Pod Save America - "Spar-a-lago: Ron v. Don."

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Donald Trump’s Arizona rally offers a preview of the 2022 midterm campaign and perhaps a 2024 rivalry between him and Ron DeSantis, Martin Luther King III joins to talk about his father’s legacy and what’s next in the fight to protect voting rights, and Democrats and Republicans debate banning Members of Congress from trading stocks while in office.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Donald Trump's Arizona rally offers a preview of the 2022 midterm campaign and perhaps a 2024 rivalry between him and Ron DeSantis. Martin Luther King III joins to talk about his father's legacy and what's next in the fight to protect voting rights. And Democrats and Republicans debate banning members of Congress from trading stocks while in office. But first, check out this week's offline right here on the PSA feed, where I interview novelist Chimamanda Adichie about her viral essay

on why she believes the tenor of conversation on social media is obscene and what that means for literature and politics. Also, we've got something exciting coming up on Pod Save the World. Tell us all about it. We've got Secretary of State Tony Blinken on the pod. We're interviewing him tomorrow. Big get. Let him talk about... him tomorrow big get and talk about it i haven't written a single question for a little behind the joke what do you say no it doesn't matter say it again blinken or you'll miss it okay just what john's been on a big run of puns since we sat down in here they don't know

that two minutes ago they do now anyway what are we going to talk about tony with i don't know i haven't written questions yet but uh i'm excited about it so uh check out the tony interview uh subscribe to pod save the world and also we're on pod save the world's on snapchat guys so if you thought to yourself snapchat's fine but i wanted some uh some ben rhodes and tommy talking about foreign policy you got it you got it it's actually very fun it's it's a it's one little issue. It's very funny. Check it out. All right. Let's get to the news. Arizona will be a central battleground in 2022 and 2024, which is why it was the site this weekend of activists marching for voting rights and a Donald Trump rally that drew over 15,000 people, including the leading Republican candidates

for governor and secretary of state, Kerry Lake, who has called for the imprisonment of Arizona's top election official. And Mark Fincham, a January 6th protester who's running to be the state's next top election official. Wonderful. Per usual, Trump spent most of his 93 minute speech lying about the election he lost. But he also had a couple of new riffs on Joe Biden and the pandemic that came just days after sniping with Ron DeSantis over which potential 24 candidate is the bigger COVID hawk. Let's take a listen. The big lie, the big lie is a lot of bullshit. That's what it is. We all knew that Joe Biden would be not so good, but few could have imagined that he would be such a disaster for this country.

We never even heard the term supply chain. You know, if you talk supply chain, it's not something that we even talked about. There are four times more COVID cases. Remember, I'm going to get rid of COVID. I'm going to get rid of COVID. Instead of letting our and letting us resume, and that's what we want to do, our normal lives, Biden's trying to bully and intimidate people with his, you see how angry he gets? Anger! You've got to listen to me.

Listen, listen, where am I? Where am I? Where the hell am I? The left is now rationing lifesaving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating, just denigrating white people to determine who lives and who dies. If you're white, you don't get the vaccine. Or if you're white, you don't get therapeutics. They're so confused at the end there. They're like, if you're white, you don't get the vaccine. Yay!

Wait, we're not supposed to cheer? Wait, I was white and I didn't get the vaccine, but I'm happy. I don't want you to make me get it. I don't want it. But if I want it, I want it. And it's not fair that I don't get what I don't get the vaccine, but I'm happy. I don't want you to make me get it. I don't want it. But if I want it, I want it. And if it's not, it's not fair that I don't get what I don't want anyway. If they want it, then I want it. It's like, God, they're children. Well, let's start with the speech, which I believe we all watched on 2x speed this morning.

2x. 1.75 sometimes. I went straight with two today. I thought it was. It was 93 minutes. Too, too, too long. That's a long speech. It's also getting hard to find these big these big tech monopolists are striking down censoring our president's have canceled all of his speeches c-span it's service provided by the

cable companies i found like some dudes upload of the pre-recorded rumble video uh anything newsworthy or notable stand out to you guys in terms of trump's uh midterm messaging yeah the line that really worries me was we gave Joe Biden every tool he could want, yet he still completely failed. The virus evolved and the strategy failed to evolve and it didn't, it just didn't evolve with the virus. He's incapable of keeping up. It goes on from there. But that really worried me. It seemed like it was written. You could tell he was reading.. Yes, and he struggled because it was a sophisticated bit of wordplay. And he did later criticize the teleprompter operators

for not buttressing them enough against the wind. But yeah, that was the same. That actually is what stood out to me too. Yeah, we're now on the sixth variant. I wonder which one is coming next. And he just goes, I mean, it was effective. What about you, Lovett? Yeah, that's what I wrote down.

The one piece was the COVID messaging. I it's it's you know we can he does it in his you know buffoonish way but biden promised to end the pandemic he didn't and nothing he's doing is working uh is gonna be pretty damning if we're wearing masks in november of 2022 and certainly if we're wearing them beyond. I mean, Biden had this message early on about this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. There's a lot of emphasis in his messaging about the vaccines at the time and even later and even now. I think some liberals, some public health experts criticize that for overemphasizing the vaccines because, you know, breakthrough cases and all the rest. There's a reason that Biden did that. And I think it's because of this

kind of thing, because I think the retort from Biden on this is to the extent that this pandemic is still killing people in this country, it's overwhelmingly over 90 something percent people who were given access to a free vaccine and chose not to take it. And the further you get away from that message, the easier Trump hit like that is to land. Right. Yeah, I do. I do. You know, Joe Biden is president in part because there was a bigger coalition of people who kind of trusted the science, believed in following the rules, believed in doing their part, were worried for their parents, worried for themselves,

worrying for their kids, and who felt like they needed somebody in charge who was gonna be more responsible, who could get us out of this. And if we start losing those people, the people who have been doing the right thing all along, but don't see enough progress, Donald Trump will be president.

That'll be that. We joked about it at the top too, but the naked appeal to racism at the top, to claim that white people can't get the vaccine was just a lie. The truth is that New York State has a policy that allows health care providers to consider race as a risk factor when administering antiviral drugs because the CDC found that black and Latino people are twice as likely to die from COVID as whites. twice as likely to die from COVID as whites, but he made it into this gross appeal to race and grievance for a vaccine that his base could get for free, but doesn't want.

It was very, I mean, it's not surprising in any way, but it was twisted. Well, he did it in both a gross way and a dumb way. He fumbled the hit too, but it has nothing to do with vaccines. It was only about treatments, right? It's about the antiviral treatments and stuff like that about using uh

race as a factor in giving uh the uh the antiviral treatments you know i mean it you could make an argument that it would have made that if you're going to list socioeconomic factors as uh one thing to consider when prioritizing who gets very limited treatments. They're currently limited first, but then you would have to also add the economic part in as well. And the reason that black and brown communities are experiencing such high rates of COVID and have for a long time is, you know, there's a lot of other factors involved there like poverty, income level, housing problems uh health care access and stuff like that which are also faced by you know uh less affluent communities of all

races um so there's like per usual there's like a hint of something in there that he exploited in the most racist way possible um but of course because it was trump did it in a clumsy way that some other republican might have done more adeptly, I think. It just confused everybody, I think. Yeah, I think that's right. But I do think, like, we were talking about this before, like, hearing him talk about the supply chains, or the supply chains, as he talked about, and just being like, we never talked, we never had to worry about supply chains before, and now Joe Biden's there. I mean, it reminded me of me of like trump is most comfortable as

a challenger and his formula is very simple it's it's you can call it genius but it's pretty fucking simple right it's like here's something on the news that pissed you off and uh you can blame the people in charge well that's it that's all he does but also no supply chain challenges nurses were wearing trash bags for like six months what are you talking about dude well there was no ppe in the entire country you didn't hear about inflation when i was president now you hear about inflation it's that kind of thing it's not you know you have to overthink it it's nonsense but i think part of the appeal is just nostalgia it's like any kind of reboot these days whether it's a comic book or you know fresh prince you know they hear uh lee greenwood come on and everyone's just sort of happy to be there again it is uh they were pretty happy to be there again the uh if you

there was um another piece that stood out to me it's not the most important thing politically but pretty menacing uh directed at the uh the person who shot ashley babbitt oh my god really terrifying basically saying this person should really threatening them in a very similar way that when he would do his threats against hillary clinton uh basically saying that oh if this person had protection they'd be in a pretty bad situation like basically kind of suggesting that that person should be killed the way ashley babbitt was killed it was dark it was really dark uh and then but but the reason i brought that up is there's a lot of obvious extremism in this speech and so much of it is devoted to the big lie it's obviously where he's the most comfortable

it's where he leaves the teleprompter behind. It's where he has the most fun. It's where the crowd is most excited, actually, which is, I think, worth noting. But if you put aside the pieces of it, the big lie, and you kind of blur your eyes, you can see the message that his more sophisticated advisors want. And it's pretty, it's, it's like, it's not to be taken lightly. Right. There is a very sophisticated hit into Joe Biden and Democrats inside of that speech. And I think the the focus on the big lie is valid and important. But we should make sure we're paying attention to the kind of argument he's making against Biden, because I think it is a smarter one than the rest of the wrapping.

Well, you know, there's a new york times piece it was the piece on about desantis and trump that we're going to talk about in a bit but there's a line in there that says mr trump and his aides are mindful of republicans increasingly public fatigue with the drama that trails mr trump and i do think to your point love it the the danger for trump here is that it is all nostalgia right and that might that might work for the 15,000 people that showed up at the rally, but in a general election against Joe Biden, like the one thing that would stop people from people who are deciding between Trump and Biden potentially, um, from, from pulling the lever for Trump again is like, you know, there's some Republicans will say this and

say this, like, yeah, I've been disappointed with Joe Biden. But like, do I want to deal with all the drama of the Trump years and go back to all that bullshit and stuff like that? Like, isn't there another choice? And the more Trump leans on the big lie. Yeah, it rallies the party faithful, but it doesn't necessarily win him points with people who might be disappointed with Joe Biden. But yet are kind of like sick of the Trump act and the big lie shit. but yet are kind of like sick of the Trump Act and the big lie shit. I mean, Trump's entire his his his campaign, if he runs again, will be entirely predicated on people's short memories. Yeah, of course, Tommy, people didn't have PPE. Of course, their testing situation was completely abysmal. He abandoned science for for in favor of whatever he could say to kind of solve his ego during this, during the pandemic. He's relying on people to forget the fact that he is,

the fact that his popularity has gone up over the last several months is because people have forgotten what it is like to be exposed to him on a semi-daily basis, as we've noted and as Dan noted in Message Box. Like, his being off Twitter has been very good for him. His take on the supply chain crisis was, there's no merchandise in Tiffany's. You can't buy a ring. You can't buy a ring.

That was so relatable. That was so funny. Yeah, John, I saw that line in the New York Times story that there's fatigue. I don't see signs of fatigue, really. I mean, there's Liz Cheney, but I don't know. I don't know there's some like broad sense of fatigue among the Republican base.

I hope there is. I want there to be. I would like to see it though. I mean, the reason I know we're not seeing it, but what are we seeing? I mean, like, I think it's I think it's their advisors

are looking into the polling and looking to focus groups and they don't care about the look. There's like 30 to 40 percent of the party in a lot of these polls that are saying we love Trump and we want him to run again and we're going to vote for him.

For sure. Like, that's it. There's a small percentage of Republicans. It's like we don't like him. We don't want him to run again and we're going to vote for him for sure. Like that's it. There's a small percentage of Republicans that's like, we don't like him and we don't want him to run again. And then I think there's a middle percentage that's like, we really like Donald Trump. We're open to another candidate and we don't know if he should run again. And I think those are the people that those advisors are probably worried about. Sure. Of course. I just don't think there's any signs of fatigue and I'm sort of surprised. I don't know, it's interesting to see it written like, sort of stated as fact

in the New York Times story. Gave me a little hope, frankly. Well, it made me think that there's something that Trump advisors know that we don't. I also like how they talk about Mike Lindell.

They praise him. He said about Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, I always say Mike is the single greatest purchaser of ads in history. They praise him, but they're just mocking him

for getting bilked by everyone in the market. Yeah, just a goofball. A kind of wack in history. They praise him, but they're just mocking him for getting bilked by everyone in the market. Just a goofball, a kind of wacky goof. Yeah. So Arizona will be a hugely important state in the midterms. Democrats need to reelect Mark Kelly if they want to keep the Senate and win the races for governor and secretary of state. They want to prevent Trump loyalists from overturning the next election. Here's a taste of what they're up against from some of the Republican candidates who attended the rally. There's a car out there,

and we think the registration lights are on. The registration seems to belong to Les Go Brandon. Les Go Brandon. Anybody here know Les Go Brandon? We must decertify the presidential election of 2020. And if our founding fathers were here today, they would be Trump Republicans. I can see it right now, Mr. President, George Washington

crossing the Delaware with a Make America Great flag at the back of the boat. And Teddy Roosevelt would have his Make America Great cowboy hat. I feel like that Let's Go Brandon joke was one of those that just looked much better on paper than it ended up landing. Yeah. It's sad. You know, he tried to kind of tag it with the same joke again doesn't really make sense no it doesn't the registration says let's go Brandon what the registration I think even license plate it's a mess I mean look the guy was a January 6th

that protester who's never running for Secretary of State I don't think we can expect too much out of him who was that was that kosar no that I think that was um Mark fincham okay got it yeah I know he sounds great he went to the Capitol riots. He's running to replace Katie Hobbs, who's the Democratic secretary of state. So he can help overturn the next election. And then Katie Hobbs is running for governor who her opponent, Carrie Lake, wants to imprison. So she wants to imprison her opponent, who also happens to be the top election official in Arizona. And she's in the lead. I wasn't even going to talk about Carrie Lake because I'm like, oh, this is just the Trump candidate. The latest poll has her in the Republican primary way out in the lead. She's also a former TV news anchor, I believe.

Which is why Trump loves her. That's great. He said he's like, she got great ratings, great ratings on television. Amazing. There was a line in the Times piece looking at the kind of tensions over the Trump candidates. And it said, as popular as the former president remains with the core of the GOP base, his involvement in races from Arizona to Pennsylvania and his inability to let go of his loss to Mr. Biden has veteran Republicans in Washington and beyond concerned. They worry that Mr. Trump is imperiling their chances in what should be a highly advantageous political climate,

which is like watching a murder and saying you're getting blood all over the carpets. It's like, oh, is that- Notice that they got a lot of quotes in that story. No one who would back up that assertion. No names, nothing. Not even an anonymous quote from someone who was worried. They're like, Mitch McConnell expressed concern the other day.

What, that's all you got? It's wishful thinking, it's wishful thinking. I mean, if you're a Democrat running in Arizona right now, how do you handle what's happening in these Republican primaries? We got candidates who are saying we should lock people up who were involved in the last election. Paul Gosar is up there on stage saying a storm is coming, which is a shout out directly to the Q people, the QAnon people. Like, how do you how do you run against that? I think you're running against

extremism. I mean, it is it's important to remember that Congressman Paul Gosar is so out there that his own siblings cut an attack out against him. They all got together to run ads against him. And I think like- There's an extremist. There's a special brand of extremism that exists in Arizona right now that I would be talking about a lot. I mean, Ali Alexander, the organizer of the Stop the Steal rally was in touch with several of the members of Congress from Arizona, right? I mean, it's sort of the Stop the Steal rally, was in touch with several of the members of Congress from Arizona, right? I mean, it's sort of the norm there. When I was doing open

mics in New York, I'm pretty sure this was at the Comedy Cellar, and there was always an eclectic lineup of people. And I remember there was one night where this middle-aged woman got up on the stage and she seemed perfectly in charge of her faculties. And then she started grunting and yelling. She had a bunch of high-pitched voices. She briefly started eating the microphone. Then she humped the wall. There was a painting on the wall. She started kind of pretending to make out with the painting. And then she said, thank you. And she walked off the stage. And I remember the next person up came to the stage and he goes, is it all right with everybody if I just tell some jokes? Was it your normal crew? Like Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Tim Allen? Well, it was always a mix. It was anybody who had $5. So it was always a mix.

But I always think about that because there's this little bit of this like, hey, I'm going to try to solve some problems uh in maybe your life if that's interesting to you look if you want to rehash the 2020 election and argue and yell and have the internet spill all over your state that's fine we can do that but actually i'm just here to do a couple things and i'm not going to really pay attention to arkham asylum health care well i think i think this is the danger of over learning the lesson of virginia Glenn Youngkin, right? Which was that, OK, Democrats, Terry McAuliffe tried to say that Glenn Youngkin was a Trump clone and it didn't work.

And, you know, he exaggerated too much like I said. Well, Glenn Youngkin is different than some of these Republican candidates in Arizona. We can still dislike Glenn Youngkin, think he's horrible for Virginia or against him and say that he is he is not as extreme as the people we just spoke about. And I think that running against Carrie Lake and Mark Finjam as extremists, like you have plenty of ammo there

when you're running against them to talk about. You have plenty of quotes that they gave about locking people up that you never had with Glenn Youngkin. My guess is the the lock them up uh lock him up lock her up chance don't go over well with a broader set of the electorate like there was a lock him up chant about dr fauci that's new that's weird that's that's scary even if you're not a fan of of dr fauci or katie hobbs or random uh democrats and

public health officials that republicans now want to up. They're saying things like anyone who was involved in the 2020 election should be locked up. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, said we should lock up 300 million people in the country for fraud. Which is inspired. Which doesn't leave a lot of people left. Talk about overcrowded prisons. And that's kids

too. That's got to be like 12 year olds. Who are the 30 million left behind? I don't know. I like that they're appealing to pocketbook issues but i also don't want to go to jail so i'm not going to be with the lindell guy the uh yeah there is a like kind of uh past future thing too it's just like hey these people are really angry and they seem out of it and they're kind of focused on something that happened a couple years ago doesn't do anything for you now and it won't help anybody except trump seems like we should have somebody that's focused on actual issues in the real world not conspiracy theories like we always

go through things like do you want to root for these extremist candidates to win the primaries and of course you don't want to root for any extremist candidate to go far at all but when i saw the news last week that that current arizona governor doug ducey might jump into the senate race i got more nervous than when i saw some of the things that these candidates at the rally said, because Doug Ducey is, again, not someone I'd ever vote for, but more not as not as extreme as some of these other candidates, you know, resisted the big lie. And if he somehow gets through a Senate primary and challenges Mark Kelly, I think that's a much tougher race for Mark Kelly than a Kelly Ward or some of these other lunatics in Arizona. Hey, speech guys.

Trump had a line about Arizona where he said it was where the great American West became the American dream. Good? You like that? Oh, God. Is Stephen Miller still writing these fucking speeches? Really bad. Where the American West became the American dream. It doesn't make any sense.

No. It makes no sense whatsoever. That was right after he floated a soft boycott of AT&T. The dream is in a place. It's something you have. It doesn't work. So look, a lot of talk about Trump. The 2024 is far away.

What can people do to help in Arizona in 2022? Just turn your faucets on in California. There's only so much water left i was gonna say there's a lot of races to focus oh yeah that's right i'm sorry elections i'm sorry which ones john which one well look there's been a lot of focus on uh kirsten cinema and primary in kirsten cinema which great let's go for it just want everyone to know she's not up until 2024 let's play a long game it's 2022 we have an election in november before we get to cinema in 2024 and uh her colleague mark kelly who has not been a pain in the ass about the filibuster or anything

is up and is going to have an extremely tough race so he went out of space he went out of space and now we need some now we need some money to uh and he needs your support. Or Kyrsten Sinema gets her ideas. To make sure that Mark Kelly wins. Because if Mark Kelly doesn't win, it's going to be very hard to keep the Senate. Arizona Secretary of State. Two candidates, Reginald Boulding and Adrian Fontes, who are running. Arizona Governor. Again, Katie Hobbs, who's the current Secretary of state, is the leading candidate on the Democratic side.

You also have Marco Lopez and Aaron Lieberman as candidates. If you want to run for a whole bunch of local and county offices in Arizona, it's not too late. The filing deadline is still a ways away. I was tweeting about Run for Something over the weekend. Who could you support? They help local candidates all over the country uh run for office it's a fantastic organization um elections in arizona are run on the county level um and and some of those county like county recorders especially run elections in arizona some of

those positions aren't up until 2024 but you should check to see the ones that are open again again local and state elections especially ones that involve the administration of elections which is what steve bannon and the republicans are targeting like look at those offices and if you live in arizona yeah you should think about running from one and if you live in los angeles what you do is you get on the 10 you head east you go past silver lake and then you stop at phoenix and that's how you get there and between silver lake and canada it's just a couple minutes right yes it'll take you a couple minutes perfect Perfect. And you can knock on doors. You can make calls from another state, which I don't know, maybe that's fun.

Yeah. Yeah, hey, that'll be fun. I'm excited to go actually canvas in person again. Absolutely. I'm doing it. I don't care what Dr. Fauci says. I'll say this. I've said it before.

I'll say it again. I am much more worried about long Trump than I am about long COVID. That's my official position. Hey, it's pretty good. It's a good line. It's a good line i like that line too so trump's main focus at the rally was of course his own political future not 2022 um and right now it appears that the only potential threat to him winning the republican nomination

is florida governor ron desantis who unlike most of the other potential candidates has refused to say that he'd stand aside if trump runs again the only other one who's refused to say it is Pence. But like, no one's really worried about Mike Pence. Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman. Jeb hasn't ruled it out either. Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman just wrote a great New York Times piece about the growing rivalry between the two Florida men, which quotes Trump telling advisors, I wonder why the guy won't say he won't run against me.

Why do you think, guys? What? I think DeSantis is the smartest of them. And saying, conceding to that is so pathetic, is so limiting to your own ambition, to your own sense of yourself, to the kind of like pride and like guts that human beings want to see in other human beings that it's like seems like he's smart enough to know how dangerous a thing it is to say it's interesting i'd forgotten that they got into a tiff in 2018 uh about the death count around hurricane maria i remember trump was trying to claim it was overstated uh in trump and desantis pushed back on that uh and you know trump basically didn't concede anything, but he was furious, but he still had to campaign with DeSantis because Florida was so important.

This is an interesting example of someone who stood up to Trump along the way and kind of lived to talk about it. I'm very eager to see how this plays out. I can't tell if it's just ego or a real political consideration because it does seem like the outcome is kind of binary. If DeSantis decides to run, it will be a fight to the death between these two guys. If he doesn't, I'm sure they'll be able to to paper over it. So I don't know, as much as I'm enjoying this on a personal level, it doesn't make me feel good for the world that the space to run against Trump is to the right of him on vaccines. That's not great. Yeah, it's well, it's funny, too. It just goes to like if either you run or you don't, if you run, then you are willing to run against Trump.

If you don't, you don't need to have ruled it out. Well, I think all those people that have ruled it out are serious about it. Like I think if you talk to Nikki Haley or Mark or Ruby or any of those people, if Trump Donald Trump runs, they're not even going to try. And I think DeSantis is the only one who's willing to actually make it a primary. Maybe Mike Pence, but I think he'll probably come to his senses. But like you could see and DeSantis is looking around at all the rest of them. He's like, oh, they're saying they'll bow out if Trump runs. So if Trump runs, I get a shot at him myself. And it would be the first time, right? That's like the the the crowded field is partly why Trump was able to become the nominee.

The politics have changed since then, but it certainly wouldn't matter that there was one alternative as opposed to five. I'm sure DeSantis is believing his own hype a little too. Reading his own clippings, seeing the polls, thinking, I can do this. He's thinking that I can give you Donald Trump without any of the drama or any of the baggage. That's his pitch. We have talked about this around various tables for a very long time that that one of the the the great safeguards we've had over the years was trump being too stupid too buffoonish too egotistical too

narcissistic too undisciplined uh to to uh not get in his own way uh and de santis is seeing the exact same thing we are as a smart person. How much of a threat to Trump do you guys think DeSantis is? I think that he's more of a threat to Trump than anyone else in the Republican Party that I can think of. Certainly more than like a Mitch McConnell or Liz Cheney or like a swamp kind of resistance Democrat. He scratches all the culture war itches, which I think are the most important thing. But also he's the standard bearer currently when it comes to fighting against anything to do with COVID overreach or lockdowns or whatever. And I think he thinks Trump has some vulnerability there, not just with, um,

not just with the vaccine, but also with, you know, sort of the early lockdowns. I also didn't realize that DeSantis has $70 million in the bank, $70 million. So I think he's dangerous, but I think this is getting overstated because DeSantis is described even by his closest friends, in this case, Matt Gaetz, closest friend in Congress, as basically a weirdo loner

with no friends and no emotions. There was an anecdote in Washington Post story that when DeSantis played baseball in college, when he was playing catch with a catch partner instead of asking the person to back up he would just chuck it over their head and make them run and get it like he's just like not he's like a guy who has no emotions he doesn't really empathize like i don't know that like trump has the trump thing axios got a source close to trump saying that um trump has been saying desantis has no personal charisma and has a dull personality which which you could say. So does Trump need an issue or an ideological wedge to run against DeSantis? No, all he does is need to say, like, that guy's fucking boring. Don't you want

the Trump show? Yeah. And the the yeah, right. To to write the two words right. We've heard from Trump about DeSantis or something like boring and gutless. Right. It's interesting on the vaccine thing that Trump basically kind of put it out there that he got the booster, has been more responsible than most Republicans in Congress about vaccines and the booster. And when DeSantis refused to say that he was boosted, he saw it as an opportunity to call him gutless, right?

Which is a way of turning an issue in which he's clearly to the, it's so funny to say left and right, to closer to reality than the base. And DeSantis, he tries to make it about gutlessness, about being boring. The idea that like, you know, when Trump says he thinks DeSantis is boring or has no charisma, he is he is wish casting. Right. He wants that to be something that DeSantis gets hard with, because actually, you know, Ron DeSantis is a leading Republican

figure. He's pulling at 40 percent if Trump is not in the race. That is not because he is boring. It's because he is interesting to a lot of people. Look, I've never watched a DeSantis rally or a DeSantis speech, but I've seen on Twitter a couple of times and Republican strategists and other people say, you know, the only thing close to a Trump rally is a DeSantis rally in the size of the crowd you get and the reaction that you get from the crowd. So I don't know. I'll have to watch one myself someday because I don't know what all the fuss is about maybe as we get closer to 2024 i'll say i'll say the one thing that i the the like when you see josh holly when you see ted cruz uh these are guys that kind of reek of their pedigree you know they just they they seem like they're faking it they're putting

on their boots like you don't realize that desantis is smarter than he seems until you look at his Wikipedia. Like you don't realize this is a Harvard Yale guy. This is a guy that has been plotting and planning for a run for president since he was a teen until you look at his actual his actual experience because he doesn't he doesn't give away the game the way those guys do. Certainly Trump's team is worried. Right before we came in here, Roger Stone was tweeting, or I guess this must have been like Getter or something, a tweet that ended

hashtag fuck Ron DeSantis. It called him... There he says, more of a scalpel than a... Yeah, yeah. Singe don't burn. Hold on, it gets better. He called him a, quote,

Yale Harvard fat boy. I'm not sure if that was supposed to say frat boy. He also said he was an unknown congressman with a bad haircut and an ill-fitting suit until Donald Trump made him governor. I know where he was when he was missing. Ask Emerald Robinson,

who was the, I think, like a former Newsmax White House correspondent. This is great. I love it. More, more, more, more, more. It's also like, I'm sorry, ill-fitting suits, like that's a prerequisite

for winning the fucking straw poll we're in like italian tailored those are those are hot air balloons around his legs i think a piece of info that made me think like maybe maybe desantis is onto something reading up on all this is um how he's courted so many right-wing media folks and that he gets softball questions and and they love to book him on all the shows and he's like the new favorite like that actually that helps way more than what republican candidates tried to do in 2016 which is like court elite republican strategists and and people members of congress was like who the fuck cares they don't control anything you know it's like it's it's it's the right-wing pundits on fox and and newsmax and OAN that control everything. And he is so and he's just a slimy, slimy enough to do this, too, because it's like he's going out there pretending like my only regret is in March 2020 that I didn't tell Trump to kill more people.

I did my best in Florida to kill as many people here as I could, but I couldn't get it done because I had the White House in my way, not letting me kill more people in my fucking state. But I think it is like, look, I still all this said, I still think Trump has a huge advantage here. But if you're going to make the argument for DeSantis, I think that the COVID thing isn't necessarily like an ideological fight. I think what he's trying to do is say, like, you make the fight about Trump's presidency and the drama around it. They screwed up on COVID by locking down too much. They screwed up the election by letting it get too close. Trump is yesterday's news. I'm younger.

I'm the future. You make it a past-future thing. Also, I have 43, by the way. That's pretty fun. You put some city miles on that chassis. Yeah. I just have like 43.

That's my shocked bit. It's starting to be wild to see that I... We're... He's our age. You could see... Almost. You could see a message where desantis is

like trump listened to fauci he had let it you know i mean like there's all these sort of gross things he could do desant trump is not wrong though that desantis basically owes him his political career he was a backbench congressman who became a governor because trump endorsed him and gave him all kinds of backing in that primary. I don't know how that goes over with voters, but yeah. I don't know either. It's just wine. It speaks to the sort of Shakespearean element to this grudge match.

It's the closest thing to an adult relationship in Trump's life. This is a great anecdote for that same Washington Post profile. A colleague recalled being on a long distancedistance plane ride with DeSantis and watching as the congressman spent the entire flight twirling his hair, a habit he has had for decades, not even stopping to read a book or listen to music. Just total weirdo, sociopath, American psycho fucking moves. He's got that yell to Harvard, to Harvard to reserves to Congress to governor.

This guy has been running for president every day of his life. It is the only thing. That's what he's thinking about when he's twirling his hair. That's it. He's writing inaugural addresses. He's going to state dinners. That's what he's been doing. Yeah, well, I'm looking forward to this rivalry.

Okay, when we come back, I'll talk to Martin Luther King III about his father's legacy and the struggle for voting rights. Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And unfortunately, the backdrop of this year's remembrance is the Republican filibuster of legislation that would protect the right of every American to vote and have that vote counted, the same cause to which Dr. King devoted his life. Here to talk about his father's legacy and the fight for voting rights today is Martin Luther King III. Thank you so much for joining today. It's an honor to talk to you. Thank you for the opportunity.

So I think when it comes to protecting the right to vote, the question on everyone's mind at this moment is, what now? Where do we go from here? Well, of course, yesterday we had observed the King holiday and we had been saying, my wife and I and those who work along with the organizations, that we were able to assemble over 100 organizations, all of the labor unions, over a thousand ministers who have basically been saying it's time to deliver for voting rights. And the holiday, in terms of how it was observed, was a day of action where people were calling on their senators, people were signing the petition. And today in the Senate, the hope is that there will be some kind of vote that affirms the right to vote. Now, you know, as we know, at this moment, there are two senators on the Democratic side who have not been willing to come forth and say that they support.

They I'm scared. Excuse me. They've said they support the legislation, but yet they have not supported a pathway to getting it done because they believe that it alters the filibuster. But, of course, those senators also realized that they had no problem altering the filibuster when it came to raising the debt ceiling. They had no problem when it came to budget reconciliation issues. So it's very interesting that we selectively decide when we want to modify the filibuster. In this context, when we're talking about democracy, this is not a partisan issue. This really is about all Americans. And 19 states, as we perhaps know or as may be known, have passed excessive laws to make it harder for people to vote. And with 34 pieces of legislation and as legislatures gear up now, again, state legislatures, there could be another 20 states that may create these draconian laws. So here's my point. The first thing is we've got to see what the senators do today.

If the legislation does not pass, I think that we've got to look at some different kinds of tactics and techniques to use, including going to businesses where, for example, in Arizona, businesses or West Virginia, obviously that evidence steal and maybe a few other things. But Arizona is a different animal. So my point is, we've got to look at every tool in the arsenal because we're not going to give in, we're not going to give up, we're not going to give out. This is so, so important for protecting, preserving, expanding the right to vote, and also saving our democracy. When you talk about going to businesses and different tactics,

do you mean in order to then have different entities pressure Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin or just other ways to protect the vote? That's certainly one option. But I think an additional option is, you know, we could even get to the point where there's some people that we have to think about boycotting. That is certainly not something that anyone wants to do. But I think it needs to be factored into the discussion and the equation, because business if businesses are not inclined on their own to, you know, take strong positions to help influence these senators that, you know, don't that seem to be unwilling to take a posture for what I again, we characterize it as saving democracy. Of all the Republican efforts to make voting harder or take over the administration of elections,

which are which are the greatest threats to democracy in your mind that you've seen proposed or passed over the last year? Well, so the first and foremost, I think just making it harder to vote, period, is egregious. In my own state of Georgia, there are 159 counties. If the Republican legislature, majority Republican legislature in Georgia, does not like the outcome of the election, they can change the nonpartisan election commission to put people in place who are going to be favorable to what they want to achieve. That means they can invalidate the votes of people who have voted for one candidate or another. I mean, to me, that's just draconian. There have been, of course, ballot box closures.

There have been suppression of voting by saying, okay, let's say you had 25 days to vote. Now you have 15. So these are things that are making it harder. And then, of course, the fact that if someone or anyone could change an election, that is that's almost dictatorial control. That is not democracy. Democracy allows the voters to be heard. And whatever wherever things lay or where the chips fall is where they fall. Not someone manipulating moving vote votes off the rolls.

You know, in the older days, there were Jim Crow provisions in the law. And what I mean by that is when African-Americans came to register, they would ask questions like how high is up or how many bubbles are in a bar of soap? I mean, all kinds of questions that no one could ask. Or can you tell me a specific area of the Constitution? Recite that. And if you recited that, they would go to another area. So all these techniques were used to suppress the vote. to suppress the vote. And what we're saying is these new techniques, although not the same, which basically kept people from being able to register, they will make it harder for people to vote. They're not just downright, you know, putting provisions in place where you can't answer questions. They're doing things like limiting drop boxes. They're doing things like curtailing hours that you can vote.

So all of these things, it seems to me when everything we do today by automation or technology, we handle our business affairs, our banking online. Why could we not even vote? I mean, we have the system to be able to develop where it's fair for everyone who is a citizen. Voting should be as simple as can be, not complex as people are trying to make it. You attended President Biden's speech in Atlanta last week. He's obviously tried privately pressuring Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. Then he gives that speech publicly, again, came out in favor of making an exception for voting rights with the filibuster. That didn't work. Joe Manchin said, oh, it was a good speech, but it didn't change my mind. He went to talk to the Senate Democrats. Kyrsten Sinema didn't even let him go talk to the Senate Democrats before giving a speech about how she was in favor of keeping the filibuster.

What advice would you give him about how to handle the fight for voting rights going forward if you were giving Joe Biden advice? Well, I would, number one, first of all, say what we've been saying, and that is you were able to get an infrastructure bill used because you use the full faith and credit and the power of the White House to get a bill done. That's whatever you did. You never deterred from whatever you believed, even if it looked like it wasn't going to happen. You stayed vigilant. And that same thing must be done in terms of voting rights. And I'm sure that over the weekend, you know, that there have been calls that have been going on.

And so that's why it's going to be interesting today to see, you know, what happens in the Senate. If, in fact, debate will begin to occur, which is really most critically important. It would seem like most senators would want to have debate on the issue. The fact that the filibuster has been used to even keep the bills from coming to the floor and so they can be debated is a very sad commentary in relationship to where democracy is at this point. What did you make of the decision by several voting rights groups to boycott Biden's speech? Well, we actually are in touch with everyone. Well, many. I won't say everyone, but many who are involved in the discussion. And I thought

it was appropriate. I understand the frustration that some people have who've been working on these issues 24 hours a day or 24-7. I certainly understand and support that. But I also felt that someone needed to be engaged in terms of speaking to the White House and to others. And so while we employed and support, we also need to keep being engaged. And at the end of the day, the legislation is passed. If legislation is passed, we all are joined together. It's obviously been, you know, an incredibly tough couple of years. I think a lot of people who worked hard to get Donald Trump out of the White House are feeling exhausted and disappointed and frustrated that, you know, the anti-democratic forces that gave rise to Trump are still very much on the march. And I always think about how, you know, it was 10 years between when your father led the Montgomery bus boycott and when the Voting Rights

Act of 1965 finally passed. Do you have a pep talk for people who are frustrated with the pace of progress right now and might want to give up? Well, the thing that I would say is I have to look at things that create change that we may or may not understand before they happen. Many years, I encouraged the state of South Carolina, for example, to remove the Confederate flag. It was not until the tragedy occurred of Reverend Pinckney and eight of his members at Mother Emanuel Church were killed, that within weeks or days, the Confederate flag came down, that those in power began to understand, okay, my gosh, if this is a symbol of hatred and not unification, it needs to come down. I can never, we will never, ever forget about a tectonic shift in this nation in 2020 after the tragic death of George Floyd. And in all 50 states, there were demonstrations, 90 percent.

Well, certainly 89 percent of them were nonviolent demonstrations or peaceful demonstrations. And yet that energy for the young people is still in place. The challenge today is we live in a microwave kind of society where we want things to be instant. And unfortunately, it's not always instant. It does take time. from the Montgomery bus boycott to the passing of Voting Rights Act in 65 is one example. I'm not suggesting that it's going to take 10 years, but I think this has to be done very shortly and soon. You have midterm elections coming up, and that's going to determine who is in charge in the House as well as who is in charge in the Senate. So all of these are reasons that a legislation needs to be passed and needs to be passed now. And it's probably the thing that's most perplexing to me is that you have two senators who say they support this legislation, but yet they don't support a pathway to get it done. You can't be for everything or for legislation and not have a pathway to get it done.

That's, to me, somewhat inconsistent and disingenuous for whatever reason there may be. Yeah. Your father might be one of the most quoted public figures of all time. You often see people, especially on days like today, cite a specific quote or speech from him to support whatever political argument they're making at the time. Of all the things your father said in his life, what do you think most captures who he really was as a person? Wow, that's a question that is very, very difficult to answer, but I'll try to answer it this way in one of his own quotes. And that quote was, the ultimate measure of a human being is not where one stands in times

of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy. He went on to say that on some questions, cowardice ask is a position safe. Expediency ask is a position politic. Vanity ask is a position popular, but that's something deep inside called conscience ask is a position right. He went on to say, sometimes we must take positions that are neither safe nor popular nor politic. But we must take those positions because our consciences tell us they are right. To me, every day we have to make decisions, any of us. And in my experience, generally, if we listen to our consciences, we make the right decision. Very well said. Very well said. I know you were only 10 when your father died. Is there

a memory of him you think about on days like today? Well, certainly days like today after the holiday and during the holiday period, I have just been thinking about just how far we as a nation have come in spite of the moment we find ourselves at now, meaning a very divided nation, which is certainly unfortunate and certainly against what he would want us as a nation to be engaged in and certainly thinking that we should be further along. But I think about the fact that whether it was Montgomery, the bus boycott, or whether it was Birmingham right before the Civil Rights Act, which was passed in 64, whether it was Selma in 1965, where the Voting Rights Act was passed, or, you know, the fair housing legislation in 1968 after his death, just a couple months after his death. He always understood that strategy. You know, he and his team had a plan of execution and they executed, not necessarily perfect, but they executed that plan

and ultimately it yielded results. So what I'm thinking about now is we've been involved in a plan. We back in August of this year on the anniversary of the March on Washington. We did over 100 marches with almost 400 organizations in one day in 41 states. And it was all around, you know, voting rights. Yesterday in Washington, D.C., we marched across the Frederick Douglass Bridge.

And on Saturday, we marched in Phoenix across an overpass. And we're saying, Mr. President and the Senate, you did it for infrastructure. That is wonderful. You now must do it for protecting, preserving and expanding voting rights. And so, you know, as I as I was over the weekend thinking about dad, you know, I'm thinking, what would he tell us at this time? What would he? Well, and first of all, I must add a trajectory because had my father lived, we as a nation and I think Robert Kennedy as well, he was running for president at the time he was killed, you know, in June, dad was killed in April. And if those men had lived, we as a nation would be dealing with different issues. We'd be on a different trajectory.

If dad came today, he would look at what he sees and he'd be greatly disappointed in our political leadership and the political discourse. But that would not deter him. He'd be so excited about the engagement of young people who are on the battlefield many days. Young people are engaged in activism, whether it is environmental justice, whether it is, you know, women's rights, all of the things that are happening around women's rights, whether it is the LGBTQIA community. I mean, all of these issues that we look at, he'd be so proud of the young persons who are engaged in leading to change our nation and our world to make it better for all of God's children. And so I think that's all of that I've thought about over the last few days and contended

to think about it. And this morning, you know, as we're preparing for the day, I am hoping and praying that our senators will do the right thing. I have the same hopes and prayers. Martin Luther King III, thank you so much for joining us, for taking the time. And thank you for all the work that you're doing to carry on your father's legacy and fight for voting rights and civil rights in our time. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And thank you for what you all do every day. Okay, before we go, we want to talk about Congress's renewed interest in banning its members and their immediate families from trading stocks while in office.

You might remember that at the beginning of the pandemic, Senators Richard Burr, Dianne Feinstein, James Inhofe, and Kelly Loeffler were investigated for selling off their stock after getting briefed about the damage the pandemic might do to the economy. Burr is still under investigation by the SEC. Well, last month, a Business Insider investigation found that 54 members of Congress and at least 182 of the highest paid Hill staff have violated the Stock Act, which makes insider trading illegal and requires members of Congress to file financial disclosures. This has led to a big bipartisan push to ban stock trading altogether. It has the support of everyone from AOC and Abigail Spanberger to Josh Hawley and Kevin McCarthy, who says he'll push for a ban if Republicans win the House. One of the only leaders in Congress against this idea, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who recently said this about the ban.

We have a responsibility to report on the stock, but I'm not familiar with that five-month review. But if people aren't reporting, they should be. Because this is a free market and people, we have a free market economy, they should be able to participate in that. I think it's weird that she said that while having white truffles shaved over her naked body. Boy. I disavow that.

Disassociate myself. Disavow. I don't know. I disassociate my relationship. I disavow the show. Halfway through. Why naked? Right.

The truffles. You had me with the truffles. You know what it is? I didn't have something better. There's different colors of truffle. There's white and... I don't know. I found it all disgusting.

That's a small point. I found it, frankly, all have something better colors of trouble there's white and i don't know i found it all disgusting small point i found it frankly all disgusting i don't know what was she thinking there let's get to the point what was she what was she thinking she was thinking she got a lot of fucking stocks in her portfolio is what she was thinking she's a fabulously wealthy woman married to a venture capitalist legislators of the century yeah what was she thinking there so right if you're a lawmaker or a staffer who makes more than $132,000 in 2021, you have to report stock trades of more than $1,000 within 30 days. And if your spouse does it, you have 45 days or like, yeah, you're supposed to pay a $200 fine if you fail to meet that deadline. And then increasingly higher fines if you keep missing the deadlines to file these reports. But there's no way to figure out which lawmakers have actually paid fines. There's no reporting. There's no accountability. There's no transparency.

And this isn't just a Congress problem. Three members of the Fed had to resign because they were selling stocks at the height of the pandemic as they're making decisions about whether to open the spigot and choose the economy. This is a huge problem. So it's very simple. as they're making decisions about whether to like open the spigot and and choose the economy this is a huge problem here so it's very simple if you're a public official no one's saying you can't participate in the free market economy put your stocks in a blind trust i don't know about the blind trust that's what all that's what all these bills are that everyone's talking about no all of them are doing if you have a blind if a blind like if you own if you own like

a huge amount of exxon mobil or something and then they put it in a blind trust, you don't forget you own Exxon Mobil the next day. You know, like owning, it's funny because like the trading, there's like, it combines, this issue combines a bunch of different things. One of them is like the trading on inside information, right? And that's something that Richard Burr did so brazenly and despicably. That's something members of Congress do because they do have access to kind of special information. But there's also just holding stock and making decisions based on wanting those companies to do better or worse. And that's not about trading.

That's just about having things in your portfolio. And that continues even if it's a blind trust. There's no like perfect answer for any of this. I just don't know how the blind trust works. I mean, do you have to liquidate your holdings and then hand it to an advisor and they invest it for you and you just get like a yearly report? That would take care of Lovett's problem. That would be great.

Or I would, I mean, I would advocate that you can only own index funds or only own mutual funds. Like, so what Pelosi's husband does is he was buying millions of dollars of call options in like Alphabet, Roblox, Salesforce, Disney. And like the key to understanding this is these are not long-term investments. This isn't like putting, you know, two shares of Apple in your IRA and holding them for 10 years and feeling great. You are,

these are risky trades that have expiration dates. And basically it's gambling. Like you're betting a stock's going to go up and there's huge upside there. And I just don't think you should be doing that. And Pelosi's husband is making millions of dollars on tech stocks before antitrust meetings. There's literally TikTokers, YouTubers who track Pelosi's holdings and try to match her investment strategy. Because when you look at the holdings of members of Congress, they beat the S&P in the short term, in the medium term, in the long term. And that's very, very, very hard to do. Here's what annoys me about the whole thing the most.

I don't want this to become another what the fuck are Democrats thinking story because you read all the stories about this and like every Democrat in the House and the Senate, whether it's, you know, AOC on the left, Spanberger, who's more of a centrist. John Ossoff and Mark Kelly have a bill about this, right? Like, like Democrats from across the ideological spectrum are like, yeah, we should ban trading of stocks among members of Congress and their immediate families. Ossoff and Kelly have a bill that would ban members and their spouses and children from trading stock. ossoff and kelly have a bill that would ban members and their spouses and children from trading stock um so it's like you know because she is the one of the most high profile democrats

in the country and the speaker of the fucking house it's obviously going to get a lot of attention as it should but like is there any reason that the senate democrat shouldn't just hold hearings on the kelly ossoff bill and and try to pass it immediately do it right now and again not not because it might be hard getting one through the house is why i started with the senate you should increase the political pressure i mean look i'm and we're not trying to pick on pelosi here like so rand paul and his wife had not bought an individual stock in at least a decade when his wife bought up to fifteen thousand dollars worth of shares of gilead sciences it's a pharma stock in early 2020 right after they started a clinical trial for remdesivir,

which is one of the COVID treatments that like Paul is on the Senate health committee. He disclosed the trade 16 months late. The fact that he like that should get some sort of, I'm not saying criminal charge. There should be a huge fine. Well, they should be saying he's got to pay $200. You shouldn't have to, right. You shouldn't be able to reap the benefits of, right. There's no penalty that makes not breaking the rules worth it if a stockbroker did that they would go to jail the um yeah i mean i i like the blind trust thing like i i how it works exactly i don't know but for the most part traditionally it has been all right my lawyer is now in charge of this it's in a blind trust we've changed the ownership and we've kind of done it in a way

that i it's over but wink wink by the way i can call my lawyer anytime I want to find out what's going on with it. Here's the cheat. Like Richard Burr, right? He called his broker, dumped all his stocks right before the pandemic hit. Then he called his brother-in-law. Then his brother-in-law dumped all his stocks. So like-

Shouldn't be able to do that. Shady people shouldn't be able to do that. Bad people can get around this. And it's also worth noting that Chris Collins, a member of Congress from New York, maybe Jersey, whatever. He's a Republican. Went to jail for insider trading, was pardoned by Trump. So, you know, there's not a lot of people are taking this seriously enough. But I do think this is appalling to your average voter.

And by the way, is it? Let's see. What percentage of voters? What percentage of voters approve of members of Congress trading stocks? Ready? Five. Five percent. Seventy six percent. what percentage of voters approve of members of congress trading stocks ready five five percent 76 you're on the other side of a five percent issue one of them was nancy pelosi with a mustache unbelievable this is a poll by the convention of states i don't know what that is uh but it's the

most accurate poll i've ever heard 76 of americans think congress has an unfair edge in financial markets i mean, just look. I'm skeptical when anybody is like, I own individual stocks. I'm trading stocks. Like these are people with insider. Anyone. No, I am. No, no.

Anybody. I'm saying that like anybody outside of like the financial services industry, anybody who's not doing this for a living, like all of these, you know, there's all these ads all over television. You should be trading stocks. Everybody should be trading stocks. Everybody should move. Like people should be in fucking index funds. My money's under my mattress. Normal people should be in index funds. I mean,

I can like, look, one of the reasons Pelosi and her husband's portfolio has done really well in fairness to them is because a long time ago they bought like Amazon and Microsoft and Apple and stocks that have just ripped the last five, 10, 15 years. Right. So that's probably why they're beating the market. Again, but that's like long-term investing. When you're talking about trading call options or trading puts, that's gambling to me. And it is gambling. I think the point is, it's not

about public officials shouldn't be able to accumulate wealth or accumulate savings. It's that public officials should not have a fucking conflict of interest over between the money they're making and the the laws they're passing and and and the in the industries they're overseeing right like that's the the core of this even if you have a situation where members of congress are required to be in kind of funds that are kind of diversified so that they're not in any specific company too much whatever the rules would be even then you're

still having a situation where members of Congress are dependent on the stock market, right? And the stock market is not the economy, right? It is still a conflict of interest for members of Congress to care more about the stock market than they do about the economy as a whole. There's limits to what we can actually do without just having people with integrity in Congress. But the idea that even like, okay, over the last kind of decade, Nancy Pelosi and her husband have had a lot of money in tech stocks. There's also been a time when those companies have accumulated a great deal of power where we've been unable to find ways to regulate them successfully. That's a conflict of interest.

Even if it's even if you ban trading, even if you put things into blind trust, like that is a conflict of interest. It's like we're we're like wasting our breath. What articulate the downside? The members of Congress are sad that they can't. And by the way, the other thing too is it's like. They would say that, you know, this is. Please, yeah. I hate this.

I hate that. Let's hear it. Forget this. John Richard Burr. Forget the throat clearing clip. What's next? There's probably some argument that, and this is the conflict of interest stuff I think is, there's no, you know, that's the most egregious but like you want people in public service right you do you have to take a vow of

poverty to be in public service that's that's the bullshit that you get part of this part of the problem here though is an index and be fine well that's what that will love it was getting close to like you know no wealth no no no i wasn't saying that an index and or retirement and stuff like that i think i'm saying even that is a compromise. I think you want to design this in a way that you can build your retirement like normal people, but you can't be fucking trading stocks and making a lot of money,

especially with industries that you have something to do with as a public official. Yeah, the point, of course. The point is that even if you allow members of Congress to own mutual fund or index funds, that is still creating a kind of underlying conflict own mutual fund or index funds, that is still creating a kind of underlying conflict that we have to, that probably is something we have to accept. But like the piece of this about like, oh, they're going to have to plead poverty to go into

Congress. It's like the average wealth, the wealth of members of Congress has been growing year after year. And the number of super wealthy Congress, my people in Congress has been growing year after year after year. The average net worth is like 1.6 million, which is well over the average person. They're all doing fucking fine, especially the senators. I mean, the- Some people make the argument about staffers. That's another fucking story. These are fantastically rich senators, especially.

I just think that, look, okay, maybe there's challenges with the blind trust stuff. We can work through that. I mean, the current system just creates no penalty for breaking the rules over and over and over again. That is egregious. And I just think that people look at the way Congress polices itself through the ethics committee and see that it is utterly broken time and time again. Yeah, like we're talking about all these like mutual fund versus the average voter is looking at this and they're like, these people are fucking crooks.

I send them to Congress. I find out they're making a lot of money on the side. They're supposed to be working for me. They don't't do anything they haven't fixed any of these fucking problems and now they're saying that they want to keep trading stocks it fucking makes people mad like and i do think like look as the democratic parties we head into the midterms or anytime you want to draw the clearest cleanest possible line between a democratic party that uses its power to fight for everyone in a republican party that uses its power to fight for themselves and their rich friends. That's it, right? Like we cannot be a party of highly educated, affluent voters who are only progressive on social and racial issues. We can't be that party. We will

get killed. Right now, Kevin McCarthy is to the left of Nancy Pelosi on stock trading right now at this exact moment. It's a one look and it's slimy, but he knew, of course he was going to, so of course he was going to say that as soon as she made that comment kevin mccarthy jumped right on it she is the smartest she's one of the smartest most effective speakers in history this is a real blind spot and it's also frustrating because like listen she's she's had an amazing career she's probably retiring in the next two four six years right i mean she worth $114 million. This is not going to be a big personal sacrifice. But the reason I wanted to talk about this is because it might sound like a small issue is just one thing Nancy Pelosi said, but it's that larger point about the party being a party of

working people. And like, to a lesser extent, you saw this in the debate over salt, right? And which is like a tax cut that would go disproportionately to a lot of very wealthy people. I know, I know. Before we get all the comments, there's going to be some middle class people who would benefit from salt for sure. But like this, we just we have to remember our roots as a party of working people and act like it. And this is this is a this is a perfect issue to do that on. So they better pass the bill before the midterms yeah i mean like i it does sort of seem like um it does not matter what leadership

wants on this this train is coming yeah and she and like pelosi hasn't said that she's gonna opposes any of these bills or she's gonna try to block them yeah and i don't i don't know that at this point after all the furor that she will I mean, I guess part of this could be like feeling like you were being accused of doing something wrong in the moment in that answer and being defensive because you didn't and your husband's just good at his job or whatever. I don't know what it is.

But yes, if she were to come out and say, no, I will block this bill from passing, that would be a real problem. That would be a whole different level. I will wager a bet that she won't do that. Yeah. Now, excuse me. I have to restock my ice cream only freezer.

There you are. It's funny you started with the truffles. I thought we were going to get the ice cream. I forgot about the ice cream until now. I forgot about the ice cream. Well, just ensure we never get our calls returned by anyone in Congress. Good for us. Maybe some of the poor ones.

If you're poor. Let us know. Well, that's it. That's all we have for us. Maybe some of the poor ones. If you're poor, let us know. Well, that's it. That's all we have for today. Thank you to Martin Luther King III for joining us. I'm sorry I made

that joke about Nancy Pelosi right after an interview with Martin Luther King III. That's something that you're going to have to live with.

That's all we have. We'll talk to you guys later. Hot Save America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Kyle Sedlin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montooth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.