Pod Save America - "Propaganda, foreign and domestic."

Episode Date: July 10, 2017

McConnell is down to a final few moves on health care. Don Jr. dissembles on yet another Trump campaign Russia meeting. Senator Al Franken stops by to talk about life in the Senate and his new book. And DeRay joins Jon, Jon, and Tommy to preview this week's Pod Save the People.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. It's good to be here in studio with you guys. The three of us haven't been in studio in a while. You look great. Yeah, that's true. Everyone's in their summer attire, their summer cuts, including Pundit.

Everyone got the puppy cut. Leo's getting a cut today. I did not ask for a summer cut. Cool. I have to say, Emily and Jon and Tommy have been making fun of the fact that pundit is very uh close cut she had a short cut i never made fun tommy didn't make fun it was implied but um not to your face it was said it's been said that it wasn't the best haircut pundits ever received and i rejected that until i tweeted a picture of pundit and the retweets just weren't there.

Someone also asked if you used a Harry's razor to cut your dog's hair. Was that you? No, that was someone else. I just sent it to you. Oh, got it. Anyway, on the pod today, we have an interview with Senator Al Franken. Very excited about that. Love it. I actually talked to him on Friday, so this is a pre-taped interview. It was great. I geeked out a little hard.

It's great. And we'll also be talking to the host of Crooked Media's Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson. Also, if you haven't listened to it yet, go ahead and download Saturday's Love It or Leave It. Hilarious. It was a great episode. It was great. I was there. Tommy was part of the show.

We had a whole corner. You know what? You had great comedians who were also deep and thoughtful. And had a lot to say on policy. Thank you. Especially Jeff Ross was excellent. It was an awesome conversation. Wil Wheaton, Sabrina Jalise.

Tommy was there. We talked to former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. And you know what's funny? He tried to get me to use his nickname, Tenito, which made me uncomfortable. And in the moment, I forgot, my nephew's name is Bennett. And his grandmother is Cuban. and he goes by Benito. Neat story. Okay, cool.

So today, we will get to the antics of political savant Don Jr. and his father in a little bit. But first I want to talk about the health care bill, which we have two weeks to kill forever. Things like Rasputin. Yeah. I think right now we should feel emboldened but not complacent. The Senate comes back from their well-deserved recess today and Mitch McConnell is eagerly awaiting a new score from the Congressional Budget Office. The new score will include Ted Cruz's amendment to make protections for pre-existing conditions extremely expensive.

About $54 billion for opioid treatment and up to $375 billion to beef up some combination of subsidies and Medicaid. Reportedly, the Senate Republicans are meeting tomorrow to try to hash out a deal. Questions. What do we think this will do to the score and will it work? I mean, who knows? What do we think this will do to the score, and will it work? I mean, who knows? Haven't they run out of things to talk about in these deal-making meetings? We certainly have.

Kill the fucking bill. Kill the bill. You're so bored of your dumb bill. We still hate the bill. Yeah, I don't know. Who knows what can work? This thing isn't on the level, so who knows what they can buy people off with that $375 billion? You know, I just don't know.

We don't know what's coming out of these conversations. You know, sometimes you hear, oh, the Ted Cruz amendment is actually a poison pill. And then you hear, actually, it's going to get some votes. You think Capito is going to do the right thing for his state because there's no earthly way. If she cared about her constituents, she could vote for any version of this bill. But then you hear, oh, there's an opiate fund. I know she just wants it to be less of a cut to Medicaid. It's just really hard to keep up because nobody's telling the truth about what's going on. And the whole process is behind closed doors.

Right. When we talked to Senator Bennett, I asked him, do you think this thing is going to get pulled toward a more moderate position to buy votes that way or pulled to the right to buy votes that way? And he thought it couldn't get more conservative. But lo and behold, it looks like Trump has lost some moderates. And you have McConnell looking hard at Ted Cruz and Mike Lee's amendment. You've got Mnuchin saying that he backs Cruz and Lee's amendments on one of the Sunday shows. So, you know, there is I do have this fear that this thing is going to lurch ever rightward. And this whole discussion of repeal and delay, it's like no one really knows what that even means is basically inserting an ellipse in our repeal and go fuck yourself shirt.

You know, it's like none of this, nothing they're talking about. A lot of it's worse. That's for sure. So it is, the Cruz thing is very confusing. It's very confusing that McConnell has now told Cruz he should go sell this to the caucus, right? Because like, I can't imagine. Business salesman.

Yeah, like you want to send Ted Cruz out on the send ted cruz out on the field right we wait we need somebody with charisma people have a natural affinity towards who they trust implicitly send ted crew with a melting face yes and ted but if you look at a lot of the reporting like chuck grassley over the weekend basically call actually not basically did call ted cruz's amendment subterfuge yes that's chuck grassley amazing quote like capito's had some bad things about it. Cassidy's had some bad things about it. There was a Senate leadership aide that said it could probably get about 15 votes. And just to expand on your Grassley quote, he referred to it as annihilating the preexisting conditions requirement. So nothing. You don't know who's telling the truth. But some of them are at least boxing themselves into a corner with some of their statements, right?

Which is actually the subject matter for Save Our Care. An outside group has spent about seven figures on an ad buy that targets Collins, Murkowski, Heller, and Capito. And it basically uses comments they made, disparaging comments they've made about the Senate bill, to say keep your promise to vote vote against this. That's great. I like that. So now, what could happen with the new CBO score? Our friends Topher Spiro from CAP and Andy Slavitt have both done some math. They've talked to some people. They've crunched some numbers. If you spend about $375 billion, which is about what McConnell can spend or what we've heard he's spending because that's what he sent to the CBO, you could probably get the $22 million uninsured number down to somewhere between $17 and $20 million. Reminds me of Dr. Strangelove.

Not saying our hair won't get must a bit. So, you know, you still have massive coverage losses. You still lose your essential benefits. Premiums are still up around 75% overall. Deductibles are up. Costs are up. Massive Medicaid cuts. It still sucks.

So part of this is like, it does seem as though Collins and Heller have pretty well boxed themselves in to not voting for this thing. It does. So that's it. They've lost those people.

So it means they do need 100% of their conservatives, including people like Rand Paul. So I guess if they're looking at a situation where moderation doesn't help us anymore, but a conservative change could possibly make it conceivable that even if it's unlikely,

something passes. That's the only option that they have. Scary. That's right. And I've said this from the beginning, but we can count on our pressure on moderates working, or at least we can hope for that. We should not count on Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee as no's ever. Who knows those guys? Exactly. That is far beyond our power. So,

we're still looking at getting Murkowski or Capito to join Heller and Collins in a no. And others who showed incredible political courage in coming out against the bill after it had been removed from the floor. Yeah. Jerry Moran in Kansas. John Hoeven from North Dakota.

McCain said on Sunday that the bill's probably dead. Cassidy said now the only way forward is his bill with Collins. And not that it's worth mentioning because he'll obviously just do what he's told, like the follower he is. But Marco Rubio also, after the bill was removed, said he thought it was needed work. We should say another, just an attaboy to the brave Republican governors like John Kasich who are standing up and saying even the additional money for opioids is a drop in the ocean. Yeah.

And Sandoval in Nevada, who like, Sandoval's opposition to this bill is basically why Heller is where he is. Totally Bachman. And so, you know, that's good for us too. So that's all the good news. Now, the bad news is, I just remembered the Upton Amendment in the House, right? Like, we thought the House bill was dead. The Upton Amendment comes.

It is a shitty amendment that doesn't do much to moderate the bill at all. It's a fake fix. And yet somehow it's treated as huge news compromise. It brings all these people on board. It basically made the bill worse. Yeah. Like, it didn't do anything. And so I do think they're going to try something when the new CBO, you see this already when the new cbo score comes out they're going to say this is a

brand new bill the old bill is dead this is like great it's new it's fresh and then we have some kind of compromise and and now they're also the white house is saying they're going to use um non-cbo numbers they're going to have their own numbers oh they got a cool yeah eric eric's eric's up there with an abacus figuring this whole thing out to your point about them claiming there's a new bill John Cornyn who is a hack of all hacks

said the most incredible thing which is how can there be a CBO score bill on the bill there is no bill no bill yet exists working on it what are you talking about you said there was going to be a vote on the thing.

You were so done with the bill, you wanted it to pass into fucking law ten days ago. Biggest Twitter troll in the Senate. No one has Twitter ratios like John Cornyn. Cannot stand it. Unbelievable John Cornyn. Who is this for? Hack. Poor Texas. Senator from Texas. He doesn't give a shit.

FBI. How are you going to run the FBI? Give me a break. Give me a break. Give me a break. Anyway, so this is coming out this week. Basically, they have this week and next week to get this thing done. If they don't, it's probably dead for good. They lose the reconciliation process and the ability to do it with 51 votes. It's great. It's a big, big loss for McConnell and Trump.

I would say keep up the calls, but actually go beyond the visits to the offices, the rallies. By the way, guys, let's just step back for a minute like donald trump cares so much about this that he did one sort of half-hearted tweets that it would be like be a damn shame if they went to another recess without passing a bill eight fox and friends tweets four hits on comey one defending ivanka and none defending don jr this thing dies you'll never hear about health care from donald trump again never yeah he won't even. He's barely paying attention right now. But anyway, keep the pressure up. This is where it gets scary because

things change very, very fast and they're counting on people just not paying attention. Okay, let's move on to Don Jr. I thought the New York Times headline said it best. Trump Jr. met Russian for dirt on Clinton.

On the pod today, we have a very special I thought the New York Times headline said it best. Trump Jr. met Russian for dirt on Clinton. Cool. On the pod today, we have a very special interview about what the story is all about. Joe America. Hello. It's Joe America here to set the record straight. Long time Mar-a-Lago waiter, two-step verification opponent. Very bad two-step. Don't use it.

Anyway, as you know, I've been friends with don jr for a very long time eight eight months eight months exactly i remember when i was assigned to assigned to him when we bumped into each other at moscow club so i tell my completely non-transactional friend i say don jr what do you want more than anything in the universe and we're dancing you know we're dancing and and he shouts the sense that my father sees me as a human being and not just another tool for his use. And I was like, that was weird. Okay, that's uncomfortable. But anyway, I said, okay, okay, done.

Calm down. But I say, I can't do that. But I have this totally cool lawyer. She's not a Kremlin lawyer. She's a totally cool, normal lawyer. She has the Hillary Clinton whitey tape. The holy crap. lawyer she has the Hillary Clinton whitey tape the whole thing we've all been looking for this thing the politics has been dealing with where is this

Hillary whitey tape she says whitey this and whitey that so I set up this meeting and obviously this is no big deal when you set up meeting with random Russian lawyer who claims to have information you how you said meeting with the person with the son-in-law of the candidate, the campaign manager, and the candidate's son. Very, very normal. Just a normal, quiet, no big deal meeting. It's a flyer.

You have campaign manager in meeting. Anyway, so that's it. It's my fault. It's Joe America once again with a bum steer. End of bit. Amazing. That was very well done. Amazing.

So on the off-off chance that you guys didn't follow everything Joe America said, on Saturday the New York Times reported that Don Jr. became the fifth senior Trump official to hold a meeting with Russians during the campaign, even though we had been told repeatedly by people like Trump, Pence, and Kellyanne Conway that no one met with the Russians. And Don Jr. And yeah. Don Jr. initially said the meeting was about the issue of adoptions,

but by Sunday the Times had confirmed that Don Jr. initially said the meeting was about the issue of adoptions, but by Sunday the Times had confirmed that Don Jr. went to the meeting because the Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer had promised damaging information about Hillary's campaign. Don Jr. actually admits this in his statement, but says it's all fine because the woman didn't produce the info after all. Cool. What do you think, Tom? Ah, yes. So, I'd like to quote my friend John Brennan from his testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee. I know what he's going to say. I'm excited. People who go along a treasonous path do not know they're on a treasonous path until it's too late.

Now, I don't mean to overstate this, but, you know, I think we've been focused on the way the Trump team has lied and contradicted itself and evaded these questions. But when you when you add up even just juniors to explanations of the quid pro quo is right there. The fact that this meeting occurred is ridiculous, right? I mean, they're in the middle of a presidential campaign. They're about to secure the nomination. Why are the top people in the campaign meeting with a random Russian lawyer?

It doesn't make any sense. It shows that they thought this was a big deal. Um, when the Gore campaign, by the way, was sent a copy of Bush's briefing book, they called the FBI, right?

They weren't like playing dirty here because they are smart enough to know you're getting set up. Yeah. By the way, good idea, guys. Nice job. 500 fucking votes. Right. They weren't like playing dirty here because they are smart enough to know you're getting set up. Yeah, by the way Good idea guys. Nice job 500 fucking votes Maybe you should have used that goddamn briefing book and dealt with the consequences Anyway, go on Feldman if you're listening John call you after the body we don't promote crimes here So we don't know if this lawyer was working for the Russians

But she has ties for them and is advocated for their interest. So that meeting should have sounded the alarm, right? So, okay first of all, the quid pro quo is, we'll give you information to hurt Hillary, you get rid of these sanctions we hate. The adoption issue is not about little kids. It's about the Magnitsky Act, which is a 2012 law we put in place because the Russians beat to death a lawyer who had exposed corruption in prison. So we sanctioned him, individuals around him, froze their bank accounts, etc. You should read a book called Red Notice by Bill Browder if you want to learn about this. But I mean, the Joe American bit is hilarious.

But like part of what they're trying to say is, well, you know, she's just a lawyer. This wasn't some like Kremlin official. They're not going to walk in the door with a name tag that says KGB to sit down with Don Jr. here. So, I mean, it's just... I don't know. I've been trying to resist. I'm so susceptible.

I know, you don't want to take it to... I'm so susceptible to the don't be Louise Mensch, don't fall into the conspiracy trap. But then it's all right there. Well, we also know that they just are lying constantly. We've caught them in so many lies about this

that you're like, well, yeah, I'd like to take it all at face value, but they've lied to us 50 times by now then the face value is like yeah we wanted damaging information on hillary then that happened like yeah the uh the thing is like the other thing that i keep noticing it's like you don't need to decide whether somebody was stupid criminal or criminally stupid and the thing that you look these are people these were neophytes these are sleazy neophytes in a game that's like much, much harder than they understood how to play. Right. And you look at campaigns over the years, Republican campaigns, Democratic campaigns. You look at the people that you think about Bush versus Gore and you think of these giant political figures that were involved in these kinds of campaigns.

These are serious adults. Right. These are serious adults, right? Being in charge of a presidential campaign in the United States is a serious task for people who have wisdom and knowledge and experience in the world that gives them a sense of, I have a red flag here. This is wrong. Or this is something that will come back to bite us. Or even though this could help me around Donald Trump. There was Paul Manafort, who is, I think, a sophisticated creep and criminal. And then you have Don Jr., you know, whatever, this sort of bad facsimile of his father, a copy on a copy. He's a very unintelligent person. And, you know, Jerry Kush Kushner who's just hanging on to this marriage this job by marriage for dear life so you know nobody could stop them from making these

going down these terrible paths I'll tell you the only winner in this episode Tiffany Trump looking a lot better these days

so Eric too Eric just lurched into number the second spot what's going on in there, guys? Not for you, Eric. SNL made Eric the dumb one.

They probably should know. No, they should not have. Anyway, so I was trying to wrap my head around this too, Tom, because it is so crazy. I'm thinking, like, basically this would be analogous to if the day after Obama wins, wraps up the primaries, Hillary drops out, the day after that, remember what a big day that was in the campaign, Plouffe, Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett... And Malia.

And Malia. Aren't in the office that day because they're meeting with someone who they claim not to know. Donald Trump Jr. said, I didn't know what the name was. Now, he didn't say he didn't know what the identity of the person was. He just said, I didn't know the name. He probably forgot the name. He could spell the name, right?

Exactly. So they go meet with a Russian lawyer who has damaging information about John McCain, promised damaging. We'd be like, what? What were you thinking? What are they doing? Like, it's crazy. And this all, by the way, is starting to fit together with a larger story, right? There was that Wall Street Journal report about this outside guy with connections to the campaign looking to talk to Russian hackers about getting the 33,000 deleted emails.

Peter Smith. Peter Smith. They're starting to be, you're kind of starting to get the sense of what's going on here, which is a group of people out of their depths in a campaign that's far behind, looking for anything that they could do to kind of turn the tables, whether it's data or damaging information or hacked emails or what have you. And because they are sleazy by nature and lack scruples generally, they open the door up to these serious crimes. Yeah. Senator Brian Schatz tweeted, maybe it's the crime, not the

coverup, which sort of was my reaction to because the new GOP talking point, which you're seeing sort of laundered through various Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity, who just had an unbelievable meltdown on Twitter last night, is that the collusion would be untoward but not criminal. And that could be true in legal terms. Collusion is about price fixing and antitrust issues. So they're sort of playing this word game. But this will ultimately probably be a political determination. But the criminality of it is very fact specific and whether they were lying to the fbi and others all along because jared and these guys didn't put any of these meetings on their background check for yes i know a lot of which is why this is all coming out a lot of focus on don jr here because he's the you know useful idiot but um jared kushner went on to serve in government and did not and he was at that meeting and he did not

report it until later and donnie jr says they didn't know what they were meeting about the sf-86 form clearly makes makes right say right there and you don't need to mention drop us give me a break give me break these people well so the yeah the question is was the meeting illegal or was it just moronic we don't know the legality i think is going to be fact specific. It very well may just be. I mean, like, I think people are jumping really quickly to treason. And I've joked about that myself. And I shouldn't do that because it's a pretty serious allegation. But I just don't think we should.

I don't think we know yet, but I don't think we should rule this stuff out. Yeah. And there's a lot of like, certainly it is a crime for them not to have reported meeting after meeting. Right. There's a pattern here of deliberately omitting important things. And that is a serious crime. The truth is, right, whether some specific thing turns out to have been something that could technically be called a crime, like, these are political charges, impeachment is political, what Donald Trump does with this information is political, what Mueller

does is political. I mean, he can, he's going to conduct himself, I think, in like the most like forthright and with a lot of forthright way and very with a lot of integrity. But like, still, like, what we're looking at here is a large political question. And you already see Republicans slowly marching towards collusion. Not only is it not a crime, seems like it was pretty smart. Right. Right. I mean, the picture is emerging pretty clearly here. Right. It's like we know now that the Russians wanted to interfere in our elections and tried to interfere in our elections and succeeded in doing so. Right.

to interfere in our elections and tried to interfere in our elections and succeeded in doing so. Right. And so as they're trying to interfere to elect Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton, what do they do? They go try to find willing partners in the Trump campaign. Yes. Do those people, do those partners need to know what they're doing? Do they need to know this collusion?

Not necessarily. Not necessarily. There were like, we know there were plenty of shady financial ties between the Trump organization and Trump and the Russians that Russians that date back for years. So they have these pre-existing relationships. They're trying to interfere to help this guy win. So it doesn't matter if Don Jr. or fucking Mike Flynn or Jared or any of the rest of them are smart enough to know what they're doing. It's like the Brennan quote, you know?

I mean, it matters if this lawyer... Look, this could have been a weird one-off meeting with a lawyer who didn't know what the hell she's talking about, never reported it back to anybody. Right? Or it could be someone that's connected to the Kremlin who ran up against these guys for a meeting to feel them out and reported back to the bosses in Moscow. Like, they seem pretty open to this whole idea of, like, a little quid pro quo here. So, I mean, this could be, you know, a conspiracy... Like, Ben Wittes and Susan Hennessey wrote wrote a long smart piece on this which i'm stealing from but like great they flew up in the the law of conspiracy covers all these agreements to engage in future crimes like so that's an area you could

see this being problematic what the hell do i know i i didn't even take the lsat but you know certainly this should be far more politically problematic than i think it's even been especially with republicans because it seems like pretty openly that they were trying to collude with more politically problematic than I think it's even been, especially with Republicans, because it seems like pretty openly that they were trying to collude with Russian figures to get information. Yeah. And this whole defense Don Jr. is tweeting this morning, which seems like a very smart idea. Yeah.

You know, who among us hasn't tried to collect dirt on our campaign opponent? Like, that's not going to fly. You know what? Not from a foreign adversary. Hey, Don Jr. Listen, listen, you can either say you didn't know what you were doing, or you know how campaigns work. But it cannot be both. And I would stick to the former.

So anyway, we'll see what comes out. So Donald Trump this morning tweeted about a lot of shit. Didn't tweet about this. Did not go rushing. Didn't defend his son. He defended his daughter. Can we just, for one second, talk about the fact that Ivanka sat in for her father as the head of state at a meeting. I usually don't like diving into the Twitter pylons on this stuff and like everyone tweeting the same outrage.

It is crazy. She's not an elected official. This is not a monarchy. The secretary of state could have been there. National security advisor. Secretary of the treasury. Any person that was appointed or confirmed by the Senate that has received some oversight not your kid that is outrageous it makes us look like a banana republic it's really a big deal and i don't mean to like i'm not slapping around ivanka here it's her father

that asked her to do this and it's outrageous yeah and i mean look people say oh it's normal for this to happen no it's normal for leaders to step out and for someone to step in for them but usually that person it's cool if you had to go pee right and that well that person is a highly qualified foreign policy expert that sits in for them but usually that person like you said It's cool if you gotta go pee Right and that person is a highly qualified foreign policy expert that sits in for them or Secretary of State or something like that

Or Treasury Right That's the person who sits in for the leader when they leave Not your kid man But anyways of course

Donald Trump defended her he retweeted something James Wood said That guy He retweeted Hannity he retweeted three fucks and friends clips I want you guys to know

that I skipped all this. Well, I mean, you were writing your Joe America thing. You missed nothing. I had to write a bit. I didn't really care. I looked at the Trump tweets. I'm like, what is he doing this morning? But one thing I want to talk about is yesterday morning, Trump was tweeting and bragging.

It said that he and his old pal Vladimir Putin had talked about forming an impenetrable cybersecurity unit so that election hacking and many other negative things will be guarded. Tough to really figure out that sentence. The language is so bad. But then the crazy thing, right, is he walks it back. So, of course, this is after he told us that Putin vehemently denied interfering with our election. And then Steve Mnookin, the Treasury Secretary, goes on Sunday shows, brags about this cybersecurity unit as a huge accomplishment. And then Sunday night, love it, Trump changes the tune and said, the fact that President Putin and I discussed a cybersecurity unit doesn't mean I think it can happen.

It can't. I mean, so a lot of great analogies come from the cybersecurity unit. Do not credit. This was like open season. It was like, Washington, send us your nerdiest analogies. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I was trying to be sarcastic there. Because that was a little like, actually, Marco Rubio's, which was, it was like partnering with Assad on a chemical weapons unit. Right. I thought that might've been the best, you know, got to give Marco Rubio credit. I did. I tweeted it. Everyone did like the burglar ones.

And then it just became a cascade of bullshit that you give your boss for a Sunday show. Yeah, it became the joke equivalent of this. It's easy enough to understand without the analogies. How about Lindsey Graham who said, it's not the dumbest idea I've ever heard, but it's pretty close. That tells me a lot. When somebody tries an analogy on me, I usually say, did you think I was too stupid to understand the underlying issue?

It's like partnering with the people who hacked us on an anti-hacking initiative. That's it. That's what it is. Didn't need an analogy. Very clear to me. But honestly, who thought that was a good idea? There's a lot of areas where you could conceivably work with the Russians.

This is really, really low on the list. Maybe you could have a lower level working group that tried to deal with cybercrime. But the fact of the matter is most cybercrime comes out of Russia. If a Russian cybercriminal goes after a Russian, they face there's hell to pay. If they go after an American, they don't give a shit. In fact, sometimes they use them as a carve out to get things done. So it's like but the notion that we would apply this to an election scenario is insane.

I mean, all they're going to do is work with us, steal all the information they can from that cooperation and walk away and give us nothing. It's just like, what? Why? What are you talking about? And why would you announce this at the head of state level? I wanted to ask you about this, Tommy, because like, obviously we talk about Russia a good deal and a lot of it's related to the investigation and what happened in 2016 and holding them

accountable and holding Trump possibly accountable for anything that he did. And there's an investigation, blah, blah, blah. But going forward, looking ahead to the future, a legitimate fear is that now that they haven't been held accountable, Russia will do this again in 2018, 2020 and beyond. And the question is, what are we doing or what can we do to secure you know, secure ourselves from another cyber attack from Russia? Yeah, he gave Putin a pass on election meddling. And this is not about collusion. I'm not talking about the impact on the election itself.

It's the fact that, like, our intelligence community said unequivocally that they interfered. And he was like, well, I basically took Putin at his word. And then Putin said he took me at my word. And the Trump people were left spinning that that in fact didn't happen. So basically what Trump should have done was say, like, we know you did this. Here's what we know. Lay out the case. And if this happens again, there'll be severe consequences.

And then you should not make this about 2016. Like these activities are ongoing. There were stories over the weekend that they're hacking. It's a nuclear energy facilities. Very scary. They're hacking. They're trying to hack European elections. So we should have stood with our European allies and showed some common cause there and made it clear that there's going to be a significant cost. But, you know, this the thing that came out of the meeting that was interesting is this temporary ceasefire in Syria.

And like, I hope if this works, I will jump up and down and applaud them for getting this done. But, you know, my skepticism is with Putin and not the Trump team with Putin, with Assad and the ability for them to actually get folks to have a meaningful ceasefire. But, you know, it just, Russia experts, Mike McFaul, a lot of people out there basically said Putin got everything he wanted out of this. He got said there was a good meeting and we got nothing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, else is emboldened, but not complacent. Yeah. Yeah. You know, else is emboldened, but not complacent. Russian hackers. Look, Donald Trump is pretty simple animal here. Like, he knows what his people hasn't talked about polls in a while, but he reads them every day. We can go we should we have to be open to the darkest scenario here, which is there's really very few roots for Donald Trump to have a successful reelection if he's imagining how things would go right now. And one of them is having the election hacked and stolen and fucked with by a foreign power. Yeah. And it helped him the first time.

It's in his interest for it to help him again. And he's not guarded, guided by any kind of sense of scruples or morals. And Russia was willing to take this incredible risk of getting involved in our election when they thought that there was somebody who cared. One just one quick additional point. It's so amazing to me that Trump continues to run down the intelligence community on foreign soil. Yes, they got Iraq wrong. We should never forget that. We should treat the leaks about intelligence with skepticism. But the talking point that only four and not 17 intelligence agencies agree that Russia interfered is it's so crazy that he thinks that because the Coast Guard intelligence didn't weigh in on this or the DEA didn't jump in on the intelligence assessment about Russian hacking that it somehow absolves him. It's just like it's the most specious talking point and it

shows his lack of interest in knowing what actually happened. Well, let's be clear. The opinion of the intelligence community was unanimous. Just because some agencies didn't weigh in on it doesn't mean there was any disagreement. Because it was too sensitive to give them the information. There was no disagreement. And, you know, for all that they screwed up with Iraq, that wasn't unanimous, the decision of the opinion of the intelligence issues there, right? Yeah, it wasn't Joe Biden over at the Defense Intelligence Agency, like, combing through the information and yelling at analysts. But I'm just saying, like, so... That's a Cheney reference, people. I do. Yeah, that analogy worked for me.

That's a Cheney reference, people. I do. Yeah, that analogy worked for me. Obviously, a huge concern is cyber attacks on physical infrastructure, whether it's voting machines or nuclear facilities or what have you. But if it repeats what happened in 2016, then it is Democratic candidates running for House suddenly facing a whole bunch of misinformation from Russian bots that were spread around or having their emails hacked and released. And it is hacking people's minds, right? It is people going to the polls, fake news, disinformation, misinformation. And like, that's the, we have not had that, we've not had that conversation in this country because, you know, it is hard to admit that there was a lot of misinformation that actually,

you know, influenced people's voting. You know, it's, um, that's pretty scary. It's, it's, it's the anti-democratic forces that are just beneath the surface. It's not on CNN. It's not in the new yorktimes.com. It's, uh, it's being shared on Facebook. It's moving around and kind of like a second layer of the internet that's kind of filled with garbage anyway. And then on top of that, we have gerrymandering on top of that. We have Sinclair broadcasting, reaching millions and millions of homes with propaganda.

We have Donald Trump's friend buying up the supermarket tabloid so that when people are buying food at the end of the day, they look to their right. And what do they see? They see a row of Trump friendly headlines and pictures. And and so there is this, not to mention the fact that Chris Kobach is out there rooting through people's voter files. So like we have to I do think it's important that we not be naive and Pollyannish about this. Like there are really strong, dangerous, anti-American, anti-democratic forces trying to prevent our elections from being fair and open and honest and being driven by policy and persuasion. And we need to win before it's too late. And one of them works in the White House and his

name is Steve Bannon. And according to the long New York Magazine piece today, he is again ascendant in the White House because Trump looks to him whenever things are in crisis because he will defend literally anyone about anything. So be nervous. Read that story. It's a good piece. Propaganda, foreign and domestic, is the big challenge as we go forward. And we have to deal with it at some point. We have to talk about it.

So, okay. When we come back, we will have our interview with Senator Al Franken. This is Pods of America. Stick around. There's this great stuff coming. Lots of great stuff. On the pod today, we are very lucky to have with us in studio, Senator Al Franken. Welcome, Senator.

Great to be here. Thanks for coming. Thank you. So I need to tell you something, which is, I've had three interactions with you that you may not remember. Okay. That I was saving until this moment. All right. One.

Here we go. I don't think that was necessary. The 2004 convention was the first convention I ever went to. I sat next to you on a bench at the end of a long day, and I said hello, and you said, hey, but you were exhausted, and it seemed like you weren't in a good mood, and I was afraid to push it further. Okay. That's the first.

All right. The second is- That sounds like memorable. It actually, I told people about it at the time. Yeah, sure. Second, talking about it ever since I bought a boom box to listen to the first day of air America radio. Cool.

When I was a temp paralegal and I vividly remember you talking to BB Newworth pretending she was Ann Coulter who I believe had locked into some kind of a closet. We, we had, um, yeah, we had locked Ann Coulter in the green room and turned up the heat. And I thought B.B. Newworth was perfect Ann Coulter, kind of, for her character from Cheers. It was basically sort of Ann Coulter. It sounded like her. And then the third is, when I was... Well, that's not a story about you and me.

That's a story about you listening. Okay. I saw you on TV once. You were in the Senate. You were asking questions. And then there was this time I saw you on Saturday Night Live. Listen. Okay, what's the third one?

This is literally... This is a story about how much I like you. Oh, okay. And you keep stopping it. Okay. All right, and the final part. I want to hear, okay, go ahead. And the third thing, and this meant a lot to me, was I was trying to get a job with Hillary Clinton.

And I don't know if you remember this, but she was supposed to go to a roast of Barbara Walters to raise money for Spina Bifida. Okay. Do you remember writing jokes for that? Just say yes and we'll get over it. Yeah, we'll get it over with. Anyway. I'm sure I did. I made you laugh with a joke about Rick Lazio working at a deli in upstate New York.

Oh, good. And I think it helped me get the job. Fabulous. With Hillary. Okay. Any questions for this Saturday? I was excited to talk to you. You poor listeners.

Having to hear that story. Listen. Those three great stories. They're in for a penny, in for a pound. I was so excited to talk to you. The point I'm making is that I've been a fan of yours for a very long time. Oh, well, thank you. And these small interactions I had with you, or really, mainly observations of you on other media,

meant a lot to me, and your books meant a lot to me. So that's why I'm excited that you're here. Well, thank you. That's a very... Get off of the question. Oh, let's talk. Oh, should we ask him a question? Yeah, we talked about this.

One of the things you talk about in the book is that you would have to learn a set of weird and occasionally sociopathic political skills. And one of the things you said is, the most ridiculous politician skill I had to learn was how to pivot, a term that basically means not answer questions reporter asks about the polls and you're supposed to say uh when i go around the state minnesotans don't talk about the polls they talk about jobs etc and so you had to struggle basically with not answering people's questions because it's not the right thing to do well basically pivoting means getting to what you want to talk about that day right you guys know staying on message you have a message that you want to get out that day

and i had this i could not learn to pivot off of the question which i just i was taught by my parents and by teachers to answer questions and I always would answer the question and give some interesting detail to be used that wasn't our message. And it took me forever. The story in the book about when I finally figured this out was I go to New Ulm, Minnesota, a town founded by German immigrants. New Ulm. I guess they were from Ulm. And it's a beautiful, beautiful town in the southern middle part of the state. And I was speaking to a Democratic farmer, labor, bean feed kind of a picnic.

It was a picnic in this park. And in the park, they have a statue to Arminius, who was a, I guess, a German Hun or something who defeated Romans, like killed like lots and lots of Romans in battle in 9 AD when Christ was just a tot. He was, I guess, nine years old. And the statue is huge. It's this huge statue to Arminius, but they call it Hermann the German, and that's what's known as New Ulm. Now, I'm speaking to these people, and I'm literally in the shadow of Hermann the German, and I grew up in St. Louis Park, which is the Jewish

suburb of Minneapolis. It's about 25%, or was when I was growing, about 25% Jewish, but that's a lot of Jews in Minnesota. That's a shtetl. That's just Jewish. And it was called St. Jewish Park by a lot of people in Minnesota, so everybody knew that St. Louis Park was a Jewish suburb. So now, here's the situation. I'm talking there. I'm trying to get the nomination, of course,

trying to get to run against Norman Coleman. And I'm talking about the issues I'm talking about. I'm talking about health care and education. But I'm standing in the shadow of Herman the German, and I'm from St. Louis Park, and I was a comedy writer for 37 years or 40 years. St. Louis Park and I was a comedy writer for 37 years or 40 years and so naturally I think of saying uh you know I'm here in the standing in the shadow of Herman the German you know I'm from St. Louis Park we had a statue too stew the Jew and I didn't say it I did not do it and which I was very proud of because there was a tracker there was a tracker oh yeah from the coleman campaign or from the republicans and i thought that anything i'd ever done in comedy was put through this dehumorizer which was a 15 million dollar machine with advanced israeli

technology that this would take all the context and if you you know satire you have irony and they took that out and and at the end of all went from went through the dehumorizer it was uh not funny anymore and very often offensive the one the stuff they chose so i figured that they would take this and say that you know franken blames holocaust on people of New Ulm. They were absurd with what they did with your joke. It was out of control. So I didn't say it. And so then about two weeks later, I didn't say Stu the Jew.

My team, my staff was just thrilled when I told them I had thought of this and didn't say it. And they thought, oh, my God, that's great. He's learning. That is a low bar. And then about two weeks later, New York Magazine comes to Minnesota to do a story about, you know, Al Franken running for Senate. No joke. You know, it was ever thought of a joke? Oh, no.

Yeah. That, you know, something, and you didn't say it. And I went, yeah. And then I, Stu the Jew. And my team is going like, why did you do that? Why did you do that? Now, it's not as bad in New York. And New York Magazine magazine of course that

was the first thing they went with you know great lead but it's not as bad as being on a trackers thing and it was uh so and that that was it for me i went i got it because they they said why didn't you just say i can't think of one right now or offhand you know why couldn't you have done that and i said like you're right and i've got to learn how to pivot so then i got and had one more training on pivoting from jess mcintosh who was our press secretary yeah and then i did then like a day later i did an interview with a guy to interview me a a number of times in Minnesota, Bigfoot in Minnesota. And he asked me a question and I pivot.

And it doesn't seem to bother him at all. So then he asked me another one and I pivot again. It doesn't bother him. Asked me another question. I decide I'm going to just pivot egregiously and see what happens. So I do like a really egregious pivot. Nothing from him.

I keep doing it. This is fun. This is great. Five, six, seven pivots. Interview ends. He turns to Jess and goes like, you know, he's getting a lot better. I think he's got a shot. But see, doesn't this get at something which is, look, it's good that you learned to do this because you needed to do it to win. But are you giving up something? I mean, isn't this get at something which is, look, it's good that you learned to do this because you needed to do it to win. But are you giving up something? I mean, isn't the reason you struggle against answering the question you're asked is because you should answer the question you're asked. This is bullshit. This is a way of avoiding saying what you really think.

I don't think we have to use language like that on this podcast. We have an explicit rating on the podcast. I apologize. It's an explicit political rating. You guys are better than that. We don't want to coerce on the culture here. Yeah. I know that.

You guys can get a lot of people listening without using that kind of language. I'm not sure. Okay. Well, anyway. Well, you know, it just is a matter of the worst part about that story is that the press just not only accepts the fact that you pivot, but it's a sign that you've gotten a lot better and you have a shot, that you really are getting there, that you're learning. You're a real candidate now.

Well, so my question is, you talk all about this in the book. You talk about how you try to learn not to say whatever's on your mind, not to be as funny, not to tell jokes. That's what made you be the automaton we have before us. So Donald Trump— No, I can be funny now. I won re-election. But what happened was I won by 312 votes the first time.

Yeah, I remember. And I just basically said, okay, I'm not going to be funny publicly anyway. My colleagues figured out right away it was funny, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to put my head down and be a workhorse, not a show horse, and I'm going to do Minnesota Press and not national press. I'm not going to do any podcasts, which didn't exist. Or maybe they did. I don't know. So, and I did that. And I won re-election by a comfortable margin in 2014, which is a bad year for Democrats. But I think the people in Minnesota got it. And I'm serious about my job. And so I'm going to continue being a workhorse, but one with a sense of humor. So, yeah. Do you think that Trump winning has sort of changed this environment now, right?

Because sort of like all the consultants, press people's rules about pivoting and being on message, all that, that's all out the window. Donald Trump is president. Does it change anything? I mean, did it surprise you at least what you can get, what he was able to get away with? Well, yeah. If I compare what he got away with and how he got elected president of the United States.

I was running for the Senate. And he didn't tell intentionally funny jokes. You have like intentionally funny jokes. Yeah. And you could like look at the intent of the joke. Except the humorizer took the intent out. Right. No.

And he talked about, he literally bragged about, you know, assaulting women. And, you know, I had written, you know, jokes that were racy or something. And, man, I paid a price for that. And I think he paid a price for that thing, but not a big enough one. Right. Because he's president. He is president. Why do you think it's hard for so many politicians to speak like a human being, to sound like

human beings? Do you think that they listen too much to the consultants and staffers that are telling them to be careful? Or do you think it's just, it's fear? I mean, you don't have a lot of politicians out there who speak normally, right? Well, I think it helps. I think it helps that, you know, I ran ran for public office when I first time when I was 56 years old. So I had already kind of, you know, the reason I had a lot to learn was I didn't I didn't know anything about about running. And I actually relied a lot on my political, on my media consulting.

You know, I was, I'm in that school of candidate who runs for office for the first time, who's been successful in some other field. There are two schools. One is I was successful for a reason. I'm really smart. I know better than anybody. That's why I'm CEO. And I'm just going to, you know, I'm going to just listen to myself. I'm not going to listen to anybody.

And that doesn't usually work unless you're, I guess, for president and the Russians help you. But mainly the ones who are successful are ones who I know what I don't know, and I don't know how to do this. And I will listen to my consultants and I will, of course, filter, you know, I will make choices. And but so I think it helps in the sense that I didn't run. I hadn't run previously and I hadn't had a history of having to not be. I hadn't been penalized ever for just saying what I wanted to say. So I think I'm – you know, I have that authenticity thing. Don't you think? Oh, I think so.

That's why we're asking you. Let's see how we're doing. Let's ask your listeners. Let's let this conversation go on a bit longer before we start making any kind of judgments. Okay. Why don't we have callers? It's a podcast. Oh, yes. Well, one of the things you talk about is DC's reliance on cliches, right?

You talk about the word robust. Robust kills me. Well, but again, though, you know, look, everybody understands, you know, authenticity has become this thing everybody talks about, which is ironic because the second you say you want to be authentic, you're not doing it. Right. It's if you're if you're trying to seem authentic, you're faking it. But and yet D.C. relies on all these cliches. What do you want? You know, is Trump authentic?

I guess so. Do you want that? Cuts both ways. Yeah. Yeah, cuts both ways. Yeah, I mean, I hate to use the word, but, you know, it's, I guess once you can fake it, then you got it. Right. Well, that's depressing.

No, no, no. But so, like, DC reliance on these cliches, right? Like, okay, consultants are helpful. You needed them to kind of help you figure out how to run for office. But there is a certain value to bucking them, right? That people, you have to push back, you have to be your own person, you have to say what's on your mind. But it does feel as though, at least that there is this language problem among Democrats, that Democrats are called out of touch. I say in the book that the problem with Democratic messaging is that all our bumper stickers end with continued on next bumper sticker. And, uh, we're, yeah, we're kind of bad at it. And, uh, you know, Paul Wellstone, uh, I dedicate

the book to Paul and Sheila, uh, his wife and, um, you know, he was good. He, he said, we all do better when we all do better. Yeah. And I like that so much because there are so many narratives now that there's winners and losers. And, you know, I think Democrats are about everybody wins. I really do. I think that's what we do best. And I talk in the book right away in the first chapter is why I'm a Democrat and the reason I'm a Democrat is that I grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. My dad was a printing salesman, didn't graduate high school.

Me, my brother, and my parents lived in a two-bedroom, one-bath house. I considered myself the luckiest kid in the world because I was. I was growing up middle class, at the height of the middle class, in America. Middle class in the middle of America? In Minnesota, in St. Louis Park. And I felt like I could just do anything I wanted.

I felt secure. I felt good. I felt the world was my oyster. I could do that. My wife, who I met my first year of college, first week of college, grew up entirely differently. Her father died in a car accident when she was a year old, 18 months old. She had a younger sister, and her mom was widowed with five kids at age 29 and with a high school education. And they made it.

It was tough. They had Social Security survivor benefits, but sometimes they went hungry. They often went hungry. They had their heat shut off. This is Portland, Maine. But all the girls went to college. All four of them went to college on combinations of Pell Grants

and scholarships. Pell Grant at that time paid for 80% of a public college education. I know the young people listening who are going, what? Because now it's like 35%. And so you could actually go to a public university and work in the summer and have almost no debt. And my mother-in-law, when Bootsy, the youngest one, went to high school, she decided to go to college, and she got a $300 GI loan. Her husband was a World War II vet. And she got three more loans, graduated college, became a teacher.

Because she taught Title I kids, She had all her loans forgiven. And they tell you in this country, they all became productive members of the middle class. And they tell you in this country to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We all believe that. But first you have to have the boots. And the government gave them the boots. And that's why I'm a Democrat. And I think we have to keep that message. message now right now we have this health care bill yeah and my

goodness what this is so horrible so what it's amazing what's going on right now the Senate what's that what's on the minds of your Republican colleagues are they well I don't know they're home been home. They're home. And the ones who either actually are home and dared go out, you know, may have heard something. I think they're getting the message from people. And there's been some good organizing around that. And people are mad about this. organizing around that. And people are mad about this. I'm the co-chair of the Rural Health Caucus, and I go around rural Minnesota to hospitals and clinics and nursing homes, and they're mad. This bill enjoys 17 percent support, which is the exact number,

exact percentage of Americans who said they have seen a ghost. That was just Marco Rubio running away from reporters. I don't know what that means. I missed that completely. That's fine. We're going to cut it. So everyone says Mitch McConnell is this master strategist, legislator.

It's so smart politically. Why is he working so hard to pass a bill that's got 17% support? What do you think is on Mitch's mind right now? I think on their mind is that they promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, I think. That's it. And so I think they think they'll pay a bigger penalty for not trying than for, you know, they could have tried to like actually maybe pass something that didn't take health care away from people who need it the most and give tax cuts to the people who need it the least. That could have been a way they could have tried it, maybe, and it would be more popular. But I think that's the calculus, right?

I think. That's what all the experts say. That's what my political consultants say. I mean, that's what it is. What do you think Democrats should run on in 2018 when it comes to health care? Do you think it's – are you in the Medicare for All camp? Are you in Fix ACA? What do you think?

Well, you know, I was for Medicare for All or single payer back in 2009. But I write about ACA and how we did that in the book. And, you know, Bernie was leader of that. And you need 60 votes, and we were about 50 votes short. Almost there. Yeah. So we're not going to – I think it's – what we did in ACA was – T.R. Reid wrote a book about all the different healthcare systems in the world. And when I was debating in 2008 against Norm Coleman, he would say continually, America has the best health care system in the world because we have Mayo Clinic.

And I go like, that's not a health care system. And T.R. Reid looked at all the systems and said, we don't have a system. We have systems. If you're in Medicare or Medicaid, you're in the Canadian system, single payer. If you're in the VA, if you're in the military, you're in the British system, socialized medicine. If you're getting through your employer, as most Americans do, you're in the German system. If you don't have insurance, you're in the Cambodian system. And what Obamacare was about was trying to get people in the Cambodian system into either the Canadian system or the German system.

That was basically it. And we got a lot of people in the Canadian system, and they're trying to take them out. That's what they're trying to do, to give a tax cut to people who are in the German system. Get them back in the Cambodian system. I can't believe we didn't land on this as our message. I get it. Do you want to ask one more question? Yeah, I want to talk about Trump first. But no, what we should be doing, what we should be doing, I hope it's sooner than 2018,

I think what we should do right away, if this fails, and I'm hoping it does, but I'm not counting on it necessarily, but I hope it does, is we should get the Republicans to work with us, with Democrats, and through the committee process, through the normal process. I'm on the health committee, the health committee. And Lamar Alexander, our first hearing this Congress was on the exchanges we need to address the exchanges I think we need a public option so that everybody in America can have that

and we'll have more competition I don't know if we'll get that but we should be addressing the weaknesses which they have been deliberately sabotaging. Oh, yeah. By getting rid of the risk corridors, by not enforcing the mandates, by shortening the period that you can sign up.

Everything you can do by not doing the cost sharing or not pledging to do it, we should do that. And we should also address pharmaceuticals. Right. And I have a comprehensive bill to do that. And we're actually starting to have hearings on pharmaceuticals in the health committee. So that's what we should be doing. Well, because we are good former staffers, I got many texts that he has to make.

He has another interview. All right. Oh, really? Yeah. That's what they're out there. It doesn't seem so short. You know what it was? It was a damn story you told at the beginning.

Yeah, there were three stories i don't care i do want to ask one last thing because this is something that's been is it going to be appropriate at some point to start talking about the fact that donald trump seems to be in some kind of decline i'm sorry but i i'm obsessed with this and and it feels like at a certain point we're going to have to have a conversation about it and you see increasing clips of him being unable to answer questions his behavior has always been erratic but it seems to be getting worse and do you think that there is something we should talk about ever should talk about i'm not the one to talk about that i'm certainly not you know i be a good time for a pivot don't help him thank you don't help him wow beautiful

now that's why we need mental health parody in this country well the thing is is i was just thinking about when uh republicans like rick perry or or secretary zinke come before the energy committee and you ask about climate change they go i'm not a climate scientist you know i'm not a scientist and i, yeah, but you have to answer this. I don't think I have to answer this one. But I'm not a psychiatrist, and I'm not a doctor who knows. I think what you're talking about is somebody did an analysis of his old speeches and answers from years ago and think that maybe there is some deterioration there.

I'm deteriorating. I'm 66, so, you know. I think you're sharp as ever. Thank you. Great. I think that's a great way to end. Al Franken's book is Giant of the Senate. No, no, it's Al Franken Giant of the Senate.

Gee whiz. Al Franken Giant of the Senate. Look at the book. If you type that into Google, you would find it. Yeah. But anyway, go buy the book. It at the book. If you type that into Google, you would find it. Yeah. But anyway, go buy the book. It's really funny.

It's really great. We've been laughing about it for a couple weeks now. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. It was fun, guys. Let's do it again.

Let's do it again. Take care. And next, we'll be right back with the host of Crooked Media's Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson.

I think Al Franken liked me. Me too. Me too. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. Happy belated birthday. Thank you.

Yes, happy birthday. I appreciate it. I, you know, one year older, one year wiser. Yeah. You know, I have trouble saying happy birthday to people on Twitter. I don't know what it is. I can't do it. It's something impersonal about it to me. Just because you didn't saying happy birthday to people on Twitter. I don't know what it is. I can't do it. It's something impersonal

about it to me. Just because you didn't wish happy birthday to Dre on Twitter like I did. I saw you do it. I retweeted your happy birthday. No, no, I actually wanted to retweet it.

I wanted to talk about this because I saw John's and I really did want to reply saying happy birthday but something made it hard for me to say it. Like it felt weird. We can get into it.

But that's why I replied with a joke. That's how I express my affection. I just make a joke. You guys gotta, I wanna see my birthday, the thing you could do for my birthday is wear rompers, rompers. That would be amazing for the three of you to be in one.

Like I said, this Lovett feels like his summer wardrobe is very constricting. And so I think that he's a good candidate for this. DeRay, without a doubt, I would wear a romper. That's just something that I would do. I think that getting John and Tommy into one

would require several people like they were being restrained. It would require it to be in Brooklyn. It would be cool in Brooklyn two years ago. What if we get Friend of the Pod romper?

We're going to talk to the merch people about that. Romper of the Pod. So, welcome back to the pod. We haven't talked to you in a while who do you have on pod save the people this week and uh and what are you guys going to be talking about we have governor mccullough the governor of virginia excellent talk about a couple things so he uh somebody in virginia just was uh sentenced to death and and was executed

so that happens uh we talk about that and then we talk about the felon disenfranchisement stuff that he's been working on in Virginia. And then what it means to be governor, some other issues that are really important. So he's good. And then there's a special guest who's a local, some local work that's going on. So people have to listen to hear that one. Exciting. Exciting. I like that.

I like that was a good teaser. So what are some of the felon disenfranchisement work that McCullough's been doing in Virginia, just so people know what the gist of the story is? Yeah, so I won't give away what's happening in Virginia, but I will say that there are a couple of states across the country where if you get charged with a felony, you lose the right to vote forever. And Virginia used to be one of those places, and he's been working hard to change that. But there are other places across the country where that's not the case. There's some interesting work happening, for instance, in Alabama around moral turpitude. So there was a law that said if you were convicted of a crime of moral turpitude, then you lost the right to vote.

But the Constitution actually didn't define what moral turpitude was. So every single town and county in Alabama could just make it up on their own, which, as you can imagine, led to deep discrimination. So only recently has that changed. So there's some people in Alabama, you and Alabama, some local organizers are doing incredible work to register people in jail to vote and make sure they can vote. But it's also interesting to think about the loss of rights that people face in prison. We talked about this on the pod this week, but in some places you don't have access to your medical records. The three largest mental health facilities in the country are actually prisons.

Wow. And they're not providing any kind of mental health treatment in prisons, I'm imagining. They actually, they are, but not high quality, right? Got it. And not nearly to the capacity that people, it doesn't meet the need. And in the public, when we talk about prisons, people talk about private prisons, right? This idea of privatization. We don't often talk about sort of what's happening in the vast majority of prisons, which are public,

whether that is like, you know, prison labor or health care or mental health or solitary confinement or education. So trying to uncover those things on the pod when we talk about issue-specific work. Yeah, it's interesting because we've shunted so many people with mental health problems into the prison system, and then we don't provide them with the care they need. Yeah, and there's a new study that just came out that talks about how women are overrepresented

in the mental health population in prison. And researchers are trying to figure out why, and they think that it's because many women who are in prison have actually experienced sexual assault or sexual trauma at some point that is leading to increased rates of mental health issues. And again, like the demand is not being met by service providers. In a lot of prisons and jails, The people who provide services are actually like private, they're private health companies.

It's not like, you know, the public health people. So we're seeing like a decline in services to people, which is frightening and has huge consequences on people's reentry into society. You know, what I love about this,

this Tommy, I just want to plug the show for a second. What I've loved about recent episodes is like, I feel like every week I've gotten a great update from Andy Slavitt about what's going on with healthcare. But then either through your interviews or the news section, like, you guys have surfaced stuff that I hadn't read or heard about that I think is really important. And you guys do it in a thoughtful way. And so I just think everybody should check it out because it's very different from what we talk about on Pod Save America week to week, but it's a fascinating show. Yeah, cool.

I want everybody to listen, too. Trying to talk about the what behind the what. You know, the stuff that isn't making necessarily the headlines today, but is impacting people's lives in a real intangible way. One more thing I wanted to ask you about because we haven't talked about this since it happened, but that NRA ad that was out there and then they went after you by name. How have you dealt with that? I saw that you were tweeting about it and stuff like that, but that just seemed so outrageous to me. Yeah, it's like that happened. We responded to the NRA.

There were some other people that they targeted after they put out that ad about me. I think that the NRA is really calculated, right? So it's really intentional about how they target people to look at what the reaction will be. I think that the reaction obviously was disgust and frustration with the NRA, and they had enough time to do an ad about me but haven't said anything about Philando Castile. Also, this past week was charged. I'm being sued currently by an officer from Baton Rouge. I saw that. A year ago, an officer got hit with a rock and he sued me.

And then just this past week, I'm being sued by another officer in Baton Rouge. It's me now and a couple other plaintiffs who essentially said that I incited a riot. So these are just distractions. I'm no more afraid for my safety than I have been for the past three years. And I'm hopeful that we will sort of work through these things quickly. And they're suing you because you're part of Black Lives Matter, not because you were at the scenes where these attacks happened, right? Yeah, so like the first lawsuit from the officer in Baton Rouge, I was there at the process. I got arrested at, so he's suing me as like somebody who didn't stop him from being hit with a rock.

And then this one, this is when the officer got shot, which did not happen when I was in Baton Rouge. And they're essentially arguing that I helped create a climate of danger. And interestingly, in both of these lawsuits, the officers of John Doe's, that they feel that they're sort of saying that their safety is at risk if they were named in this. And it's like, the reality is the only violence I've ever seen in a protest is the violence of the police. We came into the street because the police were being violent. We believe that there should be no violence, right? Like the movement began as a call to end violence,

and we believe that today. Yeah. It seems like this is something that protesters and protests have dealt with throughout history, right? Like how many times during the civil rights movement do they accuse peaceful protesters of being violent agitators, right? Like that used to be the line. And using the court to intimidate people. Right. Yeah, that's what happens what happened well i'm glad you're uh i saw that ad i was like i couldn't believe it and then i'm glad you fought back so it's uh i noticed it and i said you know what this

is the nra first of all like they are an organization that pretends to stand up for the rights of gun owners that ad had nothing to do with gun owners, gun ownership, responsible gun ownership, anything. It was just, it was purely an ad to try to incite people. And they go after you. And I mean, everyone has been saying, you know, they don't talk about Philando Castile. They do not talk about gun ownership and the rights of gun owners when it's a black or brown person. And there's such goodwill that they could earn.

There clearly is people saying, why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? And yet they refuse, which makes it seem so calculating. And they call themselves the nation's oldest civil rights organization, which is like. It's like a purposeful troll. It's like, are you, what? You're like, you're right. A purposeful troll is like the kindest way to describe that.

That's what we are now governed, empowered, purposeful trolls. That's the life that we're living. Alright, DeRay, well, everyone go check out Positive the People. It drops tomorrow, right? Tuesday? Yep, Tuesday morning. And DeRay, romper-wise, let's talk about sizing after. I actually don't know what my romper size is, but let's get to

the bottom of it together, I think. I can't wait for the group photo of all of us in rompers. Again, we're going to have to hold John and Tommy down like they're dogs that don't want to take a pill. Alright, Dre. Take care. We'll talk to you soon. Okay. That's all

the time we have for today. What a show. What a show. Good stuff. That's some good conversations. Al Franken was delightful. I think we solved all the world's problems. Joe America. Joe America. Joe.

Does Joe America want to sign off? This is Joe America reminding you once again that Russia is your friend. And that two-step verification is more caution than who needs the hassle. Maybe you're not at home. Maybe you're at a hotel. Maybe you're at a hotel. You need to sign into your email. It's like, whoopsie-daisy, you can't get into your email because you have the two-step

verification. Turn it off. Especially if you work inside of a democratic think tank or if you work for the Democratic National Committee. This two-step verification has gotten out of hand. And by the way, no more of these encrypted WhatsApps. None of this signal. It's very ridiculous. We are trying to...

What kind of society is this where people are using encrypted things like everybody is some kind of spy? Have a great day. Everybody is too... We'll see you again on Thursday. Leave with your door unlocked.