Pod Save America - "Rudy Giuliani, human tweet.”

Episode Date: December 17, 2018

A Texas judge rules in favor of Republicans trying to dismantle Obamacare, Trump and Rudy flail against a legal onslaught, and a bipartisan coalition tries to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Then former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro talks to Jon Lovett about his plans to run for president in 2020.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in the pod, you'll hear Lovett's interview with former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, who just announced he's forming an exploratory committee for a potential presidential campaign. First of dozens. First of dozens. A cast of thousands. Tis the season.

We've also got a lot of news on the agenda today, including Friday's ruling from a federal judge in Texas who declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, the latest in the Trump investigations, and the role that Congress can play to end assistance to Saudi Arabia in its war on Yemen. A new Lover Leave It is out. It's an excellent episode because I was in it. Tom was on it. Tommy was on it. That was a really hard quiz. Travis.

Travis is here in studio. It was a quiz about the events of 2018, most of which you've all forgotten. We had a very good time. My most recent role at Crooked Media is to be the guy who plays quizzes that are so hard that you humiliate yourself. So get ready for Keep It on Wednesday. It gets worse. Here's three random events that happened in June 2018.

Please put them in order. Go. Yeah, I guess you guys found the test too hard. Yes, we did. But you know what? It was fun. I had a blast. I had a great time.

And we also had Alicia Garza, Louis Vertel, Megan Gailey. We had a great time. It was one of my favorite episodes. All-star episode. So check it out. Tommy, what's new with Pod Save the World? So I'm excited to talk with an expert on what the hell's going on in france to see if there's something we can learn from

the protests over there what they mean for macron what they mean for the world it will be interesting excellent also an announcement we're going on tour in the new year check out cricket.com for tickets to our february swing in new orleans charleston and Durham. And there will be many more dates added throughout the year. We would love to see you at a show. Those are fun cities. Yeah, fun February swing. My mother called me and she said, good news, we're going to be in New Orleans when you're there.

That's where we're going to meet you. No way. Yep. I was like, oh, great. That's the perfect place. That's perfect. You, your folks. So excited for Fran and Robert to show up in New Orleans.

Fran and Robert in one of those big-ass beers they sell on Bourbon Street. Oh, man. It's going to be great. Can't wait. Also, if you want to see this little podcast in action live on your computer screen, you can go to YouTube.com slash Cricket Media. Sign up. Join.

Smash that like button. Oh, there we go. There we go. Okay. To the news. On Friday, a federal judge ruled that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional just one day before the end of the enrollment period for health care coverage. Even some conservative legal scholars and Obamacare opponents were surprised at the scope of the ruling by Judge Reed O'Connor,

who'd been considering a lawsuit filed by a group of Republican attorneys general and ultimately argued that the entire ACA must be dismantled because Congress eliminated the individual mandate in 2017, which requires that everyone carry health insurance or pay a fine. That means every part of that law would go. The Medicaid expansion, protection for pre-existing conditions, staying on your parents' insurance until you're 2016, everything. The case will be appealed up to the fifth circuit court of appeals by democratic attorneys general and democrats in congress and it could end up in front of the supreme court where all five justices who upheld the aca in a

landmark ruling in 2012 remain on the bench guys why do so many experts and scholars from across the political spectrum think that this ruling is horseshit. Ted Frank, a lawyer at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who's critical of the ACA, called the decision embarrassingly bad. Jonathan Adler, who was the architect of the last conservative strategy to dismantle Obamacare through the courts that failed, called the ruling surprisingly weak. Why was it so bad? Brutal smackdown. Brutal smackdown by conservative legal scholars. Okay. Brutal smackdown.

Brutal smackdown by conservative legal scholars. Okay. So when we talk about the 2017 tax cut, we often say that the individual mandate was struck down. That's not actually accurate. What happened was the tax was reduced from whatever number it was to zero dollars. But the individual mandate itself still exists. So Republicans, a whole bunch of attorneys general in states across the country, filed this suit. And they went form shopping for this specific judge, Judge O'Connor.

The Texas AG does this all the time. He likes to try major cases challenging Obama-era policies in Wichita Falls, Texas, where he's the only district judge who hears cases, and in Fort Worth, where he is the only district judge who is not semi-retired. What a racket. Yeah. This, you know, remember back in the day when- You got your Republican AG installed. You got a judge in bumfuck somewhere.

Yeah. Remember when Republicans used to talk about legislating from the bench and activist judges? This is the definition of it. So what they did was they went to this judge and they argued that Obamacare is now unconstitutional because it's no longer a tax with the individual mandate and that those provisions, you can't separate them from the rest of the law. I don't think anyone agrees with that. Nobody agrees with that. It's called a severability argument. But that is what this judge did, which means that if this is upheld and it will be appealed, it'll go to the Fifth Circuit and maybe the Supreme Court, depending on what happens.

But if this was upheld, it would get rid of all of Obamacare, all of Medicaid expansion, all protections for previous inconditions, the little calorie counts on the menus at the restaurants you go to. All of it is now gone because of this little minutia tax argument. So that's one bright side. I'd like to get those calorie counts off the fucking menus. I'm at Sizzler for a reason i don't need to know what's in this uh crusted chicken romano cheesecake factory no one needs to know no one needs to know that's that's not information what's so ridiculous about this is judge o'connor wrote that the law remains coercive because quote the individual mandate continues to mandate the

purchase of health insurance but that is simply simply wrong. Simply wrong. As Chief Justice John Roberts noted in a case where the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, saying that it attaches, quote, no negative legal consequences to not buying health insurance beyond requiring a payment to the IRS, a payment that is now set at zero.

Zero. Then, O'Connor says, the entire law is invalid because in 2010, Congress claimed that the mandate was essential to the operation of the act, and the judiciary is supposed to uphold the intent of congress the problem is that completely ignores the intent of congress in 2017 which was to eliminate only the mandate penalty and leave the rest of the law intact so you're supposed to uphold congressional

intent but congressional intent specifically in 2017 said only 2010 intent which it's so it is so crazy old intent so most people think that this is a complete joke that this will not survive scrutiny by the fifth circuit though even if for some reason the fifth circuit does uphold it some people say you know it could be possible it would be very tough to imagine the supreme court upholding it since the same majority that upheld the last mandate is still sitting on the court. Of course, the problem becomes, I think the bigger problem would be is if there was another Supreme Court vacancy while this works its way through the appeals process, which could take a couple of years. It's very scary. So that's the scary part. And just to go through the stakes real quick, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation,

52 million people or 27% of non-elderly adults have a pre-existing condition. And so they could be denied insurance. And again, Medicaid expansion is at risk in 37 states that have accepted it as well as Nebraska, Idaho, and Utah where voters just approved it and Maine where the governor is about to approve it. So before Obamacare, the uninsured rate for non-elderly adults was 18.2%. Now it's 10.3. This is just a grenade rolled into one sixth of the economy to the most sensitive thing that we all deal with in our lives. It is potentially a massive deal if upheld. I think one of the things that makes this so troubling is on its face, it is silly, right? It is silly to say this whole thing must be thrown

out because of this one provision. On its face, it is seen as being legally specious. On its face, it seems like something we shouldn't have to worry about. And yet, you know, we can't be certain. We can't be certain because the same trend that led to this kind of manipulation of the law to get it in front of this judge that would lead this judge to make this kind of ridiculous argument is the same trend we see playing out in bigger and bigger ways, all the way perhaps to the Supreme Court at some point. And so we're in this place where if things were fair, if the rules applied, if we could count on conservative justices to do not even the right thing, but in this case, don't drive 40 fucking miles out of their way to do the wrong thing. We'd be okay, but we just can't be certain, which is, I think, why, despite the fact that this is so frivolous,

it is something that we're talking about and is something to worry about. And it was timed to be announced right before the end of open enrollment in a blatant effort to make people read the news and say, oh my God, Obamacare was struck down, not accurate. But then you're not very likely to enroll if you think that might be a possibility. Right, and that's an issue. I think what's very important is that everyone listening to this knows that in the short term, this means absolutely nothing for the Affordable Care Act. Nothing is changed. Nothing is weakened. You can sign up for health insurance. All of the permissions remain, and that will remain true throughout this

appeals process which again could take months could take years specifically o'connor has not ordered an injunction of the law right uh the trump administration has said that they don't want an injunction of the law that's the trump administration which operates on a different plane than the actual president the people at hhs are actually saying like we don't want the thing to be stopped and while Trump is celebrating it. So nothing happens to the law during the appeals process. But, of course, you know, we have to worry about the appeals process and worry about the Supreme Court. It does seem like it's very obvious that if the same Supreme Court hears this case, has heard the last mandate case, it will not be upheld. Because it's just Robert's reasoning is exactly contrary to O'Connor's reasoning.

But we do, like you said, we have to worry if there is another vacancy. So let's talk about the politics of this. Dave Weigel wrote a good piece in the Washington Post where he said that Democrats are happy to talk about this ruling while Republicans are not. He wrote that, quote, in 2020, Democrats plan to make this decision infamous and ask voters whether they want their health care to be decided by some judge they've never heard of.

Is this a no-brainer issue for Democrats to focus on in 2020, no matter what happens? Yes. Yes. I mean, one thing that I think is fascinating about what's been happening in the past few years is it's almost like the anti-Obamacare forces have kind of become zombified. You know, it began at, you know, first they tried to stop it with every tool at their disposal. And then it passed and they said they were going to try to stop it with every tool at their disposal. And then it passed, and they said they were going to try to stop it before it went into effect. And then they said, oh, people are going to hate it. And ultimately, it will collapse under its own weight. All their prognostications didn't happen. All their abilities to stop it didn't happen. And it

was always predicated on this idea that we're going to replace it with something better, that Obamacare is terrible. It's going to make your health care worse. We're going to repeal it, and we're going to replace it. And we're so far from that idea now, right? Because this isn't an effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. This is an effort to just rip it away and replace it with nothing, something that Donald Trump supports, something that Republican AGs and Republican governors have supported across the country. And what to me is interesting about all of this is that it's easy for them to try to make Obamacare a boogeyman before it went into effect. It's also easier to make Obamacare a boogeyman when you don't have to be responsible for what happens if it goes away. But now they're like, oh, shit.

If this were to actually happen, if we were to actually see what they're going to get, it's politically unacceptable. And I think that Republican politicians are not going to be able to just let this go by pointing to this judge and saying, oh, it's his fault. If you voted to gut the mandate, which everyone did from Senator Susan Collins on down, you laid the groundwork for this ruling. Totally. And so, like, and I think the Democrats can fairly campaign on, you know, first of all, Republicans just lost 40 seats in the House and a whole bunch of governors. Based on health care is one of the big issues. Based on this suit in a lot of cases. And now Democrats are going to be able to say this Republican politician has cast votes to destroy Obamacare.

And now the fate of Obamacare and the fate of health insurance for 20 million people, pre-existing condition protections, all the rest, hangs in the balance because of the votes that these Republican politicians have taken. Yeah. I mean, in a bizarre, I guess it's not bizarre. Trump didn't defend his the law of the land. He instructed his attorneys to say that essentially, you know, they agreed with the suit, but they didn't want Medicaid expansion to go away. So they were sort of tiptoeing around this to begin with. I think Dave Weigel is like one of the smartest political reporters out there. The characterization of Democrats is happy about this ruling goes too far for me because I think we're all scared to death of this ruling. But I do think this cuts right through the Republican lies about healthcare. I mean, they were attacked based on this suit during the campaign. They all pretended that they can

pass the pre-existing conditions are bad and we hate them too active 2018 and make it all go away but that's not how the system works well that's to me like this is just a bigger version of that fight where we said you know all these republicans that lined up behind this lawsuit they don't believe in protecting you from pre-existing conditions and they all acted with this sort of outrage how dare you yeah how dare you say that about us you know that i want to protect my children have pre-existing conditions i am a a pre-existing condition. I am a case of asthma. And yet, and yet, of course, as Tommy says, when push comes to shove, right, this is the policy they got behind.

And now we're going to see that exact same fight play out. Think over Medicaid, which is equally popular, sort of on the same plane of popularity as protecting people with pre-existing conditions, because now this lawsuit has sort of become an effort to get rid of Medicaid, where they'll all now say, but I don't want to get rid of Medicaid. I just sued to get rid of Medicaid. And I will say that, yeah, I am not happy about this at all. I'd rather have people keep their health insurance than have a political issue in 2020. I think we'll have plenty of those. Weigel also wrote that, quote, the legal threat to the ACA has radicalized Democrats growing

their internal constituency for a massive expansion of health insurance through Medicaid and Medicare, which have faced no legal opposition in 50 years. Why are some people on the left arguing that this ruling could lead more Democrats to support a single payer system like Medicare for all? I agree with him here. I think Ezra Klein wrote something similar, which is the Obamacare approach, thanks to Joe Lieberman, you guys have heard us mention how great he is before, was a market-based approach to expanding health care, to getting more people covered. We worked with Republicans. We took a bunch of old Republican ideas and cobbled together this plan that wasn't the one some on the left would have wanted,

but I think it was the most achievable option at the time. I think when Republicans attack an effort or a policy that they once supported in these bad faith ways, you can draw a direct line from death panels to today, these bullshit attacks, and they've, you know, cut all the funding to market the plan and tried to undercut it in a million ways, then that does make me think, okay, the only thing they can't try to sabotage is a Medicare for all type plan. Why wouldn't we push for something like that when we know that they're going to do this? Because Medicare is protected both by its political popularity and by the fact that, like you pointed out, there's been no legal challenges to it. But as you point out, and it's good for everyone to notice, we make fun of Joe Lieberman all the time for this, it wasn't just Joe Lieberman. it's good for everyone to notice i mean we we make fun of joe lieberman all the time for this it wasn't just joe lieberman right i mean fixing the health care system and reforming the health care system requires a bunch of moderate senate democrats and the caucus as a whole right now is

more liberal than it was back in 2010 but still think about all the senate democrats who were worried about daca we couldn't get on board for this, that, the other thing. It is still going to be difficult for Democrats to find, well, the truth is, no one's finding 60 votes in the Senate for Medicare for All. It's just not happening. So the only way that Medicare for All is passing if there's a Democratic president is to get rid of the filibuster and pass it with 51 votes. Even then, it's going to be hard to get 51 votes for Medicare for All, but for sure it's not passing with 60 votes.

And look, I think if we had gotten rid of the filibuster in 2010, it still might have been hard to pass a public option, but we might have had a better chance. Yeah, I mean, the, right, because Lieberman, Lieberman wasn't alone in killing the public option. I think sometimes Lieberman actually- Get your Ben Nelsons there, your Mary Landers. Lieberman, you know, there's a lot of people that use Joe Lieberman like a human shield on the public option. There was that people wanted it to die, and Joe Lieberman, you know, there's a lot of people that use Joe Lieberman like a human shield on the public option. There was that people wanted to die and Joe Lieberman's taken a lot of the blame for it.

I mean, he deserves it. He sort of led the fight, but he was really responsible for killing the Medicare buy in for even people 55 and older. I think it's an important distinction because it tells you just the razor's edge we were on to try to get something through, because the last thing to come out of the bill was allowing younger people to buy in kind of a public option for middle middle aged people. And even that was considered too liberal for people like Joe Lieberman. The one thing I'd add to this, too, that you look at what's been happening with Obamacare, and all the attacks and all the successful fights have been around the market based side of it. It's been around the mandate, it's been around the exchanges, where Obamacare has been at its most robust is on Medicaid, the place where we just

made a government program to give people health care. Not only has it... Except with the one exception of the Supreme Court ruling that states do not have to expand Medicaid. Yes. So... Which is what we're dealing with now. Right. Well, so we've had Republican legislatures, Republican governors being unwilling out of spite to take free money from the federal government to expand Medicaid for their people and bring money in for their hospitals, which is one of the most despicable

acts in modern public life. But at the same time, even as Obamacare is viewed as this partisan cudgel, we saw Medicaid expansion pass in Idaho and Nebraska in Utah. So even in some of the most blood red conservative states in the country, the government run parts of Obamacare are the most politically palatable. Kentucky. Yeah. I mean, look, voters want a simple, elegant solution to health care that is easy to understand, that is not complicated. This has been the problem with health care. When the Clintons tried to pass, this was an extremely complicated policy to explain.

Obamacare became, by the end, an extremely complicated policy to explain. It is, when you have a simple expansion of public health insurance, whether it is a buy-in, whether it's voluntary, whether it goes all the way, whatever it may be, it's not only easier to understand, it's easier to withstand legal challenges, and it is the reason why Democrats are going there, because the private health insurance, the basis for Obamacare was, okay, Republicans are at least going to be willing to compromise,

to go along with ideas that they themselves have supported in the past. That's what you brought up. And that is not true. Republican politicians do not want to go along with ideas they support. So we can thank them. If they wonder why we're going to Medicare for All, it is their fault. I feel like there's a distinction here, though, because originally the idea was let's do this compromise. We'll get some Republicans on board. All right. And we'll do a market based balance of some public, some private, some regulation, some cost controls.

And we'll cobble this thing together to try to get everybody health care because it's the most most that we can do in a bipartisan way. That dance lasted for the better part of a year. But when Chuck Grassley and Olympia Snow and all those senators went away, this task of anything even with just democratic votes became a huge problem and so yes this started out as a bipartisan compromise but even when it was a democrats only bill this was still the most liberal thing that could pass us right but i mean yeah exactly i mean it's just the individual mandate was a republican idea like we used to be like mitt romney you proposed this idea so therefore you should support it yeah did not work and look to you know moderate Democrats, we can blame them for this, but they are also responding to voters who have real fears when you try to change the health care system.

I mean, just so everyone knows, a Medicare for All system would move 160-plus million people off their health insurance that they have now through their employers to a public system. That will be better and that will protect them better. It's going to be better insurance. But think about what we went through in the Obama administration when just 3 million plans were canceled to give people better plans with more protections. It was the biggest scandal of the year.

I think the lesson of 2016 is that you campaign on big, clear, bold policy ideas. But we should not fool ourselves that the implementation or passage of these laws will be easy because it will be messy. It's one sixth of our economy. Massive jobs, special interest money, all kinds of fights will happen around this. Doesn't mean we should trim our sails. No, we should do it. I do think that politicians who are talking about this should let voters know just how difficult it's going to be because otherwise it sounds like another broken promise when they

realize how tough it is. Yeah. One thing also I think is going to, we see the contours of what the debate is going to be in 2020, and I think it's going to be some version of, is it Medicare for all with a transition period? Is it a Medicare buy-in, which is more like a public option? And I think that there's a policy question there. There's also a political question as to what we should be advocating. I do not think it's a clear-cut case. And the one thing I would say is if we ended up in a system where there was a Medicare buy-in that worked, that where anybody who wanted to buy into Medicare could have it while people could keep their private insurance and take that political cudgel off the table,

that would be a really, really good thing. And there are very progressive Democrats who have advocated for it, not because they're afraid of Medicare for all, not because they're afraid of single payer, but because they legitimately believe it is the best and fastest way to the most progressive outcome. And I think that is a legitimate debate. And I don't think it is fair to make the buy-in debate versus the single payer debate, the buy-in versus Medicare to all debate a purely ideological one because it just isn't, just isn't. just or to like i hope all the democratic candidates debate those two options and actually there's many more options than that um but like i really hope that you don't start attacking people

as sellouts and traitors and stuff like that just because you pick one of those options because they are all like light years ahead the only way to avoid that is to stay off Twitter. Real quick shout out. Sarah Cliff and Dylan Scott did a rundown of all the Democratic health plans that are out there for Vox. And it is fantastic. It is so smart and well done and makes it easier to understand. Okay, let's move on to the Trump Family Crime Syndicate. Here's the Washington Post over the weekend. Two years after Donald Trump won the presidency,

nearly every organization he has led in the past decade is under investigation. That includes his business, his charitable foundation, his campaign, his transition, his inauguration, and his administration. His former campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman, foreign policy advisor, national security advisor, and personal lawyer are either in jail, have gone to jail, or are going to jail. And federal prosecutors have implicated the president himself in multiple felonies. I know that we've all been waiting for Mueller to drop the big one. And he still may.

But even if he says, even if he never says another word, isn't Trump in a very different place politically than he was just a few months ago? Yeah, I mean, I feel like what we may realize is, you know, you can go up to the counter at an ice cream place and you can say, give me the biggest fucking sundae that you have. And then a few minutes, you have no sundae. Then a few minutes later, somebody hands you a gigantic sundae. And that's a lot of ice cream. You can also go to a place like Yogurtland and go from little thing to little thing.

All right? And put a little bit of each flavor into your cup. With the toppings? With toppings and all the rest. And maybe you didn't notice, but over the course of that walk down the ice cream row and down the topping zone. Maybe you start with just a few pulls. Yeah. And then you start putting fruit on it.

And then by the end, you're like, is this an entire Reese's peanut butter cup? Yeah. Cookie dough. And maybe it's hard to define it, right? Maybe you couldn't say it's one. It's not just a peanut butter cup, right? There's a gummy worm in there. There's snow caps in there.

You took a brownie bite. You don't know. But I got to tell you, it's pretty delicious. Tommy, do you have an analogy? i don't know that i do so the 62 majority who say trump has not been honest about the investigation into russian interference in the 2016 campaign who are they in the metaphor uh i think there are i think there are people waiting to check out with their ice cream they're just waiting to pay for the sundae. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe they work behind the counter.

Look, we'll work on it. Yeah, I don't know where you want to go with this because there's so many places to go. I think that we have – we focus so much, and we've talked about this in the past couple of weeks, on impeachment versus indictment or both or some combination. But the truth is even if – I mean we have an election in 2020 where the voters will render a verdict on Donald Trump. And even if we don't have an impeachment or an indictment, there seems to be enough criminality, enough potential criminality, enough wrongdoing, enough ethical mishaps here on behalf of the Trump family and Trump himself that Democrats should have a pretty good story to tell. If he wasn't president, he'd be indicted. If you guys listening out there want some motivation, the statute of limitations on campaign finance violations expire in 2021. So we got a win, or he's home free. Now, that doesn't seem like how the system was intended to work,

but it's worth noting. I mean, also, just to focus on one of these, ProPublica did a pretty great investigation into Trump's inauguration. So some quick numbers. His inauguration raised $107 million. That is more than double what Obama raised in 2009. Bush's second inaugural planner was quoted as saying that the Trump team had one third of the staff and a quarter of the events, but they raised twice as much. And like, where did this money go? There are, the answer is Trump's pocket. They did all their events at Trump Hotel.

And now there are emails where Ivanka is negotiating the price on behalf of the pick, on the presidential inaugural committee, on behalf of the Trump Hotel, where the top planner for the inaugural is saying, hey, you're overcharging us and it's against the law. And that they ended up offering a discounted rate. The hotel ended up offering a discounted rate of 175 grand per day for use of the ballroom in a meeting room for Trump's friends and family event at his own inauguration. And the planner was like the fair market value was actually 85,000 per day. And so like the grifting, the fair market value was actually 85 000 per day and so like the the grifting the corruption is so vast and it's sitting right there because you know they don't know how to account for like 40 million dollars worth of donations he got rich off his inauguration he got

rich off his inauguration um let's just talk about how trump is defending himself from this legal onslaught um which is with tweets and with Rudy Giuliani. Who is a human tweet? The president tweeted that Cohen is a rat and then falsely accused the FBI of illegally breaking into Cohen's office when in reality they had a warrant, but went on to suggest that the FBI should have broken into the DNC and Crooked's office, which is fun for us. that the FBI should have broken into the DNC and Crooked's office, which was fun for us. And then on Sunday, we finally heard the words,

collusion is not a crime from Rudy Giuliani, who also rejected the possibility that Trump might sit for an interview with Mueller, saying, over my dead body, but you know I could be dead. Is there any discernible strategy here anymore from Trump and Giuliani? There's one. There is one. And it is there. Okay, so Rudy goes out there there and it's fascinating to watch. It is really just sort of classic sort of gaslighting. He's not a lawyer. He just plays one on television at this point. It's, you know, his glasses are trying to escape in real time. He's barely cogent. He's just firing off sentences over and over again george stephanopoulos can

barely get a word in but inside of that word salad are little bits of of important information yeah where he further incriminates the president well not well it's further incriminates but it's get something out of the way for them so one one thing he seeds in this sort of, you know, in this word romance salad is that, yeah, were discussions about the tower going on until November? Sure, sure, sure, sure. And you're like, wait, wait, wait, that's a big fucking deal. Because originally they said January.

Now Cohen's saying August. We don't know when this conversation ended. Yeah, originally it was January. Cohen lied about January. It was then said June. Oh, June, yeah, yeah. And now Rudy's saying November. And the big difference there, by the way, is between June and November, what did we find out?

We found out that publicly that Russians were trying to interfere in the election. And at the convention, at the Republican convention in July, that's where they changed the platform to make it more pro-Russia. So they were doing the deal while they changed the platform. Yes, and that conversation goes on until November, which is a very interesting month because something happens in November, which is there's a presidential election and then November keeps happening for weeks after.

That's the crazy thing about November. So what Rudy is saying, so Rudy goes out there and it's a lot of performance. It's a lot of bravado. It's a lot of stuff that barely makes sense. But in it, he kind of lets out some information so that when we learn it in an indictment, when we learn it in a press conference, when we learn it in a confession, it doesn't have as much impact. That's one of the things he does.

Yeah, there's a couple other things from that interview that we should note. He was also asked if Roger Stone gave Trump a heads up about WikiLeaks and the hacks and the release of the WikiLeaks information. And he said, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, I don't think so. I don't believe so. But even if he did, not a crime. Where's the crime? Collusion to commit hacking.

Oh, that was the other thing he said during that interview. He goes, the crime is conspiracy to hack. Conspiracy to hack. That's the crime. No, that's not the crime. There are hack. Conspiracy to hack. That's the crime. No, that's not the crime. There are a lot of crimes. But it's also, I mean, here's the problem with what he just said.

What he wanted to say is the crime is hacking. Conspiracy to hack means that there is multiple people agreeing to have something happen. Hack, dissemination. So yes, if Roger Stone told Donald Trump and told the campaign wikileaks is coming out with a bunch of stuff which you know we think they might have in the case of uh you know wikileaks found an email about hillary's health scare and then they told the trump campaign

you and right-wing media outlets you should start talking about her health because there's this email we have it's coming yes if the trump campaign and trump himself were involved in all that yes that is a crime well what i think what he's trying to do is say, this is again, this is the little bit of strategy in there, which is you let out the air by saying maybe Roger Stone did call Donald Trump and tell him this was coming, but then now the goalposts have moved. He's no longer saying he never knew about it. What he's saying is even if Roger Stone gave him advance notice, that's not the crime. You have to participate in the hacking. You have to direct the hacking in some way for it to be a crime.

So he's just a guy being told, might as well have been the Washington Post going to run the story. Might as well have been the New York Times that got the emails. He's just an innocent bystander being told journalistic information. He's a clown. I mean, the guy is not a good lawyer. He's running around the country trying to negotiate contracts for himself with every nasty dictator he can find.

And I think that they are just doing a public messaging campaign to try to play for an impeachment vote down the road to protect Trump. That's right. You know, it's, they're not smart. So let's talk about whether this strategy is working. Tommy, you referenced this poll earlier. A new poll by NBC and the Wall Street Journal found that more than 60% of Americans feel the president has been untruthful about the investigation into his 2016 campaign.

By 45, 34% voters say the investigation should continue. By 46 to 23% voters think that the crimes of Trump's aides may also implicate Trump. That's a key number. The president's approval rating is at 43. And 52% said that they'd probably or definitely vote for the Democratic nominee in 2020. Bad. Doesn't sound like it's working it's not it's not it's look i don't think it's working i also think we should be very sad that these numbers are as high as they are it just is sad that donald trump is at 43 it never stops being sad gallup has him at 38 today but it's trip it's the same but here here's the thing it is sad for sure But now we've had an election. We have the 2018 election.

And Donald Trump begins the quest for a re-election in the hole. Right? Like he can't go into 2020 at 38 to 43 percent and hope to win this election. So everything that happens between now and 2020 has to be some good news for Donald Trump. Donald Trump improving his standing among the American people. And so far, we're seeing it as flat as it's ever been, and at the low end of where it's been. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're so used to Donald Trump's bluster. It's so hard to tell how conscious he is of it, right? What he believes versus what he just thinks he could say, because I don't know where he lets that guard down. But one thing that I always

come back to is that he was really surprised that he won. Yeah, in 2016. He was terrified and surprised. And so even as all this is going on, even if even even all the kind of the show he's about to put on for his reelection, all the lying and all the claims of how well he's doing, right, there is that kernel that knows what's going on. And so when I think about how this story ends, it's again, only three ways can be impeached and removed, he can resign. And then Mike, Mike Pence can fulfill his sacred duty, which is to pardon Donald Trump, or we can defeat him. And to me, I think that these three things are kind of coming together in one place. I think that impeachment and removal is still the least likely option. So which is why I think the story we need to tell about Donald Trump has to be a story

that makes a compelling case that a he's a criminal who will go to jail if he leaves the White House, and B, he can't win because of the crimes he's committed. Because we don't know what the future holds. This is not a prediction in any sense. But I want to know that we're doing everything we can to create the pressure on Donald Trump to choose to leave rather than face an existential thing. Because what Tommy pointed out is really important. This election is now, this election is not just a referendum on Donald Trump. His freedom may be on the line. And that, to me, is so terrifying that everything we can do to create the pressure for him to think he cannot win and cannot escape culpability through normal political means, I think, is really important.

And that, to me, is what I'm thinking about. Yeah, and look, I think there's a message here message here for democrats too you don't just have to run around saying he's a criminal like donald trump lies cheats and steals to become richer and more powerful and every republican politician has let him do it he puts fine he puts his own financial interests ahead of america's interest i mean it's very like and there is a million it doesn't even have to be about russia now we're going beyond Russia. Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, right? Autocrats, rich people, right-wing populists all over the world. He's in bed with all of them so he can get richer and screw over the American people.

That's it. I mean that's the message. That is the P-Tape. That was the P-Tape the whole time. Someone said that – I saw someone tweet that rudy juliani rudy juliani is the kind of person who goes on tv and says it was a pdvd and then he goes home and says yes i did my job right oh rudy okay uh i wanted to end by talking about one of trump's um many autocratic customers uh

saudi arabia last week with the help of five five Democrats, Paul Ryan used a vote on the farm bill to basically block a separate vote on ending assistance for the Saudi-led coalition in the war in Yemen, which is one of the biggest humanitarian disasters in the world. The Senate actually took a vote on Thursday to limit presidential war powers,

a bipartisan statement pushing back on the Trump administration's reluctance to hold Saudi Arabia accountable. But in the House, Ryan essentially slapped a rider on the farm bill and convinced a handful of Democrats to go along with him. Tommy, for people who don't know, why are the Saudis at war with Yemen? And why has the United States, why have the United States been helping Saudi? So they've been involved in a civil war in Yemen for several years. It started during the Obama administration. They're fighting a group called the Houthi rebels who are aligned with the former president of Yemen, President Saleh.

And they are, you know, call them what you want. The Trump administration wants to call them a terrorist group. They're an insurgency. They're whatever. It's deeply destabilizing. And the Saudis view this as a proxy for their ongoing constant war with Iran. So, I mean, first of all, we should just give a shout out to some of the senators who have been fighting for this. Chris Murphy, Mike Lee, Bernie Sanders.

They're the ones who really been pushing this bill to withdraw U.S. military aid for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen. It's the first time that Congress has ever agreed to pull U.S. forces from a conflict under the War Powers Act. It's a big deal. And it also included this provision that blamed Mohammed bin Salman for Khashoggi's death. So again, like important bill. Good. Good for them for fighting for this. Paul Ryan is just going out with like Craven Act after Craven Act. He snuck a provision into the Farm Bill that blocked votes on Yemen-related war powers resolutions for the remainder of the Congress. Why did he do this, you ask? What does this have to do with the Farm Bill? The answer is he's a soulless human being because it has nothing to do with the Farm Bill. He knew

that the Farm Bill is this big piece of business that has all these subsidies for agricultural individuals like food assistance, like SNAP benefits. And it put members in a tough political position where you have to say, are you choosing against this Yemen vote or American farmers? That was the messaging. So infuriatingly, seven Democrats were not in town or abstained from the vote and five Democrats voted with Paul Ryan to curtail debate on the provision. Jim Acosta of California, Al Lawson of Florida, Colin Peterson of Minnesota, Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, and David Scott of Georgia. The most cynical vote you could possibly imagine. Like tying a bill to try to save kids who are dying at Ro Khanna, a congressman estimated one Yemeni kid dies

every 10 minutes because of this war. To tie this to an unrelated farm bill to create political pressure on these people, it defies all logic and reason. So what we need is Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership to say they will schedule a vote on this bill again the first week of January. And then hopefully the Senate can repass what they did so we can increase pressure on the administration on this awful war. And it does seem like if she schedules this vote,

that even some of the Democratic opponents of this bill last time will vote for it this time. I think Ruppersberger said he would. A lot of them didn't know what they were voting on, which is not pathetic, not an excuse. Colin Peterson gave these quotes like, I don't know a damn thing about Yemen was terrible, embarrassing for him. Awful quotes. Dutch Ruppersberger is a former ranking member on the Intelligence Committee. He's from Maryland. I'm not sure what his big interest in the farm bill is. He should know better. And I'm deeply frustrated there. But you know, that's the vote now Now, it's non-binding. Trump could veto it. They could override the veto. And then it gets challenged in court and creates

this, you know, constitutional crisis. But what I think stepping back, like what's good about this is you're seeing Congress take back some of its, you know, constitutionally mandated role in trying to check the executive when it comes to war and peace. Well, so explain this a little, because I had trouble understanding this too. If these resolutions had passed both the House and the Senate, and I know there were separate resolutions, what is the practical effect of that? I'm not entirely sure. And I've asked some of the people who support these bills what they think would happen. The likely scenario is if the House and Senate vote for it, Trump will veto it. If the veto gets overridden, it will get challenged in court. So basically it sends a message that the Congress doesn't believe that we should be waging this war in Yemen.

Now, on top of that, Congress can block future arms sales to Saudi Arabia and do things with real teeth that prevent them from getting hardware. What is the political pressure causing people to not support this? I have no idea. I mean, if Saudi lobbyists in DC, well, if you're Colin Peterson from Minnesota, like you've been working on a farm bill for years and years and years, you're not going to vote for anything that might mess that up. And so he got convinced to take this vote. I think that they probably could have, this wouldn't have scuttled the farm bill. What's Paul Ryan's interest? I have no idea. Doing Trump's bidding?

There's no good argument for continuing to support this war. It is creating a humanitarian catastrophe of like biblical magnitude. 20 million people need humanitarian aid in Yemen. Like 50,000 people may have died. It is like babies, it's children. There's no national security interest here. It is a fucking nightmare. So what is like the fig leaf excuse that the Trump administration would give if you asked like Pompeo right now? Would it be this is to check Iran or something like that? And be it Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudis,

they're our allies. We need to help them fight malign Iranian influence in the region. Like when you view every problem on the planet through the prism of Iran, you go insane. And that's what happened with these guys. Which seems to be where conservatives have sort of led our foreign policy for the last couple decades. So what can people do? Is this about pressuring Pelosi and the House Democrats to make sure that they vote on this very soon when they take office? Yeah, I mean, look, I think it would be great if people do a few things like there have been some champions for this bill, Congressman Ro Khanna, Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, Mike Lee, who's a Republican,

tell them that they're great and give them a shout out. And then I think people should call their member of Congress if you care about this and say, please ask House leadership to schedule a vote the first week of January, like Days, minutes, hours actually matter here. Kids are dying right now. And so hopefully Pelosi will say, yeah, this is a no-brainer. We should absolutely do this because I don't know the argument against. And if they don't, the political consequences for these five will be severe. And if you want to know just how devastating this war is,

I think Nick Kristof has been doing a great job writing about this in the New York Times. You can read some of his op-eds and they publish pictures of some of these children who are dying of starvation. It is fucking awful. So Tyler Hicks is an amazing photographer. Declan Walsh, another New York Times reporter. They went into Yemen. They did this big piece a few weeks back that is like it's devastating to look at. They deserve a lot of credit uh also you know credit to chris hayes

and nick kristoff for doing really great reporting staying on top of this so check out uh their reports if you want to learn more but you know it's i've never been this that that vote was the angriest i've been at congress in a really long time because it's so nonsensical and outrageous, but the stakes are so big. Okay. When we come back, we will have Lovett's interview with Julian Castro. Joining us on the pod today, he is the former U.S. Secretary for Housing and Urban Development under President Obama and the former mayor of San Antonio. He's now formed an exploratory committee for a campaign for president in 2020. Please welcome Julian Castro.

Welcome to Pod Save America. Thanks for having me on. So the potential Democratic field in 2020 could be roughly 40,000 to 50,000 human beings. in 2020 could be roughly 40,000 to 50,000 human beings. What led you to want to get in this race, and what distinguishes you from this ginormous field? Yeah, I know we joke, but sometimes it does seem like it's going to be the most crowded primary that we've ever seen. Well, we're going to have a whole bunch of talented folks that are going to put their name forward. This is why I'm interested in getting in, because number one, I have a strong positive vision for the country's future, because I have shown both at the local level and the national level an ability to get things done,

especially to expand opportunity for folks. And third, because I have a life experience, my life experience of growing up in neighborhoods where I can relate to people who are struggling and also being successful in my career and being able to relate to people who have reached their American dream. And so I feel like I have a good window into the life experience of Americans everywhere. So that's why I'm thinking about running. So what is that vision? So when you look at the country today, what are the policies you want to put in place? Like what would be your agenda if you were to walk into the Oval Office in January of 2021? My vision for the country is that we ensure the United States is the smartest, the strongest, and the safest nation on earth in this 21st century.

And that I believe that today, each of those three things go together more than they have at any time in the nation's history. And so you asked what my agenda would be. I believe that we need a 21st century blueprint for opportunity. When we talk about being the smartest nation on earth, that means that we need universal pre-K. We need to improve public education. We need to make sure that folks can go to college and not have a mountain of debt, that we have at least tuition-free higher education, whether that's at a public university, a community college, or some sort of certification, because we know that today, brain power is the new currency of success out there. People need more education and more skill to be able to thrive in the 21st century economy

than ever before. And so that would be one important part of my agenda. We also need Medicare for all. You know, I believe, especially after these attacks on the Affordable Care Act, the number of people who have already lost health insurance, the ruling that we saw in Texas just the other day, that it is time for us to push for universal health care coverage. So that would be part of my agenda. So, you know, Medicare for All is a place where we've seen the Democratic Party shift to the left that in part because of all the ways in which Obamacare has been threatened,

despite the fact that it was sort of a moderate policy outcome. You know, we saw this ruling just in the past few days that there's this need for bigger, bolder, simpler answers from Democrats on major challenges facing the country. We're looking at waves of mergers across industries. We've seen productivity gains and economic growth no longer occurring to working people. We've seen corporations and wealthy using those gains to steer policy at the local level, at the state level, at the national level. And there's a sense that Democrats are outgunned by Republicans. And on a policy front, we're not answering this existential threat to kind of the basic building blocks of what makes America, America. And what I hear when you say things like, oh, we should have,

you know, more affordable college. To me, it sounds like the answers from a previous campaign. What have you learned from Donald Trump winning? What have you learned from Democratic failures in, say, the past 10 years that would make you different from, say, forget Bill Clinton, even Barack Obama walking into the Oval Office? What is your answer to these massive sort of economic shifts? Well, I think part of the answer is that our economy has changed in the last 10 years, in the last 20 years. I'll give you a perfect example of that. You know, those scooters that everybody sees on the streets of a lot of American cities these days. Are you coming for my scooter? So every night, right, folks take their own pickup truck or whatever vehicle they have.

They can pick up these scooters and they take them to a recharging station. Those folks that do that, they get paid, I believe, like per scooter, you know, that they return. And, you know, they're not employees. They're not getting health insurance from that. They're not getting any kind of fringe benefits. They're basically independent contractors. We have gone, we're going in this nation more and more both to automated work, but also to work that is increasingly with an independent contractor model. And also a lot of people working essentially individually or as part of a small business or they're self-employed. As we do that, it means, I believe, that the government has more of a role in ensuring

that people have things as basic as healthcare. So, I don't think that the answer is to be radically different from whether it was Barack Obama or Bill Clinton or somebody else. It's that today things have changed. And so we need to put forth bolder solutions, whether that's on health care or education or the economy or immigration. Things change. And we need to address that. Because if there's something that we've seen,

it's that what worked in the 20th century won't necessarily work in the 21st century. So I think it's important that there's this conversation about whether it's people working for ride sharing companies or picking up scooters off the street or having these incredibly grueling jobs at warehouses that are involved in sort of the fast shipping that Americans have come to rely on. There is this sense that people have sort of been sapped of the basic control over their jobs, the basic benefits that come with jobs. And it's important that Democrats are talking about how to sort of have government provide a backstop. But what do

you see as the way government can arrest that problem before it becomes a problem? What is, to your mind, the cause of that shift in power to corporations and out of the hands of workers? Well, I think that that's a number of things. That's the tax policy that we've had over the last 40 years. Many of the result of lobbying that's happened in Washington, D.C. to advantage folks that already have a lot of power to advantage corporations that have armies of lobbyists in Washington, D.C. It's the result of the fact that our economy has become more globalized. And so now you have companies that set up shop in other nations, and we're competing against the standards in those other nations. And that's why I agree with folks that say, in terms of our trade agreements,

that we need to be more mindful, whether it's on labor or environmental concerns, about what other countries are doing and try to bring them up to better standards. in trying to ensure that at the center of our focus is always the person, the individual, and making sure that that individual has good job prospects and has the ability to get something as basic as health insurance and a good public education. And I'm not under the illusion that we're either that we are going to be able to always or that we should always stand in the way of those kinds of changes. Those kinds of changes can be beneficial sometimes, you know, to our forward progress. than we have been about what's good and what's bad, and that we need to stop encouraging, in some instances, corporations from just seeking their profit, their quarterly profit, and leaving out the well-being of individuals and their families when they do it. So let's shift for a second, because I don't know if you're paying attention. The president's a criminal. It's a big problem. How are we going to have a policy debate inside the Democratic Party? You know, we've got a lot of really serious people that are gonna be putting

out a lot of serious ideas about how to tackle some of the biggest problems we face while Donald Trump is under investigation, while Robert Mueller is releasing findings, while congressional Democrats are doing investigations. How do you strike that balance? And what do you believe we should be talking about when we talk about Donald Trump? balance? And what do you believe we should be talking about when we talk about Donald Trump? Well, I think we should keep the focus on what's important to people going through their everyday lives, right? We should always keep the focus, first and foremost, as we have a conversation with voters about what they care about. What are the things that keep them up at night, whether they have a job or a job prospect, whether they and their children

have health insurance, how good is their child's education and what is the prospect for their child to be able to get a higher education so that they can get a good job in the future? You know, what is the infrastructure that they have to wake up and drive on every morning in their community, whether it's a small town or a big city? What does that look like? At the same time, I really do believe that we can walk and chew gum and that people care. People who have not normalized all of this deception and the lies of this president, people do care about the integrity of their president. They do care that there are 17 investigations of everything from the Trump organization to the campaign to him personally. I think that we do need to point that out. I don't think that

that's the only thing that you can address. But if you address that and you also give them a positive vision for the future, something that they can believe in, something that they can connect to their own quality of life and their own economic prospects, I think that's the ticket to win. So it's midnight. Your brother, Congressman Castro, calls you. He says he's about to head to the floor. He has to decide whether or He says he's about to head to the floor. He has to decide whether or not today he's going to vote to impeach Donald Trump. What are you going to tell him? Well, I think that what's going to happen in this next session of Congress is that they're going to do real investigations, unlike the ones that we've had so far when the Republicans were in charge and didn't subpoena documents, did not press witnesses

who clearly had contradicted themselves. And I actually do believe that there's going to come a time when these investigations go forward in a real way and or the Mueller investigation comes to its conclusion that he will be impeached. And so when that moment comes, what I'm going to tell my brother is to do the right thing. And I think the evidence already is strong and that it's only going to get stronger. What do you think of the Green New Deal? I think it makes a lot of sense. I can't say that I've seen all of the details of it. And I believe that people have proposed different specifics of it.

But I do think that we can do it. As you know, we did a version of this early in President Obama's term where we linked infrastructure investment to stimulating green jobs and investing in renewable energy. And so it makes sense for us to take the next step and do that. So fellow Texan, Beto O'Rourke said this about your running. He said, I think it's something positive for the United States that he can offer and share ideas. Are you just going to sit there and take that shit? No, I feel the same way about him. You know, we had a chance, my brother Joaquin and I had an opportunity during his senatorial campaign to get out on the road with him and to support him. And I think he's a great guy, very talented. And I know he's going to make a decision about what he's going to do if he runs for president in 2020. And there are going to be 15 to 20 people that make that kind of decision. And so, you know, I wish him well. You asked at the very beginning, you know, why now?

I have a strong vision for the country's future, and so I feel like the time is right now for me. And no matter what anybody else does, I'm going to stick to my own timeline and speak directly to the American people. What did you take away from that statewide campaign? He started far behind. He came within three points of defeating Ted Cruz. You know, you've talked a lot about the importance of organizing in Texas, the possibility of Texas electing Democrats and what that can mean for electing a president, what that can mean for the country. Yet you've chosen to run for president

instead of statewide office in Texas. Just trying to understand what your view of Texas is right now as a place where Democrats can compete. Well, I mean, it's clear that after that campaign, you know, after other results that night, the fact that we picked up 12 state house seats, two congressional seats, I think a couple of state senate seats in Texas as well. It's clear that things are changing in the state, that it's becoming more competitive. And I actually believe that if you have a Democrat on the ticket in 2020, that Texas will give its 38 electoral votes to the Democrats. I believe that we're that close at this point. You also asked about, you know, sort of my plans and people have asked about why my brother

I didn't run in 2018. That was never on my radar screen to run for governor. That was never on my radar screen to run for governor. And for the people that ask, I've been surprised that folks haven't come to the same conclusion that I have, that actually having a strong contender in 2020 would more quickly turn Texas blue than running a statewide race. Why is that? Because I think the, and this also is something to take from the 2018 Senate campaign. Texas is so big, it's so expensive. You know, it used to be its own country, right, for nine years, that I believe the national prominence of a Texas Democrat in a national race will be so much more powerful and will actually excite the communities that folks have been talking about as difficult to excite, especially the Latino community. And so I believe that if I'm successful in this race, that it will change the trajectory

of Texas. All right, last question. And this is a weird one. It's just on my mind, because we've been watching this investigation unfold of this president. And, you know, there's been a lot of comparisons to Richard Nixon and accountability that he never got. Did Gerald Ford make the right decision when he pardoned Richard Nixon? That's a great question. You know, Charles Blow asked me that the other day from the New York Times. And I told him that I wouldn't be inclined to pardon Donald Trump, that I don't believe that if somebody, especially a president, commits a crime, that that person should be pardoned. Because you need to demonstrate that nobody is above the law. Nobody's above the law, whether it's the President of the United States or a police officer on the street in Cleveland or Detroit who abuses somebody.

You need to send that message that nobody's above the law. At the same time, the reason that you and I are still talking about this question of whether Gerald Ford made the right decision is because in retrospect, a lot of folks have said that it may have been the right decision for the country to be able to move on. And so I do see that as not a black or white kind of question. And I do think, you know, that of course there's always a consideration of what is going on in the country at that moment, at that time when you have to make that decision. But my default is that there would be no pardon. Now, before I let you go, one last thing, because we are trying to distinguish ourselves from the kind of person Donald Trump is. By any chance, do you have any massive international money laundering schemes involving Russian oligarchs and buildings in Riyadh. Man, I don't even have any massive national money schemes going on.

So, no. Okay. Yeah, I think that you remember to invoke Ford again. What he said at that time was that our long national nightmare was over. And I think about that phrase a lot these days because when we have the next president that I believe is going to be a democratic president, I think that that president will also have to address the nation in the same

way and focus on being able to move on and to build back trust with our government, trust with our allies outside of the United States. And focus again on everybody. Make sure that we have a country where everybody counts and can prosper. Well, then, Castro, thank you so much for being on Positive America. Have a great day. Thanks a lot, John. Thanks to Secretary Castro for joining us today. And, you know, we'll talk to you guys later.

We'll talk to you later. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. Happy holidays, everyone. Thank you.