Pod Save America - Strait Up War Crimes

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

Donald Trump gives Iran until 8pm Tuesday night to "Open the Fuckin' Strait" or he'll level all of the country's power plants and bridges. In the meantime, he spends an hour in the White House briefing room congratulating himself for the rescue of the downed American airmen — spilling a bunch of sensitive details in the process. Jon, Lovett, and Tommy react to Trump's latest performance, his request for huge budget increases for defense and White House renovations, the latest with the mass deportation campaign, and why Trump decided to do California Democrats a huge favor by endorsing in the governor's race. Then, Rep. Sarah McBride stops by the studio to talk with Lovett about how Democrats should approach the Iran war debate, and why her Republican colleagues are so addicted to going viral.

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an exclusive discount for our listeners right now. You can get 50% off your new system by visiting Simplysafe.com slash cricket. That's half off at Simplisave.com slash crooked. There's no safe like Simply Save. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Fabro. I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy.

I'm Tommy. Welcome back, Tommy. Great to be here. I missed you guys. You didn't miss much. Ooh, man, a lot of weird stuff happened. Were you able to unplug a little bit from the news? I unplugged, but not from my 3,000 C, boobs that I travel with everywhere.

Really tough that you missed. I was thinking about you. Isn't that a weird? Is that a weird thing? I was like, Tommy would be talking about this story. Beautiful bozingas. Bimbofacation. And you said that you had just suddenly appeared in that Waffle House.

And you've been slowly making your way back? I was in the Waffle House with the 3,000 C. breasts. And I was like, how did I get here? I unless I'm on vacation. Record scratch. All right. I noticed, I noticed Tim Miller wore some himself on the bulwark stream.

Tim's doing prop comedy. Love it. Love it where you let him do that. Only the fag has to wear the boobs on the show. Where your tits? I mean. Can we fly in a pair of magnificent, magnificent bazooms for John? I was thinking more of the person who likes to be at the center of all the comedy.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Seems our political Gallagher. You're right. You're right. Honestly, I reacted defensively. Next week is a good question. Smash a watermelon on this table next week. Anyway, we're moving on. We have a lot of other things to talk about.

On today's show, we're going to talk about Trump's Easter threat to commit war crimes against Iran. If they don't, quote, open the fucking straight. The press conference he held to congratulate himself on the rescue of the downed American pilots, new warning signs about the war's economic damage, and why the White House is asking for a $1.5 trillion defense budget for next year, paid forward by cuts to nearly everything else. We'll also check back in on the mass deportation campaign, which is continuing at full speed, even though it's fallen out of the headlines. Then Congresswoman Sarah McBride stops by to talk with Lovett about her first year in Congress and how Democrats are preparing for

the big fights coming up. Can't wait to hear what they're doing. Yeah. Remember them? I do. I do. I do. Fortunately. Quick reminder, please consider becoming a Cricket Media subscriber if you haven't already, so you don't miss out on any of the great content we're putting out for our friends of the pod. Subscribers get our new extra episode of Pod Save America called Pod Save America Only Friends, other subscriber only shows like Polarcoaster with Dan Pfeiffer, access to all of our excellent substack newsletters like Pod Save America OpenTabs, written by Reid-Charlin, who's here with us in studio today. Wow. Wow. How you do it?

What an appearance. And then also, you get ad-free episodes. of all your favorite cricket pods, and you get to feel good about supporting one of the few independent, proudly pro-democracy media outlets left and Trump's America. So head to cricket.com slash friends

and subscribe today. All right, let's get to the news. Week six of Operation Epic Fury, and there is no end in sight. The energy crisis is getting worse. Iran is shooting down U.S. military jets. Negotiations are going nowhere. And Trump has become so desperate

that he's threatening to commit war crimes against Iranian civilians and destroy the entire country in one night, maybe tonight. By now you've probably seen the president's Easter message to the Iranian regime, quote, open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Praise be to Allah. On Easter.

On Easter. I believe the holiest of the Christian holidays. Yes. Yeah, it is. It is the holiest of the Christian holidays. He thought that was a joke, but do you think the fundamentalists in either of the other religions did? Christians or anyone. Yeah.

Or anyone. I thought it was a joke when I saw. I thought it was a fake tweet. It was because it was Easter morning. I actually didn't open Twitter because my kids were up early with their Easter baskets. Not for any religious reasons. Don't worry. And my brother sent me a text.

He's like, I can't fucking believe Trump's truth. Did you see it? And he sent it to me. I'm like, Andy, did you fall for some misinformation somewhere? I thought some people got caught too. I did too. And then I started looking. I was like, holy shit.

It takes a lot to surprise me. It was shocking. It was shocking. I think it was also the capitalizing of F in fucking straight, which also, maybe that's not important, but I thought that was funny. Quite a post for sure. The closest thing, what it reminded me of when I read it out loud is, do you remember the 2002 Mike Tyson press conference when he was promoting his fight against Lennox Lewis? Of course we did. I'll fuck you till you love me.

Oh, yeah. All praise to Allah. Wow. I forgot he added all praise to Allah is there. Almost verbatim. The fuck you till you love me, really. That was stood out. I believe that was to a reporter.

Yeah, no, I know. Lennox Lewis. I don't know. I don't remember that well. Anyway, back to the war crimes. They're bad. If Iran doesn't open the fucking straight by 8 p.m. Tuesday, the president says he will order the destruction of all the country's bridges and power plants.

He took questions on all of this Monday morning at a press conference at the White House. Let's listen. The entire country can be taken out in one night. And that night might be tomorrow night. Iranians would be mad if you stopped these attacks. But why would they want you to blow up their infrastructure, to cut off their power? Wouldn't that be punishing Iranians for the actions of the regime? They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom. We've had numerous intercepts. Please keep bombing. Bombs that are dropping near their homes. Please keep bombing. Do it.

And these are people that are living where the bombs are exploding. So believable. So believable. So, we're going to tax on civilian infrastructure, violate the Geneva Convention and international law. Who you with? Who you with? I'm with the New York Times. Are you... Failing, the feeling.

Are you concerned... ...theircirculation way down at the New York Times? What's going on? ...that your threat to bomb power plants and bridges amount to war crimes? No, no. No. The war is coming to an end to war going to be bombing Iran to the Stone Age. So which is it?

Are you winding this down? Can't tell you. I can't tell you. I don't know. We're giving them till tomorrow, 8 o'clock Eastern Time. And after that, they're going to have no bridges. They're going to have no power plants. Stone ages, yeah.

Stone ages. Trump also started that press conference off by saying, militarily, it's been one of the best Easter's. That's just so funny. Really, really. Interesting adverb that he's turned out. Yeah. Militarily, it's been one of the.

Really getting into that Easter spirit. Yeah. That famous Easter spirit. I also think he thinks that Easter's Monday. He said a couple times, happy Easter. Happy Easter. It's a great Easter today. I'm like, it is Monday, sir.

He kept referring to Easter Monday. I think what he meant was it was the day of the Easter egg role. Right. Well, in his mind, it's probably the only Easter that really cast. Yeah, right. All right, lots to unpack here. Let's start with the war crimes, which the administration is already trying to argue would not actually constitute war crimes.

A White House official told the Wall Street Journal that power plants are, quote, legitimate military targets because destroying them could foment civil unrest complicating Tehran's path to a nuclear device. Seems like a bit of a stretch to me. What do you think, Tommy? Yeah, I agree with that. I brand that

quote by Ona Hathaway as a professor of international law at Yale Law School. No big deal. She's been on POTSA of the world. I don't know. They gave J.D. Vance a degree. Yeah, and I think all the classes are past failed. But yeah, go on. Anyway, sorry. I'm sure she's wonderful. She's like the smartest person I've ever. She said it would a war crime to carry out those threats, destroying civilian infrastructure to foment civil

unrest is clearly unlawful. But on Monday, as you mentioned, I mean, it gets worse. He threatened to bomb all of the bridges and all of the power plants in Iran by midnight and Tuesday. And explicitly threatening to bomb all of the power plants serving a country of 90 million people. That's about as clear cut of a war crime as I could think of. I mean, in case anyone still cares, the Geneva Conventions want international humanitarian law. They want you to distinguish between military and civilian infrastructure. So like don't hit a power grid, don't hit water systems. And attacks are also supposed to be proportional.

So you could say, okay, take out that power plant that fuels that base over there. But taking out all of them, it's just collective punishment. Same with the bridges. Yeah, if you bomb the Eiffel Tower, it would screw up production of the next season of Emily and Paris. And even if that's a worthy goal, we would all say that it was an inappropriate use of force. Yeah, the whole thing is it's all ludicrous. Nailed it.

It is ludicrous, even if that's a worthy goal, even if it would be in our national interest to stop that production. It's all ludicrous, right? Like, it's not a, it's not a, nobody believes we would be bombing civilian infrastructure because we were trying to foment unrest so that the nuclear program is disrupted. But they really back them, like, it's just worth, why are they saying something so stupid? And it is because, well, they can't say they're fomenting arrest because they want the regime to change because either the goal of the war is not regime change or the regime change has already. taken place. They can't say it's because they have a military necessity to conduct the bombing missions that they're sending people, sending the military on because they claim they have total dominance of the skies and there's never been a more effective military campaign in the history of warfare.

So they have to come up with some cacamamee justification for doing this. When we all know why they're doing it, he would be bombing civilian infrastructure so that the threats to do so before the bombing would have been true. They were real threats for of her future horrible. What did Lily Collins do to you? What did Lily Collins do to you? Is that someone involved in- The star of Emily and Paris?

I don't. I've actually never- I'll be honest, I've never seen Emily and Paris and I just thought it'd be, I just couldn't think of a show. I thought, I'll tell you, to be honest,

if you want to get behind the scenes, I thought, what would bombing Paris disrupt? Emily and Paris. Well, that's it. Hard argue with that. So that's all.

So if you really, if you really want to interrogate it. You know, own a half a way about that one. Like, there might be, there is a justification for the threat he's issuing. He is trying to. The threat is a war crime, actually. Well, the threat of the threat of the moment.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, he, I, yes, but what the, the threat has a purpose. The threat, look, he's pressure political. He's putting political pressure on them to try to get to some kind of a deal when, as we talked about last week, he's on this sort of ratchet of false threats and assurances and each one has to keep being backed up. He does this threat.

Then he carries it out. Then what's the threat after that if the regime holds together? But the, like, once the. threat, once he's acting on it, there is no purpose because it only existed so that he could try to get some sort of a deal to end the conflict. Yeah, it's sort of darkly funny and ironic that the administration official, the White House official, the talk to the Wall Street Journal was like, oh, it's to foment civil unrest to topple the regime. When it's like, that specific thing in the Geneva Conventions and in the DOD war manual is against the law to say that

like you are going to target civilian infrastructure in order to foment unrest, in order to about the dream. But you know what? It's like, we get into like, is it a war crime? Is it not a worker? And the reason we're talking about this is I saw on Fox News this morning, John Roberts, on Fox was like, going to be hard for the Democrats to argue this is a war crime because they did this in Kosovo and they took out the power lines there in that war and we did it in the first Gulf War. And it's like, yeah, what we learned after doing it in the first Gulf War is that taking out the Iraqi power grid and the first Gulf War ended up leading to countless, countless civilian deaths. And horrible, yeah, consequences for decades.

I mean, it's just, it's also stupid. It's like stupid strategy. War crime debate aside, like, you want the population to overthrow their leaders and be a new friendlier US aligned Iran. So you're going to bomb them into submission, take out all their infrastructure, destroy the country for a decade. And then Trump's response on the ICC stuff is like, we're not a party to it as a country. And also like, okay, Haig, come and fucking get me if you want to arrest me for war crimes. But his bigger problem is going to be when the Iranians respond by hitting desalination plants in Kuwait and Iraq and all these places. And then you, you're going to be. And then he's, he's going to be when the Iranians respond by hitting desalination plants in Kuwait and Iraq and Iraq and all these places. And then. And then, of a genuine humanitarian catastrophe throughout the Gulf. Yeah, and I think people here, like, oh, so a couple of bridges go away and power plants, like, that's not great. But, you know, the power plants go down in a country. That means that every hospital where someone's on a ventilator, someone's in dialysis, little kids in incubators, insulin is spoiled, like all of people die in hospitals right away if all the power is gone.

It hurts water treatment. Before you even get to the bombing, the desalination plants, there's water pumps. that clean the water. So you get when you bomb power plants, you get water that's contaminated, that people drink, that causes all kinds of disease, food access, a whole bunch of food spoils.

I mean, like, it is a humanitarian catastrophe just bombing the power plants, and never mind anything else that he wants to do. Never mind any of the people who are going to die, civilians who are going to die in all of this. I mean, it's fucking nuts. What are we talking about here? We're, no, we should not be doing World War II-style

total combat against the country of Iran, a place we have not declared war against, that Congress has not authorized a conflict with, there's no even mention of any kind of imminent threat. We are still in a place where he needs to be saying there's an imminent threat to the United States in order to justify any kind of military action. No, bombing the bridges of Iran

is not preventing any kind of imminent threat to the country. It's, like, the idea of like, oh, is it a war crime? Is it not a war crime? Like, sometimes it can be justified to bomb a power plant. Like, all of that, is predicated on a rational set of goals you're trying to achieve in a military campaign that you're weighing against the cost to the civilians, how could it be proportional when we don't why the fuck we're doing it? Like, we don't even know what we're doing it for.

Well, the strategy is also kind of, the logic's a little bit faulty in that the regime is made up of a bunch of lunatics, but somehow, who kill their people, but somehow if you hurt their people, that's going to pressure them to be a good deal. That's not usually how it works. Here's one reaction to Trump. He has gone insane and all of you are complicit, meaning Republicans. Our president is not a Christian and his words and action should not be supported by Christians. This is not making America great again. This is evil.

Marjorie Taylor Green. Marjorie Taylor Green. Speaking some truth. Probably one of the strongest responses on Easter Sunday there. So on the rescue, because I don't want to gloss over that, obviously an incredibly heroic, impressive operation by the military, which Trump spent all. lot of time talking about at the press conference, probably a little too much, judging by this exchange with General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. How many men did you send altogether approximately to the operation?

I'd love to keep that a secret. Okay, well, we are. But I will tell you, the number, I'll keep it a secret, but it was hundreds. Sir, that's not how a secret works. Sir, hot or cold, 152. So it's very much The person who reported this was anonymous But goes by either Lisa S or L. Simpson

Simpson's jokes This is like just a couple weeks ago Remember when he divulged the member of Congress Who had a terminal illness That he believes he saved? Yeah In front of Mike Johnson's like, Sir, that was not supposed to be public information

Oh my God, Dave King's like Tommy, what do you think about Trump divulging all these details About a very, very highly secret of operation? I mean, just for what it's worth But like, I watched the little press crimes we all did. Like, I'm very skeptical of anything that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth or Pete Hagsest's mouth. Dan Kane, I think, is more of like just the facts kind of guy.

The stories are amazing. This person climbing 7,000 feet, the pilot or the bomber person, the airman, sorry, to avoid getting captured, the 8-10 Warthog pilot who got hit, continued to fight, flew out of the country and then had to eject. Like, it's amazing stuff. There will be medals of honor awarded for this. But I kept hearing my NSC staffer head was screaming, shut up. Why are you guys doing this the whole time? Because like what happens if another pilot gets shot down and they want to conduct a similar mission and they've just talked about all the ways they did it?

Like the CIA is bragging about creating a disinformation campaign to help the pilot get out of Iran. It feels like those assets or tools would be useful as it's an ongoing conflict. Trump is the worst offender, obviously, about talking about sensitive details. You have both John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, and then Dan Kane, the chairman, started their remarks by saying, like, I know you guys are going to want a lot of details, but we're not going to give them to you. And then Trump just lays out all the details. Like, you keep reading examples in news reports to the CIA's exquisite technologies or something like that. That's where they're fuzzing it up. Trump seemed to all but confirm that it was a drone or a satellite capability that was able to spot the pilot on a mountain from 40 miles away at night with some sort of specific new lens. That sounded to me like a lot of detail I might not want out. He was, again, bragging about cyber operations to take out weapon systems in Venezuela. And the irony of it all is they're also bitching about a leak, which is a really bad leak that I think the news outlets were reporting that the U.S. had identified the pilot, but the other crew member was still missing in Iran. And that obviously is a big tip for the Iranians.

But so they're going to do a leak investigation. They might even prosecute media outlets that reported on it. But I think this was first reported by someone in Israel, an Israeli reporter who was really close to Netanyahu, which makes you wonder, what if Netanyahu is the source on this, then what happens? So that was an interesting wrinkle in all this. But I think this whole thing was very ill-considered. The fact that the military can achieve the goals that the president sets, whether in the rescue, which was extraordinary or in being able to complete the objectives of the bombings of Iran, like that is, we have an extraordinary military. with incredible capabilities. But the reason they were doing this today is they want the respect and glory and plotts to redound to them. But this administration doesn't get any of that credit. This is not something that they did. This is something they put the military in a position to have to execute. And I'm glad that they did. And I'm glad we have a military that's capable of this.

But all of the everything that they're describing, all the techniques and capabilities that may have been revealed, what our enemies learned from this, the incredible cost of it, the risk of it. All of it is not an argument that makes this administration seem more impressive. It is all the more kind of like an example of how absurd it is that we've put this incredible capabilities in the hands of this person to be deployed in this haphazard and dangerous way in this campaign. So like they are doing this because they think it makes them look good, but it just doesn't. Yeah, the whole thing pissed me off because like, you know, my first reaction when I saw the

news that they were rescued is like, oh, thank God. And then it was like, wow, I can't believe the military pulled this out. It's incredible. And then my next reaction was being so fucking pissed at Donald Trump for putting them in this position. And, you know, it's funny, I started thinking about all the times we had to listen to fucking, you know, war crime, Dr. Seuss, Pete Hegseth over the last week be like, we control the skies. We fly over Tehran.

No one can touch us. We do it. And then even today at the fucking press conference, Hegsteth goes, we control the disguise. You see, we flew for seven hours in daylight over Iran to get the first pilot, and Iran did nothing about it. Well, they did shoot down two of our planes, so I guess they did something about before that. And you keep telling us that the whole military is destroyed, that their navies destroyed, that whatever. I mean, it's just a, it is indicative of their larger, how fucked up their larger messages on this whole thing, which is like, we won the war, but also we're going to

bomb them back to the Stone Age because we haven't won the war yet. There was a, I remember we, we talked about this. I'm not going to get even close to who it was. But there was, but there was, was somebody that we thought was like generally pretty smart, but they were like, and we're talking about how like, oh, people's insecurities will always get in the way of their, of their, even their, even the intentions that they have, like, even if they know what's best, their insecurities will always get in the way. Like, who is this performance of domination of Iran for right now? Right. Like, who is it for? Like, the Fox News is he's got the people on Fox News. The country is against this. Not a lot of people are going to be persuaded by Pete Hegset at the podium

talking about how we dominate the skies at this point when gas prices are going to hit like movie theater popcorn prices soon. And it's certainly not helpful when clearly we're in this sort of fucking like contest with a bunch of people and of leaders in Iran that are putting their own interest ahead of their peoples every single day and who have their own need to protect their egos more than they do, projecting the people of Iran. So what is the value at this point, right? Like, why are you not speaking softly and carrying a big stick? Why are you not creating the, this space where if you really do believe that there should be a deal where you are talking about how much you want that kind of a deal rather than like the endless like domination language,

the endless kind of hitting of this story. I don't even know who it's for other than just for themselves to make themselves feel like big big guys, big big boys. I think it's just who they are. Yeah. Right. But it's Trump too. Like I like watching yeah. I was reading I was I was off last two guys reading the stories like seeing that these guys were downed and then they were rescued. My reaction was thank God also. And there were all these people online who were like, oh, you're probably unhappy that they got saved or, you know, this makes Trump look like that. That's such a crazy thing. It's like my reaction was thank God both for the missing airmen and for the people involved, the Americans involved in the rescue effort, but also for this broader war effort generally because I wanted to be over.

And I thought the worst thing possible was if Iran suddenly had a bunch of hostages. Yeah. Like the escalation that would have occurred from that, the way this thing could get protracted, the way you could see. ground forces going in for some sort of like, it would have been awful. Like, thank God these guys were out for every single reason, imagine we'll under the sun. Yeah, I had the same thought, too, is that, like, if there's, God forbid, there's, like, a mass casualty event of American troops or hostages and footage broadcasts. Like, you think that's going to, like, bring us closer to some kind of end of the war or diplomatic?

Like, that's exactly how these things escalate and get out of hand. And when you have bloodthirsty warmongers who are barbaric, like Donald Trump and Pete Higgs, Seth, then it's even fucking worse. So who knows what the state of the negotiations will be by the time this episode is out Tuesday, but as of right now, they are not great. The U.S. reportedly tried for an immediate 45-day ceasefire to give more time for negotiations that would hopefully lead to a permanent deal. Iran wants the permanent deal first. Trump thinks threatening to destroy the entire country might change their minds. What do you guys think? Does a 45-day ceasefire mean that Iran de facto reopens the Strait of Hormuz for 45 days?

I think that's what they wanted. And that's what I read somewhere. That was part of what they wanted in the 45 days ceasefire. Because what like what scenario would Iran do that? Just sort of like give up all your economic and political leverage that is built and is building on Trump to end the conflict. I don't see the logic of this for them in any way. It seems like they've rejected the ceasefire. It seems like their rejoinder was a set of maximalist demands.

I don't have any hope for a deal. Again, Trump is like, well, just going to bomb you more because the people want us to bomb you. I mean, he's crazy. And so meanwhile, like the Iranians are learning and adapting, and they're starting to use, like, clustered munitions on their ballistic missiles that are hitting civilian areas in Israel and could be very effective against U.S. bases. So I just feel like both sides seem to think they have the upper hand in different ways. It does feel like a very Trumpian offer, which is like, let's get just a quick ceasefire now,

and then we'll just punt everything, you know, 45. Just give me another 45 days. Yeah. Because everything is short term. everything is tomorrow. Let's see how the markets are. Let's see everything will calm down. In the 45 days at the end of that, you know, maybe we'll push another 45 days if we don't get a deal and another 45 days. And so I think the Iranians know that. Obviously, why would they trust, how are they trusting them at this point? They don't. Yeah. The, like, we also don't know what kind of information Donald Trump is getting, obviously reports that he's not getting like the full picture of, of the implications of the war.

But presumably someone inside the White House is talking about what happens to a war. oil prices if if we escalate and Iran escalates if the region is further destabilized that that this will have immediate and then sustained terrible economic consequences I'll just say like I hope that that that Donald Trump's threats do lead to some kind of a a ceasefire of some kind even if it seems unlikely even if it even if we're all right now as we record this it seems like both sides aren't willing to give because like the best case scenario right now is that he does not go through with what he is promising to go through with. And the fear, whether it's because a plane is shot down over Iran or because he feels obligated to carry out this threat as we are now on this

endless ratchet where, okay, he carries out this threat. The regime doesn't fall and doesn't capitulate. What's the next group of threats that comes after this? What happens in the next week after he's destroyed the country, and yet the country still exists and the regime is still in power. I don't know that they're thinking three days ahead, but I suppose the rest of us ought to at least remember that there is a next week that will continue to be after he goes through with this on Tuesday. It's just ridiculous that we're talking about this right now when right before the weekend after he gave that prime time address.

Remember when he was like, the straight? We don't need the straight. The straight after we leave, the straight will just open naturally. It's like, and then now it's open the straight or we'll bomb you back to the stony. Go to hell. Also, you keep saying it's Europe's problem when like 80% of the oil and gas that goes through the straight-door moves is going to Asia and it's growing everyone there. So, yeah.

Meanwhile, the war keeps getting more unpopular by the day here in America. Good news. Trump seems to know that. Bad news doesn't seem to care. Here he is telling reporters at the White House Easter egg role that he'd like to take control of Iran's oil, only if the rest of us would let him enjoy the music in the background. my choice what would I like to do take the oil because it's there for the taking there's not a thing they can do about it unfortunately the American people would like to see us come home

when you say the American people don't want that how do you know that are you listening to well I tell you what I'm pretty good at this stuff and I go around and I check they'd like to see us win and come home and everyone say oh is Trump losing maggot no I'm not losing mega no I'm not losing maga maga loves what I'm doing and CNN did a poll of mega voters a big poll very important Paul, Harry. And he went on, he said, this is amazing. 100% support. What do you say to Americans

who are not a fan of the war? They're foolish. I always quote from the book of Harry on Easter. Harry. There's a big poll from CNN. It's a Harry poll. You got a Harry poll. Oil is the oldest resurrection story, sir. Quite a message for the midterms there.

You think Republicans are going to run on that? You think, like, is he just? is he just impervious to bad polling? It's funny, he did the Harry, the Magas With Me poll, but he clearly knows that it's not popular with other people. Yeah, every day I'm more convinced that Trump does not give a shit about the midterms, does not give a shit about the future of the Republican Party,

does not give a shit about J.D. Vance. This is a political smash-and-grab job for him, his cronies, his family to make as much money as possible and then do things to burnish his legacy. There's just no other explanation for why you would talk like that, for why you'd build the ballroom, like the monument to himself in Virginia, start a war with Iran that sends oil prices to the moon, and then do it all before the midterms.

And it's politically like he's not even trying. Like he didn't go to CPAC, but that, because he said he was too busy, but that week he went to the Saudi investment conference down in Miami. Hmm. I wonder which entity can pay him more over the long run. So like, I heard that foolish quote, and my brain went to every single attack ad I would run linking members of Congress to the war in Iran, they kick off with that quote.

And then it's just like image after image of death and destruction and, you know, skyrocketing energy prices, et cetera. We are like running out of Trump quotes to fit in a 60 second ad because we just, I feel like once every couple episodes now, we're like this is the this is the line that's going to be in all the midterm ads. And I still think they're all very ripe for this. I mean, the Easter, remember the Easter lunch that was. We can't afford Medicare. We have a war to pay for. Yeah, right. We had that just last week.

And there's just, do you think I, do you think this is going to ruin? the affordability tour? Do you think you still, do you think you're still going to be hitting the road once a week for Susie Wiles that she wants them to do that to sell his economic agenda? Eggs only. Amlets only because he's proud of those, that price. Yeah, I will say the one thing you can also take away, though, from what he's saying there is he believes there is political pressure to get out of this, right? Like his version of, I need to end this war and declare victory is the American people want me to win quickly and leave. Now, many people don't want to be in this conflict, but they certainly don't want boots on the ground over us to invade a round. Or,

to take the oil and he does seem cognizant of that. I think what there's a kind of story they're telling themselves, which is this is still short. We will get this quickly. The effects will see will will will recede and it will go into memory as the time we decimated the Iranian military for the good of the region. Yeah. And unless then they bomb all the power plants and everything else.

He's probably looking for some kind of face saving thing where you can say like, I threatened them. Yes. They decided to give me this, which they probably didn't give him, whatever he's going to say they gave him. Right. I know. I'd say, like, you could, it is totally possible that in the, like, while we're recording

this, he says, we got a deal. Iran says we don't have a deal, but, but there's some, some, some, some, some, some, um, some, uh, story about how much they've given and the gifts they've given and the fact that he's not going to do the bombing this week, but he could do it next week. Like, that is so possible. And I, I genuinely like, like, like, fuck this guy and fuck these people. But, man, I really hope. that they can pretend, like, pretend they have some kind of a win because this next, what they are

promising and what comes after, like, it just, it's so clear that they're being cavalier, but, but I, like, I would rather Trump be able to walk out in the Rose Garden tomorrow and say, I did it. I achieved everything I said I was. Everyone was wrong about me, then have him go through with this. I really would. Not me. I want him to go through. No, I don't say, but, I'm not saying, I want a catastrophic war where they kill all the people. I'm not saying you do. I'm not saying you do, but I'd rather me personally be wrong. Of course.

I want the best outcomes end this war tomorrow for sure. And it's going to involve him spinning some bullshit. I just think that the chances of that are so much less than they are with all the other bullshit he's done, right? Which is like, you know, I keep thinking and making this comparison. It's like the tariffs, you know, and you're like, well, the tariffs, you ever into the taco thing? You're like, oh, he backed off. It's fine.

and then it's saving face because it's a treaty about fucking tariffs you know like this is you're dealing with like I think that the people on the other side

of this are maybe if they get a vote yeah they get a vote and they're really too they're not going to say that they're completely crazy because I'm sure they're doing things

in their self-interest but they certainly don't care about the people of their country right all that much they care about the regime and the regime survival so it's like you're dealing

with people who aren't fucking Trump wants to end this to deal with the near term political challenges the Iranians don't want to get bombed again in six months or 12 months or 18 months, right? They're thinking longer term. They want a deal where the U.S. can force the Israelis not to keep bombing them, too. Like, they're playing a longer game here. Yeah, they apparently want the end of the war in Lebanon as well as part of the deal.

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Regardless of what the polls say today, it's becoming pretty clear that they're going to get worse. And that's because even if the war does end today, the economic damage will last for some time. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's told Politico, quote, I don't think we're going back to the pre-war prices for the foreseeable future. Certainly won't be this year, won't even be next year, might not be ever. Ever. Okay. And then we got Jamie Diamond, who was on Fox last week, just cheerleading the war.

What was that? I was shocking. That was another one I was like, Tommy should be here to yell about Jamie Diamond. What is he? He was an asshole. Went out of his way too. What a, like, what a kiss. He didn't need to appear on Fox.

He was like, hello to all the Fox viewers. I'm Jamie Diamond and I'm here to say that like, uh, the Iranians. I love war with Iran in a major way. Yeah. It was basically like, the Iranians caused, uh, October 7th and Americans died. It was just the, he sounded like fucking Netanyahu. Oh, good. So he warned in his annual letter to shareholders.

That's, that's important to him. that there could be more oil price shocks in the coming months and that the war could keep inflation and interest rates high, but you know, the American people might have to pay more. He said this on the fact. People might have to pay more, but you know, the economy is resilient. Thank you, Jamie Dimes. Right now people feel worse about the economy and inflation that at any time since the post-COVID inflation surge, I just saw that gas prices have now surpassed in AAA records like the gas prices and tracks the gas prices higher than at any time since right during COVID with the gas prices. I just saw that gas prices have now. supply shock for COVID in history. In history. So that's where we are with gas prices now. I am having a hard time imagining that people don't feel worse about the economy than they do today on election day. Like I don't know how this, I don't think this gets better by election day at this point.

I think we've, even if the warrants today, I think we've passed the point of no return about things getting worse in the next couple months. But I don't know. Does anyone disagree? No. I mean, like, so you're right. Gas prices are what? Like 412 today is the national average.

I think that goes up before it goes down. could go up dramatically. Similarly, natural gas prices, especially in Europe, are up and will be up for a while, especially as they go into the window. So that energy shock is like the initial thing we're feeling, but it's far from the only implication because fertilizer prices are way up, right? That's going to lead to higher prices, lower yields, potentially food shortages. Countries in Asia are rationing fuel. They're shutting down factories. So like the economic impact is across the economy. They got like work from home going in Asia. Yes. And like flights are grounded. Like people can't get jet fuel. And then so it's like developing countries are getting hit now. Then it hits major economies in India and Japan and South Korea. They start to slow down. You guys talked about healing, apparently, and rip some helium on an episode, right? We did.

We did some whippets here. That would impact semiconductor manufacturing, which, you know, that happens to be propping up the entire U.S. artificial intelligence bubble, the availability of all these semiconductors. The Gulf is going to take like a multi-hundred billion dollar hit the GDP. and all the various industries, their gigantic sovereign wealth runs are propping up will be impacted. So like I just, there's a way,

this will ripple out in ways we are not seeing now. It will last for a long time. None of it is good. The fact that Jamie Diamond can like be blasé about this is crazy to me. Yeah,

Trump has failed to address people's concerns about prices before he started this war in Iran. Everything he's done. Tariffs have made matters worse. He's rested on the resilience. of the American economy to protect him from the bad policies he's pursuing. But gas prices will be going up as we head into the summer, even if there's some recovery months from now, people will have

experienced months and months of the economy of prices going up by the time you get to November. That will be additive, that will aggregate and as people kind of come to their conclusions as we head towards November. And we'll get to it in a minute, but it's not as though Trump is out there doing his affordability tour. We've just gotten a window into his priorities for next year. And I don't think they're going to answer the mail. Yeah. So the budget's out. And less than anyone thought that what he said at the Easter lunch was just a gaffe, it was not. Again, remember he said, he said, we're going to all have to start paying higher taxes via state taxes. Right. The states are going to have to raise taxes if we want child care, many added Medicaid and Medicare,

because the federal government is busy, quote, fighting wars and quote, we have to take care of one thing, one thing, military protection. So then they release the budget. The official budget request for 2027, they're asking for $1.5 trillion for the Department of Defense. That is an increase of $400 billion. And that doesn't include the rumor $200 billion supplemental for the war. Trump proposes paying for all this new war spending with huge cuts to just about everything else. Health programs, medical research, education funding.

One big exception, White House renovations. The budget says there were $377 million in improvements last. year and they're estimating another $174 million in spending for next year, which includes both the ballroom and other renovations. Apparently they told political... Weren't the tech companies all paying for the ballroom with the bribes? I thought the ballroom was grottis. Thought the ballroom was on tech. I thought there was a gift from our overlords. Some White House official anonymously told Politico, like some of the private money is included, but like that doesn't really add up. So I don't know what the hell they're talking about there. Axios mused

that, quote, the most powerful populist of this century is at risk of becoming what he ran against, a deficit spending interventionist asking working class Americans to shoulder the cost of war. Perhaps a sign that maybe he was never actually a populist in the first place? I don't know. Wow. I'm just. Perhaps he's a hypocrite. Yeah, I just can't think of anything.

Like, just on a Democratic consultant's ketamine journey, I don't think you'd come up with something better than not just a $1.5 trillion dollar defense budget to cut health. care and other social spending, but also about north of 500 million on a Trump home renno. Like that is an extraordinary message for us. These consultants, these strategies could be frothing at the mouth. A lot of froth. And then they look at the news and everyone's like, Hassan Piker. That's right.

Let's re-litigate. They're like, look at our poll. We've been showing this pretend, this pretend message for a decade that they want to, they want to cut your health care to pay for tax cuts for the rich in his ballroom and this fucking war that no one wants. And now it's happening in real life. I want a third way summit on streamers. It's just like, it is so clearly the least America first policy platform you could design. Like, voters are not stupid. They know that Trump promised to invest at home, to take care of Americans first, to avoid foreign wars. And is this the thing he said last week when he said, he bragged about

telling his OMB director, we're fighting wars we can't take care of daycare? Yes. That's a bad quote. That's a bad quote. And Medicare and Medicaid. He throws those in at the end. He didn't know that he didn't know the cameras. He didn't know it was being live streamed. Yeah. Being streaming different. And before so the $1.5 trillion dollar Pentagon proposal, a budget proposal was floated before the Iran war. And afterwards, there was a Washington Post story about how the Pentagon literally couldn't figure out how to spend all the extra money. They were like, what bullshit weapon systems do we need to acquire with? Like they don't know. Who's asking who's paying? Who's asking for this then? I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. no, nobody was. And so now, like, I guess you could fill that need with all the interceptor missile stockpiles and shit. It sounds like we're running low. But that will, that's not a money problem. That's a supply problem. That will take decades to fix. So it's just all of us, again, makes me think this guy does not care about politics anymore. It just doesn't give a shit. It's also great. It's, you know, all these are big defense contractors that make a lot of money. There's every, every, every dollar in the defense budget goes to some district. That is, this is saying yes to everybody. Every Republican member who, he needs, every contractor, every, every, every executive coming through, this is money that gets to their pockets one way or another. Although I did see that some Republicans already in Congress are like, I don't know about

this budget. But then, of course, they can't have like a like a full-throated, you know, critique of the budget. You got, I think Susan Collins's quote was like, well, Congress does have the power of the purse. Oh, really, Susan Collins. Go ahead. I dare you to, I dare you to vote for this. Yeah, it's funny to think, like, when we first started having the conversation about a supplemental funding request coming down the pike to pay for the Iran war, initially the reports were it was going to be like maybe $50 billion, then it was $200 billion.

And the framing was, oh, no, what a tough vote for Democrats. They could be accused of being, you know, not supporting the troops. And now it's like, oh, this is the most politically devastating thing for Republicans. I could possibly draw up in my brain if I tried. Yeah, Marjorie Taylor Green's out there calling him evil. Right. And everyone's like, oh, are we going to support the troops? with the budget. Nancy Mace is like, I'm a hell no on this stupid budget and stupid war.

Lauren Bobert, yeah. A 40% increase in the largest Pentagon budget in history, as time points out that they don't know how to spend. But that is not enough to do the kind of military conflicts he wants to do. So really, they need $1.2 trillion this year, go up to $1.4 trillion next year. In part, by the way. Because Cuba's on the back burner now. Right. Yeah, we got to, but maybe. But one lesson they've learned, right, is that if Donald Trump is going to become a interventionalist regime changer, you need a bigger baseline, because. because he can't go back to Congress, he has for more money. But, and like, a lot of it, I think, is for the Golden Dome missile defense system,

which is, like, probably doesn't work, you know? He thinks it's a magic force field around America. Yeah, I mean, he thinks it's, he's trying to make a play on the Iron Dome system, which is Israel's short-rain rocket system, which works very well, but those are, like, little, like, Katusha rockets that are flying in from Lebanon, not intercontinental ballistic missiles where you're hitting a, you know, something going Mach 7 with bullets, basically. Yeah, I don't, yes, and I do think if we start to face that,

missile barrages from Quebec and Toronto. I think we've got bigger fish to fry. Yes, that could happen. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp, whether you are navigating anxiety, depression, relationship hurdles, or financial stress, or just need an objective professional to help manage daily stresses. BetterHelp connects you with the right support. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the U.S. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps you identify your needs and preferences. There are 12 or more years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate

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Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash PSA. That's BetterHELP.com slash PSA. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the tools you need to promote and get paid for your services in one platform, whether you offer consultations, events, or other experiences, Squarespace can help you grow your business, create a professional website to showcase your offerings and attract clients no matter where you start.

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America. Don Lemon for America. When life hands you lemons, things get better. That's what I say. I work for Don Lemon now. Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to Squarespace.com slash crooked to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. that's squarespace.com slash quirk it. Let's talk about immigration and mass deportations. So, Nome, Lewandowski, Bovino have all been fired. ICE and CBP have drawn down from Minneapolis and other cities. And the DHS shutdown will likely end when Congress gets back without Democrats having

voted for any new funding for immigration enforcement. And yet, there was a big story in the Times this weekend about how the only lesson Stephen Miller has learned from all this is to pursue his purge of immigrants, including those who are here legally. more quietly. Sure enough, the Times also had an absolutely heartbreaking story about Annie Ramos, a dreamer who just got married to an active duty army staff sergeant who is preparing for deployment. So she's been in America since she was almost two years old. She's 22 now, a few months away from getting her college degree. She teaches Sunday school at her church. And she just showed up with

her new husband at his army base with her birth certificate, passport, marriage license, so she could get her green card. And then when they got there, I showed up, shackled her, took her away, and now she's facing deportation. And this is all after the wife of another Army reservist was finally released from ICE custody last week after four months in detention. I want to get your takeaways from both the Miller piece, very long piece about Stephen Miller, but had a lot in it about sort of the Trump administration's larger immigration strategy and the Ramos story just in terms of like where all this is headed. Yeah, the way the administration talked about Ramos, I thought, was revealed.

willing to because they say basically she tried to enter a military base and she has a lawful deportation order and it's like with her husband and that order was and that order and that order was from when she was a baby it's an order from when she was a literal 22 month old child yeah so that's who they're going after and everyone acknowledges this is the like under no previous administration under no one's understanding of how the law should be applied was a person like this ever gone after in the past no there's just simply no just justification for it whatsoever. But I think it does speak to the larger point about what Stephen Miller is trying to do here because he is not humbled at all. He has the same mission and the

same goals. They're trying to just do it more quietly. And the two things that jumped out about, to me, in the Miller piece about what they're trying to do next, one was talking about how to go after immigrants who apply for credit cards. And the other was his work with local legislators in Tennessee to require state or local officials to report people who receive services at hospitals, social service agencies, and some public schools despite being in the country illegally. And so it is more of an effort to weaponize the financial system, the information we gather about people, the way people have to access services and care to try to do more with a scalpel what drew such attention when they did it with like an axe.

Yeah. Those things jumped out at me too. And then the only the other one was they're trying to, for legal immigrants, any legal immigrant here who happens to ever get public assistance, Medicaid, anything like that, he wants that they, he and the new frauds are, J.D. Vance and the rest of them want to go after that and try to prove that they somehow illegally obtain their benefits, not so they can just take the benefits away, but like, then deport the legal immigrant. Boy, really spoiling the end of this book about what he learned from Catholicism. Yeah. Not, not, not, not really internalizing what the

wafer's supposed to represent I get through the communion, but militarily, it was one of the best Easter. Yeah, it was a fantastic Easter for the military. Yeah, the time piece of with Steve Miller, it's my favorite kind of story and that it validated my priors.

Oh. Which is, he's calling the shots. Trump has outsourced immigration policy to him. He's the worst of the worst when it comes to pushing cruel, racist policy ideas, but he's better at playing politics than the other goons, the Bovinoes or the Christie Homes or the Lewandowski's, probably because he's closest to Trump

and can whisper to him and blame others for when he gets in trouble and like all of them step away right i blame all of them um the other thing that was really important about that stephen miller story that relates to the other uh articles you mentioned was it just showed that the ice and CBP abuses in minnesota had a huge political impact yes and the communities push back brushed back trump and stephen miller in a significant way and i think it just shows you the power i mean obviously like ice murdering CBP murdering someone on camera is like horrific in ways that i hope will never be repeated But stories like these, you know, the anecdotal evidence of these innocent people caught up in a cruel system treated in a cruel, bureaucratic, heartless way and punished for something they, when they did nothing wrong.

I think, like, people react to that strongly. And it shows the importance of lifting up these examples and, like, just speak in people's humanity. And I think why it's important to keep up that pressure and not to see the firings and the drawdown of ice in the cities and everything else is like, All right, we won this chapter. On to the next fight, you know, because all this is, like, we just been seeing that with Annie Ramos and all these other stories. I just saw CBS, too, interviewed Liam Ramos. Remember the five-year-old in Minnesota and his dad? And they're still being threatened with deportation.

There's just part in the story where Liam is now, you know, he's a five-year-old kid. He's now seeing a psychologist because he's, like, dealing with such trauma. And he's a five-year-old boy. And he's like, I'm more than anything. I'm just scared of ICE. I'm scared of immigration. I'm scared of what might happen. And like, yes, that's Liam, but think of how many children out there are in the exact same spot.

Think of how many children are in detention right now, right? Like, if you've been in detention, if you're still there, like the trauma that like it's just fucking up these kids' lives. And Miller is the other thing from the story, Miller's focused on ramping up deportations of non-citizens to far away countries with the hopes of encouraging immigrants still in the United States to leave voluntarily. So that is a, you know, a nice way of saying that, like, he wants to send them to third countries that they've never been to. Like Libya or South Sudan. Yes. So not for any other reason, but to send a message to other immigrants to leave now yourself or we are going to send you to somewhere where you're probably going to die or just

be enslaved. Yeah, exactly. It also, it does, he's an evil person. It does connect, I think, too, to like what we're seeing with how they're conducting the war in Iran. It connects to, like, you know, people try to say, oh, you know, don't, you know, Trump says crazy things online. He says terrible things about whatever.

Rob Reiner, his enemies and their and their, and their, and their, and their, and their, and their, who died, but it's all a lack of proportionality, all of it, right? Like, there is no, there's, there's no empathy. It's, there's no, like, there's no, like, recognizing of someone's humanity and how they're conducting these policies. It is just zero forbearance, like, all attack, do as much damage as you can, regardless of the consequences to achieve whatever ends you've set out. And so, like, when they try to dismiss Trump, when he's, like, renting and raving online,

like, no, that's the person making these policies. That's the connection between the threat to bomb a power plant. in Iran and willing to go after our military spouse in the U.S. Like, these people lack character and it will affect, and it will be, it will be infused in everything that they do. That reminded me of just the one other nugget in that story is, again, we could talk about confirming your prior, something I had suspected, but I think it was news in the story. Remember that like a long time ago, I think it was last September, there was that video of,

in a New York City immigration courthouse, and that ICE officer tackled that woman who was just there for her husband. And like, shockingly, the next day, ICE was like, oh, that person's been fired. And I was like, wow, that's like, they finally backed off. And it says in the story that the state that ICE is doing that, like, fucking made Stephen Miller so angry that he like got involved, reversed it, and then made them hire the guy back. Yeah. And it just goes to show like exactly, like, this is, it is all like from the top, from Stephen

Miller to try to send, like, he's using, he is using like torture and cruelty to send a message to immigrants. You are unleashed, just the quote from it. Yeah, you are unleashed. It's fucking awful. All right. One last thing before we get to Leavitt's conversation with Sarah McBride, Donald Trump decided to do Democrats a huge favor in the California governor's race.

Don't say he's never done anything for us. Easter miracle. Yeah, I know. Resurrection the California Democratic Party. So as we've discussed because of the so-called jungle primary format here, we have been in danger of seeing two Republicans advance to the runoff because so many Democrats are in the race. It's splitting the vote.

So you have all these polls with Steve Hill. and Chad Bianco, the two Republicans is one and two, which means that the Democrats would be locked out of the general election. Well, on Monday morning, Trump took to truth social to endorse Republican Steve Hilton. And I'll just quote Politico here, quote, dealing a potentially fatal blow to GOP rival Chad Bianco's campaign and to Republicans' hopes of locking Democrats out of the runoff. It's so funny. I think you and I talked about this and I was like, how have other Democratic campaigns not elevated one of the two Republicans by now? Because that's the way Schiff got it done. That's the way Newsom got it done before and like no one's done that yet.

It turns out they didn't need to. Trump did it for them. Well, and they were they were planning to. And by the way you do that is by spending like tens of millions of ads supporting Republicans. So that was the position they were about to be in. Every every California like Democratic Party activist or operative I know are just ecstatic. And they literally can't believe it's happening to the point where they're all looking for conspiracy theories because like he, do you think he's too stupid? to know this was a political disaster for California or like he just doesn't care. He wanted to do a favor for Steve Hilton. Steve Hilton said he didn't ask for it.

Steve Hilton said he'd ever talked about the race with Trump. He didn't ask for an endorsement. Like maybe Trump is so delusional that he believes his own bullshit about like if not for the illegal votes that he would have won. One other theory I heard is that Trump wants Hilton in the race because he's actually a good spokesman. He will spend six months attacking Gavin Newsom in California and like soften Gavin up. Like, I don't know, interesting theory.

but I think Occam's razor that he's a dumb, lazy asshole. He just did something stupid. August's razor is he like saw some segment on Fox News. Exactly. And was just like, I'm in. And by the way, that word, Hilton, that's a good, that's a hotel word for him. But yeah, look, Democrats have wanted to elevate a Republican so that there would be just one Republican so that they didn't have to face a Democrat.

In the current situation, Democrats need to elevate one Republican so that it's not just two Republicans, which is like a different kind of a problem. I think the truth is, like, it is a genuine risk that Democrats could be shut out of having a candidate in the general if more people don't drop out and the thing doesn't coalesce. But even if both of the two Republicans were sort of not, we're splitting the vote more evenly, any kind of coalescing will probably result in one Democrat getting above the other. So I think like it's a little too cute, I have to think that Donald Trump, that Donald Trump's action is going to result in something that is likely different than what would have happened

anyway. But you think so? Why? Because I think it is still likely even if the two Republicans were splitting the vote that there will be a coalescing among the Democrats and one would rise to the top. Like, oh, I'm on the Democrats. You say it not on the Republicans. No, no, not on the Republicans.

I'm saying that like if the two Republicans continue to split the vote, right, what is more likely? Is it more likely that Democrats truly remain completely divided and those two move on? Or is it that two Republicans splitting the vote might keep their numbers low enough that two Democrats could get through. I think it's right now, I think it would probably be more likely that two Democrats would get through. And so you might like, if you were thinking about this in terms of, all right, they're going to, Democrats are going to start dropping out. You would want one Republican to rise to the top if you want a Republican to be in the general. I think that's another, that

is, I think, a reasonable way to think about it. I think the reason that everyone was so freaked out about this is like whether or not the party establishment, uh, co-o-leases around. one Democrat. California is just a big fucking state and there's so many voters and it's been so hard to get attention for this race because we're all talking about Trump

all the time and everything's nationalized that like you could see I mean we're getting down to it you can see towards the end even like you know important political figures deciding to back one candidate or the other and then the voters are just sort of like I don't know and just going into it

and it's just like of all the political figures who could make a statement in this race like we've been thinking well Newsom endorse or Kamala or even Barack Obama or someone like that. It's like, no, actually, the person, the political figure who could make the biggest difference is Donald Trump. Yeah. By endorsing one of the Republicans. Yeah. I still think that like one of those, we've talked about this before, but like Steyer, Porter or Swalwell, like those are probably your one of those three candidates is going to end up

being governor. Yeah, very likely. I still think, look, candidates have a week or two and then I think they need to decide to drop out and endorse other people. If you're not at 5% in the polls by like April 15th, when ballots are getting mailed to people, when this thing is really getting into the final stages, like you're not going to win.

Yeah, early vote starts what May 4th? Is that right? Early vote is soon. Like everyone needs to be big boys and big girls and realize that like if you're still at 5% or less a month before the primary, it's not happening for you. So get out of the race,

endorse someone else. like do something good for the party here because my god if if there were some version of this where two Republicans make it through and we are locked out of the internal election that is a catastrophic disaster especially especially now now that we had Donald Trump help us out here yes I did see that I'm so you see CNN's doing a debate a whole other debate for this it's gonna be in May 5th I think it is weird to me that their criteria is you had to hit 3% in two polls I would have made that a little tougher they're probably avoiding some of the

political challenges that USC got. Yeah, but the other problem here, too, is, yeah, some of these candidates that are polling really low, they need to drop out. But if we still are getting close to, like, mid-May and you have three Democrats that are kind of can all claim to be something like the frontrunner kind of vaguely evenly splitting, like, that is when it actually Trump jumping in as being helpful because then you could still end up with two Republicans. But the harder challenge, right, is what happens when we need one of those three to decide? Like, like, when they're splitting all the votes and they each have a justified reason for being in the race and we're heading

towards the election. And then you go to the tribal council. That's like who's going to. Yeah. And I know a thing or two about unjust results at a tribal council. You're like, I've been home for five weeks. Oh, anyway. So that was, you know, ending on ending on some good news. Yeah, yeah, I like that. Thank you, Donald Trump. Thanks for your help, buddy. When we come back, Sarah McBride. Pod Save America is brought to you by Built. We can all agree that housing is expensive. Rent, mortgages, it doesn't matter which one you're paying, it stings every single month. But Built can make it feel a little better. Let me explain. Built started out rewarding members on their rent. Now, as of 2026, built members can also earn points on mortgage payments wherever they live. Every housing payment earns

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Joinbilt.com slash crooked. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash crooked. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. Congresswoman Sarah McBride, welcome back to the pod. Thanks for having me. You've been in Congress a year. What do you know now that you wish you knew a year ago? Well, I don't know that I know that I know things now that I didn't know then. I I think I know them more deeply. Okay. I think, one, I know that there is still a chance for us to get things done. Two, I know very deeply the stakes of this moment and the cowardice of many of my Republican colleagues, most of my Republican colleagues, almost all of my Republican colleagues, two, obviously the stakes of the administration.

But you know, actually, one thing that is interesting, that I know. we talked about last time that I have come to realize over the last year. I know we talked about the reality TV show nature of Congress. And I used to think that the antics we saw from folks in Congress who were taking up a lot of oxygen was the politics of reality TV in pursuit of a rational goal, attention for the sake of power, for the sake of influence. What I have come to realize over the last year is that for many of the folks that you see taking up oxygen on the other side of the aisle in particular, it's not in pursuit of a rational goal. It's actually an addiction. Interesting. And I think that's one of the things we actually don't talk a lot about. It's not

pursuit of attention to win the competitive attention economy. One of the things you most frequently hear about these people when they get to Congress is they were so normal when they got there. And granted, they're people who ran for office, so I doubt they were that normal, but by congressional standards, that they were relatively normal. And then what happens is, with all of the best intentions, they go viral ones. And they're not doing it in pursuit of that, but they just find themselves going viral for something they've done. And we know that social media as addictive. And when someone posts a picture online and it gets a couple hundred more likes than usual, it's a dopamine hit. It's a puff of a cigarette. But when you go viral nationally,

it is like the most instantly addictive drug. And I don't mean that as a trite throwaway line. I don't mean that as a metaphor. I mean literally. It is addictive. And one of the things that we don't talk a lot about is that much of the behavior you're seeing in Congress is from people who are struggling themselves, they find themselves going viral. And as is the case with many addictions, they will debase themselves and inflict collateral damage on anyone else in pursuit of that next tie. And it's the same strategy that I employed before, but it's a different understanding because in the context of people coming after me early on, my job was not to take the bait. It was not to give them the response that they want. And in this case, it's to be essentially a clogged bong, like just to not give them the high that they want so that they will go and chase it elsewhere. But in so doing, what I don't think I realized was just how much opportunity that would unlock for me in not taking the bait. I knew it was what I needed to do to, get them off of me. I knew I think it's what I needed to do on behalf of my constituents.

But what happened after those first few months when I didn't take the bait, when I wasn't that effective high, was I had a number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle come up to me and not only say, welcome to Congress, not only say, I'm so sorry with what they're doing, it's not very Christian, but to have a number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle come up to me and say, let's find opportunities to work together to show people that not everyone here is like that. Because they saw that I was willing to work across disagreement. They saw that I was willing to be a serious substantive legislator, not someone who was

simply there to chase the high of attention. And it's now resulted in me being able to introduce more bipartisan legislation than any other freshman this Congress. So you make lemonade out of lemons. It's interesting. Because on the other side of that, you know, specifically, your time of Congress began with Nancy Mason, Lauren Bobert, you know, chasing you around the Capitol in case you had a bill in the chamber, as it were. And they've both, you know, Lauren Beauret just had a series of public humiliations. Nancy Mace had that incident at the airport and is largely despised, it seems, by her colleagues and also reportedly members of her staff.

Is there something about the way those people treated you and what has happened to them, sort of publicly, politically, that kind of fits in this analogy of, I would say it's actually more like, you know, I don't know if it's about a bong thing. It feels more like a stronger drug they're hitting. Yes, much stronger. Is there a connection you think between the ways in which they've unraveled and the ways in which they went after you? Yes.

I mean, I think that goes directly back to what I was saying. And I think it's particularly true for some of the folks, which is that as is the case with any addiction, if you are someone with real pain or trauma, if you're someone who's not well, you are more likely to fall into addictive behavior and fall prey to addiction. And I think that that is what we saw from some of the folks who came after me. They were not doing well. And in the case of Nancy Mace, I wish her well in her campaign, all the best in her campaign for governor. I think it's time that Republican voters in South Carolina choose someone who came into Congress standing up to Donald Trump, denouncing the insurrection, someone who came into Congress and proclaimed their support for not only gay rights, but trans rights. I think that's the type of person that Republican primary voters in South Carolina should choose to be their next governor. Such an important point.

So that's an important point. So Lauren Bobert actually has come out against in a pretty strong way Trump's proposed supplemental. He's out there seeking a $200 billion supplemental. A lot of Democrats have come out against it. You're part of the congressional progressive caucus that has come out against it. At the same time, there are some Democrats in the Senate, including Delaware's Chris Coons, who have not been, who have been more equivocal on whether to support to support, to support funding the military because of the Iran war than a Republican like Lauren Bobert. Is that disappointing to you? Do you wish that that all Democrats were more emphatic in saying that we will not vote to provide military funding to kind of in effect go back and authorize

the war? Well, I think my understanding is that one comment maybe got taken out of context. And he came back and I think was pretty clear and unequivocal. Clearer, for sure, but yes. And my sense is that every, pretty much every Democrat in Congress understands that a supplemental to fund this war would be both in perception but also probably in reality a validation retroactively of the administration's reckless and illegal war in Iran, which is clear today than ever, but was always clear that it was going to be a failure. And I don't anticipate any Democrat, but maybe one obvious one in the Senate. And I don't know about any in the House voting in favor of a supplemental, no matter whether it's $50 million, $100 million or $200 million. And I think this is a moment where we should be absolutely clear and unequivocal that we will not give one dime to this president's war, not just because of the process that he didn't go through. But because this war is stupid, it is dumb and it is making us less safe.

We are more than a month into this war. I think the president's going through different stages of grief right now. I think the press conference we just saw from him is a mix of negotiation and denial in the process of grief. Because a month and a week in, we have a new Supreme Leader who's, by all accounts, more extreme and more pro-nuclear than before. everything we have destroyed can be rebuilt and can probably be rebuilt with the billions of dollars that Iran now has because of the easing of sanctions and their closing of the Strait of Hormuz, which was entirely predictable and predicted, but the president thought we would have won long before they would have the chance to do it. And now our adversaries in Russia and China, Russia is swimming in revenues that they didn't have, which will make peace in Ukraine that much harder. China is not only accessing oil in a way that much of the rest of the world is not, they also now understand our military and operational capabilities far better today than they did two months ago, which means they would be better prepared to potentially invade Taiwan. All at the same time, we're further alienating our allies in Europe and costs, including the cost of gas, are going up here.

So I don't anticipate any Democrat, save for maybe one, voting for such an ill-thought-out war by validating through the appropriations process, $200 million to continue down this path. As someone who's tried to find places to reach out to Republicans, I talked about this with Tim Miller from the bulwark about why. And his point was that Trump is in terrible political territory. this war was a war of choice that we should never have pursued. Gas prices are through the roof. Most of the countries against this, we should be on offense. And that includes trying to talk to Republicans, whether it's on television, on Fox News, or to your colleagues in the House to try to get as big of a coalition together that opposes

the war, funding the war, supporting the war. Are you talking to, is there a conversation between Democrats and Republicans about making sure that that there isn't a supplemental that gets through because they don't have a lot of margin and a bunch of Republicans have expressed if not outright opposition skepticism. Yes, there are absolutely conversations going on. There are conversations routinely. I was on the bipartisan bicameral delegation that went to Denmark during the height of the Greenland crisis. We came back and the first thing many of us did is we went to our Republican colleagues. I think in that instance, as is the case in many instances, we do find opposition.

to this president among our Republican colleagues, but either a hesitation to push back publicly for fear of the political ramifications or a hope that the situation will resolve itself by the president's own actions. I mean, I think they will often say to us, he'll stand down, he'll pull back, it's rhetoric, it's bluster. But when you're talking about war, when you're talking about a president as unhinged and divorced from the reality of what's going on as he is, a president who cannot handle things going well and respond rationally, it's incredibly dangerous and irresponsible for any Republican who does oppose this war to not meet that belief with any kind of public action.

or even rhetoric. I will say, too, to your point, this is a moment where I think we have to reinforce that if you are a Republican voter and you are watching what's going on and you don't like what you are seeing, if you are a Republican voter who voted for this president because you thought, well, the Democrats talked a lot about democracy and we survived his first term and prices were lower and you feel like he has broken either one or both of those sort of promises that democracy will be fine and costs would be lower. If you feel like he's broken his promises, welcome to our coalition, welcome to our cause. You don't have to agree with us on 100% of things, but join us to stop forever wars and to bring down costs. So I wanted to talk to you

about the ways in which you've been working with Republicans in the House. In December, the House passed that Marjorie Taylor Green bill. That was her swan song, criminalizing certain kinds of medical treatment for trans minors. The vote was along party lines, except you were part of an effort to get four Republicans to join you in voting, no, which they did. One Republican who opposed the bill, Brian Fitzpatrick, said, the same theory could be used to say that if parents don't vaccinate their kids, they could be committing a crime. So the parent-child relationship, doctor-physician relationship, we have to always presume that these are sacred. It feels like that is the strong, that argument of just freedom. Freedom between, you know, parents to make decisions about their families, for

doctors to be able to provide what care they think is best, is our strongest argument. But at times, it also seems like on the left, let's say when the Supreme Court rules that parents have a right to be notified if their kid socially transitions, or if a law in Colorado providing conversion therapy violates, potentially violates the First Amendment. I think liberals, in part because they don't trust this court, their first reaction is to go to the outcome of that, which are policies we might not necessarily agree with. But is their value in simply saying when the court is doing these kinds of things, it's actually standing up for a principle we believe in, even if it's applied in a way where we don't like the outcome.

Absolutely. I mean, I think in this moment with the stakes as high as they are, not just for trans people, but in so many instances, one, we have to recognize the way, well-intended policies or rhetoric that we have done in the past could be used against us in the future. I think the last year and a half have brought that possibility into stark relief for us. And I think it's something that we have to be mindful of moving forward. What's an example of that? What do you mean by that? I mean, I do think that there is something to be said for it's harder to say government shouldn't interfere with the health care decisions of a,

parent and their child when there was a spate of efforts to ban what is bad, abusive, quite frankly, health care in the form of conversion therapy. That's being used as a precedent here. And I think that I'm not saying that I don't think those bills or ideas are wrong, but I do think we have to be cognizant of how the right can co-opt precedent in order to do really harmful things on a wide scale. And I think we do have to keep the main thing, the main thing in the fight for equality for LGBTQ people. I think there was after marriage, there was sort of a search for what's the, what more can

we do, what more can we do? And there was a lot of basic necessities that we had not actually protected for portions of our community. including the trans community. And I think that we are seeing that sort of chasing of the next best idea on gay rights maybe resulted in us taking our eye off the ball for trans people to some degree. But I also think that sometimes freedom means, sometimes democracy means, that people make choices that we don't like.

Families make choices that we don't like. And I think right now in this moment, we have to be clear that the best place for decisions to be made around the health care of a child is between the parent, the child, and their provider. And that is not always going to result in parents making the decisions that we would make for our child. our own children, but it also means government doesn't get to come in to those individual decisions and stop parents from making decisions that we believe are in the best interest of their child. And so I do think that we have to be firm in that conviction, and that means taking some of the not-so-good with the good. Yeah. Well, it's, it's, I would say have you got some sort of like right-wing activists and like really press them, right? I think there is a sincere

belief that the, that, that not even just on LGBT issues or trans issues, but across the board, that what liberals had argued for was something about freedom and access, but actually became rules that everybody had to live by or else. And let me just be clear. Again, I'm not saying that conversion therapy bans are bad, I just, I do think that we should be cognizant of precedents that are established that can be used against us when we are in power, just to be clear to. Right. No, of course. And by the way, like, you know, conversion therapy as sort of free speech versus medical care that we are allowed to regulate, they're like technical and important distinctions to be made between sort of freedom of speech and what medical, what a medical provider

can, can offer. Like, those are distinctions to be made. But, And there's a difference between using, I mean, there were some FTC ideas that people were pushing in the Biden administration, people were thinking about in the Biden administration as it relates to conversion therapy, that the right is now trying to use around gender affirming care. So, I mean, there's just, there's also the way you go about it and the way you do it. And that also makes a difference in terms of precedent too. Right. Well, like in the case of California, both the right-wing judges and the liberal justice. judges seem to acknowledge that parents have some rights, but children should be protected from harm and from abuse. But the law in California was written as if the Supreme Court didn't really

exist and certainly wasn't right wing. And I can't tell if what we're talking about here is an effort just to save some ground because we're under attack from right wing judges. Or are we trying to assert a principle. I think it's a principle. I mean, I think, I think, look, there are strategies, tactics, policies that I might have thought were great ideas 10 years ago. And over time, I've since evolved on or learned, well, it's a well-intended policy, but it could have, it could lay the precedent or the foundation for this kind of policy

that I don't like. And I think that the politics of backlash that we're experiencing right now, I think, should sober all of us to that potential, to that risk. And it doesn't mean changing your positions all the time. It does mean, one, being more cognizant of that. And I do think that that's a principle, right? I mean, I think there are a lot of things in a liberal democratic society that some people on our side, would want to forbid, but if you forbid it in this context, it means that they can forbid it in that context. And I just think that there is a return to an understanding and appreciation of

freedom, and that means taking the good with the bad, that I think all of us have learned some hard lessons on over the last couple of years. But I think was an understandable and well intended approach a decade ago that was in part a byproduct of sort of perhaps an arrogance or a sense of unending cultural momentum that we didn't have to grapple with that messiness of liberal democracy and freedom, that we could across different issues sort of tamp down different approaches because we didn't like them. when I think that that's, one, perhaps a violation of the principle of freedom, but two, I think just counterproductive in a modern digital society where you can't suppress differing thought and approaches as much as you may disagree with them and often seeking to suppress them only makes them more attractive and only gives some degree of credibility among people that maybe there's a truth in them. because you're trying to suppress it.

And I think all of us would do well on our side to learn both of those lessons, both the practical and the principled lesson of the last couple years. I want to ask you about the Democratic Party and what we are trying to do now to signal to people in the midterms and beyond that we're not just a party that opposes Trump, but we have a real kind of mission around the kind of economy we want to build. specifically, there's been a series of proposals. I talked to Senator Cory Booker last week about one that he introduced. Senator Chris Van Halen has another. Katie Porter here in California has one that's about kind of just basically raising the standard

deduction, getting income tax off of as many people's plates as possible because the economy is so stacked against working people. And I'm wondering what you're, I feel like you have thoughts about that. I have no doubt that those proposals pull well. and I have no doubt that there are people who would benefit from a change to the standard deduction or a holistic change to the tax code. And I do think that we should make our tax system fairer and more progressive. I think that as a matter of both principle and frankly, practicality, that we do better by creating solutions that actually solve the source of the problem that families are facing. I think out of principle, one, we should

address the problem, right? We should address that the housing shortage and the cost of housing that is a byproduct of that. We should make sure that people have access to child care that is capped at $10 or $15 a day. We should have a higher minimum wage in this country nationwide. We should have paid family and medical leave nationwide. And I think that those are the right solutions, one, because I think they change the structures of our economy, that even if we change the tax code, the pre-existing inequities in our economic structures will persist and will be so porous that they will still find ways to create inequities even if you change the tax code.

And so I think, one, you need to solve the problem as a matter of principle. Two, as a matter of principle, I do think that making sure that all of us feel a sense of buy-in, that all of us feel a sense of ownership in our society, in the policies of government is a good thing. But then from a practical standpoint, even if in the short term the tax changes that people have been proposing poll really well, I just don't think people remember that. at two, three, four years after, right? People don't remember, I'm not saying we shouldn't do a tax cut, but people don't remember who created the standard deduction at 30,000, right? They do remember who created Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, who created the Affordable Care Act.

When there is a tangible policy, a program that people are interacting with, that's not just good politics on the front end. I think it's better politics in the long term, well because people will see our party as the party that's not just lowering costs, not just making the American dream more affordable and accessible for them. They'll know when they access that $10 to $15 child care. They'll know when they take paid family and medical leave. They'll know when they're able to buy in to Medicare. That individual action was made possible by Democrats. On the other side of this, we have Donald Trump. He said this.

last week at the end of last week, that seemed like quite a revelation here. The United States can't take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. You've got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it, too. They should pay. They have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up. But it's not possible for us to take care of daycare. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.

They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing, military protection. We have to guard the country. So Trump just put out his 2027 budget. It has a massive boost to military spending, 10% cuts to domestic policies like public health and scientific research, housing education. He also has proposed $377 million this year for a White House renovation, $174 million for next year.

I can't think of worse politics than cutting social spending to fund the war and do a gut reno. How do Democrats make the most of this? And do Republicans understand how bad the politics of this is? I mean, you'll have to ask them as to whether they understand how bad the politics are. I mean, Donald Trump, it's no wonder that the White House deleted that video. When I saw it, I immediately pushed it out. I mean, that should be part of our ads and our message in the midterms. And he's just saying the quiet part out loud.

I mean, everyone knows from the policies of the last year and a half that this was the Republican agenda. The Republican agenda was a massive increase in spending for forever wars and massive tax breaks for Donald Trump's wealthy donors. And everyone else has to pay the price in cuts to health care or in the failure of the federal government to address the very issues you and I were just talking about like child care. I mean, there is always money, it seems, from Republicans to cut taxes for the wealthiest. and to invade other countries. And yet they clutch their pearls when a Democrat proposes paid family and medical leave or universal childcare paid for, mind you, not even adding to the deficit by making the tax system fair and increasing taxes on the wealthiest.

So I think we not only should be elevating that message, but we also have to have a very clear agenda that runs contrary to that. It's why I think whether it's a $15 or $20 minimum wage nationwide, universal child care, paid family and medical leave, I think that should be at the heart of our agenda because I know how much it meets the needs of my constituents. I know how popular it was in Delaware when we passed many of those policies during my time in the state Senate. And I know how necessary it is for our nation to compete global. I mean, there is a reason why every other industrialized nation has passed paid family and medical leave and provides meaningful support for families who are trying to send their kid to child care. It's because they know it's not just compassionate policy, but competitive policy. We have a 1950s care infrastructure for a 2026 workforce.

And if we are going to tap the potential and skills of everyone, no matter their gender or family situation, we need to have policies that allow them to start a family, to have kids, to fulfill their obligations to their own health and to their family without having to sacrifice their job or their income. It's a good place to leave it. Congressman Sarah McBride, thank you so much. And you were telling me before we started that you're training in the breaststroke for the 2028 Olympics? Yes, yes. That's a little controversial, but I think it's exciting. I want to be the face of trans participation in sports because I'm, I'm, I want to be the face of trans participation in sports because I'm,

I know. You'll sink like a stone. Exactly. I always say if you want to prove trans women don't have a competitive advantage in sports, throw me in. But you know what I'm really focused my time on? What are you focused on? I'm focused on recruiting you for traders. Oh, yes.

I would look, I think if you think that I perform poorly on Survivor, boy, Survivor with food, I could probably only do better. I mean, I think you'll be like a season four, Dorenda, not a season three, Dorenda. You'll make it about halfway. I hope. Thank you for saying that. I told, I said, I tweeted at them and I said, you should pick John Lovett for the next season of traders. Celebrity or non-celebrity. They can pick.

Right. Yeah. No, I see why. And I appreciate that. And I appreciate that. So I'm leading that effort right now. Wow. And that means the world to me because you know what?

You build coalitions. You can get things done. You know, defy expectations. And that's why we love talking to you. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. That's our show for today. Thanks to Sarah McBride for coming on.

Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. Our producer is Saul Ruvin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.

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