Pod Save America - “Sedition: Impossible.”

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

Jon, Jon and Tommy kick off 2021 by examining the last ditch attempts by Donald Trump and Republicans to subvert November’s election, the latest in the Senate races in Georgia, and what it will take to fix the Trump administration’s bungled vaccine rollout. Then, they share an installment of Alyssa Mastromonaco’s video series, “Let’s Break it Down,” exploring the presidential transition. For more episodes, check out: YouTube.com/CrookedMedia

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, the Republican Party's last-ditch effort to overturn the presidential election for a man who was just caught on tape trying to steal it again. We'll also talk about the state of the Georgia Senate races a day before the election and what Joe Biden can do to fix the federal government's bungled vaccine rollout. vaccine rollout. Then you'll hear from former White House deputy chief of staff, friend of the pod, Alyssa Mastromonaco, who's going to talk all about what to expect in a presidential transition in her crooked YouTube series, Let's Break It Down. But first, but first, check out the latest

episode of Gaining Ground, the New Georgia, where Jewel and Rembrandt talk all about what to expect on election day, which is tomorrow. Go download that pod if you haven't listened over the break. It's a fantastic series about how Georgia got to this point, how it's turned blue based on what the organizers on the ground have been doing and the hard work they've been doing over the years. Fantastic series. Check it out. The election is tomorrow. There will also be volunteer opportunities available right up until the polls close on January 5th. So sign up for a shift today at votesaveamerica.com slash Georgia and send a link to your Georgia friends so that they have access to valuable voting information tomorrow. Super important. Can't believe we have another election already. I know. It's too much.

It's too much. All right. Let's get to the news. When we last spoke, Donald Trump had just finished losing 60 legal challenges about imaginary voter fraud and irregularities in the courts of dozens of judges that he appointed, including a unanimous rejection from the Supreme Court. He also failed to stop a single state he lost from certifying its election for Joe Biden, despite publicly bullying countless Republican election officials and state legislators. And yet, the soon-to-be ex-president is simply not tired of losing and has set himself up for one final humiliating defeat with the help of some of America's worst people. On Wednesday, January 6th, during what has always been a fairly routine counting and certification of the electoral votes in Congress, most House Republicans and at least 12 Republican senators plan to formally object to Joe Biden's

win, citing more imaginary fraud and irregularities. Unfortunately for them, the only recorded instance of fraud came on Sunday when the Washington Post released the full audio of a call where Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that he'd be criminally liable if he didn't find Trump enough votes to overturn the thrice-certified election in that state. Here is a clip. But they are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on what I've heard, and they are removing machinery,

and they're moving it as fast as they can, both of which are criminal fines, and you can't let it happen, and you are moving it as fast as they can, both of which are criminal fines and you can't let it happen and you are letting it happen. You know, I mean, I'm notifying you that you're letting it happen. So look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have because we won the state. Love it.

I saw on Twitter last night that you said you listened to the full hour. I listened to the full hour. I did too. It was great. It was an hour well spent. Wow, guys.

I'm so impressed with both of you. In the streaming era, there's really been a blurring between the traditional half-hour comedy and the hour-long drama. And I think sometimes that's led to comedies that aren't funny, but this was a drama with great, great jokes in it. What did you learn from the full hour? I love it.

So I feel like there's a lot of people saying, oh, Trump is delusional. Trump is delusional. But if you listen to the tape, first of all, I was always I was thinking about Axelrod calling Trump a feral genius, which I think is both too kind and too unkind. He's not that feral and he's not that smart. And you listen to this tape and what he's what he's really saying is, look, I'm giving you plenty of certified fake numbers. They have specific commas in them. They have digits. You can just take these numbers, just take them. I'm giving them to you.

And it's enough to stir enough doubt to throw out the results. Why don't you understand that? I endorsed your guy. We're both Republicans. And, you know, he throws it in the call, right? Like, I got other states on the blower too, and they're going to do the same thing. Now, that's obviously not true, but he's trying to get something going, right? He needs Georgia to help him so that something crazy can happen in Michigan. He needs Michigan to help him so something can happen in Georgia. And he's just spinning his wheels and spinning his wheels and spinning his wheels. And throughout the call, there are these interjections from sleazy lawyers and Mark Meadows. And I think the call culminates

in Mark Meadows basically at a moment of awkward silence saying, so I think what I'm hearing is, I love that part too. I think what I'm hearing is, we're all going to meet and look at some of this information and figure out if there's a way forward. Just trying to get out of this call with a do out. And the lawyer is just like, no, we're recording this. I'm not giving you anything. What Meadows said is, so what I think we all agreed on is you're going to give me a bunch of data that you cannot legally give me. And the lawyer for Raffensperger is like, no, absolutely not. I did not agree to that. It is, yeah. Mark Meadows is not very good at shepherding along the process. That is, that much is clear here. I mean, here's, here's one of the many thoughts I had is like what did trump think he was going to get from this fucking call like he

has not had a great history with brad raffensperger as he's been publicly berating him for like the last month did he not think that raffensperger was going to think about taping the call did he not think that raffensperger was going to tell him to go fuck himself and not give him what he wanted like what about his relations with brad raffensperger made him think this is the call that's actually going to do it, that this guy's going to say, you know what, you're right. I'm going to go fucking steal the election for you and go find the votes. Like, that's what makes me think he is pretty delusional. Look, this is for once this question isn't just sort of like, you know, psychological in nature. It might have legal ramifications

because, you know, there's a legal debate about whether this call was illegal or not. And a lot of it might boil down to sort of some sort of proof of his knowledge or intent that he would be defrauding the Georgia electorate if he got Raffensperger to do this. So it's very hard for me to tell whether he is just spouting a bunch of nonsense, trying to give Rappensperger a pretext to finally overturn the election just because he's that desperate, or whether he has created this cocoon of bullshit around himself that involves OAN and actually not even Fox News anymore, Newsmax and these increasingly insane lawyers like Lin Wood and others who are just telling him what he wants to hear. like Lin Wood and others who are just telling him what he wants to hear. And, you know, instead of reading the PDB, he's just getting every like Reddit conspiracy theory put on his desk and he just wants to believe them. I have no idea, but it clearly the call is unethical. It is beyond the pale for a president to threaten, to threaten. I would say not ethical. Yeah, no, definitely, definitely flagging the, uh, the the the is definitely a more a violation

for the flag. But look, he threatens Raffensperger and his lawyer with some sort of criminal offense TBD. And then he says, I just want to find eleven thousand seven hundred and eighty votes. I mean, he's threatening to punish them if they don't do his bidding. I thought it was interesting. I think Benins pointed this out uh on twitter who's usually on the q anon crazy beat um he was saying that like everything that trump said in the call was just mainline straight from the reddit threads 8chan fucking you know parlor right like all of the way beyond fox news way beyond right-wing media at this point just like all of the darkest craziest corners of the internet now go have a direct pipe to the president of the United States who then spouts these conspiracy theories to the secretary of state of Georgia in an effort to overturn the

election. Just straight up. And, you know, it's first of all, to your point, right, this is someone who Trump views as hostile and this is how straightforward he's being in his demands. Imagine the conversations going on with people he views as more friendly to him, the Lindsey Grahams of the world. I mean, I was appreciating how direct these Georgia Republicans were in saying, we decided to tape him because Lindsey Graham did a crime on the phone and nobody believed us. And so first of all, you have to imagine what those conversations are like. What was that conversation in the Oval with those Michigan elected officials? What are these conversations that we don't know about been like?

And the other piece of this is, you know, again, everything is very stupid and very important because, yes, these are ridiculous, baseless conspiracy theories and we'll get to it. But, you know, Trump promulgates these conspiracy theories. They spread on right wing media. It's a it's a it's a doom loop. They come out through Trump again. And then all of a sudden, all these Republicans say there's a lot of questions about this election.

We're just following these questions. They fabricate the questions and then they use the fabricated questions as a justification for delegitimizing the election. So the question is, like, what should be done about this call? You know, Tommy, you noted that, you know, there's sort of debate among legal experts and lawyers whether it was illegal. I think we leave it to the lawyers to sort of handle that, figure that out. I think there was a DA in Georgia who said they were going to look into it, investigate this. So that's fine. There's been calls for like he should be impeached again, which I'm just like, sure. Should Donald Trump be impeached again? Of course he should be impeached again. Which I'm just like, sure. Like, should Donald Trump be impeached again? Of course he

should be impeached again. He should be out of the fucking office as soon as possible. But like, what? Like, let's play this out. So the House, the House gathers together today, the new House, they vote to impeach Donald Trump. Great. It passes. He's impeached again. Mitch McConnell doesn't take it up in the Senate or he does. It immediately falls. He doesn't get convicted. And so I guess we all feel pretty good that there's like two impeachments on his on his track record when he leaves office that he's got he's got two two black marks against him and we all cheer. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what it does in the short term. Like hopefully the audio of this call makes it a little bit harder politically for, you know, Ted Cruz and then blow dried Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and some of these other senators and representatives to go along with this scheme because they can spin this however they want.

They can pretend they're creating a commission or they're just, you know, they want people, their constituents to be heard. That is all bullshit. You are helping this guy try to get random state election officials to steal votes for him. That's the end goal. You can't pretend otherwise after hearing this. So that's the short term. Long term, this may have violated a federal statute. It may have violated a Georgia statute. We don't know. It's not our job to really speculate. We'll see what DOJ says or Georgia prosecutors say down the road. In the near term. I mean, look, I think my takeaway from impeachment is that there was sort of a bipartisan sense that voters didn't like it very much.

And I think, you know, in the midst of a global pandemic, when they were just promised another two thousand dollar check each, when the vaccine rollout is slow, when Biden's trying to get in there and like use the DPA to move things forward and, you know, enact a bunch of priorities like another impeachment seems like something that would be wildly unpopular to me. I know there are some who think that we we need accountability and results. Just the problem is, if you impeach him, I don't believe he's going to be removed because the Republican Party is a cult and they will refuse to remove him. So we'll be in the same exact place. We'll be in the same place. we'll be in the same place he won't be removed at all a thousand percent even my thing is even if even if impeachment i don't know how it pulls maybe the second impeachment would be uh 75 25 in favor

maybe everyone would be for it tell me how it would materially change anything about the current situation we're in even a little bit only if he's removed what effects would it have only if he's impeached removed and then he can't run for office again. But again, but. Right. And he will absolutely not be removed anyway. We have a bunch of Republicans in the Senate who won't certify the election results for Joe Biden, let alone convict the president of a crime. You fucking crazy.

I also just think it's like, like, OK, take a step back from this one question. I think a lot of these Republicans are going along with this for completely cynical reasons, and they just think their primary voters may have a longer memory than general election voters. The next election is a lifetime away for all these people. The odds that we're reflecting on this moment in November of 2022 seems unlikely to me. Maybe it seems unlikely to me. Maybe it's part of how we tell the story of this moment. That said, I think there's two big questions for us beyond Trump. One, how do we disincentivize criminal behavior on the part of a president moving forward? And I think that's means he needs to be held accountable after he leaves office.

Yes. And I hope prosecutors at the state level and at the federal level look at every violation without partisanship, with no politics, because these law, this law breaking is incredibly, uh, dangerous. It's criminal. I don't know if this call specifically is criminal, but there's so much criminal conduct that we've observed over the last four years. That should be looked at. But beloved, I think it's important to say that, like, that is the job to me.

I don't know if you think this, too. Like, that is the job of prosecutors and the people at Justice Department, stuff like that. Like, it is not a job for pundits and politicians even to be talking about what should or shouldn't happen afterwards. Like, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If people who are, you know, that's their job, find that he should be prosecuted. That's it. It's their judgment. One ad though, I would like to see Congress, House or the Senate, or both continue to investigate his crimes. It doesn't have to be impeachment. They should keep digging

into this stuff. Sorry, I love it. Sure. No, no, I totally agree. So, so I, and I think, I think there was a moment where Joe Biden was, I think, hinting, he's been saying the right things lately, which is it's not my job. I'm going to leave it up to career prosecutors, because I think one of the most damning things I've heard some politicians and some pundits say is we need to look forward. The only way to look forward to protect the country moving forward is to make sure there's accountability for the crimes of the past, or we'll just invite more criminality in the future. And then so as part of this, you know, making sure we disincentivize criminal behavior on the part of a president, Congress needs to investigate. Congress needs to make sure they strengthen laws against self-dealing, look at

restraining the pardon power, look at ways to prevent corruption in all the different forms, look at making into law what were norms that have been violated over the past four years. And that's, so that's preventing criminality on the part of one person. The second part, and this is, I think, a harder part to figure out what to do, is we need to attack the incentives that lead people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, completely cynical mercenary actors, to view being for Trump as more valuable than being for democracy. And that, to me, is, I think, a really hard question. And Democrats do a lot of self-flagellation, but we need to look at the media ecosystem

and the ways in which this kind of behavior has been incentivized. Because politicians will be cynical. They will do what they view as in their best interest. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are in a competition to be the most disgusting because they think it's their path to becoming president. And my beef with that, you're right. But that is such a large meta question that is so far beyond the power. You know, I saw some people saying like, Joe Biden needs to drop his talk of, of, of unity and bipartisanship and Joe Biden needs to come out and start screaming about this. Number one, Joe Biden gave a pretty forceful speech, um, on the day that all the votes were certified, where he called this an attack on the, on, on the democracy and, and, and said everything he should say. Um, Joe Biden can come out today and scream about sedition into a microphone

and I'd cheer it. I'd fucking RT all those quotes in a second. With your good arm. With my good arm, yeah. I'd be RTing everything. But like, do we think, so again, I go back to the question about impeachment. What is the effect on the situation?

What does that materially change? Does that convince, does that change the incentives for Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley? Does that change them, right? Does that convince a single Republican? Mitch McConnell could not convince, Mitch McConnell got on the phone with all of the Republican senators and said, please do not object to these results. This is going to be bad for us. Do not do this. And 12 senators said, fuck you, Mitch McConnell. Are those senators going to listen to Joe Biden go out there and start screaming about this? No, no, no. Of course they're not. The majority of American people don't want this to happen.

They voted for Joe Biden. Of course they don't want this to happen. So we've got the majority of the American people on our side. Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney are on our side. Like what else are Democrats yelling about this going to do? Look, the silly conversation is pretending it's impeachment or nothing. There's lots in between, right? Impeachment seems like a bad idea.

There's not time. Joe Biden won the election. There's a critical, there's a pandemic raging. Let's focus on those things. I think we need to let Joe Biden and other smart politicians like have a public message that is focused on big issues that people care about. And then when Joe Biden takes over, the wheels of government will turn. DOJ will do its thing based on whatever technocrats decide. Prosecutors and states will do their things. Committees should investigate. But like screaming for impeachment right now

seems like not the best use of time to me. The literally the most important thing that we could possibly do right now is to amass more power, to do all the things that Levitt said, to turn norms into laws, to pass laws about corruption, all this kind of stuff.

It requires power, requires us to be in power. And that requires us to win these two races tomorrow in Georgia and maintain the House in 2022. Why did we lose a lot of Democratic House members in 2020? It's because there was a bunch of people who voted for Democratic House members in 2018 who either didn't come out or voted for Republicans in 2020 in the House. We need to get those voters back. That's the only path to power in 2022 and beyond. And to make sure that we save democracy by passing a bunch of laws that aren't just norms to stop all this bullshit from happening again.

We need power, you know, and like that's that's what we should be focused on. How do we get those people to vote for us? I also would say, too, like this isn't just a Republican Democratic divide. There is an intro Republican fight unfolding like Pat Toomey and Mitt Romney, like Susan Collins, there is a fight going on inside of Republican politics around democracy and integrity and about whether there is such a thing as truth anymore. And I'm not saying, you know,

that makes Susan Collins and Mitt Romney and Pat Toomey heroes, but it does mean that when Republicans are fighting amongst themselves, our job is not to give them a unified thing they can argue against. Right. Let them fight. Let as as you know, as they Godzilla and Mothra, let them fight. I do want to know, like back to the beginning of the conversation, there's no way this is the only call of this nature that he's made. How do we investigate that and figure out what he said to PA state officials, Michigan officials, et cetera?

what he said to PA state officials, Michigan officials, et cetera. And then, you know, in terms of McConnell, like Ted Cruz and blow dried Ted Cruz are the most annoying because they're smart enough to know better and they're smart enough to know how cynical what they're doing is. But like I would like every Capitol Hill reporter who has lavished praise on Mitch McConnell for years and talked about his iron grip on the Republican caucus to just eat a little shit in this moment. Like a dozen Republican senators are giving McConnell the finger and he kind of deserves it. Right. Like he tried to play footsie with Trump in these conspiracy theories. Not one of these guys in Washington has stood up to Trump and shown strength in the way Brad Raffensperger has. Instead, they all made a cynical calculation about how to help turnout in Georgia and these runoffs and, you know, how to like mollify Trump

for a few weeks or months. And, you know, now they're now they're living with the consequences. Right. So like we're we're all disappointed, but no one should be surprised. This is what happens every time Trump does something crazy and slowly the majority of the Republican Party warms to it and it becomes their position. It's just how it works. Because this is way more fun than talking about what Democrats should do. Let's talk about the inter-Republican fight here. Because so, you know, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, this is going to fail on Wednesday.

We should have said that from the outset, right? Why is it going to fail on Wednesday? Because if a senator and a House member, and now there's multiple senators and multiple House members, object to a certain state's electoral college certification, then they both go back have a pro-democracy majority in the Senate, meaning all the Democratic votes plus Romney, Collins and all the other Republicans now 15, I think, who've said that they will not object to the certification is a healthy majority in the Senate to vote all the objections down. Including like raging right wingers like Tom Cotton, by the way, right? Like this is a broad majority. Tom Cotton! Mike Lee, Ted Cruz's buddy, Mike Lee just came out right before the pod and said he's not going to object either. So we have a, so they're going to be all shot down. So now the question is, why do you guys think that Holly Cruz and that crew has decided to object and do this? And why do you think not just people

you'd expect like Mitt Romney, but Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, Mike Lee have decided not to object. What do you think the various calculations are on both sides of this fight? I mean, I think Ted Cruz and blow dried Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley are cynical pieces of shit and they want to run for president again. And they think that this is how you will get to the Trump base when push comes to shove in the next primary. This is what happens every time a rabid right winger loses a presidential election, whether it's Nixon or Goldwater or others, like the politicians who cling to them until the bitter end usually get some benefit from it in the next primary. I think that's the calculation here. Yeah, it was funny. It was funny when, so Josh Hawley did his press release kind of solo,

and then Ted Cruz came out with his Dirty Dozen. And Josh Hawley was like, welcome to my plan. Ted Cruz is like, no, no, this is my plan. You're on my, you're a part of my separate bigger plan. So yeah, I mean, I think they're seeing where the Trump base is going so that they might lead them. I also think they want to continue to sow doubt about election integrity so they can pursue voter suppression over the next two to four years. I think some of some of these House members genuinely believe this shit. There are a lot of low information voters in the House. It is, I think, also there's one in the White House. Yeah, one of the White House. I also think it's pretty chilling how many Republican

senators elect are part of this 12, right? Tells you something. Almost all of them. Tells you something about the future of the Republican Party. Because it's, you know, it's people like to me who have said they're retiring. It's people like Mitt Romney who have embraced this sort of old sage persona, you know, finally discovers how to be a person after giving up running for president. So I found that pretty, pretty sad. And I think some of them are, again, it's what I said at the top. They think that their base voters and the people they raise money from have a longer memory than general election voters. And they're counting

on avoiding a fight with Trump and the base now and not paying a price for it in two years. I do think that, you know, Tommy, you're right, that they are trying to figure out where the base is because they want to run for president in 2024. I think it's also true that where the base is, at least where the right wing media ecosystem has led them, is not being for democracy. democracy anymore. I think that they have they are sliding very fast if they have not already gotten there towards autocracy. I am very concerned that if 2024 rolls around and the Republicans are in control of the House and they're in control of the Senate, especially with some of these more radical members in the Senate now, and we have an election, whether it's Joe Biden running, whether it's another Democrat running and the Democrat wins the election, that next time we come to a certification in the Congress, in the House, that there'll be enough objections to overturn an election. I'm genuinely

worried about that. And I think that a lot of these Republicans just think like, we believe in our bullshit so much, we believe that we should be in power so much that democracy really doesn't matter. It's actually a nuisance. And that's happened in other countries throughout history. Like, I'm very scared of that. Most dictators, most autocrats, tyrants don't start that way. They start as freedom fighters or elected officials and they cling to power over time. And, you know, they do increasingly frightening authoritarian things. But the one like, I don't know, maybe this is a silver lining. I was trying to think of any silver lining. This is clarifying for Joe Biden, right? Like it was smart of Joe Biden and it was right of him to run on unity and to run on

working together, to run on bipartisanship. That's what voters want to hear. Clearly it worked. He won the election, but none of us had any faith that Mitch McConnell or anyone else in the Republican party would actually be constructive once he got into office, especially if Trump is still pulling the strings with these idiots via Twitter, which is clearly what's going to happen. So at least now, like he can point to this as an inciting incident and say, this is the break with the GOP. I tried. They wouldn't even let me take office before, you know, mainlining these conspiracy theories. Like, look, it's it's not a great silver lining. If we win Georgia changes everything. But I think one of the reasons it does change everything is the reason I think McConnell

looks so weak in this moment is McConnell's power as majority leader is not preventing his members from voting the way they want to vote. It's preventing votes from happening at all. McConnell can't prevent this vote. And so they're going to vote the way they want. The control over the floor, the preventing of the voting on $2,000 checks or what have you, and anything over the Obama administration, that's his power. And so, you know, right now we can draw comfort in intra-Republican divides. But if a majority of Republicans do not want to

pass anything while Joe Biden is president, it doesn't matter as much in the Senate after these votes what Mitt Romney or Susan Collins ultimately want to do if McConnell won't go along with things. I think Joe Biden's demeanor and how he works with Republicans, like Georgia matters more than what Joe Biden decides, right? Like if we lose Georgia, then even though Republicans are maniacs who tried to overturn an election, Joe Biden's only path is to still try to work with him on legislation and forge bipartisan compromises because he doesn't have the power to pass things himself outside executive authority, which he should try to do and then see what gets struck down by the courts. We've already talked about this. But if we win Georgia tomorrow and now he's got a Democratic majority, then I think there there should be pressure applied on Joe Biden because now he has a Senate majority and not just Joe Biden, but the Joe Manchin's of the world. The Kyrsten Sinema's, the Mark Kelly's, like some of the more conservative Democrats that are in the Senate, because if Joe Biden doesn't pass H.R.

one, the democracy reforms make D.C. a state Puerto Rican statehood, you know, gerrymandering like all the other good stuff and democracy reforms. If he doesn't get that done fast, then we are at real risk of this, of them, the Republicans, succeeding in overturning a future election. They still may, but at least passing a lot of these democratic reforms will reduce the chances. And he has to get that done if we win in Georgia. He has to get a whole bunch of stuff done if we win in Georgia. And also if we win in Georgia, by the way, every one of these objections that have been raised to any of these nominees near as mean tweets or someone being upset about this. Like I would just tell them to fuck off. Like they don't need them. You can object all you want. We're going to just ram every single nominee through the Senate and you're going to

like it. And we're going to fill a bunch of judicial nominations too. And he's, he actually has to exercise that power if we win Georgia, because then all the criticisms of him and the bipartisanship and all this stuff will be completely valid. It's just amazing to be on like year five of a failure of any Republican to take collective action and stand up to Donald Trump, right? Like they have, they watch themselves get steamrolled in the primary because none of them would push back on this guy. And they like Ted Cruz specifically sucked up to him until the very last moment, thinking he could then make it a one-on-one race and pull it out. And he got his ass kicked and he got humiliated. And now he's right back where he started, just kissing Trump's ass. Ted Cruz had one moment of conscience

four years ago at the convention. It lasted about 12 and a half hours and it has not been seen since. So one of McConnell's various henchmen that just sort of populate the dark corners of the Internet and just tweet shit from their K Street offices. He said, you know, Holly and Cruz will live to regret this. I guess Josh Holmes did that. I knew you meant it. There are so many of them. I read the tweet. Holly and Cruz will live to regret this.

And all the other Republicans who did this will live to regret it. Do you think he's right that they'll live to regret it? Because, look, I would love for him to be right on this. And all the other Republicans who did this will live to regret it. Do you think he's right that they'll live to regret it? Because I look, I would love for him to be right on this. I would in this fight as a as a citizen of this democracy. I am on the side of the Mitch McConnell's, Lindsey Graham's, Tom Cotton's about this. Right. But I don't know if if Holly and Cruz will live to regret this. I think this could be politically for them beneficial. I don't know. I'm trying to think of the other side of it. I mean, we're sort of in predicting. So, yeah, I obviously don't know either. I think it's going to take some work to get to that. Like, I'd like to be at that place.

I'd like to have Trump viewed as Nixon, right. A disgraced loser. But it's going to it's going to require these Republicans standing up to him forcefully now and not letting him pull the strings or, or, or tweet the agenda for another two, three, four years. You know, look, Trump emerged from decades of rot in Republican politics. I hard pressed to point to any facet of that problem that got better over the last four years. If you think we're going to get to a place where someone like Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley

pay a price for what they just did, you have to show me where there's going to be some positive change in this media ecosystem, in the spreading filth on Facebook via Newsmax and OAN. You have to show me some place where you see a sign that things in the Republican side inside of that debate is getting better. I don't see that. I don't see that anywhere. In fact, they abandoned Fox News and gerrymandering. They just abandoned Fox News because it wasn't telling them what they want to hear. Yes, we have a supply problem in terms of what these media companies and billionaire-backed institutions are pumping out. But there's also a demand problem. People are going to where they find the news that tells them exactly what to hear before they get in their car

and drive to Ralph's to do YMCA without a mask. I think the one place that may hurt Holly and Cruz personally and their personal ambitions, and this is what I don't quite know what the calculation is on this. Donald Trump could run again in 2024. He may run again in 2024. Right.

So if your story is Donald Trump had this election stolen from him, but otherwise he's the rightful winner, then why are you running against him in 2024? Why if why should voters choose you, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, when you just told us that Donald Trump was the rightful winner of the last election? Well, something something's not going something's not right there. So what I tried to understand all understand all along. It's almost like they didn't believe that he was going to run in 2024, but you need to be able to call him a loser and say it's time for someone else. All right, let's talk Georgia. The Senate special election is tomorrow.

After months of campaigning and hundreds of millions of dollars spent in advertising, the races between Senator Kelly Loeffler and Reverend Raphael Warnock and Senator David Perdue and John Ossoff are still neck and neck, with the polls moving ever so slightly towards the Democrats in the final days. Far more important than the polls are the actual votes. Over 3 million Georgians, nearly 39% of all eligible voters, have already cast ballots, which is already the highest turnout in a Georgia special election ever. If there were no more votes cast, it would be the highest

turnout in a special election. So just like in the general election that we just went through in November, it's hard to predict what the early vote means for who will win on election day because we don't know exactly who will turn out on election day. There is a denominator we're missing. But what can the numbers in Georgia tell us about who's voting and who each side needs to turn out on Tuesday, Tommy? So like you said, this is closer to a 2020 general election turnout right now than it is a runoff, which hopefully is good for us. It seems to be favoring Democrats. There's higher black turnout by, I think, three to four percentage points. And then turnout in white rural areas is down so far, especially in northern Georgia,

which is where Trump is going today. Right. And but so that's why they're sending him there tonight. But who knows if his message is going to be go out and vote or if it's going to be the state Republican Party in Georgia is stealing your votes, why even bother? So we know in November, more Georgians voted early in person than by mail. That trend seems to be continuing. The question is always whether there's a huge Republican turnout on Election Day. So, look, I don't know. As always, it's good to know that you've banked a lot of votes, but it's hard to predict things

based on this data, especially, you know, a runoff election after a what's now described as a disputed election in a pandemic. It's just who knows. Yeah, like, you know, so all the number crunches have been looking at this and Nate Cohn did a couple interesting threads on this. I think what we can say is for Republicans to win these runoffs, they will need to improve their turnout on election day by even more than they improved their turnout between early vote, absentee voting and election day during the general. So they have to do even better on election day than they did in November. And that's it's not impossible. People just could change the way they vote. But it's a tall order. And it is, I think, better than a lot of people expected. Look, Republicans had an advantage in this race in that in the general election, David Perdue did

win more votes than John Ossoff, about 88,000 more votes. When you tallied all the votes in the jungle primary, Democrats did slightly worse than Republicans in the special election. Now that's between Loeffler and Warnock. So, and in special elections, turnout often goes down. So that is sort of the hill that Democrats had to climb. And now it's looking like they are climbing that hill. So it could be very close, but love it. You were saying, we were talked about this for a long time now that Georgia, the dynamics of this Georgia race, and you were saying that a lot of voters are cynical and not stupid and that they might come out anyway, even though, you know,

Donald Trump and everyone else has been sending message and Linwood and all the other crazies have been sending messages that the election is rigged. But it does look like turnout is lagging in some of these areas so far. Maybe they'll make up for it on Election Day. I don't know. Yeah, I think we don't know. And I think, look, this we're recording this Monday afternoon. I don't know. You know, we I think it's all going to come down to turnout. And, you know, we'll see. We will we will see tomorrow. I think there are some heartening numbers. And also one thing we've kind of started to consider is that maybe our kind of gut instinct on higher turnout is better for Democrats, maybe changing as the electorate shifts. We just don't know. That said, it's a

completely unknown. We're running a two Senate runoffs for control of the Senate after the biggest turnout election in a presidential contest. As the president says that elections are illegitimate, they're running incredibly vicious right wing hits on these two Democrats to try to stir up their base to get people out. That cattle prod has worked for them in the past. Maybe it's going to work, right? Like, oh, they need a bigger turnout than ever on Tuesday. Well, we could wake up on Wednesday and they got it. We just really have no idea. And as to whether or not what Trump is doing is going to kind of depress turnout, maybe. I just don't know. I just, I never wanted us to count on it and I still don't think we should.

votes have been cast already who didn't vote in the November election. And that like and that is disproportionately. Who is that guy? It's more that is. Give me give me a profile on those. Well, it is. What were you doing a month ago? Some of it is some of it is young people who weren't of age yet.

And then it is if you look at the racial breakdown of that cohort, it is there are more black voters than there are in the larger cohort of voters. So that's good news for Democrats, both those things. And I just like what, you know, some of those could, of course, be Republicans who are turning up for the first time, too. I'm sure a bunch of them are. But that is a testament, by the way, to a lot of these organizers on the ground, Stacey Abrams, Crew, Fair Fight Action, all of the other organizers and activists that have been doing this work for a year, Latasha Brown activists that have been doing this work for years. Latasha Brown, they've been doing this work for years to get that many people registered and out to vote between the general. And now is astonishing.

There was a great piece in the New York Times magazine about Latasha Brown and Fair Fight and the efforts to change Georgia. And it's really worth reading. Yeah, that was in the Daily this morning, too. But like, you know, if you're Perdue or Loeffler, like you can't be happy that Trump is dominating the news cycle as a general matter and questioning the value of voting itself as a closing argument. On top of that, clearly the coronavirus is a key issue for everybody just because it is. And Trump really did help clarify that Republican control of the Senate was preventing additional stimulus and direct payments to people as part of that stimulus. So like, again, I don't want to predict, but this is not how I'd want to close. Now, what's clear is that they, Loeffler and Perdue,

are going like hardcore racist base only messaging. Like they're not looking for a lot of swing voters when they're running a Reverend Wright ad about Warnock, right? Like it's a gross, gross campaign. The Republican strategy from the beginning has been to, it was their strategy in 2020. And they think that it at least worked on a congressional level. Democrats are radical socialists, right? We all saw the debate and Kelly Loeffler repeated Raphael Warnock, radical socialist a million times, right? Like that's been their strategy. They have driven that strategy with their own message. They have driven it in paid media the whole time, right? The Democrats' message from Ossoff and Warnock has been these two are basically corrupt senators

who've profited off the pandemic at a time when they're blocking relief for you. And here's what we're for. They have a very positive message, jobs, justice, health care, right? They've been repeating it over and over again. Then that's their message. So whatever happens on Election Day, I think if you look at who has had more luck driving their partly helped by Trump and Mitch McConnell in this whole fucking stimulus debacle. Like when Donald Trump came out for the $2,000 checks, I was worried because I thought what was going to happen is Mitch McConnell was going to put it up for a vote knowing that it wouldn't pass the Senate. Bunch of Republicans would vote against it. Loeffler and Perdue would vote for the $2,000 checks. And then they could go back and say, look, we voted for this. And instead, McConnell blocks the vote. They sort of mealy mouth come out for it.

Trump starts screaming about how Mitch McConnell blocked the relief. And now Ossoff and Warnock can campaign last week by saying, we're for $2,000. These guys couldn't get it done in the Senate. This is the kind of Senate you're going to get if you send them back. You're going to get a Senate that doesn't help working people. Like, I don't know. You can't ask for much better than that. Well, I mean, look, it's a it's a you know, it's a intellectually honest and sincere, positive message. While I'd say like Purdue is awful on the stump.

Leffler, man, just this complete just like you see Purdue and Leffler and you like, why do you even want this job? You don't seem it. It's just like you're Purdue and Loeffler and you like, why do you even want this job? You don't seem it. It's just like you're up there. Like this is left Loeffler's, you know, she's she's pulling out a David Boyce donation to try to tar Warnock as a fucking. It's like as a QAnon light. It is despicable, despicable, despicable stuff.

I think for Loeffler, this is just cheaper than a bloomberg terminal so she can kind of trade stocks ahead of the curve that seems to be the primary motivation i will say too that like i think that warnock has handled these attacks in a very smart way like instead of getting down in the mud and going back and forth on them with her she accused me of this i'm not this she's that blah blah blah like he has you know it started with the puppy's ad and then he's out there just talking about what he's for what he's going to do for georgians and that's what john ossoff has and their negative message about those two has been these are two corrupt fucking assholes who were emblematic of everything

that's pissing you off about washington yeah and like that's the senate that you're going to get if you send them back like i i think it's good to say this now because who knows if they lose, they lose. But like, I think they have done almost as well as they can with on the message side in this race. I think that Ossoff and Warnock have. And it's look, it's much, this is very, it's harder for Warnock, right? When you're running as a black candidate, you have to worry more about being called angry or divisive or all the bullshit that was lobbed at Barack Obama, who was out of the same side of the, you know, their mouth, they were calling him professorial and aloof and all

this stuff. And I think he is running sort of an Obama like strategy of trying to rise above a lot of these attacks. Now, obviously, they're punching back on the stocks, the insider trading, all that stuff. But I do think they are tying that to substance, like you said, when it comes to the stimulus. I also just really, I also just liked how they both call out the game, right? Like it's not, they're not just punching back. They're saying, you know,

Asif has a version of like, they want you to believe you can't do better than this. And you have Warnock saying like, they're trying to make you afraid of me because they're afraid of you. And they're both just sort of, it's compelling and inspiring. And, you know, in the face of so much misinformation, I think they're doing the best that they can. And a lot of money. I think win or lose,

there will be lessons from their campaigns in how to attack Republicans and also run campaigns going forward. All right. Let's turn to Operation Definitely Less Than Warp Speed. The first first coronavirus vaccine was approved at the beginning of December. But out of the 40 million vaccines delivered last month, only five million have been administered. At this rate, experts say that it could take 10 years to vaccinate the entire country. The Trump administration had publicly set the ambitious goal of providing 20 million Americans with their first round of the vaccine by the end of December. End of the year. That obviously hasn't happened. Love it. Why is this process taking so long and whose fault is it? So basically anything that the Trump administration touches turns to shit.

And so when, you know, obviously the response and there's a great, very, very in-depth look at the response to the virus by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker, I suggest everybody read it, set aside a few days for it. It's quite long. And basically what you see here is once the development of the vaccine, as quickly as it was developed, is one of the greatest achievements in scientific history. It's an incredible achievement. But now it is not just about science. It is a practical, logistical question. And what is clear is this administration is not capable of planning ahead and putting in place the process that will make it so when this thing got to the states, when it

got to public health departments around the country, when it got to hospitals, when it got to doctors, that there would be clear guidelines, clear plan, clear funding in place to help them get it from deep freezers into people's arms. And so there is wherever you look, there is chaos, there is confusion. There is public health departments that are completely strapped. There are hospitals that are completely strapped. These people are exhausted. They are exhausted. And they have been going hard for months and months trying to deal with this pandemic without enough resources, without the PPE. And then all of a sudden the vaccine is here. There is no procedure. There is no plan.

There are 50 different sets of rules, 50 different ideas of how to distribute it. And all of this, look, there was always going to be challenges. There were always going to be problems. This is a once in a century event. It is difficult. It is complicated. It takes incredible ingenuity and resources, not just to develop the vaccine, but to get it to people. But all of this, I think, would have been so much different under an administration where the president could focus on something other than voter fraud for more than an hour. Tommy, what do you think? Yeah, look, I mean, I'm trying to keep from losing my mind by, you know, allowing for the fact that

there are some mundane and understandable reasons, right? Like if you got your batch of vaccines right before the holiday, you then went away for a couple of days from Christmas and that could have slowed it down. They're all trying to figure out how to work with vaccines that are stored at these ultra low temperatures, right? So I'm sure that's all challenging, but there is a part of this that I just think is a deliberate choice that is directly attributable to Trump. They haven't given states clear guidelines for how best to distribute doses, right? Congress has not given them enough money to pay for that infrastructure. And so you also have this, you know, hesitancy that is among some parts of the population to

take the vaccine. It's very worrisome how many healthcare workers are rejecting early access to the vaccine. In California, where we are, you know, the vaccination process is colliding with a massive, really dangerous outbreak. But I do think, you know, this is part of the strategy that we've heard about forever, which is Trump basically wants to say, I get credit for the vaccine production, but the rest of it is on the states. They didn't want to own testing. They didn't want to own, you know, sufficient use of the DPA to ensure there's enough PPE and other, you know, vital materials for healthcare workers. So they just push it all to the states without giving them any of the funding they need. And it's, you know, it's not going well. I think we can catch up.

I think that's the key. Like, I think they can catch up to this, all these stats about, oh, at this rate, it'll take 10 years to vaccinate the whole country. I think that's a little bit clickbaity alarmist. We can catch up. Fauci talked about this over the weekend. Well, that's based on like if everything is going exactly as it is now. And like the idea is we speed it up and then suddenly those timelines change dramatically. You know, one big issue is that different states have prioritized different groups of people. Again, it's not a centralized approach. After health care workers and residents of long term care facilities that different states have prioritized different groups of people. Again, it's not a centralized approach. After healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities, some states have decided to prioritize frontline workers and people 75 or older. Others have decided to prioritize elderly people over frontline workers and a sort of a broader swath of elderly

people like 65 and older. Members of Congress had early access. Now, apparently two staffers from each congressional office can get it too.. Outrageous. Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo said that outrageous. Governor Cuomo said that New York would institute a one million dollar fine if anyone gives the vaccine to someone out of order. Also stupid. I also think is also stupid. There was a story that was floating around today in Washington, in Washington, D.C., where there was a pharmacist who told two people, hey, I got to throw this vaccine away. Do you guys do you two people who are just standing here want some vaccine? Because otherwise I'm going to throw it away. Like, how are we in a position where we're throwing fucking vaccines away in the middle of a fucking pandemic where everyone's home and millions of people are sick and dying?

And we're like Florida. See, in excuse. I was doing first come first serve. And you had like senior citizens camping out on the sidewalk together in crowds. And so and so like all of this, right? Like there was always going to be, I mean, that we, we won't, we don't need to talk about, but that person who's just like, I'm going to throw some vaccine away because I suck. But, but, but like there was always going to be, this is a fast paced, difficult thing.

There's going to be lost vaccines. There's going to be vials that hit the ground. There's going to be things that go bad. There's going to be grabbing a pizza guy off the street and giving him the vaccine. That's great. Like that's, that's life. Like that should be happening. But if it was in the context of a clear, forget even, you can let the states do it the way they think is best, but a clear, calm, consistent message from the top that said, everyone will get a vaccine. It will take about this length of time. You can

trust what we are going to say. There's no need to race out. We're going to make sure everybody has it. We're going to do it fairly. We're going to do it faithfully. You wouldn't have all of this uncertainty and panic and people racing to get in line if people just had a sense of where they were in the line, when they were going to get it. There's so much communication that would have happened if you had an actual presidency and an actual group of people committed to informing the public about what was going to happen and the steps to get it done. And a president who hasn't taken it, by the way. But like, yeah, give them military infrastructure. They don't have to be uniform.

Doesn't have to look scary. I'm not saying like inject it from the top of a tank, but like give them all the infrastructure they need to get this thing out there. And like it's maddening to hear stories that, you know, some of these doses might be wasted it makes no sense emily made the point she's like the national guard was out here on on larchmont uh in la during the uh the floyd protests right right for like no good reason and yet like now there's like a mass vaccination program that we're trying to get underway like where are they now right why isn't every resource of the federal government being deployed to vaccinate people as soon as humanly fucking possible? Now, we're talking about the Trump administration, which plenty to criticize, as we've done. Joe Biden's going to

take office soon. He has pledged to ensure 100 million vaccines are administered in his first hundred days in office. We are nowhere near hitting the million vaccinations a day on average needed to achieve that goal. Like, what can Biden do to speed things up? Because, you know, I'm torn here. Like we've all been in government, right? Like we've seen, you know, promises of speed and efficiency, you know, fall to bureaucracy and lawyers telling, you know, and people in the bureaucracy telling, you know, like it is hard to push even with the best intentions, the machinery of the federal government and the bureaucracy to act and act quickly during an emergency. It just is. We've all seen it happen. Right. Like we didn't want fucking health care dot gov to fuck up. But it did, even with the best intentions. And I do think that like this is a moment for the Biden administration.

This is going to be maybe the most important thing they do in the first hundred days or the first year or maybe the presidency, right, is to get this done. And he has to act quickly and break all the China he needs to break and the federal government to get this done. I thought Mitt Romney had some good ideas in the statement he released criticizing the vaccine rollout, which was, you know, lead some major effort to get retired doctors, retired nurses, veterinarians, like military medics, people who are no longer in the healthcare field, get pull them in, pay them, have them be a part of this process, right? So that's something that Biden could do if he wants a bipartisan idea. He's also said that he's going to use the DPA, the Defense Production Act, more often to give private industry more production of

materials needed for vaccines, as well as more PPE. I read that Operation Warp Speed has used the DPA 18 times, including to make glass vials and syringes. So I'm not sure what else specifically they need. I mean, the other good news for Biden is that in late January, Johnson & Johnson is going to release clinical trial results for a single shot vaccine. So that will help. AstraZeneca's results will come in February. So hopefully there will just be more supply. And then maybe, you know, maybe you're just getting to a point where you're just sending big shipments to CVS and people like us who are not in any of these at-risk profiles are just getting in line and just getting the thing. But yeah, this is, you know, competence will go a

long way, I think. Competence will go a long way, but I think the creativity point, it matters a lot too, because competence will take you so far, but I think the federal government is going to have to get really creative in, even the things you were saying, Tommy, but like the holidays, right?

Like there should be 24 hour vaccination centers, right? Like if there's a 2.30 a.m. shift for a vaccine, I would stand in line at 2.30 in the morning and get the fucking vaccine. A lot of people would, right? And if we have to pay people to work those shifts around the clock, let's do it. Money should not be an object here. Like it should be like very ambitious, like sky's the limit on what we think about here. You know, there was a there was a brief flickering moment where Trump was like, this is a war and I'm a wartime president.

And then it went away. It never happened. Right. And there are so many aspects of it. Yeah, it's resources. It's also something that I think a competent administration would have done, which is best practices. Hey, what states are doing it? Well, let's get that information. Let's get that information to other states. Right. That's something that the convening, the power to convene, get people together, talking about the best, best thing to do to get this into people's arms as quickly as possible. And the other thing that has just been completely absent is patriotism. You know, when another, I've just, I've been thinking about this, this piece by, but this right piece, which, and it talks about how one thing that, that, that helped New York

so much in the early days of the pandemic was that people really responded from across the country. They came to help that they, they came to help and people are willing to help, but there's no, there's no message like that. There's no leadership. There's no there's no PPE being sent to everybody's homes built, you know, as part of a patriotic kit to every have everybody wear a mask, like all of that. The kind of the soft power of the presidency has just never been employed by these people. And that's part of why we're paying this price to. The good news is that Biden's incoming chief of staff is Ron Klain. Ron Klain was the coordinator for the Ebola response, right?

So he knows how they deployed the U.S. military to set up basically hospital infrastructure in Africa so that like workers were safe. There's lots of creative ideas that I think were probably bandied about during H1N1, during Ebola that Ron can bring to bear. And in a lot of ways, it's probably already road tested. I would say the team really heartens me that Biden has selected the COVID team. And in addition to Ron, Jeff Zients, who's going to be the COVID czar, right? Like Jeff came into the Obama administration to fix healthcare.gov when it was broken, did that and then had a lot of jobs in the White House that was like involved managerial experience and expertise and logistics, right? So like he's good at that, the new search in general,

like there's just a really good team coming in that is both competent and creative that I feel confidence in. I just hope that they are, you know, they're willing to move fast and break some china. No more cushioners. Overcome the fact that the most important work that could have been done

should have been done three, four or five months ago. Yeah, right. So, okay. When we come back, you will hear an excerpt. I'm sorry. When we come back, you will hear Alyssa Mastromonaco in her YouTube series. Let's break it down. Talk about presidential transitions. We gamed out what we thought would be the three most likely scenarios that they would face. We flagged a hurricane, we flagged a cyber attack, and we flagged a pandemic. Welcome to our third episode of Let's Break It Down, where we go behind the scenes at the White House to reveal how campaign events are planned, choreographed, and executed to prevent things from going terribly wrong. I'm Alyssa Mastromonaco, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Barack Obama.

Joining me today is Chris Liu, former White House Cabinet Secretary, Deputy Secretary of Labor, and Director of Transition after the 2008 election. I've known Chris since he was the legislative director for then-Senator Barack Obama. Chris Liu, welcome to Let's Break It Down. Thank you for being here today. It is so good to see you. Listen, we've been in the trenches for a long time together, so it's great to be on here with you. I mean, for like 15 years at this point. It feels like 15 years. I know. We were much younger back in the day. Okay, so Chris, knowing what you know, being an expert, if you will, looking at the transition thus far, what major actions are delayed or have been delayed because of the Trump administration's denial of the election outcome?

Let's just do a little bit of concept. Back in 2008, there were 77 days between election day and inauguration day. This year, there are 78. And mind you, you work backwards. At noon on January 20th, 4,000 political appointees leave. Basically, the entire senior leadership of the US government leaves, the most powerful, largest organization in the world. leaves, the most powerful, largest organization in the world. You would not do this in any private sector company, university, whatever. But we do it. But you also have to understand in 77 days to prepare to take over the US government is no easy task. It's one of the reasons you start early. But it's also the reason why every single day matters. So if you lose days, those are days when you're not interviewing and vetting potential

nominees. Those are days when you're not inside the federal agencies trying to understand the policies and the budgets. It's days when, most importantly, security clearances aren't happening, which means you can't put people into the national security agencies. Those are days when you're not having, you know, communications with the outgoing administration about whatever, you know, homeland security risk or national security risk you're trying to cover. except to say that 11 weeks isn't enough time. And if you cut that down by three weeks, which is what happened here, that's going to have an impact. Hard to say what that impact is. But I think given the challenges that the country faces right now around the pandemic, around the economic recession, you would want as much time as possible. I remember very clearly in my office, the small office, not the bigger office, I remember very clearly in my office, the small office, not the bigger office, when you came to see me, I think it was like July of 2012.

And you and I started, it might have been June, and you and I started talking about preparing the Romney transition. Now, people don't really talk about this. Yes, we were the sitting president and Barack Obama, I'm sure you had this conversation with him as many times as I did. He said, we will never do any less than the Bush team did for us. We will do more. We will try to do even more than they did because the transition of power is so important. And so you and I started talking about making sure all the binders, when you transition, most departments pass binders on to the incoming administration, so they understand what certain templates, what documents, what decision memos look like, what different kinds of like, I mean, I didn't know how you order a military aircraft. I found

out in my transition binder. And so you and I made sure that across the campus, everyone had their binders updated. And we worked with the Romney folks to get ready, working with some of them on their clearances, because as a reminder to everyone, Benghazi happened in September of 2012. And so our national security team wanted to make sure that the Romney folks had clearance to be able to get updates, much like President Bush made sure that both us and John McCain were able to get the briefings on the financial crisis at the same time. So knowing all that, I left onto much greener pastures in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and you

ran the transition for Trump, our, the Obama administration lead for the transition for 2016, which ultimately ended up being Trump. Can you give folks all the color, all, how did you prepare? What did you hand over to them? How did they like respond? Tell us all. So let's start in 2012. I mean, first of all, this is one of the more uncomfortable projects you will ever take on because, you know, notwithstanding, you know, our boss had made this commitment that he was going to be as cooperative with his successor, whether that was after four years or as eight years as his predecessor was to him. So he had made that commitment. He believed in it. He tasked us with that. But again, it's

this horribly uncomfortable thing because, you know, we're trying to win an election at this time. And yet we also understand that you have to put that partisanship aside and focus on continuity of operations and what's good for the country. So you're right. We sat down with all of the federal agencies or the major ones. I remember we brought them into one of the big rooms in EEOB and had this conversation, made sure they had their binders together. And we were ready. And obviously, we didn't want to have to have a transition, but we were ready in case we did. Fast forward to 2016. I was the deputy secretary of labor. And so I was managing our transition on the way out. I was the deputy secretary of labor. And so I was managing our transition on the way out.

This time you knew you were going to leave, but you were hoping you were going to hand the reins to somebody who was from your own party. But obviously that didn't work out. But we had all the binders ready. We had the room that they could work in. We had computers. We had a whole set of briefings that we were going to suggest that they do.

And Election Day happens. Obviously, the result is not what we wanted. There's a lot of, you know, understandable grief among the political appointees. But we're ready to do the handoff. And we wait and we wait and we wait and nothing happens. And it's funny because when we ran the transition in 08, I made sure, election days of Tuesday, I made sure that we had people in the federal agencies, certainly by the following Monday, six days later, but in many cases by that Friday. So three days later, we had people in.

I don't remember when the Trump people actually showed up at the Department of Labor. I think it was like the Friday or Monday, It was probably like the Monday of Thanksgiving week. And one person showed up. It wasn't 10 people. It wasn't 20 people. It was one person, very nice person. We had a nice conversation. I gave him a bunch of binders. I suggested he do these briefings. He said, sure. And then he did some of them. He brought a couple more people in. They did some more. But it wasn't kind of the organized thing that you would hope would happen when you're taking over a federal agency. And when you look across the whole government, this was happening across the place.

And it's subsequently been written about. But obviously, they had Chris Christie planning their transition before election day. The day after election day, Chris Christie was fired. All of the materials that he and his team had put together were thrown away and they started all over again. Now, we started this by saying, even in an optimal world, 77 days isn't enough to plan a transition. And it's certainly not enough when you start the day after election day. And I think in many ways, the chaos, the dysfunction of the Trump administration,

certainly over the first year, can be traced back to the fact that they just both didn't expect to win. And once they won, didn't think through clearly how to do this handover, this takeover. Because it goes to show that like, governing is actually really hard and really important. And it's almost like when they had Chris Christie run transition, it was like, let's give Chris

Christie something to do. Like they didn't totally understand that he probably was in their orbit, one of the best people to have been running the transition for them. Another just to your story, we talked about this a little bit before, but one of my favorite Trump transition stories can be found in Susan Rice's book, where she talks about meeting with the national security staff,

incoming Michael Flynn and his deputies. And of all the questions, Chris, that I know I brought to my transition meetings, they asked her if she had ever considered working in shifts with her staff because this whole idea of being on 24-7 seemed unnecessary to them. They're like, there must be a better way. And she was like, oh, my God.

And then Michael Flynn tried to hug her. Just imagine that whole thing in your head. Can I tell you, though? I mean, again, this is why these things matter. In January of 2009, we did a tabletop exercise with the outgoing Bush administration to walk through potential things that would come up in 2017. And again, now this has been written about, we did a tabletop exercise with the Trump people, the one week before inauguration day, where we gamed out what we thought would be the three

most likely scenarios that they would face in terms of a homeland security thing. We flagged a hurricane, we flagged the cyber attack, and we flagged a pandemic. And I remember sitting there in one of those big rooms in EEOB where we used to do these tabletops. And one of the most awkward meetings I've ever been in, these tabletops. And one of the most awkward meetings I've ever been in, where they had the outgoing cabinet person sitting next to the incoming cabinet person around the table. So I was the Deputy Secretary of Labor, Tom Perez was tied up. So I'm sitting with Mnuchin on one side of me, and the person that he originally nominated for labor, Andy Puzder. And you're looking around the room and it literally is, you know, it's Scott Pruitt, it's Wilbur Ross, it's Elaine Chao.

And there sitting there is Susan Rice next to Mike Flynn. One of my, the most searing visuals was over in the Justice Department corner, it was Jeff Sessions, Sally Yates, and Jim Comey sitting right next to each other. And you're like, boy, it's quite a thing to see. I don't know if it was Josh Earnest sitting next to Sean Spicer. It was one of the most uncomfortable meetings I've ever been in. Oh, my God. And's I mean, and the thing is, we had such rules, mostly because you and I were assholes. But it's like, I wish that we had had that we were we had okayed more photo taking in the West Wing. We did not allow like personal picture taking. We were like, No, but you hear some of this stuff. And I'm like, Fuck, I wish I had a picture.

Pete Sousa can't be everywhere. Okay, so here is something that I know people know very little about. And Trump has really sort of butchered people's understanding of this specific group of people. Career employees. Yeah. Career employees are who Donald Trump has vilified as the deep state, in quotes, deep state, meaning that in some way, shape or form, he was trying to tell America or at least his supporters that career employees were trying to have like a coup d'etat. Can you explain who career folks are and why they matter to the peaceful transition of government? I mean, this offends me to my core. My father was a career federal employee at the Defense Department. I have three aunts and uncles who worked

at the federal government. What Donald Trump calls the deep state are 2 million career civil servants who ensure that you get your Social Security check, you get your veterans benefits, that the air that you breathe is clean, that the food you eat is inspected, that we're not attacked by people overseas. It is the people that enforce our laws. I mean, I tell people you literally cannot walk from your house to your curb. And I can tell you 10 different ways that the federal government affects your life. Again, we can stipulate whether government's too big, too small. We can have that argument. But these are people who are underappreciated, who are not well paid by and large. I mean, they have a lot of other benefits,

generally not well paid, and labor under challenging work conditions to provide service to the American people. Now, of course, we want it to be better, and that's something we should strive for, but these are not the enemy. And when they're standing up to Donald Trump, often at considerable personal cost to themselves, they're doing it because, like all of us, they swear an oath to the Constitution. The oath is not to the President of the United States. It's not to a political party. It is the Constitution. And they're standing up to protect the laws of our country. And in many ways, I think the lesson we've learned from the last four years is that a lot of the guardrails of democracy haven't held

up particularly well. Certainly, you know, the Republicans in the Congress have not been a check on this president. The press has done its job, but as importantly, it's federal civil servants. And I think about all of the people that came forward during impeachment who were then subsequently fired or demoted or moved to other jobs. Those are all federal employees who saw something that bothered them to the core and risked their jobs in order to protect the laws of our country. And not just their jobs, in so many cases, their pensions, their retirement. And also, these are people who, when we were in office, our career employees, our career public servants

had served both Bush's the Clintons, sometimes they had been around as long as Carter or Reagan. I mean, these are people who truly put like country over party in every single way. And so hopefully not too many of them have fled. And the Biden folks can restore those seats of people who might have left. But the problem, though, those seats of people who might have left. But the problem, though, is that a lot of them have left. I mean, you know, we know that in the Foreign Service, because it is so difficult trying to defend this president's foreign policy aims, a lot of the senior diplomats have left. We know that there's been this big exodus of climate scientists from EPA, and Interior and Agriculture. And, you know,

that kind of expertise is not easy to replace. And so it's Yeah, you're right, it's going to be important for the Biden people to figure out how can we replenish the federal service quickly. Chris Liu, thank you for joining me on Let's Break It Down. This was so much fun. We'll have to do it again. I mean, it's it's like, you know, it's and to down this was so much fun yeah we'll have to do it again I mean it's it's like you know it's and to think that was my god that was 12 years ago that has gone by fast

thanks to Alyssa for filling us in today and good to be back guys I feel refreshed I do it was nice that was a solid two weeks off.

I'm taking two weeks off in a long time. I'm going to say no refreshing for me. Oh, yeah. John broke his body. That's tough. I was... I just was like... I broke my shoulder for all of you who haven't done it.

Thinking about you, just like the elections behind us. We worked so hard. You know, like we did all these podcasts. Like we were ready for this big, important break. You're like, ah, vacation. time to take a nice little jog. Boom. Hit the ground just like instantly. And like at the beginning, at the beginning of the vacation, it was December 20th that I did this. And so I have been December 20th.

I fell and broke my shoulder. I had surgery a week later in the 28th. So now. So I have not slept, have not caught up on anything have not helped emily with our child which i had been neglectful about during the election so uh things are going great here but you know whatever it's uh here we are we're back i'm on the mend and it's gonna be a pretty chill week in news yeah nice and quiet everyone everyone in dc just you know stay away from downtown on wednesday by the way, there's going to be a lot of Trump rallies

and all kinds of Proud Boys and troublemakers. Just sort of stay clear. Stay clear of that. The world's worst people are descending on your city, so that's not good. Not great. All right, we will talk to you guys on Thursday. Take care, everyone.

Bye. Bye. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long,

Roman Papadimitriou, Quinn Lewis, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.