Pod Save America - "Ride or die with dictators."

Episode Date: October 15, 2018

Tommy and Lovett discuss Senator Elizabeth Warren's October surprise, Democrats carping about Beto O'Rourke's fundraising, GOP voter suppression tactics, Kushner's taxes and the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Then they talk with the Democratic candidate for Florida’s 26th congressional district, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm John Lovett. Lovett. What's up? We got one HBO show under our belts. Yeah. Woo. Woo. You can still catch it online. You can catch it streaming on HBO now. It would be nice if you did.

Tomorrow, you and I are going to head to Austin, Texas. Dan and John go a little later for our show on Friday. Our guest is Beto O'Rourke. He is. And I want you to know that as we go to level two of the video game of me not eating carbs, Texas barbecue, the next challenge. Oh, God. Well, you looked good at the gym this morning. Thank you very much.

Later on in the pod, you will hear our interview with Democratic candidate for the 26th District in Florida, Debbie Mucarcel-Powell. She's cool. She is very cool. Everyone, don't forget to go to votesaveamerica.com. You got everything you need for the election on November 6th. You got an interactive voter guide. Fill out a copy of your ballot. You can find volunteer opportunities.

We're just trying to make it easy. There's a couple of cynical people out there who think this is some sort of data capture play for us. We'll burn the data when we're done. We don't give a fuck. Just vote. Maybe you'll burn the data. I'm burning the data. Okay.

22 days until the midterms. Love it. Today is Monday, October 15th. 22 days until the midterms. Love it. Today is Monday, October 15th. We're going to talk about Elizabeth Warren's October surprise, Beto O'Rourke's fundraising, nationwide Republican voter suppression tactics, Jared Kushner's taxes, and the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Whew. Okay. Okay.

Section one, midterm grab bag. There's going to be a lot of polls. There's going to be some horse race stories that are going to make you anxious. The thing you all need to know is it's gonna be close. It's gonna be close. We gotta work hard. Keep your head down. But here's some things that jumped out at us over the weekend. Yes. Overnight, Elizabeth Warren released a DNA test that provides, quote, strong evidence she had a Native American in her family tree dating back six to ten generations. Scoreboard, Donald Trump. this comes in response to another racist birth or demand from our racist president who's been demanding to see the longest form of birth

certificate her dna for a long time it was a cool video i don't know what do you think so uh the results suggest that she has native american heritage somewhere six to ten generations back donald trump has said that if she can demonstrate that she has Native American heritage, he would donate one million to charity. Elizabeth Warren selected a charity that focuses on helping Native Americans. My advice to that charity would be

do not assume the money in the budget for the fiscal year. That would be my one thing. I would say, hey, if it comes in you know uh hope for the best plan for the worst that's what i would say yeah to that organization yeah i mean like the video was well executed like everything she does i it was very compelling i mean it depresses the life out of me that our racist birther president demanded another person like live up to a level of of truth and factual

accuracy and evidentiary presentation that he doesn't live up to but whatever okay yeah you know this isn't a shouldn't focus on this too much shouldn't give this too much oxygen clearly this is something that senator warren wanted to dispense with before next year i got who knows why who could who could think of a reason as to why she'd want to dispense with this before we enter some sort of a, I don't know, a race, a marathon next year. But I can't imagine this will solve the problem totally. But look, we talked to her a few months ago. And when this controversy was first erupting, or at least erupting in a bigger way, we asked her about it. She actually was pretty frustrated by the fact that she was being put in this position.

I think she's right to have been frustrated to be put in this position. But all in all, I'm glad she's dealing with it. It seems like it's the kind of thing that she was going to have to answer one way or another. So she wanted to deal with it now. Now there's been some criticism of her that she's doing it before the midterms, like it's a big distraction. The idea that Elizabeth Warren putting out a video

in which she reveals that she has Native American heritage is going to cost us midterm votes is the stupidest fucking shit I've ever heard. So this seems to be unrelated to the midterms. Yeah. I mean, I think the birther thing followed Obama around forever because it was fundamentally racist

and people wanted to have a racist attack on him. I think this is different, but I don't think Trump will let it go. Anyway, let's talk about Beto O'Rourke. Yeah. Beto O'Rourke's campaign announced that he raised an astonishing $38 million in the last three months. That brings his total to nearly $62 million, the biggest quarter ever for a Senate candidate. This immediately led to criticism from Democrats who want that money to spread the wealth around, like Joe the Plumber. The latest iteration of that narrative was a New York Times story with the headline, Beto O'Rourke's war chest bothers

some Democrats as he struggles against Ted Cruz. Love it. Does Beto's war chest bother you? It doesn't. It doesn't bother me. There's sort of two things that are getting combined. One is, it's absolutely true that if Beto O'Rourke were to win a Senate seat, it is worth the exact same number of votes for majority leader as Claire McCaskill, as Heidi Heitkamp, as Bill Nelson, as Jackie Rosen, as Kyrsten Sinema. That's absolutely true. And we need all of those candidates to do well. We need all of those candidates to have the resources they need to compete. It would be a shame to wake up the day after Election Day and having discovered that if we just put a few more resources into a race, we could have won the Senate. That's obviously true.

But it's actually a separate point than what Beto O'Rourke is doing, because Beto O'Rourke has not taken a single dollar away from another Senate candidate. Yeah, I think, well said. I mean, this criticism, I think, tells you a lot about traditional fundraising. For many candidates, there's like a finite number of bundlers and lobbyists and PACs that they go to, and that is a zero-sum game. Beto got contributions from 800,000 donors. More than half of the third quarter money was from people in Texas. And so like the average small dollar donor in Houston isn't sitting around thinking like, I got a hundred bucks, should I give it to Beto or split it with Heidkamp and Manchin? Like that's a very

DC way to think about it. Some people pointed out that in 2008, Mark Warner transferred a bunch of money to the DSCC, but like he was winning. Beto was down by as much as eight points. So and also, by the way, you know, Beto is doing more than just campaigning for himself. When you have a war chest like that and you can use it to get out the vote, organize, put up ads, you help build a growing Democratic coalition in Texas. Texas is getting closer and closer to being a state we can win more frequently. This has been something we've been talking about. I remember when George W. Bush was the candidate for reelection, the conversation was this may be one of the last times Texas is not in contention. It hasn't been true yet. It's taking longer than anybody wanted. But Texas was closer than Iowa. We still, in our minds, think of Iowa as a swing state. So I think I'd

say that as well. Also, but by the way, like, it's true. You know, Democrats are driven by sort of heart in a way that I think Republicans aren't as much. And that is a problem, right? It is a problem. We don't pay enough attention to down-bout races that don't inspire us. We don't pay attention enough to Secretary of State's races and judges' races and district attorney races. We do treat politics as something that's about inspiration rather than, you know, practical perspiration. Sure. Exactly. Absolutely. Sure. And that's something that we should think about more. But but using Beto and sort of saying that Beto's war chest should trouble you is actually not the right conclusion. The question we should ask is, what can we do to have other Democrats excite people in the same way?

Take the positions that get more fundraising in. And that's it. Yeah. If you're listening to the show right now and you're thinking, I want Democrats to take back the Senate, then you should give money to Claire McCaskill, Bill Nelson, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly, John Tester or challengers like Kyrsten Sinema and Jackie Rosen. We have to win those races. If you gave to Beto because you were inspired by Beto, that's great. There's no negative there. Like the idea that he has an obligation to pull a bait and switch on his own donors and start giving money away before the election is like bonkers. That said, I don't know how you spend thirty eight million million in a month, but we're going to find out. Yeah, it's just not a zero sum game. That's all.

It's not a zero sum game. And we talk about all this time, right, that like there's this contradiction, right, which is we need Joe Manchin to win, but we want to pay him a price for voting for Kavanaugh. We want Bresnan to win, but it pisses us off that he gets behind Kavanaugh for no fucking reason and actually loses some volunteers because of it. Well, there's actually, that's the kind of negative one, right? The one where you're like, oh man, you know, we need him to win, but it sucks that they took that position. But there's actually a positive example, right? We want people like Beto to be rewarded for being the kind of candidates we believe in. And that sends a message about what kind of candidates we want in the future.

So I think this kind of hand-wringing is silly. I think it was a narrative in search of examples. Yes. Run, Beto, run. Okay. That story was annoying. This one is downright frightening. Even though Trump had to dissolve his bullshit voter fraud panel efforts

to prevent people from voting are still happening at the state level in a bunch of states. In the name of voter roll maintenance, Georgia has canceled over 1.4 million voter registrations since 2012. The man in charge of purging the voter rolls is Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is now running for governor. More recently, Kemp's office put 53,000 registration applications on hold. 70% of those applications are African American. So is Kemp's opponent, Stacey Abrams. What a coincidence. Love it. Like this is so brazen. It, so is Kemp's opponent, Stacey Abrams. What a coincidence. Love it. Like this is so brazen. It is so obvious. It's clearly voter suppression is happening in plain sight. What do we do about it? Yeah. So another number was that 670,000

had been thrown off in 2017 alone. And, you know, look, you turned on a football game, you know, football, the sport that I can talk to you about. I mean, it'd be quite a thing if at some point during the game, the quarterback just went in the middle of the field and started throwing out flags on the other team. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep going. You know, being the ref or ump. Right.

That's inappropriate. You'd be like, wait a second. You can't call balls and strikes on the football field. Kick a home run, man. You're on the game. You're in it. You're the QB. You're the halfback. You're the football field. Kick a home run, man. You're on the game. You're in it. You're the QB. You're the halfback.

You're the fullback. We can't have a fullback moving the chains. The NFL's really moved away from the football. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's what's going on here. The other thing is, you know, Michelle Goldberg wrote a really great piece about this in the New York Times that I would recommend everyone read.

It actually is a really great rundown of this issue and where it stands. One thing I would hope is that Chief Justice John Roberts gets a newspaper and reads it because the Voting Rights Act, look, the United States was not truly a liberal democracy until we changed our voting rights laws and we made sure that a history of segregation, vote suppression, and racial terrorism in the South didn't prevent millions of African Americans from casting a

ballot. Third, the success of the Voting Rights Act was used to undermine the Voting Rights Act. And the second, John Roberts and that court allowed the Voting Rights Act and its key provisions that means states with a history of racial voter suppression have to have their voting laws reviewed by the Justice Department before they're approved. The second that was removed, these states went fucking hog wild. That's what's going on right now. That's going on across the South and across the country. And, you know, one thing we need to do is, again, as we were talking about earlier, you hear Pundit shaking. She's furious. She's wearing a bow tie. She looks really cute. She is. She looks like Paul Poundstone. We need to win Secretary of State's races. We need to win local races. We

need to win judges' races. And we need to make sure we win down ballots so that we can fight this in the future. And we need to see how these cases play out. But it's a really tough issue. And the bottom line is, if Stacey Abrams loses by a tiny bit in this governor's race, it will be an illegitimate election. I mean, this is racist. In Florida, African Americans are more likely to have their ballots, their vote by mail ballot rejected. In Texas, the Secretary of State is trying to invalidate voter registration applications submitted through vote.org. This is happening all the time. Like you said, in 2013, Robert gutted the Voting Rights Act and he made it harder for the federal government to do anything. So we got to win the governor's office and legislatures and secretary of states,

because as much as people criticize Hillary for not going to Wisconsin, it is probably more significant that nearly 17,000 registered Wisconsin voters were prevented from voting by the state's voter ID law. And Trump won the state by 22,748 votes. I mean, look at what's happening in North Dakota. Heidi Heitkamp needs Native American votes to win. They have just changed the law to make it so that if you are, if you're, if you're registered at a P.O. Box, that no one counts.

Well, guess, guess who tends to be registered at P.O. Boxes more than the rest of the state? Native Americans, because a variety of reasons. So we are seeing this. It's incredibly dangerous. It is anti-democratic. And yeah, here's one more quick, gross, but not surprising story. Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Jared Kushner

appears to have paid basically zero federal income tax from 09 to 2016. Basically, he was able to claim that buildings he owns were depreciating in value and use those losses on paper to offset any money he actually made because you know, real estate in New York, it's always going down in price. Love it. How do we buy a building and get in on this action? Well, first you have to buy a building on Fifth Avenue at the height of the boom and then go so far in debt that you are really a supplicant to foreign governments. Writing this down. Writing this. Yeah, this is good. That sounded like TV button mashing.

Yeah, look, this is, and one other thing I'd say is the corporate tax bill that they just passed makes it even easier for people like Jared Kushner to claim that their losses outweigh their need to pay federal income taxes. You know, Donald Trump has probably has claimed the same. We know that from his 1995 tax return that he claimed almost a billion dollars in losses, which meant that he probably didn't pay taxes for the next decade. Even as he's accruing massive wealth, this is one of the great issues of our time. I've said this before, but inequality is not some mysterious force. We see a lot of like harrumphing and conferences about the future of work and globalization and technology and all the rest. That is not the cause of economic inequality in America. The cause of economic inequality

is corporate concentration and government policy. And this is yet another example of that. Yeah. I mean, rich people like Donald Trump and the Koch brothers and many others, they use like populist rage to get economic policies that benefit them disproportionately. Like when you hear Donald Trump complain about his taxes, just remember that his dad was able to give him over $400 million. Jared pays no income taxes. Like these wealthy people use these loopholes to avoid paying taxes. Warren Buffett is honest about it. He says he pays a lower effective rate than his secretary. Gary Cohn was quoted as saying that only morons pay the estate tax. So when they say this is about helping farmers, they're fucking lying.

It's rigged. It's bullshit. This is why Democrats need to be in control so we can actually change the tax code to get Jared to pay something and help working people. It really is, you know, there really are two systems here.

And I think one thing people don't understand about what these sort of high-powered lawyers and tax accountants do is, you know, for a person who just has a job and goes to their accountant or does their taxes themselves, it's all pretty simple. You know what you're supposed to declare. It's not as simple as you want it to be. It can be complicated and really fucking confusing. But ultimately, you're like, you know what you made. You know what you're supposed to declare.

You know what would be kind of skirting the rules a bit. but you do your best to pay your taxes and what you owe. For people that have these incredibly complicated, wealthy, high-end lawyers that are kind of looking at investments and losses and write-offs and all the rest, their lawyers don't actually tell them here's what's legal and here's what's illegal. They basically say here's what's really conservative. Here's what we think you can get away with. Here's what's pushing it. Here's what's really fucking pushing it. And here's what got this guy in jail. And basically, you know, they sit around the table and they decide what, they don't decide what do they owe, they decide what can we get away with. That is what our tax code is written to do. And one other piece of this is over and over again, we have seen through budgets,

tax code is written to do. And one other piece of this is over and over again, we have seen through budgets, through policy decisions, the Republican Party has tried to undermine the IRS's ability to investigate tax fraud amongst the wealthy because the audits are much more likely to come for people who make less simply because there are more people, but also because it's just a lot fucking harder to go into Donald Trump's books and figure out what the fuck is going on. But I'd say one thing Democrats should be talking about when they see this is we need to make sure that we have federal investigators with the ability to go after tax fraud at the highest levels. These people are getting away with stealing from you. Donald Trump has done it. His father has done it. Jared Kushner has done it. Countless people in finance are doing it every single day when they don't have the scrutiny of national politics on them. And it's a huge problem that the donor class doesn't want to address, but we should.

Yeah, corporate robber barons. Let's talk about the horrifying murder of a Saudi dissident named Jamal Khashoggi. This is a tough story, but it has major international consequences. So I'm just going to try to walk through the basics relatively quickly. Jamal Khashoggi worked as a journalist for more than 30 years. At one point, he also served as an advisor to the Saudi leadership, including a former intelligence chief. So he's like a well-known, well-respected, dialed-in person. He left Saudi Arabia after the current leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, came to power and started cracking down on dissent.

Khashoggi had been living in Washington, D.C. for about a year and writing columns for The Washington Post. On October 12th, so a couple weeks ago, he went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to get paperwork that would allow him to marry his Turkish fiancée. But then he never came out. On that same day, two private planes arrived in Turkey from Saudi Arabia, carrying 15 men who have since been identified by a Turkish official as members of an assassination team. According to Turkish officials and news reports, Khashoggi was interrogated, tortured, murdered, dismembered with a bone saw that had been brought along for this purpose. The Saudi kill team then checked out of their hotel allegedly and flew back to Saudi Arabia the same day. Love it. The Trump response has been all over the place and terrible. First,

he basically said, I don't like what happened, but this guy wasn't an American citizen. The Saudis buy a lot of weapons from us. So, you know, what can you do? Last night in 60 Minutes, he seemed to toughen his stance a little bit, saying that while they've denied any role in the murder, the U.S. will inflict, quote, severe punishment if they're lying. This morning, he said he's sending Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, over to Saudi Arabia to deal with it. What do you make of how they're handling this? Yeah, one thing I'd add is he tweeted, Trump tweeted this morning, just spoke to the king of Saudi Arabia who denies any knowledge of whatever may have happened to, quote, our Saudi Arabian citizen. He said that they're working closely with Turkey to find an answer. I'm immediately sending our secretary of state to meet with the king.

It seems pretty clear that Trump does not want to be accused of not caring. He wants to kind of hit the points he's supposed to hit, but that's what he wants to do. What his instinct is telling him is to create distance by reminding people that even though he was a legal immigrant in the United States, that he was a Saudi citizen, and he wants to kind of not care about this, not deal with this, take the Saudi talking points at their face value. It's very, very, his rhetoric on the Saudis is very similar to his rhetoric on Putin when he said, look, he's telling me he didn't do it. You know, it's the position he takes when he does not want to deal with this problem. It's when he either is, for reasons we don't know, perhaps financial, unwilling to criticize somebody who clearly deserves it. You know, this goes back actually to our conversation about taxes. We don't know. You know, now we've gotten some window into Jared Kushner's

taxes and we know that he hasn't paid taxes. We have no idea what's going on with Trump's taxes. It seems pretty clear that there are financial ties between the Saudis and whether it's Trump or people in Trump's orbit that have led them to be incredibly solicitous of this government. The unhealthy relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia has been kind of made even worse by the kind of whether their personal financial ties between Kushner and this government, whether Jared's just in this guy's pocket, whether he's just been duped, we don't know. But it's shameful. Yeah. A few thoughts. I mean, the initial response basically told every dictator, I don't care about human rights. I don't care if you crack down on journalist dissent, etc. I don't think that surprised them after years of lock her up chants and threatening to change the libel laws and all that shit. But it's also immoral to suggest that that's more important than preventing the murder of innocent people.

It's also pathetic to talk about arms sales as if that ties our hands versus like being leveraged for us. Like these these weapons systems are top of the line. They're hard. They're expensive. They're complicated. You can't just like switch from one to another like it's Coke and Pepsi. Like it would take a while to do that. The reality of his response, I think Congress might be able to force him to respond. A group of bipartisan group of senators sent a letter to Trump calling for an investigation of what happened under the Global Magnitsky Act, which will require Trump to submit a report to Congress indicating what happened and if he's going to sanction Saudi leaders if they had a role in the murder. If they do that, it would be a huge step. Like Mohammed bin Salman has been wildly overreacting to everything. The Canadians tweeted a mild criticism of him. He like suspended trade

investment flights. They went nuts. But I mean, to your point, I think there's a chance that his long-term financial interests are more important to him than the country's interests. And so like, but the one thing that makes me feel great about all of this is that this relationship rests in the hands of Jared Kushner, right? I mean, Jared and Mohammed bin Salman WhatsApp each other all the time. They're buds, one prince to another. So Jared is on it, right? Love it. Like nothing to do with future investments or anything else. States relationship with Saudi Arabia wasn't worthy of praise before Donald Trump and Jared Kushner came along. You know, one thing, you know, it's fascinating to see how this murder of a journalist has excited a reckoning in terms of what Saudi Arabia has been doing when their behavior in Yemen has not, when their kidnapping of a foreign official from Lebanon has not, when their incredibly dismal human rights record has not. But if this is what it took to wake people up to something, maybe that's positive. I mean, Tommy, why is it that the United States

has this relationship with Saudi Arabia in which we look past human rights abuses, that for any other country, we would be far more critical of? So it's very complicated. I mean, the US-Saudi alliance goes back 70 years. Our demand for oil is like, obviously, a huge part of it. But there's also a very close security alliance between not just the military, but the intelligence services. Like, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP is a lethal, lethal threat. And they spent years, for example, working on special explosives that you could get on a plane that were undetected. And they nearly took down a couple of planes like when we were still in the White House. And I remember being in situation where meetings where we were talking about, like very specific ways, the Saudi intel services had helped us deal with AQAP.

So I'm not saying that to absolve them, but that's a piece of it. Also, obviously, I'm a supporter of the Iran deal, but we were not always friends with Iran in the United States. And the Iranians are hardly good guys. They've done a horrible shit in Syria. They killed our troops in Iraq. They were supplying arms to groups that horrible, horrible shit in Syria. They killed our troops in Iraq. They were supplying arms to groups that went after our guys in Afghanistan. And the Saudis have historically helped us check them. But I don't think any of that means you can get away and excuse the murder

of a journalist or the war in Yemen that you mentioned or the human rights abuses in the name of combating terrorism, because ultimately, like cracking down on human rights and basic decency like that leads to more terrorism. Yeah. And if we had a legitimate president who was not guided by personal interest and Fox and Friends, like what what would President Obama be doing if in 2015 this had happened with this journalist? You know, it's like I was thinking about that over the weekend. I mean, first of all, the cries of weakness and attacks on him for not immediately stepping in would have been instantaneous.

I think I mean, I think the first thing is that we wouldn't necessarily have been in this place like like I don't want to harp on Jared too much, but when you put like a little dilettante in charge of foreign policy or this huge relationship, he's going to get tricked. I mean, he shouldn't have been back channeling with Mohammed bin Salman and supporting him when he was locking up all the senior figures in the Saudi government in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton. Like, he shouldn't have been cutting out experienced State Department officials from that process. He shouldn't have had Trump go to Saudi Arabia of all places on his first foreign trip or had them intervene on the Saudi behalf during their dispute with Qatar. Our biggest base in the region is in Qatar. Right. So it's like dumb on its face. But Jared bought this line from Mohammed bin Salman that he would help us solve the Middle East peace process. He bought into Trump's political narrative that he was going to go after Iran where Obama had been weak. And Kushner just,

you know, Mohammed bin Salman told people that Kushner was in his pocket. So like what I think we would have done differently is when MBS started locking up critics or kidnapped the Lebanese prime minister, or, you know, as Yemen has gotten worse and worse, we would have started applying pressure then, and maybe it would have prevented this kind of step. But again, like, to your point, like, I'd love to whack Democrats in a minute too, but Mohammed bin Salman went on this media tour where he sold himself as a reformer to journalists, business people, celebrities, politicians. He went to Google, Amazon, Facebook, got a puff piece on 60 Minutes. So Thomas Friedman, Tom Friedman. So yeah, like, you know, there's a lot of people who are a little

more hardened, who don't have a financial interest in government, who think Mohammed bin Salman is Kim Jong-un with a billion dollar sovereign wealth fund, right? Like we would have been maybe a little more cynical. Yeah. And there was a there was a moment in the State Department briefing that I thought was revealing where a reporter kind of put it to the briefer and said, who's our ambassador to Turkey? Who's our ambassador to Saudi Arabia? And the answer is we don't have one because, again, they have so dismantled the State Department under Tillerson and, you know, I don't and which has continued under Pompeo. And it's all being run out of the White House and it's being run by people with personal financial interest and no fucking clue as to what they're doing.

Interesting that he sent Pompeo this morning. Kylie Atwood, who covers the State Department for CBS, tweeted the manifest. Jared is not on there. The adults got sent. But again, to your point, before I get too self-righteous, Democrats have hardly taken a pure position on Saudi Arabia over the years.

The war in Yemen is a humanitarian disaster. This was started in 2015 by Mohammed bin Salman. Obama did put some pressure on them, both in terms of public statements and trying to pull back arms sales. But more could and should have been done. I think also the international community should have done a lot more like the UN. I mean, we could, that's another thing you could do. You could empower international bodies like the UN General Assembly, the Security Council to try to push them. But like, yeah, the Saudis have done terrible stuff that have gotten a pass for a long time. Like women were just recently allowed to drive. Shia activists were locked up.

Protests were made illegal around the Arab Spring they got a pass because of what they gave us in terms of security Iran and oil. Yeah and also they have spent millions and millions of dollars building up a lobbying and press apparatus in Washington D.C. that has been incredibly effective

Avi Asher Shapiro was posting what he's gotten from his sort of seeking of government documents, farrah filings. And one thing he found is Norm Coleman, a former senator from Minnesota, kind of emailing the Foreign Relations Committee just to kind of plant the seed that actually, you know, kind of with the talking points to kind of defend the Saudi government on Yemen. So they have put a ton of resources behind an effort to make them

seem like a more modern and reformist state. One thing that has happened in the past few days is a lot of companies have been under pressure and a lot of individuals have been under pressure to cancel their visit to Saudi Arabia for what they call Davos in the desert, which- Because the first Davos is so important. Davos in the fucking desert. That is so depressing. So lame. The only problem with Davos in the desert is there is water for them to drink.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up. Because this is not just creating like political and ethical problems for our government. The Saudis invest billions of billions of dollars into like investment funds like SoftBank's Vision Fund, which is this big technology investment fund that invests in companies like Uber and Slack. My understanding is they put in $45 billion and there's $45 billion more pledged. So that's a lot of money. Wall Street is currently salivating over the prospect of the biggest IPO in history of Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, goes public. There's that huge investment conference. So I guess Secretary Mnuchin is still going, but a bunch of business leaders that you wouldn't expect, like Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, the CEO of Uber, all the media sponsors pulled out. Do you think the private sector might lead us in the right direction here?

I do not ever put my hopes in the leaders of these companies. I think they should be under pressure to not go. I think we need to make a category shift as to how we think about Saudi Arabia. And as you said, think about it less like some reformist and modern state and more like Kim Jong-un with oil. Stepping back, this is a country with an incredible amount of oil wealth. They make kind of a dirty deal with their own people, which is you're not going to have to work very hard. You're going to be able to have resources and air conditioning and an incredibly nice life because of this oil wealth the only thing you have

to do is give up your basic dignity and liberty we will bring in immigrants from other countries and we will work them to fucking death and treat them like absolute dog shit so that you can lead a nice life in which you're you know safe and ensconced, as long as you don't question the authority of the government, but that you look in the long term, you go to 30,000 feet, and eventually that oil will run out. And so these conferences, these investments, this idea of reforming the country is incredibly, incredibly important to the future. Without oil wealth, they can't pay the bills. They can't pay the electric bill. And they're trying to figure out

how to build the infrastructure, education infrastructure, economic infrastructure outside of oil to maintain their lifestyle, maintain their level of wealth into the future. That is an extraordinarily difficult prospect with the cooperation of Goldman Sachs, with the cooperation of Jeff Bezos. It is impossible without it. So all this talk about how we're going to lose some contract with Raytheon, that we need Saudi, they need us. They need us. They need us and they need the international community far more than anyone needs them, especially as the economics of fossil fuels are changing, especially if we have our own

resources, especially as we're moving towards renewables, at least we should be moving towards them faster. So the idea that we're somehow reliant on them is changing and we need to change the way we think about that country. And like, why can't the art of the deal guy ever identify his own leverage on the front end? Like Mohammed bin Salman, he understands what you just said, which is that like the US is doing fracking and exporting more oil. Their reserves are going to run out. They need to change their economy in a hurry, or else they're going to not just bankrupt themselves, but face massive social unrest. So he's been trying to take all these steps, like, you know, some social things like allowing women to drive, but then trying to build all these like tech companies in the city of the future and all this shit. And like,

that's what he sold the press on. But to your point earlier, like I am very cynical about the Saudis facing long term punishment because of the twenty seven million dollars they spent last year alone on lobbying. That goes to Republicans and Democrats. They try to influence lawmakers, their staff, the White House, the State Department, DOD and journalists. And that doesn't include like the off the book stuff where countries are trying to gain access through Trump's big donors. The New York Times did a piece on that or when state linked firms hire former generals or State Department officials and are like fun think tanks. totally overreact and there's a rupture in the U.S.-Saudi relationship, they turn to Russia and China and a decade from now, we think to ourselves, that was not a long-term prudent thing. Like I'm not making that argument. I want to hear it. But I also think like there's right and there's wrong and we should do the bare minimum right now and at least like try to figure this out and stand up for basic values. Right. And look, for all their kind of saber rattling in Saudi Arabia saying,

oh, we'll respond and do more. If we take steps to punish Saudi Arabia for their human rights abuses, once those steps are taken, the fundamental conditions of the relationship remain the same. It is fascinating to me how many people who rely on kind of realpolitik reasons for our kind of looking the other way with dictators and shameful actors around the world simply lose sight of that reality when it comes time to making those actors pay a price for bad behavior. If you believe that we shouldn't be guided by principle alone, if that's your position, then why do you think doing the right thing, making them pay a price will make them act irrationally after that price has been paid? Once we have punished them, Magnitsky sanctions, for example, their need for us will remain exactly as it was the day after we put those

in place as they did the day before. Yeah. No, like what you just said reminds me so much of sitting in meetings in 2011 when the Arab Spring was starting, because you'd have like the 70 plus crowd advisors talking about whether or not Obama should speak out against Mubarak's crackdown in Egypt or side with the protesters. And they'd be like, you know, Hosni and the boys were with us in Gulf War I, you know, like in 91, we couldn't have done it without them. And, you know, the younger people were thinking we have to live these values we claim to care about as a country. Now, the tale of the tape on the Arab Spring is unfinished. And certainly the security situation in Cairo looks a hell of a lot worse than it did seven years ago.

But no one said this was going to be a quick process. And I don't know, like values should mean something. Yeah. It just, we shouldn't be ride or die with dictators. It's not that fucking hard. And just to make sure we have an option for a tight, for an episode title, Davos and hell, you know, that's just there for us to use or not use. I've said it. So now it can count and that's all. I guess my brain jumped all over ride or die with dictators. We have good options. We have good options today. I mean, last little caveat that people should just know.

All of the information we're getting about this is through the Turks. It seems to me like the turkeys have the Saudi consulate in Istanbul wired because we're hearing about maybe audio tapes of him being tortured and killed. So that would mean that they're in their comms. They have bugs in there, they have video cameras, but we don't know. We haven't vetted any of this stuff. So it's also notable that the Turks and the Saudis hate each other. The Turkey was a colonial power over the Saudis. Erdogan wants to be the chief leader in the Muslim world. And so they don't like them because they're close to the Muslim brotherhood. So the Saudis view them as a real enemy. That said, he went and he didn't come out. Exactly. And the Saudis have offered no plausible explanation for where this man is.

So they literally stopped texting back when reporters asked that exact question. Right. Anyway. OK. Very complicated stuff to be continued. Coming up is our interview with congressional candidate Debbie Moukarsal-Powell. On the line is a Democratic candidate for the 26th District in Florida, Debbie Moukarsal-Powell. Thank you so much for being on the pod. Thank you, Tommy, John, for having me on. So you're running in a district Hillary Clinton won by 16 points two years ago. Are you taking it for granted on vacation?

This thing's in the bag. Is that the deal? Oh, God, guys, I wish. Are you kidding me? No, every single vote is going to count on this race because you see, I am running against a Republican incumbent who has really been very savvy about deceiving voters. He has a completely different image down here. He pretends to be a moderate on all issues, but then voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, was one of the main people to write this horrendous tax bill that I've heard you both talk about consistently. So, you know, the problem is that people didn't know who he truly was. And my focus has been to introduce myself to this

community because I've been working here for over 20 years, but also let them know who he is and how he votes. How's that going? Because on the one hand, Congressman Curbelo is somebody seen as a moderate. On the other hand, he has voted with Trump a lot of the times. I mean, I think right now we're in this place where a lot of the coverage of politics isn't on the substance, right? That somebody who is verbally critical of somebody gets a lot of credit, even if they vote with them a huge percentage of the time. Do you find that inside the district, people understand that? Or do you still have a ways to go to show people that actually as moderate as this person may seem, based on some of their words, that actually they're voting for

corporate tax cuts, they're voting to repeal your health care? Yeah, so that's been the challenge, right? You're absolutely correct about that. I think that they're realizing that he's not an honest representative and they're ready for change. What can I tell you? And I think that the excitement is there. So I am truly looking forward to the next 22 days to be able to get everyone on board. And what we've seen is that, you know, in the last numbers that we've seen, my message is resonating. I worked here in Miami. You know, I'm an immigrant.

I came here when I was 14. I know what it's like to leave family and friends and come to a country that you don't know anyone at. And I was very fortunate to get a scholarship to go to college. I'm still paying my student loans, by the way, so hopefully I can work on that when I get elected. But, you know, the education, the opportunities that I've received is what's brought me to where I am today. And just imagine that only in this country, an Ecuadorian immigrant can get elected to Congress in one of the most contested seats

in the country. So right now, I think there's a lot of hand-wringing amongst Democrats that we have to get back to talking about the things that actually affect people, right? Pre-existing conditions, what the tax cut has actually meant for people, what this sort of Trump and Paul Ryan Congress have done to kind of undermine working people. But, you know, we're talking about Kanye. We're talking about sort of side issues a lot of the time. Do you find that that's hurting you? And what do you wish national Democrats would be talking about right now to kind of help you in these final few days? Well, actually, on my drive, help you in these final few days? Well, actually, on my drive, I had a meeting with a union right now. And on my drive here, I was just telling a couple of my staff members that I can't believe

that every day I turn on MSNBC, CNN, all we talk about is exactly what you're saying, Kanye West, and what Trump said yesterday, and what Trump, this morning. And there are things that are happening in this world that are never covered. And why not focus in the next 22 days, every single day on people like me that are fighting the fight to be able to go up to D.C., bring back some sanity, bring back civility? Why not focus twice a day, two candidates across the country, so that people can see that there's a contrast, that there's a huge slate of candidates across the country that have different, that are coming from different backgrounds, like myself, but that are willing to come up there to have the conversations that need to be had so that we can work on health care,

gun reform, which is a very important issue for me, education, the economy, and an economy that's going to work for all of us, for all the working class families, not just for the people in the top. Why don't we spend some attention doing that? And then hopefully we will win in November and things will start getting back on track. I like that idea. You mentioned earlier that you migrated to America from Ecuador when you were a teenager with your mom and your sisters. There have been a bunch of stories in the past few weeks about whether Democrats are struggling to reach Latino voters or at least more than they should. Is there anything you're seeing or that you've read that concerns you? And how do you think Democrats could do better in terms of their efforts to get, you know, earn the vote from Latino voters?

Well, first, we need to get more Latinos represented in Congress in all areas, you know, whether it's local office or federal. I can tell you, yes, I'm the only Latina running for Congress here as a Democrat in the entire state of Florida, and yet no one talks about that, right? Because our voices are not being reached, and they're not being put in front of people everywhere that I go, whether it's, you know, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., New York. I see different groups being represented, but I don't see Hispanic leaders there present talking to us. I have to tell you that running my race, and I'm running in a district where we have 70%

of Hispanics that live in my district, and I have that complaint because when I want someone to come down here and reach my voters, I need someone that's going to be able to understand the issues that are affecting the Hispanic community. And Hispanics, Tommy and John, just so that you guys understand, we come from different countries, and we're not married to one party, and that's part of the problem. This country doesn't understand that when you have a huge group of immigrants that have come here, that have been here 20, 30, 40 years. You know, there's not that commitment to party. There's definitely a distrust in government and political elected officials because there's so much corruption in a lot of our countries,

which now, unfortunately, we're seeing here as well in the United States. So we need to talk about what, you know, we need to understand the community, which I obviously do, and I'm trying to send that message out. But nationally, we don't have the leadership that we need from the Hispanic community so that we can start reaching these voters. And no, they're not going to come out and vote if no one's talking to them. Yeah, Democrats need to do a better job not talking about Central and South America, to them. Yeah. Democrats need to do a better job not talking about Central and South America, which are continents, I believe, as monolithic or countries. It's a very good point. One question on climate change. I mean, last night in 60 Minutes, Trump again denied that climate change is manmade. In fact, he seemed to suggest that if we wait around a while, things will just improve

on their own. Your opponent is one of those people who seems to like to call anyone who sounds the alarm about climate change an extremist, an alarmist. Are voters starting to see through that kind of rhetoric and see the obvious connection when we have these destructive hurricanes? Well, I hope that they do. You know, I spent a few years working with the Coral Restoration Foundation, and I don't know if you guys have seen, but I've made the environment one of my key points in this race because I did work and I've seen the impact that climate change is having along the Florida Reef. And I don't know if you guys know this, but the Coral Reef along the

Florida coast is the third largest barrier reef in the world, and it's the only living reef in the entire country, the United States of America. And what we're seeing right now is the bacteria that's attacking the reefs. And I understand this issue because I had the opportunity to work with Coral Restoration Foundation. And what I really want to make clear to all my voters, especially in Monroe County, which is, you know, all the Florida Keys and South Florida, is that we have a representative right now that likes to talk a lot and says that he's part of this climate change caucus, but they have not been able to bring one

bill to the floor. And the only way that we're going to deal with this issue immediately is if we get a majority of Democrats in Congress, because that's been an issue for us since the 80s. a majority of Democrats in Congress, because that's been an issue for us since the 80s. And, you know, we don't have time to wait. We saw a report that came out from the U.N. last week that says that we have 12 years to save the planet. Twelve years. That's so much time. What's the problem?

Everybody's getting so freaked out. Twelve years. I'll see in a decade. We'll worry about it then. Listen, when you get to be my age, 12 years becomes like, you know, 12 years. I'll see in a decade. We'll worry about it then. Listen, when you get to be my age, 12 years becomes like, you know, 12 minutes. I'm not that old. No, you're not. No, you're not.

I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Yeah, no time. I get the, I feel the anxiety. And yes, this is the time to be alarmed, Congressman, is what I want to tell him. Yes. Yes. And if you're not, then please get out of the way and let us get those seats so that we can actually bring action. That's right. Last question for you. People are listening. They want to get involved in your campaign. They want to help you out. What should they do? How can they support you? How can they support you? You can go to the website, debbie2018.com, D-E-B-B-I-E-2-0-1-8.com, and sign up as a volunteer.

Send me an email, debbie at debbie2018.com. I always read my emails. It takes me a long time, but I still do, and I respond to them. Don't blow up her inbox, okay, listeners? Just be respectful. Yeah, nice emails. Listen, Tom and John, I hear that you guys have a huge fan club and those are the people that I need to come out and help me knock on some doors.

All right. We need an Ecuadorian in Congress. We do. Some sanity to Washington, D.C. That sounds great. Debbie, thank you so much for doing the show. Thank you for being a common sense, thoughtful, smart, reasonable person running for Congress. We need you in Washington, not trying to get there.

Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you. All right. Love it. That's it. We get on a plane tomorrow. Tommy and I are going to Austin. We're going to go visit a campaign headquarters and we're going to get ready We're going to go visit a campaign headquarters, and we're going to get ready for this live show in Texas, which is going to be very fun.

Some special guests. Please check it out. And votesaveamerica.com, guys. There's not a lot of time left. Let's go win some elections. Let's go win some elections. Also, Guy Branum hosted Love to Leave It. Did we ever mention that at the top?

I just skipped through housekeeping, but we could do housekeeping and insert it. Nah. You heard it here. If you made it to the end, you're a true fan. Guy Brandom did a great job hosting Love to Leave It. We're still in the outro. There's still music. End of show. Bye-bye.