Pod Save America - "Schumer's bump."

Episode Date: September 11, 2017

Irma portends the effects of climate change, the press heralds Trump as an independent dealmaker, and Bannon goes to war with Republicans. Then Erin Ryan joins Jon, Jon, and Tommy to talk about Hillary Clinton's new book, What Happened.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm What Happened. I'm Tommy Vitor. Joining us on the pod today, right here in New York City, the Daily Beast's Aaron Ryan. And later, we'll talk to the host of Crooked Media's Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson. Guys, it's Hillary Clinton Day. We are going to Chappaqua to interview Hillary Clinton. To the woods.

To the woods. Lovett has been asking for this since the day we began this podcast. Well, it felt inevitable. Just begging for it. Okay, let's calm down. I didn't even send one email. All right, we'll get to this. A few housekeeping items.

We still have some tickets left for our tour. Go to crooked.com slash tour to buy some. And we are adding a live taping of Love It or Leave It right after Pod Save America in Madison, Wisconsin on October 5th. Tickets now. Huge news. We're basically not going to leave

until Paul Ryan does. On Pod Save the World this week, Tommy talks to a Republican from Texas. Congressman Will Hurd, former CIA officer, served in Afghanistan, now making laws. I haven't done the interview yet, so I can't tell you how it went, but I'll let you know about us tomorrow. Did you say that already? I did. I wasn't listening.

I was waiting for my turn to talk. That's a great summation of what happens here on Pod Save America. Let's begin with Hurricane Irma, another massive historic storm. It is thankfully weakened from a category 40 or category one hurricane as it makes its way up the Florida coast. At least four deaths reported in Florida, 27 dead in the Caribbean, and almost 6 million people in Florida without power. Storm surges and flooding are still a threat all the way up Florida from Miami to Naples as far north as Georgia. So thank God this wasn't as damaging as it was first predicted to be. But on the heels of Harvey and with Hurricane Jose not far behind,

I want to talk about the role of climate change since not nearly enough people... Not appropriate. We're not allowed to talk about cause and effect in our politics. Not today. So let us begin there. You can't talk about it now, but it's also important not to talk about it later. There's never a good time. It's just divisive. So this is what Scott Pruitt,

who is our administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has said, that it is not appropriate to talk about climate change. It's a little bit like when Republicans say it's not the time to talk about gun safety after a school shooting. Now we're doing this on climate change. It would be little bit like when Republicans say it's not the time to talk about gun safety after a school shooting. Exactly.

Now we're doing this on climate change. It would be as if, like, after like 50 people got E. coli from Chipotle, that the head of the FDA was like, now is not the time to talk about food safety. We eat Chipotle regularly here at Crooked Media. I love Chipotle. Honestly, it was a boon for me.

It was a boon for me because I went right in and they were just giving out burritos left and right. Respect for the sneeze card, though. Lovett was eating Taco Bell for breakfast at Chipotle open down the street. And now he eats some Chipotle. I think you mean Del Taco. There was a piece recently, though, that the EPA now has a guy, a political staffer, whose sole job is to go through research grants monitoring them for the double c word climate

change they've they've turned it into like an epithet over there at the epa i mean that's how like far from logic and reason we've gotten under this administration it's just like a head couldn't be deeper in the sand uh some sensible republicans here the republican mayor of miami disagreed with pruitt said if this isn't climate change i don't know what is john mccain said something similar when he was asked on jake tapper's, which is the only Sunday show anywhere that mentioned climate change. Sam Stein pointed out that it's been two weeks since the Trump administration was asked about climate change. So the talking point on the right here is, well, the first talking point is climate change is not real. The second talking point is climate change doesn't cause bad weather.

And they have some meteorologists and they have some. And so I want to dispense with that because no one is arguing that climate change caused the hurricane. What we're arguing is that climate change makes bad weather catastrophic and makes, exacerbates the effects of bad weather like hurricanes. It makes bad storms more likely, and it makes storms worse. And that's just true. And if sea levels rise in a place like Miami, where storm surge is a huge problem, it's an even greater problem. Well, right.

And we talked about this with Harvey, which is the storm surge was a foot higher in Harvey and Houston than it would have been because of rising sea levels. And warmer temperatures mean that storms will dump more rain on places. These are scientific facts. Look, you don't have to listen to us. There's this person on Twitter named Donald Trump who has been endlessly fascinated by the severity of these storms, who cannot get enough of just how unprecedented the storms have been.

storms who cannot get enough of just how unprecedented the storms have been uh it's it's obviously you know he's an addled old racist so he doesn't really make the connection or i thought he was an independent deal maker you know what we're gonna get to that i just want to make sure i just want to introduce it early i'm gonna have a controversial position controversial position you know probably not This is one, like, this is also another unique challenge with Donald Trump, because when you're tweeting something crazy every day, when you're, like, kicking

around NATO, or, you know, like, Rosie O'Donnell, whoever it might be, all these things happen under the radar, off the radar. What's the metaphor I'm looking for here? I don't know. Under the radar. I guess you can go under the radar, but I guess I suppose you could also be off the radar off the radar what's the metaphor i'm looking for here i don't know i guess you can go under the radar but i guess suppose you could also be off the radar which is when you're either flying low or maybe you're just not in the range of the kind of the scope there i think we're technically off here like all these things are happening at epa enforcement is lagging or if not

stopping and it's exacerbating this problem i mean yeah and there's no way to get it covered because like we were talking about earlier two two weeks without a mention on a Sunday show because when one side has a position where they dig in and you don't move, the press moves on because it gets boring. One of the things that sort of protects us a little bit is the fact that Donald Trump is so incompetent because the place where he's been most effective at undermining environmental rules has been at the administrative level in these lower level positions that just don't get covered, you know, the assistant secretaries and all the rest. But because they've been so disorganized and bumbling, they haven't actually been able to do as much damage as they otherwise could have, even though pulling out of Paris, plus all the rule writing that they're doing at EPA and through the administration has been devastating. Yeah. What's truly scary about this is for a long time, it's, you know, oh, liberals are predicting

climate change and conservatives saying it's never going to happen. Well, it's here now and it's here in a big way. And with storm surges and these hurricanes destroying parts of Houston, parts of Texas, putting Miami underwater, putting, you know, Naples is covered. I mean, this is, we now have to do something about this because it's here. And so now efforts are basically not just focused on mitigation, but adaptation. Like, you've got to build seawalls, and we've got to have stronger buildings and flood protection, all this kind of shit. And that is a huge infrastructure project on its own.

Yes. And it's not going to get done if we can't focus on this. Well, one of the things the Trump administration rolled back was rules that accounted for climate change in the building of buildings and infrastructure in areas prone to flooding. Mind-boggling. Yeah. And these are all expensive items that are fraught politically that involve a lot of mindshare. I mean, the thing that worries me is, like, having gone through some natural disasters, you know, at the NSC and in the administration, there is only so many minutes of the day that your Homeland Security advisor

or that your FEMA director can spend, like, managing each individual crisis. And Harvey is just beginning. Irma is not even over yet. God knows what could come next. I mean, it's going to take a lot of time and effort for them to fix this and a lot of money. I thought perhaps the best encapsulation of conservatism in 2017 was Rush Limbaugh saying that Irma was liberal media hype and then promptly evacuating his Palm Beach home. You know, Alex Jones has sort of dimmed his terribleness star, but it's good to have him back in our crosshairs because the guy is just a clown. What did Rush Limbaugh sound like broadcasting from an undisclosed location?

Let's see what liberal Rush Limbaugh would have to say about this. Conservative traitors flooding Miami. They've set their terrorist climate sights on Miami and Tampa and St. Petersburg and Tallahassee. I'm recording this from deep within NORAD, the only place now safe from the climate disaster. Conservative traitors sacrificing your beaches at the almighty altar of the Koch brothers. The Koch brothers, conservative traitors. Friends.

Oh, God. That's so stupid. At the end there, that was him running away? Yeah, that was him. The water. Water's coming. Gurgling.

I'm so upset by these changing climates that I must attach yet another fentanyl patch to my haunches. I was waiting for that. I was going to let you keep going until you talked about the fentanyl patch. The only thing changing faster than the rising sea levels is the level of opiate coursing through my bloodstream. Friends.

That's Aaron Ryan laughing in the background. Oh, boy. Friends. Friends. That's Aaron Ryan laughing in the background. Oh, boy. Okay. Just got off the rails so fast. I think we covered that. I wonder if Hillary will like it when you do that later. Okay. Donald Trump has been relatively quiet during this latest storm.

That is because he is basking in the glow of his press coverage. There's a lot of TV to watch, too. As of late. I want to talk about Trump, the independent dealmaker. Slew of headlines over the weekend. Here's Peter Baker of the New York Times. Quote, in some ways, Trump is the first independent to serve as president in modern times.

Here's Robert Costa of the Washington Post. Quote, in spirit, Trump isn't a Democrat or Republican. He's a freewheeling transactional politician who looks for wins. Here's Robert Costa of the Washington Post. Quote, in spirit, Trump isn't a Democrat or Republican. He's a freewheeling transactional politician who looks for wins. The Associated Press, quote, Trump the independent. Now, in fairness to Peter, he said that he didn't intend independent to mean moderate or centrist, just that Trump isn't beholden to the Republican Party. John, you have a, what you've described and previewed for us is a controversial position. Well, you've, you've, no, I don't know.

I mitigated it, didn't I? No, you didn't, not yet. So here's, here's what I think. You can tell me if this is controversial. I don't want to, I don't want to hype it. It's hyped, it's hyped. Donald Trump ran as a Republican, but in many ways he did run an independent campaign. The issues that were central to his campaign, immigration restrictions and anti-trade and just general nationalism would have worked also as an independent bid.

And it was running against conservative and Republican dogma. I mean, he stood on that stage and just said George Bush lied us into war. You know, he attacked a lot of precepts of the Republican Party, and that helped him win a lot of people who were dissatisfied with the Republican Party. And that could have been a platform he used if he had run as an independent. That being said, once he was inside of the Republican Party as the nominee, he was captured because his tax plan was deeply conservative, something Paul Ryan could get behind. The health care bill he's signed on for is something that obviously Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell could get behind. The health care bill he's signed on for is something that

obviously Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell could get behind. So he did run as an independent, and in many ways he is an independent. But the policy apparatus he built around himself by inertia, by who Reince Priebus put him with, by a lot of different forces ended up making him govern more like a traditional Republican. And it's actually been something we've talked about a lot, that the great risk of Donald Trump was not that he'd come in, basically, you know, that we'd have Trump's temperament and Ted Cruz's agenda. The more frightening possibility was that he'd really adhere to what Steve Bannon wants,

which is a populist agenda that includes big infrastructure proposals and anti-trade and anti-immigration. And he really hasn't done that. So I was more sympathetic to this version, only because the first eight months of this administration, he is so thoroughly governed like a traditional Republican, plus some extra verbalized racism, and verbalized anti-immigration policy, and anti-Muslim policy, that the fact that he could sit down and make this deal with Schumer did feel so strange in such a departure. So I guess my view of the articles is not that they're wrong, it's that they're completely overstated. Like making one non-ideological

deal to extend the debt limit by three months does not make him the independent he could have been. That's all. So I'm going to disagree with you. That was in any way controversial. Ooh. You know, you know, Tell you. That was in any way controversial. Ooh. Tommy. Aaron, what do you think? I think this is instructive in that it's like a sea change in how Trump is covered versus every other president. Every other president is lashed to their previous positions and gets the crap beaten out of them if they change or diverge in any way.

Donald Trump is constantly handed a blank slate. Axios the other day reported that he has a chance for a reset on race because he was meeting with... Wait, what? No. What? You didn't read this? What are you talking about? Dude. I'm going to read it to you. President Trump's botched Charlottesville response was the low point of his

presidency for some key aides. Now he has a chance for a reset. At the same time, he's reveling in the adulation for a surprise deal with Democrats wait i want to see love it's faith he doesn't know why let me tell you why the reason was that he was a meeting with tim scott he was a meet he has a meeting with a black republican senator on his schedule thus the racial reset who wrote that name them i don't know. Axios? It would be Mike Allen or Jim Vande Hei. Come on, Mike. I don't know. Better than that, Mike. So, I mean, I think this is, again, like...

A reset on fucking race because you're meeting with Tim Scott? Tommy, do you have the line there where he compares it to a movie character? I do not. It was something like, it's a classic storyline. The bad, evil guy realizes everyone hates him, and so he decides to turn things around by reconciling. I just hope this is not the false victory. I hope what's going on right now is false defeat.

Yeah. I hope we're not at the turn into three. I'm talking about classic structure, based on the dumb book everybody reads when they move to L.A. Right, Save the Cats, great. It really helped me succeed. How's that screenplay coming along, guys? Got a protagonist?

Got some nice characters? What the hell are we talking about? I'm talking about Trump's pivot on race. In some ways, this is back to how Trump was covered in the campaign. Because everyone thought that there was this chance deep inside him, there was this liberal Manhattan Republican who was moderate on a whole bunch of issues and like that is belied by the fact that his entire election was appealing to the hardest hard right audience he could possibly find yeah and here we are but just because he hates mitch mcconnell and paul ryan doesn't mean that

like this is some new day so i agree with love it that there was a chance during the campaign that trump could have upset the party and the party structure by going far to the right on the Republican Party's most far right positions on immigration and – Trade. Terrorism. And then – yeah. And then on trade and stuff like that. And then tacked more towards Democrats on issues like he promised to protect Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. He at one point talked about raising taxes on hedge fund people.

And he talked about trade protectionism wherever that falls. And that's where – and infrastructure. And this is where Bannon wanted him to go. Bannon wanted him to be this big nationalist, this ethno-nationalist where we kick out immigrants and then we do all this building and infrastructure and bullshit. None of that. But the problem is absolutely none of that has happened since he started governing. And the only time he has broken from the Republican Party while governing, the only time is when he made a deal to push a vote on the debt ceiling from three months, from 18 months to three months. He literally shortened the timeline for a vote. And those are the articles we got.

There's nothing liberal about that either. It's just a stupid deal. The debt ceiling is incredibly stupid. It's non-ideologically stupid. I think one thing that's instructive about how all this went down is there was, I think, a report in Politico about the conversation between Mulvaney and Trump on cutting entitlements. And Trump's like, I said I wouldn't cut Social Security and Medicare and all the rest. He goes, and Mulvaney is like, well, what about disability? It's like welfare. You know, Mulvaney leaving out the fact that it's Social Security disability insurance. And Trump's like, yeah, yeah, we can do that. And so a lot of this is because of the

people around Trump. You know, Bannon's not wrong about that. Right. That a lot of this is because Donald Trump built a Republican apparatus. Well, this gets to my other point, which is like, so what forms Trump's views? What is his ideology? He is a dotty old racist Fox News viewer, and that's how he gets his information in news. And so he either gets it from the people he surrounds himself with in his administration, or he gets it from Fox and Friends. And thus, that's how his views come to light.

I have a question about this. I have a question about this. So all these stories, the AP story, the Post story, the Time story, the Axios story, whatever's happened on cable news as a result of those stories setting the narrative, Trump sees that, and he really likes it. And it's good. It's good for the country that Donald Trump sees on television, that him...

It's good for the country that he's now watching Morning Joe instead of Fox and Friends. That's a terrifying thing to say. But look, we are through the looking glass. This is the world. It's all relative. Right. Look, I didn't decide to move America to fucking Saturn.

I tried to stop it. We all did. That's the point of this book we've read, you know, sit and stop shitting in the fucking house. Like, isn't that a good thing? I'm with you. All I'm saying is we focus. There's a lot of metaphors there. A lot. They're good. Press focuses too much on characters in a drama and not enough on like.

I always like when you say that, characters in a drama. In a drama. And not enough on like the larger forces here. So in three months, we're going to have a debate about the debt ceiling, about funding the government, dreamers, infrastructure, infrastructure tax reform whatever it may be and trump's going to have to make or not make some actual deals with con with policy consequences and then all of this stuff is going to go to shit because if he makes some deal to legalize young undocumented americans then great for chuck and nancy great for democrats great for america Americans, then great for Chuck and Nancy, great for Democrats, great for America, and is going to continue to get that great coverage on Morning Joe and stuff like that.

But his pals at Fox and Friends and on the right, they're not going to be so happy. I don't know that that's true. They're happy right now because it's a deal with no consequences. It's him as a dealmaker. They can, look. Steve Bannon said it's going to start a civil war if he legalizes it. That's next year. We've got December problems.

But no, but but, you know, a little bit of like Paul Ryan kind of being dragged into a deal that legalizes the DACA recipients is not the worst outcome for him either. Right. They want this to go. You know, he's voted against it in the past, but it's not like it's not a core belief. It's a base play. But if Trump comes along with a deal with Democrats and they and they can claim some kind of victory, I don't know. I don't know. We don't know what's going to happen. But I'm not so sure that Fox and that Fox News won't go along on the little on the journey we're about to go on. That's what I think that Fox is like pathetic supplication to Trump is financial and that they will kind of follow his lead. Look at the Lou Dobbs segment, just shredding Paul Ryan.

That guy was a Fox business reporter, like throwing all principal out the window. I just hope that there aren't a lot of businesses watching Fox business because I think they're getting, I don't know. I'm just worried about their, I'm worried about their employees. You know, when Bannon talks about a civil war, the supplicants on Fox, maybe, maybe the people who, you know, are on Fox and Friends don't really have much intelligence at all. Sean Hannity is going to be there with them until the end. Sean Hannity is going to be buried in Trump's coffin.

Breitbart will start a war against that administration. They're a bunch of loonies. They will. And right now, everyone's holding their fire because it's just a deal about a fucking vote. So it's all too early. Okay. When we come back, we'll be talking about Steve Bannon on 60 Minutes. Great job.

With Aaron Ryan. And we're back. And we're back. And joining us is Aaron Ryan. Hi. How's it going? It's good. I was so surprised that you all three were here in New York. I thought I was going to come in and there was going to be some phone situations. Oh, no. We travel in a pack. Hi. How's it going? It's good. I was so surprised that you all three were here

in New York. I thought I was going to come in and there was going to be some kind of bone situation. Oh no, we travel in a pack. Wow. Of course. We're all here.

Do you guys have like matching pajamas that you wear when you go to bed in hotels on the road? Do they have your first initial like monogrammed on it? They won't do it. Who told you that?

They said no. Hey Lisa, take a note next time. Okay, so we want to talk about steve bannon on 60 minutes did you sit through the entire interview no i saw bits and pieces and i saw a gif of the best moment of the video which is where a part of his face moved independently of the rest of his face uh but i mostly just kind of read recaps of it yeah it was um he made a few different headlines

let's start with he declared war on the republican establishment and accused Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell of trying to nullify the 2016 election because they don't want Trump's populist economic nationalist agenda to be implemented. Cool. Seems fair. Yeah, I didn't disagree with that. Yeah, I don't think that's wrong. He also said something interesting, which is on the first, he said on the first day, he ratted out Mitch McConnell. On the first day, Mitch McConnell told him, enough with the drain the swamp stuff. I can't hire any good lobbyists, basically.

Man, Mitch McConnell is just exactly who we think he is. It was weird to root for Steve Bannon, but in that moment, I sort of rooted for Steve Bannon. It's like alien versus predator. Can we pause on this for a second, though? Sure. He is right that the swamp is a business model and that it's going to take generations to drain or whatever the hell they really want to do. But Steve Bannon is profiting off it as much as anybody else. His entire entity that he runs, Breitbart,

is funded by a billionaire named Robert Mercer, who is a right-wing lunatic who funds all these other things. Like Steve lives in a house that houses Breitbart News. He is as much a swamp creature as anyone else. He just doesn't play one on TV. Then why is he so handsome? What kind of swamp creature looks like that? Because he perfected the polo under a black

shirt under a black blazer look. Yeah, let's talk about that. Let's just talk about that for one second. So he wears I really was flummoxed by it. So he wears a button-down shirt under a button-down shirt under a jacket. All black.

All black. So I don't mind the all black. You know, Johnny Cash may – you know, it's as if Johnny Cash had a stroke, like halfway getting dressed. Well, you know what's interesting is Steve Bannon – And put on an extra shirt by mistake. Steve Bannon is actually really skinny, and it's all shirt weight that he just, like, layers over. So it takes him about 45 minutes every day to peel off every single layer of shirt. It feels like, is he cold?

Does he always get chilly? But then it's like, why not wear a sweater over it? I don't know. I mean, it's sort of like the cautionary tale of the middle-aged divorced man. How does this happen? I don't get it. What happened? I feel like even his...

Steve Bannon, what happened? What happened when you got dressed it feels a little bit like just another fuck you from Steve Bannon like he's like fuck them

I'm gonna be dressed like a crazy person yeah I think that's true and I also think but I will say that Steve Bannon's a little bit of a trailblazer in that it feels so nice

to be talking about clothes that a man is wearing instead of clothes that a woman is wearing so like thank you Steve Bannon the feminist let's go after Steve Bannon's appearance a little bit here.

Yeah, yeah. No, I'm feeling like very feminist right now. We can make fun of men too. I saw that you tweeted he should drink more water. That's what that was. Yes. Every time I see him, I'm like, oh my God, how much water have I drank today? And I go drink some more.

Megan Amram tweeted that he puts lipstick on his eyeballs. Can I say, working in the campaign and working in the White House is like the worst thing you could possibly do for your health. We all watched Barack Obama age two decades in eight years, but I've never seen someone look worse for the wear than Steve Bannon. I genuinely, I'm not concerned about him, but like his health doesn't look good. What do we think about him out there in general? Like, is he someone who is successfully spinning a seven-month stint in the White House where he got fired as a success?

Are we not really buying it? I think you can only have so many demonstrable apparent failures in a row before it stops looking like you're playing some kind of master chess game and it starts looking like you're just pretending like you didn't lose. And like he, I think he's kind of running out of time. I think most people haven't been, I think it'd be fair to not be generous and assume that he's just a loser. But you know, it is possible that he's got some other tricks up his sleeve.

I don't know. Yeah, I mean, look, I sort of go back and forth here. You know, he is in many ways like a classic sophisticated crank, right? He has a whole bunch of arguments. He had a real career before. But then you listen to what he says and it's like, populism will win the day. The question is if it's left wing or right wing and all the rest.

And it's like, OK, there's some truth to that. It was with all kind of crank nonsense. There's like a kernel of truth in there. But he's a sophisticated crank elevated because he helped elect a president and he did do that and and what he said was you know his case for why trump could win was correct i mean he was right but like he is right that the central problem with the trump administration which is what we were just talking about, is that they are – he didn't staff the administration with a bunch of Steve Bannons. He staffed it with some Steve Bannons and then some traditional Republicans and then like Wall Street bankers.

And so Bannon's dream on the populist economic side of like infrastructure and draining the swamp and tax reform and all this bullshit isn't getting realized because Gary Cohn and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are there. That's correct. I think Mulvaney has played a big role in all of this because everything that they've – he's basically been a Paul Ryan acolyte inside of the administration and it's made a difference. I think he's a Jim Comey – like you're right that he sounds sophisticated. He quotes President Polk and cites history.

But he's a Jim Comey letter away from leading the most racist losing campaign in modern history than the most racist winning campaign in modern history. I think we can't remember that. Hillary Clinton would agree with that. Yes, she would. In what happened. She would. One thing that is remarkable to me, though, is, again, the sort of totally rejiggering how the press covers these things like the fact that he still gets away with calling bragging about sexual assault just that's

locker room talk there's like no follow-up on that just locker room talk you know just it's just the guy is disgusting yeah i agree yeah how about how about the chris christie stuff like he was like no the access hollywood tape that was real test if you got on the plane afterwards you were part of the team if not we don't want to talk to you anymore yeah i mean well true and awful right it seems like that was true terrific yeah you know it's awful but it's also like another irritating thing about this whole thing is is how like i don't know it's like there's a whole crew of people in power right now who seem like they're trying to play guys who are bad guys on TV.

They're play acting a version of what they think evil is based on a movie they saw in the 80s. It's really odd because it's really disingenuous. It feels really fake. Have you ever talked to somebody who was acting? It feels like you're in a cultural reenactment of

the bad guys from Revenge of the Nerds. I'm a street fighter. Are you? How many fights have you been in lately? Yeah, he was so excited to call himself a street fighter. I'm a street fighter. You're a guy that got some Seinfeld money. Calm the fuck down.

Who the Mercers like because you're a nut. And to your Christy point, they're like, that guy was dead to us. He was off the plane. He was never given an important job. Chris Christy now leading our opioid task force, by the way. We handed him that piece of shit. No, I love when he rails against elites and he's like, limousine liberals and blah, blah, blah.

It's like, hey, buddy, you were fucking on Wall Street in Hollywood. That was your career. You're as elitist as they come. Also, Gorka, Bannon, they all do this Obi-Wan thing where they're like, strike me down. I'll become more powerful than you could possibly imagine. It's like, you run a fucking blog for racists. It's a racist scene. But, as Tommy mentioned,

the alliance with Mercer makes him at least somewhat influential and powerful. It's capitalized. And what came out of that interview that I think is most consequential is that Mercer and Bannon are planning primary challenges to Republicans like Dean Heller, Jeff Flake, possibly Bob Corker, possibly Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

Currently, they're trying to take down Luther Strange, who I didn't even know was a senator. He's like a million feet tall, and his name is Luther Strange. I didn't believe that was a real name of a real senator. I didn't either. He came directly from Hogwarts. He took time off from his teaching position there to be in the Senate. And now he's getting primary.

Oh, is he the Defense Against the Dark Arts guy? Yeah, again. He's having a really bad year. The eighth book. Poor Roger Wicker is like, how did I get on this list? What did I do? I was trying to think of something like Tea Party Puff. Huff and Party.

I don't have it. So I'm struggling with the primary. Rac't have it so i'm struggling with the primary racist puff i'm struggling with the primary challenges because in the pre-trump world i would say excellent a bunch of moderate or conservative republicans journey are being taken down by a bunch of right-wing freaks that's good for democrats we're going to win in this world i don't know i don't know if like Roy Moore is the stronger candidate against a Democrat than Luther Strange whoever he may be I don't I don't know if like Dean Heller's challenger is stronger than Dean Heller against whoever we may put up because the argument they're going to use against these Republicans

they're trying to knock off is they're part of the establishment they're part of of the swamp, they're part of the special interests, and you should knock them off for a change. I think that's assuming that the level of energy that existed on election day 2016 is going to be present in 2018. That's a good point. And among the exact same people. So like that's a pretty big gamble to assume that like the Trumpian like rally attendee MAGA hat wearing set is going to be as fired up and mad. And I don't think that's going to be the case. Whatever, polls screw up all the time. But if you take a look at what media people are consuming now, what political publications, what broadcast people are watching,

MSNBC is killing it because people are mad and fired up on the left. Just as how when Obama was first in in office fox news was killing it like it's a midterm election and that's a huge gamble i just can't see that playing out yep yeah that's right i had the same journey which is like initially i'm like great spend money bleed these guys dry but i i'm just i have this fear inside me that these more you know you see the somewhat moderate individuals even when they're cowards like dean heller seeing them go down like a jeff flake going down, I don't know that that's a good thing for the institution. I do think it's back to the moderating of Trump question, like, is he

going to go all in with the Breitbart crowd and like primary people, like he's been doing in Nevada? Or is he going to get with the program and like support the caucus? We just don't know yet. I think the Breitbart crowd plays in extremely red districts, though. And if Trump likes national headlines that are fawning, he can't align with that crowd because he's found throughout the first month of his presidency that every time he's aligned with them, the papers, the TV shows, talk shows have hated him. And he liked the Schumer bump. He liked getting good press coverage. So like he's, that was gross. Schumer bump. Schumer has a Schumer bump from the Schumer bump.

Yeah, right. Oh boy. Oh, I was in the mind. Nobody likes that. That stays in, Don. That's staying in. I saw your face. It's staying the fuck in.

But yeah, he likes good coverage. I think that's the title. Yeah, the Schumer bump. I'm so sorry, guys. But he'll do what he needs to do to impress the audience. He's the schumer pump i'm so sorry guys but but he'll do what he'll do what he needs to do to impress the audience he's in front of at the exact moment

and if he can't impress the nation with aligning himself with breitbart he's not going to continue to do it yeah i mean look i think the what we've seen the past you know eight months is that he'll do both right he'll bounce around you know i think i think you're right he'll pivot one way he'll try to help these people but he won't be disciplined enough to follow through i mean he's already threatened some of these people with primaries. He basically threatened Dean Heller in front of him. But then following through means making people mad to their faces, which is something he's never been comfortable doing, which is why the I'm fired guy can't fire someone. You can't look Gary Cohn in the eye. That's his discipline. I feel like there's,

I remember, I feel a little bit about like how we're worried about what's going to come out of these primaries the way we did early in the republican primary where i remember us talking about this a lot that it was you know who do we want to face hillary in the primary and there was jeb and marco and cruz and some other kind of homogenous white faces i've mostly forgotten and then there was ben carson and ben carson and then i and i remember us talking about this that like you know who do we want to come out of the process? And Trump was the wild card. There was this back and there was a feeling like, oh, it would be great if Trump got that.

He'll implode. But maybe he won't. We're not sure. We don't really know. But we in our minds were like, but Rubio is harder than Jeb and Jeb is harder than Cruz. Like that was an easy math to do. So it's a little bit like kind of different math. Like we don't really know what comes out of it. But I do think we're

maybe a little bit traumatized and we're not going to make the exact same mistakes in every single election. It still could be another year of the Sharon Engel year, the Todd Akin legitimate rape guy, Christine whoever, who was the witch or not the witch.

Remember? What a year. And they all lost. And they put What a year. And they all lost. They put up those crazy candidates and they all lost. And the Democrats won those races. Akin lost because of talking about whatever. I can't even remember. What was it called?

Legitimate rape? And then Donald Trump brags about legitimate sexual assaults and he doesn't pay a price. He's on the way to the White House. Okay. This brings us to Hillary Clinton and her book, What Happened, which we will be interviewing her about in a couple hours.

Erin, you read the book. I sure did. And you wrote a review already. I did write a review already. Somehow, I was able to do that. That's amazing, because the three of us basically just finished the book late last night.

The three of us getting through a book over the weekend, we're like, this tweet is so long. I can't believe how long it's taken me to read this tweet by Hillary Clinton. I never knew tweets could be this long. Yeah, it's a... What did you think? I thought, you know, I was of a few minds on it.

First of all, it wasn't a bad book. It's not bad. It's like, there are parts of it that are like really funny in a way that's kind of deadpan and like, oh, that's actually really funny. When she was like writing about her staffers fighting over hot sauce brands and like when she was kind of deadpanning how she goes through a day, it was like actually funny. When she was talking about the inaugural and she's like, I wish I was anywhere but here. Bali?

Bali sounds good. It was like deadpan. Also, I liked how she kind of ping pongs between being like an aggressively basic suburban woman and like the most one of the most intelligent and powerful women like lover hater like who's ever like lived in the modern era so it's like you know she would be like i love ncis los angeles it's the strongest of the franchise which was a horrifying line and then uh and then she'll and then she'll talk about how she's got a plan for meeting resistance with steel like with steely resolve and it's like oh my god this woman is scary but also like super nice and i kind of want to hug her but she's also very so there's that the book is actually

a good book but i think reading it i was put into a mind space where i was like i don't want to hear this from you right now and like not that i'll never want to hear it from you, but I understand why people are like kind of resistant to it. And I was thinking this morning that it sort of reminds me of like, if you had a dog that got hit by a car, and the person who hit your dog came over to your house and explained like, look, there was a bee in my car. I'm super allergic to bees. And I had to hit the bee. Otherwise, if it would have stung me i would have died and it totally wasn't my fault or i got rear-ended and that's why my car hit your dog i don't care like my dog is still dead i don't want to look at you right now like i don't care if it wasn't your fault i don't care if you i don't

care if like that you have a perfectly good excuse like my dog is still dead and i know that like i don't think that it's even rational to be that angry or like upset with her. But the fact that, you know, this is her owning up to the mistakes that led to where we are right now is kind of, I don't really want to be put back in that headspace just yet. But I'm glad I'm glad I read it. That being said, I think it's a book that people should read. Yeah, the I've had a similar reaction, especially when she gets to the litigation of why. And she writes this case and it's like, oh, right. It reminded me of when she was in the Benghazi hearing and she just held her own for 11 hours, which is just, you know, I worked for her. And like, that's the Hillary Clinton you love working for.

Because, first of all, she comes like, Snaf can make a mistake she can make wrong choices about the message or all the rest but you know that she's going to show up brilliant and prepared like we've been preparing for this interview for the past couple of days and we're all going in under the assumption that she will be fully and totally prepared for questions and for the direction we're going to take it and that's part part of who she is. And so you read this litigation of why and the different reasons and different causes in her way of breaking them down. And she's one of the smartest people around. And the thing I was thinking about, too, in reading the book is all of those qualities became background radiation. The fact that she is incredibly tough, the fact that she is a brilliant person became kind of the for granted part of the election and everything was focused on negatives.

And in that she is right. So I found myself having the same feeling as you. Like I was telling these guys last night, like I pinballed back and forth, like reading this and being like so outraged on her behalf and so sympathetic. And then also having that same feeling that you had, which is, I don't know what to do with this. It's a bit traumatic to go through it again because she does do such a good job of taking you through the whole experience in a very candid way. It's a very candid book. And we're talking about, we've all read a lot of politicians' books, unfortunately. And some of them are like, I'm running for office and here's my blah, blah, blah

that my speechwriter and my communications person put on paper, you know? And then there's more honest books. And this is one of the more candid politician books, which is good. I would also tell people, like, you should read the whole thing. And then if you have criticism,

like, offer all the criticism you want. But the excerpts that have leaked out and they have leaked out, they haven't been put out by the Clinton people, don't really paint an accurate picture of what the whole place is about. The excerpts give you a unique window into her frustration because she couldn't have more fully owned this loss in the book. But the fact that she also talks about Comey and how that influenced the election, the fact she talks about Russia, like there will be people that will pluck that out and say she's making excuses. It's just like hopefully we all could be a little more adult about it and be like, yes, they were factors that contributed to this broader event, even if she didn't run. Yeah, I don't think people are really capable of being adults when it comes to Hillary Clinton, though, like people go insane one way or the other, like whether or not they are crazy about her and love her or whether they just are just hate her i'm sorry aaron just pause for a second i just want to make sure we have the verit authentication on that point oh guys did you see that he's like

a house dj he had he like produced a bunch of oh my god i'm not talking about it okay i'm not talking about it anyway uh no i think think people are like, because like, John, what you said, that some people experience the election as like a trauma and revisiting it causes like this extreme reaction one way or the other. And it's really hard to go back there. And this is something we want to ask her because the Bernie Hillary wound that opened in the primary that everyone thought would heal for the general did not heal. And it has not healed today.

And it is certainly a fair reading, I think, of the Twitter reaction and everything else that this is exacerbating the problem. I think she has every right to tell her story and explain where she's coming from. But like, okay, now as a party, how do we fix this? Because we still have this monster in the White House. Our entire message is still just attacking him. Like, what are we? What do we stand for?

And like, how do we fix this? Because this is an existential problem. And we have all experienced how difficult it is talking about that. Like, you send out an errant tweet about the 2016 election, and you are... Batting down the hatches.

Poor Dylan. You too. Dylan Matthews at Vox tweeted over the weekend, does anyone know what she was trying to accomplish with this book? Now, you can take the tone of that in a bunch of different ways. Dylan later said he was actually just wondering, like, what's she trying to do? He's still replying to his mention.

I was glad that he said, I was glad he was like, guys, I'm not going to apologize for asking what a politician's motivation is. But it speaks to the kind of sensitivity that people have because of all these unfair dynamics that played out in the election. We're all kind of like a dog that needs to be re-assimilated to other dogs. We're all partially honest in the same way the book is like pretty honest but not 100 percent candid, right? Well, and it's also – she lost an election to Trump, right, which is what makes this whole thing different. And I was on John Kerry's campaign.

I remember the days and weeks and months after that campaign. John Kerry was destroyed. There were Newsweek books about it. And I mean, it was bad, but it wasn't anything like this. And I sort of saw it coming, though, if she was going to lose. Like, I remember visiting headquarters in Brooklyn to say hi to our old friends who were there. And I was talking to Jen Palmieri and talking to Christina Schottke. And I was like, you know, this is right after she won the primary. And I'm like, this has got to be so much pressure for you guys. Because in addition to all the other pressure you get on a presidential campaign, it's Trump. And if you don't beat Trump, it's going to be that much, like, that's so scary. And they're like, thanks. Thanks. Appreciate that.

But they hadn't really hit them yet. You know, like it ultimately hit them, but it hadn't hit them at that point. And it just, it makes it a different context because he was so scary. Yeah, I mean, and I think additionally, you know, the book's title is What Happened, but Hillary kind of at one point says,

like, I don't know why I'm the one that gets treated like this. I'm at a loss. Tell me what you. I'm, I'm at a loss. Tell me what you think. Like I'm at a loss. And it seems like a lot of the ends, loose ends are still loose. Like she lays out why she did what she did and takes ownership for the

things that went wrong, but we're missing the exact thing that went wrong. You know what I mean? There's like step one to question mark profit. Like we were, there's like a whole bunch of question marks still left in there. Right. I think that the parts she takes responsibility for

are the parts least elucidated in the book, right? And the parts that were the outside factors, which she very effectively makes the case mattered most, are laid out and fully and bare. And I think it's quite reasonable that this book, an attempt to explain from her perspective what she thinks went wrong, needs help on the parts that are specific

about the failures of the campaign, specific about her failures in the campaign. So, you know... So almost because every time she takes responsibility for one of those failures, there also happens to be some mitigating outside factor that has also caused that problem. Right, Right.

So it's just like you can see the whole book is a back and forth. I was at fault. I did this wrong. I did this wrong. But this also happened. And it's true. And, you know, she says this in the book, which I think is quite reasonable, like, you know, these things happened and they're not excuses, but they happened and we need to

understand why they happened. And she's right about that. You know, and I think the excerpts that have been pulled out have kind of highlighted that aspect of it but you know she's not wrong that we need to talk about that yeah i also thought as i was reading it that i was like oh i'm glad that this is all written down in one place because i think five years from now 10 10 years from now if anybody wants a snapshot into like this weird time in history like this will be a really useful volume for one side of what happened uh and like i was thinking like future college kids will probably get assigned it and in history, this will be a really useful volume for one side of what happened. And I was thinking future college kids will probably get assigned it and grumble about it, but then actually secretly enjoy reading it because it's kind of a fun book.

The book is a metaphor. The book is being treated like and represents the way Hillary Clinton has been treated in the public eye this whole time, which is incredibly high level of scrutiny, much of it taken the wrong way, much of it taken fairly flawed, but mostly honest and trying to understand something. But the flaws become exacerbated and the flaws make the honest part harder to talk about. Sounds like we got a book jacket blurb. We'll have to add like an accordion to inner Jack and Jill.

Okay. When we come back, we will talk with DeRay McKesson. And we are joined by the host of Crooked Media's Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson. DeRay, how's it going? It's good. It's good. How are you guys doing? You guys have a big interview coming up. We have a big interview. We do. Do you have anything you want to ask Hillary?

Or you want us to ask Hillary? I'm always interested in her about race, so anything that you ask her about race and justice, you know, she had a lot of stuff in her policy platform that never made the light of day, like you didn't hear about it, so I'd be interested to hear about that. And then what does she think is going to happen moving forward?

Like, she's been an insider for so long, and, you know, she was First Lady and Secretary of State. Like, what's her thought about how we organize to respond to this administration? I'm interested in those things. That's good. Yeah, we asked people on Twitter and Facebook for questions, and I think the most common one we got was, what's going to happen moving forward? Don't try to re-litigate too much of the past, which I think is probably wise. Which I probably won't hear, too.

It's just going to be ignored. So, Dre, you were in Houston this weekend, I believe. What were you doing there? How's everyone doing? I volunteered. Houston, you know, this is city rebuilding. doing? I volunteered. Houston, you know, this is city rebuilding. I volunteered at the Harvey Relief Hub, which is like this incredible warehouse of volunteers donating stuff, and then people who needed stuff in Houston could come and just pick up whatever they needed.

So it was great to be there. And then I came back to New York City, and I'm off to Philadelphia. So it was good to be there. And then, you know, on the pod coming up, we talked to Congressman Yarmuth from Kentucky about the debt ceiling, which I didn't know very much about. So, yes, a full week. We were talking about this earlier on the pod. What are your thoughts about this budget deal? It's interesting. I realized, like, how little I knew about sort of the budget-making process until, you know, the government started to collapse before I had their eyes.

And I was like, I probably should learn something about this. started to collapse before their eyes. And I was like, I probably should learn something about this. So, you know, I'm interested in the debt ceiling. And like, you know, Trump has essentially said we don't even need a debt ceiling, which some people, you know, agree with in some ways. So that'd be interesting to see how it plays out. The DACA decision is still fascinating to see if DACA, like immigration reform is actually used as the lever by which people get tax cuts.

Congress, so like, I'm interested to see how that actually plays out and hopeful that the immigration rights sort of space doesn't get screwed over as a swap for some really bad tax deal. On the other hand, a billionaire DACA recipient would come out pretty well. Yes. Well, I'm sort of worried, Dre,

about what they're going to trade for legalizing these undocumented young Americans, which is like, there's a lot of thought that maybe it's the wall, right? They'll get wall funding, and some Democrats will say, okay, we'll give you the wall funding if we get DACA recipients legalized. Did Yarmuth have a thought on that, or what did he say? No, we talked about the debt ceiling and sort of the process. We didn't talk about, in all the people I've talked to, people haven't had much comment about what they think, or many comments on what they think the swaps will be.

I personally think that the wall is being used as the shock value that's going to open up space for them to do the crazy tax stuff that we don't even know and as you probably have seen is that the aca repeal is like back on the table in some parts of congress so like making sure that people aren't too fatigued to keep this fight up i think is really important on our end and i think that you know the trump folks are being really consistently dramatic that is like fatiguing people so yeah you So I think that they are doing that really consciously. And did you see that Omarosa is being locked out of the whole office?

That was interesting. I loved that. We didn't talk about that. I think that is terrific. I love that she triggers him. That's like the accusation from Kelly's team. I love it. I didn't know that you used to work for Hillary.

I did. I did. I worked for her for three years. I was her speechwriter. I didn't know that. Yeah. After Hillary lost in 2008, John hired me at the White House. So this will be like a homecoming of sorts, this interview.

Yeah, yeah, that's sure. Love it gave her all of her funny lines. For a while. DeRay, you're also, you're mentioned in the book as well, and she talks about a very great meeting that she had with you and Brittany. But again, it's the question you asked, which is, she talks in the book about like, she has all these policies, and it was hard for all these policies to break through. And I think one thing

we probably want to ask her is, you know, what did Democrats do? What do we do in the future to make sure that, you know, everything isn't just a Trump show, and then a lot of really good policy actually gets out there as message, which is, you know, I think probably every movement struggles with, right? Yeah, she was, you know, we met her in Cleveland before she did a big event in some swing space. And she was incredible, like very thoughtful, all the right things about the police and race and just like in ways that people hadn't even anticipated she'd be. And you never got to see that. And that was a real, I think that like the campaign really just made the wrong calculations about like not allowing the videotapes of those conferences

to be released or like those meetings to be released. She didn't do much media with anybody who knew content. She did a lot of culture media, which was great, but they could have said anything about the content or about policies and they, and like they just, they weren't experts on it, so they wouldn't have pushed. So I think that was a real fault. And you think about the surrogates. A lot of people didn't know who Killer Mike was, but they knew him because of Bernie. He was an incredible surrogate. People had no clue who Katrina Pearson was, but Katrina was out there for Trump.

It's like, who was actually the surrogate for Hillary? I don't know. I don't know who was delivering her message in any medium, and I think that they just played that game wrong. It's a good point. I remember Karen Finney being on MSNBC a lot for her. There was no one person who became

the face of the campaign on television. Podesta was on one or two times. But who was... Even Benghazi. The Benghazi story got so far without there being a person being like, OK, here's actually what happened. It was like 50 people. You're like, well, I don't really know. Whereas the right was just so docile about like the same faces just beating her up over and over and over.

Yeah. And I think that's also true for the Russian investigation. I mean, when they sort of tried to amp up their messaging on the fact that the big story was the fact that Russia was interfering in our election, I think they sent out Robbie Mook, who is seen as a political staffer, not a national security expert or someone that they sort of credentialed along the way to talk about these specific issues. Yeah. I mean, you learn in a campaign that message discipline is everything, and you have to be saying the same thing every single day, even when it gets boring. And when you look back at the coverage of the race, some of this is the fault of the press,

but it was all about her emails and the Trump people and the Republicans and the right-wing media hammered emails and corruption every single day for the entire race. And that's what they got. And I think because Trump offends so many different kinds of people and does so many things wrong and it's such a disaster, there's like 50 targets a day on how you hit Trump. Yeah. I mean, one thing I was thinking about, too, from all of this is we like it's almost as if we needed a first part of the sentence to attach what Trump was doing. Like instead of attacking him for what he said about the cons on its own, like Trump is a selfish plutocrat, which is why he attacked the cons. Trump is a racist billionaire

who doesn't care about people, which is why he did this. Like, we needed one phrase about Trump that we all said over and over again until it stuck, and he was so erratic and so undisciplined and said so many crazy things that never happened.

Yeah. And look, and this matters for the future because we're going to face this again in 2018 and 2020, so. Hopefully it doesn't last till 2020. Let's not even speak. All right. I like that. I like that optimism. All right, DeRay, we're going to face this again in 2018 and 2020. Hopefully it doesn't last until 2020. Let's not even speak. All right. I like that.

I like that optimism. All right, DeRay, we're taking off. We're going to head up to Chappaqua now. We're going to the woods, DeRay. I got some gorp. I have some kind bars. I have a canteen filled with water. I have bug spray.

We are going to talk to Hillary Clinton. Cool. Talk to you later. Everyone go download Pod Save the People this week. DeRay's talking to John Yarmuth and a lot more. So, DeRay, take care. We'll talk to you later. Thanks, DeRay. Cool. Talk to you later. Everyone go download Pod Save the People this week. DeRay's talking to John Yarmuth and a lot more. So, DeRay, take care. We'll talk to you later. Thanks, DeRay.

Cool. Talk to you later. Bye. All right. That's all the time we have for today. We are headed north for this interview. I've never been in New York City on 9-11. Yeah.

It was a strange realization. I know a lot of people never move on, but it does feel like this city, it feels like we're in a different place than we were. I know a lot of people never move on, but it does feel like the city, it feels like we're in a different place than we were. I know. Like when we were in the White House and we would, such a focus on the attacks and the anniversary. Every 9-11 in the White House is a big,

yeah. I don't know if that's a healing, if it's just the culture moving, I don't know. I think the 10 year marked the end of marking it every year in the same way as we did before. We still mark it, but it's different.

Yeah, yeah. So, interesting. All right, everyone. That brought the outro down. Well, that's my role here. Usually the outro is a chance for camaraderie. There's a fun video game like music song that plays right now. Is there?

Yep. It's just started. Okay. Well, we'll talk to you guys later. Don't forget to download the bonus episode. Download the bonus episode. It's going to be great. Probably.

Bye, everyone. Bye.