Pod Save America - “Terry vs. Trump.”

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Democrats schedule a vote on a new voting rights bill while Republicans run more Big Lie candidates, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe talks to Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor about his race against Trump supporter Glenn Youngkin, and the week’s worst punditry gets its due in a new installment of The Take Appreciators.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Democrats will hold a vote this week on the Freedom to Vote Act while Republicans intensify their efforts to make sure yours doesn't count. Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe talks to Lovett and Tommy about his race against Trump supporter Glenn Youngkin. And we decide how many politicos to award some of the week's worst punditry in a brand new installment of the Take Appreciators. I'm excited to play. Are you guys excited to play for the first time? Very excited.

Very excited. Yeah, I got to hear you and Dan play last week, and I was a little bit jealous. Also, Lovett's got a mask that is made of the carpet from The Shining. You bet it is. Where does that land in the anti-mask wars? I think this is... If you're wearing a mask associated with a prominent murder

i think it's um ambivalent a lot of people are wondering it's ambivalent but uh i like the pattern it's very nice like the overlook hotel stylings do you before we begin an important reminder that this will be the last time we release this episode on a Monday afternoon. Starting next week, October 26th, we're moving to First Thing Tuesday mornings. The episode with Dan and I will still be released on Thursday afternoons. This switch will help us cover news that happens Mondays. It will give us our Sundays back, which is very important. Very important.

Because, you know, all work and no play makes John's a dull boy. Hey, there it is. A little callback. Was that a callback? It was. Oh, I thought I just made that up. It will also give you all an extra day to listen to my brand new show, Offline, which premieres next Sunday, October 24th.

Offline is a series of unplugged conversations about how to improve our hellish online existence. about how to improve our hellish online existence. John, I think that the discourse around Colin Powell's death today is proving the fundamental premise of your show wrong, and that it's a very wonderful, nuanced, and thoughtful discourse online. Look, the most effective way to prevent future wars is to call dead people war criminals on Twitter and let everyone know that you called them a war criminal so you can virtually signal about how anti-war you are.

No, no, no. I just want to attack people whose views don't perfectly jive with mine. Well, it's just an effective discourse every time it happens on Twitter, every time someone dies and then people yell about them. It usually moves the ball forward is the important thing. It moves the ball forward. You can't talk about people who are too online

without revealing you too are too online. Yeah, no, that's part of why I'm doing this show. I mean, that's,

if you guys listen to the trailer, you're both featured prominently in it. Love it for making fun of us for monitoring every tweet in the sky like we're air traffic controllers.

Tommy's talking about the, his phone screen time, the indication you get on Sunday. A little judgmental screen time. John's actually doing the show because it's actually one hour where he physically can't be on Twitter because he's recording something. The more I'm on the microphone, the better

it gets. I talk to people like Monica Lewinsky, Megan Rapinoe, Gia Tolentino, Peter Hamby, DeRay McKesson, and more. Fun show. I've already learned a lot from the people I've interviewed, and you can find it right here on the Pod Save America feed starting next Sunday. Who's your worst guest so far? The worst guest?

Hamby. Okay. Not even a hesitation. Because I know, because we're such good friends with Peter, I can say that really quickly. All right. Sorry, Pedro. Peter was terrible.

You're out. All right. Let's get to the news. Chuck Schumer has announced that there will be a vote this Wednesday on the Freedom to Vote Act, which is the compromise voting rights legislation that now has the support of all 50 Senate Democrats, including Joe Manchin, who helped write the bill, the compromise bill. The bill would guarantee universal early voting, mail-in voting, automatic and same-day voter registration. It would make Election Day a national holiday.

It would restore voting rights to the formerly incarcerated. It would ban partisan gerrymandering, essentially overturn a lot of the voter suppression laws that states have passed, and make it harder to remove election officials for political reasons. So it does something on election subversion, which the original For the People Act did not do. political reasons. So it does something on election subversion, which the original For the People Act did not do. It also includes a voter ID requirement, but not one as stringent as most Republicans have proposed in the past. Manchin has been trying for months to find 10 Republican senators who might support the compromise or at least even negotiate. He so far hasn't found those 10, which means the bill will only pass if Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema change their minds on the filibuster.

How you guys like our chances? It's a little like being the first person in Squid Game to look out over the bridge of glass. Oh, yeah. Scary. It's not good. What if, okay, I got a pitch. What if Biden only talked about uh election day as a public holiday element and just called it the day off bill you get a day off joe wants to give you one

day off to the that's all this is about it's just the lowest common denominator thing i will say by pitching here we're pitching ideas we're going to talk about some of the shittier things joe mentioned has been up to lately but um pretty good piece of compromise legislation from joe mentioned now I will say that there's a whole bunch of other Democratic senators who worked on this compromise legislation, which is probably why it's so good, because it wasn't just left in Joe Manchin's hands. Amy Klobuchar, Jeff Merkley, who's been very progressive on voter rights for a while, Raphael Warnock, Alex Padilla, who we talked to here in studio about this. So it was a good crew

that came up with this compromise bill. Here's my thing on this. Like, I don't want to get my hopes up here at all because I have learned anything related to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. You should not get your hopes up. I just can't figure out why Manchin and then all these other Democratic senators would go through all the motions and all the work of coming up with this compromise legislation if Manchin knew all along that once he didn't get the Republicans, he was just going to give up and do nothing about the filibuster. Yeah, I think, first of all, on the compromise, like there is a big give here on voter ID. That's a big deal. It's a big deal. The Democrats are giving up on this. It is indulging something that is fundamentally not real, but we're doing it as a sop to Republicans who claim they genuinely believe there should be voter ID, even though we know that these are bad faith claims. Fine. I agree with that. When I say that there's not a chance,

there's not a chance of finding 10 Republicans. Oh, yeah, no. To pass this without reforming the filibuster. I read that they found like five or six who didn't like the bill, but were at least willing to sit down at a table and compromise, but only five or six. So like, no.

Yeah, I don't know. Look, as Lovett used to say, he has high, high hopes for living. He would say that a lot and he would cheer and he would do like a TikTok dance about it. The way that we're going to get this done is not by finding 10 Republicans. It doesn't matter how many invites they've received to the, what's the houseboat's name? The Almost Heaven. The Almost Heaven, docked out in the sea, whatever, doesn't matter. But I do think like hopefully Joe Manchin views this as a necessity to get to a place where he'll do a little carve out for the filibuster even if you think it'll carve out even if you think that joe mansion is a uh annoying asshole which you know my hands up in the air i would go with idiot idiot um he he might have like a selfish reason for wanting to reform

the filibuster here because he will look like a fucking moron if his whole thing was like the senate can work and we can have bipartisanship and so i'm gonna spearhead this compromise legislation and i'm gonna find republicans to get it done with me and then he doesn't find any and then he just lets it die like he looks like an asshole just for selfish reasons not not even joe manchin being altruistic here i don't know um he's been made to look like a schmuck many times in the past and hasn't really phased him. I agree, though, with what you're saying. I mean, I think I think you have to hope that like the failure to find 10 Republicans for a very reasonable compromise on voting rights when 15 years ago they voted unanimously to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. When you look at the shenanigans over the debt ceiling, when you look

at the fact that they blocked a one six commission, you start to add that all up together and you start to see an argument that maybe, maybe Manchin and then Sinema can get behind, do some kind of filibuster reform. Manchin has been all over the place on the filibuster. He has issued really strong assertions that he would never be for reforming it. Then he has entertained all kinds of changes, whether it's carve-outs or requiring the minority to show up in full to block bills, require a talking filibuster. There's a bunch of reforms that he has at the very least entertained while talking about basic principles about wanting the minority of the Senate to have a voice. And there's a way you can maybe get those things,

that Venn diagram, to overlap with some kind of change. What's the old saying? A smart lawyer never asks a question they don't already know the answer to. You'd hope that in this case, Manchin would not go down this path without knowing that there was an outcome that would look successful. That's the optimistic case.

The pessimistic case is we've been talking about whether a bill will be 3.5 trillion or 3 trillion or two or one. And the whole time, Chuck Schumer's been sitting on this letter, apparently from Joe Manchin that $3.5 trillion or $3 trillion or $2 trillion or $1 trillion. And the whole time Chuck Schumer's been sitting on this letter, apparently, from Joe Manchin that says $1.5 trillion is the cap in his mind. And yet we have this huge expectations management problem, which is a perennial problem for Democrats. We're very good at spinning even successes into feeling like failures. So I don't know.

I'm going to try to stay helpful here. I'm going to be the happy guy. I was going to say, I'll add to your pessimistic case because I do think we should lay out both cases for everyone, since clearly the Democrats in power have not done that. To Tommy's point about expectations management, the pessimistic case is that if Manchin and Sinema weren't willing to reform the filibuster to avoid a default, which would have caused a catastrophic global recession, they're not going to do it for voting rights, right? That's the pessimistic case. But, you know, that was one aspect of the debt ceiling fight that I think was under discussed, which is, I remember early on before Manchin basically came out and said, I will

not do filibuster reform. The question for Manchin was always, why would you come out so strongly against filibuster reform when just allowing for the possibility that you might support it frees up, frees up Republican votes and frees up negotiations to get some people along a bipartisan compromise? What was interesting about the debt ceiling is there were these two precepts that couldn't both be true if Republicans didn't budge on voting to lift the debt ceiling, which is Manchin said, we will not default and I will not reform the filibuster. If those two things, you got to pick one. So Republicans saw that. And the moment the possibility of filibuster reform was real, they fucking caved. And my hope. So I think that like the optimistic version of that is in the end. Democrats are going to lift the debt ceiling through reconciliation. It's going to happen. But the point I'm making is like, I think that there's a pessimistic version in which Manchin doesn't say, oh, well, we can't do it because I won't support the filibuster. There's a pessimistic version where he says something like, I just need more time. This was too soon to have the vote. We got to give the process time to work. There's an optimistic version of this not

happening where he starts to entertain. He wants to entertain the possibility of filibuster reform and hopes that that cudgel gives him time to get those 10 Republicans. Neither one of these is great. I guess there's also, by the way, an outcome where Manchin supports a talking filibuster and, you know, you see Ted Cruz and some of these grandstanding assholes just stand on the floor for a month trying to filibuster voting rights legislation, which... I just think you can't count to 10 in 5, 10 willing participants in even these negotiations. I like, my guess is that someone like McConnell

is smart enough to dispatch some of his deputies to play act and pretend to negotiate as a way to just kill time. That would be smart. I was, as I do on the way to work, listening to Steve Bannon's fantastic podcast this morning. You're going to become radicalized soon. I'm getting into it, yeah.

The first time I thought it was interesting. Now it's just you listen all the time. I'm a little bit worried about... When was the last time you listened to Love or Leave It? I'm a little concerned about some of these Dominion machines. Don't you guys marginalize me. And what Bannon was talking about with Mark Meadows is the need to use the debt ceiling fight to just take as much time as possible, eat up the clock so they can't get anything else done.

That's their play. That's their strategy. All right. So Republicans are widely expected to filibuster this bill on Wednesday. What should Joe Biden do after that happens? Listen, I don't want to I don't think I'm the first person to say it it's time for a pivot ladies and gentlemen who are we pivoting where what direction we're pivoting we're pivoting to a voting rights anti-filibuster i'm gonna use another washington term it might be time

for a full-court press oh my gosh i mean the the debate is going to be you're reading all these articles that are like demands for joe b Biden to give a big speech or make this the focus of his external messaging and yada, yada, yada. I don't know that that's the right move. I think it's like Joe Biden should get in a car, drive to Capitol Hill, go to Joe Manchin's office, lock the door and say, we're not leaving until you figure out what you can be for. I think he should announce that he is for a carve out for democracy reform on the filibuster. I mean, he should vote. So who gives a fuck on some level? It's like Manchin and Sinema and all these people who actually vote on the reason.

I think he should. I don't think that him saying that publicly is going to move Manchin and Sinema. Yeah, I think we are at the point now where Joe Biden should fucking throw the hot potato to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema so that they get the blame. Because right now, when voting rights advocates and progressives say Joe Biden didn't fight hard enough because he never came out for filibuster reform, they are correct. Toss him the smoldering coal, Ember. I think that's right. And I think he should. And look, Joe Biden.

Of course he should. Of course he should. But like in terms of like things that we debate, whether they really will make it get it done or not. This is one of those times where it's like, yes, do that but also it's all all the actions in the senate yes but i do think they're activists that are pressuring they want to know joe biden is with them in this aspect of the fight and i think there is i think very little cost at this point to coming out and saying we have tried everything to get these republicans to compromise they have failed a protecting the majority of voters in this country is more important than protecting

a group of minority Republican senators. And it's time to do whatever we can to protect democracy in this country. He can do it in a very Joe Biden way, right? You know, like we tried bipartisanship. Joe Manchin tried bipartisanship. Like nothing in this bill would inherently favor one party over the other. These are all nonpartisan provisions. I ran for president because I thought democracy was at risk.

This is central to my whole presidency. I thought you were going to say like while getting ice cream at an OTR, like a very Joe Biden way. That's fine too. But like, you know, like Joe Biden, of course, likes bipartisanship, likes the Senate, is a creature of the Senate. Bipartisanship in the Senate working doesn't matter if we don't have basic democracy in the country. Right. That comes first. Yeah, I think that's right. And I, you know, I understand why activists and people who are paying attention are, you know, pressing the red button, being like, this is an emergency.

This is a crisis. They're absolutely right. They are right. We are in a crisis. Our democracy is at risk. What is not clear is if whether or not Biden making that the centerpiece of what he talks about every day to the detriment of other important issues like getting his bills through, immigration, a host of other issues, redounds to the benefit of his political prospects, our midterm prospects, or even the ability to get something done when we've actually successfully made the case on democracy reform. There is a big majority that supports it in the House. There is actually a 50, all Democrats support protecting our democracy in the Senate. The problem is not making the case. The case has been made. The problem is two human beings

that have shown themselves in just the last couple of weeks, not receptive in a lot of ways to ordinary pressure. Manchin, because his politics are different, and Sinema, because she's Kyrsten Sinema and she's on some kind of a fucking soul journey involving wine and Europe and Iron Mans and proving she's John McCain. And that is something that Joe Biden making this a kind of national fight.

I don't know if it helps. I would like it. I agree. I think it's an inside game. Joe Biden talking about all those other issues isn't doing if it helps. I would like it. I agree. I think it's an inside game. Joe Biden, Joe Biden talking about all those other issues is doing much good either. That's true too. That's true too.

Here's there are full on nihilism as politics. Look, there are plenty of people who are still people who don't pay attention to politics very closely. Don't follow the news very closely. And they say they don't see anything getting done. And they're like, Democrats are fucking up.

And I want to be like, actually, who's fucking up is Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, not Democrats. But the more I think about it, like then more Democrats in office and in the White House should say what you just said. Love it. You know that like, yeah, we want to do this. And the reason we're not doing this is because of these two. Like fucking it's time to turn the attention on these two. Fucking it's time to turn the attention on these two. And I know they haven't up until now because they are very concerned that they were going to say something that pisses the two of them off so bad that they don't vote for Build Back Better or even worse, they leave the party altogether. So I get the sensitivities there.

But I do think it's time to turn up the heat a little bit, as Hillary Clinton would say in 2008. I like that, yeah. Yeah. Turn up the heat. Again, one of Lovett's best lines. One of the best lines I've ever wrote was obviously the famous mid-January slogan, turn up the heat, turn America around.

Seriously? Did you make that up or is that real? I did not. It's a real slogan. It is not mine. Wasn't there also an if you can't stand the heat? Yes. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Which I think that was new for her. It was a new line, right? That was a brand new. Those were both from the Iowa, I believe those were from the Iowa JJ because I remember that there new for her it was a new line those were both from the Iowa I believe those were from the Iowa JJ because I remember that there were

green and yellow signs you guys are chanting turn up the heat turn up the heat and then on the other side it said turn America around I believe but you also had to

turn the sign around that's confusing we bust people in from Illinois are you wearing a squid game colored sweatshirt am I right about that

or is it more is the squid game outfit more red? This is an audio format. It's bright pink. I'm wearing a bright pink. People know what squid game is. Neon sweatshirt. They do know what the squid game colors are. But I'd do more pink. Thank you. I recognize it from your Abbey on Twitter.

This is my go-to. It is. It is from my Abbey. You know why it's always on? It's because it's in my car. Mansion has also reportedly told the White House that he opposes including a clean electricity program in the Build Back Better bill, which would reward utilities that transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and penalize those who don't. This is a policy that would do more to cut carbon emissions than anything else Biden has proposed and really anything else the federal government has ever done. How big a deal is the Manchin opposition to the Clean Electricity Performance Program, which I believe is the CEPP? Yeah.

Can I just, I think it's a huge, huge deal. The question is how bad it will be is determined by what is allowed to replace it. Because Manchin has said pretty frequently, actually, and has now reiterated that he is against rewarding utilities for doing on clean energy what they would have done anyway, which is an interesting way for him to describe this because he's talking about the carrot piece and not the stick piece. He's talking about the carrot for rewarding renewables as opposed to the stick piece for making companies pay for not switching to renewables. Well, it sounds like he's against both.

Well, he has to... He's complaining about the carrot piece, but he was also complaining about that he doesn't want coal companies penalized. Well, the question is, will he be okay? The focus being on not wanting to reward renewables, is he open to any kind of a carbon tax? As I say that, I am worried that we will see a statement of him coming out against a carbon tax by the time I get to the end of this. In fact, when we were prepping for the pod, I was looking for just such a statement because I'm like, I get the New York Times broke the story and then did a followup story about Democrats now looking into a carbon tax

a couple days later. And I was just reading the story, like, why would Joe Manchin support a carbon tax, which would also require coal companies to pay more if he didn't like the clean electricity program because it required coal companies to pay more? I don't understand. Look, there's some, the modeling of this bill suggests that this clean energy performance program would drive over 50% of the emissions reductions that we need to see by 2030 and then again by 2035. So right now, 40% of electricity in the U.S. comes from clean energy sources. That includes nuclear. Biden wants us to get 80% by 2030 and 100% by 2035. This is the key driver. And getting clean electricity is the linchpin to lowering emissions generally, right?

Because if you have clean power, you can then plug in your electric vehicle into your clean power at your home and you're not burning fossil fuels and it makes the whole thing work. Manchin coming out, or the New York Times reporting that Manchin opposed this part of the program

made me want to put my fist and then my head through a fucking wall. It's the key, it's the linchpin of the bill. It's an existential issue for the planet. And I think one of the frustrating things is we often talk about climate as a coastal problem. It's like, oh, Miami is going to be screwed. Oh, this part of New England is going to be underwater. There was a big report in the New York Times, I believe, that talked about how vulnerable West Virginia is to flooding because there's near all these rivers and streams because all these residents have nowhere to really go in mountainous regions. Half of West Virginia power stations are at risk, fire stations, police stations. So it's a real existential problem for the state of West Virginia. for the state of West Virginia.

So you're left to wonder, hmm, what's Joe Manchin's motivation here? Which brings us to his financial, personal financial incentives and the investments he has in the coal energy industry. And so, yeah, I don't know. It's exhausting. I think he's just an idiot.

I don't know. You had a good idea that we were talking about before the show. Yes, here's my idea. There are 14,000 coal miners in the state of West Virginia. About 10,000, I think, work in the mines. I think here's my idea. There are 14,000 coal miners in the state of West Virginia. About 10,000, I think, work in the mines. I think there's some several thousand that work

at the surface level. I'm not an expert at mining. Nor am I. I'm a gay Jew from Long Island. Neither here nor there. Those aren't mutually exclusive. You find me a gay Jew from Long Island mining coal in West Virginia, we can continue this conversation. Okay, tweet at Lovett. Tweet at Lovett Tweet at Love It.

But you gotta back it up. You gotta prove your work. Show your work. Wow. The point I was making is 14,000 people. We can give each one of them a million dollars.

One million dollars in the bill. That's 14 billion dollars. Don't start that high. Let's start at half a million and then we'll go straight to right over here. Truly, I'm cool with buying off just the executives. Let's $14 billion. Let's start at half a million.

I'm cool with buying off just the executives. Let's try it all. That's my pitch. I like that pitch. There's that pitch. There's carbon tax that's being floated. Again, the carbon tax would also include rebates to consumers and particularly to people

who work in the coal industry because energy prices because corporations could respond to the carbon tax by raising their energy prices, which could, you know, affect consumers. And so there's rebates involved in that program. Also, key to that would be the carbon tax that if you if you're producing gasoline, that wouldn't count towards the carbon tax. So then it wouldn't raise gas prices on vehicles. So that would be one way politically to get it through. So that's one idea. Jeff Merkley from Oregon, who's been a climate hawk forever in the Senate, he said he would not vote for a reconciliation package

that did not have significant climate provisions, but he said he was open to any option to cut carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2030 and produce carbon-free electricity by 2035. He suggested additional wind and solar subsidies or proposals to speed up the transition to clean energy vehicles. I haven't seen any proposals that would get us those reductions. It's similar to a carbon tax or a clean energy standard just through incentives and tax credits, but if they can figure something out, great. And also, by the way, all this is predictions about what these

incentives will ultimately do. And actually, there the way, all of this is predictions about what these incentives will ultimately do. And actually, there have been plenty of times in the past where the incentive was smaller than people wanted, but in the end, it caught a moment where it resonated with what the markets were doing anyway, and all of a sudden, you could hit your targets anyway. AOC even said, there are many ways to do it, but we can't afford to give up.

Everybody is kind of recognizing that, look, what we're fundamentally talking about is we need incentives for renewable, we need disincentives for fossil fuels. How do we do that? There are a lot of ways to do it. And there's a lot of ways to turn those dials to achieve what you would have achieved in a clean energy program as they had previously drafted. Will they get all the way there? I don't think any of us know. I just don't know how important the balance of care is versus sticks. We need like a phone, a friend, like we conference in someone from Vox to like tell us exactly how the policy works. But I mean, the thing, the other

part of this, I think people need to understand is that Joe Biden goes to this big climate summit on October 31st in Glasgow. It's this big international summit. It's the latest effort to bring countries together to take urgent action to stop climate change. The U.S. is responsible for, I think, 15 percent of global emissions. But we've over time released more CO2 than any other country. If Biden goes to Scotland with nothing to show the rest of the world about how the U.S. is doing things that are difficult politically to deal with climate change, it's going to be very hard to ask the Chinese or the Indians or European allies or anybody else to do tough things there.

And he should bring Joe Manchin with him and say, you fucking explain yourselves to everyone. All right. So while Democrats can't seem to get centrists like Joe Manchin to help save democracy or the planet, Republicans are busy trying to elect only the most extreme candidates who are willing to help overturn future elections if necessary. overturn future elections if necessary. Big lie believers are running in secretary of state races to be the top election officials in Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, and Arizona, where the Republican front runner for governor is a woman named Carrie Lake, who has called for the 2020 results in her state to be decertified and for the democratic secretary of state and various journalists to be imprisoned. That's who's running for governor and who's a front runner in Arizona right now. Also in Arizona, the guy who may have started the QAnon conspiracy, Ron Watkins, has announced he's running for Congress. And last week, Donald Trump himself

released a statement that said, quote, if we don't solve the presidential election fraud of 2020, Republicans will not be voting in 22 or 24. It's the single most important thing for Republicans to do. What do you guys make a Trump statement there? Good news, scary news, or both? I don't know how you're reading good news into that. If Republicans don't vote in 22 and 24, I think that's fantastic news. Oh, yeah, sure.

But look, I think that that is his cudgel for telling Republican candidates all across the country that they need to mimic his language and say this is the most important issue. That's what Glenn Youngkin has now said in Virginia. That is what he's trying to get even people that are not particularly Trumpy when they start out to end up looking like Trump when the time comes to vote. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. I mean, the good news part of it would be, I kind of think it's both because

Republicans who don't embrace the big lie are both better for democracy and easier for Democrats to beat because they will cause some Trump voters to stay home. There's evidence that happened in the Georgia Senate. But you're right. The pessimistic case and probably the more realistic case is that every Republican will take that statement as a signal. I better fucking embrace the big lie. I also think the other thing it does, though, in the nearer term is it just it creates a series of incentives to go further and further to the right for primary candidates. So I think it's radicalizing the people running in Republican primaries like Eric Greitens in Missouri, right? He's one of the first people to come out and say he wouldn't

support Mitch McConnell as leader. That I heard about on my favorite podcast, the Steve Bannon War Room, whatever the fuck show. And so like that's what he's doing here. Like he's further radicalizing the Republicans who are running for office and who may or may not win these primaries. I think what's really scary about this is that nothing in any of the proposed voting rights protections would prevent some Trumpy governor or secretary of state from refusing to certify an election. So then the question is, like, how do Democrats handle this development in these candidates? And I do think, look, I think they have to make it a centerpiece of their campaign in 2022. This is, I mean, we've had this debate before, but I think it's kind of an emergency. I mean, the emergency is keeping the house and or the Senate, that if we lose both the house and the Senate, the ability for Republicans to overturn the election becomes

far easier. How do we as a country deal with the fact that one of our two, one of our two major political parties that wins roughly half the elections no longer believes in basic democratic norms and precepts? It's one of the greatest threats we've ever faced. We have to win elections. We have to make it easier to vote. We have to do everything we can. And we have to assume, by the way, that they will use all these institutions as cudgels.

They will stack the courts and they will use the courts against us. They will fill secretary of state roles and then those people will become Trumpy and refuse to certify election results they don't like. We have to be honest, I think, about the threat first and foremost. Yeah, the good thing about the Freedom to Vote Act is it prevents the firing of election officials for political reasons. The disappointing part about it is there isn't much that would prevent election subversion, which is clearly the greatest issue or the thing happening at the state level in these gerrymandered state legislatures. I'm not sure why that didn't land.

Well, because the election subversion proposal is what you just said. It makes it harder to fire the election officials. Right. But then it's also just taking the authority away. There's nothing to. Yeah. I mean, ideally, because there's nothing there's nothing federal to do about it, like state by state, because states have so much power over elections and have since the beginning of time. state by state, because states have so much power over elections and have since the beginning of time, like what basically every state would have to say, OK, when it comes to elections, no partisans, no Democrats, no Republicans involved in the running of elections, in the certification of elections. It has to be all nonpartisan from the top to the bottom so that

governors shouldn't have the ability to certify an election. Right. Like secretaries of state shouldn't be partisan. Right. Like you'd have to, it'd be pretty fundamental reforms, but you're right. Like there's nothing, no proposals to fix that in a lot of these states, which is quite scary. And, but also by the way, you look at like what the conservative, like intellectual, like legal minds have been cooking up and they can use laws that have nothing to do

with subverting an election to create a new precept or a new principle around state legislators should be able to overrule the courts to send whatever electors they want the rules governing that six step plan for mike pence to overturn the election fundamentally we have to defeat these people there is a fascist movement inside the republican party the laws don't matter the rules don't matter to these people so we can we can craft all kinds of restrictions. They will blow right through them. They have to beat them. And Ruby Kramer had a story in Politico today that when the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee called out Republican state legislative candidates who took part in the January 6th insurrection, it raised their profiles and helped them raise money. I realize like you could take you could take from that like, well, don't elevate them. I totally disagree.

Like we've been talking about this for months or if not years about like Marjorie Taylor Greene and some of these other people too. I mean, look, when they say things that are crazy or outlandish or they make, you know, disgusting comparisons to the Holocaust or say things that are racist, at some point you have to call it out and talk about it.

I know it's going to raise money for them, but that doesn't mean they're effective legislators. I totally agree. I also think part of this too is like, we're going to talk to this with Tara McA and talk about it. I know it's going to raise money for them, but that doesn't mean they're effective legislators. I totally agree. I also think part of this too, is like, we're going to, we're going to talk to this with Tara McAuliffe about Virginia. Like we have to figure out how to get base Democrats as enthusiastic about defending democracy as Republican base voters seem to be about overturning it. And the way they're not right now, because they are not, they are not. And so a lot of, I think this, we talked about this in the first segment, we talked about Biden not doing enough to promote voting rights. I think a lot of the activist frustration is fair to be pointed at Biden. But the end often is also pointed at the media. Fine. But when you go beneath that, the real problem is actually we need to get the American people, vast numbers of Americans to care about this more. The power of negative partisanship and polarization, as well as

like the clear and present danger of these maniacs taking power, means that that's how you should run your campaign, making sure voters know about their extremism. It's got to be a centerpiece. I mean, again, it just brings you back to the power of Fox News and conservative media. Yeah. Because fights over what's being taught in schools or what textbooks are acceptable, et cetera, et cetera, like that's as old as time. But Fox News with that goofball Christopher Ruffo, I think is his name, manufactured a new term for it, critical race theory. And now it is all that Republicans are talking about. They are very good at creating like a demand, a thing to antagonize their base and get them worked up. And then you got the Steve Bannons of the world who are telling his listeners, okay, now you need to go to school board meetings

or run for school board or show up at these meetings. And that's how they're affecting change. Yeah, and I totally agree that the conservative media is a huge part of that. And that's why they can do this so well. But there is this debate on the Democratic side. We've had it before that it's like, if we deliver results and talk about the results

we've delivered, that's going to be enough. And I think when you're, you know, talk to Gavin Newsom about his recall effort and what he had to do at the end to make sure he won. He talked about his opponent and what could happen. You guys will talk to Terry McAuliffe about this. He's talking a lot about Glenn Youngkin. He's not talking about all the things he delivered for Virginia. Like at the end of the day, this is a more effective campaign strategy to talk about the threat we face than to only talk about the goods that you've delivered. That's the thing on like critical race theory specifically. I think there's like, we end up in this sort of kind of cul-de-sac where we're like, it's actually not

critical race theory is actually a legal scholarship thing at the highest level in a reality. What we're just talking about, Republicans do not want our kids to learn history in school. They are afraid of American history. We need to make our own version of what is actually a far more accurate way to describe what is happening and drive it home without speaking to the terms that they constantly use. Alright, when we come back, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe

talks to John and Tommy about the final weeks of his race against Republican Glenn Trumpkin. Is that something? Is that something? We already knew it was. Oof. Ask him about that. Ask him about it. We are just over two weeks away from the Virginia gubernatorial election. Here to talk about it is the Democratic candidate himself, former Virginia governor, Terry McAuliffe. Welcome

to the pod. Great to be with the pod, man. This is exciting. First question. Seems like Yunkin sucks. Why is this so close? Virginia, off year, always close. Republicans always get about 45% of the vote.

The guy who ran against Mark Warner got 45. Cuccinelli got 45. Gillespie got 45. You know, presidential turnout, huge turnout. We're off, off. No federal candidates. So it always drops dramatically. And you got to remember, in 44 straight years in Virginia, the party that wins the White House, the other party wins the governor's mansion.

I'm the only guy to break it. I won in 13. Of course, President Obama won in 12. So we got to get what we call those federal voters out in a non-federal year. But we're going to do it. This guy's a Trump wannabe, been endorsed by Trump six times, says so much of the reason why I'm running is because of Donald Trump. He'll ban abortions. He's very public on that. He wants to get rid of gay marriage. I mean, this guy's out there. So Governor, so there's a Republican rally in Virginia recently where the people there

were asked to pledge allegiance to a flag that was carried during the January 6th terrorist attack on our Capitol. I know we talk about Youngkin's connection to Trump or how conservative it is, but what does that say to you about the kind of campaign he's trying to run, especially given that he reportedly thanked the organizers of the rally profusely for being there. And he did. And this was his rally for the ticket. And Trump called in and said, Glenn Young will do, quote, whatever we want him to do. But the most pathetic thing for me and sickening was that they actually brought a flag up that was used on January 6th, the symbol of our democracy, the American flag, that flag was used to destroy the

very democracy that it's supposed to symbolize. And I got to tell you, it was sickening. And they all stood and did the Pledge of Allegiance to this flag. And this was a Glenn Youngkin rally. And when asked about it, he didn't say anything. And then we pushed him and he came out and said it was weird. And let me tell you, if this were a McAuliffe surrogate rally and someone had done that, I wouldn't say it was weird. I'd be a lot more forced. I mean, people have fought and died. I mean, I'm the son of an army captain, the father of a Marine captain. This is sickening. People have fought and died for the right to vote. And then the idea that Trump calls in and then Youngkin profusely thanks the organizer for being a great event. It wasn't a great event. It was an embarrassment to this country. It does seem like Youngkin's trying to have it both ways. So in ads

and in speeches, he's trying to seem like a norm core business dad. And then he needs to whip up the Trump base or at least not piss them off. He's doing election lies. He's doing critical race theory. He's encouraging people not to get vaccinated, even as you said, restrict talking about restricting a right to choose. How do you think about beating an opponent like that? How do you get less engaged Democrats to understand the stakes when so much of their messaging is trying to get them to see him as acceptable? Yeah, and that's it. So he he got tossed out of his firm, Carl Algrove, and he walked out with like 500 million bucks. He spent 16 million

winning, getting 7,000 votes in his little drive-through primary thing they had. And he's trying to run these TV ads, pretending he's something he's not. But we've released tapes of him saying he'll ban abortions, but we're not going to tell voters because if they find out, the independents won't vote for me. We've got him on tape saying, you know, the most important issue facing Virginia is election integrity. We've got him on tape saying, you know, the most important issue facing Virginia is election integrity. We've got him on tape saying that Donald Trump represents so much of why I am running. So we got him with all of his crazy statements. You know, he has no experience in politics in Virginia, doesn't know anything about it.

The Speaker of the House, she went up to him the other day. He had no idea who she was. First woman in 402 years. He's just clueless. You know, he got no idea who she was. First woman in 402 years. He's just clueless. He got tossed out. He had a lot of money. But running for governor is not a consolation prize from getting fired from your private equity company. But he's dangerous. And so we're running ads. We're up. Massive digital programs going on. We did knock on over 100,000 doors this weekend. People talk about it. People are excited. I just announced I raised $45 million with 100,000 doors this weekend. People talk about it. People are excited. I just announced

I've raised $45 million with 100,000 donors, seven times what he was able to do. No governor's race has been able. I've raised $2 million just online. I'm talking average contribution of like 15 bucks just since Wednesday night. So people are paying attention. We've got people hitting the doors. We've knocked on over a million doors so far, but it's always going to be tight. This is Virginia. We've got to get those federal voters out. But once they hear that, you know, he's anti-gay marriage, he is anti-choice. And I got to tell you, when I became governor, I inherited a horrible economy from the Republicans, a two and a half5 billion deficit. I got to work. I recruited 1,100 companies, left a huge surplus, created 200,000 new jobs. Personal income went up 14%.

Unemployment dropped in every city and county. That's what you get with Democrats. But Glenn Youngkin, you know, I wrote the bid for Amazon. It was the biggest deal in 50 years. We won it here in Virginia. Amazon, Google, Facebook all came to Virginia. I negotiated these deals. They're not coming to a state that discriminates against women, g all came to Virginia. I negotiated these deals. They're not coming to a

state that discriminates against women, gays or anyone. Glenn Youngkin will destroy our economy. He'll destroy our education system. Forty three thousand teachers will be cut. And Washington Post has endorsed me a number of times. They've gone so far as to say if Glenn Youngkin is elected governor, it will be a grave mistake for Virginia. You guys know they don't normally do that in editorial pages. No, they do not. So even in this answer, you talked a lot about what your record, what you would do for the state of Virginia.

We also talked a lot about Youngkin's record and what he might mean for the state if he's elected. You're on the trail every day. You're talking to voters. Which part of that message resonates more? Is it the positive message about what you can do with four more years, or is it the damage that Youngkin and his allies are trying to do or could do? more? Is it the positive message about what you can do with four more years? Or is it the damage that Youngkin and his allies are trying to do or could do? Because I think Democrats across

the country are trying to figure out what exactly to run on. Is it the Biden agenda? Is it the return of Trump? What are you finding? Listen, people were very happy when I was governor. In fact, several dozen Republicans just endorsed me, including Bill Kristol. They don't want Trump off the mat. They don't want him to use this as a kickoff for 2024. So I think it's both. You know, everybody was happy when I was governor. I got recruited to come back.

You know, the leadership of the Black Caucus, the House and Senate, everybody said, you know, Terry, you saved our economy before. And as you guys know, I restored more voting rights than any governor in American history. 206,000. I got sued, taken to the Supreme Court, sued for contempt of court. I won. You know, I banned, I used executive authority. I banned the Confederate flag from Virginia license plates. I kept the 16 women's clinics open. I'm the first governor to perform a gay marriage after the ruin. I just wanted my state to be an open and welcoming state and treat everybody with dignity and respect. So they're happy, but also they need to be an open and welcoming state and treat everybody with dignity and respect so they're happy. But also they need to be scared because they need to know that he will ban abortions.

He's against gay marriage. His election integrity, he said, is the number one issue. But, you know, we've got everybody coming in. I just had Dr. Biden here on Friday. I had Stacey Abrams, I had the mayor of Atlanta. I got President Obama coming in on Saturday. I got the president of the United States coming in after that. We got everybody on the playing field. And for all your listeners, if you could text me, text Terry to 50550, get in the game. We can't let Donald Trump off the mat. He wants to use this. He's endorsed him six times. He wants to use this to begin his comeback for 2024. to use this to begin his comeback for 2024. I've beaten him twice here. You know, I've been overseeing both presidential. I've beaten Trump twice. I'm going to beat him again. I'm going to be Terry McCall

three, Donald Trump zero. If they text you, will you personally text back? Because you haven't written back to me the last couple of times and we're trying to get together and you ghosted me. Okay. Thank you. Do it after midnight when I get home. Okay. Deal. So you talked about... Do it after midnight. I'd love to do it. He's a late night texter. Yeah, right. He's a you up kind of guy.

I don't know. Sleep when you're dead, man. I don't believe it. I think sleep's a total waste of time. Yeah. So I'm glad that a lot of you have people coming in to campaign for you. You've also talked a little bit about being pretty annoyed with national Democrats around some of this legislative wrangling. How is that playing out for you in this race on the infrastructure bill, the reconciliation bill? See, I come at it from places as a governor and we don't have filibusters and all this kind of stuff they got up in Washington.

We got to produce every day. I got to run a budget. I got to balance my budget. I got to build roads, clean them. I run education, I run healthcare. And sometimes you get tired of all the squawking going on without some action. I want this infrastructure bill passed. It's $7 billion of roads here. It passed the Senate with 69 votes. So I'm hopeful they can

get both of them done. I also want childcare. I want family medical leave. I want elderly care. So let's just get it done. And I like to, you know, how I would do business. I'd get everybody in a room, Democrats and Republicans, whatever. When I was governor and the governor's and I closed the door, I locked the door and we ain't leaving until we get resolution like a squid game. That's how I did that. That's what governors generally have to do to get things done. And I got 74 percent of my bills passed with a Republican legislature. Do you think Biden should be doing that more with like, you know, your Joe's Mansion, your Kyrsten Sinema's, your game squid?

I hope that that's what they're doing today and getting everybody in that room and saying, OK, what do you need? What do you need? You know, just we don't need all the press conferences and everybody's negotiating in the press. You just can't do business that way. Get in a room and let's get this thing done. And I know Speaker Pelosi and she is working this very hard to get everybody at the table and get to a place. But I do, you know, listen, I'm very happy. President Biden got us in Virginia $14.3 billion through the American Rescue Plan, $300 billion I got for education. So, you know, we're close, but, you know, people want to see us deliver and I want to see us deliver. This is a historic moment for our country. COVID has been so tough. They want to see leadership. They want to see action. They want to see people get things done. Yeah. You mentioned this earlier, but Glenn Youngkin was caught on tape saying that he has to

limit his anti-abortion rhetoric in public because he wants to appeal to independent voters, but that if he's elected, he will go on offense against abortion rights if he wins office. What do you think that means? What does it mean to go on offense against abortion rights if Youngkin is elected? Yeah, good question. So he will ban abortions. He has said he will do that. And here's the issue. That's why every person in Virginia needs to pay attention to this election. For, you know, for 50 years, we felt that the Supreme Court would protect Roe v. Wade. So it was always a backstop. We talked about abortion rights and women's reproductive rights, but we always knew the

court would protect it. That's over. It's gone. With the new Trump Supreme Court, abortions are now gone in Texas. It's over. Women doesn't know they're pregnant within six weeks. You can now sue doctors and Uber drivers. That's the law in Texas today. And they're going to have the Mississippi case coming up when they're going to go after viability. And I'm just telling you,

a governor and a legislature, and especially in these Southern states, they are going to abolish abortion. Glenn Youngkin will abolish abortion in Virginia. It will put women's lives at risk. So they're either forced to get in a legal, dangerous abortion or they leave the state and doctors could be put in jail. And as I'm saying, there's no businesses will come. This is no longer a scare tactic. People usually say, oh, you know, women's reproductive rights will go away because we but we always felt the court was closed, but the court would protect it. That's over. This is Trump's court, 6-3. It's over. Abortion is over. So the only protection we have is a governor who will veto bad legislative bills that want to outlaw abortion. I was a brick wall. When I took office, Virginia had the most anti-women, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-environment, pro-gun legislation in America. I stopped all their nonsense. I had a record 120 vetoes. I never lost one. I only had 34 Democrats in my house out of 100. That means I did not lose one Democrat for four years. years. All of their insane defund Planned Parenthood and you could carry shotguns in your back of your truck. I got rid of all that nonsense. It made our state open and welcoming. Fired the Board of Health and kept all 16 women's clinics open. I was a brick wall to protect women's rights. I'm tired of men telling women what they ought to be doing with their bodies.

So I think you're getting at some of the kind of extremism that people are sort of a little bit complacent about. Another place where you see this is on voting rights. We just had this big conversation about getting people to wake up to the threat nationally in voting rights. I'm just curious, just you as a kind of message guy and on the campaign trail, when you talk to people about the threat to voting, what is working for you? What is making sense? What is getting people to click on how important and serious it is? Great question. So here we are in Virginia, where 42 states are now rolling back voting rights, as you know, making it difficult for more people to vote. We are one of the few states that actually expanded voting rights this year. We have early vote here in Virginia, 45 days, no excuse absentee bound. And yesterday

was historic in Virginia. First time in Virginia history, you could vote on a Sunday. Now, what I tell voters all the time, you got to get that early vote in because people say if they don't take advantage of it, we will take that away from people. When I hear what's going on, this is voter disenfranchisement. They are trying to make it more difficult for Democratic voters to actually vote. I had Stacey Abrams here with me yesterday. Don't forget the governor of Georgia disenfranchised 1.2 million voters in Georgia before Stacey's gubernatorial election. If people vote, we win and a good message is sent. And that's what we have to do here. It is absolutely critical that we do it. I mean, John, voting rights is the fundamental bedrock of our country and they

can't win if people vote. So that's why they're trying to roll back, make it more difficult for folks. And this is Glenn Youngkin's whole message. I mean, he said the other day, let's audit the Virginia voting machines. That's what Glenn Youngkin said. Really? mean, he said the other day, let's audit the Virginia voting machines. That's what Glenn Young said. Really? Guess what Trump said the day before? Remember at his rally? We're going to audit voting machines. What I hate about this is it runs down our country around the world. It makes us look like a kangaroo court. Oh, they don't even know how to have elections. They are doing such damage to the prestige of the United States. We're supposed to be the symbol of democracy.

Donald Trump, Glenn Young, and the people like him are making our country look disgraceful. And I hate it. Yeah, we hate it too. A bit of an aside here. In a previous life, you were known as one of the best fundraisers in the entire Democratic Party. Thank you, Tommy. Does it ever piss you off when you see the kids these days just like clicking a fucking link and getting money on the Internet? I mean, come on. Is that too easy? It used it used to be harder used to be a typewriter involved well you know i you know i traveled i you know i did this all as a

volunteer you know i've always helped and you know i never got paid for i was always out doing helping candidates i believed in but you know on the one hand tommy i enjoy going out meeting people having fun and you know convincing them to write a check. I actually enjoy that. Now, as a candidate for governor, we have raised close to $10 million online this year. That is pretty good. Historic for governor's race. So as a candidate, you're right.

It's pretty good. It really does matter. I mean, it's important because remember, I'm running against a private equity guy who said he was going to spend 75 million of his own money. And what did he do? He was a CEO of a company. They would go in and buy nursing homes, cut staff, put elderly lives in jeopardy. They bought dental clinics and performed 100 medically unnecessary root canals on babies, some of them without anesthesia, and he made the company billions. That's wrong. So that's why people are helping me, I think, in such a degree. It's disgraceful what went on. And he shipped thousands and thousands of jobs overseas. So you talked about meeting people. Now, I think in order to woo some people from the beer industry to create jobs in Virginia, you put in a keg in the Virginia governor's mansion. Then you offered beers to people at rallies.

Then a couple people actually showed up at the gates to the governor's mansion. But you were at the gym at the time, and they did not have an appointment, but you still made time for them to come in and have some beers with you. I feel like that sets a really, really terrible precedent of random people showing up all the time seeking beers with you. It's not sustainable. And I want you to respond to that. It is sustainable. I disagree because I can, you know, I'm Irish, man. I can handle all that.

So I did. I was the first governor, put a kegerator in the mansion. And every night I would have a different craft brewery. I think when I was governor, I opened like 160 craft breweries i love the craft brew business number one great for tourism great for employment i they locally source all their ag products and it's good beer let me get you on the record here let me get you on the record i want to get you on the record here ipas suck oh yeah they suck they are bitter and they are terrible uh ipas are terrible about my beer business i i like look i like a pilsner what do you sit around with a little

chardonnay i like a rosé i like a sparkling rosé it's the diet coke of beers you look like a rosé type i think that's great i love it all i love rosé love red wine but you know i am a rosé type but literally the first governor put a kegerator in the mansion, which I was great. But, you know, we're outselling. But I did. I was down at Browns Island at a huge concert. You know, I gave the opening remark. And I said, oh, come by and have a beer.

Everybody laughed, blah, blah, blah. Well, sure enough, I was at the gym, which was next door to the governor's mansion. And I was coming back. It was 9 o'clock in the morning. And there were five people in the gate said, we're taking up. And the police officer who guards the mansion said, you know, move away.

I said, no, no. Listen, deal's a deal. So I brought them in. And at nine o'clock in the morning, they each had a beer out of my kegerator. It took about 20 minutes. And I was happy to do it. Wow.

The only thing I didn't like is they secretly recorded the whole thing, which I thought was, you know, here you are, I'm inviting you into the house. That's not cool. It didn't matter, but whatever. But, you know, I'm a cool guy. I mean, it is okay. It's okay. That's lame. Yeah, don't record it. Last question. The guy invites you into our house and gives you a beer at 9 o'clock

in the morning. Yeah, that's a friend. They immediately posted this when he walked out. I didn't care, but, you know, come on. Come on. Last question, I think. So, last week, I thought we were a couple hours. know, come on. Come on. Come on. Last question, I think. So last week. I thought we were a couple hours. Yeah, we're going to do a couple hours. We're here as long as you want to be here.

Last week, John Gruden, the head of the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, resigned after emails he sent in 2011 came out where he had been emailing with Bruce Allen, the GM of the Washington Redskins at the time, now the Washington football team, that used racist words, anti LGBT words, etc, etc. Is it time for Dan Snyder to leave that organization, turn over the reins of someone else and give people in Virginia and the Washington, D.C. area a football team that's not racked with scandals every other year. Is it time for Snyder to go? I think it's time for the Washington football team to start winning. We just lost to Kansas City the other day, as you know. I don't tell who owns or not. That's up to the NFL, but I want teams that win. I think that's important for us. We're, what, two and four now, Tommy? that's important for us. We're what, two and four now? You know what I wanted? I wanted to have one of those big old Super Bowl rings.

That's what I wanted as the governor of Virginia. Now, 60 percent of the people who go to the Washington football are Virginia residents. Right. Every player lives in Virginia because we're low tax. Right. You know, and all the merchandise. So, you know, we have an affinity, but, you know, I'm going to be governor again. Let me make it clear. I don't care how they do it. I want a Superbowl ring. Do you guarantee it? Will you guarantee a Superbowl win if you win the governor's mansion? Yeah, I guarantee I'm going to get that Superbowl ring one way or the other. There we go. I would always go to preseason camp. I throw the ball around. I'd receive, I mean, listen, I was a great inspiration.

You're going to Vladimir Putin and you're going to steal it like you did to Bob Kraft. He did. He took Bob Kraft's ring and never gave it back. That sucks, by the way. And the Bush administration was like, don't say anything. Don't say anything. Like, that sucks. I would have gotten a wrestling match with him right at that, right there.

I know he likes to wrestle bears and stuff, but I mean, I would have gotten my ring back. No one's taking a ring off your finger. By the way, this you win this is how you win in an off year a chicken in every pot and i'm going to give you a super bowl ring i love it i see how you do it i see why you're a good politician governor mccullough thank you so much and if you all right thank you guys remember text terry t-r-y-5-0-5-5-0 get in the game get in the game trump down m the game. Trump down. McCall of three. Trump zero. Youngkin gone. Youngkin gone.

Thanks, Governor. Thanks, everybody. Crooked's own chief take officer, Elijah Cohn, is back for another round of Pod Save America's new hit game, Take Appreciators. Take it away, Elijah. Hi, guys. Welcome back to the Take Appreciators. I'm going to share some notably bad punditry with you. The producers have seen these takes.

John, John, and Tommy have not. We haven't. We'll get their reactions in real time and rate them on a scale of one to four politicos. Bear with us as we continue to work out the kinks of this segment in real time. John, John, and Tommy, are you ready? Ready. Yes. All right.

This first one is thematic for today from the Washington Post titled, How Glenn Youngkin Could Become the Education Governor We Need. Oh my God. Oh my God. We need. Go ahead. Give Oh my God. We need. Go ahead.

Give us the take. Give us the take. Here's a quote. If Glenn Youngkin wins, it will be because he convinced parents that he would tackle the malaise that affects so many public schools. His appointments in that area

will be his most important, his legislative priorities his most urgent. And if he succeeds, more than Virginia will be winners. We first have to play the game of who wrote this take. This was sort of a... Yeah, so, like, can we... Is it a writer for the Post? This isn't like an op-ed, right?

Is it a guest writer? It is an op-ed. But is it a guest writer or is it a regular contributor? I'm not sure, but he is deeply triggering to you guys. Okay. Mark Thiessen. No. That's my first guess.

One of these days it's going to be Mark Thiessen. You know, if it's not about supporting the torture or some sort of war crime, it's probably not Mark. Here's what I'll say about that take. I think there is a malaise in America's schools. And fundamentally, it is that we are learning too much about what happened in America between the Declaration of Independence and Elvis. And we basically, if we want to get rid of the malaise, we should just skip right from we hold these truths to be self-evident all the way to like hippies in the 60s and maybe NAFTA. And if we can skip all the other stuff that happened in the middle, I think kids would be a lot happier. Parents would be a lot happier. Teachers would be a lot happier. And you know what? Be good. I'm giving Levitt's take three politicos.

Yeah, Jesus. Absolute junk. Oh, man. Well, first tell us who it is. Tell us who it is. This helps with the rating. Hugh Hewitt. Jesus Christ.

That fucking guy. Wow. That might have increased my rating. Yeah. I think I'm going to have to give three. I think it's a three. I'm between two and a half and three. Do we get 2.5s in this?

Sure. Two and a half. Yeah. You get half a Politico. Congrats. Axel Springer will be sending you a contract you have to sign about what you are allowed or not allowed to say. Yeah.

I will say that McAuliffe's campaign, there was some story about this. McAuliffe's campaign said that like in all their internals, even when the race is really close, like they're just not finding swing voters who actually, and undecided voters who actually care about this issue. It's a baseline. This has become like a media fascination more than anything else yeah votesaveamerica.com slash virginia guys um all right that was just the warm-up this next one is an absolute banger uh it's a piece from the washington examiner titled armed insurrection colon what weapons did the Capitol rioters carry? Oh, my God.

Here's some highlights from a tweet thread by the author. He points out that only 12% of people charged that day had weapons charges. And here's a quote. The problem with the armed insurrection talking point. By any standard of civil disorder, January 6th was a riot. But look at the DOJ prosecutions. It does not make the case that January 6th was a riot but look at the doj prosecutions does not make the case that january 6th was a quote armed insurrection your thoughts i have to say like i do not appreciate this take because saying that admitting that 12 of the people were armed and

then saying it's not an armistice direction isn't even a that's not even a you didn't even make an effort there i would just point out that several of the murder weapons in the game clue included candlestick rope lead pipe so right this sort of dovetails with i think it might have been a rich lowry tweet over the weekend where he was uh chastising people for suggesting that the gallows that were built outside the january 6th insurrection were workable and his beef was that they weren't this could not have this couldn't have supported mike pence's weight yes that's exactly what he was saying oh my god was it is it rich lowry is he right for this it's it's uh byron york oh same thing exactly are they different byron york and rich lowry maybe i got it wrong

maybe it was byron york i think it's whatever it's this like i said it's the same person yeah i think he might have said the stupid thing about the gallows. Let me read this to you guys. Some of you point to the gallows as evidence that the riot was an armed insurrection. Call it a threat. Call it an ugly symbol.

Call it what you like. But it wasn't real gallows. What? Was it real gallows? Like what? Did he measure that? Did he look at the cross beam? Like,

what are we talking about here? I'm going to say, I'm going to rate the armed insurrection take as two politicos. If, if you gave us the gallows one, I might've gone up a few politicos. See, I'm going to go three politicos for the armed.

And yeah, the, the gallows thing is a full playbook. It's four. It's four plus. I'll split the difference. I'll say three and a half, three and a half politicos. A full playbook is It's four plus. I'll split the difference. I'll say three and a half. Three and a half politicals.

A full playbook is going to... You just coined a new term. Thank you. A full playbook. Yeah, that's your full playbook. All right. Well, speak of the devil, on to the next one. From playbook last week titled,

Can Pete Buttigieg Have It All? Oh my God. I think I know what this one's about. Here's a quote. Pete Buttigieg have it all? Oh my God. I think I know what this one's about. Here's a quote. Pete Buttigieg is MIA. While U.S. ports faced anchor-to-anchor traffic and Congress nearly melted down over the president's infrastructure bill in recent weeks,

the usually omnipresent transportation secretary was lying low. Your thoughts? So the context is that Pete just had a baby. So he's been on paternity leave. Twins. Yeah. Premature.

So they were home taking care of premature twins. Also, he and Chastin are not rich. Chastin's a teacher. Pete's been in politics for his whole life. He's a public servant. So they're probably not like, you know, dripping with nannies and things. It's not Downton Abbey. There's not somebody who walks the little kids in after the end of the day and says,

here's a picture of your kids drawn. You pat them on the head and they go back to go back to boarding school now that said i would like to see pete in one of those big machines where he's personally offloading containers from ships and stuff it's also like yeah i mean wouldn't we all uh uh secretary pete has faced many kinds of criticism i believe i can't think of anything that is less likely to stick or seem real than someone who claims that he's not a hard-working el, so this is one of these controversies that I sort of caught the back end of the controversy

when it was fully in the discourse, but I didn't know how it started. Was that Playbook saying that? Or was that a Republican attacking him? Like, who actually was responsible for that garbage take? That is Playbook. Playbook wrote that take, that he was missing an action,

knowing what they knew. Wow. I thought it was some Republican that started this that like hit Pete Buttigieg. I didn't know that Playbook called him missing in action. Look, paternity leave is fake. And men should not do things with babies. That is for women and facts. That is the fundamental point Tucker Carlson is making.

That is the point a lot of these Republicans. Touching, caring about your children, changing diapers, being kind of emotionally engaged in the raising of your children. This is gay shit that belongs on a rainbow flag. Steven Crowder, who's a right-wing YouTube host or something,

he said, quote, he tweeted, paternity leave is for pussies. There you go. I didn't even know that. I also like. I predicted that. Anat Shankar Osorio made this point this morning and she said that in Australia, they don't call it like family leave or paternity leave or paternity leave. They call it like paid time to go care. Right.

Because the idea that it's about leaving and leaving work instead of emphasizing the fact that you take that time to care for another human being. And that is important work that should be rewarded in society. Including your spouse, potentially. Right, exactly. Like that is a, I actually like that reframing of it. Unbelievable. That's four fucking politicos. That is a full playbook and which is fitting for this.

Yeah, wow. That kind of one sort of writes itself, huh? If it's already in playbook, politico? I'm now disappointed I didn't tweet angrily at Playbook about this. Oh, that would have helped. Again, just like the workroom thing. That moves it along. It moves it along.

That moves the debate forward, stops the next person. Look, if you don't say that Colin Powell's dead body is the body of a dead war criminal, the next day you're going to turn on television, another secretary of state is holding up a little fit photo. That next day, you're going to turn on television. Another Secretary of State is holding up a little fit photo. That's what happens. Steaming right along to the next one here.

I want to give credit to producer Olivia Martinez for this one. A piece from the Wall Street Journal titled, quote, Dave Chappelle may have helped tame wokeness. Here's a quote from the actual article. The special is a hit, and Dave Chappelle may have helped tame wokeness. Here's a quote from the actual article. The special is a hit, and Dave Chappelle seemed comfortable because he knows he is talking to regular people, not ideologues.

If Netflix CEO Ted Sarando stands firm, it will be progress. Free speech won, and the mob lost. Stands firm. Did Dave Chappelle know he was talking to real people? Was that the purpose of that? firm is that what did jay chapelle know he was talking to real people and i that that would he yeah was that the purpose of that i didn't notice a a real or fake button when i signed up for netflix um i didn't have to check that box i think i remember this take i think i remember someone tweeting about it i'm trying to imagine who did this for the wall street journal i just like the author sure uh peggy noonan oh of course of course you know

peggy noonan it is i remember when um uh that fox news person announced his comedy show on fox news by saying he was finally gonna tell the truth about these woke gutfeld about these woke liberal scolds there is money in attacking trans people and liberals and wokeness. It is a cottage industry. Barry Weiss just got the David Pearl Journalism Award for bravely taking on Twitter. Dave Chappelle just spent 37 minutes attacking trans people because they didn't like his jokes. He is getting tens of millions of dollars for doing this. Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle are about to do comedy shows together where they continue doing this. They are about Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle are about to do comedy shows together where they continue doing this. There is money in being anti-trans. It is

not brave. It is mercenary. That is that has been clear from the beginning. And what makes me fucking angry and nervous about all of this is that like it is absolutely true that there are millions of young men who find something very appealing about the kind of masculinity defense being offered by like by joe rogan and dave chappelle right now and it should be chilling to all of us and we should figure out how to grapple with it but it's not an attack on wokeness it's an appeal to fears on the parts of millions of young men and there's always been money in that for pinocchios or whatever politicos i just i think that peggy noonan has uh been able to trigger people even worse with even shit i'm gonna i'm gonna go with i can go with three i'll go with

three when is the last time peggy noonan from the upper east side interacted with a real person yeah she has been writing these fucking well there i mean these screeds she goes from the upper east side to the meet the Press roundtable and she probably sees people along the way. Yeah. A couple thoughts. One, I don't believe for a second that Peggy Noonan watched

the Dave Chappelle special, so we should just stick with that. I did watch it. I would say my reaction was it made me very sad because there was someone I used to love and respect

and enjoy his comedy and he just seemed like a bitter old man who can't take criticism and decided to spend an hour of his life lashing out at people on Twitter who decided to criticize him. And to me, that is just kind of a pathetic thing. And I think this is where all the free speech anti-woke warrior rhetoric kind of falls flat on its face, which is to say that they want to be able to say whatever they want to say, but you can't say anything back or else you're a scold or you're annoying or you're this or you're that. And I

think I find this infuriating, but we also need to recognize that there is, like Lovey was saying, like some power in this rhetoric, the sort of the feeling of aggrievement, especially among young white men where they feel like they've been suppressed in some way or can't say what they want to say or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It is a rallying cry. It's like the it's the only thing that the Don juniors of the world talk about, et cetera, et cetera. And it's like a real sort of unnerving strain of Republican politics. Yeah, there is a genuine challenge to masculinity happening right now. There is a real and genuine change happening. And I think it is scary for a lot of people and they don't know what comes after it. And people like Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan and Donald Trump Jr.

for a lot of people and they don't know what comes after it. And people like Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan and Donald Trump Jr. and Tucker Carlson and whatever that Crowder guy's name is, they are all feeding off of that. And I think our question has to be less about like, what do we do about Dave Chappelle? And more, what do we do about the audience laughing along? Or also like, it would be great if Netflix came out of this thinking like, okay, let's take an inventory of how many transgender comedians that we've paid to release a special or, you know, writers or actors that like, you know,

think about balancing out the ledger that way, produce more content that is for the people who want to hear those voices. I, I had been avoiding the whole controversy around it and watching it. And then I started watching it Saturday night and I was like stealing myself for the part, which was most of it. And I really is most. I have to say like 30 seconds into when he started the jokes

I was like cringing so badly and I was like oh this is not funny. I turned it off. I was like I'm good. I'm all set. Okay. Sorry Peggy. Alright.

Let's bring it back to some more typical punditry here maggie haberman responding to bernie sanders oh yeah his criticism of the press feeling to cover bill by better this one is sarcastic she tweeted it's always the press's fault and never the fault of the people communicating something that's just 101 your thoughts so i'm gonna i'm gonna say that uh i like maggie a lot maggie's been a friend of mine for a long time i think she's a great reporter uh i would like to award her um one uh new york times uh reporter always circling the wagons because that's the thing they always do like what what drives me a little bit crazy about criticism of journalists on Twitter or other forums is it almost never comes with a little

bit of introspection. Whereas criticism of people who worked in government or government officials, introspection or self-doubt or self-criticism is demanded. And rightly so. We should look back on our records and the things we've done and critique ourselves and try to improve and do better. That never happens in these conversations about coverage, despite the failures in 16 and during COVID and the anti-mask, like all the things that are happening right now. And I would love to see a little less defensiveness out of journalists in this area. Especially the New York Times political desk. They are great reporters, but they are among the most offensive and thin-skinned. They deal with lots of criticism that would drive me crazy too.

And I will also say, it is not the New York Times job to sell the Build Back Better bill. She is correct about that. But the way that, not just the New York Times, but all the media reports about politics and political fights has been broken and has there are systemic issues with that that we've talked about at Nazim here for a long, long time. issue is that all political coverage in mainstream outlets in this country is predicated on the assumption that there is some other coverage happening somewhere else that actually gets into the substance. That political coverage is really existing to evaluate whether the real news

that real people saw was effective or not in helping people understand what's going on. But there is no real news. There is no substantive coverage. It's political coverage all the way down. I will say that the New York Times and the Washington Post and even Politico has some like very substantive policy reporting. It is overshadowed by some of the more garbage shit, especially that Politico does. Like we freak out about Playbook all the time as we should because it's terrible. But there's a lot of good policy coverage in Politico. Yes, there is a lot of good policy coverage. That's absolutely true. But the vast majority of news in this country does not educate people as voters as to what is inside of these legislation. It is coverage of the fight.

It is coverage of the divide, is coverage of the conflict. And coverage of the conflict is important, but it should be a part of the news, not 90, 95, 99 percent. This is the point I think Jon Stewart was trying to make this weekend on CNN. He did an interview with Brian Stelter and he made some point about how like the lead of some,

I think maybe of an Afghanistan story was about like who it will benefit or not in the midterms. And the problem with Stewart's point was I think he got

the publication wrong. He criticized Politico when it might have been in roll call, et cetera. And you know, you should probably like, you know, cross the T's, dot the I's if you're going to, if you're going to unleash that kind of a critique. But I do think the fundamental point

stands like Lovett was saying, like sometimes the lead story on a bill or a political item is about how it will impact each party and not about what it would do for people. And I think that's sort of the fundamental failure. And it gets back to the roots and the origins of Politico that we all criticize, which is sort of like an ESPNification of political coverage, like the gamesmanship, sort of like cynical observations of how these policies will impact people's lives instead of putting that front and center. That's right. If a policy is good and Democrats fail to sell it and the media fails to convey, despite the fact that Democrats fail to sell it effectively, why it would be better than the alternative. That is not just a failure of Democrats. That is a failure of the media too, because everything is not in the lens of political

strategy. The goal is actually to make the country a better place. I mean, look, we're all yelling at Joe Manchin today about this climate legislation, but you know, one Republican could decide that climate change is an existential threat to the U S and the planet and support the bill. Yeah. But it's sort of like it's priced in that that cynicism is priced in. Yeah. And sadly, at this point, the cynicism about the press communicating it clearly is also priced in because for every like deeply reported piece on climate that The New York Times runs, which they do, like there are many, many more bad tweets about the gamesmanship that political reporters will write and terrible cable

segments and all the rest of it. And that's, I think, what you're getting at. I'll give Maggie's take two politicos. You know what? After what we've been through today, one politico. That's fair. That's fair. I already rewarded a... Yeah, you had a new thing. You know, a circle of wagons. Okay, okay last one this one is disparaging squid game from a north korean

propaganda site quote squid there's gonna be spoilers here right no okay no spoilers here it is uh on the fundamental premise of the show great great great sure squid game gained popularity because it exposes the reality of South Korean capitalist culture, a world where only money matters, a hell like horror. Guys, good take for North Korea? I'm going to do something wild. I'm going to award that a Vox. That's when a take is spot on, 100% accurate. Good for you, kim jong-un yeah that's no i'm well i think the original premise of take

appreciators was to have take so bad that you appreciate how like trolly they are that's like a it's such a good troll from north korea so i will give that four i'll give that four um i appreciate it in the in the in the truest sense of take appreciator shame on the two of you for celebrating this this terrorist regime. I won't participate in it. All right. I award Elijah Four politicos? Four politicos.

All right, guys. Thanks for playing Take Appreciators, the game where we arguably all lose. No arguably there, buddy. Thank you to Elijah for giving us another

round of Take Appreciators and thank you to Terry McAuliffe for joining us today. We will talk to you later. And next week, we'll see you Tuesday morning, first thing in your phones. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse.

And Olivia Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer, thanks to Tanya Somanator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Brian Semmel, Caroline Reston, Madison Hallman, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos at youtube.com slash crooked media.