Pod Save America - “The AP Bows to the Right-Wing Mob.”

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

Joe Biden’s ambitious agenda confronts the reality of a broken Congress, the Associated Press sets off a controversy over objectivity in journalism after firing a reporter for her tweets, and New York political reporter Jeff Colton talks to Jon Lovett about the upcoming New York City mayoral race.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 pod, Joe Biden's ambitious agenda confronts the reality of a broken Congress. The Associated Press sets off a debate over objectivity in journalism after firing a reporter for having political beliefs. And Lovett talks to New York political reporter Jeff Colton about the upcoming New York City mayoral race. But first, check out the latest episode of With Friends Like These, where Ana Marie Cox is joined by former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum to talk about his sobriety, his recovery, and the

work he's doing to destigmatize mental health. Great episode. Yeah, I enjoyed that one. Yeah, it was good, right? And believe it or not, Pod Save America's 500th episode is coming up, and we want to hear from you. Out of all the blabbing we've done on the show for the last four years, what questions do you have that we still haven't answered? You can ask us anything. Send it to PSA at Crooked.com and we will try to answer as many as we can on our Monday, May 31st episode. All right, let's get to the news. Here's a headline in Sunday's Washington Post that I'm sure the White House was psyched to read. Biden's big agenda is imperiled as his priorities stall in Congress and a debt fight looms. There were similar stories from CNN, New York Times, Politico, a bunch of other outlets.

So I thought we could give people a sense of where we are and how likely we are to see progress on the president's most important priorities, his jobs plans, voting rights, police reform, immigration and guns. On jobs and infrastructure, the White House proposed a $2.25 trillion plan. Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito sent back a counteroffer of $500 billion. And then on Friday, the White House countered the counteroffer with $1.7 trillion. They lowered spending on broadband, construction of roads and bridges, and took out investments in manufacturing and research and development entirely. In response, Senator Capito said the offer was, quote, well above the range of what can pass Congress with bipartisan support. And Susan Collins said the two sides are, quote,

still pretty far apart. Tommy, do you see any path to a deal here? How long do you think the White House should keep up the performative bipartisanship? Yeah, those developments aren't that hopeful. I mean, I am, as a general matter, in favor of doing as much as you can as quickly as you can, because we have a very thin majority and a very old bunch of senators. But, you know, you'd think if there was room for a compromise, it would be on infrastructure, because it's an issue where both sides say they want to get something done. But, you know, as you know, you'd think if there was room for a compromise, it would be on infrastructure because it's an issue where both sides say they want to get something done. But, you know, as you mentioned, John, the Republican bill is $568 billion. Last week, Biden said he was willing to cut nearly that amount out of his bill to bring it down, to bring the cost down, to attract Republicans. And that didn't seem to fly. The other, I think, probably much bigger

problem looming here is that President Biden wants to pay for his bill by raising taxes on corporations. Republicans want to pay for the bill by repurposing money or creating fees that are going to get paid for by working people. They want to tax all of us instead of corporations. And it doesn't seem like there's much hope of compromise there. So it does seem likely that we're going to get back to a conversation about reconciliation and using that process where you only need 50 plus one votes sooner than later. Well, what do you think? You think it's time for Joe Biden to call up Joe Manchin and say, hey, this enough for you? Did you get what you were looking for? A couple of meetings, Republicans, we all smiled. We said we're working together.

We good? Had a few laughs. I don't think we're at that point yet. I think we're working to get to that point, right? That's what a lot of this is about. By the way, one thing I would point out is this is a good example of the headline was worse than the story. The story was actually, I think, I think much more measured about what's working and what's

not. Some ongoing negotiations that have been happening behind the scenes. You know, like negotiations over how big an infrastructure package should be between Republicans who want it to be smaller and Democrats who want to be bigger is normal politics. And the question is, can normal politics continue all the way to passage? Or is this normal politics that will stop once it reaches the like actual key moment of decision where the normal politics that have been playing out amongst the more moderate members of the Republican caucus meets the abnormal politics of a revanchist right wing anti-democratic movement that believes Joe

Biden is not legitimate president. I don't know. I don't think anybody knows. 500 billion plus 2.2 trillion divided by two is 1.4 trillion. Is that the middle? I mean, if 500 is too little and 1.8 trillion is now too much, like, are they going to meet in the middle and actually do a deal? I don't know. But it seems like what's happening is they're going to try and pretend, or at least pretend it's possible in the hopes that it could be possible. And if it falls apart, then I do think Joe Biden calls Joe Manchin and says, we tried with these fuckos. It didn't happen. We got to do something. And then, you know, it is up to the mercurial, imperious mind of West Virginia senior senator. And nobody knows what he'll do.

Yeah, I mean, I think that all the debate about the exact levels of spending is sort of obscuring the real problems here, which is, one, what Tommy just pointed out, which is that Republicans have drawn a red line on tax increases. They want user fees, a gas tax that's going to fall on working class people, and they don't want to, they want to keep tax cuts for rich people. Like there's no getting past that in the negotiations. And also their definition of infrastructure. It's like Republicans don't want any investments in clean energy or home health care for the elderly and disabled as part of this package they just want spending on roads bridges and broadband so they're very far apart and actually what the definition of infrastructure is how to pay for it it doesn't seem like there's any real common ground here and also remember joe

mansion long ago said he could see up to four trillion dollars in spending on infrastructure paid for with some corporate tax increases. So if Joe Manchin is ready to go for that, then I think you wait. Yeah. Like apparently the Republicans are going to come back with another counteroffer, at least deciding whether they should come back with another counteroffer this week. And then after that, I think your time, you know, speed kills here. They don't have a lot of they don't have a lot of time left to actually do something with all the other priorities that we're about to talk about as well. The only thing I'd add to that, though, is you're absolutely right about the like the places where there's just no alignment. But the one place where there has been alignment, at least in the past couple of years, is if you want to pay for it one way and we want to pay for it another way. Maybe we just don't pay for it is always an option that's sitting there.

It's true. Yeah. I'll tell you something that really annoyed me is that this is something to do with Biden's budget. Jeff Stein in The Washington Post reported that Biden's going to release his budget soon and it won't include the public option. It won't include prescription drug reform. It won't include student debt relief. And I just don't really understand that play, partly because those were his campaign promises. But also prescription drug reform is always the most popular. After tax increases on the rich, prescription drug reform is like the most popular policy that you could ever pull. It was like, you know, he mentioned it in his address to the joint session a few weeks ago. Now, I think the good news is that, you know, Congress can just include it in a budget that passes anyway. So who cares if it's not in Biden's budget? But it is a little troubling that that was not those are not big priorities of his. So just about everything else Biden wants to pass requires either eliminating the filibuster or getting 10 Republican votes in the Senate. So on police reform, the president promised to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act by May 25th, which is the anniversary of Floyd's death. Biden's meeting that day with Floyd's family, but he won't be signing any legislation just yet. The main sticking point in the negotiations is

that Republicans are opposed to eliminating or even loosening qualified immunity, which protects police officers and departments from being sued over police misconduct. Republican Senator Tim Scott floated a compromise where you can sue the police department, but not the police officers themselves. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, meanwhile, said he'd support a final bill that excluded qualified immunity altogether. Tommy, what do you think? I mean, the interesting thing about these negotiations is there was a political piece about what was happening. And I opened it expecting to see people attacking each other and being critical. And it was the exact opposite. You had members of Congress, the White House, even activists saying, look, missing Biden's deadline is fine. We feel like we're

making real progress. We want a good bill. We want a fast bill. So that did make me actually hopeful for once. Qualified immunity is a big deal. It's a big sticking point. As you said, it shields police from civil suits, alleging violations of federal law. And it's gotten twisted to the point of making it, it's just being completely absurd. It's hard to tell if that might be a compromise. I mean, I think the question is, does that threat, does the risk of a department being sued, is that enough of a stick to get departments to crack down on bad actors and really force systemic change? I don't know the answers to that. I know progressives on the House side really want any bill to include language on qualified immunity. And so, you know, it's good news that the negotiations are ongoing and that people feel good about progress being

made. The broader context, though, Sam Sinyawi posted a link to a database that shows that the police have killed 229 Black people this year alone in 2021. So this is an urgent problem for all those people who are being hurt by police. There's also a broader challenge of violent crime being significantly up in 2020. And obviously, we need to stop violent crime for obvious reasons, but also because when people get scared, you see lots of media coverage of it, right? That's when the worst policies end up getting passed. Think Nixon running on law and order, think post 9-11 policy. So I do think this is something I need to deal with relatively quickly, but I don't know. I'm hopeful about what I've

heard out of Congress so far. I think that holding departments liable and not police officers is probably not enough of a stick to really change behavior. But Lovett, do you think that Democrats should be willing to move forward with the bill anyway if they end up landing on a compromise? Because it seems like Republicans don't want to go for full repeal or real or significant reform to the doctrine of qualified immunity. Well, I would also just I would say like one of the most important pieces of this debate, one of the, one of the biggest points that activists have made that I think has been, I think accepted due to the success of protest and activism is that we need to not talk just about bad apples. We need to talk about broken systems inside of departments. I'm not an, I'm not an expert in this, but we're talking about lawsuits. We want to hold departments

accountable. We want to hold individual officers who commit terrible crimes accountable. But we also want departments to change and feel the threat of change. And I imagine in practice, being able to lawsuit, you know, lawsuits name multiple defendants, right? And it's like, if you can go after the department, obviously, it would be better to be able to go after officers who have committed terrible crimes and have been extremely reckless, who have histories of of racism in their conduct. But I do think it would be a big and important step. I think on this one, because this is not ever going to be passed, the reconciliation has to go through regular order because it's not budgetary. The only way anything's passing is if you get 10 Republicans on board, right? So qualified immunity is critical, but I can see what Jim Clyburn is

saying because, you know, some of the other provisions in this bill, banning chokeholds, banning no-knock warrants in federal cases, making easier to prosecute police officers by lowering the legal standard from willfulness to recklessness, beefing up pattern and practice investigations of police departments, a national database of suspect officers. Like if you can get all of those with this Republican Congress and somehow get 10 Republicans on board, you take it. And I think the key is you don't then celebrate that you passed some perfect reform. You still blame the Republicans for blocking any kind of real reform on qualified immunity. Karen Bass said this to Dan when he interviewed her in the pod a couple months ago.

You know, if you're a doctor and you screw up, you could get hit with a medical malpractice lawsuit. But if you're a police officer and you screw up and kill someone, you can't. I mean, it's ridiculous. And so I think if somehow you end up with a compromise, you celebrate what you get in the compromise, but then hit Republicans pretty hard for deciding to not hold individual police officers accountable at all.

Yeah, I will say it's a little bit, some of this is what's public and what's private because these are real negotiations. But like Tim Scott saying, here's a potential compromise on qualified immunity. And then Clyburn saying, we don't need qualified immunity kind of gives away the game a little bit. Right. Like, yeah, yeah. So it seems like Scott's proposing a compromise there. Don't say you're going to qualify just yet. I was I was I was a bit confused about that.

Clyburn tends to do that. So we've talked a lot about the For the People Act, which isn't going anywhere so long as Joe Manchin opposes it. But Manchin did throw his support behind an expanded version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. What's that? Well, the original Voting Rights Act included a provision that required states and local governments with a history of racist voting practices to preclear any new election rules with the Department of Justice. election rules with the Department of Justice. Then in 2013, the Supreme Court basically got rid of preclearance because John Roberts essentially said racism is over and you don't need preclearance anymore in these states. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act would restore preclearance, but then Manchin went even further and said that preclearance should apply to all

50 states, not just places with a history of racist voting practices. He's also got Lisa Murkowski on board with this. So that's one Republican down and nine to go. Love it. What do you think of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act as a potential alternative to the For the People Act? It's not an alternative. But so first on this question of applying it to all 50 states. So yeah, John Roberts also invented a new constitutional rule about how rules can apply to certain states and not others. He just kind of invented it. And so this does also answer for that. One thing that happened after the Voting Rights Act ruling by the Roberts court was that you saw an explosion of anti-voter, anti-voting laws, racist voter suppression laws passing throughout

the states that were governed by the Voting Rights Act, by this specific Voting Rights Act provision. But you also saw them everywhere. You saw them in Wisconsin. You saw them across the country. So I do think actually it's a good thing to have preclearance apply everywhere when you're seeing some of the same things that you needed preclearance for that are happening in Texas, happening in states Republicans control that are outside of the Confederacy. On the For the People Act versus the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would do a lot to protect against changes that take place in the future. It does nothing to protect against the voter suppression that has already taken place. It does nothing about gerrymandering. So the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is a really important piece of what we

need to do to protect people's votes. But it's it's just not remotely enough. It wouldn't answer a huge number of problems that Republicans have created to try to suppress the vote. So, yeah, it needs to happen. It's just so clearly not enough. Tommy, what do you think? Yeah, I don't think it's quite that clear cut. Like I look, I think H.R. one is us going on offense. We're taking on a whole bunch of anti-democratic problems. It expands early voting. It gets rid of partisan gerrymandering. It goes after the broken campaign finance system. That is the gold standard of all

the things we want to do. To me, I view the John Lewis Voting Rights Act bill as defense. It provides a way to block voter suppression bills and then potentially to weaken some that have already been passed. So I do think that can help fix some of the damage, but not all of it and not in a systematic way like H.R. 1 would. So obviously, that's what I'd prefer. It just seems like Manchin holds the keys of the kingdom here. And I thought it was pretty hopeful that he was not only talking about John Lewis, but also trying to apply it to all 50 states. Because, yeah, I mean, it's great to restore preclearance to the nine states that were subjected to it until 2013 when it was struck down. But I do think, like Lovett said, it's important to add to that.

It's also important to realize that the 50 states would fix John Roberts' problem with the original Voting Rights Act preclearance thing. And basically what John Roberts said is it's unfair to apply the standard to some states and not other states. So that's the new rule. That was the new constitutional rule he invented. Yeah, it's fucked up. It's ridiculous. But if you do all 50 states, you at least solve that problem. I actually think you should do all 50 states and then make the law retroactive to the beginning of this year so that preclearance would also involve the Georgia law. What's going on in Texas? What's going on in Arizona? And then you can do that.

The real downside, I think, to the preclearance stuff is, you know, it kicks these laws, these voting changes and voting in election laws to the federal government, to the DOJ, to make a determination. That's great when Joe Biden's in power. But what happens next time there's a Republican administration? And next time, you know, there's another Trump in there that's not really going to work. So it's definitely not as strong as some of the provisions before the People Act. But like, if it's if it's all we can get and somehow we can get fucking 10 Republicans on board, then great. So we haven't talked much about immigration reform, but apparently Chuck Schumer is exploring whether he can use a 50-vote budget reconciliation bill to pass a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. Democrats are hopeful because a 2005 reconciliation bill apparently included a provision to issue

high-skilled visas to immigrants. Republicans think that the parliamentarian will never allow this. And some Republicans are saying they'd be willing to do a bipartisan bill that offers a pathway to citizenship just for dreamers in exchange for beefing up border security. We've heard that one before. The same fucking deal. The same deal. We've been hearing this for fucking 10 years. Trump said no to that deal.

On guns, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told the Washington Post That the conversations he's had with John Cornyn on expanding background checks Have been the most substantive negotiations He's ever had on the issue of guns But also said he was frustrated that it's been six weeks Of no progress and that there's got to be An end of the road at some point

My question is Broader question on all this stuff What's the political incentive for Republicans To cut a bipartisan deal on immigration or guns or really any of these issues at this point? Tommy? Oh, I mean, I don't think there is any. But I mean, that's why the Schumer news that he was looking to do this reconciliation was actually hopeful. I mean, it is it speaks to how stupid the congressional law process has gotten and how ridiculous it is to to cling to the filibuster as some sort of valuable institution. When, you know, you now have activist groups and senators hiring former parliamentarians to try to figure out the best way to convince some unelected official who works in the Senate to get a bill through their process. But that's where we are. But I think if Schumer can figure out how to get a pathway to citizenship and to

expedite citizenship for DACA recipients through reconciliation, they should absolutely do that. They should jam it through and get it done. It's something the Democratic Party has been promising to do for decades. It's been blocked at every pass by cowards like Marco Rubio and others, but they should just do it. Well, but I just keep thinking that on all of these issues where you hear, oh, there have been good, productive conversations with the Republican side. I just think to myself, it's in the Republican Party's interest and the leadership's interest to completely oppose everything Joe Biden does. Mitch McConnell has admitted as much. So I kind of think that we're back to on issues where you can pass something through reconciliation.

There's a possibility on issues where you need 10 Republican senators in the Senate. We're not going to get anything done. Now, the evidence to the contrary is that Joe Biden just signed the COVID-19 hate crimes bill, which was bipartisan, which almost all Republicans voted for, except I think like 35 in the House and Josh Hawley in the fucking Senate were the only ones who voted against the hate crimes bill. This is a bill that would address the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic by making it easier to identify, report, track and review hate crimes. What do you think? Like, do you think there's hope in some of these bipartisan bills, considering the Republicans just joined together to pass the hate crimes bill? racist and can point to this very kind of this bipartisan step, which is ultimately, I think is important.

I think it's an importance. It's important symbolically. I think it does create some some useful tools, both in terms of tracking hate crimes and responding to hate crimes, monitoring hate crimes. I think that those are those are valuable tools. It's a small bill. It's a small step. It is. Yeah.

And and it was a symbolic effort. And of course, they all wanted to be a part of it, except for Josh Hawley in the Senate and, you know, a couple dozen sickos in the House. But we got a bunch of sickos over there. But on guns, like we've done this before. We did Manchin-Toomey, right? Like negotiating, we've had these negotiations again and again and again on DACA and border security. We've had these negotiations again and again and again on DACA and border security. We've had these negotiations again and again and again. At a certain point, it's like, let's stop pretending these Venn diagrams

have an overlap. They don't. We talk a lot about personalities, but there are these structural reasons why we have this level of dysfunction. It's not just the filibuster. Filibuster is important. Filibuster makes it worse. But we have a system where it is no longer in the interest of Republicans to work with Democrats. It's in the interest of Republicans to make Democrats as big of failures as humanly possible as we head into the midterms. That will not change. If there's an opportunity to do something for dreamers, if there's an opportunity to do certain things in advance of that, I do think it is perhaps Republicans viewing it as in their own local interest to have something to talk about at the expense of the national party, at the expense of

the national campaign or genuine moments of conscience. But I think the idea of waiting for genuine moments of conscience, you'll be waiting for a long time. So, no, I'm not. I'm not super optimistic, but it's nice to be hopeful, John. It's nice to have hope. Tommy, the only one that I'm sort of hopeful about is police reform legislation potentially because they've put Tim Scott in charge. Tim Scott's looking for a compromise. And if Tim Scott seems happy with the compromise, it feels like it's going to be difficult for McConnell and the rest of the leadership to then sort of oppose Tim Scott's compromise. But again, one of their favorite attacks on Democrats is defunding

the police. And if they join hands with Democrats to pass a bipartisan police reform thing, they sort of lose that attack. Yeah, I do. There's a political incentive, a very cynical, disgusting one, but a political incentive for Republicans to not get anything done on this and just to call us soft on crime. And that makes me very worried. I mean, I agree with Lovett. The hate crimes bill, definitely important, far more limited in scope. It makes it easier to report hate crimes. It authorizes some grants to state and local governments.

I just don't know that there was a big, loud constituency that was lobbying against that legislation. Whereas when you're talking about police reform, you have police unions loudly, like shockingly loudly and attacking any proposal that's put forward, you know? And so on immigration, you have Fox News and a whole right-wing ecosystem that has spent years, if not decades, demagoguing immigrants and people of color in this country. And now, you know, you're seeing Republicans say, well, we can't do anything on immigration until you get the border problem

solved, right? So they're always going to create a new hurdle that makes it impossible for them to be bipartisan in some way. And unfortunately, like people report those made up hurdles in good faith, right? Remember Marco Rubio just said he could no longer trust Obama. So we had to walk away from immigration reforms when obviously he walked away because he was scared of the politics, right? So that's, we've all seen this play before. I'll also say too, like, you look at like, again, it is this thing of what happens when like normal politics meets abnormal politics. Like you had this negotiation over a commission to look at the insurrection, right? Republicans, Democrats in committee working together, they come up with a bipartisan proposal. It passes in the house and it heads over to the Senate. And then you have

Marco Rubio saying, I can't support this by, I can't support this partisan commission, this partisan, it's a partisan commission. You have Republicans turn against it. It's like, there are these, there are these fundamental problems that inform every single one of these debates that's always there. It doesn't go away. Just doesn't go away. Again, we're operating in two different realities here. On one hand, Republicans are like, no, we're not going to support the bipartisan commission that's set to investigate our own attempted murder. But like, yeah, they're going to give Joe Biden a win on immigration or guns.

But that's why I'm just not as cynical about the immigration one. If Schumer can find a way to do it through reconciliation, that's awesome, right? I mean, we're happy about that. Oh, for sure. No one's credibly arguing there's going to be a bipartisan bill. So like, yeah, of course not.

But it's like also like, it's so fucking stupid. Like, okay, we figured out a way to get it through reconciliation. OK, great. You've like you can call that preserve like mansion and cinema can tell themselves whatever they want. If you're like that's not preserving the filibuster. That's eliminating the filibuster in another way. Right.

That's just eliminating the filibuster for immigration because you found a way to word something to meet the demands of one bureaucrat in the government. Like all of this is sort of circling around the central problem of a Republican party that is lost to reality and a Senate beholden to a 60 vote threshold that doesn't make sense. Republic. Yeah. Republicans realize what their goal is. Senate Democrats, 98% of them realize what their goal is. It's only Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who seem confused about the real incentives in politics today. All right. We've talked before about how the political media's obsession with bipartisanship comes from their obsession with balance. This was taken to the extreme last week when the Associated Press fired a news associate in Arizona named Emily Wilder for what they say are violations of the company's social media policy that occurred after she took the job on May 3rd.

After she took the job on May 3rd, the AP has yet to specify which post they're referring to. But the dismissal came after right wing media and assholes like Tom Cotton attacked Wilder's pro-Palestinian activism in college, as well as a tweet from the other week where she said that when it comes to reporting, quote, using Israel, but never Palestine or war, but not siege and occupation are political choices that reveal bias. Wilder, who's Jewish, wrote in a statement after she was fired, quote, I am one victim to the asymmetrical enforcement of rules around objectivity and social media that has censored so many journalists, particularly Palestinian journalists and other journalists of color before me. What does it mean for this industry that even sharing the painful experiences of Palestinians or interrogating the language we use to describe them can be seen as irredeemably biased. This morning, over 100 AP

staff signed an open letter to management saying they strongly disapprove of Wilder's firing and demand updated social media policies. So this has become a big media controversy. A lot of reporters are weighing in in support of Wilder. Lovett, what do you think about the AP's decision here and how they handled it? Look, I think they wanted to avoid controversy and it worked. Mission accomplished. No controversy here. I don't know. I don't think cancel cultures exist.

I think you can't. It's like sand that falls through your fingers if you try to figure out what it is. But if it means anything, it means when it's not a mob online, it's nothing to do with that. It's when corporations or other organizations view it in their interest to dispense with someone rather than deal with some kind of public backlash or reaction. It is the cancel culture is not the decision of Twitter. It's the decision of managers, leaders of companies and organizations.

And time and time again, when these controversies happen, the mistake that news organizations make, that corporations make, it is they get so concerned about a 24-hour, 48-hour, unfair, bad faith, or even at times good faith response to something to see the longer-term interest on their employees, on their organization, on their reputation. And that's what happened here. They overreacted in the moment out of fear for the appearance of bias, not bias, the appearance of bias, the perception of bias, and they are paying for it and they deserve to pay for it.

Tommy, what do you think? Yeah, they just could not have screwed this up worse. I think one clear lesson out of this is that I think media organizations, campaigns, governments, they need to do a better job of recognizing and dealing with coordinated right-wing disinformation campaigns. This started as a Twitter thread by the Stanford College Republicans, half of which were them pretending to be upset about jokes about Ben Shapiro and Sheldon Adelson. And then it led to this panicked rush decision that seems to have pissed off half of the journalists at the Associated Press. And I think the bad faith nature of the attacks was best summed up by

the Washington Free Beacon, which is a right-wing DC outlet, where they said this woman, Emily Wilder, who worked in Arizona, her views in college could, quote, fuel concerns about the AP's objectivity amid revelations that the news outlets shared an office building with Hamas military intelligence in Gaza. If you can't see that for just the absurd nonsense that it is, there's something wrong with you. And you know, like it's not easy in the moment. I often think about back in 2009, when we just got to the white house, when Glenn Beck would go on Fox news and do these crazy whiteboard conspiracy theory rants, but he would do it to some relatively obscure staffer, accuse them of being a Soros

plant or just like whatever, and just go off on these people day after day after day. I don't know that we did enough to defend them at the time. I don't really fully know the toll it took on individuals who had to live through this. There was a case of Shirley Sherrod, who was a staffer at the Department of Agriculture, who was forced to resign after Breitbart released a selectively edited video of a speech she gave. They later watched the whole video and tried to fix that and rehire her. But the focus in these situations should be on these staffers who are under assault, who are getting threats often, and helping them support them through it. And Olivia Nuzzi, who writes for New York Magazine, had a long, smart thread about this,

where she said that every time a media outlet deals with a situation like this as a wound to cauterize, as a PR problem to be solved, they invite it to happen again and again. And they also perpetuate the absurd myth that reporters aren't human beings, that they haven't lived through experiences, that they don't have opinions when all of us know that is bullshit. Reporting, podcasting, everyone's job is like, you're all doing the best you can with the experience you've lived and the views you have, and you're trying to learn from different experiences and suggesting otherwise. lived and the views you have and you're trying to learn from different experiences and suggesting otherwise, it's just it's it's nonsensical. And it's not just that it's suggesting that reporters aren't human and don't have natural biases that come from their experiences and

their identity and what they believe. What's wrong with letting the audience know that your beliefs and experiences and identity can inform your reporting without rendering it inaccurate? What's wrong with having a diverse set of experiences that somehow inform the work that you do? You know, the whole timeline of this is completely fucking ridiculous. The AP told her, told Emily Wilder that her college activism and tweets weren't a problem and that they would protect her after the right wing campaign first started. And then soon after they fired her for what they say are the recent tweets. And if you look at the recent tweets, it's exactly the one that I read from her. And then she like retweeted a few other tweets that showed sort of some of the destruction in Palestine. And then that was it. Now, you know, news outlets will say, like, it will further erode faith in journalism

to have bias because, you know, readers won't trust them if they perceive bias. It's all about the perception of bias. But what they don't understand is a major goal of the right wing media and Republicans is to erode faith in journalism, right? Like they've openly admitted this. Trump calls them the enemy of the people. Steve Bannon said it was the press is the opposition party. If you're a media outlet, you can't base all your reporting or hiring or firing decisions on the mere perception of bias because it's never going to stop the right from attacking you as being biased. You have to just have faith that your reporting is accurate. That's the only thing you can do. I do think I do think these sort of

old school organizations have struggled for years with the reality that sometimes they are reporting on Republicans and Democrats all together inside of a democracy, right? Republicans and Democrats debating each other. And there are, I think, legitimate questions about bias that have been raised from time to time about mainstream outlets that they should consider, they should process. But what they really struggle to recognize is when actually, sorry, you don't have to like it, but you're actually in here with Democrats while a anti-democratic, anti-free press movement is attacking you from without. And I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable,

but that's the reality of what's going on. You are being you are being undermined for the purposes of a right wing project. That is an anti-democratic project. Yeah. And no one's asking you to defend Democrats. You shouldn't. That's not your job. At least defend your own institution. Yes. From from the assault on the free press that the right is generating every single day. Like, be honest to what's going on here and defend yourself. Yeah. And also just like and also just like, hey, Twitter time isn't real. No one lives on Twitter time. You don't need to live on Twitter time. We all live from time to time have felt like, oh, things are

happening right now. Every like Twitter has this ability. Social media has this ability to like stretch out the present and make the present bigger and bigger and bigger. And like that, like everyone's living in this huge gaping chasm of a present. Chill the fuck out. This could you don't need to react like see if the Stanford Republicans are still on your shit on Wednesday. You know, like nothing. You don't release.

Everyone must release a statement explaining themselves immediately anytime there's a controversy on Twitter. Why haven't you released a statement for yourself yet? Who the fuck cares? Yeah, this would have been an issue that would have been relegated to Fox News, the Free Beacon, Tom Cotton's fever dreams.

I do not think that all of us would be talking about the tweets of a new reporter covering the local Arizona beat. This is a textbook case of manufacturing a problem for yourself. Her job wasn't even to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She's covering news in Arizona and they still, I mean, it's crazy. Tom Cotton has her sending rockets from Ashkelon. And by the way, if you talk to journalists that actually do cover Israel and Palestine and Gaza, like Slate had a long piece on this

where they talked to a bunch of folks who had covered that beat or still covering that beat, and most of them wouldn't go on the record, but a lot of them expressed frustration with decisions by their editors to create balance in reporting about, say, civilian casualties, even when the death toll in Gaza was exponentially higher than elsewhere. And Peter Beinart,

who writes on these issues often, has talked about how reporters feel pressure to use sort of pre-vetted language to talk about what's happening to avoid controversy. There's entire entities set up to police language used by reporters. And like some of the loudest opponents of cancel culture, like Barry Weiss is like an OG cancel culture fan because when she was at Columbia, she was part of efforts to force out faculty members who were perceived as anti-Israel. So, you know, there's just hypocrisy swirling throughout this. There's so many bad faith attacks. We all just need to like be better prepared, inoculate ourselves. And then what you do in this instance is you support this person who just started working for you to get through it. You don't freak out and fire her and then refuse to tell her why she's even fired. It's almost like a minor point, but like asking the question, like,

she's even fired. It's almost like a minor point, but like asking the question, like, do we call it a war or do we call it a siege? Right. Do we say Palestine? Do we call it, say Israel? Those are important questions. And, and it is a bias. It may be a bias you think should be in there. Like bias, bias has taken it. It's, we all have biases. We all have the biases in every different direction all the time. We all have many facets of our identities that we bring to everything that we do, including all of these reporters. Stephen Rich of The Washington Post tweeted that the punishment disparities between Chris Cuomo and Emily Wilder is a good example of how this industry often works. For those of you who don't know, Cuomo was criticized after reports that he was advising his brother, Governor Andrew Cuomo, not to resign after allegations of sexual harassment. CNN said this was inappropriate, but didn't discipline Cuomo, though they did just dump Rick Santorum finally as a contributor after he said there isn't much Native American culture in. They waited like a month to get rid of the guy when I think it was clear to everyone that he has added no value to the network for a very long time.

It was time for him to go for a lot of reasons. I mean, on the Cuomo piece, I've never been a Chris Cuomo watcher or like a huge fan. I didn't mind actually the Cuomo and Cuomo interviews during the pandemic. It was a scary time. It was kind of fun. Like the shtick was mildly entertaining. But obviously, it was an objective. Obviously, it was a conflict of interest to interview your governor brother on your TV show and get a boost in your ratings. But joining a conference call with your brother's political advisors to discuss

the PR response to sexual assault allegations is just so far over what the ethical line should be here. I'm not really sure that CNN can come back from this in terms of how they will be viewed by other reporters, because it just shows that the response is not about ethics. They're about money and ratings and power and public relations considerations and none of the high-minded stuff that they would like to tell us these decisions are made based on. I mean, this is pretty shocking to me that Cuomo is not even, he's not getting fired. He's not getting punished in any way, shape, or form. Right. And he hit it. That's the thing, too. It's like the one at least

be I think what we can ask of journalists is to be transparent about their beliefs and biases and then say, OK, well, this is what I think. But also, you know, you can trust me that this actual reporting is is true and accurate and fair. And for Chris Cuomo to just do that and hide it and just secretly be on calls with his brother advising him about that while he's a journalist on the network, even if he's not covering Andrew Cuomo's sexual harassment scandal, it's still crazy to just hide that from your network and the viewers at the very least. In the wake of, I think, getting special treatment in terms of COVID testing and a whole bunch of other things that have come out in the last few months. I mean, it's a lot of lines crossed there. I think you're being, I think you're, you're, you're, you know, you have to weigh that against Chris's contribution to journalism. One last thing on the Rick Santorum piece of this. Okay. Rick Santorum is no longer on CNN.

That's nice. He wasn't very good to watch and didn't have very smart things to say. Do you think that that spot is getting filled by some, you know, I don't know, like smart, sophisticated person? No, like there's a spot now available on CNN for a right wing defender of some kind. It's a role and they're going to cast somebody for that role. And it will be somebody who says new and exciting, despicable things because that's the person, that's the slot they need to fill. Jeffrey Lord 2.0 is what it'll be. Yeah. Do you guys have thoughts on like what kind of standards and social media policies would be appropriate for news outlets to set for journalists? Obviously, this is a sort of a

tough conversation and debate to have. I do not. And I really don't just because like, I've never managed a newsroom or edited somebody. But I do think that like, our entire society needs to have a reckoning about the fact that a whole bunch of people are aging into the workforce, having put all kinds of stupid shit on social media. And that's in no way like excusing things that are completely out of bounds. But I do think we all need to reflect on the fact that there's a there's a permanent record that we've all now created that didn't exist for job seekers 20 years ago, 30 years ago. So that's one piece of it. I thought Jose Del Real of The Washington Post had a good tweet. He said, you know, we need to create space for honest, tough conversations within our newsrooms about how to make sure our personal biases aren't blinding us instead of pretending those don't

exist. I think that's true. And I also think that it is there's there's been a reckoning, especially over the last couple of years, where I think it would be wise for newsrooms and outlets to understand that the experiences and identities of a lot of their reporters can add value to the reporting rather than detract from it. You know, one of the reasons we are all aware of how bad police brutality has become is that a lot of reporters, especially black reporters, volunteered to go to Ferguson and report on the violence that they saw and in many cases personally experienced. And they realized, and Wesley Lowry talks about this a lot, they realized that outlets had been publishing

the police side of the story without questioning whether it was accurate. And it turns out that it wasn't. And the reason we know it wasn't is because all of these young reporters, a lot of black reporters went down, volunteered to go to Ferguson and covered it themselves. And Wesley Lowry tells the story,

he was just tweeting it in response to this Emily Wilder thing, that while he was being tear gassed in Ferguson, a senior editor called to complain that he had referred to police as, quote, cops, which could appear biased or dismissive. When when there's a reporter in Ferguson getting tear gassed and trying to say, hey, what the cops have been telling us this whole time might not be accurate. And the editor is like, yeah, the real problem is police versus cops as a language.

Think we've got a problem. I would say, yeah, I'd say it's interesting that you say that because I agree with everything that you and Tommy just said. And I just add two things. One, I don't know how you make standards. We live online increasingly. But I do think one place to begin is to stop worrying what things seem like and worry about what they are. When you say I am worried that you will appear biased, what you are saying is I don't trust trust the audience. You're saying, I'm a pundit, and I'm smarter than them, and I know they can't handle the truth. Okay? So I think that's bullshit. And then two, if anybody tweets that gif of that real housewife doing a spit take, they're unhirable. That's it.

They're done. Their careers are over. They have nothing to contribute to society. It's sad, but it's true, and some things you can't come back from. We need a broader reckoning with reaction gifts in this country generally. I think this conversation about like social media standards and norms for journalists does dovetail with a broader conversation about like what issues are objective or not and what things can be both sides. For example, democracy feels like an objectively good thing that we all support here in the U.S. From a self-interested standpoint, if I'm in the media, I would think to myself,

huh, if you go from democracy to autocracy, the first thing that's going to go is a free press. So maybe we should stand up for that and fight for that. But, you know, you don't necessarily see that in the coverage when you see voter suppression laws getting passed, people's, you know, right to vote being restricted, et cetera, et cetera. So I do think this is part of a broader rethinking of coverage, what is true, what is false, what is right, what is wrong, and how to bring different perspectives into conversations that historically have not included the entire country, have been sort of a group of people, mostly white, mostly male, who've been driving the conversation. And by the way, and like, it's had real consequence

when one of the, you know, you're not allowed to be partisan for Democrats. You're barely allowed to be partisan for democracy, but you're allowed to be partisan for bipartisanship. And that's at real cost. And that's at real cost to the way we have debates in this country and i will say one last thing as we were prepping for this i just have i was scrolling through twitter and i happened to see uh news that um uh rachel campos duffy formerly of the real world was just promoted to fox and friends weekend co-host even though she receives a paycheck from fox news and the rnc at the same time that's so that's what's going on over there in journalism.

I mean, that's a merger. That's a merger along a long time in the making. Sean Hannity, right, was loaning his plane to Trump or Pence or somebody during the campaign. He was speaking at events. I mean, that's the challenge with all of this. As much as they complain about liberal bias, they know they're full of shit. They know they're totally biased and they just don't care. The way they deal with incidents like this is to ignore them and say, you're a liberal and I don't care what you think. And they move on. I'm not saying we should adopt that, but we should just know how asymmetric this whole conversation is. Not on the level. All right. When we come back, Love It talks to New York political reporter Jeff Colton about the New York mayoral race.

As New York City emerges after a year of loss and hardship, 15 candidates are vying for the chance to replace Bill de Blasio as New York City's next mayor. And those are some tall, weird shoes to fill. It is a crowded primary. Technically speaking, it is a rank choice clusterfuck. It also is a lens at some of the big inter-left debates that extend well beyond New York. Here to help is city and state political reporter and author of Campaign Confidential, Jeff Colton. Jeff, welcome to Pod Save America. Thanks so much for having me on. Excited to bring you into the local world of New York City politics. to bring you into the local world of New York City politics. I'll just be honest.

Like, this raised me. I don't vote in New York. I vote in L.A., but I'm a New Yorker by birth and mentality. And so, but it's been so hard to figure out what the hell is going on. And so for listeners in New York who are just tuning in to the primary themselves and for people outside of the city, can you just give us the highest of high level overview overviews of where the race stands right now? Sure, sure. So, yeah, we're looking to replace Bill de Blasio, who's been in office now for seven and a half years. He's term limited out. So there will be a new mayor. No more de Blasio. We've got basically eight serious Democrats that are competing here.

Eight, which is a pretty big field. And honestly, I think all eight of them have a path to victory. But of course, the real story here is Andrew Yang. This national figure who got a lot of attention coming out of nowhere to run for president decided to run for mayor of his hometown, New York. He's lived here for 25 years, maybe 26. And he has dominated the race. You know, even though he has no experience in local politics and in city hall, that sort of thing. In fact, he himself has never even voted for mayor before. He decided to come in and you know what, he has really shaken up the race. He's the center of attention center of energy here. However, we have another candidate really gaining ground on him and all the most recent polling. We see Eric Adams,

the Brooklyn borough president and a former police officer either gaining ground on Yang or, or coming close or, or ahead of him in fact. And, you know, those are just the top two candidates. Like I said, there's six others. Some of them are more progressive. Some of them are running on a more business-friendly platform. Everybody is running as a reaction to Bill de Blasio in many different ways. And the election is on June 22nd. So we've got about a month from when we're recording this. So there have been a few candidates who have tried to like climb up to get into the anti-Yang spot. And what a what a world that that's what we're talking about. One of them is Scott Stringer,

comptroller. But his campaign has been rocked by sexual harassment allegations. Catherine Garcia, who is an administrator, she ran the sanitation department. She was the first, I believe, she called on Stringer to drop out, but a number of others have. He didn't. He's pushed back. It's kind of in limbo. What's the status of his candidacy? is what's the status of his candidacy? So Scott Stringer is still a contender. However, I mean, he's had quite a roller coaster ride. If you asked me a year ago who I thought the next mayor of New York City would be, I would say Scott Stringer. He's the New York City Comptroller. It's a citywide elected position, kind of the CFO of the city, and has been working towards a mayoral run for literally 10 or 20

years. I mean, just doing everything he can to position himself for this race. And he was in a, you know, pretty solid position, had a ton of labor union endorsements, a ton of endorsements from young, progressive elected officials that were kind of, even though he himself is a 60-something white man, really building up this multicultural, multiracial base of support, not unlike a Bernie Sanders campaign. Different politics, Scott Stringer's not a socialist, but he was kind of following that election playbook that we've seen from Bernie. And then, yes, last month was rocked by this allegation. A former volunteer of his from a 2001 campaign, so this is 20 years ago,

accused Scott Stringer of sexually harassing her and even sexually assaulting her. He said, yeah, I knew her. She was a friend. We had a brief relationship, and this was totally consensual and really muddied the waters by basically saying that she's doing this for political reasons. And Jean Kim, the woman who alleged this, said, no, this was totally unwanted. You know, he was a higher up in the campaign. He was he was preying on me.

pain. He was he was preying on me. So that's the background. And the political situation now is that Stringer had a very narrow path to victory before the allegation. And right now he has a much narrower path to victory. So into that void, you pointed out that Eric Adams has been rising. He is a former police officer, as you said, former Brooklyn Borough President. It was actually, I think, I thought striking how much of the debate seemed to revolve around him a bit in a way that that you would you would think would have been around Yang, given the fact that he has been in the poll position for so long. One of the biggest points of contention in the debate in the race has been policing. It's obviously been a huge topic in the national debate. There was this moment between former counselor to the mayor, Maya Wiley, and Eric Adams. Let's roll this clip. But my question is to Eric Adams. Eric, 685,000 people, 85% Black,

88% innocent. That's what Stop and Frisk was at its height that my former organization, the ACLU proclaimed a racist practice and won a court case on. And just a year ago, you called it a great tool and have said that you used it. And I just wanna know, cuz as a civil rights lawyer, all I can say is there was nothing okay about it. And it certainly was nothing more than lazy policing, certainly kept people's constitutional rights violated. How can New Yorkers trust you to protect us and to keep us safe from police misconduct? Thank you so much, Maya.

And every time you raise that question, it really just shows your failure of understanding law enforcement. So let me give you... Well, having chaired the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, I certainly understand misconduct. And yes, yes, you chaired it, and we both know that how much it was a failure under you. Can you talk a little bit about what Eric Adams has been saying around policing and how the national debate over police misconduct and injustice has influenced this hyperlocal New York debate?

So Eric Adams is such an interesting character when it comes to policing and to criminal justice reform. And he himself is positioning himself as the policing candidate. That's because he spent more than 20 years in uniform. He was an NYPD officer. He rose through the ranks to be a NYPD captain before entering politics. However, that entire time, he was a critic of the NYPD on the inside. I mean, the NYPD leadership hated him. You can read old clips in all the newspapers from the 90s of Adams, this rabble rouser calling the NYPD racist from the inside. He's kind of talking about both things. He's saying, yes, I am the policing candidate. I'm going to keep you safe. I know what it's like to be a police officer. But he's also saying, I have a long record of criticism and of calling for reform. worked for Bill de Blasio, she is accurately calling out the fact that Adams has said good things about stop and frisk. This very controversial policing practice. Adams has said, yes, I used stop and frisk. I like it. It's a good tactic, which sounds crazy. But Adams is trying

for some real nuance here. I don't know if it's going to get across to all the voters, but Adams is trying for some real nuance, saying that stop and frisk is a useful tool in moderation. And the problem with, you know, the massive controversy from the Bloomberg years is just the overuse of it and the racial inequity of it. Back in 2011, there was an insane number of stops and frisks of, of mostly young men of color on the streets of New York. There are still stop and frisks by the NYPD today. It's just the number is like one 10th of 1% of what it used to be. It is a very rare tactic that they, that they now use. And Adams is basically pointing to that, you know,

tiny little percentage and saying, that's good. Like, let's keep that up. It does sound like a crazy, crazy thing to do to even acknowledge that you'd like stop and frisk because that that term itself has become so loaded. You know, even Bloomberg himself, when he was running for president, basically had to appear at a black church and say, I disowned stop and frisk, you know, that was that was a huge mistake. So it's, it's very interesting that this is once again, becoming a major issue in the mayor's race. Yeah, I mean, look, like Andrew Yang in that debate, and has consistently said he is against defunding the police, then you have candidates like Maya Wiley, taking a more left position candidates like Diane Morales, who taken a more left position. This is probably one of the biggest places where you will

have a democratic primary debating police reform in the country until a presidential primary. I mean, this is a huge pool, a big pool of Democratic voters hashing this out in the biggest city in the country. How has the police reform, police defund debate played out? What have you noticed? What have you learned from the primary so far about it? played out? What have you noticed? What have you learned from the primary so far about it? Look, a year ago, there was such a movement in New York City to defund the police. I mean, you know, massive marches, an upswelling of support that went beyond just the Democratic socialists in New York City. It was accepted by, this call for defunding was accepted by even, I don't know, run-of-the-mill progressives, I guess you could say.

And of course, you know, largely New York City politics are well to the left of the country at large. But anyway, there was this big movement towards defund the police. And now in the mayor's race, very, I mean, basically only one of the candidates, Diane Morales, is openly saying defund the police. She's running the most left-leaning campaign. Other candidates like Scott Stringer and Maya Wiley are saying, yes, we need to reallocate funds, you know, to a lesser extent, maybe not the $1 billion or more that some activists are calling for. a huge issue, especially because we have seen a random shooting in Times Square a couple weeks ago. We recently have seen a huge increase in reported hate crimes, particularly against Asian Americans, against Jews. And policing is once again on the top of people's minds and not necessarily reforming the police. But I think among a lot of New Yorkers, there is a real growing fear of being the victim of crime or the fear of New York City, quote unquote, slipping into the bad old days, which is which is always an issue here in New York. Thinking back to the days of high crime in the in the 80s and 90s. Look, let's put this in context here.

Overall, crime is at its lowest point this year in New York City than it's been in recorded history. Crime is incredibly low historically in New York City. However, there is an increase in shootings. There is an increase in murders. So there is a real concern here that New York City is slipping on these key metrics. And every single mayoral candidate is responding to this. And it's become possibly the number one issue in the race, even more so than coronavirus

recovery. Yeah, you heard, you know, you hear Scott Stringer, and you hear Maya Wiley, you know, you hear Scott Stringer and you hear Maya Wiley, you know, talking about trying to kind of hit the notes on not having police respond to, you know, people having a mental illness crisis, some of the kind of, for lack of a better term, like touch points of what defund the police wants to achieve while then going back, you know, Scott Stringer repeatedly talks about he was a kid in New York in the 70s. We don't want to go back there. Right. So those candidates are trying to strike a balance. And you have people like Andrew Yang and Eric Adams being, I think, a bit more in their rhetoric. I'm not sure how much different would be in their policies, but in their rhetoric, striking a more pro-police tone. I think that's exactly right. And of course, yes, there is a difference between the rhetoric and the policies. Eric Adams is, of course, also proposing some real changes

to the NYPD. He wants to change up how things are done. However, his rhetoric is definitely appealing towards those New Yorkers who do really support the NYPD and maybe want a larger police presence. So I have no doubt that this is going to be a national referendum on how people see policing and funding the NYPD. And, you know, funny enough, the primaries on June 22nd, on June 30th, the next New York City budget is due, which means that, you know, next month, I mean, we're going to see once again, a huge debate in the city council among Mayor de Blasio about how much money should be going towards the NYPD, which is by far the largest police department in the country. So I think that this issue is going to become

only hotter as we get closer to, as we get closer to election day. It seems though most of the top candidates, regardless of the rhetoric, have embraced the idea of shifting some funding towards having trained counselors respond to mental health issues, to homelessness, to some other issues that have traditionally brought police. So it does seem that like that that debate at the national level has sort of filtered down and had a big impact at how the policing is debated in New York. Is that right? Yeah, definitely. There's been a large discussion about which calls the NYPD should respond to versus, you know, maybe, maybe more trained mental health professionals, that sort of thing. And that is a totally acceptable position,

even among the more pro police candidates, candidates. Everybody is calling for some level of change. However, this has also been one of the areas where Andrew Yang has been criticized the most, especially by more progressive voters or voters that are more critical of the police. really been talking about have NYPD having a role in cracking down on maybe the street homeless or those having real mental health episodes, whereas a lot of more progressives don't want the NYPD to have any role in that. Yeah, yeah. One thing that came up in the debate that I thought was, so Catherine Garcia, former sanitation commissioner, kind of viewed as a really competent administrator. de Blasio put her in charge of other pieces of the government at times. She's like sort of widely respected, but was seen as a second tier candidate, gets this big New York Times endorsement. There was one moment that I thought was just strange. And like, can we roll this clip is when they were asked about regulations,

they would change. And I wanted to ask you about this. I want you each to get specific and name briefly one specific regulation that you would undo or ease and why the public would still be protected. Ms. Garcia, signage or something else? I'm not going to go with signage. I agree with signage, but I actually think a more fundamental challenge, particularly for restaurants, is the surprise inspections of the health inspector. We do need to make sure we are inspecting restaurants, but they can schedule the appointment so they are staffed to be able to manage it moving forward rather than losing a whole night's worth of receipts. They wouldn't hide stuff and clean up for the inspector with the appointments?

They would not be hiding stuff from the appointments. You're talking about how many people have ever gotten sick in a restaurant in New York City. It really doesn't happen. I really like Catherine Garcia. Is she out of her mind? What? They need to have surprise inspections at the restaurants. Yeah, they'll clear. Like, have you met people? Am I being too cynical? That was like she's she is. She is has this great reputation. And I know that this is a small thing and not a fair place. It's not the only thing. It's not the most important thing. But I can't stop thinking about that. What?

We need to have a surprise. What am I? What am I implanting? Oh, I couldn't believe it. A rare misstep by the Garcia campaign, I would say, you know, as somebody who has before gotten what I believe to be food poisoning in a New York City restaurant. However, look, I do think that Garcia is probably making a calculated decision to appeal to small business owners, which is a very, very powerful constituency in the Democratic primary. And I think that she was looking out for them. Of course. And I'm not. And I do think like the larger point she was making about how hard it is to start restaurants, run restaurants, run small businesses, completely true. I'm glad that they were really they talked about that a lot. They do all talk about that a lot. But man,

yeah, I do think you got to have surprise inspections. All right. They can't just make appointments. You can't just make appointments. All right. I'm a one issue voter, Catherine Garcia. All right. I don't vote in your city anymore. So you don't worry about it. But if I did, Jeff Golden, thank you so much. Where you let you you go why the fuck would anybody want this job right you have to deal with things ranging from the Israeli Palestinian conflict to you know surprise

visits for clean restaurants it's such a job I love it I love covering it I wouldn't want to do it but I like playing the role that I do so oh man Jeff Colton thank you so much thanks for having me I wouldn't want to do it, but I like playing the role that I do. Oh, man. Jeff Colton, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Thanks to Jeff Colton for joining us today. Have a great week. We'll talk to you on Thursday. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are Jazzy Marine and Olivia Martinez.

It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin,

and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload

these episodes as videos every week.