Pod Save America - “Putin’s Paperless Post.”

Episode Date: July 24, 2018

Trump spends the weekend rage-tweeting, the Nunes Memo is exposed as a fraud, and Jim Comey blesses us with punditry. Then students from Parkland, Florida and Chicago talk about their efforts to register young voters and reduce gun violence, and DeRay Mckesson joins to talk about his upcoming book, On The Other Side of Freedom.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Today on the pod, you'll hear our conversation with students from Parkland, Florida and Chicago who are now traveling the country to register voters and push the country to act on reducing gun violence. We'll also be talking to Pod Save the People's DeRay McKesson about his new book.

Everybody should check it out. Very exciting. Lovett, how was Lovett or Leave It? We had one of my favorite... Look, they're all great. There's never been a bad one. Hard to pick a favorite. But this was one of my favorite episodes we've recorded in a long time.

Define long. It's a high bar you just set there. We're really scoping the praise here. How long? I would say it's definitely one of my favorite episodes in the last six months. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. We had fantastic guests.

It was a great conversation. Great games. I yelled about Joe Lieberman for a solid 15 minutes, which we did cut down for your benefits. Save some for today. Double that. I never run out. I'm a perpetual angry at Joe Lieberman machine. How many Joe Mentum jokes?

Zero. Zero. That's the first one. Cool. Check out Love It or Leave It. Tommy, what about Pod Save the World? Well, John, future me is going to talk with Jason Rezaian who is a journalist at the Washington Post who was imprisoned in Iran for a very long time he is back in DC he got out

but we're going to talk about Trump's crazy tweets and then we're going to check in with Mike McFall who may or may not be in the process of being rendered back to Russia by Donald Trump and John Bolton and the cascade of assholes who work in his administration. Stay tuned. And the latest chapter of The Wilderness is out, Chapter 5, The Backlash.

We explore race and politics in America. We'll be doing that in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6. So go check it out. Are you in favor of The Backlash? Where do you come down on that? I have come out against the backlash after quite a bit of thought and exploration. Any backlash to the episode? Not that I've seen yet.

So no backlash, backlash. It's early. I'll be a little meta. All right. Let's get to the news. At the end of a week where the world was left to wonder whether the president of the United States has been compromised by a hostile foreign power. That's's right that's a sentence that i just said here in

2018 uh donald trump invited russian president vladimir putin to the white house this fall and then spent the weekend doing some good old-fashioned rage tweeting where he once again claimed that russian interference in our election was nothing more than a hoax quote so president obama knew about russia before the election Why didn't he do something about it? Why didn't he tell our campaign? Because it's all a big hoax. That's why. And he thought Crooked Hillary was going to win.

So guys, we have lots of other news to discuss from the weekend and today, but I don't want to just breeze past this. It seems pretty clear that Trump meant exactly what he said during the press conference with Vladimir Putin. Yes? What do you guys think?

Yeah, well, so... Walk back the walk back. Walk back the walk back. It's a walk forward. He walked it back. I mean, he got a little too much credit. We talked about this. He got a little too much credit for his initial walk back because midway through reading the prepared remarks like a hostage where he said that, actually, I don't think Dan Coats is a mental patient, and I trust our intelligence community, and not Vladimir Putin.

He threw in, but it could have been anybody. He could have been anybody. He couldn't stop himself from throwing in the, he walked it back in the initial walk back already, and this is just taking it to its logical conclusion. Tommy, do we often invite leaders of hostile foreign governments who've attacked our elections to the White House?

Do you see a lot of value in that? No, you're probably not going to get a lot done. You also, you don't often invite a foreign head of state who you just met with accomplishing absolutely nothing for a follow-up on your agenda-less meeting where you did some soft treason maybe and no one really knows what happened. And it's not just us libs who are surprised about this. I believe the news was broken to Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, by Andrea Mitchell during an interview on Friday. And I think he said something like, excuse me?

Yeah, no, listen, Dan was exactly where he should be, which was sitting in Aspen on stage with Andrea Mitchell. Where all great thought leaders are. It's important for the head of the DNI to be there in Aspen on stage with Andrew Mitchell. Where all great thought leaders are. It's important for the head of the DNI to be there in Aspen on a stage where ideas are exchanged. Where ideas are flourishing.

The idea in that session was, oh no, the president is a corrupt moron. Or is he? In conversation. Andrea Mitchell, Dan Kutz. I mean, there's articles about whether national security officials are ever going to get a full readout of what was discussed. The Russians are just announcing things left and right.

New partnerships on Syria. Things they're going to do vis-a-vis Iran, etc., etc. And his own administration has no idea what was discussed, what he agreed to, what he promised, except for maybe this translator who's just, you know, stuck playing monkey in the middle here between Trump and Vladimir Putin. Where are you, translator?

And how's that memory? Huh? You take any notes? I want to make just two quick points. One, I think we need to get – Trump is like memento. I think that he is losing track of what he's supposed to say, and he needs to get a tattoo that says, I accept the conclusions of the intelligence community on this arm,

and then maybe, I don't know, don't do crimes on this arm. And also, too, it is so desperate to invite Vladimir Putin to the US right after the Helsinki summit. It is... Well, it's interesting time for the midterms. He's going to join him on the stump. Yeah, he's got to. How does Putin poll in Michigan? If Putin goes to Wisconsin, he'll have been there more than Hillary. That was a long journey for that one. Yeah.

And don't tweet at me about it. I know. I know all the reasons that you have a problem with my saying that. I already know. I know I should do better. I will do better. But it's just – the point I was only – I was getting towards eventually is just it's a little bit you know you went on a date you had a good date you can't invite him to another date when you get home you think it's too desperate it's too desperate you gotta wait two days wait two days maybe maybe

putin would text you trump did you think john wrote swingers is that why we're here at this at this bit oh how cool would that have been huh what if we replaced him with the other one as i thought until last year that's why I signed up for this company. I don't know if anyone would notice. What about Trump's argument that the Obama administration never warned his campaign about Russia? I realize that it's easy to blow past a lot of these things, but I just, let's do a little fact check on this one, Tommy. He's the president of the United States. He doesn't need to be, like, he can get access to any information that we have in the u.s government from the cia the nsa the entire intelligence community anytime he wants he can walk into a

room and say tell me all the secrets all the cool shit the moon landing being faked allegedly what area 51 all the cool shit all the russian hacking shit he has access to all of it him to go out there and claim he wasn't told about any of this is so ludicrous and like lo and behold of course as it always happens now it leaks out that he got a very detailed briefing uh august of 2016 right after all of this went down uh and like it was in the press like he didn't need to be told by obama hillary clinton told him about it at the debate also i would just point out no puppet no puppet no puppet you're the puppet i'm the puppet no I'm the puppet. No, he's the puppet. We're the puppets. Both puppets. Punch and Judy.

Those are puppets. Wait, what are those puppets from? They're some sort of old-fashioned puppet show. Punch and Judy. Punch and Judy. I don't know. I don't know anything more about them other than there's Punch and there's Judy. This is very Borscht Belt.

Listen. I love it. It's getting a lot of tweets after this. Listen. Listen. and there's Judy. This is very Borscht Belt. Listen.

I love it. It's getting a lot of tweets after this. Listen. The point I was going to make is only, why didn't President Obama warn me about this hoax that isn't real? That is his argument. I should have been, this entire scandal is a made-up hoax in which nothing happened. I should have been told about it.

I should have been told about it by the president before I did the crimes. Why didn't President Obama tell me about the crimes I was about to commit? Yeah, I mean, he was briefed in August of 2016. He then was told that Russia played a direct role in the hacks against the DNC, which we know about because he then said, Russia, if you're listening, please find the rest of the deleted emails and go hack them. And then they did. Well, they didn't find those.

What are we doing? No, no, no. John, John, you're being unfair. Right, right, right. They did a different... Different hack. They took his invitation and did a related hack,

which is apparently exculpatory. He just acts like a casual observer of the country that he runs. It drives me fucking crazy. That's what happens when a pundit and a Fox News pundit becomes president. So Trump and various Republican politicians and pundits

also spent a lot of time this weekend lying about a newly released, previously classified application by the FBI to obtain a warrant to monitor the communications of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign official who the government had reason to believe was interacting with Russian officials. The law that allows the FBI to apply for this kind of warrant is known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is why it's often referred to as a FISA warrant.

We had some people on Twitter asking us to please give us a brief on this, what a FISA warrant is. Tommy, before we get into this specific case, what is the process for obtaining a FISA warrant? It's incredibly onerous. You can now read it. I mean, there's a long application where you have to fill out all this probable cause

that you put before a judge. George Soros. Right, right, George Soros. George Soros gets Hillary Clinton on the blower. You're right, you get one of his typing helpers to help put it together. He presses the deep state speed dial. Sorry, sorry for interrupting.

So, yeah, so you go to a judge. All of them in this instance were appointed by Republicans and they approve it or not. And then you have to go back on a regular basis to get it reviewed and renewed. So it's a pretty closely held process here. And what new facts did we learn from this application being released, even though it was heavily redacted? heavily redacted um we learned a number of things i mean one i guess i don't know that we learned this for the first time but we learned that devin nunes is a discredited liar and i don't know if you want to get into this now or wait a little later okay let's do it so remember when this was all being discussed in the first place uh dumb devin our friend and if you if you want devin nunes to leave congress check out andrew jansanz for Congress's Twitter account, webpage, wherever you want to go. Just go Google his name. You'll get there. His www.

Yeah, go to his www. They... Devin tried to say... Devin tried to say a bunch of things. One was that the Steele dossier, we all remember Chris Steele, he put together the P-Tape dossier, was the sole basis of the

FISA application. That is not true. Nunes also tried to say that the FISA application didn't say who funded the Steele dossier, that it came from a partisan source. That is not true. There's like an entire page of notes about how the source might have been compromised and the judge is allowed to evaluate that on the merits. We also learned that the FISA application wasn't solely based on the sealed dossier and that it was approved by four Republican judges. And then it got longer every time because new information was added, presumably because they learned things that were relevant or important about Carter Page in the process. And so we've learned that, you know, everything the Republicans have done in service of Donald Trump trying to defend him from charges of collusion has been a lie. But like the bigger problem here with Trump is that he tries to conflate the page surveillance with the look into the collusion generally, like the investigation into Russian interference in our election.

And they're simply not the same thing. Well, that's – yeah. The FBI applied for this warrant in October of 2016, which was months after Carter Page left the Trump campaign. So he was no longer an employee of the Trump campaign. So the idea that it was to sabotage the Trump campaign is sort of silly. And it was already months after they had already opened an investigation into connections between Trump officials and the Russian government. Because of George Papadopoulos. So the idea that Republicans keep pushing, that Republican pundits keep pushing, that the whole Mueller investigation was based on the dirty dossier and this application is completely false. They opened the investigation after George Papadopoulos got drunk. In London.

In London. With some Australians he didn't know. And blabbed to an Australian diplomat about meeting a professor who offered all kinds of dirt on hillary clinton that's what began the investigation um in this in this application the fbi offered evidence that page was the subject of quote targeted recruitment by russia and its efforts to sabotage the 2016 election and that he'd been quote collaborating and conspiring with the russian government they had probable cause to believe that. That is not a small thing. No.

That is not a small thing. Carter took a trip to Russia in July of 2016. The Steele dossier alleged that he met with senior Russian officials. He lied and denied that. And then when pressed by the House Intelligence Committee, he finally admitted that he did meet with senior Russian officials, just not the ones mentioned in the Steele dossier. So Carter hasn't shown himself to be the most trustworthy narrator of his own life.

Which, if you've ever seen him on TV, would not surprise you at all. Yeah, look, I think there's one thing we certainly don't understand, which is what makes Carter Page tick? You know, what gets him out of bed? I don't care how many warrants for surveillance you've got on Carter Page. You're not figuring that out. You're going to need a mystic and a divining rod and I don't know what. I mean, it's also important, too, because the whole thing, the Steele dossier, because it was paid for by, you know, the Clinton campaign or the Democratic Party or law firms connected to the Democrats. It's garbage, right?

It says in the application, in subsequent FISA renewals, the Department of Justice provided additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele's reporting. This is important. They did not just take the fucking Steele dossier and put it in application and say to the judges, now go approve it. They independently corroborated the reporting that they needed to get the application with various other individuals, which is why the judges approved it. But another very important point was even if they hadn't done that, in the same breath, Trump and his like asshole associates try to claim that the Steele dossier is biased and shouldn't be the basis for a FISA application. But they argue that Clinton Cash, an oppo research book paid for with Steve Bannon's money, should lead to an FBI investigation into Hillary. So they are lying idiots who are trying to have both sides. And it's simply not how the

process works. You are allowed to be a witness and have some sort of political or personal bias against the person you are discussing. Yeah, it's just it basically boils down to this. The old conspiracy peddled by Nunes, Trump, Republicans and all their favorite pundits on Fox was that the FBI had lied to these FISA judges, that somehow they had concealed things in the application and that they didn't. And now that we know that they revealed everything they needed to in the application, because now that the application is out, the new conspiracy is the judges were in on it, too, and someone should look in on the judges. This is what Andrew McCarthy said on Fox News and Trump retweeted and Hugh Hewitt and all

these people. The judges personally picked by John Roberts. Right. And look, and a lot of national security experts and legal people said we shouldn't focus too much on the fact that they're Republican appointed judges because just because they're judges and the judiciary is supposed to be independent

should be enough for people. But it is worth pointing out that yes, they were all Republican appointed judges selected by John Roberts. And I also think what's important to note is we're learning a lot of this but Devin Nunes isn't. Because he hasn't read the application. Devin Nunes put together a memo.

First of all, if we remember, he defeated himself in the memo, right? Because we actually learned from Devin Nunes' attempt to discredit this FISA application that it was also based on Papadopoulos and that that came first. So he kind of began discrediting himself earlier. But I also think we're in this debate now where we're debating whether or not the FISA application was legitimate. The FISA application is what, 400 pages? It is an extraordinary document. First of all, tons of it is blacked out and redacted. So we have actually –

It's called the good stuff. Yeah, the good stuff. They're saving that for later. That is for the series finale. That is season three. Yeah, we don't get that. We don't get that yet. We're going to get,

30 years from now, there's going to be, you know, we'll read it in Axios. We'll finally get to the wall. Go deep. Big fight will happen. Axios will release it.

And of course, they'll have the long form version, which is seven words. But of course, if you're too busy, there'll be a two word version. It's just as good shit. But but, you know, we you know, the three of us got into this debate over over the evolving explanations for the problems with the FISA application started with saying that the Steele dossier was the cause.

Then it was, oh, the Steele dossier's provenance wasn't revealed. Now it's just this seems weak and the judges are in on it. They're kind of running out of legs. The stool is out of legs. What we're talking about is a ton of evidence about a conspiracy involving a foreign government to involve themselves in a presidential campaign and collude with the Donald Trump campaign and then administration. What we're talking about, the scale of the scandal is sometimes lost in the debate over these picky details about this warrant. But you read the thing and you read the little excerpt like this is this is the FBI screaming, holy shit, there is a massive, massive conspiracy. It is incredibly dangerous and we need to find out what's going on.

Right. The big, big, big picture takeaway for me is that Trump's biggest defenders, the worst fringe right-wing media the maga dead enders like kim strassel and hugh hewitt uh trump's kids house republicans they will lie and cherry pick everything yeah there's no explanation up is down they don't care it is so brazen and the bigger problem here is no one in the republican party is really checking them like marco rubio who we criticize a lot in the show, to his credit, went on the Sunday shows and pushed until we got to here. And so, you know, Paul Ryan has allowed Devin Nunes to run the House Intelligence Committee, and it's been completely politicized. And we're in a place where there's just one news channel and one right wing sort of media ecosystem believes one thing based on

an identical document. And it is hard for me to wrap my brain around how weird and crazy and dangerous that well because it's they've also succeeded in making this a fight about whether devon nunes is an idiot or a liar or not when that's clear yeah right when the when the real takeaway like you were saying is like oh my god the fbi had probable cause with judges agreed with them that carter page was leading an effort to collude with the foreign government, who we know now because they've been indicted for this, sabotaged our election. And references many other people. And potentially other people. And specifically, one thing that has been public for a while but is not talked about enough, the fact that Carter Page went to Moscow shortly before he joined the campaign

and then the Republican convention was held and even though the entire Republican establishment did not want the platform to be changed to be more pro-Russia than it was somehow the Trump campaign decided to make the platform more pro-Russia. And it was right when Manafort started on the campaign it was after Carter Page came to Russia

and the FBI said we have probable cause to believe that these people are involved in collusion. And I just want to think to Tommy's point, too. All these people that are kind of going out on a limb now to continue to claim that there's a problem with the FISA application, with this investigation. They are doing it out of a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons is they allowed themselves to be co-opted and admitting now that they got taken for a ride by Devin Nunes is somehow too hard to admit. And so instead they say, yeah, no, I know I said that the dossier was used in a fraudulent way, but actually it's just that now the overall application is weak. No one who is now making

these claims that this application has a problem would be doing it if they hadn't gone out on a limb because Devin Nunes lied to them. And admitting that they were dupes of Devin Nunes and the Trump administration is, I think, hard for some people. Well, for the intellectuals and bonies. Yeah, it is. To your point about the platform, I mean, Putin's wish list is not long and it's not subtle. You know, I mean, he doesn't like the Magnitsky sanctions. He wants those to go away. He doesn't want us to give lethal support to Ukraine.

He comes back to the same things over and over again publicly and has his little cutouts and intermediaries run these ideas up against Don Jr. and Manafort and Jared and the gang privately. So again, the whole thing is in plain sight. Right. Sitting right there. Yeah. Yeah. The only piece, the only piece that remains a mystery is why Donald Trump himself behaves with such solicitousness towards Vladimir Putin. The rest is all kind of right there out in the open for all of us to see, except there's just one piece of information we're missing. And it may involve urine. Or it may involve the fact that Vladimir Putin kept evidence that Trump went along with all of his wishes on the wish list. Yeah, we don't know.

So as if all this weren't enough, Trump caps off the weekend by all caps tweeting the following to the president of Iran on Sunday night. Never ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before. We are no longer a country that will stand for your demented words of violence and death. Be cautious. Great kicker there. Be cautious. That's like driving your car 120 miles an hour down the highway and screaming be cautious out the window

at people you blast by. You've calmed down psychopath. It looks like a speech from Armageddon. You expect theremed down psychopath. It looks like a speech from Armageddon. It's like you expect there to be kind of orange and blues and kind of a Dutch angle and Aerosmith playing. Yeah. Tommy, what was that? What was that all about? And how freaked out should we be? The Trump team has started this sort of PR effort that where they're talking about corruption among top regime officials. The goal is essentially to weaken and destabilize the regime and try to punish them for their nuclear program. And so I haven't seen a lot of intelligence on Iran in many, many years.

But I suspect this plan to criticize and destabilize the current Iranian regime seems more likely to create a void that will be filled by the IRGC and military leaders like Qasem Soleimani, etc. I also think that bad people that we don't like bad guys who run the military and are accused of terrorist acts. Pompeo, Secretary of State Pompeo is out there giving these speeches saying he wants to talk to the Iranian people and help their quality of life. But he forgets that they're all suffering because we pulled out of the Iran deal. And now they're gonna get sanctioned again, and Trump's Muslim ban prevents them from entering the country. So, you know, a smart reporter from NPR pointed out that when Putin released a video of allegedly invincible ICBMs with warheads striking Mar-a-Lago, Trump didn't respond with a crazy all cap tweet. But, you know, it's good

politics to go after Iran. So here we are. There's larger questions about their policy towards Iran. But when Donald Trump picks up the phone to do a big crazy tweet on a Sunday in a week in which we've seen stories about, you know, A, the fact that his lawyer taped him, great lawyer, buddy. He chose a real top-notch lawyer there. And B, the fact that he's in the pocket of Vladimir Putin in a way that is now openly being discussed, it really felt to me like this is a guy shaking the etch-a-sketch and just trying to change the subject. That was my last question before we move on. Like it is when Trump goes on these rage tweet storms, you always wonder, like, is it just he happens to have a break in his schedule and he's pretty bored and he's been watching TV that got him upset? Is it some kind of a distraction

which I never usually think is true because he's not really playing chess here? Or is it something else? Does he know something's coming? It does seem like maybe this round has been I want to change the subject from the Putin mess last week. I think this is both. I totally agree with you.

What time did he send that last night? Like 11pm? It was very late. I totally agree with you. I mean, like, what time did he send that last night? Like 11 p.m.? Yeah. It was very late. Late night. I definitely think this and the stupid Rand Paul, let's go after people security clearances thing. Like, they're targeting John Brennan and trying to strip him of security clearance. This is like, I think, chum in the water to create a new story. But the Iran stuff does dovetail with a policy decision. Like, in three weeks, we're going to reimpose banking sanctions that were suspended after the Iran deal.

And we've told all these other countries that they have until November to stop buying oil and gas from Iran. So it is kind of converging in a strange way, a strange, terrifying, potentially destabilizing way. Right. I just think he looked at a buffet of distraction options and thought the Iran one would work. He was right. Well, part of me, honestly, I hope a tweet from him does distract because at a certain

point, as the news for him gets worse and worse, he's going to need to find more and more heinous and outsized ways of distracting us. And man, if he starts figuring out that words don't work, I'm going to get very nervous. So North Korea goes from little rocket man to his good pal Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, buddy that he's inviting to the White House, and now Iran

angry with them. All caps, threat tweet. No way now. Very cohesive policy. He's got a real doctrine. You have thought leaders like Ari Fleischer out there saying that, you know, he's right to try to destabilize the Iranian regime because that always turns out well. Honestly...

I know Ari Fleischer's never been involved in a bad foreign policy decision. Spoken for the Iraq war. Donald Trump could give Alaska back and we'd be hearing about how it was part of a grand strategic bargain. Also, John Bolton, it's worth remembering too, that John Bolton, hawk, America must be tough. We should never appease.

Obama is weak. These Democrats are weak. He has now been reduced to sending paperless posts to Vladimir Putin, who has faced no consequences for attacking our country. Couldn't happen to a better guy.

Ambassador Bolton does want regime change, so maybe this is one for him, one for me. I thought he wanted regime change in other countries. All right, let's talk about something else besides the instability and criminality of our president. You might remember that back in December, Republicans jammed through a $1.5 trillion tax cut for the rich that they promised would give workers a raise.

We heard that from Paul Ryan many times. Well, over the weekend, Bloomberg's Noah Smith had a chart that showed that in the first six months after the tax cut passed, real wages actually fell by 1.8%. Meanwhile, millionaires earned $17 billion in tax savings in 2018, and corporations have showered their shareholders with nearly $700 billion in stock buybacks. I just wish somebody... So much for that, huh? Wish somebody could have predicted it. I wish somebody could have said that if you do it this way, there will not be gains for the middle class and corporations will just keep the benefits. I

wish there had been someone out there making that argument, but there wasn't. If I had a researcher handy, I would ask that person to go find all of the stories that Paul Ryan and his staff successfully spun to various reporters in Washington, D.C. Watch out, Democrats. There's all these raises happening and there's these bonuses and all this kind of stuff. And it's going to reshape the 2018 elections and Democrats are going to be on the run because Republicans are going to be campaigning on the tax cut. No ads for the tax cut as far as

the eye can see, as far as I can tell. Just MS-13 all the way down. What is this character he's doing? Just really angry. They could make the argument that they've cut the wages for MS-13. I suppose. I don't know if they're included in the cut the wages for MS-13, I suppose. I don't know if they're included in the statistic.

So the conservative-leaning tax foundation also said that Trump's tariffs will reduce wages by another 0.04 percent and possibly eliminate more than 48,000 jobs, the one he's already proposed. That's not even the ones that he hasn't implemented yet. In this fall, we could see double-digit premium increases because of their sabotage to the Affordable Care Act. That's at the hand of the Trump administration. Latest NBC Wall Street Journal poll, however, said that 50% of voters approve of Trump's handling of the economy. That's up eight points from October. What should Democrats do here? How do we get the story out about a tax cut that didn't do anything but shower millionaires with more money and yet

costs are rising on everything else. Yeah, I think we should probably make it a big part of what we talk about. Cool. I think it's a important part of the campaign. Probably get to run some ads, break through this media cycle maybe. Yeah. Okay. I ask about the Democrats because over the last few weeks, there have been a chorus of voices in washington cautioning democrats to stay in the center yeah um here's former fbi director jim comey over the weekend who everyone looks to everyone looks to for political wisdom democrats please please don't lose your minds and rush to the socialist left this president and his republican party are counting on you to do exactly that.

America's great middle... Oh, my God. I just had, like, chunks rising in my throat. America's great middle wants sensible, balanced, ethical leadership. Oh, my God. Of course, we had Joe Lieberman's Wall Street Journal op-ed on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. See the third way met this weekend, talking about Democrats rush to the center.

I just, I don't, I don't understand what's going on. Why do the rich, powerful, financially well-off white guys always feel the most aggrieved? There is room for them in this party. There's room for social conservatives, limited government, less spending, whatever you guys want. Okay, go out and win an election, fight for the things you believe in. But these guys always frame it as if the rest of us are

dangerous for thinking that everyone should have healthcare or thinking that income inequality is like a horrific, enormous issue for voters. It's infuriating. It's such a fundamental mystery of where the party is, where the country is. And also, James Comey, you've been a Democrat for all of seven minutes. You have historically terrible political judgment. You led us into this mess, in part because your political judgment is so shitty. Shut up. I want to hear from you. Shut the fuck up. I would say you could make a very good argument that James Comey's punditry is amongst the most destructive forces in the history of the republic. Here's the thing about what James Comey says. Here's what Joe Lieberman says. They never say, I believe in these moderate solutions. I believe

they're better for the country. These are the policies that we should pursue. We shouldn't do Medicare for all. We shouldn't do universal college. We shouldn't do a jobs guarantee. They're bad for America. These are not practical. These ideas make us less electable. These ideas will cost the Democratic Party. There is no evidence for that. There is no evidence. And to your point about what we should be saying about the tax cut, you know, this is an argument we've had sort of not an argument, but it's a conversation we've been having for a long time.

Fundamentally, for a long time, there were two choices for people. One was the Republicans that saw, you that saw growing income inequality and corporate concentration and answered it with policies that would make matters much, much worse. But the alternative was Democrats who offered solutions that would help people, that would make life better, but that were not up to the scale of the problem, that didn't feel commensurate with the uncertainty and dislocation and immiseration people saw in their communities, the sapping of dignity people felt in their own lives. And the conversation we've had over the past two years has been incredibly productive. It's why we've ended up in a place where every major Democrat who's going to be running for president is in favor of some form of either access to Medicare for all or Medicare for all. We have had this debate. We had this debate when Joe Crowley lost to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It is over and over again we've seen that the Democratic base wants people who are going to fight harder and for more

for bigger, bolder policies. And the elite of the party seems to have rallied behind those ideas, too. The people that are left out are people like Joe Lieberman and James Comey, because I don't know why. Because they read an article about Bernie and AOC campaigning and they all flipped out. Yeah. And also, I mean, one thing you said that wasn't quite right. We didn't learn that in the primary between Ocasio-Cortez and Crowley, because Crowley was one of the first members of Congress to embrace Medicare for all. Of course. No, no, but it leads to a bigger issue here, which is the Washington press corps and Washington media and a lot of people whose

political knowledge and political punditry is based off the Washington narrative, like Jim Comey, like Joe Lieberman, have made up this ideological divide in the Democratic Party that doesn't really exist right now. There are some Democrats who believe that maybe we should have a public option first before we get to Medicare for all. There's a lot of others now, pretty much majority of House Democrats and most of the Senate Democratic Caucus who believe we do need Medicare for all. And there are various debates about how hard you should go, how strident you should be, this, that, the other thing. But the progressives who have been trying to push the party to the left ideologically have largely won this debate.

And the reason they have won this debate is because it reflects voter attitudes right now, on the economy especially. Yeah, and it also reflects the fact that we have spent a long time trying to make sure that we put electable Democrats on the ballot, and it didn't really work. Well, we don't know what electability, the notion of electability is crazy. That's what I mean. All these people are pushing for the kind of politics they practice, Joe Lieberman practiced for decades in Washington. Over the last 10 years, as we've talked about many times, we lost the Senate, we lost the House, we lost the White House, we lost the legislators, we lost the governorships.

So clearly our notion about what's electable is a bit fucking off. So maybe, maybe instead of worrying about what your instinct tells you about what voters want, why don't you just say what policies you support and we can argue about that. And we can argue about that. And I've said this a million times, but if you are genuinely centrist ideologically and you want to say, I don't think Medicare for all will work for this reason, that reason and the other. And here's my plan that I'm putting for that. Please go say that. But politicians. Or go run for office. Or go run for office.

But politicians, especially politicians. Jim Comey can do whatever the fuck he wants on his Twitter feed. Especially politicians. Don't be out there acting like a fucking pundit. I saw some of the politicians, Democratic politicians who were at this third way thing being like, we don't want to have an election where it's our base versus their base. And we just think our base is bigger. But don't get into all of that. Talk about the policies that you support and why. The only other thing I'll say is that part of Comey's tweet where he's like, the president and

his Republican Party are counting on you to do exactly that. The punditry I am the most sick of is don't do X. This is a gift to Donald Trump. You're playing into his hands. This is what Donald Trump wants. No one knows what the fuck Donald Trump wants. Donald Trump wants a cheeseburger and a Time magazine cover. He's wanted the same thing this entire

fucking time. This plays right into his hands. He wants to get accepted to Harvard in 1971. Can you make that happen, James Comey? Because that's what he wants to get accepted to harvard in 1971 can you make that happen james comey because that's what he wants no one knows what a political gift to donald trump is come on people the uh so silly the uh the other go ahead put a button on it put a button on it fuck joe lieberman fuck joe lieberman only because and i said this i'll never leave it but i'll say it again now joe liebermanman talks about how we, he says in this op-ed that we need people that, we need to prove that Democrats know how to govern again, as if what's happened in the last two years,

yeah, we know how to govern. That's what we need to prove. We have a governing party. It's the Democratic Party. I'm sorry that your brand dictates that you need to start no labels with John Huntsman and pretend that both parties are to blame. But we have a national fucking emergency, and it's not because Crowley isn't going to be in the fucking house. All right.

When we come back. Did that count as a button? Yeah, that's good. We got it. When we come back, we will be talking to students from Parkland, Florida and Chicago. go on the pod today we are here in studio with cameron caskey student at marjorie stoneman douglas high school and one of the founders of march for our lives matt deitch a graduate of marjorie stoneman douglas high school and the chief strategist for march for our lives and ariana williams is a graduate of North Lawndale College Prep School in Chicago and

a leader with the Chicago Peace Warriors. And you're going to Michigan State in the fall. Yes. Congrats. Thank you. Thank you guys all for being here. So you're in Los Angeles right now as part of your Road to Change tour. You spent the summer going on a bus to places all around the country.

What were your goals when you planned the tour? Why did you pick the spots that you did? Tell us a little bit about it. Who's asking? Go for it. It's me, Jon Favreau. Cameron earlier said he could not tell the difference between my voice and Tommy's voice. Yes, so listeners, I apologize if you're like me.

So Matthew and I, the chief strategist, I don't know where he got chief. That's what it says in your – yeah, this is – Matthew, a strategist from March for Our Lives. Chief strategist. And I, the founder, not co-founder. Thank you very much. We were in – we went to one of our friend's offices in Brooklyn. And for four days, we said we are going to completely plan 80-some-odd stop tour around the country, and we are going to make sure we're very strategic in different ways.

We picked different districts with low youth voter turnouts, and we went to different areas that are affected by gun violence in very different ways. For example, Chicago, Milwaukee, those two cities are affected by gun violence very differently than, let's say, Houston. Right. And, you know, there's so much that all of these situations have in common. But again, it's no two cities are the same and no two cities have the same problems. And especially in regards to Chicago, Ariane, I feel like you can really expand on that. Chicago has very prominent problems in the community, such like gang violence which is one problem that a lot of people named a lot name a lot but it isn't always gang violence it's also police brutality

and just the war on poverty which is one of the things that like top like creates problems in Chicago that creates the gun violence and creates the black on black crimes and the police brutality because people in chicago feel like they have no no path to on life because the education system fails us um there's no supermarkets no grocery stores in our communities and literally like no one comes no one literally wants to help the um the neighborhoods they usually just go downtown chicago which is basically not even a part of chicago We don't even claim that as Chicago. But they've got the bean. My look.

It was really important for us to start our tour in Chicago because the first real approach we had to the intersectional issue of gun violence was that we reach out to St. Sabina and the Peace Warriors to inform us on the nonviolent practices that they preach in their neighborhood and what has stopped gun violence in their community. So we started with the Peace March, which was this beautiful event with Chancellor Rapper, Jennifer Hudson, Will.i.am. And we had thousands of people march four miles down the streets of Chicago. And so we started in Chicago and then we've been all around the country. Now we're in Los Angeles and we've just been on a bus. So it's like... And we've been meeting up with students in different areas. And if they are as engaged and excited about working in this issue together as

we are, many of them have joined us. Ariana has been with us in Chicago. We have a friend named Bria, who we met in Milwaukee. We have friends from Houston, because it's so important to be a unified front here. Gun violence affects so many different communities in so many different ways. And if we're able to stand together and say, we come from different walks of life, we were raised differently, we have very different communities, but we know what the problem is here. We know what we can do for this. And we stand together and are proud to march into the future alongside each other, it's very hard to lose the momentum because as long as we have each other, it's a very powerful thing.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the things about what you guys have built that's so impressive. You've made it so intersectional. I mean, it's people of different ages and races and geographic locations. What have you guys learned from each other? And like, what, what is something that surprised you about gun violence and how gun rights or gun ownership are viewed in places outside of Florida? I've learned that a lot of people who will disagree with us, really, really, really don't know a lot of the things that are happening. And by that,

I mean, I'll be at one of our counter protests because sometimes we have counter protests where a handful of people with AR-15s will stand outside and say, you won't tread on me, all those things. And I'll speak to them and I'll reference bills and laws that they don't know exist or I'll mention something that does not exist and they'll think it was there. For example, I'll talk about ATF digitization. I'll talk about how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is not legally allowed to digitize their files. And therefore, when law enforcement will put in requests for the serial number of a gun that was found at a crime, they have to go through an archaic pile of paper.

There are so many – Does the NRA oppose? Yes, the NRA opposes ATF because they're feeding into the conspiracy theory that any step towards making law enforcement's job easier means that Hillary Clinton is going to bang down your door and steal all your weapons. And the ATF has so many piles of paper, in fact, that they have to use shipping containers in the parking lot to hold some of it. And lose a lot of them too. They lose a lot of them. So this does not expand the ATF. It simply takes files that exist and brings them into the 21st century.

And I talk to these people about it and I'm like, you know, the NRA opposes that, right? And I say, no. And they say, well, how could they ever oppose that? And I say, here's 11 articles that show NRA publicly speaking out against that. And that's one thing. Many people don't know that guns are not confiscated at the site of domestic violence cases, even for three to five days. And yet more than half the women in this country who are killed are killed by their partner.

These are very simple things that simply are not on their radar. And like the biggest thing for me was we're always taught that this issue is polarizing. We're taught that this is something that like we don't talk about because it makes a lot of people angry at each other. And that hasn't been the case. And we've invited opposition to come and speak with us. And they'll be like, come march with thousands of people at the counter protest to Road to Change. And there'll be like six people outside. And they'll all have guns and they'll all be screaming at the people walking in

and then we'll have a conversation and they agree with most of our policy points if not all of our policy points and so i think the reality is that this is not a polarizing issue except in capitol hill right and except in the presidency where they personally benefit from allowing this violence to perpetuate because they're profiting off of this and they get to keep their position in power unfortunately what's happened with the the recent gop is that the gop is acting very scared of a bunch of different things for example there's the current faction of the gop that will just say whatever trump says and do whatever trump does because they're afraid of him not liking them i mean you've got ron desantis big faction now yeah you've got i mean you've got ron desantis who's running for governor in florida entire platform is Trump likes me, guys.

And I know that happened with Obama. But the difference is – I don't need to explain the difference to you. There are these – and you'll see there are members of the GOP who are so scared of the NRA not liking them. They will not read a bill that doesn't touch the Second Amendment with a 20-foot pole. It's embarrassing. I mean, I very often speak out against weak politicians on both sides of the aisle because I think a lot of Democrats right now are pretty weak too and need to start kind of dusting off their knuckles. But the intimidation that's coming from the NRA, I mean, you've got Marian Hammer in Florida, whose simple job is to be a bully that the NRA sends to scare people. She's an evil woman.

That New Yorker piece on her was pretty remarkable about her power and influence, the way Florida has been an incubator for terrible gun laws to spread. I think she was mentioned in the failing New York Times as well. She was at the legislative session that the Parkland survivors, Jackie Corn, organized 100 survivors of the shooting to go up to Tallahassee and talk about like a small bill that they wanted to see on the floor. And Marion Hammer walked right past the kids, was able to go into the legislative room, talk to the lawmakers in a room that says like voters only and was able to go in there. And then she came out and the vote was close and they she killed the bill and she was wearing a cape that said i hate you kids i hate you and her dalmatians were behind her cliche villain yeah ariana um you've said that when people talk about chicago they can fall into a trap of saying you know

chicago's kind of code for a place where a lot of people get shot. And they overlook stories of young people from African-American, Latino communities, you know, who are trying to make things better. What's the story you want people to know about Chicago and the work that's going on there? I want people to know that we've been working for a long time and we've been crying out a lot. And people believe that we don't ask for help because of downtown Chicago or like the north or or east side and they forget about the people who were who get the bottom of the barrel basically and the fact that we normalize our own our own deaths and our own people who fall into the traps of being on that set path that they're giving like when you're born you're automatically they're automatically given the path of being a gangbanger or being someone who

won't ever have anything because we're told from day one that we'll never get out of Chicago. I want people to know that we have so many people in Chicago who are actually very intelligent and people who can be the future doctors, lawyers, and teachers. Like I wouldn't be where I was if I wasn't from Chicago and I didn't understand and I didn't see the daily like problems that we have. I wouldn't have a full scholarship to Michigan State if I didn't see the daily problems that we have. I wouldn't have a full scholarship to Michigan State if I didn't see the problems that we have and I didn't want to actually change that. So at the end of the day, just don't assume that we all want to be gangbangers,

that we all want to live in this environment because nobody really does. We just want the resources that we need. We need the money and we need the recognition that there are people in Chicago who will better the future. Yes. And to expand on that, Ariana has told me her GPA and I can proudly say it is almost twice mine. And in regards to that, I think that the perception of Chicago violence falls under something that you'll see a lot of people say, which is if it's black on black violence, it's gangs. If a Hispanic person shoots somebody is a legal immigrant. If it's somebody, if it's somebody with some, forgive me, if it's a Muslim person, it will be terrorism. If it is a white person,

it's a mental health issue. And he was a nice boy and he's misunderstood. It's the people will fall into these, into these generalizations so quickly that people don't care. Just sticking on Chicago for a second, I mean there's – the incidence of police shooting innocent African-American men mostly, you read about it constantly. And there's so much frustration with Rahm Emanuel, the mayor, and state government. I'm curious. What do you think people in Chicago want to see the mayor's office do differently, the Chicago police force do differently to try to address the challenge of police violence? Well, for one, do their jobs. We shouldn't actually tell them what they should be doing.

And it becomes a problem when they're saying there are no solutions, but there are people giving them solutions. So it means you're not actually doing the work that you are supposed to be doing we want the governor to actually not give nine five million to build a police academy when there are schools that are being shut down and we're sent to like all of these schools in our neighborhood so if the schools that are in different communities are shut down that mean they're pushing us all into one school so you have all of these different gang members coming into one school. So that creates a more prominent violence that is happening because you have all of these people who do not like each other and they cannot stand each other and they're gaining, they're trying to gain control of the money and everything else that is

prominent in the neighborhoods. So the fact of the matter is that do the work for the people. You work for the people. You are supposed to be there for the people but at the end of the day it's all about money and it's more of money is over our lives and that should not happen and didn't they cut your ap classes yeah i had four ap classes my first semester of high school um my senior year high school and then my second semester which is the last semester i had one so my gpa went from a 5.5 to a 5.3. That is still a really good GPA. I think it's important that we're not breezing through this, that the fact that they always say, like, what are these kids doing?

Like, what are they doing to fight for this? Ariana shut down a highway earlier this month, the Dan Ryan, to protest the lack of funding uh for that area and that's a huge budgeting battle between uh ronnor the governor and uh and rom the mayor and it's all over this budget that has destroyed this school system in her area and they were able to shut down the highway make a statement but still we see very little negotiations in these human issues that aren't partisan. It's just about actually providing decent education for these children. So investing in the future is such an effective way to prevent this violence because giving these people an opportunity to make something out of themselves

without having to carry a gun is incredibly important. I mean, forgive me, but you know, there are people in the Obama administration that I love, people in the Obama administration that I really cannot stand. We feel the same. Cameron thinks I'm Dan. I got to tell you, though, Rom, he better not be my space knight. Do you guys hear Chance kind of drills him in the new album he dropped last night? It's a tough lyric. So what policies are you guys pushing for as you go across the tour?

I mean, it's fascinating to hear, you know, you're talking about ATF digitization. And then, Ariana, as you talk about some of the issues that Chicago's facing, it goes even bigger than that. It gets to housing and poverty and education and all kinds of issues. It gets to housing and poverty and education and all kinds of issues. So what issues are you all focused on when you go to different places on the tour and also when you talk to lawmakers? Well, have you ever heard of the Kindergarten's program? No, no, no, no, no. We're not going there. I mean, the biggest thing, the first step is funding CDC research for gun violence.

When you have the Senate majority leader say, we don't have any solutions, but we welcome funding for those solutions, and then the same committees don't fund programs to actually research those solutions, we're not getting anywhere. If guns aren't the problem, you can fund the research to tell us that guns aren't the problem. Yeah, seems reasonable. And so then that's the first thing, and then digitization of ATF records, and then universal background checks, which records and then um universal background checks which polls at 97 percent with americans we literally don't agree on anything as much as

we agree on that apple pie polls worse in this country than universal if i went outside with 100 people and said it's hot out 96 people would be like yeah 100 degrees out exactly and and there and there's a really bad stigma behind expansion of universal background checks and private sales. They're saying, okay, I have to get a background check to buy an AR-15 privately. Hillary Clinton and Obama this time are now going to be beating down my door to steal all my weapons. The thing is the government has regulated things before, surprisingly enough. Sit down, guys. Amazing.

And we're all still here. Exactly. The NFA of 1934 was it or 1938 the National Firearms Act is why I cannot open carry a bazooka

now there are people I know the gun rights gun owners of America they're crazy they're apparently a fifth the size of the NRA

and they think that we need to repeal the National Firearms Act of 1934 because you know we need Tommy guns everyone needs a tank everyone needs a tank the only way to stop a bad guy with a tank is a good guy that we need to repeal the National Firearms Act of 1934 because we need Tommy guns. People need their bazookas.

Everyone needs a tank. Everyone needs a tank. The only way to stop a bad guy with a tank is a good guy with a tank. So they're saying that if we're able to do background checks and private sales so we make sure that pedophiles who have killed 11 people cannot buy this kind of weapon, that the government is going to have a very distinct list of people who own guns and then track them down. First of all, the ATF can't even find guns already recovered at a crime.

So I don't know why you think the government is going to work that well. Yeah, good point. People say that it's government involvement and everything. If the government was effective enough to make a list of everybody who had a gun and go take it, they would be much better at a lot of other things too. And that's the stupid argument I can make about it. There are a lot of good ones as well. That's just the easiest pill to swallow. I mean, hearing this sort of brings me back to when we were in the Obama administration and we tried to pass a universal background check bill. And it was a pretty decent bill, could have been

stronger, but we're trying to make it a bipartisan bill. Joe Manchin's a sponsor, Pat Toomey, two very, I mean, Joe Manchin's conservative enough as a Democrat that he, you know, shot a copy of the climate change bill in one of his ads. You know, so this is a guy who likes his guns. But still, they were both on board sponsoring this universal background. He shot a copy of the climate. It's wild, man. Loves guns. Wild ads back in the 2010 race for midterms.

But anyway, so they put this bill on. We kept saying the same what you were saying, Matt, like 90% of people agree on universal background checks. We don't agree on anything like that. And it was after Sandy Hook and the bill dies. And it dies because just about every single Republican was against it and a couple conservative Democrats. conservative Democrats. So how do you guys sort of change? How are you thinking about changing the political calculus around even this even legislation where there's broad agreement in the country? Is it about registering voters? Is it about awareness? What do you guys think? It's about creating an educated voting force, especially with young people, because when we're

talking about what has perpetuated this system, it's because the people that vote are these old people that aren't as educated as the younger people when discussing these situations in this policy. But I mean, it's a lot of it is just the misconceptions and the lack of ability to actually combat these terrible arguments. Like I've been in meetings with over 200 representatives, and most of the people against us are absolutely wrong in what they're actually claiming at me. And they misquote the Constitution and they say policy incorrectly. That's why educating the youth is so important. Surprisingly enough, the older people in this country who will tell you that our insight doesn't matter because we haven't seen this much are the easiest to manipulate.

I mean somebody could put out an ad saying this person wants to pass an ATF digitization bill. Lock your gun up right now. The government is coming. And they'll be like, oh, my God. I mean, we were in a meeting with Marco Rubio, and we said we want universal background checks for all gun exchanges, all gun sales. And he said, well, what if I want to give a gun to my nephew for his birthday? Does he need a background check? Yes.

Obviously. I don't know your nephew. That was my answer to him. And he like so offended by this that is if you don't if you don't want to get if you don't want to get a background check what are you hiding buddy yeah or what's your nephew hiding rubio's a young enough guy his nephew i only imagine, would be at most like 20 years old. I just never got that. Like you need a gun so badly, so soon, you can't wait for a couple days for a background check. Seems silly.

You talked about educating young voters. I mean, I saw a poll recently that was a little dispiriting, which had only 28% of adults age 18 to 29 are absolutely certain they're going to vote in the midterms. Now, the polling on that question has been all over the place, but this one had it relative to 74% of seniors. So what have you guys found are the most persuasive arguments to convince your friends, the people you're meeting on the tour, even people who don't agree with you, that they have to vote in this midterm election? I think the important thing is reminding them what's at stake. And it's difficult because empathy is subjective. There's no scientific formula for empathy. The same way as Dana Leal will say that a crazy person will buy a gun, there's no scientific

formula for crazy the same way there's no scientific formula for getting in touch with somebody one-on-one. So you have to sit down with that person and say, well, what matters to you right now? Chances are, if you talk, if you speak for long enough about it, they're not going to say nothing. If you talk about the camps that Trump is making for immigrant kids, which I think we can all agree, whatever, what's today that people aren't talking about anymore. Yeah. All right. What were you going to say? Have you found an effective argument that you think people should replicate? I was going to say the same thing, just basically to empathize and not just have sympathy. Because I feel like that's the whole reason why I'm on the tour is to share my story and to share other people's story from Chicago.

And I think that's the most effective way to get into people's hearts and also their minds and not just have them listening. Because at the end of the day, these are things that they never went through. They don't know how to feel for you. And if you tell them your story and vividly explain it, they'd be like, wow, that shouldn't have happened to you. And it can happen anywhere else in the world. Let's take Parkland, for example. It was voted one of the safest cities in Florida. And yet there was a mass shooting that happened. And that's kind of, you know, it's hard to start to think about when it's never happened to you. But you have to think, maybe one day this could have happened to me, could happen to my kids.

And also, like, you have to think about the future. Do you really want kids growing up in the future where they have to be afraid of walking down the street? I mean, it's already happening now, but I wouldn't want my children to feel like that. I wouldn't want my four sisters to feel like that. And at the end of the day, it's just more of empathy and not just sympathizing with someone. And we can't talk about voting as participating in this system. We have to talk about voting as being able to create a new system that fights for us instead of a system we have to fight.

And I think that's the hardest thing right now to communicate to people because we're incredibly divided as a nation. But if the young people of this country can come together, we have the technology, we have the education to come together and say, this is what we want to fight for. We can completely change what this country looks like because young people as a demographic, like vote at the lowest rate. And if we raise like five points, six points, the youth turnout completely control the election as young people. And that's something that doesn't get communicated. We are constantly told voting doesn't matter. I went to school at Santa Monica College. I was told constantly that my vote in California means absolutely nothing, right?

But it does, 100% for the local election, for my Congress race. It may not totally matter for the presidency because it's predictable, but it still matters. Because you're still being, you are actively choosing the leaders. So we don't talk about voting as just checking a box. We talk about it as being a hero, as being a part of the future of this country. And that's the messaging that we really need to push instead of this your vote, one vote doesn't matter. And I remember growing up on this. I remember my parents telling me, oh, I'm going to vote today.

I'm going to go wait in a long line. We're from Florida, so it's hot. And there's this abysmal vibe around it. You know, vibe, because I'm so well-spoken. I'm saying vibe. There's this abysmal stigma attached to it where people truly believe that voting, if they are going to bother to do it, is just another sloggy part of their sloggy day. We need to really flip the narrative on that. There are a lot of different ways we can do it. And there are a lot of great efforts that a lot of us are working

with to make sure that voting becomes a much more accessible and exciting thing. But it's the problem with going back to your question, the problem with so many people being disillusioned from voting is there's a culture that is really influencing us against it. And I feel like we can really flip that here at Pod Save America, where you guys are doing so many good things. Well, so a question for you. I mean, the NRA successfully partnered with Russian spies to push their agenda. Have you considered calling Moscow and seeing if they want to work with you?

Нет, спасибо большое. I believe that's a yes. Let me just finally ask, like, have you guys noticed a shift in how people think about this issue and how people think about voting among a lot of the young people that you've talked to in your travels? What's giving you hope throughout the last however many days you've been on this tour? People like you guys. Before we went on, we were talking about the voter registration surge in Florida, especially around Parkland. That's incredible.

They used a picture of David on that article. Yeah, of course the article had to use a picture of David on a tirade because that's the sensationalization of media. So what I would say is one of the things giving me hope is we're seeing a lot of young people really, really active and involved. And this is something Matt's really good at speaking on. One of the things giving me hope is we're seeing a lot of young people really, really active and involved. And this goes – and this is something Matt is really good at speaking on. This goes before people who can vote. These are people who are not 18. So I know that there's an abysmal percentage of folks who want to get involved at 18.

But I know students who are 15 who are asking – 10, zero, who are asking, how can I get involved? From the womb. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I was with my friend i was with my friend who was pregnant the other day and the baby kicked in morse code how can i how can i how can i knock on doors she's like how do they get it you have that story about that 15 year old kid right yeah a 15 year old kid really early on came up to me and was like i can't vote i can't vote in the next election what can i do and i And I was like, well, you can help register people to vote.

We've been registering people to vote for years, and no one's really good at it. So we really need to create new, fun, interactive ways that we can get more people registered to vote. And he goes, OK, I'll figure it out. And he left. And I saw him like 10 days later, and he was like, I didn't really do a great job.

I registered like 30 people. That's amazing. If everybody in this country, if every single person in this country registered 30 people to vote, that wouldn't make any sense. But that's the thing. It's about creating ways

that voting is more accessible to people because everyone over the age of 18 should be able to vote in this country. And the fact that that is a controversial statement is ridiculous. So Jamal and I, Jamal is our creative director at March for Our Lives. He's 20 years old, a Stoneman Douglas alum.

Claps for Jamal. We saw that the NRA stands on our flag. They talk about the Constitution, but they don't actually represent any of its goals. And so we wanted to take back patriotism and so we rebranded the American flag as this QR code with if you scan it it registers you to vote in less than two minutes no way and we've registered awesome we've registered in the 38 states where online voting is

the pop socket oh we also pop do you have the pop so I do you have a pop socket if you it's the same flag design and if you have the popsocket? No, I don't. Do you have the popsocket? It's the same flag design and if you scan it, you can scan it with any iPhone, any QR reader or Snapchat and it takes you

to our website and you can register to vote in less than two minutes. That is so cool. And we've been selling them on the road to fundraise for the local groups

that we partner with. So for example, last night we had a town hall in Los Angeles and all the money we made selling Search went to Black Lives Matter in Los Angeles. Awesome. And money we made selling Search went to Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. Awesome.

And when we were in El Paso, it went to the Human Rights at the Border campaign. And so we're partnering with all these groups, registering people to vote, and actually helping them raise money too. Matt Deitch, Ariana Williams, Cameron Kasky, thank you so much for joining Pod Save America. When we come back, John will talk to DeRay. I will. Joining us on the pod today, the host of Pod Save the People and the author of the new book On the Other Side of Freedom, DeRay McKesson. Boom, boom. It's great to be back. I haven't talked to you on the pod in a while. I know it's been a while. So I was very excited to start reading the book. I read a chapter in which you talk about your childhood, your relationship with your mother. And you also

talk a little bit about how you how that made you think about the country too. And I just wondering if you could tell people about it, because I have to say, I thought it was a beautiful chapter and surprising a lot of ways. And I think people may not know that story and what it meant to you. Thanks for reading. Thanks for reading some of the book. It comes out on September 4th. But, you know, I think about the book as like a reflection on the things that I've learned in the protests and like all the ways that we talk about activism and like those stories. And that chapter you're talking about is my mother who left when I was three and came back when I was 30 and like I it's the first time I've ever actually written about her which is like I didn't realize that until I finished writing I was like this is the first time I've written about her um but I

wanted to talk about like what what it was like for my mother to leave and like what that meant to me as a person and what is it like for her to return but also talk about the power of memory and like what what does it mean that we reconstruct our memories in a way that can actually either be a tool of liberation or oppression and that that essay to me sort of mimics what I try to do with all the essays is like how do I sort of talk about these personal things that I learned but also like use them to enter into much bigger conversations. So, so the book is, you know, the, the subhead of the book is about being hopeful. What is the takeaway for people in terms of being hopeful at a time in which things feel pretty dark? Yeah. You know, it's, it's funny. People will say things like, um, they'll say things like the

system, we'll say the system is broken and people say, no, it's actually like it was designed right and what we say in response to that is it was designed that like people made this and because people made it people can make something different and like hope is a belief that our tomorrows can be better than our todays and like we have to carry that with us so it's called the case of hope and the very first essay is about hope it's like this notion that like yeah this is bad but people made this because people made it, like if they can rewrite the tax code on the back of napkins and paper tiles, we can actually do a whole lot. But some of that is like, how do we imagine the world that we want to live in? And like in the book, I try and offer both reflections on things I've been through, but also like a sense of like, where do we go from here? And like, what are the tools that

we'll need to get on the other side of freedom. So speaking of people trying to redesign the system, on the show, you recently talked to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Was there anything surprising about talking to her? I mean, she's somebody that has been in the news a lot. She's now, you know, a villain from everyone from Fox News to James Comey. What do you make of her? Even more impressive in person. Like, I already loved her like everybody did. And then I met her and was like, I would vote for you for president.

You could be the dark horse. She's too young, but she has the chops to talk about this work. I'll be interested to see what happens when she actually enters Congress. There's this one part that I think actually got edited out of the interview because we didn't have time, is that I said to her, what is your relationship with the party, right? People are, people don't know why you ran as a Democrat, and like, you talk about being a socialist, like, why the party? And her response is something I'll never forget. She said, DeRay, people confuse the party with the people who have those leadership positions. She's like, I know the party to be every door I knocked on, the gay people, the, like, black and minority women, the people who work in low-wage jobs, like, they are the party, and minority women the people who look in the low-wage jobs like they are the party

and my relationship with them is perfect and i thought that was like such a powerful way to reframe the way people try to ask that question even the spirit that i asked it in and it was like okazo cortez like you get it like you know how to talk about this and we often think about language as like the first act and that's actually the beginning of the book i talk about this idea that like the the people who define things defining the terms is actually the first act. And that's actually the beginning of the book. I talk about this idea that like the people who define things, defining the terms is actually the first instance of power. And like she understands that so well. that you're a part of and have been a part of leading for so long, but also, you know, bringing that message to people like Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and, you know, striking, walking that line between engaging with those in power and also pushing back against those in power. Is there anything in the book that you think people would find

interesting just to let people know just kind of how you're going to let people behind the scenes a bit? Yeah, you know, writing it, I feel like I've been writing the book for four years. I talk about there's like something Bernie said in one of the meetings that I've never written about before talked about. So I write about that there. That was a reminder that even the people we love, we need to make sure that we continue to push them. We need to make sure that we continue to push them. I remember meeting Obama for the first time, and he had just said, or the second time actually we met, he had just called the protesters in Baltimore thugs. And he and I were together.

It was just the two of us behind the chair he was sitting in. And I'm like, Obama, you can't call people thugs. I said it just like that. And he's like, DeRay, you said things on TV you shouldn't say. And I'm like, yeah, but I'm not the president. So I write about those things, which are different and interesting. I actually write about being gay for the first time. I've never written about being, I'm not in the closet, but I've never written about being gay. So there's this essay at the end of the book that talks about sort of how I think about identity and what it means and the way that we think about this work. So I try to do,

and there's a chapter on the police that uncovers some of the things about the police that you might not have known and some research that we've done. And I don't know, Levin, if you saw, you saw that article that came out recently that was about the relationship between police violence and mental health. Did you see that? I didn't. So there's a big study that came out that talked about the relationship between mental health in black communities and police violence. And they actually used our data set to do that study. So like, we put a lot of things out in the world that people use for dissertations and study. And I actually write about some of the things that we found that just like haven't made the public

conversation yet in the book, which I'm excited about. DeRay, do you find it as frustrating as I do that they're now going to be members of Congress that are younger than us? You know, aren't you going to go be their speech writer or something? They need to learn from you, love it. You need to be having speech writing workshops on the side. I don't know. Bunch of kids on the hill now.

Kids on the hill. That was good. That was good. Well, DeRay, I think people will love the book. I think it is fascinating. It's personal. It's beautifully written. And there's a lot of interesting stories in there.

So I hope everybody listening picks it up. Yeah, you can pre-order it now at deray.com, D-E-R-A-Y.com. And a portion of all the proceeds, up to 20,000 books, actually goes to help the NAACP Legal Defense Fund

in their work that's happening right now to protect the rights of people all across the country. And you might not know them by name, but you know their work because they did Brown v. Board of Education. Awesome, awesome. Well, Deray, thanks for being here because they did Brown v. Board of Education. Awesome. Awesome. Well, DeRay, thanks for being here.

Everybody get the book. Everybody check out Pod Save the People. Everybody do whatever DeRay says. Boom. Thanks, DeRay. Talk to you later. Yep. Thanks to all the students who spoke to us today. Thanks also to DeRay McKesson.

And thanks to you guys. Thanks to James Comey. And Joe Liebman. For getting into the political fight. Mixing it up. A week ago, you say we got to vote for Democrats. One week later, you're worried that the Democratic Party has left you behind. Send a letter about it.

Pretty fucking amazing, James Comey. Thanks a lot for playing. We love your political ideas. We'll see you at the phone bank.