Pod Save America - "Stick to sports."

Episode Date: September 25, 2017

Trump starts a fight with two professional sports leagues, and Graham-Cassidy loses support. Then Axios' Jim VandeHei joins Jon, Jon, and Tommy to talk about covering Trump, and DeRay discusses what it means to take a knee.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, we will talk to the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Axios, Jim Vande Hei. And later, we'll talk to the host of Pod Save the People, Jerema Kesson. Other crooked shows this week, Pod Save the World, Karen Doddenfried. Do you want to try that?

Should I try that again? Nope. Tommy, take it away. Why don't you take it, Tommy? Yes. I'm going to talk to a Europe expert named Karen Doddenfried about the elections in Germany. Merkel wins!

And the rise of these scary right-wing parties. Not as good. Good news. Has that ever happened-wing parties. Not as good. Good news. Has that ever happened? Never mind. It's interesting. I mean, I think there's a lot of relief that Merkel pulled it out. But there's also some concern that some of these scary nationalist forces are increasing their presence in parliaments and in capitals across Europe.

So we're going to talk about those trends. Does the Merkel thing make you feel bad that Putin was only successful in influencing the outcome of our election and seemingly lost in France, lost in Germany? Germany and France. I mean, it shows, I think, a couple of things. It shows the need for a more resilient culture and a more politically bound together culture, but also that we were one two-step verification authorization and one Jim Comey letter away from probably pulling it out despite all that bullshit. But anyway. Also, nothing wakes people up to stopping Trump-like forces and seeing Donald Trump win in the United States.

Good point. That's true. John, who was on Love It or Leave It Friday? I want you guys to know that the reason he did it in that sort of forced way is that there was a cut you missed where he didn't do it at all. We had an awesome Love It or Leave It. No, we're leaving all this. We had an awesome Love It or Leave It. We, we're leaving all this. We had an awesome Love It or Leave It.

We had Norman Lear. We had Ed Helms. We had Melina Abdullah on Friday. It was an awesome show. We have a great show this week with Tony Goldwyn and Mark Maron. Yes. And Love It or Leave It is going on tour with Pod Tours America. Madison, D.C.

There's an L.A. podcast festival. And New York. We're adding another show, so go to crooked.com slash tour. Do we have to attend the Love It or Leave It shows when we're on tour, or can we go to the bar? You do have to attend it. Just curious.

I'm going to create a segment where you have to be on stage, so you fucking have to attend. Okay. Alright, gentlemen. On Friday night, Donald Trump was at a rally in Alabama to campaign for Senator Luther Strange. When, for reasons we may never know, he started to talk about the National Football League. First thing he did was complain about how the penalties for hard hits are ruining the game, in his words. This, of course, comes at a time when studies are showing a link between players getting concussions and developing degenerative brain disease.

Then he moved on from that, and Trump started talking about NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem, obviously referring to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began kneeling last season in order to protest police brutality and racial injustice. Here's what Trump said. Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He's fired. He's fired. In case we thought this was just a one-off, he then tweeted half a dozen or so times about the issue on Saturday and Sunday, saying players who kneeled during the anthem should be fired and that fans should boycott the NFL. Still tweeting about it this morning.

And, of course, Fox's entire Twitter feed is covered with it. Also on Saturday... In fact, they were like the genesis of the next iteration of this ongoing sports saga from the weekend, right? Yeah, so on Saturday, Trump saw a Fox & Friends segment about how Steph Curry didn't want to go to the White white house one of the most popular people on the planet on the planet which championships teams usually do they go to the white house and trump tweeted that the invitation was rescinded so uh in the matter of 24 hours he picked a fight with the nfl and the

nba last night trump said none of this had to do with race he's such an idiot idiot. Just a coincidence. What are your thoughts, guys? Tommy, what do you think? I think we should just start with the fact that it is really demoralizing and upsetting that the president doesn't care as much about police violence and the death of innocent African American civilians as he does about the conduct of NFL players. In fact, we know that he doesn't care at all because he goes to police rallies and encourages them to brutalize suspects. So that's important. With respect to Kaepernick, I just want to be honest. My initial gut reaction when Kaep first started kneeling wasn't, oh, that's so brave. It was, is he the right guy to do this? Is this the right way to protest? I worried the same sort of political punditry reaction that it might upset more people than it helped. Kapp was right.

I was wrong. And I think one of the reasons I was wrong is something you hear a lot, which is I think people feel like police brutality and discrimination. Yes, it's a problem. But isn't there a better way to protest it? Isn't there a better way to get attention? That's clearly wrong because police treatment of African-Americans has been a problem for decades and it hasn't been fixed and no one was talking about it and no one cared. And if Cap did a press conference and at the end politely raised this issue, it would never get covered.

But now he did what he did and he was a leader and he decided to kneel and the entire world is talking about this. So Trump's response was racial. It was pathetic. It was political hackery. He did it in front of a bunch of rabid right-wing Alabama Republicans where he talked about disrespecting our heritage. He said, they're not like us. Those people. It was very us and those people. It was, you know, we need to get to a place where we're stopping using these sort of tortured euphemisms about racism it was blatant

racism yes and uh all the more strange given that uh trump i've been told is focused like a laser on passing graham cassidy yeah so and north korea and the fact that the lights are out in puerto rico and you know people down there need help and there's there's a lot it was just barking that was leo and uh it was 100 leo yeah, it's purely racist in the Trump mindset. There is nothing worse than an ungrateful black person because white people earn things and black people are given things. And so we're not coming to the White House at his request, kneeling during the national anthem. These are signs of disrespect to the white owners and to the white people watching at home. And the other part of this is like, I wish these guys would protest when it was less disruptive and would draw less attention. Like, what are you guys talking about?

Like, I miss the good old days when people protested quietly at home. I want to go back to what Tommy said said because that was what I took away also. Protest is about making you feel uncomfortable. That is the point of protest. You protest to get more people to pay attention to an issue that's not getting enough attention and the way you do that is to...

We talk on this show all the time about how to break through. How do we break through the clutter? How do we break through the noise? Colin Kaepernick broke through the noise and broke through the clutter by kneeling during the national anthem. Yeah, and upsetting people. And this whole thing is like he wasn't – he's not protesting the flag. He's not protesting the anthem. He's protesting police.

Or our military. Or our military. He's protesting police violence. And the way to protest police – I mean we should say police killed nearly two unarmed black people per week in 2015. That is five times the rate of unarmed whites that were killed. And only 13 of 104 cases in 2015 resulted in an officer being charged with a crime. That is an issue that we have to discuss. And it is not being discussed.

It's not being discussed by our president. It doesn't come up in the media a lot. That's why there's Black Lives Matter activists in the streets. And that's why Colin Kaepernick did this last year. I mean, I think two things. One, consistently since Donald Trump became president, one of the only effective ways to take the microphone away from him has been through protests. That was true for the Women's March. That was true for the protests at the airport when he announced the Muslim ban.

That has been true for Colin Kaepernick and for protests in St. Louis. That protest is effective at taking the microphone. The second piece of this is, man, I do not – these just sort of smarmy, unctuous people with like, I support your right to protest. But can't you please consider not doing it at the expense of our soldiers? Army unctuous people with like, like, I support your right to protest. But can't you please consider not doing it at the expense of our soldiers? They're protesting the flag that people died for. You don't give a fucking shit. Donald Trump Jr.

All these conservatives bending over backwards to pretend that that's a position they have because they think it's effective. They think it's what they should be saying. It is completely ridiculous. It's completely ridiculous. I because they think it's effective. They think it's what they should be saying. It is completely ridiculous. It's completely ridiculous. I'm going to disagree. Yeah. I think you are well within your right to find kneeling during the anthem offensive to you. You're well on your right to oppose it. I agree with you that there are cynical people deploying the military as a cudgel to attack those doing it.

But I do think I think you have every right to disagree or agree with what's happening. I have no problem with people that have a sincere disagreement with kneeling during the national anthem because they don't like the signal it sends. I have no problem with that. My two problems are one conservative intellectuals pretending that that's their position because they think it's exactly what their base wants to hear. And my other problem is people pretending as if the military itself isn't divided on this issue. All weekend, you saw members of the military saying, don't use my name to say that this isn't right. You know, I support people's right to protest. That's why I joined the military. Or as a lot of people are pointing out on Twitter,

the military is filled with diverse people, many of whom themselves don't want to be subject to racial injustice. I mean, pulled over for fact, the military is more diverse as the country as a whole. And the fact that Donald Trump doesn't respect that or recognize that at all is a huge problem for the military. Donald Trump going around and attacking people and using racial animus and using racial grievance when we've got

hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people of color serving the country and are expected to do what he says is a huge problem. Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors, nailed this. He talked about when he read, we heard Trump calling them sons of bitches. He said, it crushed me because think of what they're protesting. They're protesting excessive police violence and racial inequality. Those are really good things to fight against.

Like that, that is, I think, the way we should be shifting the conversation. Others are trying to do what you said and like make it about something else. I think the challenge here again is when the president of the United States comes out and tries to silence free speech by saying Jamel Hill at ESPN should be fired for making comments about him or that Kaepernick or someone should be pulled off the field for protesting. That is completely inappropriate. Yeah. No, I think back to, and a bunch of people raised this over the weekend, when Obama was asked about this 2016, when Kaepernick was doing this for the first time,

and he said, he obviously has a right to do this. And I think people should, you know, wonder why he's doing this and, and talk about police brutality and police violence and think of how it must feel if you're someone whose, whose child was shot by a police officer, even though they weren't armed. And then, you know, people who are protesting should also think about the reservations that other folks have in the country who may say, well, you're kneeling during the national anthem

and doesn't disrespect soldiers and stuff like that. I think the job is when there are people who feel like that, our job is to say it wasn't about soldiers or the flag or about the national anthem. It's about taking a stand about police violence because it's not being covered. And that's the way to get it covered. I think you can have this honest conversation. Now, Donald Trump's not interested in this conversation at all. And like you said, a lot of these right-wing hacks that are going for this are just cynical.

They're not interested either. They're just the idea that like the idea that these people are like so torn up about this and not just scoring. And some have defended it, too. Yes. Some of them. And many of them are the ones who act like Ben Shapiro not being allowed to speak at Berkeley is the worst thing that's happening in the world right now. And while I agree that free speech on campuses is critical and it must be allowed, I think they should be

as vociferous in their defense of Colin Kaepernick. I think the broader problem is like, our culture has gotten to this weird place where we penalize people differently for political involvement. If you're a player, there is obviously a risk Republicans might dislike you if you're a Democrat or Republican, vice versa. But you're also now simply attacked for talking about politics in general players are told to stick to sports but no one tells the owners to stick to sports when they give a million dollars to donald trump's inauguration it's unfair it seems clearly racially biased can we also talk about donald trump is the last fucking person who should be talking about disrespecting our soldiers and our flag.

He attacked a fucking POW, John McCain, saying he likes war heroes who don't get shot down. He attacked the Khan family, parents of a fallen American. He accused US troops of stealing money from Iraq. Remember that? Defended Putin killing journalists and dissidents by saying, you think our country's so innocent and requested four fucking deferments in Vietnam,

including one for bone spurs. Also, many fine people among the Charlotte white nationalists who carried a Confederate flag, which was created to replace the American flag. Many fine people. Sons of bitches for kneeling during the anthem. Many fine people for carrying tiki torches

to promote white nationalism. So, yeah, I don't think this Trump guy is on the level on this issue. The jump to look at this from a political lens, I also think is toxic. I want you to go. Because just because something pulls badly in the moment doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do. There's a great piece in the Washington Post this weekend that talked about how the march on Washington didn't pull well. But leadership takes time to move people's opinions. And, like, the right decisions look obvious in hindsight.

But, you know, so let's not let's not talk about it from that perspective, because I guarantee you some polls going to come out and it's going to break down on very predictable racial and partisan lines. And that's OK. It doesn't mean it's wrong. It doesn't mean we're playing into Trump's hands or that he's playing nine dimensional chess. It's just the right thing to do. Yeah, the goal is not always to see how, like, an electoral victory or, like, a good polling result for your party, you know? And that's exactly, I mean, we had the same people that you would imagine when this happened. It was the same people during Charlottesville and the Confederate monument thing that said, well, I think Rich Lowry of the National Review said, this is an example of his gut political genius because he has lured democrats into this fight

where you know most most of america most fans you know don't think that kneeling is a good thing and yes there were some boos at uh the games yesterday when when players took a knee especially in boston yes i would also argue that donald trump even from the most base political standpoint fucked this up because he took what was a controversial issue and by sunday you had there were four the ap counted four players that took a knee during the first week of the nfl yesterday there was more than 130 okay there were owners who were owners that tommy just said who had given to donald trump's campaign locking arms with the players three teams three teams didn't even come out of the locker room for the national anthem including the titans and the steelers pittsburgh and tennessee not exactly

blue america so you had not that paris football team right not the paris you could tell the owners because they have literal monopoly man mustache so donald trump donald all donald that's it's like it's like player player player billionaire from a cartoon that's weird i think i think i saw scrooge mcduck on there is that the top hat token for monopoly that's weird glom gold owns a team no but he basically succeeded in uniting the entire NFL, players, coaches, and owners, and the NBA against him. I don't know if this was a great political move on Donald Trump's part either, aside from the fact that it was also morally repugnant. Well, you know, you catch more bees with honey. No, but yeah, he went too far and he brought all this sort of unity out of it.

He could have just – he could have with some tact exploited the division over the kneeling itself. But instead he turned it into a referendum on criticizing the players as people and their motivations and all the rest. And we can't view this in isolation because this comes after birtherism. It comes after attacking a judge simply for being Mexican-American and saying he couldn't rule fairly against you. Like there is a long list of things that would make people of color in this country understandably feel like the president is biased against them. And so we can't be like, oh, but that kneeling thing, that's dumb. That's wrong. We shouldn't pick that fight. Like it's a much bigger fight. Pfeiffer had, I thought, a really good point, which is, you know, it's not about

whether you ignore the culture fights that Donald Trump declares. It's just it's whether you win them. And I think this is a case where, you know, you guys are, you know, yeah, poll will come out, it'll show where, you know, not maybe, maybe not on the right side of the issue in the poll. But sometimes it's about being on the right side of a poll. And sometimes it's about the slow, steady process of changing the poll itself. Gay marriage did not pull very well for a very long time. And then all of a sudden, you know, minds start changing and then the polls change. Yeah, that Washington Post story that Tommy referenced. Poll from 1963, Gallup. Do you think this march on Washington is a good idea? 23% favorable, 60% unfavorable. That would be

the march of the I have a dream speech delivered by dr king have civil rights demonstrations helped or hurt black rights help 15 percent hurt 85 you know gandhi better be careful with this fasting thing there's a lot of food a lot of foodies out there who might be offended this is sort of it would be fun to cover like historic protests with the current media yeah punditry lens yeah it's the same lens the uh the the thing that i also was taking away from this is is this notion of like that they should stick to sports oh that why are they politicizing this what what is the politics of this and aren't they ungrateful well all of that is that is ridiculous but but on this notion of like oh politics doesn't belong on the field or you know this goes also goes to

conversations about whether like oh this you know this late night show shouldn't be political. That is politics. That is a form of politics. When you say that politics doesn't belong on the field, what you're saying is, A, this issue isn't big enough to disrupt this event, that the status quo ante in this country is not worth disrupting so that I can experience this the way I did before without having to think about politics. The question of whether these players kneel or not is not about whether or not this sport should be politicized. It's whether or not we have a problem that should disrupt day-to-day life. And what Colin Kaepernick has said is it is.

And you're welcome to say it's not. You're welcome to say I deserve this time with football that isn't interrupted by these difficult ideas. But that is the debate. And if you want to say that football or whatever, the Emmys or any cultural event doesn't belong in politics,

you're simply saying that things are okay enough that these questions shouldn't be raised. Also, I keep thinking about the incredible conversation that Rembrandt Brown had with Annamarie Cox about his piece that everyone should go read again, if you haven't already, about Colin Kaepernick and dealing with these issues. And at one point, Rem says, like, do you think I wouldn't rather be still writing fun pieces about sports than writing about this? Like, do you think it's fun to write these heavy pieces all the time? And I think about that with these NFL players

and they're like, oh, they're so ungrateful. They're paid all this money and now they're feeling oppressed. No, no. You don't think these guys would rather just go out and play the game?

You don't think there's risk for them to do what they're doing and get the criticism that they're doing? It is hard to go do this. What we do, like yell into the microphone every day,

this is pretty easy. This is the easiest. Taking a knee and getting the criticism and the threats that they're getting from a lot of people and getting booed by fans that's fucking hard to do that's not fun for them and all the money in the world doesn't make leave people immune from these problems like you know i don't know any professional athletes names so but but one very famous athlete was pulled over was arrested and had a had a a knee put in his back for absolutely no reason because he was black. Michael Bennett.

Michael Bennett. And then you have – these problems don't stop existing just because these guys made it in this sport. When you get rich and successful, you're told that you're spoiled and that you need to pipe down and enjoy it. What's so frustrating about this is every president makes polarizing decisions, sort of the nature of the job, but you get to decide how you talk about that. And Barack Obama, despite bending over backwards to the point where some African-Americans criticized him

for being, you know, trying too hard to see the good in people. Not saying enough about Ferguson. He was called the most divisive president since slavery by a congressman named mo brooks who's some prick from alabama but trump is actively inflaming these tensions like he sees something critical about steph curry on fox and friends and decides to make it a global debate he didn't get a question at a press conference no he was sitting homeed him off. No, he was sitting home, bitter by himself. Do we not have enough fucking problems?

Is America short on things to argue about on television? North Korea, Puerto Rico. Healthcare. Tax reform. I'm watching these breaking news alerts come in that we're flying B-1 bombers around off the coast of North Korea and they're threatening to annihilate us

and saying this is making the threat of hitting us with a missile more likely to happen. And it's like temperament is so important. We need off-ramps for these things. We have these two idiot bullies facing down each other, and neither of them will give an inch. It's just – it is so much more dangerous than i think anyone gives it credit for in the public debate that's why it's dangerous there really is a need to separate these issues which get conflated in all the coverage which is there's a legitimate debate to be had about protesting and the value of protesting in the most effective way and who's uncomfortable and who's not stuff like

that and then there's everything that trump did this weekend, which is fucking unconscionable on so many levels. And whatever side you're on, right? Like whatever side you're on in this debate, like what Trump did is so unacceptable for the president of the United States. It's not like he's some viewer home watching Kaepernick take a knee and saying, am I uncomfortable about that?

Is it the right way? He's the president of the United States and he's just, he has not figured out how to do the job at all. And when you're on the job, what you say matters and that your words have weight and can have consequences. He has not changed one bit. Not one bit. No predictions of change on the part of Donald Trump have ever been proven accurate. I also think this weekend will be a defining moment for Trump in that it captures perfectly every risk and problem associated with giving power to this person. Because while Donald Trump is stoking racial grievance,

because he's bored and because he thinks it helps him, or because he had a bad week on healthcare and maybe talked to his buddy Ben or something and got riled up, while he's stoking racial grievance and being a racist and then putting people on a television to defend him for doing that. There is a health care bill moving through the Senate that has not yet had a hearing that still has a chance of passing. There is a massive humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico that the president hasn't said a fucking word about. And brinksmanship between North Korea and Donald Trump continues to get worse because

Donald Trump does not have the temperament to do the job. Like, that is this administration. That was what we were afraid of. And maybe we were wrong about who was going to win. But we were so fucking right about Donald Trump. One last thought on this. I'm glad some of these owners like Bob Kraft are speaking out. But they're putting up statements with the words like you're disappointed.

It's like really? Yeah. You expected more? He let you down? Come on. It's like you got a grizzly bear as a pet and you come home and the couch is a mess. This is so beyond the pale.

Pay attention next time. Pay the fuck attention. Read some news stories. I do want to mention Puerto Rico quickly just before we move on to healthcare because it's not getting enough attention. Hurricanes Irma and then Maria have left the entire island of 3.5 million American citizens without power.

95% of the island's cell sites are also out of service. 13 people are dead. It is a catastrophe there. And they're saying it set them back 20 to 30 years. They still can't communicate with nine municipalities. Yeah. And they're not getting the help they need from the federal government quickly enough. Like you said, Donald Trump hasn't said anything.

If you want to give, globalgiving.org. There's also a number of other great charities. Jennifer Bendry of the HuffPost has a story where she lists out like five or six charities you can go to. So if you want to go help Puerto Rico, which please do, you should go and we'll tweet out that story. Healthcare. So here's the update.

Actually, this is going to be news to me. Well, you know because you talked about it on Love or Leave It. Oh, yeah. I thought it might be a new update. So McCain's against update. Actually, this is going to be news to me. Well, you know, because you talked about it on Love or Leave. Oh, yeah. I thought it might be a new update. So McCain's against. He's a no. And that is because he's pissed about the process, which can't be fixed by the end of the week. So it doesn't seem like there's any getting McCain. That's one no. Remember, we need three. Rand Paul over the weekend said he'd only be for it if they cut the block grants in half, which means it wouldn't be Graham Cassidy. And this morning, they made tweaks to the bill late last night,

and so this morning Paul's spokesman came out and said the tweaks were not satisfactory to Rand Paul. He is still a no. That's two. And then yesterday on the Sunday shows, Colin said it is hard, Susan Collins said it is hard for her to envision a scenario where she'd vote for it. I think she wants to wait for the CBO score to make it official so she can say, I don't make decisions without the CBO score. That seems smart. I mean, at what point are they just going to paperclip like a hundred dollar bill to the

thing and hand it to these senators? That's what they're doing to Murkowski. The efforts to buy them off are so blatant. Yeah, they really are now. It's actually even simpler than the calculus for the last few versions of this bill because it's now so clearly about the numbers. They released this new kind of tweaked version. And of course, you go look and they had this sort of which states win and which states lose. A lot of states lose a lot of money,

but of course, they kind of adjusted it just enough to make sure that... Tommy described the tweaked version perfectly. It is just... They basically... They stapled the $100 bill to a piece of paper and they handed it to Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, and John McCain because those are the states that get

And Maine. And Maine. And Maine. Those are the states that get a little more money, although there's some controversy about how much money they actually get. They sort of like, they kind of fuzzed it up on paper. Right, because it's a new map. Net versus Obamacare is still likely to be the answer. They're hoping to confuse people, which is what they've done the whole process. Yeah, so they're trying to confuse people.

They're trying to buy off these four senators, but like, there really is no way around this. If you want to get Rand Paul, you have to make it less generous. If you make it less generous, you lose Collins and Murkowski. So they really are trapped once again in this position between there's not a way to make the bill both vicious enough and generous enough to pass. Yeah, and one thing that's important that they did during the tweaks is they actually made the protections for pre-existing conditions even weaker. So you used to be able to, if you were a state and you wanted to get rid of, if you wanted to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, you would have to apply for a waiver from the federal government. Now you just have to file a notice.

And in the notice, you have to basically come up with a reason of why your health care is still affordable. But no one really has to check that. No one has to sign off on it. So you say oh i have a high risk pool that covers five people and they'd be like yeah it doesn't matter go do whatever you want to do charge people found a wall charge people with cancer whatever you want to charge for their chemotherapy we don't care it's like if you found a wallet with a couple hundred dollars in it at like a coffee shop you have to go is this anybody's is this anybody that's not okay i'm gonna take this it's so weird that they're continuing this process without seemingly any real hope and just being increasingly like they used to be kind of subtle about their cynicism and their efforts to just, you know, destroy Obamacare and buy off senators.

Now they're just talking about it publicly. But then Politico this morning excerpted a piece from the Post and Courier, which is a South Carolina paper about how Lindsey Graham has just been loving life in the spotlight during this bill. Like one time he was talking to Pence and then Pence gotence got a call it was like what the fuck is this he's having a great time like that that's what we're reporting on yeah so bizarre it is very bizarre and i don't you're right i don't know why they're continuing to move forward at this point which is i know why everyone's still nervous and the bill is very much alive it's not dead yet no one should celebrate trumpcare10.org crooked go there there's there's like hundreds and hundreds of people in line for the senate finance committee hearing today snaking around the dirksen building which is really

hopeful to see well it's important you know it's a six of the economy so you got to talk about it for at least uh two hours right right um but so i think the fact that they're continuing to push forward is what makes everyone nervous like they they're going to buy someone off. And they could, so stay vigilant. But I think things look better than they have. The reason we're nervous is because we live in a world where these people do not play by, forget like the new rules. There's no sense of any decorum or any sense of adhering to what they said in the past. They're not afraid of buyoffs.

They're not afraid of changing the bill completely. So we don't know what they're saying behind closed doors and and we don't know what they'd be willing to do to get something through and so we should be nervous because we can't trust them at all to not just change their ran paul changes his mind he does it all the time but it's sick to sports sick to sports okay when we come back we will talk talk to Axios' Jim VandeHei. On the pod today, we have the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Axios, Jim VandeHei. Welcome to the pod, Jim. Great to be here.

So, Jim, it's love it. We just want to kick it off with two questions. One, how do you pronounce the name of your news organization? There's been some fierce debate on our side. I don't want to color this issue with my bias. How do you say it? I say it with my Wisconsin accent is Axios.com. I will say for the Greeks in the audience, I do believe it's pronounced axios. And most have gone with the axios despite my better efforts.

It makes a lot of sense. Okay. This is helpful. So do you have any desire to solve that issue and have everybody say it one way? As long as they're talking about axios, that's all I really care about. And actually, we love the name because in Greek it means worthy. And we really do set out to try to be worthy of your time and attention. Really regret letting you get that in. Oh, come on.

Come on. You know how hard it is to name a stinking company these days? We're cutting it. We did a lot. Now, this weekend there was a bit of a dispute between Sean Spicer and Mike Allen. It seems to have been resolved. But why did Sean Spicer threaten to call the police on Mike Allen? Has he been stalking Sean?

Has he been outside in the bushes? What's going on there? I don't think Mike Allen's a stalker. Listen, Spicer's not had a great run this year, and he certainly hasn't gotten great coverage. And I think he got out of the White House, and he's hoping to get a big speaking gig and get on network TV, and things haven't broken his way. My guess is in the moment, like, we get worked up, he was clearly agitated that Mike was about to do an item that he didn't like, and he sent a text that he clearly regretted. I can confirm that few people send more thoroughly polite emails than Mike Allen. He is. Like, I could see sending it to me or calling the cops against me, but a Mikey? Yeah, wrong guy. Donald Trump has fairly, in my opinion, received his fair share of bad press

over the last nine months. I think that's been due to lack of success, things he's said, things he's tweeted. Given how much of the coverage has been negative, is there pressure for news organizations to balance that out with positive pieces that ultimately might reflect more wishful thinking or spin from administration officials than the reality of what is or will happen? I'd say if anything, there's pressure to pile on the president. If you just look at the dynamics on Twitter and look at the dynamics at most media companies, I'd say for us, we really try our darndest to explain him. Like, why is he doing what he's doing? Even if the world thinks it's insane, at least get inside his head, his staff's head, and try to walk people through what are they doing? Why are they doing it? I will say the

complication is, and you saw it this past weekend, that he's a rolling ball of improvisation, that almost always there's not really a method to the madness. So explaining him, even when you have better visibility into this White House than we've probably ever had into a White House, because everybody, unlike the White House, you guys worked in, everybody leaks. So you do have visibility. But because he operates on his own after hours and does things that make his own staff cringe, helping people understand why he does what he does is harder than it would have been with past presidents. So, yeah, I mean, as you just said, you guys are incredibly well sourced in the White House. You know, Mike knows everyone. Jonathan Swan talks to Steve Bannon a lot. It just it seems like the.

You mean someone close to the White House? It used to be someone in the like the – You mean someone close to the White House. There used to be someone in the White House. Now he's close to the White House. No, but I mean – so you mentioned that Trump is improvisational obviously. It also seems like there's a particular problem with this White House and that the staffers in the White House lie to reporters often. I mean there was a Politico story where they were all bragging about how they lie to reporters often. I mean, there was a Politico story where they were all bragging about how they lie to reporters. How do you guys decide when it's okay to give background cover to White House

staffers who've been known to lie, who might be trying to push their own agenda versus what Trump's actually thinking? Listen, it's art, not science, right? You're basically trying to make an appraisal of the quality of the source, the proximity to the information and their track record in dealing with them. Like Swan and Mikey, I'd argue other than Maggie Haberman, there's no two people who are more wired into this White House and the people that matter and the people who make decisions and the couple that are trustworthy month in and month out to try to be able to figure out what they're doing. It is true. There definitely are elements or have been elements in the White House that are just out there to push things to stir up mischief. And you've got all these people who are hyper worried about whether or not they're going to have a job a week or two from now who have personal agendas in a way that you didn't really see with the Obama White House or the Bush White House. There's basically, it was just everyone was there for the president.

They were clearly there in service of the president. One of the darndest things about this White House, in talking to staff, very few people on background, on the record, really try to defend him or even say that they're passionately pro-Trump. Most of them would say, geez, I'm in there because I'm doing this for the good of the country. Yeah, boy, I'm cringing too when I see the things that he does. And so it's the dynamic. Words can't explain how weird this dynamic is compared to every other White House that

I've had the luxury of covering or writing about or thinking about. And it does go to him because everything flows from him. He doesn't care if people leak. Could you imagine President Obama not caring if you actively leak stuff that doesn't even help your agenda or help your personal standing? The only time you get in trouble is if you do what Bannon did and make yourself bigger than the big guy. When that happens, you get kneecapped and you end up back at Breitbart. What a cushy landing,. So, you know, I feel like this idea of how things are playing for Trump comes across in what you cover in part because you are reporting

on what people inside the White House are saying, and that's what they're paying attention to. This weekend, Steve Mnookin went on the Sunday shows and, you know, continued his sort of path of being the least likable part of the administration. But he went and he, you know, continued his sort of path of being the least likable part of the administration. But he went and he, you know, defended the president, defended what he was saying about the NFL. And what was written up in Axios, Axios, was that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin passed Trump's loyalty test with flying colors. And then it said, be smart.

Could you ever imagine Gary Cohn defending Trump like Mnookin does at every turn? Of course not. So do you worry at all that taking things from the perspective of one person, Trump himself, leaves less room to cover the actual substance of what's going on here, which is someone going on television and doing Trump's bidding or someone refusing to criticize the president when he defends white supremacists? Do you have any fear that that is crowding out the actual substance and stakes of these issues? I don't because I think, listen, you're getting a ton of visibility through us,

through others about what they're doing and the consequences of what they're doing and the substance where there is substance. I mean, you speak of substance. I mean, one of the things that strikes me about this presidency so far, for all of his radical talk and his radical behavior, there hasn't been a lot done of substance. There isn't a lot of stuff to sort through or the stuff that they try to do substantively is done at the last second, like the health care bill, where now you are scrambling all weekend trying to make sense of a vote that might happen today. But I don't. I mean, at the end of the day, listen, you guys are in the business of you have a partisan viewpoint. You have a crowd that's expecting a certain thing. Like our business is how do we help people who want to get smarter the closest approximation of the truth so that you can illuminate something that is profound or something that's meaningful that people should be aware of.

And we obsess about this because, damn it, the world's getting so much more complicated. It doesn't necessarily just need more noise. It needs more understanding of how do we make sense of all these worlds that are colliding in real time, technology, social media, politics, colliding in ways that have consequences that were undreamable five or 10 years ago. And I think that's a void that we try to fill. And I think most news organizations that are trying to get to the closest approximation of the truth, they're doing a pretty good job. Like people, there's a lot of good reporting going on. There's a lot of crap out there. But most of that crap is being

now identified as crap. And people hopefully over time will figure out what they can trust and what they can't trust. of a new political party headed by Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and Mike Bloomberg. Do you worry at all that your own political views, your kind of partisan centrism filters into the way Axios covers things? I mean, why is advocating for a new third party that falls between the two parties not just as dangerous a form of bias? One, I don't know that I would agree with your assessment of like what my politics are. And two, when I wrote the piece, it was a piece in the Wall Street Journal looking at the need for something different. Like what Donald Trump did get right is the system right now doesn't work. You guys lived here. The way that the two parties are built, the way that Congress has been sort of bastardized because you only get hyper partispartisans for the most part on both sides, and it gets really difficult to get anything done in the House. The system, to me, needed a shock. It needed something different, just for the dynamic. Then you think about the policies.

Both parties, and I'd say this is on both parties, they spend a lot of time talking about, to me, small ball things, trivial things that aren't actually going to be definitional to how the hell do we position this country over the next decade to take advantages of all the opportunities that are out there and deal with the fact that everything is changing 10 times faster than most of us are capable of keeping up with. So when you think about what government should be dealing with, how are we going to deal with drones and driving cars and cybersecurity and the fact that we're not going to have heavy artillery moving around, but we're going to be killing people in four or five different countries using drones at any point that was true under your administration, true under this administration. And to me,

the point of that piece was there's a disconnect between the issues that actually matter and what the parties traditionally have been attacking. And so I think that's where part of Trump's appeal and the reason that he never dips below 35% is that there is a group of people out there that maybe it's intuitive, maybe it's political, maybe it's just emotional. They've just had it with the way things work. They've had it with big media, big partisan, big business, and they wanted something different. And that's why I laugh when people talk about polls. He's never going above 45. He's never going below 35. He has done every single thing you could to insult almost every group of people in this country other than straight white Christian men.

And he still never falls below 35 percent because they're with him. They like it. They like the stuff he did over the weekend no matter how crazy it seems and what a distraction it is. To push you on the drones piece, because I mean, look, I think everyone agrees with you that there have been times when both parties have not served their voters well. But I do think there's sort of like a both sides-ism that is dangerous. And in that op-ed, you talk about, you know, encouraging candidates to like exploit the fear factor and build on death by drones by talking about these modern weapon systems with muscular language because there's a new market for nuance in the terror debate.

I mean, that to me feels like incredibly cynical political advice that is actually going to get us to much worse governance or much less thoughtful approaches on terrorism. So I'm just like, I'm wondering how that advice jives with the need to fix what you think is a broken party system. Listen, the point on national security, think about the national security debates that we have. Whether you're dealing with al-Qaeda that then metastasizes into ISIS, which will metastasize into something else, whether we want to think it or not, there's never going to be a moment in the rest of our lifetime where there's not the chance that someone's going to do something catastrophic

with some kind of nuclear arms or some kind of other terrorist attack. And yet we still approach these debates in Washington in a pretty conventional way, whereas you have to figure out a way for this city to be able to adapt to all these different places that can come at us with all this different weaponry and all these different ways that our country was just never, we're not, the government's not set up to react to cyber threats. Like we can't even recruit the best tech talent to come and figure out how do we protect our own systems, much less exploit others. And so the point there was making sure that you get the public to pay attention, that you have to think differently about these, think differently about the nature of threat, and then how do you deal with it?

Now, so Jim, you talked about, and rightly so, how one of the big problems with parties right now is that, you know, too much of what's discussed in Washington is trivial and not what really matters. And I wonder because, you know, we try to figure this out all the time here at Crooked Media is how to talk about and determine what actually matters to people. And to the extent that I'm critical of you guys it's not because like i want you guys to be harder on trump or more liberal or it has nothing to do with like the ideological spectrum it's more i'm wondering you know are you covering or are you letting readers

know what's most important so like you know back in january the day after trump institutes the travel ban and there's like hundreds and hundreds of people stranded at airports and detained and everything's going crazy, I like opened up Axios and the one big thing was Trump skips the alfalfa dinner. And that's not just a criticism of you guys. I think a lot of media in Washington does that. And I'm just wondering how you guys make those decisions. Yeah. I mean, I would say like, listen, I'm not going to lie and say, I listen to your show every day, but I listened to it enough and I hear from others and I just don't agree with your critique. I think what you guys do is you'll take one item. I mean, Mike writes every single day of the week,

10 items, seven days a week. When he did it at political, he missed five days in a decade. It's incredible. There's nobody who's producing more content than he does Politico, he missed five days in a decade. It's incredible. There's nobody who's producing more content than he does. Like, is he going to get a headline wrong or a news judgment wrong once in a while? Yes. I would argue that his AM newsletter is the smartest, most comprehensive, thoughtful thing that I've seen written in my 20 years in Washington, day in and day out. The amount of work that he puts into it, how thoughtful he is about it, how smart and analytical he is about it. So yes, can you find stuff to whine about or to nitpick? Like, absolutely. But the totality of his work, the audience that it's captured, to me, it's humbling to watch it. I think he's just a force of nature. And so are we going to get everything

right? Like, no, my God, we're doing 50, 60 items a day across science and technology and business and future work. But do we hire people who are committed to trying to find out things, illuminate things, explain things, analyze things that are useful to people who care about serious news and aren't just in it for the food fight of it? Like, absolutely. So like, I don't, I've never, you guys have known us long enough, like, I don't get that worked up when we get critique. Like, as long as, I think anybody who looks at Axios day in and day out would say, you know what, those guys are pretty smart. They really try hard to help me understand what's happening with all these cross currents and technology and politics and media trends in business. And I think even the times I've

listened to your show, there's been many times you're talking about the coverage in positive light. So yes, are we going to make mistakes? Sure. Every news organization is. No, look, I think there's like fewer people who work harder in journalism than Mike Allen. I think he's incredibly impressive. And like I said, you guys are incredibly well-sourced. I think you do outstanding reporting. Your healthcare reporters I follow constantly because I'm a nerd on that issue it's less about making mistakes we make mistakes all the fucking time here i don't we said hillary was gonna win love it yeah exactly i've never made my question is more like actually every morning how do you guys decide and i know mike does but i know that you must too and everyone at axios does how decide, like, these are the stories that matter. This is what people need to know.

Is it more based on here's what the Trump administration is thinking and what they are trying to get across today? Is it what's going on in Washington? Are you trying to reach readers outside of Washington? I'm just wondering what the mindset is and, like, how you guys make those decisions. Yeah, no, it's a good question. I mean, most of it is reporter-led. Like, if you think about how we hire, we hired a scientist to do science. We hired Dan Primack, who probably understands tech deals

better than anybody else to do tech deals. We hired David Nather to do the healthcare coverage that you're reading. Sarah Fisher, who's worked on the business and the editorial side of media to talk about media trends. And so we leave it to reporters to tell us what are the most important topics that people should be aware of that they might not be paying attention to, or what is a unique frame for us to be able to help people understand how that fits into the broader coverage of said topic. And so politics, obviously Trump, like for better or worse, like Trump is the tech story. He is the media story. Hell, this weekend, he's a sports story. I just want to watch my Packers. I don't want to listen to a political debate about whether or not someone's going to do something on the field.

I just want to see if A-Rod could beat the Bengals in overtime, which he did. And so Trump ends up dominating that. But over time, we see this company as being all aimed at those big topics that anybody who's a smart daily consumer of serious news should care about. And politics is a lot of that, but I'm telling you, technology, science, robotics, artificial intelligence, media trends, how are people consuming and disseminating information? Okay, you're doing too much branding. You're doing too much branding. We're not letting it go on. It's not branding because it's a totality of those issues. You guys fixate on the politics, but it's a totality of those issues that are going to be uh the things that are going to define business

and politics and culture so let's talk a little about the totality issues because you guys actually had a great piece this morning by kim hart that looked at economic dislocation and it helped me think through my critique of axios because it's a great report that's found that economic prosperity is concentrated in america's elite zip, but economic stability outside of those communities rapidly deteriorating. I think it's an impressive bit of reporting that looks at some pretty important issues that have a huge impact on people's lives. But then I open up and I see your reporting on tax reform. And you say that most Democrats have already drawn a red line on tax reform, 45 out of 48 Democrats signed a letter saying they wouldn't support any tax bill that adds

to the deficit. And then you said Republicans are desperate for a win, appear on course to fund tax cuts with a blend of deficit spending and closing of loopholes. I see that. And then I go back to the Kim Hart piece. And I see that what the description in, I think, this morning's Axios was, was be smart. This isn't a Republican or Democratic problem. At every level of government,

both parties represent distressed areas. Economic fortunes haven't have widened, and it's not addressed by policy proposals from either side. Now, from our point of view, as partisans, we say, yeah, Democrats haven't had all the answers, but Democrats are getting behind a single payer bill. And we're desperately trying to stop cuts to healthcare, while Republicans are trying to cut taxes for people who have done better than anyone else in this economy. And my fundamental critique of Axios is you have the best access, and you have great reporting, but the stakes of these issues does not come across in your reporting because you're worried about seeming even-handed without analyzing the actual impact of these proposals. I mean, what is your- You guys get too hyperventilating too much

about the even-handedness. You think that we and other reporters sit there, oh my gosh, we just want both sides. I think we're so fair. That's not how it works. You're basically trying to explain what are people doing and what are the consequences best you can tell in real time versus that. So it's not about the even-handedness. Why do we do the Kim Hart piece? Because people simplify things too much. Oh, it's just income inequality. It's part of a much, much bigger set of trends. You're going to have education inequality, location inequality,

which was pointed out in that piece, you know, where and how you're raised inequality and whether or not you get to go to the schools that then give the advantage to people like us who got to go to good schools and then you're off to the races. And so pointing those things out, that's one bucket. That's important. Tax reform, we're trying to explain. Like Swan over the weekend exclusively found out what are the details of the tax plan.

We try to get them out there, help people to understand what are Republicans doing, why are they doing, and is this thing going to get done or not get done. Can you get every angle? Therefore, it'll affect this part of society, that part of society, right? No, but you can get the best information out there possible, and hopefully people find it super useful. If they do, then they read it, they react to it, and they talk about it on their podcast. But taken as a whole, right? I understand that you guys are keeping it short. I appreciate that. I enjoy when I read a piece that it's not very long. But taken as a whole, the covering of the gamesmanship as helping to understand what's going on between the players in Washington doesn't leave a lot of room for the stakes. And what I would argue is one of the contributions to the fact that both parties have failed to answer these questions is that political coverage and policy coverage, there's a big wall between them.

Climate change was another example. As Trump was pulling out of Paris, Jonathan Swan, who, again, is a great reporter, covers it by saying, why does this matter? Well, it matters because he's undoing Obama's proposal. It's a win for Trump. It's a defeat for Democrats. But of course, why it matters is how it actually affects the planet. And do you not see any problem in the assumption that being smart means you already know the consequences, that the consequences aren't important enough actually affects the planet. And do you not see any problem in the assumption that being smart means you already know the consequences, that the consequences aren't important enough to be mentioned in the coverage of the politics? I get your critique, and I've heard versions of

the critique for the last 10 years. You've heard it from me with some wine. I had wine in my hand, so I'm doing better today than that time. With Rob Reiner or something. It was a good argument to have, as you know from that night when I had my own gin in me and talked about it. Yes, sure, could you look at it from a different angle? Could you take a be smart and do 20 different versions of it? Absolutely. Are we always going to get it right when we say why it matters or be smart or what you should think about next? Like, no, we're not always going to satisfy you, but you have to look at it in totality.

Like, do you walk away better educated, better informed, and better equipped to make better decisions because of the content that we're providing? If you answer yes, you will read it. You will read it, and ultimately you'll become addicted to it. If we don't satisfy that need, if we don't satisfy that illumination, then we don't have a company. We don't have a business. And so, yes, like every day you're trying to perfect the formula. I read it every morning. I think it's a great consolidation of the most important stuff I need to read every day. And it's a great product. I think what we're wrestling with, what hopefully the entire media establishment is wrestling with, is after this election where the issues at stake and the policies got so little attention and the sort of gamesmanship and the sport of the cut and thrust of Trump versus Hillary on a day-to-day basis got so much more emphasis.

How do we fix that? How do we try to get back to a place where we're talking about the stakes of an election or an issue as much as we're talking about the sort of day-to-day cut and thrust in Washington. I don't know that we've perfected that balance here on Pod Save America. I also read the paper in the morning, and I worry that the broader media has not learned its lesson from that. But I don't know how you guys view that or how you view the lessons from 2016. Listen, I view the lesson that the public doesn't trust anybody and certainly doesn't trust the media and that the only way you earn people's trust is by doing your damnedest to get it right

and to be able to illuminate stuff that's important to them. Like what you guys are doing, you guys sat back and I've kissed Axie's ass. I'll kiss yours for a second. You guys sat there and you saw a market opening that basically there was a need for liberal information, liberal analysis, and then liberal activation. And you filled it really fast, right? Because technology allows things to happen faster than ever before. So now you have a platform where you can help do the dimension that you say the mainstream media is not doing. When you think about a person's media diet, it's not just like straight news and information that you would get from Axios, but it's that combined with what you're hearing socially, sort of verbally, but also in your social network. Then also from the partisan perspectives, including you guys.

So that void gets partly filled by you. big meta lessons that the media should learn is that it's the same lesson we keep learning over and over. It's like, try your best to drop the biases and just try to figure out what's going on and try to explain these things. And if you get something wrong, admit that you got it wrong. We're not perfect. And if you come at it and you have a certain bias, like don't sit there on Twitter, like blasting it for everybody to hear so that the people who might otherwise trust you don't trust you. We have a different role than you have. Both are important. I'm not saying mine's bigger or better than yours or yours is bigger or better than mine.

But we both do. And the right, by the way, like I wish the right had a pod save America. right-wing conservatives who understood how to use social media to engage in a thoughtful debate that's not just about burning things down, but about illuminating. And if you had those three things operating in synchronicity, or at least in chorus, then I think people will be able to make the decisions that they need to be able to make. They'll be able to sort through it all. Jim VandeHei, thank you for coming on. We appreciate it. Good luck, guys. Come back again. Give our best to the Committee to Save America.

Will do. Be nice to Axios, by the way. We're pretty nice. We have all my people in our shop. They listen to you guys all the time. They're like, oh, the pod guys are mad at you guys. You gotta love Axios. It sounds like what we're doing is really working to influence your coverage.

We'll continue to do exactly what we're doing. You guys are doing your coverage. We'll continue to do exactly what we're doing. You guys are doing great work. Please say hi to the team. We could not do our jobs without you guys informing us. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Take care, Jim. On the pod today, we're talking to the host of Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson.

How's it going, DeRay? It's good, it's good. I'm at the final meeting of the DNC transition team today. I'm on the transition team, and hopefully the plan rolls out soon. And everything's fixed. Have you guys fixed everything? My hope is that you guys help transition to a party that wins elections. Is that the goal

you know i'm one of many people on this team but i think that that is one of the goals good good good eyes on the prize there um okay so we've been talking a lot on the show today about the nfl and trump what were your thoughts watching this unfold you know i mean at the end of the day on sunday suddenly you, there were quite a few more players taking a knee than before Trump's outburst. But of course, we also had to deal with Trump's outburst. So what are your thoughts on how this all shook out? Yeah, it's important to remember why Colin decided not to stand. He decided not to stand because of the deep injustices in the country and specifically because of police violence. And I worry that in the past couple of days, people have been more frustrated with Trump

than the actual inequity that caused Colin not to stand. And that bothers me a little bit. You know, I'm reminded, too, that all these all these owners, it's in all these statements. They are also seeming refusing to meet with Colin and to hire him. So while it's like a beautiful, symbolic gesture to say you stand with your teams, Collins is simply being blackballed by the NFL right now for standing up for stuff that's pretty obvious. Collins, it's not a radical statement to say the police shouldn't kill people.

It's not a radical statement to acknowledge the wrongdoing that this country has done to marginalized people and say we should fix them, and I don't want us to lose sight of that. So, see this argument over the weekend from some conservatives, which is that, oh, they should leave football alone. Don't bring politics onto the field. What's your reaction to that? Yeah, you know, we live in a political world and we think about the NFL, which is like 70, 75 percent black people who are implicated in these larger

social issues. They should be able to talk about those issues wherever they are, whether it's on the field, the locker room, in their home. Like, the NFL doesn't get to dictate where they talk about these issues. And I believe that. I think Colin believes that. I think that so many people believe that. I do think that people are afraid, though, right, of losing their career or their contract or whatever, being sort of sidelined like Colin has been.

But I think that that is some of the risk of what it means to stand up. Dre, you've been a leader of the movement since Ferguson. How important do you think what Colin decided to do has been in the evolution of that movement since you guys started protesting? Yeah, I think this is like one of many things, right? That it was important that people put their bodies on the line at the beginning and stayed in the streets. And it's sad that people are still in the street all around the country, even in St. Louis at this moment, with an even more violent police force and incompetent leadership than when the protest started. You know, I've talked to Colin a couple of times, and every time I talk to Colin, I'm reminded that he understood the risk, that he still wants to play,

that he trained five days a week to make sure that he can be hired at any moment. And he also knows that he lives in a country that just isn't meeting its obligations to people. And all of those things can be true. So I think this is an important moment because it's these moments that people, that cause people to sort of think about where they stand in the fight. We know that it takes so much more, though, to change the system and structure. So I'm hoping that Colin's actions will help bring more people into the conversation so we can then get to changing systems and structures.

What do you guys think about it? Yeah, I mean, I was going to ask you, this is sort of an organizing question. I mean, I agree with you that as I was watching all the coverage unfold over the weekend, I was like, all right, now we have a lot of talk about Trump, as usual, a ton of talk now about the NFL, about taking a knee, about whether it's patriotic or not and all that kind of stuff and the issue that colin knelt for which is police violence was raised not too many times in any of the coverage over the weekend and as an organizer as someone who's trying to you know put together a movement how do you do something like take a symbolic gesture, which is what Kaepernick made, and turn that into information about the injustice itself that's actually reaching ordinary Americans?

I think that some people are starting to do that. I think that one of the hard things is some of the people with the biggest platforms, they just don't know the issues as well, or they don't think that they know the issues. So the symbol becomes an easier way for them to enter into it. You talk to them offline and they get it, but they're worried about making a mistake in public. So some of this work is on making sure that we give them the language so they know how to make an impact in a way that makes sense. The other thing, though, is highlighting the work that is happening. So, like, I just was in Austin yesterday, and there are incredible activists there who are working to change the police union contract, because that contract gives police officers a wild set

of protections that no other citizen gets. So, there, in Austin, like, if a police officer charges something, then they get access to all the interrogation information, essentially all the evidence, before they write a statement, right? And that's like built into the contract. And if you file a complaint against the police officer in Austin, you only have 180 days from the incident to file a complaint. And if it's past 180 days, then like, it doesn't really count. And it's those sort of things that there are people working on those issues. And in moments like this, we should lift those issues up so that people understand that this is a broader fight.

This is not about a flag. This wasn't about Trump. This is about a set of deep issues about inequity. Who's on the show this week? We have Evan, this incredible writer and expert on North Korea. So we're talking about North Korea

and that is dope. And then we are talking about the news and there's another guest too that I'll make people listen to learn. But North Korea. I learned a lot about North Korea. I didn't realize I didn't know much about North Korea until I did this interview. Did you walk away more or less afraid of dying in a nuclear conflagration?

I walked away more frightened about Donald Trump's toying with the North Koreans and learning way more. I didn't know the story of how Dennis Rodman got to North Korea. I just didn't understand it. I didn't know. And then I learned that. So I learned a lot. Wild. The Korean War, all that stuff.

I just didn't know. And he really helped paint it in a way that was accessible. Excellent. So Posse to the People, new episode, drops Tuesday. Everyone tune in. And thanks again, DeRay, for stopping by. Good luck at the DNC. Don't forget to stick to sports.

And fix the party. See you guys later. Well, that's our episode. It's Lovett and Tommy because we forgot to do the outro when we were supposed to, and John's on some phone call dealing with some car registration nonsense we don't really know, but we just came in here to do it. We snuck in unchaperoned, and you know what? I think it's going great.

What else should we talk about? I don't know. I'm trying to think. What would John say now? Well, guys, I don't really have an impression. Was that your impression of John? I have no... He's so hard to do an impression of. We didn't even talk about today is all the people who had private email servers, despite making it the biggest political issue of our time

in the 2016 election. I can't. I can't. Jared Kushner, I just can't. Charlie Ivanka had some private email. I can't deal with these people. It's like, it's so frustrating because the email issue was not nearly as big a deal as everyone made it then. This isn't like some show-stopping story, but the hypocrisy and the fact that they just don't care.

Now we're just doing more show. Yeah. As long as the music's going, it's outro. Ooh, is there music on right now? There's been music this whole time. Love it. Love it. No we're just doing more show. Yeah. As long as the music's going, it's outro. Ooh, is there music on right now? It's been music this whole time. Love it.

Love it. No. Our music. Wrong show. Our Pod Save America music. Other show. I want new Pod Save

the World music. We're working on it. Cool. End of episode.