Pod Save America - Republicans Strap On for Biden Impeachment

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

With just two weeks left to avoid a government shutdown, Kevin McCarthy opens an impeachment inquiry against President Biden, even though Republicans have provided zero evidence that Biden did anything wrong. Trump outlines his radical vision for a potential second term as the President unloads on "Maganomics." Then, Representative Jamie Raskin joins to break down the House Democrats' counterattack plan on impeachment. And: strap-ons in the Senate! How a hearing on book bans turned X-rated.

Welcome to Positive America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Joe Biden takes on Donald Trump's magnomics, Republican senators make a book ban hearing not safe for work, and later, Congressman Jamie Raskin joins to break down the Democratic strategy around our first topic, Kevin McCarthy's announcement on Tuesday that House Republicans will be opening an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Let's listen. Our job here is a serious job. Our job is to focus on the American public. will be opening an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Let's listen.

Our job here is a serious job. Our job is to focus on the American public. Our job is to make tomorrow better than today. Our job is to legislate, not to continue to investigate something in the back when you cannot find any reason to impeach this president. Oh, sorry, Dan. That was a clip from September 2019 of McCarthy talking about the first impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. Here's what he said on Tuesday. That's why today I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. This logical next step will give our committees the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public. That's exactly what we want to know. The answers.

Surely, for Kevin McCarthy of 2023 to disagree so strongly with Kevin McCarthy of 2019, there must be some kind of credible evidence that Joe Biden committed a high crime or misdemeanor. Right, Dan? Oh, of course. Obviously, Kevin McCarthy is a man of deep principle and he wouldn't just flip flop like that for no reason at all. We're just waiting for him to tell us what that piece of evidence is. He's hiding it closely. Which he which he was not able to at the at the press conference.

And he hasn't been able to and nor have any Republicans in either House of Congress. We have called this an impeachment about nothing, and it is, but before we get into the politics of it all, what's happening with the impeachment inquiry, how it works, can you give us the short version of what Republicans are alleging and investigating? I'm going to do it right now. You ready? You're going to say nothing. I mean, it is. alleging and investigating? I'm going to do it right now. You ready? You're going to say nothing.

I mean, it is. The idea here is some insinuation, some allegation with no evidence that Joe Biden did one of two things, either benefited financially from Hunter Biden's business dealings with foreign entities or took an action as vice president to aid one of those clients of Hunter Biden. No one, not even the sketchiest Republican witnesses has alleged that. It's not even, like we say, there's allegations, there's an allegation of that even. There is just the idea fabricated in the head of a bunch of pickled MAGA brain Congress people that that happened,

but even their witnesses don't say that. Yeah, I mean, look, just, since we aim to give you all useful information here on Pod Save America, someone actually comes up to you and asks you what they're alleging. There's basically a couple allegations that are all bullshit, but just to go through them. They think Joe Biden was, well, one allegation is that Joe Biden was bribed by Burisma,

where Hunter Biden served on the board. That is based on an anonymous tip that the FBI and Justice Department under Donald Trump already investigated. They found nothing. Dropped the case. Rudy Giuliani, during the last campaign, paid some henchmen to go dig up dirt on that same tip. Found nothing.

House Republicans found nothing. And even dipshit Senator Ron Johnson said it was probably just a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch that was making shit up. So that's the bribe. Then there was the allegation that we all heard back in the Trump impeachment trial when he tried to withhold military assistance in order to force Zelensky to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. God, that sounds like a long time ago now. And the allegation there is that when Joe Biden was vice president, he got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to stop him from investigating Burisma.

Only problem is it was the entire Obama administration, other countries, anti-corruption organizations all around the world who wanted the guy fired because he wasn't doing enough to investigate corruption, including he had refused to investigate Burisma. So that's that one. Republicans said that Hunter Biden's business partner was going to be their star witness, star witness. And he was going to link Joe Biden to Hunter Biden. And the whole thing was going to unravel. So they bring him in and they have him testify. And it turns out that Devin Archer testifies that Hunter Biden never even discussed business or policy with his father. And when they then subpoenaed thousands of pages of financial documents and bank records, they found no evidence whatsoever that Joe had anything to do with Hunter's business.

And then the last one is that they claim that somehow Biden interfered with the criminal investigation into his son. one is that they claim that somehow Biden interfered with the criminal investigation into his son. Just as we're recording, we learned that David Weiss, the Trump appointed U.S. attorney, did in fact indict Hunter Biden on three charges related to false statements and the purchase of a firearm. So no interference there. David Weiss got to do what he wanted to do, just like he said he'd be able to, just like Merrick Garland said he'd be able to. And yes, Joe Biden let his own Justice Department and a Trump-appointed attorney indict his own son. So there you go. And said he was never interfered with. The allegation from one of these whistleblowers was that David Weiss, this Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, wanted to become special counsel,

and Merrick Garland denied his request. David Weiss went public and said that did not happen. And when David Weiss asked to become special counsel, Merrick Arlen made him special counsel. So honestly, it's like the worst fucking, it's the worst scam ever. It's the worst corruption scam ever because Joe Biden made no money off of it, didn't make any policy decisions that would have helped his son, really only have made policy decisions that his vice president probably would have hurt his son by firing someone who wasn't investigating Burisma. And as president, his son's about to face charges through his own Justice Department. You just gave, with all the appropriate rebuttals, of course, a more cogent explanation of what this impeachment is about than any single Republican has done since they began pushing for it this

summer. They just sort of yell the word bribery and corruption and Biden crime family. They don't even lay out the actual allegations because they've all been disproven. So they're just using vague terms for the purpose of smearing Joe Biden to help Donald Trump. Yeah. The one thing that they keep hanging on is like, there's probably a couple of times where Hunter Biden was trying to make money off the Biden family name. And he was saying things like, oh, you know, my dad and my dad, you know, like he was trying to make it seem like his father was part of it in order to get money, which is like, again, this is why Hunter Biden is facing all kinds of challenges. Again, this is why Hunter Biden is facing all kinds of challenges. And so they're basically saying, oh, you know, well, Joe Biden, you know, he'd be with a business interest and he'd call Joe Biden and get him on the phone and be like, hey, dad, and then be like, see, I was talking to my dad.

But that is like Joe Biden. There's no evidence that Joe Biden knew what that was going on. Was Joe Biden not supposed to take calls from his son? I mean, and also it's so fucking ridiculous. It is. I'm legitimately enraged we're speaking about this because it's so stupid. I know. But it's one of those things that you got to like people should just know because everyone's going to be thrown out allegations.

And so it's good to know the facts. I heard one of these Republican congressmen the other day being like, well, why does Joe Biden have all these houses? I was like, why does Joe Biden have these houses? Do we not remember that when Beau Biden was dying of cancer and Joe Biden couldn't afford his medical bills, he was about to sell his house, he was about to mortgage his house, and then Barack Obama gave him a loan because he didn't want to have Joe Biden sell his house,

which was like one of his only assets at the time. Like, Joe Biden has never been wealthy. He made a bunch of speaking fees when he left the White House. That was it. That's how they made their net worth. And he wrote a book. And he wrote a book. Right.

That's it. That's the extent of it. He used to be one of the poorest senators in the United States Senate. Look, I understand why Republicans are upset about this. They are, their hero is an up from the bootstraps kind of guy

like Donald Trump, who was given money by his dad, or someone who just goes out there on their own, like Jared Kushner, just persuades the Saudis to give him billions because of his moxie and grit. It's like, come the fuck on, people. So just days ago, McCarthy told Breitbart that House Republicans would only move forward with an impeachment inquiry by holding a vote, quote, not through a declaration by one person. Why do you think he went ahead with an impeachment inquiry through a declaration by one person, him? What changed over the last several

days? I think the original reason that he said he would only do it by holding a vote was a way to try to put off the idea of an impeachment inquiry. Well, we have to have a vote and the votes aren't there. Therefore, that'll persuade the Freedom Caucus to stop threatening my job if I don't give them an impeachment inquiry. But they didn't care. And so he, Matt Gaetz, went and gave a speech. He ran to the, basically ran out immediately and announced it. Yeah, we have a clip of Gaetz's speech here. I rise today to serve notice. Mr. Speaker, you are out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role.

The path forward for the House of Representatives is to either bring you into immediate total compliance or remove you pursuant to a motion to vacate the chair. So that worked. That worked. Kevin got results. I mean, just the if Kevin McCarthy had any actual dignity or even strategic thinking, you don't let a goofball like Matt Gaetz treat you like that. And your response has to be to stand up. Right. I mean, I don't know. I guess this is the first time in history that a strategy of impeachment has not yet worked. Like, it is just absolutely embarrassing that he did it this way. And he just enters this even weaker than before. Yeah. And it wasn't just Gates. Basically, the Freedom Caucus, hardliners, the MAGA nuts, none of them are really happy with the impeachment inquiry. A bunch of them have called it a distraction from their gripes over spending, which is why they want to shut the government down. They want McCarthy to, you know, just cut more, even though he has a he made an agreement with Joe Biden to avert the debt ceiling disaster. So it didn't appease them at all. And some of them, by the way, just want to hold an impeachment vote. They don't even want a hearing. they don't want an inquiry they just want to impeach joe biden they've said that publicly

that's what donald trump wants him to do mccarthy did this he i guess he went into the caucus meeting today and said okay well if i know you're trying to scare me if you want to have a motion to vacate go do it see what happens so he basically challenged gates back to like go go try him after he gave after he gave gates everything he wanted i mean well clearly not i think i think gates is basically gates called the impeachment inquiry a baby step because he wants the full thing the full impeachment yeah i mean the context here also is we are two weeks away from a government shutdown. The last thing the House did before they left on their prolonged recess or Biden impeachment fact-finding mission or whatever you want to call it, the month of August for them,

was they were trying to pass a far-right conservative agriculture appropriations bill. McCarthy couldn't get the votes, pulled it from the floor. The first thing he tried to do when he came back was pass the defense bill. And he had to pull it because he couldn't get enough votes

to pass the rule. Not even the bill, just the rule to consider the bill because the Freedom Caucus wouldn't do it. And so here's where McCarthy is. We're two weeks away. He has said he will not pass a short-term extension.

The Freedom Caucus Republicans will not do that. He will not pass an quote-un extension. The Freedom Caucus Republicans will not do that. He will not pass an, quote-unquote, omnibus bill, some sort of overall budget deal. And so he wants to pass all of the individual appropriations bills, but he can't pass those. So we are barreling towards a shutdown. And so he is flailing in the most desperate, weak way humanly possible. Yeah, I guess he – I saw there was a quote he said to Jake Sherman at Punchbowl today, like, I don't know what they want. They don't want to vote for an omnibus. They don't want to vote

for a continuing resolution. They don't want to vote for individual appropriations bill. I don't know what they want. He's got control. Now, McCarthy's reportedly telling people that he'll eventually hold a vote to make the inquiry official. You know, I'm sure he's saying this partly because back in 2019, he also said that when Nancy Pelosi opened impeachment inquiry, announced an impeachment inquiry that he's like, oh, you can't do that without taking a vote in the full House. She ultimately did hold a vote in the House and opened the impeachment inquiry officially. Do you think McCarthy will go through with this and hold this vote? and opened the impeachment inquiry officially. Do you think McCarthy will go through with this and hold this vote? I don't know. Maybe. It seems hard to imagine he could get the vote as we sit

here today. And if they really want to pursue this, they're probably going to have to take the vote because in the 2019 impeachment, the Trump Office of Legal Counsel, the office in the Department of Justice that essentially issues the official legal position of the federal government, wrote an opinion that said an impeachment that is not authorized by the full House is not a valid impeachment. And therefore, the administration does not have to comply with document requests, subpoenas, witnesses, etc. That opinion is still on the books today. So that is ultimately one of the reasons that motivated the House to go forward with voting for 2019. And so if you want, they're just going to basically, the Biden White House administration,

they want to can just basically take the Trump motions from 2019 and refile them now with the same arguments if they don't do it. How does McCarthy get 18 House Republicans who represent Districts 1 by Joe Biden to vote for an impeachment of Joe Biden based on nothing? Seems like a tall order to me, but we'll see. Yeah, I wasn't sure he'd be able to get the votes for opening an inquiry. This is different than actually the votes for impeachment. Put that aside for now. But just to get the votes to open an impeachment inquiry, I could see him getting them. I couldn't before.

But then I saw like, you know, Mike Garcia, who represents a Biden district just north of Los Angeles here, where Biden won, I think, by 13 points. And he was on Fox or somewhere yesterday being like, oh, yeah, I'm for an impeachment inquiry. Don Bacon, who's like the most moderate, one of the most moderate members of the Republican caucus, who reporters always go to for for quote shitting on Republicans. Don Bacon said that he was against the inquiry. But if the administration stonewalls and doesn't hand over what they ask for, then he'd be for it. So you can imagine the scenario where the Biden White House does what you say, says, okay, there's this opinion on the books from DOJ that it doesn't count unless there is a vote. So we're not going to hand over anything. And then the Republicans in the

House say, oh, well, we're voting to open an impeachment inquiry, not necessarily because we think there's evidence of a crime, but because the Biden White House is obstructing and stonewalling. So that's why we're doing it. I could see that rationale. Yeah, if you're one of those 18 members in these Biden districts, and you have a choice to, every politician is, would rather defer pain. And so you would vote for it now. And then face, if it ever were to come to a vote for impeaching Biden, then you might have to make a different choice. But in the short term, you can probably argue, well, I just opened the inquiry to see if we found anything. Oh, we didn't find anything. I didn't vote to impeach or whatever else. You'd rather do this and face the wrath of Donald Trump, particularly while the filing

deadline has not been reached yet in some of these states where you could get a primary challenge from a MAGA Republican. One thing I can't figure out is, you know, all these committees in the House, all these Republican-led committees have been investigating Biden and the Biden family and all this other bullshit for many, many months now. How does the impeachment inquiry look different than what they're already doing? Well, theoretically, they would have a stronger argument to make in court over witnesses, to make in court over witnesses, documents, et cetera. Now, we remember from 2019, it didn't really pan out the way we had thought it would when these things take longer. Even if you're going to get the right result, the length at which this takes sometimes can

exceed the patience of the House to actually have an impeachment vote. Now, Democrats were on a shorter timeline because they wanted to wrap this thing up before the presidential race started in 2019 slash 2020. I could see McCarthy in the House just letting this thing go the whole way, right? If they never think they can actually get the full vote, then just keep the inquiry going. The other way it may look different, and we'll get to this a little bit later, is the hearings that are currently being held by Jim Comer and Jim Jordan don't really get a ton of attention. You call it an impeachment inquiry, and you can see all of a sudden, ratings starved cable channels covering them live. The networks,

which cover the Trump impeachment hearings live, carrying them live, And it raises the stakes in the coverage. One person clearly pleased with McCarthy's announcement is the MAGA king himself, Donald Trump, who's reportedly and unsurprisingly been pressuring Republicans in Congress to impeach his likely opponent. You think this is just pure vengeance, feral Trump, or is there a political calculation here as well? Both. I mean, ironically enough, he wants to impeach Biden for the same strategic reason that he himself got impeached in 2019, which is Trump always knows that he's never going to convince the public that his opponent is more corrupt than him or more of a criminal than him. But if he just convinces them that they're corrupt enough, that everyone's crooked,

that you either can give permission to some people to come vote for you, or more likely, and perhaps more damaging to us, convince people just it's not worth voting. All he wanted in 2019 was just for Zelensky to say they were investigating Biden, so Trump could go out and say Biden was under investigation. And so he wants him being impeached for this same exact reason. Was that on a whiteboard somewhere at Mar-a-Lago? Probably not, but there is a strategy behind it. Yeah, it's just how he understands how the media works and how politics work, right? And he's right. Yeah, right, because a lot of people are not going to dig into the details of this. And if, like you say, it gets a lot of coverage and people just

hear Biden impeached, Biden impeachedach or impeachment hearing or impeachment investigation, whether or not it actually, you know, impeachment happens. You could see this working on the margins for him, perhaps, or at least at least it's without a lot of risk for Donald Trump. Yeah, it's all upside for him. Let's talk about how the White House and Democrats in Congress plan to deal with the impeachment inquiry. If this reaction from John Fetterman is any indication, they don't seem too worried. I asked you about this news that Speaker McCarthy has formally launched an impeachment inquiry. He said he's going to direct... Oh my God, really? Oh, my gosh.

You know, oh, it's devastating. Oh, don't do it. Please don't do it. Oh, no. Oh, no. What do you think? Are you still as sanguine about the politics as Fetterman? I'm not that sanguine. I think the most likely scenario here is this is bad for House Republicans, but it's not without risks for President Biden. And we have to understand that anytime this is a huge unknown that's being injected into an incredibly close election,

you're putting yourself in the hands of just, it has risk, right? It absolutely has some risk to it for the very reasons that we were just talking about, is that people will just surf the headlines and think all of a sudden that Joe Biden is corrupt without – no one will ever get to, which the press will probably almost always report, no evidence. That may be in paragraph two or three or 12, and the facts will get lost in the overall vibes of a bunch of corruption and crime. Yeah. And I mean, you were talking about just leaving the inquiry open. Like it seems very unlikely that now that the inquiry is open, there's going to be a day where they say, you know what? We got all the answers. We didn't

find anything. Joe Biden's got a clean bill of health. We'll back off now. Yeah, exactly. That's not going to happen. So they're going to need to find something. And probably it's going to be made up. There's also, by the way, a number of foreign entities with authoritarian tendencies that have an interest in Donald Trump being elected and Joe Biden not being elected again. And so there's all kinds of like crazy conspiracies that could go out there. I mean, there's just a lot of shit and then in the back of my mind is you know the we went through the

benghazi shit and i remember hillary clinton had to testify for like 15 hours and everyone was like oh she kicked their ass and there was nothing there blah blah blah but then they kept going and going and going and that's how they found her email server and then it you know went on and on and on we know how it went from there so it's like not not saying that they're going and going and going. And that's how they found her email server. And then it, you know, went on and on and on. We know how it went from there. So it's like not not saying that they're going to actually find something here, but they will continue to dig and dig and dig and dig until they either find something small that they can blow up into something big or find nothing at all and just make shit up. No, I mean, you have a court system with a bunch of right wing judges that ends in a rigged conservative Supreme Court making decisions about what is executive privilege, who has

to testify, what documents can hand it over. And that gets alarming very quickly. Yeah. So the White House sent a letter yesterday to news organizations debunking all the Republican allegations, which read in part, it's time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies. Covering impeachment as a process story. Republicans say X, but the White House says Y is a disservice to the American public. Sort of an unusual shot across the bow,

though they're certainly correct about how these things get covered. Why do you think they sent the letter? A largely probably futile, but attempt to work the refs. Right. And what the other, and what was also notable in this is they included a 14 page fact check with it, which pushed back and basically a, a more noted version of what you did at the top of this podcast. And that was useful to get in their hands and just, it's a warning shot, right? Is it going to really affect, you think they're all sitting around in the, in the, in the meetings this morning going, well, you know, but I do think that this is a legitimate conversation within networks of good faith, which is they know it's bullshit, right? And so there's going to be this tension between the journalistic side and the people who care about ratings and advertising rates and all of that. So a little push here or there,

it's not, there's no downside to the White House in doing this, in my opinion. Yeah. Well, just, it reminded me of what you were saying earlier, which is they're going to have to make decisions about coverage on an impeachment inquiry. And do they give these guys airtime or as much airtime as they gave the Trump impeachments, which were over legitimate issues

and legitimate crimes? And they're going to have to make that decision. And I don't think we're going to be happy with all the decisions that they make regarding this, the media outlets, but at least it will. It is an attempt, like you said, to work the is a, it's clearly, you know, a play to hurt Joe Biden's approval ratings to in this campaign that he's running in, but also they're impeaching the president. I do not think this is how Joe Biden will want to handle this because it involves his

family. And he handled it a certain way when the original impeachment of Donald Trump was about his son and he tried to not stoke the fires. And that is an admirable example of why Joe Biden is such a good person. But from a purely political point of view, the Republicans have handed Joe Biden a gift and he should beat the living shit out of them every single day. Look at what they're doing instead of dealing with inflation or raising wages or making your health care more affordable. Just hammer them. This is ridiculous. And it leads right into this shutdown. Like if you look at where Joe Biden's political standing has basically been frozen for two years, the next two to four months are probably his best opportunity to upend that dynamic, much like it was for Barack Obama in his reelect.

Because you're going to have this impeachment, potential shutdown, the Republican primary heating up. And use this as a huge example to brand Republican extremism focused on a bunch of bullshit instead of actually trying to help people and solve problems. You can contrast it with the stuff you're doing every day. Like, look at what I'm doing. Why these guys are doing this, right? Like this, like you have a foil, use it. And he started to do that. He was at an event, I think at a fundraiser last night

and was asked about it. I don't think there was sound from it, but the quotes were much along the lines of what you were just saying, which is like, I don't wake up every day thinking about impeachment and I'm trying to avoid shutdowns and I'm trying to help the middle class. And I mean, it is sort of tailor made for a message about why he's focusing on things that matter and they're focusing on bullshit because they want to elect Donald Trump and that's all they care about. Usually you tell politicians to show,

not tell the message. This is a case, I think, where you tell as much as show. You can't just be like one of the hard parts for Joe Biden. One of the challenges is the press doesn't cover all the things he's doing. So if the strategy is, I'm just going to go do all the things and have that be the contrast to the circus on Capitol Hill, they're not going to see what you're doing. They're only going to see the circus. So you got to go out and define that circus aggressively. Yeah, I agree. One more item before we get to your interview with Jamie Raskin. First, we had Bidenomics. Now we got Magnomics. The president is giving a major speech today where he'll use the term, which originally came from the Trump administration. They coined it first to frame the Republican economic agenda. He'll talk about the House Republicans proposal

to raise the retirement age for Social Security so they can give more tax cuts to the rich. Just this week, Jeff Stein at the Washington Post had a story about how Trump's advisors are working on a campaign proposal to give another huge tax cut to big corporations, possibly lowering the corporate tax rate to as little as 15% or even lower,

if you read the story. What do you think about the Bidenomics versus Magnomics framing? I think we are at the point now where most of the economic messaging has to be contrast. Yeah. You got to get away from the referendum. You got to get away for like, if we have this fucking debate from now until November, where people are like, I think the economy is better, but people aren't feeling it. Are people feeling it? Should he tout economic progress? Should he not? Like, we're just going to get trapped into this fucking cycle that's not going to be productive for anyone. You've

got to turn it into a choice. And you do. Like, there is work to be done. And that's what the Biden ads that are up right now and the ads that Future Forward, the super PAC, have put up in battleground states to credential Biden as an economic messenger. You got to go out and say he did things so that people know that, so there's some contrast. But very quickly, we're moving into a choice between two different economic visions. And that's got to help because if it doesn't help, we're in big trouble. But right now, Biden is suffering mightily in the economy because people are just, as he would say, judging me against the almighty, not the alternative. So let's get some alternative in there. Yeah. And there's a shorthand too, which is like, do you want the Biden economy or do you remember the Trump economy? Wasn't the

Trump economy so much better? And of course, people forget that then COVID hit and things like really went to shit. And also inequality was pretty brutal at the beginning of the Trump years anyway. But if you tell people, okay, this is a choice and it's not just like a political framing. This is a choice in this election between two visions. And here's what Joe Biden has been doing and will continue to do. And here's what he wants to pass if you give him enough Democrats in Congress. Right. Everyone. There was a story today this week about how poverty rates have increased because the child tax credit expired. Well, of course, Joe Biden wanted a permanent child tax credit. Democrats have a whole bunch of other great proposals that would help families.

Republicans are blocking them. There's then now the House is controlled by Republicans, so they can't get it done. So Biden can go out there and say, you know, you give me a Democratic Congress. This is all these are all the things I'm going to do as president to help you. You vote for Donald Trump. You get Republicans in Congress. We're going to have more tax cuts. We're going to have gutted Social Security, gutted Medicare, gutted health care, and we're in more poverty and we're going to have lower wages. I mean, you just you have to make the case because it has the benefit of being true. And it's so much better to frame it as a choice. It's going to be so much more effective.

On Trump's proposal, I was told that Republicans are now a working class party. What do you think is going on there with the corporate tax cut? Well, the good news is that most voters don't think the Republican Party is a working class party. They still think Democrats are better for working class people for all the various reasons. The challenge in this, and this is why this proposal is potentially very significant in the campaign is voters think of Trump differently than they think of the rest of the Republican Party when it comes to economic issues. And so the question is, can you, they won, as you point out, and you see this, even Democrats in focus groups think fondly of the Trump economy. Yeah, that is a challenge. They,

they mostly blame COVID, not Trump for what happened. Yet they blame Biden, but not COVID for what happened afterwards, which is very annoying, but actually drives the president absolutely insane, as it should. But can you undermine Trump's working class appeal? Can you show that Trump, like the rest of Republicans, is a plutocrat in populist clothing? Can you do that? Sure as hell got to try, is a plutocrat in populist clothing. Can you do that? Sure is how I got to try. And this is a good way to do that. Yeah.

And I think in the larger effort to tie Republicans to Trump and to make them the MAGA party, it actually helps in the reverse here because tying Trump to the Republicans in Congress, who people are already prone to believe love tax cuts and gutting important programs for middle class families because that's what they do, that's how they vote. That probably ties them all together pretty well for people. All right, before we go to break, one quick housekeeping note. Midwesterners, get your Malort out. Love It or Leave It is coming to Chicago on September 21st and Madison on September 22nd with wonderful guests like Brandon Johnson, Shea Coulee, Alice Waterland, Jillian Flynn, Ben Wickler, and more.

Tickets are going fast. Head to cricket.com slash events to get yours today. Non-Midwesterners, pour your Malort in the toilet. It's disgusting. It really is. It's fucking gross. But make sure to head to that page anyway to check out Pod Save America's live shows this fall and winter. We are heading to cities like Louisville, San Diego, San Jose, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and more.

Get your tickets now at cricket.com slash events. When we come back, Dan talks to Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin about the House Democrats' strategy on impeachment. Joining us to discuss the Republicans impeachment gambit and what to expect in the coming weeks and months is Representative Jamie Raskin, Congressman. Welcome back to the pod. I am delighted to be with you guys. So let's start with the basics here. The Republicans and to a certain extent, some of the media are trying to draw parallels between what Kevin McCarthy announced the Republicans are going to do this week and the effort that you guys undertook in 2019 when you impeached President Trump for his interactions with Ukraine. Can you just explain why these are two entirely different things? Why the basis is they're two entirely different things?

Well, the Ukraine shakedown was an extraordinary assault on the rule of law. Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in order to try to coerce President Zelensky into concocting or at least representing a criminal investigation into Joe Biden. They want to impeach Joe Biden now literally for nothing. I mean, we've been in hearings and oversight committee for seven months. They do not have a single shred of evidence of criminal wrongdoing or what would be an impeachable offense. The constitutional standard is treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. And they don't have even the most meager evidence of any criminal allegation. In fact,

they can't even agree what they're saying he did. And there are 25 or 30 Republicans who agree with us. And some are very vocal about it now, including Ken Buck, who was formerly the chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Colorado. And he just said, there's nothing there. There's no evidence. And so they're saying, well, when would you impeach? He says, when you give me some evidence of a high crime and misdemeanor. I mean, this is it seems quite bizarre because these investigations have been going on. You've been part of this as the ranking member of the Oversight Committee. Every time Jim Jordan or Jim Comer, whoever else has one of these big hearings,

the takeaway has been there's no there there. Congress goes away for a month, comes back, and on basically the first day back, they're launching an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. Just what happened over this period that led us to this point? What happened over this period that led us to this point? Well, I think it's a classic example of the difference between the MAGA Republicans and the Kevin McCarthy Republicans who are simply craven and power clutching. The MAGA Republicans actually have a program. It's a program that's utterly nihilistic and destructive. They want to tear stuff down. They basically have a three-part program since we've gotten back into the House this week. One, they want to impeach President Biden for

no reason at all. They want to shut down the government. And then three, they want to overthrow Kevin McCarthy when it's all over for not being sufficiently avidly sycophantic in responding to Donald Trump's demands. And Marjorie Taylor Greene had dinner with Trump two nights ago where she promised him that it would be an impeachment of Joe Biden that would be agonizingly long and difficult. It would be, you know, a form of torture. I guess one basic question is, do the Republicans have access? I'm like, I am not suggesting they have evidence, but are there, is there anything that they have seen or claim to have seen that you have not been able to access in your role as the ranking member? Well, I wouldn't know, you know, what kind of evidence is so exculpatory of Biden that they were able just to destroy it.

And they've certainly kept a lot of things from us. For example, we've never seen the putative alleged hard drive of uh hunter biden's laptop so when uh marjorie taylor green or perjury traitor queen as some people call her but not me um when when she decided to display the pornographic photos in the oversight committee um and then asserted that they came from hunter biden's laptop although it was completely irrelevant to the subject of the hearing. We had no way of knowing whether it actually came from the hard drive of the laptop. And if it did or if she thought it did, whether it really did, because the guy who was responsible for putting it into the world has said he cannot account for the chain of custody and whether it has been contaminated since he let go of it. So nobody really knows. But in any event,

they've gotten pretty much everything that they've asked for in terms of documentary production, in terms of witnesses. And so there's no shortage of evidence. There's 12 or 13,000 pages of bank records and documents and thousands of pages of these SARS, the suspicious activity reports and hours and hours and hours of witness testimony. There's tons of evidence. It's just the evidence all demonstrates that Joe Biden didn't do anything. And, you know, they have continually looked for a smoking gun, but there's no smoking gun because there's nothing there. And you don't have to go much further than Lev Parnas, who was Rudy Giuliani's right hand man in trying to concoct the original Burisma conspiracy theory, in trying to concoct the original Burisma conspiracy theory, who gallivanted all over the world with Giuliani, trying to find dirt on Joe Biden, who wrote us a letter, wrote a letter to Chairman Comer and to me saying there is nothing there. They have not shown anything.

Nothing has been proven. And all of it was based on this attempt to get dirt on him that never went anywhere. And so he literally called on Comer to call off what he described as the wild goose chase. And yet Donald Trump won't let them go because Trump does not want to be the only person on the ballot, presumably the general election ballot, as he sees it, who's been impeached. He wants to establish some kind of false moral equivalency between the two sides. The guy's got four federal and state indictments against him worth 91 different criminal charges. He's been involved in hundreds and hundreds of lawsuits of a criminal and civil nature. He's been determined by a jury of his peers to be a sexual assailant and to have sexually abused a woman and then defamed her by lying about her. And yet they doubled down on it. And Joe Biden's record, whatever you think of his politics or his policy

or his age or anything else, has no blemish on it at all. There's no outstanding criminal charges. There's no criminal prosecutions. And so, you know, we just can't get dragged down into this authoritarian underworld where anybody can make up anything about anyone. Kevin McCarthy just unilaterally declared that this impeachment inquiry was happening. When you guys originally started taking on and began an inquiry against Trump, you also did it at the beginning without a vote of the House. The Trump Department of Justice took an opinion, took a legal opinion at that point that that made it an illegitimate inquiry that did not have to be cooperated with.

What is your position on whether a vote of the full House needs to happen for this to be an actual impeachment inquiry? Okay. My position then and my position now are the same, which is the Constitution simply says that the House can impeach. An impeachment inquiry or investigation is something that has evolved through legislative practice. But under the House rules, in order to render subpoenas in the name of the House and to compel production of documents, you do need a vote of the House, which is what McCarthy said then. It's what McCarthy said now up to two weeks ago. And it's what we did. We did have a vote in the House when we launched the impeachment investigation and inquiry against Donald Trump. So look,

the curious thing is why Kevin McCarthy did a U-turn other than that's standard operating procedure for him. But just two weeks ago, he was saying he would only move forward if there were a vote of the House. But he did not proceed with that because the votes aren't there. Yeah, that's the point, right? Lots of them coming forward saying, I'm not voting for this. I mean, Ken Buck has been the most lucid and outspoken, and he's not a moderate Republican. I mean, he's a Freedom Caucus conservative style Republican. But he just said, you know, it demeans the meaning of impeachment to do it like this. And lots of them feel the same way.

They understand how ludicrous it is. There is no evidence linking Hunter and Joe Biden in terms of the transfer of money, the receipt of money by Joe Biden for any of Hunter Biden's business ventures. There's just nothing there. They found nothing. I mean, those are just two completely distinct things. And so that's why they keep talking about the Biden crime family, which is revealing because it's obviously a projection of what they understand the Trump family to be. But the reason they keep talking about the Biden crime family is because they can't talk about Joe Biden because they don't have anything on him. There have been reports that you have been helping spearhead some strategy sessions around Democrats about how you would how you will respond to the to this effort from Republicans.

Anything you can tell us about what you guys are thinking about the best way to respond? Well, really, I've just been doing what you and I've been doing now, Dan. I mean, was I did number one, come on, Pots of America, and then it takes care of itself from there. Right. Look, we've been in this process for seven months. They have declared this their paramount top priority investigation. And obviously, it's just the excellent and distinguished members of the Oversight Committee on the Democratic side who have been through this over the last seven or eight months who are educating the other members of the House and the Senate and the public about what we've learned. And it's pretty open and shut at this point. You know, we've agreed, of course, to follow the evidence wherever it goes. We're not interested in political corruption or public corruption. We're not out there saying anything about Hunter Biden other than let the rule of law

proceed. And he should be treated fairly, not unfairly, but he should be treated fairly under the law and charges were already brought on failure to file taxes and gun charges. And we didn't start whining about that. Imagine if one of Donald Trump's children or Jared Kushner had been charged with gun charges, I mean, you can imagine the Second Amendment riots he would be trying to whip up around the country, right? I mean, you can imagine him completely villainizing and castigating and demonizing any prosecutor who would dare to bring charges against one of his children. But

that's not what Joe Biden's doing. That's not what Joe Biden's doing. It's not what the Democrats are doing. We're saying, let's have some respect for the rule of law. But the Republicans turn everything into a partisan club. Before I let you go, Congressman, we are a little more than two weeks away from government funding running out just today. The Republicans had to pull the defense bill because they cannot get their own members to support the rule. It seems like we are headed towards a shutdown. What is your take on where this is going? Well, when we first got back to town a couple of days ago, our Republican friends, if we've got them, I certainly have a few, basically gave us the word that they thought they would be able to avert a by Kevin McCarthy and the House and the country for their agreeing not to drag the whole country into a government shutdown and some kind of economic crisis that would follow. I mean, it's quite a choice to present your own country with either a presidential

impeachment based on no evidence or else a government shutdown based on no plan and no purpose. But we thought that that was basically the deal that was cut within the constantly tumultuous and riotous GOP conference. Today, we are hearing, you know, in completely predictable fashion that that did that did not fully satiate the monster, right? And so he tried to appease the mega right with that. But now, of course, it's turned them just more ravenous and they're demanding a lot more stuff in a lot of different ways. And of course, as we saw during the first week of this horrific Congress, when McCarthy had to go, you know, cup in hand, begging from each of the Republicans something. Each one of them becomes a solo rider. Right. They're acting for themselves. So they're all negotiating for their own thing. So in addition to everything else, it's extremely time consuming. But that's explains the proliferation of committees and subcommittees and special panels and select committees,

because everybody needs a gavel and everybody, you know, we have five or six committees and subcommittees doing exactly the same thing, which is going after Joe Biden, they've got no other program for the country. They in 2016, they literally adopted no platform and they operate as if they have no platform and no project. They abandoned us with the Inflation Reduction Act. Inflation's gone down from 9% to 3%. You can bet they'd be blaming it on Joe Biden if it was up to 27% if it was multiplied by three, but it was divided by three. Right. They didn't help us on reducing prescription drug care costs. Right. We cut to thirty five dollars a month what diabetics have to pay for their insulin shots.

I had constituents paying more than a thousand dollars a month to try to keep up with their insulin shots. It's now thirty five dollars in the Medicare program. We didn't get a single Republican vote on that, right? I mean, I sat there for four years and we had infrastructure day. We had infrastructure a week. We had infrastructure a month. We just didn't have an infrastructure bill, okay? But Joe Biden got in and we did that.

In the second month, the Democrats got together and we did that, a $1.2 trillion investment in the highways, the roads, the ports, the airports, rail, trail, broadband, high speed, Internet access in the rural areas. And so we actually have a program. Say what you will about us. Wherever I go, you Democrats can't message. You don't know how to message. Fine. Well, I accept all of the criticisms, the imperfections, the flaws are ours. But at least we are fighting for America. We've got a vision of the criticisms, the imperfections, the flaws are ours, but at least we are fighting for America. We've got a vision of the common good. And what do we have on the

other side? It's nothing but selfishness and chaos and attempt to reinstate the worst president of our lifetimes who views government simply as an instrument for personal wealth maximization. That's their vision of government. Congressman Raskin, thank you so much. We appreciate your passion. I can't wait to see you out there fighting against these guys as they try to push this bogus impeachment going forward. Good luck with everything. Talk to you soon. Thank you kindly. And thanks for everything you guys do. Okay, before we go, we obviously talked a lot about the House today, but we'd be remiss if we didn't mention what the Senate's been up to this week.

The full Judiciary Committee held an important hearing on a critical issue, during which Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana gave one of the most extraordinary speeches that's ever been delivered in the halls of Congress. Though I would like to warn listeners, with young children and delicate sensibilities, you're about to hear some strong language. I got a new strap-on harness today. It will fit my favorite dildo perfectly. I put some lube on and got him on his knees. This was my ass and I was struggling to imagine someone inside me. I can't wait to have your cock in my mouth. You're going to look so hot. I'm going to give you the blow job of your life. Then I want you inside of me. End quote. Sir, this is an Arby's.

Wow. Wow. Does everyone need a minute just to sit with that? I do. No pun intended. That was Senator Kennedy quoting the most sexually explicit passages from the two most censored books in America, Maya K Kobabe's Genderqueer and George M. Johnson's All Boys Aren't Blue. The hearing was called Book Bans Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature. It was actually organized by Dick Durbin of Illinois. Dan, thoughts? Thoughts on the hearing? Thoughts

on John Kennedy just, you know, just reading his I did not expect to hear that in Congress. You know, once reading his, just did not expect to hear that in Congress. You know, once a staffer, always a staffer. You and I worked on the Hill. We kind of know how these things go. So was there a meeting where they debated how to approach this, that the right choice was to have the senator read this passage? passage, or as is often the case with senators who aren't the most assiduous preppers for events,

where they just will often learn the questions from a hearing for the first time when they open up the book at the hearing. Is this the first he saw this? It was like halfway through when he realized what he was reading? My guess on this, if you ever have seen John Kennedy give interviews, he says crazy shit all the time. He is in a very safe seat in Louisiana. And he kind of just does whatever he wants. So I think his plan was, this is going to go viral and this is going to help make my point. And I don't care if I sound like a fucking just old white Republican from the South who's talking about lube and strap-ons. That's my theory. But could be wrong.

Kennedy was reading this, of course, to Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Janoulis, who we know well from the Obama days and who just helped pass a law in Illinois that prevents book bans. I think it was the first in the country. Here's how Alexi responded. With all due respect, Senator, the words you spoke are disturbing, especially coming out of your mouth is very disturbing.

Really speaks for all of us there. Really speaks for all of us. I mean, there is a, to get somewhat serious, There is a larger point here about this book ban debate. We've talked about this before. It's an issue that, you know, I think it's polls 70, 80, 90 percent of people are against book bans when you ask in polls. So it's a majority Republicans, obviously majority Democrats, independents for certain. Democrats, independents for certain. You know, what they're trying to do here, what Kennedy was obviously trying to do is pick out the most explicit language in some books and try to say that that's all they're doing is trying to make sure that young kids aren't exposed to this until they are age appropriate. And I wonder, like, what would you say to parents who hear that and think, well, you know, I don't have a problem with my child reading that when they're a little older, but is this what's happening when they're 12, when they're 13, and I want to make a decision

about what my child reads, and I don't want them to learn that? Like, what, you know, what's, what do you say to that? I think what the way, and this isn't something that I hear in my real life, is that people pick up sort of on social media some of these examples and then become concerned about what is being taught in public schools in their districts. And so the thing you would tell parents is, one, be involved in what is happening in your district. Go to your school board meetings. Pay attention. Know what's happening for two reasons. One, you're going to have examples like these, but these are a way to

just distract people so all these Republicans, the Moms for Liberty and the rest can go in and start banning books that teach people the real history of the United States. Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison. They want to ensure that people don't learn what is really happening. They want to know about race and gender and sexuality and everything else in America. And so don't be distracted by these. Get involved and learn what's happening because they're going to be people no matter what, whether you are in a rural district, a suburban district, a school district that Biden won by 50 points. There's going to be efforts by some of these groups to try to affect what your kids read and learn and participate. And I think it's important to note, this is not about telling parents that they don't get to decide

what their kids read and when. This is about saying that a few parents can't make a decision to censor a book for every other parent. Or a politician. Or a politician, right? But like if you, and they had Emily Knox speak at the hearing as well. She's a professor at the University of Illinois and she made a good point. She said, when it comes to parents, they do have the responsibility to talk to their kids

about what they are learning and reading and to steer them towards appropriate choices for their children and their family. However, they do not have the right to make those choices for other children and families. You do not have to read books you those choices for other children and families. You do not have to read books you don't like, and you can work with teachers to find an alternative for your child if necessary. And that has always been true. It remains true in the idea that there's just

these, you know, these districts where these liberal teachers are secretly teaching six-year-olds about all this kind of stuff and all this explicit language. That's just not happening. It's not happening. And when there is some kind of controversial book in a curriculum, parents get a chance to weigh in. And like you said, what some parents are trying to do, and most of them are right-wing activists, are trying to ban a host of books that teach about race and gender and sexual identity. And not just for young kids, like all the way through high school. I mean, these books are being taken off the shelves in libraries throughout the entire school district.

So this is not about just like what young kids are learning or not or parental involvement. Every parent gets to decide what their child learns and they get to be involved in their child education. And they should be. But you don't get to decide other children's education as a parent you don't get to tell other parents what to do and neither like you said neither is a politician anyway john kennedy thank you for that that was that was something i'm glad we saw we somehow turned that into a something a conversation of substance and value yeah because, because, I mean, the shorthand for that segment was just lube and strap-ons here. It's what you've been...

I think that's what the clip was titled. Intrepid producers. Farrah listened to two hours of that hearing. Sal cut it a couple of times. Yeah, we had a lot of work on that here, but I'm glad we made a real point out of it Anyway thank you Thank you all for bearing with us

Thank you John Kennedy for giving us that material Thank you Jamie Raskin for joining Pod Save America today And everyone have a fantastic weekend And we will see you next week Bye everyone Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production Our producers are Olivia Martinez and David Toledo. Our associate producer is Farah Safari, writing support from Hallie Kiefer.

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