks is Pence and Sessions were outside the Oval Office door being like, why are they laughing?

What's so funny? Sounds like it must have been a really funny joke. So this seems like obstruction of justice. It seems like the president is very clearly impeding an investigation, a federal investigation. Like I said, we know all this because Jim Comey took careful notes about all his interactions with the president. Very smart. That guy loves a memo.

That guy loves a good memo. But by the way, of course he did. And you know why we knew he would take notes? It's because Jim Comey became famous because he got in a huge fight with the Bush White House because he didn't want to renew the warrantless surveillance program under the Bush administration. He rushed to John Ashcroft's side in a hospital room and forced him to stop. The Bush White House denied this, and Jim Comey won the PR war

because he had contemporaneous notes. This was very easy to know and predict. Jim Comey is fantastic. Here's the thing, guys. Here's the thing about Jim Comey you have to understand. The guy bats a fucking thousand he is always two steps ahead

we've always loved pro flowers on this podcast we have always loved pro flowers look what is a book Jim Comey as far as I'm concerned has made like one mistake which was sending a cataclysmic letter that did change the course

of history but you put that aside perfect and you know what's funny a lifetime ago on Monday when we were talking about the fact that Trump was threatening Jim Comey with tapes what we were talking about the fact that Trump was threatening Jim Comey with tapes.

Right. What we were saying was, like, who do you think loses a tape contest? Like Donald Trump, a, you know, a... Someone who puts the word tapes in quotation marks. A jabbering lunatic who can barely string a sentence together and who commits crimes all the time on purpose and by accident and jim comey the most insufferable man in the world uh who sounds like the federalist papers like who's gonna lose that tape battle so love it on that monday podcast we talked about like are we in impeachment territory

right and what we were talking about then was Trump telling Lester Holt, oh, no, I didn't fire him because he treated Hillary badly. I fired him because of Russia, basically. So he did that. He was, of course, intimidating a witness when he threatened Jim Comey with the tapes. And I was saying, like, this feels like, you know, is it obstruction of justice?

Is this grounds for impeachment? And you said, we're not there yet. It's going to feel different when we're in impeachment territory. Does it feel different now? Well, and I said that because obstruction of justice, any impeachment question is a political question. Ultimately. That's why, that's why Bill Clinton gets impeached. I mean, you know, you can argue about the law, but it was a political question. Uh, and I, and I said it would feel different. This feels different. It really does.

And you know how you know it feels different? You know it feels different because some world historic craven cowards in Congress have finally discovered their job descriptions. You know, Jason Chaffetz, Jason Chaffetz discovered that he was in Congress after he decided to quit, finally demanding the memos. Paul Ryan says that it's appropriate for there to be an investigation

and that we get to the bottom of this. Marco Rubio, not there yet. Not disappointing me. Marco fucking Rubio. It may have happened. It may not have happened. Marco fucking Rubio. It may have happened. It may not have happened. Time will tell. It is what it is.

The president's decision is the decision the president has made. Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to turn into a tiny, tiny version of myself and crawl into a wall and hide. It's just reusing stuff now. My best friend is a caterpillar. I sleep in a matchbook. I am tiny. I am spiritually very small.

We good? Keep going? You on the fence? No. Marco Rubio. The worst. The absolute worst we can do. And all those Republicans

who told me in my direct messages, in private, he sparkles. Oh, does he? In private? Because on camera, you can see the torture of him knowing he's exactly what we say he is. He wears it on his face.

At least Paul Ryan has the distancy to have dead fucking eyes. Are you pleased with yourself? Yes. Now, we might have to have a contest here because Dan was ready to go off on paul ryan tonight i've lost and i still think paul ryan is a more of a danger to the republic oh for sure for sure for

sure for sure i wasn't very comfortable with you including paul ryan in your list of heroic republicans that was a mistake for sure so let So let's talk about Paul Ryan first. Yeah. Incompetent fuckstick that he is. So the President of the United States is reported to have badgered the FBI director into dropping an investigation into one of his associates involving Russian hacking the election. What does Paul Ryan do? Does he call for an investigation? No. No, he does not. But he holds a press conference. Is he going to use this press conference to take a stand, to express his outrage? No. His press conference is for pro-growth fucking tax reform. He has a couple of choice quotes that

I've written down about the incident here, the crime, if you will. Quote, it's obvious there are some people out there who want to harm the president. Himself. He wants to. Also, everybody who works with him. Everyone around him. He wants to, quote, reserve judgment. And he wants to hear from Comey why Comey didn't take action at the time when Trump told him to end an investigation. It's Comey's fault. I'd like to know that, too. You know what? Here's one thing I know about my man Jim Comey.

He has a great answer to that question. Yeah, he does. He does. Because Jim Comey's no dummy. End of Comey thought. Something else about Paul Ryan that happened today. So, Washington Post, Adam Entis, breaks a story

a couple hours ago that back in June of 2016, Paul Ryan... Remember that? She couldn't be beaten. Paul Ryan and California's very own Kevin McCarthy, they just... Yeah, boo.

They just came from a meeting with the Ukrainian prime minister who told them that Vladimir Putin had been financing populists all over Eastern Europe in an attempt to disrupt democracy. And Kevin McCarthy said to the assembled Republicans, there's two people I think Putin pays. Dana Rohrabacher, another California representative. Also boo. And Donald Trump.

And everyone laughed because they thought, what a funny joke from Kevin McCarthy. And then Kevin McCarthy said, swear to God. And then our hero, Paul Ryan, said, no leaks. This is how we know we're a real family here. And the reason we know this is because the conversation was recorded. And we heard it all today. How fucking lucky is Kevin McCarthy that the one time in his less than illustrious career that he was right, it's on tape?

So that's Paul Ryan. So here's the good news from the Republicans that, as you said, love it, figured out their job description finally. We now, Paul, Jim Comey has been invited to testify publicly before the Senate Intel Committee. So Richard Burr, the Republican on that committee, said yes. The Judiciary Committee, the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, Grassley, Lindsey Graham,

have subpoenaed or asked for the Comey memos from the FBI. They've asked for the tapes from the White House. And so all the memos are going to come out and we're going to hear from Comey himself. And we do have some Republicans. Mother Jones reported that Justin Amash, Republican from Michigan, was the first Republican congressman to say that Trump's actions could be ground for impeachment. And then, Republican congressman Carlos Curbelo's office called Mother Jones to ask for a correction and say, no, no, no, our congressman was the first one to call for impeachment. So that's, that's pretty good.

That feels good. That's pretty good. But a lot of them are still cowards. And then, so that was the good, the bad. And the ugly was how the right-wing media was handling this. So, Tommy, you watched Fox News for an hour last night. Tell us what you learned. He quit.

And now he works for them. Propaganda works. It's now called The Six. So, this is a... I recommend everyone do this because it was instructive. I know we're all joking about we're in bubbles, but it's garbage TV, so it's not really fun to watch.

Get drunk, watch Fox News. Yeah, have a beer, watch Fox News. Hannity is nuts, right? And he's putting up these graphics about the propaganda media, which is himself. And you expect him to do the things he does, but then he weaves this whole conspiracy theory about an innocent kid that was killed in Washington, and he's

connecting him to WikiLeaks, just like the most crass, disgusting shit you've ever seen in your life. But it's not just the Hannity's of the world that are defending Trump. You turn on this garbage show called The Five. One person on the panel is literally auditioning for the job of press secretary and confirmed it on the record to the Mercury News. It feels like a conflict of interest to me, but what do I know? The rest of them, though, are even worse to the point where someone turned to Jesse Waters, who's like the JV stupider Bill O'Reilly, and said, boy, you're really on message tonight. And he said, well, someone's got to be. This is how they approach their jobs. It's not not news it is full-throated donald trump defense and the the combi issues all the things

we're talking about tonight were barely mentioned yeah no and look i think in a couple weeks from now we're gonna hear like polls and people are gonna say we're gonna be like why is trump's base still with them and it's like well when these people watch if you watch fox if you get your news from breitbart if you get news from info wars if you're listening to hannity on the radio or rush on the radio like it is as if none of this ever happened this week yeah you know jeremy peters at the new york times who's somebody i've disagreed with on twitter on several occasions uh he covers but that's true everyone uh what a great use of time uh but uh he's somebody who has who's like really paying attention to what the conservative media is doing and he made a really good

point about this which is there's stuff that just doesn't exist to them that on Fox News the changing explanations for whether it was the tapes or the conversation with Jim Comey the kind of evolving explanations

that come over the course of a day, they just don't exist. That timeline of change, there's no discussion of it. It's like it never happened. And these are the people who spent two years freaking out about the intel assessment on Benghazi changing over time. And Donald Trump went from saying it was X to, oh, just kidding, it was Y. And they don't give a shit. Right. Yeah. And you know, we were talking about this backstage too, that it's sort of become a cliche like, oh, it's sort of a waste of time to say, imagine if Hillary did it.

And that's true. It does feel kind of like, oh, well, you know, yeah, imagine if Hillary did it. But it's only because our expectations are so fucking low. Like, the hypocrisy that these people have demonstrated

is so expected and so routine that they're so beyond any kind of moral principle that even pointing out that on the opposite foot they'd be saying the opposite thing is now considered sort of trite. No answer there. Nothing to do with it. So that's a bummer.

So we haven't talked about the reaction from the White House and Donald Trump himself. He has not tweeted still unless he has while we've been doing this, but no tweets for like 48 hours. He did give a commencement to the Coast Guard graduates today, in which he said to a bunch of young men and women

who chose to serve their country and risk their lives, quote, no politician in history has been treated worse or more unfairly than me. So one thing that was really interesting about that is actually Nelson Mandela, as a ghost, did appear and punch him in the face. And then he went back,

and he went back to heaven. Back to heaven, yeah. Back to heaven. So that's been Trump's only comment, and then now the White House is releasing statements, and no one in the White House is putting their name on the statements. And so even just basic... Can you imagine that, Dan?

We're trying to shoot down a bad story. We're sitting in lower press figuring out what to do. Now a statement from the Roosevelt Room. No, you sign it. Gibbs, you got this one. No, Dan, you got this one. We're going to do this in an omniscient voice. Just putting background quotes, denying

that we gave classified information to the Russians. Well, I mean, it's the first smart thing they've done. I guess they went around like, who still has credibility? Oh, no one. Yeah. The House does. The building could issue a statement, perhaps.

South Lawn. Now for a statement from the diplomatic room. The best was one of the Trump staffers went on background, as they often do, to the Daily Beast and said, I feel like running down the hallway with a fire extinguisher. And then another one

said, I don't see how Trump isn't completely fucked. So, I think they're doing great. It's a good time to work in the White House right now. Why don't they quit? This is a good question. Because some of them believe that they are

helping to stop worse things from happening. So I think there's two kinds of people right now that are there, right? There are the pathetic, moral idiots, craven buffway buffoons spicer people that have so you know people that have gone full smiegel right they don't they're just they're eating raw fish in the mess they don't recognize they don't recognize themselves in the mirror

they're speaking to themselves all the time like these, these are broken creatures. So you put them aside. Three left over. And then there are the kind of, the adults in the room, some of them are in the cabinet, some of them are still in the White House who genuinely believe that they could leave, but then somebody worse would be there in their stead. And I actually, I, you know,

I don't know what to tell those people because I understand why they're there. And I think that we probably are a little grateful that they're there because as long as things keep going the way they're going and Trump will be undone by his own actions, don't we want the kind of smarter, serious people to protect us from inside? Is that wrong? You know what? I'm sincerely not sure. First month of the administration, I thought the same thing. And I was like, I think it's a hard choice because there's a lot of career officials who served in the Obama administration and then now found themselves in the Trump administration, didn't want to be there. And I thought, you know

what, we need people with the smarts and expertise to stop bad things from happening and maybe they can have influence. That's month one. I think at this point, if you think that what's going on in that White House is bad and dangerous to the country, the best thing you can do for the country is to quit that fucking job and tell everyone what's going on and hopefully bring an end to this. I think there's only...

You have to draw a line somewhere. If what they can do is help kind of roll this snowball down the hill and start the kind of final avalanche. And I think that's right. Yeah. I think you're right. Yeah.

I've changed my mind. Um, straight constant journey with him. So now what were you going to say? I got lost in the snowball metaphor. I mean, like guys we used to work with are still there, right?

Like the head of the NCTC is a holdover, National Counterterrorism Center. They collate and combine to make sure all the right people... If your job is terrorism, stay. Stay. Right? Right. If you're a real expert. But don't try to tell me that you're preventing worse things from happening.

You're enabling a madman. You're enabling a really bad person to continue their... Madman is okay. A lunatic. So tell me, Trump's about to go their life. Bad man. Bad man is okay. Yeah. A lunatic. So tell me, Trump's about to go on his first foreign trip. Great timing.

Leaving the country. How do you think that's going to go? You know, like, when you see the foreign trips on TV, they look cool.

It's like bilateral meetings with foreign heads of state. In practice, it is the most grueling shit you've ever done in your life i don't know it's pretty cool it's pretty cool well like 10 europe like 10 day trip you have two or three nights where you just literally don't go to sleep and the stakes couldn't possibly be higher and in this case trump's starting in saudi arabia he's giving

a speech on his vision for islam which i'm sure will be great. Written by Stephen fucking Miller. B plus Santa Monica fascist, Stephen Miller. I thought it was C. I thought we downgraded him to C now. C plus. Yeah, I'm sure. The Arab world is waiting with bated breath to see what Stephen Miller thinks.

Then he goes to Israel because there's no challenging politics there for meetings with Netanyahu and Abbas. Then he goes to Brussels for a meeting with NATO, and they're previewing that he might say, well, we might pull out of NATO, because they're not paying any money. Then he goes to a G7.

So he has nine days to fuck up the whole world. And he's the most bitter. He doesn't have his little TiVo. He's not going to be able to watch Fox and Friends. I hope they didn't turn international roaming on his phone so he just doesn't see anything. Do you think the folks at NATO were like, well, we really need the U.S. military,

but we don't have to meet with Trump for the next four years? There's a story about how the NATO planners were asking all the leaders to keep their speeches to between two and four minutes for Trump. They're preparing preparing for Trump, because he can't listen to anything more. It's the whole world now. You know, we're ruining everything. This is a very dark time, obviously, but if you want to give yourself a little treat, remember that all these craven goons who have been helping... And when you finish... That's a freebie, Sherry. When you finish that's a freebie Sherry when you finish the berries

you can close your eyes and imagine that all these craven goons who have backed Trump are going to be trapped on Air Force One with him for days

and he hates them all and blames them all and is losing his shit and his administration is falling apart and there's nowhere to run we've all been on that plane it's one hallway there's gonna there's the conference room there's the staff area there's the

press nobody's gonna want to go there steve because all that's coming from back there are just shouting questions about obstruction of justice at the front of the plane is donald fucking trump and then sitting there quietly will be Sean Spicer eating the trout he found. Trying not to go in the bathroom after Steve Bannon. Just trying not to. Kelly Ann Conway jumped from a plane today.

I regret nothing. Fuck your pair of shoes. Actually, we won because Hillary falls. I regret nothing. Fuck your pair of shoes. On that note. Actually, we won because Hillary... False. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way.

All right. Without further ado, Mayor Garcetti. How you doing, everybody? That's L.A. There you go. Thanks for coming. My pleasure. Look at this audience.

I know. I can't see what any of you look like, but you sound amazing. So let's start with the news of the week. Have you been paying attention to the news this week? Yeah, I just came back 1.30 this morning from Washington, D.C. Wonderful place. And let me say, it's good to be back in America. Thank you.

So if it turns out that the conversation between Trump and Comey, as reported by Comey in his memos, if that turns out to be true, what do you think? Do you think this is grounds for impeachment? Do you think this is obstruction of justice? Where do we go from here? Well, how crazy is it that Trump doesn't have the tapes but Putin is offering them up? That this is this week where it's so surreal that it's insane in the membrane. It is something that is so out there. We've gone past what we expected to see.

I was there Monday, and the big news was, of course, the leak. That would be like a four-month story. And already people have forgotten that because of the second. We almost forgot about the leak tonight. It was crazy. I mean, look, all kidding aside, I think all officials in Washington, Republican or Democratic,

have a responsibility to get to the bottom of this, to actually chase the facts and find the truth. And it's absolutely crazy that, I mean, even Nixon knew not to take on the CIA and FBI at the same time, that, you know, use one against not to take on the CIA and FBI at the same time, that, you know, use one against the other. But here you have somebody who has gone fundamentally against our institutions. And it's a moment when Republican members, I never thought I'd say this,

but you have like Jason Chaffetz and you've got John McCain. I mean, they're like my freaking heroes this week, right? They're actually doing their job. We're going to fight on other things next week, but they're doing their job as Americans first. And follow the evidence. Get the truth, whatever it leads us to. That's the most important thing. And we need to see the Comey memo, and I think we need to have him testify as soon as possible. Are you worried that the coverage of all this is blocking out the sun, and we can't talk about anything else? How much do you think this is, you know, it's blocking out the sun and we can't talk about anything else. Like, are you, you know, how much do you think this is hurting sort of like democratic efforts to talk about something else, like a positive agenda? I'm very worried because if it was a trap, it's been perfectly laid. I mean, we spend, I tell my friends, spend like 10 minutes a day

yelling at your TV and then get back to work because we've got folks that are sleeping in tents a couple blocks away from here, if you believe in women's rights, and there was 750,000 of us that came out to the streets of L.A. a couple months ago. Get out there and help a woman in a tent who's a survivor of domestic violence

get to the Downtown Women's Center a few blocks away. We're spending so much time that the things that we need to be doing that existed before November and maybe are even more under threat now require us to not spend our days playing defense. And I love L.A. because we're not just playing defense. We're standing up for our values. We are absolutely on offense here in L.A. for immigrants, for women, for LGBT community, for the environment, and just for jobs and mainstream things that Democrats need to start talking about again, and we've somehow forgotten how to.

So, Mr. Mayor, one of the things we hear a lot from people is that they're trying to stay sane in the Trump era. And when you go to Washington, where you just came from, it feels like a funeral. You know, Democrats walk around with their heads hung low, and they're depressed, and it's like, then you talk to people out in states and mayors like yourself, and you seem hopeful, and you feel like you're ready to work and ready to do something about what's happening. What should we steal from you? What hope should we take from you? What are you doing every day that you think is helping improve things while Washington is depressed? So November was depressing for all of us, but that was at the national level.

And let me tell you, November and we had election March. In those two elections, this city passed the two largest initiatives to combat homelessness in this country's history, passed the largest investment in transportation, infrastructure, and public transit in the nation's history times two, Investment in transportation, infrastructure, and public transit in the nation's history times two. Invested in community colleges, which we're making free in Los Angeles, and to expand access to parks. That's five votes where people said, please, take my resources. And people think of California as this liberal place. You need a two-thirds vote to get a tax pass here from the people.

And we did that. So I keep telling people, don't cede the power you have before you exercise it. They want us to feel powerless. They want us to be fringed. They want us to be just pissed off, pessimistic, and paralyzed. Actually get up and see what we have done. And I think it's really beautiful here in Los Angeles. And I talk to mayors all the time around the country. Pete Buttigieg, who's in South Bend, was here. He's a great friend. Friend of the pod. Absolutely.

Friend of the pod. Was there first. He was here doing Chelsea Handler. I don't know. Maybe he's gone to TV now. Just saying. But he and Michael Hancock in Denver, and I think about Mitch Landrieu. I mean, there's mayors.

That November, $230 billion of infrastructure stuff passed on the same election night that Donald Trump was elected. So they're talking about a trillion dollars in D.C. But meanwhile, $230 billion, a quarter of that was passed in a single night by America's cities. So America's cities are not just the resistance. We embody the persistence of our ideals and the embodiment of action, which Washington seems incapable of unless it's backwards. Good answer. So we're doing okay in the cities.

We have lost the Congress, the Senate, the White House, most of the state legislatures, most of the governorships. I've been so busy with stuff here in LA I didn't even know. No, it's really sad out there. You should check it out. It's so depressing. It'll bring you down, but we have to see it.

So one criticism you hear of Democrats is, okay, we've got these enclaves in the cities. We're doing really well in urban places and cosmopolitan places, but we have this problem outside of that, and it's a problem building a governing coalition. What do you say to that? What do you see as a kind of way forward for Democrats that doesn't involve abandoning sort of the cities and the core constituencies that we have now, but that speaks to a broader American audience? There are so many false dichotomies out there right now, like choose between identity politics and good jobs. Like, you know, you're either a Clintonite or a Bernie crat. I mean, these things also come down to that we live these coastal existences

that are totally disconnected from the heartland. I would offer that Los Angeles is the heartland. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. Any Valley boys and girls here? Valley? Yeah. So now I'll say the depressing thing about it. So when I was growing up, we had a GM car plant that shut down.

In this city, we've had Fortune 500 companies pack up and leave. So, we know what that feels like. And there are people, by the way, in coal country named Chin and Dominguez. And we've got Smiths and Millers, you know, Indiana folks settled Pasadena. Long Beach was like a Midwest enclave. We are the face of this country. Yes, it's true we have a few movie stars that are here and we have a few space executives, but most of us aren't.

And as proud as we are of them, I think that we have to get back to saying Americans have the same concerns. There are people in L.A. swimming in debt, trying to find housing that they can afford, looking for an opportunity for a good school for their kids, who want to be able to have health care. And here in L.A., we had 1.5 million people benefit from Obamacare.

1.5 million. So it's really important for us as progressives, as Democrats, as independents, even Republican friends to say there isn't this division out there. And cities are so critical. I always say the Port of L.A., for instance, 43% of the goods that come into America come through the Port of LA. So I can go to that deeply red district in the middle of Missouri and tell them, hey, there's 9,000 jobs that come from the Port of LA. We need to work together. We want to return some of our tax dollars to modernize that port, create jobs, but it's going to be good for you too, and stop letting these false dichotomies divide us.

Mr. Mayor, I was wondering what, if you could tell the audience what you were doing and what cities can and should be doing to fight back against Trump's, Trump administration's efforts to target undocumented people. There's a lot of fear going out there among people. You know, what are you doing? What should our listeners ask their mayors to do? So tell them to stand up, tell them to defend their immigrants, and to make the arguments about why immigrants are so critical to the safety of your city, to the strength of your economy, and to the fabric of your families. I often frame this, I'm the grandson of a dreamer, right? My grandfather, Salvador, came here from Mexico during the revolution. He was a one-year-old baby,

literally carried over the border in his mother's arms. And so when I hear the Secretary of Homeland Security saying, we want to take the kids at the border and put them into foster care so that it will disincentivize mothers who are coming from Central America. It's like, can we find our humanity first? That was my great-grandmother. She was fleeing war. She was trying to save her son's life. And so we have to tell our stories that this town is 61% either immigrant, foreign-born, or the children of foreign-born, 40% plus immigrants. It is the strength of our economy. 61% of all of our main street businesses are started by immigrants. And we will never have, and other mayors should never let their police department be an immigration deportation force. It never will be in LA.

It hasn't been. Mostly because it's the right thing to do, but also because it's the best thing for public safety. I mean, the guy who enacted that policy in LA was a police chief named Daryl Gates. He was not a progressive. He was right wing, but even he understood if you don't have trust in your community, you can't police it. Today's raids were a perfect example. There was a multi-jurisdictional raid against MS-13, something the president seems to be obsessed about. By the way, that started two and a half years ago, the planning under the Obama administration. It's with LAPD and others to get really dangerous criminals out of here. And the police chief this morning told me, we couldn't have done that if the immigrant community didn't trust us. Because the intelligence

that we gathered about who the people are, who are the murderers, the rapists, the people preying on our city, came from folks who were willing to talk to us. And this year we've seen a 20% decline in the Latino community in reports of sexual assaults, in domestic violence, and people talking to our cops. That's bad for all of us. So it is really on the cities to stand up and tell the American story that immigrants make us great. Our face in Los Angeles is the face of the world today and the face of this country tomorrow, and we are not backing down one bit. So one thing we've seen is Jeff Sessions and the administration more generally try to threaten cities that take this position. Yeah, we're not,

we don't like Jeff Sessions here. Jeff Sessions. Not a fan. In fact, you know, this has been a week in which he's put forward, actually, incredibly important policy that's been swamped by the fact that the president is a dotty old racist obstructing justice. He may suffer from that policy. Yeah. Yeah, President Trump faces a mandatory minimum. That'd be nice. Saying earlier that if they invoke the 25th Amendment while Donald Trump is in Saudi Arabia and he's arrested on the tarmac,

that's the full banana republic, but which I want to start calling the full banana. So just get that going. It's not going to happen. You know the mayor is still here right hi mr mayor he'll feel good about himself back to my question which these guys interrupted me from uh sanctuary cities uh freedom cities people are trying to call them uh sessions is trying to threaten cities into not doing this uh what is your response to that it's totally unconstitutional

and this is going to come back to haunt them. It wasn't even, I love it when they attack, when we won the sanctuary city's decision that came down a couple of weeks ago, it wasn't that it was forum shopping. The ninth circuit, they started bashing the ninth circuit court of appeals, a great court out here. It was actually a decision that chief justice Roberts gave against Obamacare. Remember when it was the attempt to mandate that Medicaid has to be a part of Obamacare and Remember when it was an attempt to mandate that Medicaid has to be a part of Obamacare and states, for some reason, didn't want to give more health care to their people in certain areas. And they said you cannot put a fiscal gun to the head of states and localities simply because you don't like their policies. The 10th Amendment, that violates it.

And so they're just plain wrong. I mean, that's what makes this so laughable. We can see that these things are unconstitutional. We can see that they're illegal. Usually there's two or three strong legal arguments as to why, but they were still pursuing these. And the idea that, you know, if you look at Sanctuary City's report that came out, they're safer, they have lower unemployment, and they have more economic prosperity. And you'd think we would be the people most concerned about our own public safety, but somehow people who spend no time here are going to dictate to us what makes us safer.

And my worry is their policies are actually making us less safe. What Attorney General Sessions wants to do is now instead of going after the truly dangerous criminals, he wants to take a net, which is very small, 400 ICE officers, and throw it into this ocean of 2 million undocumented residents. And whoever he catches is a criminal, take them away. Well, while you're doing that, that net is not catching the people we actually need to. It's actually making us less safe for you not to go after that child molester or that murderer, because you're going after grandma, because you just found her and it

was easy. And when there's two million people, don't we need this president and this Congress to do what Ronald Reagan did and to have a path towards citizenship, more citizens, not more criminals. That would make America great again. So one of the criticisms of Hillary's campaign in 2016 was that she didn't have a sharp enough economic message and it didn't break through enough. How do you think going forward in 2018, 2020 and beyond, what do you think the Democrats' economic message should be? And how do you get that message out in a media environment

where everything revolves around Trump all the time? The defining issue of our time is economic insecurity. I mean, I love being a mayor because I don't have to learn that from somebody. I hear that in the grocery aisle. I hear that when I have my office hours, when I knock on doors. People are really economically insecure. This exciting future that we've embraced isn't so exciting for a lot of people because they wonder if they have a place in it. And I think Democrats

have to speak to that. We have to say that we do have a plan for jobs that are middle class jobs. I mean, in cities and other parts of America, it's never been more exciting to be part of the creative class. And there's all this great new technology and you can get your food ordered with your pointer and your dry cleaning picked up. And there's this huge ballooning service class that's barely hanging on. Here in Los Angeles, we've addressed that by raising the minimum wage,

being the largest city in America, to raise it to $15 an hour, which is very proud that we did. But that middle class, that middle class is getting squeezed out. So I think there actually are answers to this. I alluded to it earlier, but when voters passed Measure M, class, that middle class is getting squeezed out. So I think there actually are answers to this. I alluded to it earlier, but when voters passed Measure M, this is a $120 billion infrastructure package. Just to picture it, it's 15 new rapid transit lines that we're going to build or extend,

fix the freeways, pave the local streets. We can now go to somebody who doesn't have a college degree, whose parents maybe were on the bomber line in South LA, and now they can actually work on the Crenshaw line. And they can have not just three or four years of a middle-class existence, but a career. And we can start with the high schools and the community colleges. And if Democrats don't speak to that economic insecurity

and the great stabilizers, which to me are education, healthcare, and housing, we're just going to be out there. I mean, look at the French. The Socialist Party is dead as we know it. Labour in the UK is like, okay, well, we lost, let's get even more shrill. We need to stand up for our values,

and in LA we are doing it as strong as anywhere in the country, but we're walking and chewing gum. We actually have a proactive agenda for jobs, for economic stability. And that's what Democrats have to come back to and think about an agenda for the American people before we get obsessed with an agenda for the Democratic Party. So I agree with all of that. And I think Democrats have gotten better at diagnosing a lot of these problems. Like you hear a lot of Democrats talking about how automation is coming and you're going to lose millions of jobs driving trucks, for example, until you drive all those cars.

But I feel like we as a party haven't made the leap to what we're going to do about it. Are there any practical things? I mean, maybe some of the answers aren't apparent yet, but are there any practical things you've heard that we think Democrats should incorporate as part of the solutions part of that message? No question. I mean, first of all, it's the education pipeline. I mean, there are going to be jobs that are just going to shift. I mean, whenever we have that mythical coal worker, it's always like, oh, he can't be retrained. He's too old. I don't believe that, first of all, because we retrain folks who are seniors. People have been homeless for 30

years. People returning from prison. veterans. I mean, you can train people, so that's kind of BS. I'm not going to swear on this show. Missed opportunity. Yeah, yeah. You get all sorts of headlines. Goodbye 2020.

What was it? That's what it takes. Total bullshit. Anyway. There we go. Well done. Cheap applause. You trapped me.

You tricked me. So we have, I think, a pipeline first and foremost to get people into that. Education has gotten greedy. pipeline first and foremost to get people into that. Education has gotten greedy. I mean, if you look at it, it's not just that the price of education has matched inflation. It's like the NBA. The superstar professors and the dorms have to be so amazing now, like to compete for the very best students. You can't go to school without swimming in debt for your entire life unless you want to sell out and make as much money as you can. I mean, it's very difficult for people to choose professions as teachers now, or to go into public service, or to, you know, even be a police officer. There's very few cops that live in the city of LA because they

can't afford it, not because they don't want to. So I think Democrats need to get to that. Second, I already mentioned, I think infrastructure projects are everything. I just came back from DC. I'm chairing for the US Conference of Mayors, our infrastructure initiative. And we need to demand that Democrats and Republicans pass that trillion dollars because that really is lifetime jobs. And then third on the automation and technology stuff, I think it's really important. The port of L.A. is a great example. Port technology is changing, but the union that's here is actually embracing it. Instead of saying, oh, no, no, we want to move things the old-fashioned way, they're saying, okay, we know it may displace some people, but there's going to be new jobs created,

and we know that keeps us humming. And the economy here, one out of 50 jobs in America comes from the Port of L.A. We need to keep that going. So I think as Democrats, we have to, I always said as mayor, you can try to fight the future. You know, when Uber and Lyft arrives in your town, oh, or Amazon, we can fight it off. Good luck. You can be passive about the future and be happy or sad

about that, or you can guide it. And I think we need to guide that future to say, yes, these things are coming, but we actually will help these companies have pensions, have benefits, look at ways that the gig economy isn't just fun when you're in your 20s, but then you get sick and you're screwed. One thing we also saw in the election was we weren't able to turn out as many young people as we wanted. And I think that there's a lot of young people, there was a story this week about avocado toast, which we're not going to get into. But speaking of college, Democrats, we passed a way to make student loans easier, but a lot of student loans and all of a sudden we see huge rise in the cost of tuition, all of a sudden students are racked with debt. Housing prices are going up and there's a great mortgage deduction, but young people can't afford houses and they can't afford jobs that are helping them save for houses. What do you say to young people that look at the politics of this moment and say,

like, there's just nothing for me. There's no party that's saying, I have a plan for you to afford your education, get a decent job, afford the things that your parents could afford. I agree with him. And by the way, low turnout. How many people voted yesterday? But I think, you know, there is really no party that feels like it's speaking to the future. One of the frustrations I had, and, you know, I love Hillary and Dorster. I think that Bernie was amazing and still is in so many ways. But all the agendas were very either micro or backwards looking. Like, I didn't see my future and I didn't see my daughter's future in there. And, you know, mayors kind of can't afford to do that. I mean, we can, we can

skate through, you know, four years and, and leave, but you know, I'm thinking about the long, long-term things like revitalizing Los Angeles river, like fundamentally rebuilding the worst airport and making it the best airport in America, building out public transportation. I really bad idea to bring that up because I forgot about it. And now it's the next question. But we do have to wrap our heads around that anxiety. If we don't speak to that stress that people have, and I don't mean just speak to it. Look, I think so much of our back and forth right now is talking about values and not talking about programs. Like here in LA, raise the minimum wage,

unemployment down the lowest level in our history, 4.6% last month. We have got 10,000 veterans jobs, 24,000 homeless people off the streets, past those largest measures that I said. We're moving towards total 100% renewable energy. Like if you don't think we can make an agenda, we have no commission or board in the city that is all male and 54% of the people on them are female. We have things you can do quickly. You have things that you can do immediately. And so don't tell me that it takes a 100-point plan.

It takes action. And I think we're all caught in the game of politics instead of the world of life where we all live. And so I keep wanting to pull my national reps and say, like, get on the street, walk precincts again, talk to people, get out of that bubble, and you'll see Americans are willing to actually follow. They just need you to lead a little.

And when you approach LAX, you get stuck at this light. And that light is a long time. What are we going to do about LAX? Well, just get out and dance if that happens. That's kind of what we do now. It's the new thing. No, LAX we're bringing public transportation to for the first time since, well, ever. It's never had it.

We're redoing every single terminal. We're building a new one. We're going to force all the shuttle buses out so that the cars can actually get around. We started paying $15 an hour there for the workers before we even passed the minimum wage in the city to make sure that people have economic justice. And then, you know, we're going to build Elon Musk's tunnels under the entire city. And you won't really need a plane anymore, so it'll be fine. And the sandwiches are still going to be $15.

That's not something we can do about that. But the quality of the meat is so much better. I feel like you've been've invested, Lovett. Cutting that? We'll play it on Thursdays. Okay. Last question, then we'll let you go. Are we going to get the Olympics in 2024?

Yes. All right. Are we going to get the Olympics in 2024? Yes. All right. LA, we have 88% support for the Olympics. It's not only going to not cost us anything, we will turn a profit like we did in 84.

1932, we were a games changer in the Depression. Nobody wanted them. We did it. We were the first Olympic village. 84, the Cold War, nobody wanted it. We had the first profitable games, and we invested that money in community sports. So two little girls in Compton learned about tennis and became the Williams sisters.

So my dream, it's down to two cities, Paris, beautiful city, would love to visit it in 2028, and Los Angeles. And I think we're both going to win one of them. And all kidding aside, whether it's 24 or 28, my dream is to take the profits of this and to be the first city with universal access to sports. And let me tell you what I mean by that.

There are families right now who have to make a decision because of their income that their kids can't play in sports leagues. Or, okay, they can only have one kid. It's unfortunately usually the boy, not the girl. So only 20% of the sports leagues are girls in our parks. Though we're changing that now. You can only play one sport, you know, daughter, because we don't have enough money for two or three. Imagine you never had to think about that again. You had all your uniforms, coaches, league fees paid for. Instead of building an area of town up, which is usually the Olympic legacy,

check out these new buildings. How about a human legacy that reduces diabetes that reduces obesity makes a generation of athletes and they can compete in the olympics so that is uh hopefully the division and my last note when they were here they were just here last week thank you to anybody who bought a foreign or a drink last week because they might have been with the Olympic Committee. But we kind of showed them the heart of America and this city. And I said to many of them privately, we need you more than ever. Yes, we can give you a great Olympics and we can connect you with Hollywood and technology and a new generation. But you don't want an America that closes off even further. And when the Olympics came here in 1984, we opened ourselves up to the world. We realized America's strong and

we're connected with other cultures and other communities. That's LA every single day. Let us reconnect America at this moment, whether it's doing, you know, preliminary soccer matches across the border in Mexico, or whether it's making sure the world comes here regardless of religion or background and they come and they see what Americans really are about, don't let that man in the White House speak for us. Let's build it right here in our house. Mr. Mayor, thank you so much. All right.

We like the mayor. Great. Where does he go in the grid? What did you guys think? Oh, the mayor. Great. Where does he go on the grid? What did you guys think? Oh, the grid. It's called a bracket. It's a bracket. This is Lovett's bracket.

But he calls it a grid. Right now we have... He knows about the seeds. We've got the Senate conference. We've got the governor's conference. Now we have the mayor's conference. Oh, very nice. Then there's also the lunatic billionaire conference. Now we have the mayor's conference. Oh, very nice. Then there's also the lunatic billionaire conference.

Mark Cuban, Zuckerberg, a couple other weirdos. Don't go anywhere. This is Pod Save America and there's more on the way. Should we stop talking and take some questions? Let's do it. Before we do the questions, listen, Should we stop talking and take some questions? Let's do it. Let's do it. So before we do the questions.

Before we do the questions. Listen, we've had some incidents with the Q&A. We've had some drunk people. We've had some very long and meandering, confusing questions. From the drunk people. We welcome all comers. But the tighter the questions, the more questions. End of that. We practiced that.

That was necessary. Don't be Chuck Todd. You weren't in San Francisco. Okay. Who do we got? So there's been a lot of talk about Donald Trump potentially being impeached. And while that may be very invigorating for a lot of people, isn't Pence just as big of a concern because he actually understands how government works and has alliances with Paul Ryan and the actual people who run the House and the Senate?

I mean, first of all, I don't know that Pence completely escapes guilt on all of this. Like, you know, I mean, he was in a lot of those meetings. Obviously, he was told to leave for the joke with Comey. But, you know. No, I mean, I think

Pence is terrifying, too. I don't think that's a reason. I think Pence is, you know, I think Pence is terrifying too. I don't think that's a reason. I think Pence could be just as terrifying in terms of his policy agenda. I don't necessarily know that that's a reason to hope that Trump stays. I have a simple answer to this. Pence is absolutely terrible. Give us Pence, you bastards.

We can take on Pence. We can fight him. It'll be good old fashioned politics and we'll do our best we'll yell about tax cuts and his crazy anti-gay agenda and it will be terrible and there will be losses

but at least it will not be Donald Trump who is dangerous we cannot lose sight no, you can make fun of my hand gestures all you want Tommy and you can get the tweets about why you need to be nicer to me. Which you claim you don't want, and then there's your behavior. But seriously, we have to mean what we said.

And what we said was that Donald Trump was exceptional. Donald Trump was more dangerous. He wasn't an ordinary Republican. I cannot stand Mike Pence. I think Mike Pence is dangerous in a whole lot of ways, but he is dangerous in the way the modern Republican Party has become dangerous, and we can fight him there, but we have to mean what we

said, which is we have to get Trump out of there no matter what. My mom has been posting a lot of Louise Mensch Twitter and articles. How concerned should I be? And how can I tell her to stop posting these things? You know, I think you should be concerned. Yeah.

It's hard to watch this stuff because there are these echo chambers on the left with the Louise Menches and everyone's a Russian stooge. And having worked in government, the one thing I can tell you about government is that most conspiracy theories fall down because of a lack of competence. There's not enough people to coordinate these things that make it really happen, right? So I sort of brush off those conspiracy theories on the left. On the right, you have the Alex Jones InfoWard lunatics saying, this is a coup. We need to raise arms and prevent this from happening. I think both of those schools of thought and the sort of circular thinking that happens on Facebook

and social media is really dangerous. I don't know yet how to fix it. Let's put this in perspective. In the last seven days, Donald Trump has fired the FBI director, admitted he did it to stop an investigation of himself. It came out that he asked the FBI director to stop investigating him and then leaked classified information to a Russian spy. We do not need conspiracy theories. We have plenty of material to work with people. Yeah.

Look, I think you just tell her, like, to believe reporting, right, you need to trust institutions with reporters that have multiple sources, that have been trusted in the past, right? Like, you know, oh, one of the Pod Save America's guys says

there's some conspiracy here. Like, we're not part of a real news organization. You know, like, believe the Washington Post. What are you part of a real news organization. Don't tell them that. What are you doing? Love it does reporting. Believe the Washington Post. Believe the New York Times. Believe the Wall Street Journal. And believe Crooked Media.

And then everything else John is saying is right. Unbelievable. We talk about news sources. You need no other podcasts. You need no other podcasts. But I think Louise Mench is like, yeah, she got a few. Someone was saying this about conspiracy theories. Like, if you have enough of them, you're bound to get a couple right.

You know? So, like, she got a couple things right and now, you know, has a whole bunch of people following her. But I think most of them, you know, like, when she thought that, like, Black Lives Matter was actually a Putin-run operation, I was like, yeah, maybe not so much on this. Not accurate, for the record. I want to ask you, are there any congressional or constitutional legal provisions

for this presidency to be annulled? Because if an Olympic athlete has been found to be doping, they forfeit the gold. If a professional baseball player has been found to be doping, they give up all their records. And if we have substantial information that the Russians interceded in this election, I don't understand. Because I'm thinking post-Trump, and I think he doesn't even deserve to be ex-president. He doesn't even deserve to be impeached. And, I mean, I feel like he, just his name or his photo in the White House,

it should all be expunged. I agree. He should not be inunged. I agree. He should not be in the Hall of Presidents at Disneyland. That's bullshit. And number 45 can just be an asterisk. And we can just put WTF right below it. But is there any... With Lawrence Tribe, what did he say about that?

Because I know that there's a change.org about the election. This is sadly simple. No. But here's the good news. It's going to be... Trump's presidency will end. And it will be good that we can say that this happened.

Because it happened. And it's important that it happened. And it's important that we learn why it happened. Because look, we can't annul the presidency. We can't annul what happened. We can't do the election. He won the votes. We don't have evidence that the Russians hacked the we can't annul the presidency. We can't annul what happened. We can't do the election. He won the votes. We don't have evidence that the Russians

hacked the voting machines. They hacked the election. They hacked voters. And we have to face that that happened. We were vulnerable to something, something really dangerous. And we can't annul it. It happened. And after that, it's going to be up to us to repair it. But we have to live with the consequences. America elected Donald

Trump. It's real. And the Republicans enabled him, and the media echo chamber made it possible for him to win. And we shouldn't erase that. We should learn from that. And we ran a shitty campaign. And then we should make sure that his portrait hangs in the worst fucking part of the Smithsonian, I think.

Like, by the bathroom. No wax figure. No Madame Tussauds. No Madame Tussauds. It's probably already there. Yeah. Guys, no Madame Tussauds. It's probably already there. I'm in 2020! Yeah. Boo. Guys, I've said this before. I don't know why you guys don't hear me.

Build a media conglomerate. Then I run. Yes. Sorry. So my question is about purity politics i campaigned and voted for bernie in the primary as i campaigned and voted for um hillary in the election and i'm starting to get into more fights with fellow liberals about what you know um going after diane feinstein or going after Nancy Pelosi rather than that. And if, in my wildest dreams,

Trump is gone and we no longer have him as a main enemy, what would you guys say is the most important thing to kind of bridge this gap or bridge this kind of chasm that's happening? That's it. I mean, look, I feel like or bridge this kind of chasm that's happening? That's it. That's an easy question. I mean, look, I feel like the lesson here is we have sort of seen what happens when we are,

you know, like Donald Trump is a good lesson in what happens when we're all divided on the other side, right? I think in the next primary, people should campaign for their candidate and fight really hard for what they believe in. And if that's far left, great. If that's middle left, center left, fine. And you really, really fight for your candidate and you try to make your case.

But at the end of the day, we all have to realize that politics involves the art of compromise. Politics is the art of the possible. is the art of the possible and we have to come together because what the other side is offering is so much more dangerous right than whatever disagreements that we have on the left right and look i don't think that means people should be pragmatic necessarily pragmatic or i think one thing that 2016 taught us is this whole argument about who's electable and who's not electable is bullshit right like the idea of electability, which has been, you know, plaguing politics for a long time, sort of has gone out the window, right?

And so I don't think we make electability arguments. I think we make arguments based on the values and the beliefs and the policies of the politicians that we believe in. But then once that primary is over, it becomes even more important to come together to win the general election. What you said. Agreed.

Good question. Thanks for taking my question. Tommy, I think this one's for you. About a month ago, there was an article in The Atlantic by Julia Ioffe about how Rex Tillerson hadn't filled out his national security staff at all. And one of the comments you made was just how dangerous that is if an actual terrorist incident is to occur, either at an embassy or on U.S. soil. I was wondering if you could talk about, maybe a bit more specific about what you mean by that and how this kind of works when something does happen

and how important it is to have people in those positions that I think positions that still haven't been filled. Good question. So I remember the article. I'm not, I don't totally remember what she was saying regarding how State Department staffing would manage a terrorist attack, but more broadly, I mean, the policy making process and like the problem management process doesn't happen at the Secretary of State level. It's their deputies, their assistant secretaries who are in meetings, grinding stuff out all day long. And that means like developing new approaches to things, thinking through like

doing a full scrub of, okay, what are our options to manage North Korea? What are the things we didn't think of? What are the things the last administration tried and failed that we could restart? So that's like one track of policies you should be thinking about all the time. On a whole other level, those individuals are constantly talking to foreign counterparts and pushing an agenda. So let's say we want to sanction North Korea. You're sending out the assistant secretary for East Asian affairs to a whole bunch of countries in Asia or to Europe to recruit their support for work at the UN to help us ultimately get to the point

where we can put those sanctions in place and put more pressure on them to stop their program. If you just don't have a staff to do any of that, that work's not happening. And that's a problem when there's something really bad that happens, some sort of crisis like the 35 missiles that North Korea has launched in the last three months. But it's also a problem for problems that aren't on the front page. Like there's up to potentially four famines happening in Africa right now. It's Somalia, Yemen, a number of places, you know, South Sudan's a mess. I mean,

these are things that the United States can really affect change if we focus on them. And we have diplomats like bringing to bear all their skills on the front end or as early as possible to manage these problems because so many of them are political. Like you look at Iraq, there are huge security problems. There's huge problems with ISIS. There's huge problems with sectarianism. But overarching all of that is the fact that there's a government that's just not viewed as representative by the majority of the Sunni population. You have a Kurdish population in the north that wants to break off and have their own state. And if you don't have people working with them, pressing on them,

and professionalizing these governments we're trying to work with, and making sure that development assistance is getting to the right places, this shit just goes south real fast. Because a lot of what the NSC does, a lot of what the White House does, is keep problems from boiling over. And I just have no sense that there's people in place that are doing these things. I think the thing, not to hone in on your question here, Tommy, that should scare the shit out of everyone,

is that for 120 days now we have careened from crisis to crisis to crisis. We have not yet had a single crisis that was not of Donald Trump's own making. Absolutely. So at some point in time, something is going to happen in the world, a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, a diplomatic crisis,

and this collection of fucking clowns is going to be responsible for solving it. Yeah. And there's a scary, scary likelihood that something bad happens, you know, another Christmas Day bomber or something we managed early on in the administration that

the political climate in the wake of an incident like that will be used to do some of the darkest stuff we've seen. So that's the kind of stuff that I think scares Julia and freaks us out. I hope the next question is more... So cheer up! Thanks for being here. Working the crowd here. Next one's for... Hug your loved ones!

Thanks for coming. Hi. Hello. First of all, thanks for everything you guys do. Makes the drive on the 405 much more endurable. So, over the last eight or so years, we have seen how the Republican Party has kind of fractured itself, even

though they won the election. After Obama won, they appealed to the far right, the racists and the bigots, and came up with the Tea Party and all that. And we see that even though they won the election, they have such a hard time governing. They are still fractured of sorts. Now, we are doing great now

with the resistance and we have this great movement going on. And at one point, we are going to be back in power. The Democrats are going to be back in power. My fear is that as the Democratic Party fights for its soul, what we just discussed for the previous question, with the progressives and the centrists,

when we finally get there at that point, will we be ready to govern? In short, my question is, can the Democratic Party find its soul by then, or will we be like the GOP with no soul? Well, so first of all, I would say that's a fun thing to worry about,

whether or not we'll succeed when we're governing. And I would like us to have that problem. I think there's been a couple silver linings whether or not we'll succeed when we're governing. And I would like us to have that problem. I think there's been a couple silver linings of Trump winning. One of them is it's forces to confront the challenges we face as a party. The second is how much energy and activism there is. And I think the third is Trump being president has allowed us to reject notions about what's not possible, what policies we can't propose. I think that there's a lot of people on the far left that have been very critical of the Center

for American Progress. They just came up with a big proposal for a pretty giant work agenda, right, which I think is really interesting. And I think you have people like Mayor Garcetti talking about interesting ideas. You have a kind of big and new conversation about the future of the Democratic Party. And I think that's really positive. And, you know, the question the person asked before you about, you know, the Bernie wing versus the Hillary wing, that's an important debate we're having. You know, Bernie had a coherent message that he was saying, we should use this message. We should adopt this. This is a message we can win on. And we went a different direction. And I think we were probably wrong about that. But I don't think the answer is every single thing that Bernie Sanders says. I think the answer is

finishing that debate, finishing it through the next round of primaries, finishing it through the 2018 elections, making sure we're kind of together to win the House. But I'm optimistic about the fact that Democrats, this was a rock bottom for us, and I think we're emerging as something stronger. Yeah. Hi.

I just wanted to ask, first of all, if in general the voter suppression efforts are getting the attention that they should. Because the messaging conversations are great, right? They're so important. But at the end of the day, if people can't vote, is the messaging even worth it right so i think we need to be banging that drum every day all the time and um i also just wanted to point out really quickly that um in orange county we have some great indivisible groups doing amazing work um we hear a lot about roar roerbacher and isa but but both Walters and Royce. I'm involved with Walters, and great things are going on. We're in your backyard, so you should come check out some of the events down there. And thanks again for everything you guys do.

I mean, I think the voter suppression thing is a huge problem. And, I mean, there was that AP report last week. It sort of got buried in the news. That, like, 200,000 people in Wisconsin might have been kept from voting right like Hillary lost by 22,000 votes um there was some good news in that uh and the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case in North Carolina which means that that law no longer stands which is good but um our friend of the pod Jason Kander uh started that organization Let America Vote and which is good. But our friend of the pod, Jason Kander, started that organization, Let America Vote, which is great. You should check it out. And their plan is to actually

get some press and get some coverage of some of these voter suppression fights that are going on in different states. Because I think, like you pointed out, one of the big problems is they happen in the courts, but it doesn't sort of spill out into the public eye as much. And so we kind of have to go there and have those fights in public and really, you know, drum up some support. That is all, that's all exactly right. The other thing we have to do is there's a bunch of governor's races in 2018. There's governor's races in 2017. We have to win those races and we have to give those new democratic governors democratic legislatures and if we do that think about this florida is one of the states that is where we have a real shot to win if we win that governor's race and we take over that legislature and we put in place

automatic voter registration same day registration extend early vote that like that that is the difference between winning and losing these battleground states. So we talk about the House, and the House is incredibly important, and we should go beat all those assholes in Orange County and everywhere else. But we cannot, as a party, forget the governor's races, because that is critically important to what happens in the 2020 election. Yeah, I mean, the most cynical shit in politics is the voter suppression and the redistricting where they gerrymandered these districts. You have states like, I think it's Ohio, North Carolina, where they're 50-50 in the presidential and then three-fourths of the representatives are Republican. And so to Dan's

point, we have to win. Getting killed in 2010 set us back for a very long time because usually these seats lurch back and forth, but they were able to lock in these gains through redistricting. And so that's what makes these upcoming elections absolutely critical. And in 2020, like Dan said, these governor's races, that's also when a lot of the redistricting will happen for the next 10 years. And so it's even more important for Democrats to win governor's races in 2020, because then if you're in control of the governor's mansion, you're setting redistricting for the next however many years. Hi. Awesome.

I just wanted to get your perspective on what I think is the most recent piece of news, which is the gift that we got. I think we're perceiving it as a gift, which is our special counselor, special prosecutor. Oh, yeah. We spent like 10 minutes on these tapings We forgot about this guy. Special prosecutor.

We spent like 10 minutes on this taping, and we fucked that up. Thank you. God bless you. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Is he a fucking media intern? There is so much going on.

What is wrong with us? What my concern is, is that to get impeachment done, we need this huge majority in the Senate, like whatever, 66 votes. And I'm worried that this gives the Republicans kind of a separation now that they can point at this guy, and if he doesn't really come up, first of all, time-wise, it can extend this out a lot longer.

And now the Republicans have someone to say, hey, we don't need to impeach this guy anymore because we've got this other stuff going on. Yeah, I think that you raise a good point, which is we should also, I think that we should not be putting all of our eggs in the impeachment basket generally. This has been a very exciting week.

It's very good that they've appointed a special prosecutor and Mueller is going to be the, he's like the right kind of person to have the job. So the special prosecutor is Mueller is going to be the right kind of person to have in the job. So the special prosecutor is Bob Mueller. He was the former director of the FBI. He's like James Comey type sanctimony times like a hundred, right? Yes. He's like the OG James Comey. He's the perfect person

you would want for this. Perfect person. He was such a good FBI director that Congress passed a law to let him stay an extra two years. And the only person more pissed about Jim Comey getting fired than Jim Comey is Bob Mueller because he handed it off to him. So it's very good news, right? That means a real investigation can take place at the Department of Justice. And we know that as long as he's there, it's real. And if he has to leave, we're back into Nixon land, that's all good news. I said this on Monday, we have to be able to be keeping

our eye on the collusion, obstruction of justice, Russia investigation front, but we need to be able to win on the policy, politics front too. In my mind, we should do everything we can there, keep the focus on that, that's great, but I think we also need to be able to imagine

winning the House as if that's not going on, right? It's impeachment and the Russia stuff and the collusion and the special prosecutor. That's not the message that I think we want to be running on every day anyway, right? I'd rather be out there talking about the awful health care bill and their awful tax plan and things that are affecting people's lives. So now the one other thing we can do is, so they have a special prosecutor. I still think an independent commission is also good because an independent commission will search for the truth

and special prosecutors focused on crimes. And so we can get a bigger picture if we get an independent commission. But that requires a law, and so that's tough too. But I think it's a good step. And if we have to wait, we have to wait. There's going to be plenty of other things to talk about can we have some real talk yeah paul ryan is not impeaching donald trump no that is not happening so it'd be cool if it did and if i'm wrong here it's a high class problem right but we have to go win the

house if you that is what we have to do yeah no i totally agree you know all this impeachment talk i i think about again 20 we win the house in 2018 donald trump is a wounded animal we are investigating him we have subpoena power in the house we are grinding his agenda to the house to the to a halt he is so unpopular he is facing a primary challenge uh that's the thing we will be able to control what the what muller does what paul ryan does very hard for us to control. What Mueller does, what Paul Ryan does, very hard for us to control. We can fight and we can win the House and then we can have some power.

Hey, guys. I just want to say first, thank you for wading through all the news to catch me up on it because it's incredible the amount of stuff you guys read. I'm impressed as a former opposition researcher. I give you guys props.

Thank you. Even though we forgot the special prosecutor. It's all good. I have a request. So it seems like this special event is going to be a regular thing for Crooked Media. Yes? Maybe? Or trying, yeah. Yeah. So it seems like this special event is going to be a regular thing for Cricut Media. Yes?

Maybe? Yes? We're trying, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, with Indivisible and all the other groups that you guys are allied with have had on the pod and whatever, could you, like, bring at least their voter registration groups in along with you guys for these kind of events? We're literally doing calls with them next week to discuss this.

We're doing that. That's not your idea. We're doing that. John Lovett, I knew you'd have a smart-ass answer for me. Thank you. It's a great idea. It is a great idea. You had it concurrently.

Monster. I'm a former field organizer from Minnesota. Now I live in Los Angeles. I love hating Trump. I kind of hate how much I love the political drama at this point because it's distracting from actual actionable items. What should we, especially like Angelenos who are living in the bluest of blue areas, be doing right now to affect actual change?

Have you thought about moving to Wisconsin? I'm from Minnesota, so I would never move to Wisconsin. Fair enough, fair enough. We were talking about this backstage. There are seven districts in California where Republicans are in the districts that Hillary Clinton won.

And there's a whole bunch of other districts in California where there's Republicans where she didn't win, but they could be vulnerable too. Do you know about Devin Nunes? Devin Nunes. Nunes. There you go.

Nunes. Everyone in this room should decide today that we're going to help take out Daryl Issa. Yes. Whatever it takes. We're coming for you, Daryl. We know you're listening. You said Daryl Issa is such a dickhead that a reporter asked him about Trump

and he flicked her off. Yeah. He was flicking off the situation. I almost thought he's like, maybe he's not running. Like he just gave the finger to a reporter who asked you about, you know. We should take him out. Yeah.

We're going to start with Daryl. Do we left? But no, we have a huge opportunity in California. Anyone who lives in California to go to one of those districts and to work really hard from now until 2018 to help take the house back. We get those seven seats. That's like a third of the seats that we need to take the house back. If this were a video game, these are the seven mini-bosses

to the next mini-boss, which is Kevin McCarthy, to the King Koopa, who is Paul Ryan, and we get that gavel out of his fucking hand. Anybody else playing Zelda? I got Zelda on the brain. Hey, guys. Tommy, first thing, you've never been hotter

than when you said, let's get rid of terrible eye sox. Oh, my. Thanks. But on to my question. I'm going to reach way, way back, like two weeks ago, when ACHA, Wealthcare, I'm still trying to make it happen, I appreciate it. Trump Care, Ryan Care, whatever the hell you want to call it,

when that fucking terrible vote went through, and that dead-eyed fuckstick, thank you, Pfeiffer, jammed that thing through. So I'm going to ask the four of you, because you were in the rooms, ostensibly, when all of the conversations were going on, we know that the ACA was not perfect. What did they want it to be?

What should we be fighting for? As a woman who's passionate about women's health care and passionate about Planned Parenthood, what do the women I talk to every day need to be calling their representatives to say, we need to get this to happen. We need to make X, Y, and Z pass.

What do we need to do? I thought we were going to get a Lovett speech about Joe Lieberman I was deferring to you we all want it that wasn't a look of we don't know Joe Lieberman yeah I mean I don't know what calling to yell about Joe Lieberman will do at this point though I do do it every day

look I think the truth is the most important thing we can do right now is call to try to make sure that the Senate doesn't pass a slightly modified version of the Republican bill. And there are 13 guys, and they're all guys, working on this bill. And already, we're starting to hear what's coming out of those conversations. And they already saw what happened in the House. They saw that cutting Medicaid is deeply unpopular. They saw that reducing the

subsidies is unpopular. They saw that pre-existing conditions and the required benefits are, you know, getting rid of those is unpopular. And when you start talking about all the things that they don't want to do, you start ending up with something that looks a lot like Obamacare. So I think keeping that pressure up is the most important thing we can do now, making sure that Planned Parenthood is funded, for example, making sure that they don't pay for a cut to Medicaid with a trillion dollar tax cut. I think it's the same fight. It just moves over to the Senate. I think the strategy in the Senate is to push the bill as far to the left as possible in the Senate, because then that will split the Republicans in the Senate and they won't be able to pass anything.

And I think the targets for that are Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, because they're actual moderates, Dean Heller of Nevada and Jeff Flake, because they're up in 2018 in states that could be swing states, and then some of the other Senate Republicans who have already gone on the record saying they don't want to cut Medicaid as much as the House is cutting Medicaid, right? So I think that's what we do.

There's some reports today that, like, Orrin Hatch said, oh, well, maybe we'll keep the mandate till 2020. Maybe we'll keep Medicaid in place until 2020 and not phase it out there. So you can see that some Republicans in the Senate are scared of this. And so they're going to try to push a bill that sunsets a lot of this stuff in 2020 and beyond.

So they just don't have to fucking deal with it until the next presidential election. If that kind of bill gets passed, you're going to see Ted or if that's the main bill, you're going to see Ted or that's, if that's the main bill, you're going to see people like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Mike Lee and some of the right wingers in the Senate say like, no fucking way are we going to vote for that bill? And then it's just going to stall and then that will be it. So that's the hope, right? To put pressure there. What I would say to this is Mitch McConnell cares about one thing, accumulation of power.

So if he thinks that voting for this bill means he may lose the Senate or he will lose power if they lose the House, they will not do it. So all of the enthusiasm that was directed at those town halls before the first wealth care vote, we need that times 10. Because this is a two-step process. Because you were right. The Affordable Care Act is not perfect. Thank you, Joe Lieberman. Keep your microphone down. You'll have your moment. FBI Director Lieberman. Tommy, you baited him.

Could we find someone? I'm not doing it. Dan, go. We're tired of it. Personally stripped it out of the bill. A public option. Yes. Medicare buy-in for older people.

Go on. Are you really going to let me go? I'm not doing it. First step, beat wealth care. Second step, Democratic House, Democratic president, Medicare for all. That's the order. I think about this question, your question, a lot, because two weeks ago was like the worst I've felt since election night, basically.

And it wasn't just because I'm a person whose entire career was working for Barack Obama and ACA is part of his legacy. It was because I was sitting on my couch by myself watching CNN, being sad, watching that weird congressman pick his nose. And then I got a text from my stepmom, who was married to my dad. He passed away from cancer. She's had cancer twice. And she said, what am I going to do now? What are my premiums going to cost? She's like, fuck. There's so much uncertainty, and people don't know, and they're so scared. So I think remembering that during the day-to-day stories of Jim Comey and the memos and the cut and thrust of this and that, we all have to remember that health care, having a pre-existing condition and not knowing how you're going to pay for your coverage,

these are the things that really people care about, matter in people's lives, why we all got involved in politics. These are what really animate voters. involved in politics. These are what really animate voters. And staying focused on that stuff, even when it's more fun to rant about, release the tapes and all the things we do on Mondays and Thursdays. All right, guys.

I think that's our show for tonight. I mean, LA did a great job with the questions. Great job with the questions. Yeah, great questions. Must have been a long line at the bar. Crush San Francisco. San Francisco, if you came to our show, listen to this show, take some notes. Maybe in the future you'll hear your questions.

Yeah. Those questions are why I moved to L.A. Yikes. Now you're just pandering. Pandering. Just kidding. Dan stillering Pandering That's a lie Thank you very much Thank you guys