Pod Save America - "Say what it takes to heal a culture."

Episode Date: November 16, 2017

Dan, Tommy and Lovett discuss the allegations against Senator Franken, the Republicans trying to use tax reform to take health care from people, and the latest in the ever expanding Roy Moore scandal. Favreau is out of town, so Dan talks one-on-one with Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL). Plus, Tommy has a new puppy! 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Jon Favreau on the road. So we're doing a Monday, Thursday mashup. I love it. Remix edition. It's like when the Jetsons and the Flintstones got together and won that obstacle course. It's just like that. Was that double dare? Never mind. All right. So Tommy, who's on Pod Save the World this week? Pod Save the World this week is an interview with a guy named Rob Malley, who is an expert in the Middle East, an expert on ISIS. We're going to talk about what happened in Lebanon and with them and the Saudis that sort of making the region royal. And then don't miss my interview with Jane Mayer on Crooked Conversations, which posted on Wednesday. I listened to it last night on my walk to the gym.

And then the little bit of the rest of it on my walk to Shake Shack after the gym. And it was really good. It was really good. I was riveted. I've done that walk of shame myself. Somebody online. I went to the gym and then I went to Shake Shack and the guy behind me online was also at the boot camp thing with me. And I turned to him and was like, what are we doing? What are the choices that we're making? I know. I know. Two hours of your life back if you just don't eat the Shake Shack.

Anyway. Anyway, the Jane Mayer interview is fascinating. People should listen to it. Love it. Who's on Love to Leave It this week? How are you coming off the big beacon show? So the big beacon show, we have another beacon show, but that's going to come out as our special Thanksgiving episode. This week on Love and Relief,

we have Van Jones, Cristela Alonzo, and Langston Kerman. It's going to be a very fun show. And Dan, Majority 54, it's coming out on Friday. So if you're listening to this on Friday,

you can listen to Majority 54 right now. And it's an awesome episode. It's a show about how the 54% of us that didn't vote for Trump talked to the people who did, which is great. Cool. Can't wait.

All right. And have we sold out the Santa Barbara show yet? I don't know. Buy some tickets for the, if you're, if you're in the Santa Barbara environs, uh, pick up a couple of tickets. Uh, you know, we're not used to having to, we're honestly not used to having to have any left. So this is a new experience for all of us. So it's, it's literally never happened before.

Usually it's just gone in minutes. I don't know. I don't know what's up with Santa Barbara. What's going on with Santa Barbara. I don't know what's up with Santa Barbara. What's going on with Santa Barbara? I don't know what these bougie wine drinkers are up to. A lot of free time up there. All right. I will interview Senator Duckworth from Illinois at the end of the podcast today.

And I will say, Dan, that I eavesdropped on that conversation, and it's very much worth listening to. Oh, well, thank you, John. I could feel your presence as I was doing it. We're going to today talk about so many things. But before we do that, I want to raise a piece of disturbing news that came out this morning. Senator Al Franken, Democrat from Minnesota, was accused by a Minnesota radio host of groping and kissing her during a USO trip in 2006. And there was a photo posted online of Franken appearing to touch her breasts. Franken apologized for the photo, said he did not recall or had a different recollection of the interaction that she spoke of. What do you guys think about this?

I'll be honest in saying that it really was a gut punch this morning. You know, it's obviously needs to be said that our experience in reading about sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, sexual assault, about people we admire pales in comparison to the experiences of people who've gone through it. So it's not to, to make any connection there. But I'll just say that, like, you know, Harvey Weinstein's famous prick, you know, I think, you know, these prick. Al Franken is somebody that I look up to. I read those books when I was in college. I admire him, and it just really broke my heart to see it. even somebody that you admire, even someone that you like, even someone that you care about and view as a leader in the party could have this history, could have been behaving in this way, believing it was acceptable, believing he'd get away with it. That was it. It was just a heartbreaking thing to see. I had a similar reaction. I mean, I too have looked up Senator

Frank in for a long time. I think it's important in these situations to remember that sexual assault, sexual misconduct is not a partisan issue. It's an issue that impacts women. And we, especially guys, especially for Obama bros who host a podcast need to call out behavior like Senator Franklin's is totally unacceptable. It does not matter if he's a Democrat or Republican. It's fucking gross. It's wrong. I thought his statement was totally inadequate. Uh, it felt like a statement that was, uh, uh, designed for immediate PR help for himself and not to actually like do some soul searching about what might have happened or may not have happened. What the history of these situations is usually there's initial story and then there's a whole other round of stories. Uh,

and maybe that will be the case here. Maybe there will be more detail published before this podcast even posts. But he's regardless, he's got to do a much better job addressing what happened. I'd like to see him not hide behind paper statements and go out and have a conversation about what did or didn't happen. happen and not just like say what it takes to keep your job, but like say what it takes to be a part of healing a culture that is broken and royally fucked up right now. So that's my take. You know, I had obviously this similar reaction and this was, you know, inevitable that at some point there would be a current sitting Democratic politician who, you know, or, you

know, Democrat would be involved in some allegation about this. And so the question that I've been wrestling with this morning is, should he resign? And because what he is accused of here is the exact same thing that Donald Trump has been accused of by many women. And we view that to be disqualifying. I mean, Trump was obviously had many things to disqualify him from office. But this was particularly, you know, above all else, being accused by more than a dozen women of sexual assault, you know, should be something that prevents you from being president. And I think it probably should prevent you from being a US senator too. And if he was a Republican, we've been lambasting the Republicans for how they've responded to Roy Moore and tribalism and everything. in our party and is an important voice for Democrats that, you know, perhaps the same

fate that we would have wanted for Republican senators should be true of Senator Franken as well. And it's not really clear to me how, you know, whether he should stay in office in this situation. Yeah, I'm not ready to I want to read more than like a couple hours worth of stories before sort of commenting on the resign or not resign. I don't mean that to be cowardly. Like, if I think you should resign, I'll say it. It's just, I think people, we deserve to

learn as much as possible. We deserve to hear the person respond as thoroughly as they possibly can. And then I think the people of Minnesota are going to make a decision and all of us will weigh in with our opinions. Yeah, I mean, I think it's urgent to do the right thing. It's not urgent to do the right thing in the span of a few hours, right? As it's broken. And I think a lot of forces in our culture are colliding. Like we are in the middle of an extraordinary reckoning about behavior in the past and there need to be repercussions for terrible behavior in the past. And we're figuring out together how to do that, you know, we also should recognize that this is unusual. We've never done this before, right? There's never been a moment of

women coming forward en masse and saying, here's what happened to me. Here's what this person did. Here's what that person did. And it's hitting Democrats, and it's hitting Republicans. It's hitting people we despise, and it's hitting people we look up to and admire. And it's hard, but it's ultimately good. But it's also, you know, I think it's also worth taking a moment to reflect on how we handle these things. And in this case, I think, you know, I think what Dan said is exactly right, that that these are the standards we're going to hold Republicans to these are the standards we have to hold Democrats to. And once we have more information, once we have all the facts, I think it's going to be hard to avoid that conclusion.

Once we have all the facts, I think it's going to be hard to avoid that conclusion. It's very hard because when we say – like the if true is the crutch Republicans held onto for more for a long time and that some – Alabama Republicans and people like Steve Bannon – and we'll talk about this a little later – are still holding onto as it relates to more. But we also believe that we need to believe the women who say this and that they deserve the, you know, sort of the benefit of the doubt here. And it's just a very, it's a sad situation because it's someone who we had previously respected and thought very highly of. And we just, I hope our party, you know, what we say as podcasters is not particularly instructive here. But, you know, I hope our party responds to this without regard for either their friendship for Al Franken or him being a member of their tribe. Right. And treats it as they would if it was Roy Moore or a Republican senator or Harvey Weinstein or Kevin Spacey or whoever else, you know, has faced these sorts of allegations.

Yeah, the Republican Party has said, as long as you can help us push through tax reform or whatever our priorities are, we're fine with your personal failings. We should be better than that. Yeah, and there is no there is cynicism in holding your own side to a lower standard and there is cynicism in holding the own side to a lower standard. And there is cynicism in holding the other side to a higher standard. I mean, there is no way a person can call on Al Franken to resign and then believe Donald Trump should be president. It's just simply not possible. His video, what he describes, what he used to describe, what Donald Trump used to describe, what he did in his own words is quite similar to what this woman described in her recounting. Yeah. And, you know, and I think there's a similar conversation that's happening about Bill Clinton's behavior when he was president and before. And I think Anna Marie Cox had an incredibly honest and important conversation about this on her show. It changed the way I think I am still processing these questions, but they're painful, but they're something that Democrats are going to have to come to terms with. Yeah, I've been, it's been really the Bill

Clinton part of this conversation. I think there's a longer conversation to be had about it. And I agree that I highly recommend Ana's conversation on it. But I've been struck by the amount, younger people who, you know, I know, here in San Francisco, who've asked me about this in recent weeks, like totally on, you know, obviously, they knew about Monica Winske, we didn't know about some of the other allegations. And it's going to be a conversation for society and the Democratic Party for, you know, months and years to come, I think. Yeah. And it's a conversation that's going to be ultimately led by women, which is why I think it's good that you talked to Tammy Duckworth about this. It's good that Ana and Rebecca talked about it on their show.

Yeah. The one last note on this, the one person who doesn't deserve to get beat up in this conversation is Hillary Clinton. You know what I mean? Like, for God's sake, can we all just focus on the right people for once in a conversation about the Clintons and their moral failings? End of rant. All right.

Let's pivot to a more cheerful subject, tax reform and the Republican attempt to yank healthcare away from Americans. God. So. That was dark. I know, I know. When did this become like a dark AMC show?

I thought it was a fun political podcast. Well, just remember last week when, one week ago today, when John and I were euphoric in our celebration of electoral victories. And just to throw a little light in there, Democrats also picked up a seat in deeply red Oklahoma last week – earlier this week. Incredible. So we're still winning, people. That district was like what?

Like 70-30, 65-35 Trump, right? Yeah. It was hugely Republican and Democrats won. And so we're still winning, even if the news is dark today. And so on tax reform, the House is going to vote today. Politico playbook tells me that it is almost certainly going to pass, which means that there is a large number of Republicans, many in the state of California, who are willing to commit political suicide in order to appease Paul Ryan and Rand and their donors. But the real action, as always, is in the Senate. And the Senate was always a closer call just because they can only lose a small handful of votes. And just to make things more

challenging, the Senate Republicans the other day added repeal of the individual mandate to the tax reform bill. So not just will the bill, as you guys I think described in great detail on Monday, balloon the deficit, give the benefits to the wealthy, raise taxes on millions of middle-class Americans. But now it will also take health care away from 13 million people and cause premiums to skyrocket. Tommy, what was your reaction to this when you heard this news? I mean, it's just it's idiotic. It's to me also a bizarre legislative strategy that they would try to sneak this bill in by making it as bad as humanly possible within the bounds of the rules of reconciliation. One thing that really jumped out at me was actually an article John Lovett

shared this morning about the way this bill will eliminate tax deductions on free tuition. So there was a story in the New York Times about a janitor, I think, or custodian who put five kids through college working that job because they got free tuition. And now under this bill, that tuition will be counted as income, which will quadruple this person's taxes and make it impossible for him or people like him to actually pay for kids to go to college. And, like, I think, like, on the individual merits and stories, it is such an immoral decision, but it's also like, how much harder are we going to try to create dynastic wealth and make it impossible for people to rise up in this country and achieve the American dream, right? We're going to, we're going to allow the estate tax to be fully repealed so that the

richest people on the planet can keep every drop of their money. We're going to make it harder for people working class or working poor people to send their kids to college so that they can't get to that next job that allows them to build income and wealth over time. I mean, it is antithetical to everything we believe in as Americans, full stop. Yeah. Just the work priorities to look at the tax code and say the fifth, sixth, and seventh billion dollars that a child will inherit because of the coal production of their parents ought to be given to them without a single dime of tax paid on it.

But we should pay for that by asking grad students to... I'm so sick of these physics grad students with their free ride not paying enough taxes on their laser beams it's all these it's all stemming yes it is and like god is it so fucking stupid like you know it's again it's like and it really gets to by the way the partisan nature of not just how the process but the outcomes here it's like who are they punishing they're punishing california new york they're but the outcomes here. It's like, who are they punishing? They're punishing California, New York.

They're punishing students and college campuses. It's like a bill written to target people they know don't vote for them. I mean, we need physicists. We want people, we want engineers. We want people to go to grad school and to be able to afford it. And like the idea that you're gonna ask 10,000 grad students

to pay an extra $10,000 so some kid can get an extra hundred million. I mean, that is crazy. One person gets an extra hundred million dollars, 10,000 grad students pay $10,000 more. That is, and then, you know, and it gets to, by the way, also like Paul Ryan, they put out this video that was like, there's a lot of myths out there. Like someone saying that this raises taxes on all Americans or that this, no, in fact, you know, it's actually a tax cut aimed at the middle class. In this article where they talk,

where they go through what this is going to do to students, they say, well, you know, this is where their sort of talking points run out of gas, right? Because they're like, this is going to help grow the economy. This is going to grow jobs. This is relief for people for people this is going to create growth but that doesn't help somebody who's going to be stuck with the bill for this thing the one person gets the one bill they don't the talking point doesn't help them about fucking growth in the out years yeah it's so it's like one problem america doesn't have is a glut of scientists right it's just so these cushy scientists down it's just it's like we treat them like they're getting uh philosophy doctorates i mean it's the whole the whole thing is ridiculous and i mean it's pretty amazing so the joint committee on taxation today came out with their

analysis of the bill it's an independent it's a non-partisan congressional body that analyzes tax policy sort of like much like the cbo did for healthcare. And, you know, their findings were in all income groups would get significant tax cuts in 2019. But by 2021, households making between $10,000 and $30,000 would pay more than if Congress did nothing. And by 2027, every income group under $75,000 would have tax increases on average. So the Democratic argument about Republicans for years has been, you want to give gigantic tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy, and you want middle class and working class Americans to pay for it by taking away their health care and their education. And Republicans scream bloody murder. That is not true. It's a character. You know,

it's an unfair attack. And that is like this bill is the worst Democratic caricature of Republican philosophy times 10. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, they're using they're trying to sell it the way they sold the Bush tax cuts, which is this is a tax cut for everybody. It's a tax cut for everybody. Everybody gets a tax cut. And that was actually accurate about the Bush tax cut. It was that it was skewed to the wealthy to a great extent. The vast majority of the benefits went to the wealthiest part of the population. But because it wasn't reformed, because they weren't really getting rid of loopholes, they were just sort of giving everybody a little bit of money. They you know, they were able to make that claim. They're playing this. They're using the same playbook, but that's not what this bill does. This bill raises taxes on millions of middle class people. It raises insurance costs

to millions of people, right? It's actually doing what we said they wanted to do from the beginning. Let's talk a little bit about the politics of this. So Senate's going to try to pass this before Thanksgiving. And right now, Senator Collins has come out and said, she hasn't said she's a no, but she certainly sounds like she's leaning no for a large number of reasons, but in particular because of adding the repeal of the individual mandate. Senator Ron Johnson came out and said he was a no because the bill was too generous to corporations. And then we also have Murkowski, McCain, Flake, Corker, and Lankford of Oklahoma have said they have concerns. Flake, McCain, Corker make sense. They're like auxiliary members of the resistance. But Ron Johnson was interesting. What did you guys think about that?

I tend to not believe that Ron Johnson is in a yes. In the end, I find it impossible to imagine. I mean, this feels like, you know, we went through this. This is all playing out the same way as healthcare did, right? They lie and they say they have the votes, but they don't. And then you have people like, you know, the Mike Lees and Ted Cruz's and Ron Johnson's of the world who say, I can't vote for this. It's against all of my principles. But really what they're saying is, can you hurt poor people more in it in some way? And then you'll get me back. So I'm skeptical about that. I think once again, the key is in the more moderate members and in the anti-Trump members. Now, the good news is since healthcare, their ranks have swelled

slightly. Dan, I want to be honest. I got a brand new eight-week-old puppy yesterday. I was going to bring... We're going to do a whole thing on Luca the Angel in the outro, but let's do it now. My darling Luca. So what that means is I slept less and studied less than I normally would for a podcast. So I'm kind of curious what you think. I mean, how much is this bill going to change and how stuck or constrained are they by the figures they need to hit under the reconciliation process? I think that was a very good way to slip the puppy in and we can talk more about it if you want.

But the Ron Johnson thing is so ridiculous. It would be like five days before passage of Obamacare, a Democrat coming out and saying, I oppose this bill because it provides coverage to people. That's the whole point of the bill. It's not a solvable problem. The reason they're doing this is to cut the corporate tax rate and make it easier for corporations. So he's just going to flip. He must have been sleeping for the last two weeks and just woke up and was like, what? So Bob Corker right? Before this process began, he said, I can't vote for any bill that adds a dime to the deficit. And this adds 15 trillion dimes to the deficit.

You know, each of these members, Collins, Murkowski, Corker, McCain, even, they've all set down markers that if they lived by them, they couldn't possibly vote for this, right? Yes. But also, Elias, you said this is a replay of the Obamacare debate, which is they said we don't want to, we will not support any bill that raises premiums. Right. All the bills raise premiums. Right. We want, many of them would say, including Trump said, we want universal coverage. Obviously the bill doesn't do that. You know, whatever else happens, we must guarantee coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

Every bill got rid of it and they all found a way to – they twisted themselves into a pretzel. Either – and I never really know, and I think it probably differs from member to member, which one is just obviously lying. Like they know they're full of shit and which of them think they're not full of shit because they've been fed a Fox News distorted view of the world that treats them that like they just read the talking points and think it's fine and don't do any thing. But so you can see all of them getting with the exception of Collins. You can I can see them all getting to yes here. Corker is pretty hard. If you say you want to add a dime to the deficit i don't know how you do this right and the fact that he's not running for re-election and doesn't need the donations that lindsey graham said would dry up if they didn't vote this maybe he's there

you know they're trying to buy murkowski off with by putting drilling in anwar the arctic national wild reserve wildlife reserve that old chestnut which is something she has advocated for for a long time. And so they may buy her off with that. It's really bad negotiating on her part if she lets them do that, because she could get that some other way. And Trump can do a lot of it with executive authority. So it's sort of a fake thing.

So, you know, it's hard to know. This is going to come down to one or two votes. And they believe they have to pass this or the election is going to come down to one or two votes and they believe they have to pass this or the or the election is going to be right a disaster because then you look at the polling on this is really i mean you know there was a quinnipiac poll which shows that most people think they're going to get their taxes raised it's incredibly unpopular even republicans don't love this there's no real constituency for this, but they're proceeding ahead anyway. Yeah, Dan, I want to ask you about that because on its face, like my pre-2016 brain looks at this bill and thinks political suicide.

I mean, I guess the play is you pay the piper with the Koch brothers, with Robert Mercer, with all your billionaire benefactors who will in turn cut you multi-million dollar check for all your various campaign committees. And that's how you maybe can get well on this politically. But boy, that seems risky to make your caucus take vote after vote after vote. That is just horrible for all the people that were essentially the Trump coalition. Yeah. I mean, look, if these guys are still the dog that caught the car in that the pathologies that led them to have a bill like this were the same pathologies that should have prevented them from having the White House. Right. Their reliance on donors, this sort of irresolvable tension between practical governing and what they've promised their base. All of those things were the reasons why they ended up with someone like Trump.

They're part of the reason that Trump was supposed to lose. And so now they're trying to govern and they put together this bill. There was no rule that said they had to write a really, really unpopular tax cut. I mean, cutting taxes is pretty easy. You have $1.5 billion to spend on cutting taxes for people. You could do that in a way that's very, very popular. You literally can take out a calculator and figure out how many people you want to give $1,000 to. There's a simple recipe here. But their need to lower the corporate tax rate, even though there's very little evidence that that will spur growth, that their need to reward the Mercers and the Cokes and the other donors with this inheritance tax thing.

And then their need to claim it was a middle class tax cut, box them into producing this insane bill. And then adding the individual mandate to it. Dan, is there John regular order McCain? He's he is now kind of backed away from that pledge or he's, you know, applying and saying, oh, this tax bill was regular order. Is there any way in which adding the individual mandate and making it a health care repeal all of a sudden? Does that change his calculus on the process at all? It should. On its face, it absolutely should. This is a massive sweeping change to health care policy affecting millions and millions of Americans, not just the 13 million who would lose insurance right off the bat from this. But premiums spike for everyone, whether you're in an Obamacare plan or an employer plan.

it was a spike for everyone, whether you're in an Obamacare plan or an employer plan, it would dramatically undermine the protections for people with pre-existing conditions. And to just throw it in in the dark of night with no discussion on that specific piece of issue would by every definition violate regular order. So yes, that's how that should work. I just don't know that it will in this case. We'll really have like we'll probably be then on the day this comes to a vote, we'll probably just won't know what McCain's going to do and watch him. We'll either see him come in or give us a thumbs up or a thumbs down and we'll know about health care policy. It's not clear also if the individual mandate repeal makes it in the Senate bill that it will make it out of the conference process.

The House Republicans, even Paul Ryan, who rarely misses a chance to take health care from people, was at best ambivalent and otherwise pessimistic about including it in there. Because I think it makes his tough vote counting harder. It sort of creates a permission for some of these California and New York Republicans who have put themselves in this position to get out of it, right? And there are some House members who have said that they would not vote for it if it was in there. So it's not clear it's going to get through if it gets in there, but it's more likely than not if it does. And so I'm confused about the politics of this, because if you were a Republican and you were looking at the landscape and you were like, how can we fix our situation? I think trying and failing to pass unpopular legislation is bad. But here's an alternative. The alternative to that is not passing unline vote. So it would mean Republicans and Democrats would have to get together to do something like Marie Alexander to stabilize health care or is there an – try to do a medium-sized infrastructure bill. Like that's the solution to their political problem. It's not passing – the only difference between the political problem of health care and the political problem of tax reform is that tax reform will be law.

The only difference between the political problem of health care and the political problem of tax reform is that tax reform will be law. The political and policy logic is so fucked up as we try to jam Paul Ryan's Ayn Rand conservatism into Trumpist populism. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we should also be clear right here. Like this is on track. It is very possible that this thing passes before the holidays and becomes law virtually instantly. And there has not been the outpouring of activism that we saw around health care, even though not only is this now a sort of whatever regressive tax bill that will hurt millions of people, it is now also a health care bill that will cause millions to lose insurance and millions more to have to pay more. So people really do need to step up, especially calling California, New York and New Jersey House Republicans, because these are all people who would be voting to hurt their constituents directly.

And, you know, people like Issa have already said there are no vote. Others seem like they're willing to screw their people to please Paul Ryan, but it's not a done deal. And they're going to try to get this done in December, which means we have Thanksgiving, we have a few key moments to fight back. But this has not gotten the same response as healthcare, and that's making it possible for them to turn it into law. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because our friend Ben Wickler from MoveOn has some suggestions of what people can do. First, and this is his quote, melt the congressional phone lines by calling 202-224-3121. There will also be a day of action on November 21st when Congress is home, and you can go to stoptrumptaxcuts.org slash events to get information

on that. And then also the House is going to vote today. Many House members who are in vulnerable districts will vote for this. And Swing Left has created a fund that will be divided among the swing district Republicans who vote for the tax bill. And you can find that link by checking out Swing Left on Twitter at Swing Left. So here are some things to do, people. Good stuff. Go do them. Good stuff. Hey, guys, I just want to flag something. Senator Franken just actually put out an additional statement. So I want to read through that for you guys quickly so we can comment on it. The first thing he wants to do is apologize. He is reevaluating actions and how they've affected women.

And he said, I don't know what was in my head when I took that picture, and it doesn't matter. There's no excuse. I look at it now, and I feel disgusted with myself. It isn't funny. It is completely inappropriate. It is obvious how Leanne would feel violated by that picture. And what's more, I can see how millions of other women would feel violated by it.

Women who've had similar experiences in their own lives, women who have fear of having these experiences, women who look up to me, women who have counted on me. He also said that he's asking that an ethics investigation be undertaken and will gladly cooperate. So he is certainly, this statement came a long way from that first response, which was totally inappropriate. It seems like the ethics committee will now be the forum and the process by which this matter is reviewed and questions of him stepping down or not are considered. I feel like this is,

the thing still sucks. This is a hell of a lot better response than what we initially saw. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what, I don't know what to do with better statements now, you know? I just don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Right. All the people that we have, you know, have rightfully been derided for their actions. Many of them have put out very well crafted apology statements and that doesn't, that is nice to read, but it doesn't, it doesn't change the actions that happened. Quick update of what's happening in the Alabama race. Most of the I think all of the Senate Republicans now have walked away from Roy Moore, even Ted Cruz, which was sort of the last bet. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby said that he would write someone in as opposed to voting for Roy Moore.

to voting for Roy Moore. He will obviously not vote for Doug Jones. But Roy Moore is unbowed, even as a number of other allegations have come out. They seem like they're coming out almost a couple times a day. And it was reported, although disputed by Roy Moore, that he was banned from his local mall for being too pervy with young girls. But he is not getting out of the race. He tweeted last night, Dear Mitch McConnell, bring it on. There is one person, though, who is not leaving Roy Moore. And that is Tommy,

your friend, Steve Bannon. Just a truly deplorable human being. I just want to point out that, as many have noted, bring it on is a movie about high school cheerleaders. Oh, my God. I didn't even think about that. he's so he's so stupid you're such a disgusting stupid man yeah dan like you said nine women have come forward with accusations against mr moore he trotted his lawyer out yesterday to do this agathy christie bullshit about like comparing the handwriting on the yearbook to something on a court case like okay fine so you're casting doubt on one instance there are still eight others i mean this couldn't be more clearly be a pattern you have former colleagues saying that they heard this about him you have people saying he was banned

from malls that is a insane disgusting thing do have happened to you as a man in your 30s not disallowed have you been to a mall do you know how hard it is to get banned from a fucking mall? See people walking around people walking around malls? They're not sending their best. Look, you know, the obviousness of Roy Moore being a creep, you know, he was a despicable

creep before this came out. Now it's, you know, sort of hard to, it's sort of beyond all doubt here. So, and even the Republicans have walked away, but he's staying in the race. I think the question now is how far are people like Mitch McConnell willing to go to keep this seat? Are they willing to really try to cancel an election because they won't like the outcome? So there's been a couple of updates on that. So led by Hugh Hewitt, Republicans are trying to find any way to avoid the fate of having a Democratic senator.

One idea was cancel the election. Alabama governor said no to that. The latest plan that McConnell has been working on and trying to pitch Trump on would be for Luther Strange to resign. Luther Strange is currently sitting in that seat, which would then allow – give the governor a reason to call a new election. The governor came out and said that that would not happen. If Luther Strange resigned, then the governoried about Jeff Sessions' name. Mostly the people who have bandied about are ones who want Sessions to leave so there can be a new attorney general who's not recused, which would give Trump cause to get Mueller fired. But that's just sort of an ancillary benefit to that strategy.

an ancillary benefit to that strategy. Yeah. I mean, one thing that's fascinating to me here is that the same distorted, broken conditions that led the party to nominate someone like Roy Moore are the same distorted and broken conditions that leave Roy Moore believing it is in his interest to stay in the race. That quitting, right, would concede something. If he stays in and fights, he can make it about the establishment. If he loses, it's no different than he withdrew, but maybe there's a chance he ekes it out. So the Republicans in Alabama, Mitch McConnell, these guys have really been, it's partly why, it's why canceling the election was such a despicable act,

because they've been hoisted by their own petard here, my catchphrase. They nominated someone, they felt unaccountable. They nominated someone despicable. They got caught because he was even worse than they imagined. And now the same that he views staying in the race is valuable to him because he thinks there's money in it if he loses. He thinks it's a war with the establishment that he can rile up sections of the base. And he doesn't need to win. He just needs to get out of this thing without having conceded to to what mcconnell is saying he's also a delusional lunatic yeah there is a

strand of of this in in in all people in public life politicians celebrities etc where there is this sense that if something if you do something bad the way out of it is to not apologize and be like well i'm sorry if people were offended you, Trump is the sort of like the most despicable iteration of that sort of no apologies. And there's never you'd ever have to really deal with or reckon with something, a brand of politics. I'm hoping that when Roy Moore gets his ass handed to him at the polls in December, that we can push back on the, you know, the increasing number of people you're seeing who are following this Trumpy and disgusting strategy, because, you know, it is exacerbating

the sort of facts don't matter strain of our politics that is just making us all insane. Yeah, that is, you know, you're right, the tradition in politics, which is also sort of terrible is if you do something wrong, no what it is you apologize you do a press conference an interview maybe you fire someone on your staff and then all's good you're you know right back to the gridiron dinner right right but there is actually something worse than a faux apology to appease uh the dc set is no apology and no consequences. And, you know, Trump has sort of weaponized that. And, you know, whether it's Roy Moore or Bill O'Reilly or anyone else that have adopted that approach, and it's pretty disgusting. And we do need an object lesson to people that

Trump's success was actually the exception, not the rule for how you approach being an asshole. Yeah, look, you know, Democrats have nominated a profoundly decent man who is a prosecutor, and who has a great chance of winning the seat. And Roy Moore staying in, because he learned from Trump, and Mitch McConnell trying to get him out because he cares about winning might hand us the seat. And maybe that'll be the lesson these people will,

maybe they'll finally learn a lesson. The genius of Steve Bannon losing a Senate seat in Alabama. That is Steve Bannon. That's how brilliant he is. When you go to his parties at the Breitbart Embassy, talk to him about what it's like to lose in Alabama.

Jeff Sessions. Slow clap. Jeff Sessions. Slow clap. Jeff Sessions got 97% in 2014 because he ran unopposed. You should be able to run up North Korea numbers in Alabama. These guys are morons. Let's get Doug Jones in the Senate. Immoral, immoral morons. Let's get Doug Jones in the Senate.

If something comes out of this, it's a Democrat from Alabama that, like, every vote counts. I mean, God, you know, right now it seems like they have 49 or 50 votes exactly for this tax bill. We play Luther Strange with Doug Jones. That's one fewer vote. Yeah, they might get it out of the Senate, but if it goes to conference, I've got to bring it back.

And Doug, you know, Doug Jones will be in the Senate. And so if they pass it by one, you know, then that could be the difference. And so if whatever anyone can do to help Doug Jones out there, whether it's donate to his campaign, make calls, you know, I hope people will do that because he, you know, he, you guys talked to him and he's a really, he's, he's right. He's a profoundly, he's the kind of person you want in the Senate. He's the kind of Democrat that could win in Alabama. Yeah. Yeah. Dan, remember back in the day when politicians were people who had, like,

served others in their life and, like, did good things for the greater republic and didn't make a lot of money and they weren't on reality shows? That was better. I have a vague memory of that. That's Doug Jones. People did. All right. When we come back, I will talk to Senator Tammy Duckworth. We are now very excited to be joined by Illinois' Democratic Senator

Tammy Duckworth. Senator Duckworth, welcome to Pod Save America. It's great to be on, Dan. Thank you. We want to talk to you about tax reform and some of the other debates in the Senate. But before we do that, I wanted to get your reaction to the news this morning about an allegation against your colleague, Senator Franken, for groping a radio host in Minnesota. Well, I don't have any reason to doubt Ms. Tweeden's account of what happened. And, you know, unfortunately, this is all too common an experience for women throughout their professional career. Senator McConnell this morning called for an ethics

investigation into this. Would you support that process? Yes, of course. I think that an ethics investigation or a review by the Ethics Committee, whatever the process is, is probably appropriate. I think that that should be the case with anyone who violates the ethics or rules for the Senate. And this fits in this, there's a larger context here, in this environment of Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, obviously, Roy Moore, and as a woman serving in the Senate, you know, there was a story in the New York Times about the other day about with lots of accounts of, you know, women being sexually harassed in, you know, in the halls of the Capitol. What do you think the right approach is to change behavior, not just inside as a whole, but

in Congress? Well, I think what we're seeing is finally much needed change that's happening in American society. You know, some of the real rejection of this type of behavior that maybe we even put up with tacitly five, 10 years ago. And it's for a good thing that people are pointing this out, that there are leaders moving forward and saying, we can't, we should not do this. The fact that the Senate and the House did not have mandatory sexual harassment training was terrible. And, but you know what it took? It took a female senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, to introduce the bill. And, you know, this is the type of thing that's happened, as I said, throughout, unfortunately, many women's professional careers. Yes, I'm a female senator, but before that, I was a female helicopter pilot, the only female helicopter pilot in my unit many times.

And throughout my career, you know, you were, it was just how things were done. It wasn't acceptable. But until we got more women in leadership, until I rose through the ranks and became a commander myself and put a stop to it within my command, and until we got more and more female senators and more women in CEOs and more women reach the, you know, the very highest levels of power in this country, whether it's political or in the civilian sector, you're not going to see the change. But I think you're starting to see that change now, and I applaud the women who are coming forward, and I applaud women who are leading this charge,

whether it's with the work that I've done in the military against military sexual trauma or with what's happening here in the Senate as well. against military sexual trauma or with what's happening here in the Senate as well. Pivoting to tax reform, the Senate Republicans added repeal of the individual mandate into their tax bill. You know, I assume you obviously oppose that. But what do you see as the prospects for that being part of a final tax bill? Well, it's not acceptable. Basically, they're taking health care away from ordinary and especially lower-income Americans in order to pay for tax cuts, permanent tax cuts to large corporations and the very wealthiest Americans. The reason they're taking out the individual mandate is because there's a pool of money there,

I think over $300 billion that they can use to pay for all of these tax cuts for top corporations. And they had no way to find that money, so now they're doing it by taking away the individual mandate, which means that Americans who make less than $50,000 are less likely to have health care. And in fact, the CBO, the Congressionalional Budget Office had come out and said previously that if you took away the individual mandate, as many as, you know, over 11 million Americans would lose health insurance. You know, on the broadest political level, Americans like tax cuts, who wouldn't? And, you know, small business owners and others believe with, you know, real justification

that the tax code is sort of complicated and convoluted. If you were talking to an undecided small business owner in Illinois, how would you explain to them why this tax package is bad for Illinois and bad for America? Well, I do talk to them. I talk to Main Street in Illinois just about every day. And I talk to middle-income Americans in Illinois just about every day. And the problem is the tax cuts, if any, occur for smaller businesses and middle-income Americans are not permanent. You get them for one or two years or at most 10 years, and then they disappear and you revert back. But the tax cuts for the very largest corporations are permanent. They make them permanent.

So it's really a way to shortchange middle America. And what I've told my Main Street businesses is like, look, in Illinois, 95% of my employers are medium and small businesses, and they don't get a similar tax cut to the largest corporations. And I'm in it to fight for them to make sure that whatever we do, and I support comprehensive tax reform. I want to cut taxes for businesses as well, but my focus is on small and medium businesses, not the large mega corporations. And unfortunately, that's where both the House and the Senate tax plans written by the Republicans put their greatest tax cuts is for the largest corporations. Those are permanent. Everybody else, it's all written in disappearing ink. tax cuts is it's essentially a budget trick in that they will make them permanent or extend them when they expire, which was the argument around the Bush tax cuts and ended up being right for

about 70% or so of the tax cuts. So if they were permanent, would you be okay with that? Well, it depends on how they're paying for them. If you're going to pay for them by raising taxes on middle-income Americans, then no, I would not support that. If you're going to raise taxes, is not comprehensive. It takes from middle America to pay for Wall Street. And that is simply not acceptable to me. It might be acceptable to my Republican colleagues, but it's not acceptable to me. And frankly, the people of Illinois, we're just still in recovery. Our state has a terrible budget situation. We can't afford to subsidize Wall Street out of Illinois.

Have you talked to any of your Republican colleagues? You know, we're obviously, you know, those of us who have been paying such close attention to the battle to save the Affordable Care Act over the last, you know, 11 months here, you know, we watched Susan Collins and John McCain and Lisa Murkowski, like the Rosetta Stone, to see what's going to happen. Have you heard anything from any of the sort of swing Republicans about the inclusion of the individual mandate in this bill? I have not. I only know, you know, just what most anybody can see in the papers. I know that Susan Collins has expressed real reservations about the individual mandate being included

in this tax bill, in any tax bill. I think she said that before the draft bill came out. Folks need to understand this bill just came out this week, just a couple of days ago, so we're all still trying to digest it. But, you know, just the things that we've seen so far is already not acceptable. And to use the individual mandate to pay for tax cuts for the top 1% is simply unacceptable. In Illinois, you know, the average tax cut cuts for the top 1% is simply unacceptable. In Illinois, you know, the average tax cut for the very top 1% will be anywhere from about $50,000 to $70,000. And yet,

a family in Illinois that makes just $25,000 in Peoria, they're going to see a tax increase about just under $1,000, $800. And then, you know then you take away the mandate, and now we have families that are going to be out of health insurance. It's not acceptable. When we were in the battle to save the Affordable Care Act, you could compare, right? Obviously, the Affordable Care Act was law, but there was a democratic position. This is how we should do healthcare now, maybe moving to something like Medicare for All or a public option later, you know, maybe moving to something like Medicare for All or a public option later. But we had an alternative to the Republican plan.

In the tax debate, it is the Republican plan, you know, versus nothing from the Democrats. Do you think Democrats need to come up with an alternative tax reform plan or alternative tax cut plan, if you will? Well, I don't think that the people of Illinois want partisan fights. They want something that is a compromise. And I know I'm willing to work on a compromise bill. I just need to be allowed in the room. The Republicans are crafting these bills, whether it was health care or now tax reform,

without any Democratic input. I don't know that a purely democratic plan would be the right thing for the country either. You know, it has to be a compromise. And right now, that's not happening. And it's unfortunate, because there's quite a lot of us, especially centrist Democrats, Democrats from Midwestern states, like Illinois, who are ready and willing, but we're not being allowed in the room. And frankly, when we have compromised and worked with Republicans, as in the Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray health care bill, the Republicans table it after real efforts to come up with a compromise. And, you know,

in the meantime, the people back home in Decatur and Springfield and Champaign-Urbana are suffering. That's interesting. I hadn't even really, I guess it says a lot about politics today, that the idea of a compromise tax plan had not even really occurred to me that that was a possibility. What are some of the areas of compromise you'd be interested in? And are there other Democrats like you who you think feel the same way? Well, a couple of things that I've talked about to my constituents is, look, if we're going to cut the tax rates for corporations that have dollars parked overseas so that we can repatriate those dollars, then I want to have a similar tax cut for Main Street.

So you can't just cut the tax rates from 39% to 20% for the large mega corporations, but not do the same for Main Street. for the large mega corporations, but not do the same for Main Street. So if you, I mean, I'd be happy, I'd be even willing to consider 15% if you would agree that all trillion dollars that would be repatriated would have to be put towards infrastructure. Let's put that money back into the economy, into fixing literally Main Street and fixing, you know, the infrastructure in this country. We need a trillion dollars just to bring our infrastructure up from a D-grade, according

to the American Society of Civil Engineers, to a C-grade, to a passing grade. And if you put that money into infrastructure, then you would actually stimulate our economy because you can't just fix 10 miles of a road in Chicago. You've got to fix that road all the way down to Springfield and all the way down to East St. Louis. And so, you know, that's something that I would be more than happy to look at reducing the tax rate to get those dollars back. But I want that money to go towards infrastructure. And if we're going to lower the tax rate permanently for the top corporations, and I want to lower the tax rate for small and medium businesses, because as I said before, there are 95% of my employers in

Illinois. I'll ask one final question. I'll let you get back to the floor because I know you have votes coming up. The CBO reported the other day that because of, you know, quote unquote, pay-go rules or budget rules that the Senate tax plan would require a mandatory $25 billion tax cut, or $25 billion Medicare cut to make it adhere to budget rules. Now, that could be waived with a bipartisan vote in the Senate. Do you think, would you be willing to do that? Or if the Republicans pass this bill, that's on them, and they're gonna have to figure it out on their own? Well, I mean, I think that before they bring this to the floor for a vote, they have to figure this out. And I think this is where we need to have some tough conversations with our colleagues on the other side who are thinking of voting for this bill without a

solution. I'll be the first to say that, you know, there is waste in Medicare. I've talked about this. There are ways to find savings in Medicare and also to make it viable for decades to come. But just cutting from services from Medicare for people who need it is not the right answer to do that, and especially not just to meet some sort of budgetary requirement because you want to give tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans. There's a lot of things that we can do to bring down our deficit. And I cannot believe, I cannot believe that Republicans are pushing to increase our national debt and are proposing this large of a deficit increase at a time when we should be working together to lower costs. You know, we can go after pharmaceutical industry. We can allow Medicare

and Medicaid to negotiate for lower drug prices. We can go after waste and fraud that happens in the system. And yet, that's not what they're focused on. They're focusing on giving permanent tax cuts to large corporations, to the pharmaceutical industry, to the wealthiest corporations at the expense of Main Street and everyday hardworking Americans. And I don't know what they're thinking. The irony after being part of all the Obama budget battles in the years that the Republicans now want to increase the deficit by a trillion dollars is sort of hard to stomach. Well, I mean, Dan, Speaker Ryan said that this proposal that the House is about to vote on today has a $1.5 trillion price tag for our national debt. They're going to increase our national debt by $1.5 trillion. And then Speaker Ryan said, oh, but it's okay because we're going to create almost a million jobs.

And if you do your math, you'll realize that's about $1.5 million per job. That's not a deal. Give me $1.5 million. I can create more than one job. I think most Americans could. You put $1.5 million in a Main Street USA business, downtown El Paso, Illinois, that businessman, a small businessman who maybe has five employees, he'll create a heck of a lot more than just one job. We always used to say, President Obama always used to say, it's not on the level, and it is most definitely not on the level when it comes to Republicans on this. Senator Duckworth, thank you so much for joining us. And we'd love to have you back as the debates in the Senate continue over the rest of the

year and into next year. Thank you so much. Of course. Thanks for having me on. Bye-bye. Thanks to Senator Duckworth for joining us on the podcast this week. And guys, there are still some tickets for Santa Barbara, which will remind you, it's unconscionable that you haven't bought all those tickets yet. And Jason Kender's new podcast with Crooked Media, Majority 54, it's launching.

If you're hearing this on Friday, it's happening. You can get it right now. Majority 54. I cannot wait to listen to that. Jason is a great guy. And it's a great conversation. The first episode is awesome. So check that out. And Tommy, Luca the dog. Luca the puppy. She's going to come to the office around noon

so you guys get to meet her. Will you periscope? I don't think so. You think there's... Oh, Dan, I want you to know that if you think Tommy is bringing this dog in with purely pure motives and not to get some social media content out of it,

you don't know Tommy at all. I don't see Elijah today. I have no doubts. And I want you to know, Dan, that I have begun rapprochement between Leo and Pundit. And Tommy looked at me and was like, why is he doing that? Why is he doing that? Because maybe sometimes two foes

need to come together to defeat an even greater enemy. The enemy of my enemy is your puppy. The enemy of... That's all right. That would be really sad for me when everyone shows up at the next show with their puppy shirts and I get nothing. But that's okay. I can't get a dog in my apartment.

That's a cross I have to bear living in San Francisco. Let them evict you. That's right. Don't ask for permission. Beg for forgiveness. Get a dog. Yeah. All right. Thanks, everyone. And we will talk to everyone next week. All right. Goodbye. See you, buddy.