Pod Save America - “The clouds have not lifted.”

Episode Date: April 4, 2019

Trump announces that 2020 will be about health care, Mueller’s team starts leaking, House Democrats fire their subpoena cannons, Wisconsin signals trouble ahead, and Bernie Sanders leads the field in fundraising and polling. Then former White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett talks to Jon about her new book, “Finding My Voice.” Also – Pod Save America is going on tour! Get your tickets now: crooked.com/events.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, my conversation with our friend and former senior White House advisor Valerie Jarrett about her new book, Finding My Voice. Also, after my interview with Valerie, stick around at the end of the podcast for another excerpt of our weekly Pod Save America Q&A. Have a few questions there. questions there. We've got a lot of news to get through today as well, from Trump's plan to make the next election about health care, to the House Democrats firing up those subpoena cannons, to all the latest 2020 news. Also, the next installment in our Pod Save the Candidate series will be out on Friday. Tommy will be interviewing former HUD secretary and former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro right here in Los Angeles. Also, the paperback version of Ben Rhodes' book, The World As It Is,

went on sale Tuesday, April 2nd. It is a fantastic book, one of my favorite Obama books. Go buy yourself Ben's book if you haven't already. Finally, we talked to you a few weeks ago about Organizing Corps 2020, a program that will recruit and train a thousand field organizers who go to work in seven key 2020 battleground states for the Democratic ticket. The deadline to apply to that program is Monday, April 8th. So if you're a college junior who's interested, or if you just want to support the program and sponsor an organizer,

If you just want to support the program and sponsor an organizer, please go to OrganizingCorps2020.com. You can apply. You can donate. It is a great cause. We need to get field organizers in the field now so that when we have a Democratic nominee, there's going to be a staff in place and there's going to be a young, diverse field of organizers who know what they're doing. This is a really important program, so please check it out. All right, let's get to the news. Last week, Donald Trump promised that he was moving forward in courts and legislatively to replace the Affordable Care Act. This week, the president reversed himself and said that he was, quote, never planning a vote prior to the 2020 election on the wonderful health care package that some very talented people are now developing for me and the Republican Party. It will be on full display

during the election as a much better and less expensive alternative to Obamacare. This will be a great campaign issue. Will it, Dan? Will campaigning on repealing the Affordable Care Act be a great campaign issue for Donald Trump? And why do you think he backed off his earlier promise to come up with an Obamacare replacement before the election? Well, these two questions are very connected. No, it will not be a good issue. And we know that because it was the centerpiece of the 2012 election, which the Republicans lost. It was a centerpiece of the 2018 election, which the Republicans lost. And so were you to make it a centerpiece of the 2020 election, it probably does not bode well for Republicans. The reason Trump backed off of it, and backed off is not the right word. He pretended he never said the original thing, which is always a favorite Trump tactic, is that the

Republicans had no interest in following Trump off this cliff, which is unusual for them, I know. But Mitch McConnell said that, thought this was uh impressive in its dickishness but that he said he would be happy to look at any health care legislation that nancy pelosi and donald trump could agree on that was if that was a it was a funny joke for mitch mcconnell i mean not known for jokes so mean, my question about this is, like, first of all, the idea that Donald Trump has been coming up with a health care plan or is going to come up with a health care plan or that Republicans are going to put forward a health care plan. I mean, we've heard this now for how many years? Like, since 2010, they've been coming up with Obamacare alternatives. 2010, they've been coming up with Obamacare alternatives.

Like, why do they think they can get away with continuing to say that there's going to be some magical alternative to Obamacare that basically does what people like about Obamacare, protects pre-existing conditions, all that good stuff, and yet somehow we never see this? Well, it's impossible. That's the thing. It is an impossible policy problem to solve because you can't get rid of the parts of Obamacare that the Republicans hate and keep the parts that they profess to like but don't actually like, protections for pre-existing conditions. You have to get as many people into the pool as possible in order to make it affordable to protect people with existing conditions for insurance companies. So it's an impossible policy problem to solve. I listened to you guys talk about this on Monday before Trump backtracked off of this.

I think you're – there's two elements of this. One is I do think he hears all the time that healthcare is the Republicans' biggest problem, Democrats' biggest advantage. And so he's sort of drawn to it like a moth to a flame. But then there's also, he just has this politically self-destructive instinct, which is he insists on always following what seems like his best day with his worst day by, I think as you said this on Monday, grabbing the third rail. And I think there was like, oh, I'm doing really well post Mueller report, according to all of my friends on Fox News. What can I do to mess that up? I'm going to I'm going to grab on to health care again.

Yeah, I mean, the other thing, too, is he does have a health care plan. They laid it out in Trump's budget a few weeks ago. His administration did. I'm sure he doesn't know that or didn't read it. But the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan scorekeepers in Congress, looked at the proposed policy that's in Trump's proposed budget right now. They estimated the plan would cause millions of people to lose coverage. It would give states the option to let insurers return to discriminating against patients with preexisting conditions. And it would allow states to give insurers the flexibility to decide what gets covered. Maternal care, maternity care, you know, anything that they want.

So basically he does have a plan that he's proposing in his budget, and it's shit. It's a bad plan. So, like, how excited are Republican politicians to make this a central issue in 2020? I mean, didn't Trump basically end up with the worst of all options here because he brought up health care he pretended that they were going to have a vote on it you know sometime in this

this year or early next year and then he said no no i'm going to punt this until after the election thereby ensuring that the election itself will be about whether or not people want to repeal the affordable care act which we know they don't. I always get the sense that McConnell treats Trump like parents treat toddlers, which is he basically just promised him that Trump's like, I want health care. I want health care. I want health care. And McConnell's like, you can have health care after the election. We'll deal with it after the election. Right. It's easier to do that. It's easier to delay gratification than to deny it. And Trump, being a toddler, decided to tell everyone that that's what the plan was, which, yes, it's the worst of all worlds, which is to say that if the Republicans take the House and Trump wins reelection, the exact immediate result of that is the repeal of health care. That's an argument that Democrats would make and Republicans would try to elide. But now Trump has embraced it.

And so it is in some ways, if Democrats play their cards right here, a bit of a reprise of what McConnell very deviously did with the Garland nomination, which is to say to hang out this vote over the election so that Republicans who were uncomfortable with Trump could give themselves a rationale for voting for Trump, which is, I don't like Trump. He seems terrible. He seems racist. He seems wholly unfit for this job. But if he wins, the next immediate result is we get to protect the balance of the court. And so this is the Obamacare version of the Garland effect of 2016. But it will be up to Democrats to make this argument and keep this story relevant for a very long time, which is challenging considering the fact that collectively as Americans, we were unable to hold last week's impeachable offenses in our heads for more than five minutes. But yeah, no, I mean, I think you're absolutely right. And I forget which story it was,

but there was some focus group of like, you know, Obama, Trump voters. And one of the people said, you know, I really liked Donald Trump, but I might not vote for him in 2020, just because I'm really worried that if I do, I'll lose my health care again. You know, like there's there's sort of a a preconceived notion from a lot of voters, rightly so, that Republicans and Donald Trump are just bad on health care and Democrats are good, however they feel about the parties and the individuals otherwise. And I think that's a strength that Democrats have. But as you say, they have to figure out how to capitalize on that strength. And to that end, you know, somewhere in the Twitter stream of Trump's verbal diarrhea on health care was also an attack on Democrats. He said, quote, Everybody agrees that Obamacare doesn't work. Premiums and deductibles are far too high. Really bad health care. Even the Dems want to replace it, but with Medicare for all,

which would cause 180 million Americans to lose their beloved private health insurance. Dan, how worried should Democrats be about this line of attack and what can we do to counter it? I don't say this often about Trump, but this is not unclever, right? There is a, there's sort of the health care debate in 2020 sort of operates around the following axes. There is the Trump plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act either by lawsuit or by legislation. There is the Democratic plan to protect the ACA. There is a debate around what comes after the ACA, whether that is a Sanders-like Medicare for All plan, whether that is something like Medicare for America, which offers a buy-in, or something like a public option, right? Like, what is the next step beyond that?

And then there is the Trump plan to cut Medicare by nearly a trillion dollars to pay for his tax cut for corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy. And so which part of that argument you can draw the most attention to determines how Democrats will be successful. And if it is ACA versus no ACA, that is good for Democrats. If it is no ACA versus Medicare for all versus Medicare cuts, Democrats are going to have to argue the right point. I think personally that the Medicare cuts in the budget gave Democrats a huge advantage here, which is I think it should be easier to argue about giving Medicare to some people who don't have it than to cut Medicare from the people who do have it. And if Democrats can

focus on that, then there's real chance for success here. But it is a lesson for Democrats that regardless of whether you're for a Sanders plan or something less, quote unquote, lesser, then Trump is going to say you're going to kick all 180 million Americans off their health insurance. That is what Trump will do. It's what Fox will do. It's what the Koch brothers will do. That will be the outer bounds of the debate. And look, we should stipulate here that 180 million Americans, where he's getting that number from is that is the number of Americans who get health insurance through their employer right now. So those Americans will not lose their health insurance under Bernie Sanders' plan. Their private insurance plan would go away, and instead they would be enrolled in Medicare. And by the way, not just the Medicare that we know of now, basically sort of a Medicare plus version where there aren't premiums and there aren't deductibles and there aren't copays. It's free health care. That's what

it is. But it would require a transition away from the plans you have now into that plan. Now, Medicare for all advocates would also say that, you know, if you get your insurance through your employer today, your employer can change your insurance plan at any time and often does. So it's not like when you have your current plan now, you are in control of what that plan is. And when it changes, you are not your employers in control of that. So there is an argument to be made there. But, you know, there's also an argument to be made if you're for one of the other Medicare for all plans that offers a slower transition or offers a choice that, OK, Donald Trump is proposing massive cuts to Medicare and to repeal health insurance for 20 million people. What Democrats are proposing is if you like the health care you have now, great. If you want to enroll in Medicare, like seniors have been enrolled in Medicare for decades and decades, you can do that.

No problem. If you're an employer that wants to enroll your employees in Medicare, you can do that, too. And no charge. You just enroll right into the program. If you don't want to do that, that's fine, too. Just enroll right into the program. If you don't want to do that, that's fine too. That seems to me like a pretty strong message and also a way to enroll a whole bunch of people who don't have health insurance or have health insurance that's not working for them into Medicare. I think that's great. I also think that there are some things that Democratic candidates can sort of agree on that would help win this argument over the long run, right? Which the first is,

every candidate can and should say every day on the trail that what this election is about is healthcare. That it is about if Trump wins, the Affordable Care Act is gone. We should repeat that every single day. It is to the benefit of every candidate who says it, and it's important to make sure that that sinks in over time. Let's use the long runway we have to the election to our advantage here by drilling it into the public consciousness. Second, I think we should also be highlighting Trump's plan to cut Medicare. That is the best argument against his argument about Medicare for all. But I also think Democrats should not demagogue each other's Medicare for all proposals. We should disagree about them.

We should, there should be a, a battle around the policy details. But if more moderate Democrats use right wing talking points to describe, uh, the Sanders plan or Medicare for America, I think that just does Trump a huge favor. Right. And for people on the left, if you characterizing someone's position for a more a slower transition period or a buy in or whatever else is somehow being in the pocket of pharma or insurance companies also does Trump's business for them. Right. Like we we should have a good faith debate on the policy issues without making Republicans arguments against Democrats, either that we are captive special interests or are trying to kick people off their health care or whatever that is. Let's have a real debate around the issues and that will get us in a better place. But if we

do Trump's dirty work for him in the primary, that's a huge problem. And again, this all happens to be true, not demagoguing each other's plans, right? Because on one end, you're talking about automatic enrollment of everyone in this country into a Medicare program that just takes place over a transition period of four years. On the other end, you're talking about giving people the choice to enroll in Medicare if they want. And then in the middle, which is where Medicare for America is, you're talking about automatically enrolling about half the folks who currently aren't in medicare and giving the other half of the folks a choice so that's what it is and it's you know they're different programs there's benefits and drawbacks each of them but they are all about giving more people the ability to enroll in medicare and to get health insurance and to get affordable health insurance that's what

these plans are about but yeah democrats should be talking about this every fucking day and you know it's funny the people who have um like the one person who gets this message right all the time is every time Elizabeth Warren talks about health care and talks about health care plans, she always makes sure to say, well, before we talk about all of our plans and all the different plans that Democrats have, let's just remember that Donald Trump and the Republicans are out there every day trying to take our health care away. She starts every single health care answer like that. And I think, you know, every other Democrat should probably do the same thing before you start talking about your plan. And when you go back to 2016, I think one of the things, the many reasons that led to the horrible result we got was also that there was this assumption that the Affordable Care Act was safe. Right. It survived multiple elections. It survived a Republican Congress and multiple challenges to the Supreme Court.

So that is sort of the law of the land. And the salience of that issue was diminished in voters' minds. We have the opportunity to make sure it's at the top of the agenda this time, because it is at the top of the agenda this time, because the Affordable Care Act will be gone if Trump wins and the Republicans take the House. It's that simple. That is a reason for voting. That is a reason that even if you don't love the Democratic candidate that we have, you can understand how it can affect your life and the lives of members of your community or your family or whatever. 100%. And people should know, by the way, too. It's not like if Trump wins again. If Trump wins again, there is a very, very high likelihood that if he wins 270 electoral votes, it means he also had enough votes and Republicans had enough votes to take the House back. Because a lot of these House seats we took by very small margins in a very good year for Democrats.

And so if it's a bad year for Democrats and Trump wins, it's very possible that Republicans win the House back. And then you're absolutely right. The Affordable Care Act goes away. That is what is on the line in 2020. All right. Let's talk about the most openly corrupt and incompetent administration of our lifetime and what a Democratic House is finally doing about it. Earlier this week, the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for information regarding the growing scandal over the Trump White House handing out top secret security clearances to staffers who were determined to have security concerns by national security officials. The House Intelligence Committee is investigating potential illegal foreign donations to Trump's inaugural committee. The House Ways and Means Committee is now mobilizing to obtain Trump's tax returns from the IRS.

who obtained Trump's tax returns from the IRS and the House Judiciary Committee, voted to subpoena the full, unredacted, totally exonerating Mueller report, which we learned last night from the New York Times and the Washington Post, is apparently far more damaging to the president than was suggested by the four-page letter written by Trump's handpicked attorney general. Surprise, surprise. According to Mueller's own team, the report contains, quote, according to Mueller's own team.

The report contains, quote, alarming and significant evidence that the President of the United States obstructed justice. Ooh, boy, Dan. The subpoena cannons are out. The fuse is lit. Where did the subpoena cannon thing come from? I have no idea. I have no idea where it came from.

I don't know if I saw it on Twitter. I don't know if Lovett said it. Who knows? It's either some random person on Twitter or Lovett are the two most likely answers to that question. Yeah, that's where I get all my crazy things to say. Let's start with the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating the security clearance scandal, as well as the administration's decision to add a citizenship question to the census. Forgot to mention that one. Why do you think House oversight, chaired by Elijah Cummings,

started with these particular issues? What do you think? I don't know why. And I think they're totally fine issues. I think in general, Democrats have been a little too wrapped around the optics axle about all of the stuff that we, you know, it really matters

what order the letters go in or when we do things. And I think we're spending too much time worrying about how people interpret the requests for information than we are about how they're going to view the responses to those requests, to the actual information. I think these are totally good. The citizenship question on the census is a huge problem and it is a potentially massive undermining of democracy in a way – it's a political power play that will last a decade by denying representation to mostly Democratic-leaning communities all across the country. So that's a huge deal. The security clearance thing, also a huge deal. security clearance thing also be a huge deal. But still, we are in April here, and we've had the House for three months. And I think we are moving slower than we need to be. And Democrats have to recognize that the underreach, if you will, about oversight of the Trump administration

is of greater political peril than quote unquote, overreach. Yeah. So let's tick through some of these different issues, starting with the security clearance scandal. As mentioned earlier, a whistleblower from the White House Office of Personnel named Tricia Newbold recently told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the White House handed out top secret clearances to at least 25 staffers, including Jared Kushner, who national security officials had already disqualified over security concerns they discovered during their background check, including, quote, foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personnel conduct, financial problems, drug use, and criminal conduct. Drain that swamp, baby. Just drain it. Did you say Jared Kushner or did you say Official One, as he is known in the memo? Oh, yeah. Official One. Directly related to his father-in-law, Individual One.

He married into the one family. How big of a deal is this scandal? And are you persuaded by the official Republican response that actually only four or five of these security clearances had been denied for, quote, very serious reasons? The rest of them were just sort of serious reasons not to give an individual with security concerns in their background. This whole thing is a little bit of a microcosm of Trump scandals in general, which is it's this huge problem that is beyond anything we've ever possibly seen. And the answer is no, actually, it's not as bad as you think. It's just normally one of the biggest scandals you've ever seen. And so the fact that it's, if the original story was five White House officials had been granted security clearances

over the objections of career professionals. It would be a massive scandal that would dominate the news for six months. Instead, that is the, quote unquote, exculpatory talking point for the Republicans. I mean, this is a giant deal, and it should be the subject of massive amounts of investigation, both the process of politicizing the security investigation process, but also what it is in Jared Kushner's background, a person who has access to the most closely held secrets in the American intelligence community. What is it that caused such alarm?

That is, for someone who is the right hand of the president, we need to know that answer. And again, just so people know this, the reason that the FBI and national security officials and the White House do a background check on their employees and try to find out about, you know, things like drug use, debt, financial problems, personal conduct, all this stuff, is not because they want you to be an upstanding citizen, though they do, but they are worried that you will be subject to blackmail by foreign officials, foreign influence, foreign agents who say to you, okay, well, you know all these secrets. Well, I know something about how much debt you owe, or I hold the debt that you owe, or I know a secret about you. And unless you tell me the

secrets that you have access to in the a secret about you. And unless you tell me the secrets that you have access to in the United States government, I will release the secrets that I have on you. That is one of the primary reasons why people conduct such thorough background checks. And also why if during your background check, you are honest about some of the issues you've had in your life, sometimes the FBI and the White House say, okay, well, at least you were honest about it on the security clearance, on the security forms. And because you're honest and it's out there, then it's harder for them to blackmail you.

So we'll let you get the security clearance. But the fact that there was a bunch of people who probably lied on their fucking SF-86, which is the form that you fill out when you're trying to work and get a security clearance. And they had all this concerning stuff in their background, foreign influence, criminal conduct, et cetera. I mean, that clearly set off a bunch of flags in the national security apparatus, and they're pretty worried about it. And they didn't want to give those people access to the most sensitive information that the United States government holds.

I mean, just to put a very fine point on it when it comes to Jared Kushner, Jared Kushner filled out his SF-86 and he quote unquote forgot to include a meeting with Russians to explore a secret back channel that would allow Jared Kushner and the Trump administration to communicate with Russia outside of the eyes and ears of the U.S. law enforcement intelligence community, that slipped his mind when he was filling out his form where you list your contacts with foreign governments or foreigners. And so, yes, there are a red flag or two in his file, I imagine. And again, it's like Jared Kushner also has a lot of financial interests and a lot of financial interests abroad and the question is when jared kushner is trying to fucking you know uh forge middle east peace which he's doing a great job on or talk with the saudis or talk with the russians you know we we have every right to know whether he has any financial benefit to making certain

deals or certain agreements with these foreign powers like the american people have the right to know that that's why you go through a security clearance background check. Un-fucking-real. So let's talk about the House Judiciary Committee finally voting to give its chairman, Jerry Nadler, the authority to subpoena Robert Mueller's full report. Nadler, who had previously given Attorney General William Barr until April 2nd to release the report, is now saying that he won't use the subpoena right away and will be giving Barr time to change his mind. Dan, what do you think the strategy behind this is? Why would you give Barr more time?

I was originally ready to fire off some hot tweets about this just out of pure frustration. And then I saw a tweet from Andy Wright, who was an attorney in the White House Counsel's Office when we were there working on these very issues, and he explained that the reason why the subpoena was authorized but not issued yet was – and this is his conjecture based on his experience working on both sides of these conversations, both in the White House and on oversight committees on the Hill – is that there is a – there will be a legal battle over this. And it is important for the congressional committee to show that it did everything it possibly could, short of the subpoena, before they get to the subpoena. So that's why there was always a process of negotiation, of potentially compromise on how these things are done. But you have to show that you tried to do everything before the subpoena. And if you just issue the subpoena right away without that sort of preparation work, then it's likely that you're not going to win in court. So this is, Andy at least believes,

and he's very, very smart about these things, that it is about ensuring that if there were a legal challenge to this, as there probably will be, that now this committee has the best chance to succeed. So I didn't send the tweet. You didn't? So no hot tweets. But it was going to be good. It's going to be very angry. I'm sure Brian Boitler sent them anyway, because I know he's annoyed about this.

So the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voted against giving Nadler the power to subpoena the report, which is odd, because every House Republican voted to make the report public just last month. Trump has also backtracked on his initial willingness to release the report that he says totally exonerates him. Very weird, huh, Dan? What could what could they possibly be worried about in releasing this full report? What do you think's going on? It's I don't know. It seems suspicious. things going on? I don't know. It seems suspicious. And it is notable that Republicans, both pre,

during, and post-Trump, feel essentially no obligation to be burdened by the position they held three days ago. So it doesn't matter. It makes no difference to them that they said, release it last week, this week. They say, don't release it. Now they're going to be against the release of it. It's all part of being a Republican is you have to have the part of your brain that that emits shame surgically removed prior to party acceptance. Mueller's team has been telling people that they are quite annoyed and displeased with William Barr's four-page letter that tried to summarize their report. When, in fact, what we learned from these reports is that Mueller's team had already written summaries of their report in front of each section. And they wrote them believing that they would be released to the public almost immediately. And yet, William Barr did not do that. William Barr said that even their summaries, the Mueller's team summaries, somehow had grand jury information or classified information in the summaries.

But it's sort of weird. Like, why would Mueller's team write a summary that they believed would be released to the public that contained classified information or grand jury information? Seems a little odd. I have a lot of thoughts on this. I really do. I mean, first, let's just stipulate that we yelled at the press for writing the Mueller clouds clear over Trump, best day of Trump's life without ever having read the report and basing it on the four-page summary of a man who did not believe the special counsel had the authority to investigate the president on questions like obstruction of justice. So we yelled at them for that.

So let's not go completely the opposite direction, not having read the report. But the general take is no shit. Like we this was so obvious at the time that there was at least something more damaging to Trump than was in Barr's letter, because Bob Mueller, who is a man very careful in the words that he says is suggest that, I don't know, Congress, for instance, would want to look at it and see and make their own judgment. And then there's this part of the letter that drives me insane, which is Barr essentially himself, not Mueller, clears Trump on obstruction. And everyone was like, well, Trump's in the clear, clears Trump on obstruction. And everyone was like, well, Trump's in the clear, despite the fact that that is Barr's opinion. It is Barr's position, his position at the Department of Justice, that Trump cannot be indicted because he's president of the United States. So if you cannot charge Trump, then you cannot clear him. You are simply offering your opinion on the evidence and your opinion means nothing. The only people who can render a fucking

judgment on this is Congress. And Barr is currently denying Congress access to the evidence to make said judgment. So the other thing I would say about this is, hey, Mueller team, where were you last week? Like, why did it take you a week to let your concerns bubble to the top? You are free. Concerns bubble to the top. You are free. Men and women now, you can speak. You can leak. It would have been better to not let us get however many weeks it's been since this came out for the bar summary to sink into the public consciousness before you decide to express your concerns.

And even now, I should say, the sourcing on the Post and the Times stories is not Mueller's team told the Times or told the Washington Post. There's an intermediary. It's Mueller's team has spoken to officials who have spoken to the Post and the Times. So they are very, they're clearly very nervous about leaking Mueller's team still. I mean, it very well might be that they thought, well, you know, Barr can have this four page stupid letter come out, but this thing's going to Congress soon anyway. And then as the days tick by and Barr continues to withhold the report, they're starting to think, oh, fuck, maybe this isn't getting to Congress as fast as we thought it would be. And now this guy is going to, has already framed the narrative and our work is going to be seen as, you know, our work is going to be buried, which seems like it's happening right now.

And look, again, you said, let's not go overboard in the other direction. And I agree. It seems unlikely that the report actually says, you know, Trump did conspire with the Russians and he did obstruct justice. Absolutely. Trump did conspire with the Russians and he did obstruct justice. Absolutely. Barr is smart enough to know that he couldn't get away with too much of a cover up. But he's also smart enough to realize that if he framed that letter in just the right way and by omission left out a whole bunch of really damaging information about donald trump and potential criminality and evidence of criminality then by the time the report comes out if you can just slow walk it long enough the narrative about trump being exonerated would already be set and that once the report does come out and democrats start screaming about it which we will if there's bad shit in there um then everyone will say, oh, just fucking sore losers, those Democrats, just complaining about this report. The president's already been exonerated. Why can't we just move on? That is very likely that Barr could have done that. Very

likely. This is a very esoteric and painful sports reference, but do you remember in the playoffs last year when my Philadelphia 76ers were getting their ass kicked by your Boston Celtics. And in one of the games, the Sixers hit what they thought was the game-winning three-pointer as the clock was going out. And whoever runs the confetti cannon at Wells Fargo Arena fired off the confetti cannon, only to then find out it was a two-point shot and a three-point shot, which meant it was a tie. Then the Sixers lost in overtime. That is how I feel about the exoneration parties that all of the Trump people had afterwards, which is like there was the hug between Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders. There was that nauseating New York Times story that we talked about a few weeks ago about how they had all these parties and celebratory dinner parties.

Well, maybe it was a little early for those parties is what I'm saying. A lot of confetti on the court right now, Dan. A lot of confetti. All right. Let's talk about some 2019 elections before we get to the 2020 elections. In a special election on Tuesday, Democrats in Pennsylvania flipped a state Senate district in suburban Pittsburgh that Donald Trump carried by six points in 2016. Pam Evino won that seat that opened up when the incumbent Republican left to run for Congress last year. incumbent Republican left to run for Congress last year. Unfortunately, Democrats got much tougher news in Wisconsin, where a conservative state Supreme Court candidate declared victory in a race that could have a significant impact on that state's politics for years. Brian Hagedorn is a Koch Brothers-backed candidate who's called Planned Parenthood a, quote, wicked organization,

the NAACP a, quote, disgrace to America, and founded a school that bans gay students and teachers. His liberal opponent, Judge Lisa Neubauer, still hasn't conceded because the race could be within the margin for a recount, but regardless of how things play out, she underperformed significantly in a state that's critical to the party's chances in 2020. Dan, first before we get to what it means for 2020, what does this mean for Wisconsin now and in the future? It's terrible. This one was a real gut punch on a whole host of levels. And Tuesday night was a little bit of what it's been like to be a Democrat in the Trump era, which is really exciting good news followed by some sort of

devastating bad news, like right back to back. And I was super excited about the Pennsylvania win. And then I started tracking the Wisconsin race and I saw Neubauer was up and then she wasn't. And I was waiting for Broward County to come in. And then I realized there was no Broward County. And I recognize it's not fully done yet, but prospects don't look great. And it affects the ability of Democrats to take control of this court, which has been in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, has been a huge problem for progressive policies, access to the polls, union organizing, everything that Democrats care about. There's been this backstop at the Koch-funded Wisconsin Supreme Court, and we needed the seat to have a good chance to reverse the balance of that court in 2020 when you would hope and expect that there

would be a more Democratic-leaning electorate than there was in the midterms and in the special. So people know there's a 4-3 conservative majority on the court right now. This will make it 5-2 conservative majority, which means that, so there's another seat open in 2020 and it's the, the election is on the day of the Democratic primary in Wisconsin. So you have a better electorate. So what Democrats were hoping is win the one on Tuesday, win the one on 2020, and then they have a progressive majority in the Supreme Court. Now we won't have a chance to flip the Supreme Court until 2023. A liberal Supreme Court in Wisconsin, what it could have done is it

could have upheld Governor Evers' veto over whatever gerrymandered maps the legislature draws in 2021 so you have a conservative legislature in wisconsin and the reason it's conservative is because the state districts are very gerrymandered and so they would come up with a new map in 2021 evers would just say fuck it i'm going to veto that it would go to the court and if there was a liberal majority then the liberal majority probably uphold the veto. Now that probably won't happen, which means we will have a gerrymandered Wisconsin for quite some time. And that legislature has already tried to take power away from the Democratic governor. It is very, very bad. So what happened in this election? People thought that Neubauer was going to win. There wasn't really a lot of polling,

but she actually outspent her conservative counterpart. And yet, you know, he still pulled it out. It's, I just, everything I was hoping to see that would make me feel better about what happened, of the political environment whereby this happened, make me feel better about that, as opposed to the 2020 implications were so painful. It's like, first, Koch brothers' funny candidate must have dramatically outspent the Democrats.

So I go look that up. The liberal spends $2 million more than the conservative in the sense that these are, quote unquote, nonpartisan races. Then I was like, oh, maybe it was just Democratic turnout. We're not as good in special elections. And Neubauer performed very well relative to previous judicial races. The problem was turnout among the Republicans was through the roof. And there was not a equivalent surge among Democrats like the one we saw in 2018 to counteract that. And so it is very

worrisome. And it is a reminder that what happens in a midterm is interesting, but not necessarily indicative of what's going to happen in 2020. And we have a lot of work to do if we are going to win Wisconsin in 2020 and all these other states. Like there is a, we have to presume through the roof, conservative Trump based turnout. And we're going to have to counteract that with through the roof, democratic turnout and winning a good number of independents and up for grabs voters. I think,

I think that that's extremely important. I mean, like if, if this was in a situation where, you know, Democrats just stayed home and they, and they, they didn't care about the race, they didn't come out. You know, you could say, all right, we just boost our turnout to the levels that, you know, it was in the midterm. And that does not seem to be the case. It seems to be the case that, you know, Democrats turned out like they did in last April's special election Supreme Court seat election in Wisconsin. And Republicans just, they came out. The margins, the margins in the suburbs of Milwaukee, the Republican margins were huge. And we cannot,

we cannot, you know, bet on the fact that any Trump voter, Trump fan is going to stay home in 2020. We have to assume that they're all coming out and we have to get our base to turn out. But getting our base to turn out is absolutely necessary, but it is not sufficient. We have to win over independent voters. We have to win over swing voters. We cannot win the election without doing that. We cannot. And this is the important caveat, so people don't take this out of context on Twitter, is that winning over swing voters is not a call for more centrist or quote-unquote moderate ideas. That's not actually what we think.

I actually think a compelling, progressive, populist policy platform and message is the best way to accomplish those two goals. But if we were in a popular election situation, we could win by simply turning out more Democrats because there are more Democrats in the Republicans in this country. But unfortunately, and it's really stupid,

but we have an electoral college. And therefore, in these Midwestern states where the Democratic base is actually shrinking because young people are moving out and the state's population is getting older and whiter, we have to do both. And that's just how it is. And you're right. I mean, I believe, too, a populist progressive economic message can win over these independent swing voters. It did win over those voters in 2018 because we made the election about health care. But that is the message that those voters have to hear from us. They have to hear about health care. They have to hear about healthcare. They have to hear about how fucking JP Morgan just got $4 billion from Trump's tax cut. Like those messages have to come from the mouths of democratic politicians to the ears of voters. And there's a lot of shit in between that,

that can screw up the message. And they can't hear about democratic infighting and they can't hear about people complaining about this and that and all the fucking bullshit that we talk about every day. They have to hear about health care, about the economy, about jobs, about tax cuts. They have to get that message. And as Democrats, we have to do everything we can to make sure that message is directed to those voters and that it actually breaks through the noise. Very important. A lot of people were tweeting about the need for less coverage of 2020 and more coverage of down ballot races between now and 2020. What do you think about that? And 2020 is important.

Like who the Democrats pick to run against Trump is really, really important. And it should be part of an important conversation. But also the answer to a political problem identified by Democrats cannot be some sort of change in how the press does their job. We have no control over that. So we're going to have to find a way both as Democratic operatives, as people who have a podcast and a progressive media company you guys have. As Democratic voters, how can we find ways to drive the conversation around the things we care about and to shine a spotlight on the things that get less attention from the traditional media and funnel the activist energy into both winning in 2020, picking the right nominee, allowing people

to be passionate about a Democratic primary candidate they care about, and win in Wisconsin. I think we had, in races like the one we just had in Wisconsin. So we have to spend some time thinking about that, but just like simply like yelling at the New York Times that they should cover Democratic presidential candidates less is I think not the right prescription to what is a very real problem. Yeah. I mean, the most important thing is nominating a Democrat who can beat Trump in 2020. And it's not going to matter much what happens down ballot if we don't get that right. At the same time, it's absolutely correct that if all we do is figure out who to nominate and concentrate on the presidential election that, you know,

we won't pay enough attention to the down ballot races. And then that Democratic president could have a real problem on their hands when they finally get into office and try to pass it. So both are important and we have to do both. But I do think like the most the most important thing is whether we're talking about presidential level, whether we're talking about Congress, whether we're talking about the states, talking about the message we want to get through, being positive as possible, as opposed to trying to, you know, eat each other alive here, is going to be very important to winning in 2020 up and down the ballot. So with that, the big piece of 2020 news you've probably been hearing

a lot about lately is the first quarter fundraising totals. Bernie Sanders is leading the field with $18.2 million raised since declaring his candidacy on February 19th, and that came from 525,000 individual donors and without holding any fundraisers. Kamala Harris is second. She raised $12 million from 138,000 donors in a little more than two months, and about half of her total came from online donations, the rest from holding fundraisers. Beto O'Rourke is in third, with $9.4 million raised over 18 days from 218,000 individual contributions. Don't know the number of donors yet, but that's also all from online without holding any fundraisers. Pete

Buttigieg is in fourth with 7 million raised from 158,000 donors over a little more than two months. And Elizabeth Warren's campaign said it reached its goal for the quarter, but hasn't yet announced its total. And we have not heard from the other major candidates. Dan, what's your reaction to these numbers? And did anything interesting pop out at you? All very good numbers, right? I think all of them should feel very good about what they did, both in a short period of time, like Beto O'Rourke did, a more constrained period of time, like Bernie did. Kamala Harris's numbers are very good. I think we will have a sense of how good they are when we see everyone else's numbers. And it's probably somewhat telling that no one else has put their numbers out, right?

If you think your numbers are great, you put them out at a time and they'll get the most coverage. And if you think they're not great, you wait until everyone else puts their less ideal numbers out and you try to be stuck in the same story with them. be stuck in the same story with them. And so I'm curious as what the difference is between Pete Buttigieg's number and a Kirsten Gillibrand or a Cory Booker, because that tells you something, right? And so that's one. Two, I think the thing that sticks out in my mind is Bernie Sanders' cash on hand number, which he has $28 million cash on hand, which is a mind-boggling sum, which means not just that he's raised a bunch of money, but he has been able to spend it efficiently because they've done a bunch of big rallies. They've hired a lot of staff. They've been spending money on digital list building and stuff like that,

but they've been doing it in a way in which they still have a lot of cash. And the question will be, theoretically and historically, the second quarter numbers are more interesting than the first because people get a huge bump on their first day. They have some set of supporters who can write max out checks, like Kamala Harris raised $6 million over $12 million offline, if I remember correctly. But how much more is our offline base? And can you sustain that level of fundraising success going forward? So that will be interesting. But all of these campaigns in Canada should be very pleased with their results. It is notable that Kamala, Bernie, and Beto all have, heading into this race, the largest

email list by far. They clearly benefited from that, from being smart enough to develop and nurture very successful fundraising lists heading into a presidential campaign. What do you think about, I saw some people talking about this, first quarter of 2007, Hillary Clinton raises $26 million, Barack Obama raises $25 million. John Edwards raises $14 million. Some people are saying, well, these numbers this time around aren't as impressive as those numbers back in 2007. Two reasons I guess they might not be as impressive that don't have to do with, you know,

dampened enthusiasm or whatever else is one, there's many more candidates in the field this time sort of splitting up the hall. And two, Obama and Hillary did do a lot of those offline high dollar fundraisers back in 07. And this time around, the emphasis is on online grassroots giving. What do you think about that? I think that's right. I also think, if you remember correctly, back in 07, there were a lot of people in the traditional Democratic donor bundler world who would give to both Obama and Clinton, right? They would max out in primary dollars to both. Now there are so many candidates that it is much, I don't think you have people giving, a lot of people giving to multiple candidates, right? Like big donors.

I'm sure there are small donors who have given $10, $20, $50 to a bunch of different candidates in the sense that you want to support them. Or in the case of Pete Buttigieg, he made a very clever play to get people to give to him to get him into the debates, which he clearly had no trouble getting into because he had $7 million. Bates, which he had no trouble getting into because he had $7 million. So I think there's less – and this is a good thing, I think, where there's less big money going around this time. And you have two of the three candidates who, as far as I understand it, have not held a single traditional fundraiser where you go to some chicken dinner and shake hands with rich people and take photos with rich people. They've done it basically all online or maybe direct mail, but not the sort of in-person fundraising that has been a hallmark of campaigns forever, basically.

And that's new, right? The fact that you basically have Bernie, Beto, and Elizabeth Warren, even though we don't have her total yet, have not held a single high dollar fundraiser yet. That doesn't usually happen, right? No, never. It never happened. I don't know what sort of fundraising Bernie did in 2016. Yeah, maybe Bernie left. I kind of remember there being a small handful, but I know the overwhelming amount of his money was online. The ways in which campaigns are being funded has changed dramatically and for

the better, right? I think we talked about this a few weeks ago about Biden, that he has this massive Rolodex of donors, and he's very worried about being outraised online by people like Bernie, Beto, and Kamala, who have larger lists. And I think that's great. The democratization of campaign funding is a step in the right direction towards a more equitable, better, cleaner system. I mean, obviously, we have to get to public financing and something better than what we have. But it is better than relying only on people who can write $2,000 checks to support your campaign. So at the risk of lighting our mentions on fire, I have a question. Bernie is leading the pack in fundraising, got half a million donors, polling at about 20 to 25 percent nationally in Iowa and in New Hampshire, while everyone else is in single or low double digits, except for Joe Biden.

Very big exception who hasn't yet entered the race. As of right now, is Bernie Sanders the front runner front runner it has to be absolutely has to be and his he has a very clear path through the early states in the sense that he almost won iowa last time and crushed in new hampshire so he's got tremendous strength and you you cannot discount the idea that he could win both. And when you win the first two, you get a pretty big head of steam to head into the other races. He has clearly the money to compete all across the country and a very fired up, engaged donor base. And I say donor base not just in terms of people giving him $5, but people showing

up, engaged supporters showing up at rallies, volunteering, etc. So we, he would have to be at this current moment, the, you know, the front runner or a front runner, how you think about, but he has tremendous strength, and it should not be discounted by anyone. Yeah, he also has very, very high favorability ratings among Democratic voters. He's more voters second choice than any other candidate right now, according to polls. You know, there was a lot of talk in 2016 and there are a lot of truth to it that he had problems with black voters. This time around, he's winning about 20 percent of the African-American vote in a far more divided field in 2016 and importantly it's about the same amount of vote that he's winning overall so those are all the strengths the counter argument um nate silver made yesterday he said bernie is back down to polling around 20 that's not that strong for someone with 100 name recognition uh in my opinion he's one of the four most likely people to win the nomination but he's certainly not an odds-on favorite or really a traditional front-runner,

especially given he trails Biden. What do you think about that? And what are the other obstacles you see to Bernie capturing the nomination? I mean, Nate is right. And that Bernie has, we believe, a very high floor on his support in a low ceiling. And I say low ceiling only because he has 100% name ID. So your room for growth is theoretically lesser than someone who has 30% name ID or 60% name ID in the sense that people, if they know you, they've theoretically made a decision about you. It's easier to win someone over who doesn't yet know you than to win someone over who knows you and has already decided to support someone else. So the counterargument to that counterargument is that in a multi-candidate field, his high floor is more than enough to win. He has two twin challenges,

I think, one of which every candidate has, which is polls at least at this point have indicated that Democrats want someone who can win. And can Bernie make an argument that a 70-something-year-old self-identified Democratic socialist from Vermont is the most electable Democrat? And he has an argument to make. He is making it already on the stump. His team has actually been making it since the 2016 election in the argument that he would have won over a lot of those Obama Trump voters that left the party in 2016 because of his populist economic argument. And so he's got to win that argument. The second one is the same thing that contributed to his defeat in 2016, which is he is doing well, as you point out, with African-American voters. But can he do well enough to not get blown out in the delegate race in a two-person race?

And so this is an important thing to understand about how you become the nominee, which is Democratic delegates are allocated proportionally by congressional district. And in most cases, a lot of districts have even number delegates. And so in a 52-48 race or a 53-47 race, you're going to most likely in any individual district split those delegates 2-2, right? But there are a lot of districts because of gerrymandering, population trends, et cetera, that are heavily African-American. And what happened for Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 is Hillary Clinton was winning those African-American districts by 30, 40, in some cases, 50 points. So she's taking most of the delegates there. So if Bernie can't do better than he did against

one individual Democrat among African-American voters, he's going to run into a wall that will prevent him from getting a delegate lead in a two-person race. Now, in a multi-candidate field, that could be very different. But if a Democratic opponent of Bernie Sanders has a similar lead among African-American voters, I don't think Bernie Sanders can win. And so that he's going to have to be able to do better. There are indications he can, and they seem to be focused on it, but that still remains the challenge when it comes to the actual work of getting the delegates you need to win the nomination. Yeah. I mean, I think Bernie Sanders also, by the way, has probably the highest unfavorable ratings among Democrats of anyone in the field, even though he's got very good favorable ratings. And this is also what comes with having nearly 100 percent name ID in the field.

People have made up their minds about Bernie Sanders. And in the general election, when you pull general election voters, he's got one of the higher unfavorable ratings as well. So he has those challenges. And that is, I think, one reason why you see him. He's basically one of the only Democrats out there right now who's running, who's really focusing on this electability argument, which is interesting from the sort of lefty socialist candidate is out there making the electability argument all the time. He's talking about how many of his donors are registered Republicans, how many of his donors are registered independents. He's tweeting out polls of general election matchups against Trump

that show him beating Trump by a few points. Like he's really trying to hammer home this electability message because I think the Sanders people realize that, you know, there is an unfavorable ratings issue both among Democrats and among voters in the general electorate. But I also think, by the way, that it's like, it has been very underestimated, or at least not talked about that much by pundits, how so much of this race is dependent, this primary race could be dependent on the sheer composition of the number of candidates in the field right like who wins bernie sanders is hanging on to 20 in a 10 person field he's doing a lot better than bernie sanders hanging on to 20 in a four person field right that's very obvious but it's just it's interesting that the number

of candidates we've that are actually competitive for this nomination really does matter because if you have Joe Biden jumping in the race and he's sitting there at 25%, around 25%, Bernie's sitting there around 25%. And if there was like another candidate who was getting all the rest of the votes, then, you know, both of them might have trouble winning. But instead, there's like four candidates, five candidates who are splitting up the rest of the vote therefore you could see possibly like bernie and biden go in the distance but again it is very early in sort of two more things about this one i understand exactly why bernie sanders is making in his campaign are making the electability argument so aggressively i do think that electability is something that

is better shown not told in the sense that you demonstrate electability in something that is better shown, not told, in the sense that you demonstrate electability in the things you do, not by telling everyone you're electable. I think that when your argument becomes electability, then you're not really making a true argument for yourself. It seems almost offensive in my view. And then the second thing is, to your point about the size of the field, the reason why, like there's been some comparison to the Trump, to the Republican 2016 field in the sense that you had all these candidates, they stayed into the end, that allowed Trump to succeed. But there is a difference in how Democrats and Republicans allocate delegates and pick their nominees. Republicans do winner take all. So Trump

benefited from all these other people being in the race, taking 2%, 3% away from a Rubio or a Cruz or whoever else were the Trump alternative. Democrats is different in the sense that you have to reach a threshold to get delegates in a lot of places. And so there could be 18 people in the races, but if only two or three of them are polling at a decent number, then it's really only a three-person race as it becomes delegates. You think about 2008 when we were running in Iowa, there were a lot of people in that race. Kucinich, Biden, Dodd, Richardson, all these people, but only Clinton, Obama, and Edwards

were able to get any real number of delegates out of Iowa. And so you have to, like, the question will be not how many people are in the race, but how many people are doing well enough to be in some sort of top tier to actually get delegates and where those delegates come from. Does that make sense? We're going to spend a lot of time next year being pretty nerdy about delegates, but I sort of front-ran that today. It's important.

And look, that's why some of these campaigns, I remember Kamala Harris' campaign touted this, are talking about even hiring people who know delegate math right like having someone in your campaign who knows the party knows the party rules knows the delegate math is extraordinarily important um even though it sounds like a nerdy math thing as uh as this race goes on because this becomes a you know this could this could become, you know, trench warfare for delegate by delegate and all these, uh, and all these States and it could go on for a long time. And so knowing, like you said, which, which congressional districts you can sort of score the extra couple delegates out of becomes of the utmost important as this race continues.

Um, I loved the, as a small side here, I loved that staff release from Kamala's staff. It's like, here's our campaign manager. Here's our communications director. Here's some guy who was like Robert, quote unquote, Delegate Bob Smith. Just in case there was any question of who he was. His nickname included the word delegate, so we should hire him. And I'm sure he's great, but it's a sense of savviness, both that they hired that person and that they thought to make sure we knew that they hired that person.

Last question in terms of what we were just saying, that showing electability might be better than talking about it. Fox News announced this week it will host a town hall featuring Bernie Sanders on April 15th in Pennsylvania. The event's going to be moderated by Brett Baer and Martha McCallum, and its focus will be about the economy and jobs. Why would Bernie do this, and is it a good idea? I presume the answer is electability, that he can show he can go anywhere to make his argument and that his argument can be persuasive to Fox viewers, which is a proxy for rural white people who supported Trump. I assume that's the reason. I mean, my personal view is it is a huge strategic error for Democrats

to grant an imprimatur of legitimacy on a Trump propaganda network that fuels political division and white nationalism in this country. I am 100% against doing that. I think it was right for Democrats not to do a debate there. I frankly don't think Democrats should waste their time on it. A lot of people in the party disagree with me on this, Elizabeth Warren included, who has done some stuff on Fox, clearly Bernie does. So there is a stuff on Fox. Clearly, Bernie does. So there is a debate on this. There is another side to it who thinks it's the right thing to do to go into the lion's den and try to reach these Fox News viewers through Fox. I personally think those people are wrong, but let the world decide. I mean, I agree with you. I do think there's a slight difference between, you know, granting Fox News a Democratic debate,

which, as we all know, I think is a fucking terrible idea, going on a typical Fox show, signing up as a contributor for Fox News. I think all of that is garbage. I think there's a difference between, like, spending a couple minutes with Tucker Carlson, if you're a Democratic candidate, or fucking sean andity or any of those losers um and having a town hall where um you know brett bear who's still pretty conservative ask you some questions six on the trump loyalty scale if i remember that's right he's a six yeah he's he's not he's not quite a 10 yet he's a six six. But having Brett Baier ask you some questions, but then, you know, getting to getting to answer questions from a town hall,

even if the town hall is filled with a lot of Republicans and being able to get your message out to, you know, a bunch of viewers, most of whom are Trump fans that are never going to vote for you. But, yeah, there may be a few people who voted for Trump and are like, yeah, not so much about him in 2020. Maybe you can reach a few people. I still think generally I would, you know, like as you've said, the most precious resource on a campaign is time. I might use my time in other ways if I was on a campaign, but I see less harm in holding a Fox News town hall than doing the typical Fox News circuit. You know, I think like Pete Buttigieg went on Fox News Sunday, did an interview with Chris Wallace.

Maybe that did him some good too. I don't know. I don't know if I would send my candidate on that, but I don't think it's quite the same as hosting a fucking Democratic debate on that network. Oh yeah, for sure. Those are huge gradations of difference. If I were to make the strategic argument for Bernie why you would do this is every candidate is doing a CNN town hall, an MSNBC town hall with Chris Hayes, which are getting good attention.

I think they're great things that both those networks are doing to expose Democrats to their candidates to give them a chance to have a longer discussion about the issues. It's like obviously serve some candidates very well. Kamala Harris's was the most watched of all of them. Pete Buttigieg obviously got a chance to extend his pot safe America pump by doing said town hall. But by Bernie doing Fox, he's going to get more attention from it. It's going to get more coverage. I'm sure it's going to get a lot of eyeballs just because there's a spectacle of a Democrat on Fox. In the early years of Obama, this is a trick we used to use. I was a huge advocate of it. I talk about this a lot in my book, but I came to realize it was a terrible mistake. But there is an argument, which is you're not doing this just for the Fox viewers.

You're doing this for an event that will be covered by lots of press and lots of press will cover this because it has that lion's den atmosphere to it. And so that is why you, as a campaign, you may decide to allocate those valuable resources to this. Right, okay. All right, when we come back, we will have my interview with Valerie Jarrett, author of the brand new book, Finding My Voice. On the pod today, former senior advisor to Barack Obama and the author of the new book,

Finding My Voice, My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward, Valerie Jarrett. Well, hello there. It's so nice to have you here. I can't believe you're here and all this. Anyone who hasn't seen this studio, you've got to really take a peek. It's like a real thing. It's like you guys are all grown up. We are all grown up.

I feel like I've known you since you were young once. Sort of. And now you've even got like a touch of gray hair there. I know, there's too much gray. It's really getting there now. That's okay. So you've written this wonderful book. The book actually starts in, you talk about your childhood in Iran, where you were born and spent time as a kid. How did your childhood there shape your views of what it means to be an American and also of that country? Profoundly. And I lived

there till I was five, but then we went back pretty frequently until I graduated from high school. And when we were there, it was in the mid-50s, and we lived on a hospital compound with physicians, families from around the world. And it was a time when, obviously, the United States had far better relationships with Iran than they do today. And their health department was trying to recruit physicians to help share best practices back and forth, not a one-way street, but both ways. And my dad really couldn't find a job in the medical field at a teaching institution in the United States where he was making what his white counterparts were making. And he and my mom were both a little crazy, I think. And so they

take off for this other part of the world. But what I learned there, Favs, is this. Number one, that I could walk into a room and find something in common with anyone in the room. I played with children where we didn't share a language. We weren't from the same country. We worked it out. Play is play with kids. And so I have that expectation. So that's one thing. The other thing I learned that people who haven't lived out of the United States don't fully appreciate is, like, we have going for us here in America. Like my mom had to boil everything I drank. She had to peel

everything I ate. I mean, the diseases that you could get there were deadly compared to what we have here. The poverty was such that we've never seen here in America. And so I think that it gives you a better appreciation for what we have, not to mention the civil liberties that we have here. And then the final thing I would say is I believe the United States is already the greatest country on Earth. It's not the only country on Earth. And we can actually learn a great deal outside of our shores. And I think that perspective on the world I gained at a very early age. And it's actually the first conversation I had with Barack Obama in 1991.

He talked about Indonesia. And we had very similar experiences. And I think it shaped our outlook of both domestic policy and foreign policy. So you say that you had not really considered a career in government or politics. No. When did that change and why did it change? Well, it changed because I was miserable. Nothing like a little good misery to get you motivated to think about what am I going to do When did that change and why did it change? Well, it changed because I was miserable. Nothing like a little good misery to get you motivated to think about what am I going to do next. And what were you doing at the time? I was practicing law at a big law firm.

I went from one big law firm to another in Chicago. I was on the 79th floor of what was then the Sears Tower, magnificent view of Lake Michigan, sailboats, the whole nine yards. And I would turn my back to the door and I would cry. And I would say, what in the world am I doing here? And at the same time, I was in the middle of a dreadful marriage. I had had my daughter, best thing I ever did. And I would stare at her. She's breaking news all the time. Every time I turn on CNN. She is breaking news on CNN. I'm so proud of her. And she also did a swirl in her career away from the private law firm. And I just would think, well, am I actually doing something in the course of the day that's going to make Laura proud of me?

And the answer was a resounding no. I wasn't really good at my job. I hated those timesheets. I hated everything about it. And Harold Washington had just been reelected mayor of Chicago to his second term. And with that, he also now had control of the city council. And I had a really good friend who'd left his law firm, gone to work for the city. And he said to me what I'll never forget. He said, you'll feel a part of something bigger and much more important than yourself. And you love Chicago. So why don't

you want to do something to give back to Chicago? And it resonated with me. And so I take this big leap of faith. I leave behind the big paycheck and the fancy office. I walk into City Hall. My boss takes me to my office, which is really a cubicle with a window facing the alley. And I thought, you know, this is where I belong. Really? Yeah. I felt like it was the right place to be. Now, you first met Michelle Obama, then Michelle Robinson, when you interviewed her for a job in Mayor Daley's office, right?

Yes. What were your first impressions of Michelle and her husband? So my first impression of her when she walked in is she's obviously quite striking. She had on all black, her hair pulled back, barely any makeup, looks me right in the eye, shakes my hand and sits down and she saw my resume on her desk and she never mentioned a thing that was in it. And she told me her story about growing up on the south side of Chicago, her father, you know, working class family, his disability, being a precinct captain, how that kind of piqued her interest in public service. And that she faced the same thing. She was bored to tears

at her law firm and she thought there must be something more for me in life than this. So I gave her a job on the spot. I was so blown over. I didn't have any authority to give her a job, but I just said, you, we have to hire you. And so she- What was the job for? To be an assistant in the mayor's office. I was deputy chief of staff. And so we were staffing up the mayor's chief of staff's office. And so a few days later I was talking to her and I said, well, now that I have got permission to actually give you the job offer, what do you think? And she said, well, my fiancé doesn't think it's such a hot idea. So I said, well, who the hell is your fiancé, and why do we care what he thinks?

And she said, well, his name is Barack Obama, and he started his career as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago. on the south side of Chicago. And he's concerned, like, here I am going straight from a fancy law firm into the fire, no stop in the frying pan the way I had because I'd practiced law for the city for four years before going to the mayor's office. And she said, he wants to know who's going to be looking out for me. So would you have dinner with the two of us? And I wisely said yes. And that was a really important dinner.

And she did eventually come and work with me. And you and Barack Obama became fast friends from that first dinner? The three of us became friends, yeah, and had different things in common. Michelle's parents were very much like mine, deeply in love, very supportive of their children, happily married. And what Barack and I shared was really this kind of unusual childhood that had taken us around the world and back, but led all three of us to the south side of Chicago.

So fast forward to the 2008 campaign. Where I met you. That's right. That's where we met. What was the most difficult part of that campaign for you? And do you remember the moment when you thought, I think we could really win this? Like, I think he could really pull this out. I remember exactly that moment.

So I think I'll do the most difficult part first, get that out of the way. So the most difficult part for me, I think, was Reverend Wright. Yeah. Because I considered it an existential threat to the campaign. It was so inconsistent with his persona and what I think had been so unifying beginning when he gave that speech at the convention back in 2004. And I knew he had to explain it and explain it in a way where people could understand and appreciate and hopefully learn a little bit in the process. But it was painful. And we fretted about it, as you will remember, a great deal.

Yeah. I wonder how it was from your side of things because from my side of things it was i remember seeing everything break on friday i remember like where i was remember every second of that and then i remember him doing all those cable appearances that friday night and it was also when he was it was like the same day he was meeting with the edward on resco it was the same exact bad couple days and then um and then i remember just waking up saturday and getting on the senior staff call and act saying oh he wants to do this speech on race and he wants to do it by Tuesday. Did your life flash before your very eyes? Yeah, exactly.

And I was yelling at everyone. And then I remember, you know, Axe was like, well, let's try to work on it ourselves and we'll go to the office. And the two of us sat there and I was like, we can't do this. He's got to do it. And I was like, we can't do this. He's got to do it. And then I remember talking to Obama that Saturday night for like an hour. And he sort of, you know, he's like, oh, I have stream of consciousness thoughts about what the speech should say. And then he had like one, one A, two, two B.

But then I remember he said, you know, I have a great story I'm thinking about ending it with that Valerie. Yeah. That Valerie told me. So how was that from your end? Well, it was the perfect fit. And he had used that story once before, as you'll remember, when he spoke at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Martin Luther King's birthday. And it was a story of one of his campaign workers from South Carolina

who'd grown up in Florida, a young white woman, who told a story about her mother having cancer and ending up in bankruptcy because she couldn't pay her bills and didn't have adequate insurance and how she'd hoped that Barack Obama, whose mother had a similar illness, would really fight for people like her mom and his mom. And so she tells this story in this room and we're going around the room and everybody was supposed to tell their story. So I would address my comments to meet their interests. And we get about two thirds of the way around. And this older black guy said, I don't need to hear from you. I'm here because of Ashley. And it was such the perfect symbolism of what the campaign was all about. People who would

never ordinarily meet coming together and developing these bonds of trust, which is why I think our field organizer effort was so important because those people in the room knew Ashley. I was a stranger. I may have been a senior advisor to the campaign, but they were going with someone they trusted. And so the symbolism of that I think was really important. And so then when did you think, okay, we might win this?

Oh, so I thought we would win it, and I actually never look back other than that deep gulp in New Hampshire when he won Iowa, because I thought Iowa was a stretch. And if Iowa, a state that's like, you know, 90 plus percent white would go for this African American named Barack Hussein Obama in the midst of really the Hillary Clinton phenomenon, I thought, that's pretty darn good, right? And so I figured if he could do that, that it would really signal to the rest of the country that he was credible and electable. And I will say, I was stunned, as I know we're here with New Hampshire, we were all in that hotel together going,

what the heck's going on here? But I remember, and I think you were there. We got in the elevator and Michelle Obama was very unhappy. And he looked at her and he said, you know, it can't be too easy. Right. It can't be too easy. And I thought, yeah, good luck, buddy. And it was not. And it was not.

And then seven months of primary later. Yeah, but out of that came, yes, we can. And the enthusiasm later that night when he spoke to our volunteers and then the next day in Boston, it actually was a shot in the arm and it was a kick in the pants, which I think we needed. crises every day. And I don't know if you felt this, but suddenly, you know, we're in these rooms with all of these very experienced experts, right, who've been dealing with this stuff for a while. Were you ever reluctant to speak up and make your voice heard? And how did you find the confidence to basically say, you know, I deserve to be here and my opinion deserves to be heard? Well, you're right. We had the smartest people he could find. And I think he'd be the first to say

going into that crisis, he knew he needed to surround himself by the best and the brightest. But I also knew that he was interested in hearing from a variety of different perspectives. So I'm not an economist. I have run a business, though, and I know how important certainty is to the business community. And I know how important certainty is to the business community. And I know how important it was that if we thought that the economic crisis was going to have a bad impact on business, that people who have always been suffering and vested in were going to suffer even more so. And so thinking of them and keeping them top and center, I knew it was important to him. And so I think tone starts at the top, and I think he set the kind of tone where all voices are important. And I think also obviously having a pre-existing relationship with him gave me a comfort level. But as you'll remember, there was a time when the women were shying back. And I think, look, as you said, two wars, economic crisis, a lot going on. And then there was a lot of testosterone flowing.

Right. And I often wonder whether the guys were feeling slightly intimidated by it as well. But it did have more of an impact on the women. And he seized on that. And what he said to them, I think, is an important message, which is, if you're not speaking up, then it's not about you. It's about your ideas and what your ideas add to the equation. And even if I don't agree with you, you're going to make me think about it from a perspective I didn't have before. And so him reinforcing that for, I think, all of us was helpful. And I never tried to profess to be an expert in a field that I'm not an expert in.

But I also know that it's not all about research and evidence. Some of it's about how you feel. Yeah. And I remember he was great at going around the room and making sure that every single person in the room, he'd say, what do you think? And he would go to someone in the back. What do you think? I think that's that law professor in him. Right.

And he could also read the room. So I can remember so many times you'd see a young person and they'd be on the other be on the other seat and they wanted to say something, but they didn't feel it. And he would just lean in. Yeah. And then he would give them positive reinforcement. And it sent a message to everybody. This is a safe place. And I, he being the president, will make better decisions if they are informed by a whole variety of views.

And I think that also added to the integrity of the decision-making process. So even if we didn't start out agreeing with where he ended up, you felt good about the process. You felt like your voice was heard. What do you say to people who argue, you know, President Obama didn't do enough, right? Like we didn't get the public option or no one went to jail for the banking crisis or we didn't do enough on housing, knowing that when we were there, we were trying our hardest. But how do you talk to people about that?

You know what? Look, first of all, he did not let perfect be the enemy of the good. Seven presidents before him had tried to get healthcare passed and failed. And we simply didn't have the votes for the public option. And he's a pragmatist. And so his view is, all right, yeah, sure, we might want that.

But if we can't get it done, do we do nothing and just kind of hold our breath to get what we want and let 20 million people go without health care and people not be covered for preexisting conditions and all the other benefits? Or do we say, let's make progress where we can and come back and fight another day? And I think he was very good at seeing the art of the possible, pushing the envelope, because there were people who said, forget about it altogether, if you'll remember, right? Yeah, when Scott Brown won that seat. We're like, oh, well, it's all over. And there were people who said, just do children.

And he was determined to try to push for as much as he could possibly get. And I think that's important now for people who say, and I get, yeah, nobody went to prison. Why didn't you get immigration reform done? Why didn't you get criminal justice reform done? Why couldn't you keep guns out of the wrong hands? And what I say is, look, we had eight years and we ran full speed ahead. And I think never lost sight of why we were there. He never put his short-term political interests ahead of what he thought was good for our country,

which is why he was willing to use political capital to get the health care bill passed. And so you just say, look, when you're in those jobs, you know that people are going to always wish you could have done more. We wish we could have done more. But I feel very confident that we did the best we could. It was a tough deck. It was a very tough deck. So I had Cory Booker on the other day,

and we were debating whether to get rid of the filibuster. And because he had previously said that, you know, he thought it was important we should keep it. And my view is I came into that White House believing, you know, Barack Obama's message that we could work together, we could work with the other side. And then eight years of watching the- The fever never broke. The fever never broke. I know. And I wonder how you think about that now and what you think, like, does the next president have the ability to work with the Republican Party? Or how do you deal with this Republican Party going forward? Well, this Republican Party is like nothing I've ever seen before. I know Republicans who don't recognize their own party. It's been hijacked in a sense. I think the only

way we deal with the current situation is by everybody realizing their responsibility to engage and vote. And not just vote, but be informed with your vote. Hold people accountable. Don't just fall in love with a candidate, but really find out what's their metal? What are they made of? Will they blink? Will they waver? Will they forget why they're there? And I think it was important that we got caught trying because Barack Obama did come in and say, I am going to reach across the aisle and I'm going to try. And look at all the amendments we made to the Affordable Care Act trying to get one Republican to vote for it.

And they wouldn't. trying to get one Republican to vote for it. Right. And they wouldn't. But I think it was important for his inclusive vision of America to show that he wasn't just the president of the people who elected him. He was the president of the entire country. And I think that still resonates with people. Right.

The majority of the people. The problem is so many of them who feel that way don't vote. Right. And so a big part of what I want to do over the next, well, several years, not just the presidential election, is to help people understand why they have to engage. Our democracy is only going to be as good as we demand that it be. And that if we don't, then the special interests will come out. The only reason why we haven't done anything to have universal background checks passed through Congress is because the NRA put so much money on the table. And unless members of Congress feel as much heat from their

constituents as they feel benefit coming from special interest groups like the NRA, then they're going to sit on their hands. And in states where people have galvanized and organized, you've seen change. And we need to bring that change to Washington. What specific qualities and character traits are you looking for in the next president? Well, I believe, still believe, that we need a president that governs for all of America, that has a message that's an inclusive message, where we appreciate the richness of our diversity and we don't try to focus on our differences but focus on what we have in common, and that we're looking to have a better understanding of each other. The way our country has always improved, as that arc of the moral universe has moved, is when we've understood each other better.

If you look what happened around rights for the LGBTQ community, something I'm very proud of on his watch, and I remember the day that marriage equality was announced by the Supreme Court, and he gave a speech, and he said, you know, moments like this feel like a thunderbolt, but we have to remember the decades of hard work that went into it. And so I want, I'm looking for a candidate who appreciates the fact that it is hard work. It's not a popularity contest. You do need to win. But after you win, you have to do what you think is right. And it is hard to do what is unpopular once you're president. And it is tempting to just play to your base. Right.

Because you get the positive reinforcement from your base. Yeah. But that's not the job. So I'm looking for somebody who, yes, can inspire and motivate people to want to participate in their democracy, but who is also prepared to make some very tough calls. And as you know, President Obama used to always joke, like, how come I don't get the easy decisions coming across my desk? And we're like, oh, no, we took care of those. We just bring you the stuff. We're like, whoa, that's terrible. Hard things are hard.

Hard, as Zach said, hard things are really hard. And it takes a certain internal constitution to deal with that in a way where your temperament is steady. And it's a lot harder to not react in anger than it is to pop off. And I'm looking for somebody who has some self-control and a temperament and an inclusive nature and who's going to really try to make sure that our country is a land of opportunity for all Americans. And I don't see that happening right now. Yeah. Obviously, you write in the book about finding your own voice. What advice would you give to candidates running about finding their own voice? You know what? Be authentic. Yeah. Don't worry about looking at every single thing and how it poll tests before you.

Leadership is about moving people, not just mirroring back what you're hearing, particularly not mirroring back what you're hearing, which is not aspirational. I mean, that's kind of easy to meet people where they are if they're in the doldrums. Your goal should be to lift them up and inspire them to move our country forward. And so my advice, and I met with several of the folks who were running, and I've said two things to them. Number one, be authentic to yourself and be prepared for people to criticize some of what they learn about you. But even those who are critical, and certainly Barack Obama got this, there were a lot of people who said,

I might disagree with you, but I like you. I feel like I know you. I respect you. You are authentic. So you've got to be that. And then the other thing I'd say is, I have said is, keep your eye on the prize. Do not beat each other up so much in the primary that we go into the general election bloodied. And one of the advantages of so many of them being cohorts in the Senate is that they're actually friends. And I think that that has a natural, creates a barrier to trying to beat each other up. But I think we have to really keep our eye on the prize. And that's the general election. You think you'd ever run for office? I don't think so. No? No. I've been tempted in the past. I haven't said very often, but when Mayor Daley was trying to decide whether to run for a third term, if he hadn't run, I'm pretty sure I would have. I didn't want to run against him.

I love him. He was my boss and I couldn't beat him. But I might have run for mayor there. And when I first met Barack Obama, people often say, like, what was your impression of him 28 years ago? And I thought, my, he's so talented. Maybe just maybe one day he'll be mayor of Chicago. That was like the ceiling I could ever have imagined for him. So that was a goal.

And then I toyed ever so briefly with throwing my name in the hat to take his place when he left the Senate. But at this stage of my life, really what I enjoy is helping the next generation. And I've had a lot of experience both at the state, local, and federal level, both in politics and, more importantly, in public service. And so if I can help people who are thinking of running for office get inspired to do so and help them with the benefit of these years of experience, I find that really exciting. And it doesn't have to just be the youngest of the people. I mean, I was very active in Stacey Abrams' campaign and also Andrew Gillum. I think they're just superstars. Lauren Underwood from my hometown of, well, the Chicago area. Yeah, we just had her here last week. She was here. Naperville. Isn't she a rock star? Fantastic, yeah. Oh, I'm so proud she was in our

administration as well. And HHS. Ronnie Cho was running her campaign. The whole crew. The whole thing just made perfectly good sense. And so that just makes me really happy. Running for office, I don't think, is in my cards. But I learned never say never because I also said I would never, ever, under any circumstances, work for the federal government. And then here we are. And there we are. Thank you so much for joining. My pleasure.

Thanks for having me on. The book is Finding My Voice, My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward. Please go buy it. It's a fantastic read. Valerie, thanks for coming by. Thanks a lot. And congratulations to everybody around the studio. You rock.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. As promised, an excerpt of our weekly live Q&A. This week it was Tommy and me, and as always, the questions were asked by Priyanka Arabindi of What A Day fame, and you can check out our live stream Q&A every Wednesday at 1 p.m. Pacific. You can go to youtube.com slash crooked media and check it out.

Smash that subscribe button. Ask us some questions. We'll give you some answers. Our first question here is about debates ongoing between Democrats over policy implementations. There's health care, environmental policy, etc. How do we as voters and non-experts evaluate who has or what is the best plan for going forward? It's a great question. Vox.com.

But, you know, honestly, read stories in places like Vox and, you know, the New York Times will do stuff, Washington Post, BuzzFeed. There's all kinds of places we'll have good deep dives into what a lot of these policies mean. I would say as a voter, you sort of evaluate two different things. One is, do I like this policy? Do I feel like this is a good idea? Like after, you know, figuring out what it is and understanding it. And then I think the second big thing is, what is the likelihood that this can be achieved? And what is and has this candidate offered a path to achieve this policy and to pass this policy? And so there's different ways of doing that. Some of these candidates will say, I can achieve this policy goal through an executive order, so I won't even need Congress.

Well, that's great. That'll happen pretty fast as soon as that person gets elected president. Others will, most of the policies they will put forward have to be passed through Congress. And then you have to ask yourself, how is this policy going to be passed through Congress? If Democrats control it, like, we'll be able to get Republican votes. If not, will we be able to do enough? You know, John, do you think the filibuster could be an issue? And so where this is leading me? No, it's like if you if you're out there saying I'm going to pass Medicare for all and but you also are not um willing to eliminate the filibuster for example that's bernie sanders position um you're not really going to pass medicare for all you know and also cory booker in his conversation with you seemed to suggest he would get rid of the

filibuster but then i feel like he might have kind of backtracked later he's going back and forth he's a little worried about now and in fairness to these candidates because i've been tough on all of them on the filibuster thing a A lot of this is up to the Senate Democrats, right? The president can't order the Senate to get rid of the filibuster. So talk to Chuck Schumer, talk to the rest of the Senate Democrats, because if they don't get rid of it, then nothing's happening. But Mitch McConnell, I think, is on the floor today shrinking the amount of time that you're asked to deliberate a judge

from 30 hours to two so that he can just ram as many conservative judges through the Senate as possible, right? Yep, that's correct. So they seem to be cool with making some of these changes. Yes. Oh, and then the other thing that you should use to evaluate these policies is, does the candidate have a plan to finance these policies,

to pay for them? Because I think we would all agree that Democrats have probably cared too much about deficits over the last several decades. And so we shouldn't worry about, you know, if we are investing in an important policy, whether it's teacher pay, whether it's health care, and we think we're going to get a good return on that investment. It's fine for the deficit to go up a little bit. But there's a point where you actually have to finance something. You have to pay for it. You can't just increase the deficit forever. We could be in some trouble there. So

figure out how they're going to pay for it. Some of them are going to pay for it with raising taxes on the wealthy. Some of them aren't going to tell you how they're going to pay for it. But I think that's another way to evaluate these policies. Yeah. This next question is from Nathan. He wants to know what changes you would make to the format of primary debates. His idea is to get rid of the audience so candidates don't have to play for applause or pull questions directly from campaigns, publish platforms rather than horse phrase. What do you guys think would make primary debates more effective, especially looking at ours where it's like the first one I think is billed to 20 candidates. It's like kind of going to be crazy.

I'd say Nathan's idea about getting rid of the audience is a great one. I love that. I love that idea. Playing to the applause is just Nathan for DNC chair. Because it's not just that the candidates play to the audience, but then if you're watching, just naturally, if you see a lot of applause for one candidate

and another one doesn't get as much applause, then you think, oh, the other candidate did better, but all they might have done is just like... They packed the fucking thing. Yeah, or they might have delivered a dumb zinger about Donald Trump and that doesn't fucking matter, you know? I think having the moderators be policy experts, activists even, could improve upon some of these debates

because sometimes... Some journalists do a fantastic job at these debates i should say but sometimes you know the questions tend toward um what are you going to do now that you only raised two million in q1 yeah you know and they're and they're more horse racy questions ask questions it's good when moderators encourage debate among the candidates but it would be great if they tried to do that on policy to the greatest extent possible and not like i don't know horse race personality personal attacks or yeah whatever watch the latter stage uh hillary clinton obama debates to see what not to do and then we'll just

reverse it just the debate in south carolina between barack obama and hillary clinton and john edwards was so nasty. And none of us, and I'm sure our friends in the Clinton campaign would have said the same thing, left that debate feeling good about what happened. What was the one that spawned the YouTube sensation, Yeah, Gibson, Yeah? Was that Charlie Gibson? That was Charlie Gibson and Stephanopoulos and Clinton. I'm going to put that in the stream. That was also a nasty one.

Nasty debates in 2008. All right. This is in the stream. That was also a nasty one. Nasty debates in 2008. All right. This is in the fun section, but it's a little, it's like also kind of serious. Where do you guys go to get your news? How do you stay informed? Twitter. That's why I'm on, as much as I hate Twitter, I'm addicted to it because it is the best, I think it's the best way to get news up to the minute every single second.

There's that, there's Nuzzle, which is actually a better way of still using Twitter. Nuzzle, I've talked about this before, gives you the top news stories that are being shared by most of your followers but you don't have to have the scrolling anger of Twitter, you can just see the stories listed out. I like that for what a day. And then of course, our Slack

channel about news. 24 hours a day, everyone's just putting in news stories on our channel sorry you can't join that slack channel yeah we can't let you join it so i personally or crooked media pays for the new york times washington post wall street journal i think we pay for the new yorker we pay for boston globe online uh because we're assholes so yeah i mean we try to try to scan the uh the best articles on a weekly basis i don't know it's great the i don't like long for the days of newspapers because i never was like a real newspaper reader but it was helpful sometimes get a sense of

proportion when you would like have the new york times you see what's on the front page and you flip open and that's the international section first there's a bunch of shit you wouldn't necessarily have read. And then you get to politics and you get to domestic and then opinion. I think that's a good way to do it. And the place where I don't get my news anymore since I moved to Los Angeles is television. No, I never watch TV. We have televisions in the office. Unless there's a big event, we rarely have them on.

Unless there's someone funny who's going to show up on TV and do an interview. Yeah, we watch the CNN town halls. Yeah, we do that. I was thinking Omarosa. That was a while ago. Omarosa. We airplay various PowerPoints. That's what we use the TV screens for.

And the Ariana Grande music video. Remember that? Ariana Grande, yeah. Yeah, we did. That was a big event in our office. A brief aside for all the people out there. It was a big event in our office. A brief aside for all the people out there.

The showrunner for Veep tweeted about how in the first episode they accidentally land in the wrong city. And he said, does this story sound familiar? Barack Obama, we barred a few. Yes, that happened. Remember that event? Were you there for that? Someone just asked on Twitter. I was on the plane.

I heard about it because I was in Chicago. But as soon as I saw Veep on Sunday, I thought that that was based on us. I was sitting in Cedar Rapids in the middle of a fucking snowstorm. And you're like, oh, he's wheels down. And then Marvin and Reggie get off the plane with Obama. And they look around. And they're like, where is everybody? And they landed in Des Moines. How the hell does that happen?

I don't know how that happens. That would be a, that happened today. Twitter. Gaffed. Big gaff. The person wouldn't recover. be the end of the campaign thank you to Valerie Jarrett for joining us today

and we will see you next week bye everyone Thank you. Bye.