Pod Save America - “The Full Nixon.”

Episode Date: May 21, 2018

Don Jr. met with a second set of foreign agents who offered help to the Trump campaign, Donald Trump orders an investigation into the investigation of himself, and new voter registration among young people and Democrats is on the rise. Then Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts joins Favs and Tommy to talk about the fight to end gun violence. 

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. We are here in New York City. Isn't that exciting? Windy city. Really nice out. Very nice out. Beautiful day in New York City. We're recording.

Warm spring day. Nice and early, which means there'll be plenty of news that breaks today. Yeah, just stomp on the episode. But it'll be out early, so that's exciting. Today on the pod, we're going to be talking about the latest in the Trump investigation, both the crimes and the cover-up. You want to get both of those things in there? We'll be talking about the political landscape heading into the midterms,

particularly Democratic versus Republican enthusiasm, especially among young voters. And then we will be talking about the school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, with the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, Shannon Watts. We're finally getting Shannon on the pod. Very exciting. She's great. Love it. You're here, fresh on the pod. Very exciting. She's great. Love it. You're here. Yes. Fresh from Philadelphia where you were last night.

We had an awesome Love It or Leave It in Philadelphia last night. That'll be out soon. There's a great show out from this weekend. We had Paul Scheer. We had Seiru Jayaraman. And we had Amanda Seals who was really funny. Saru is a labor activist. And she was talking about how tipping works and the way it affects workers and the way they're organizing workers across the country, especially in places like Michigan and elsewhere.

And they are doing – it was fascinating. I learned a lot from her. It was just a really great episode. So check it out. I hear you didn't have the guts to tell them that Philly sports fans are Boston sports fans without the rings. I thought you were a straight shooter respected on both sides. Elijah gave you that line and what happened? Elijah teed you up and you just didn't knock it down.

Because I had just spent five minutes attacking them for various other sports related issues like picking up poop off the ground and eating it after the Eagles, the second most hated team in football, won the Super Bowl, the only time they'll ever be rooted for by the country. These are all things I did. And they'll ever be rooted for by the country. These are all things I did. And I felt some brittleness from the crowd. I was reading the room, okay? Hi, Bobby.

Hi, Steve. Hey, Philly friends. Because you know what's a great way to kick off the show? Having 2,000 Philadelphia maniacs yelling at you. Yeah, well, look out for 9 volts. One more public service announcement here, PSA on PSA. California voter registration deadline is today if you haven't voted already and you're hearing this pod before the end of the day i guess please fucking register to vote if you're in california it's very important be a

registered voter okay i actually want to start with the reports of uh new potential crimes involving donald trump that the new New York Times broke over the weekend. Seems like ancient history now, but it was just Saturday, I believe. So we all remember when Russian officials close to Putin offered dirt on Hillary Clinton to Don Jr. Don Jr. doesn't remember it. He doesn't remember it. At least under oath. He eagerly accepted a meeting with them that was held with Jaredared kushner and paul manafort and trump tower on july of 2016 the topic of which he and his father then lied to the

country about well now we know that a month later a month after that meeting don jr had another meeting in trump tower with another group of foreign agents who also offered it to interfere in our election in order to help trump win this time the meeting was set up by war mercenary Eric Prince, with an emissary to the princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as an Israeli who basically sells social media manipulation for a living, and offered to do so for the Trump campaign. The New York Times piece says that Don Jr. approved of all of this, though he denies that in a statement.

And the emissary that helped set up the meeting, George Nader, is now cooperating with Mueller in the Trump investigation. And Mueller is looking into the whole meeting. Guys, what do you think of this story? One quick note, because this is a very serious story and set of issues. But it's so funny that Trump tweeted that it was a long and boring story. I didn't dispute a word of it. Like, that's just funny. You have to give it to him.

It's so funny. He TLDR'd the crime. Don't even honestly, save yourself the time. You will fall asleep. My summary is boring. I'm boring even telling you it's boring. I'm bored thinking about it. Don't even bother. I mean, like, I think Dan made this point last week about when the Gore campaign was sent Bush's briefing book.

The only answer to getting this kind of offer come into you is to refer to the FBI. That's the only appropriate response because it's illegal to accept foreign money and support to win an election. It's also just crazy to take this meeting in August before an election. It speaks to their desperation. It speaks to the fact that it was serious and they really wanted help in whatever form was being offered. Don Jr. is obviously a moron, but he's like a valuable Trump family surrogate. So he should have been out stumping or whatever. But, you know, instead he was accepting a meeting where massive amounts of money were being floated to manipulate our election. I mean, $2 million got paid to this Israeli firm for we don't know what.

We do not know what. My favorite quote, the only real quote you need to know from the whole piece, because as Donald Trump said, it was too long for him to read, is this. Two people familiar with the meeting said that Trump campaign officials did not appear bothered by the idea of cooperation with foreigners. No shit. No kidding. No shit. It's a very shitty remake of Ocean's Eleven. They're going from like, Don Jr.'s hitting the road.

He's meeting with the UAE. He's meeting with the Russians. He's putting together a ragtag team to steal american democracy um and uh you know what don jr yeah you're cluny in this like you know what oh my god like also i mean it's also a bad it's like a a bad like a not believable villain eric prince is literally leads a private army he's a mercenary who who's blackwater his company led to such unbelievable problems in iraq that it's it's unconscionable that this person is what they do just for people who don't know what they're they're like a private military contracting force so they they you know there's private military contractors provide a lot of

security in war zones that That's not that abnormal. But, I mean, his guys like shot up an intersection, did a whole bunch of really bad things in Iraq that led to enormous challenges for the United States government to have to deal with and like – How did he get involved with the Trump crew? How did these fucking people find each other? I mean, he's – his sister is Betsy DeVos. So he is – I assume – It sounds like he was there first because, so he is, you know, I assume. It sounds like he was there first because he was in the campaign. I don't know.

It all started at a cocktail party hosted by Mark Penn. Thanks for your op-ed in the Hill, you fucking asshole. You're the worst. Who's paying him for that? Tommy, why did these Middle Eastern countries, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, want to help Donald Trump. What was their motivation? I think it's a few. There's probably a few pieces to it.

One, they all hated the Iran deal. And Hillary Clinton, obviously, was part of the team that negotiated the Iran deal to stick to it. They despise it and they despise any effort to sort of normalize relations between the U.S. and the West with Iran and to bring them into the community. But it's also broader. Like they have a deeply confrontational stance toward Iran, towards the Muslim Brotherhood. They hated Obama for, you know, standing with the protesters during the Arab Spring. They view that as a direct threat to their power because all these places are like one spark away from igniting. And so, you know, my speculation is that they just decided to go all in for the guy who loves authoritarian dictators because he basically is one.

Not to mention the hypocrisy of these people who are, you know, autocratic rulers of Middle eastern countries meeting with the campaign whose primary policy proposal was a muslim ban i mean it's just un-fucking-believable another reason this meeting ends up being important is that we also find out that during the transition eric prince then sends up sets up that meeting in the seychelles with george nader and a russian oligarch uh to try to set up a back channel communication between the trump people and putin right i mean which is like so there's obvious of course there's a russia connection to also george nader who was in this meeting went to Russia twice during the 26th campaign to meet with Russian government officials too, which Mueller is also looking into. I think all of us – all three of us have sort of slowly gotten brought into the conspiracy and been to believe sort of the craziest theories.

But like I reread the story yesterday on the plane. And like there's just so many pieces of this, like you were saying. It's like Nader was representing these Arab leaders. And then he also visited Moscow twice during the campaign. And he arranged the Seychelles meeting. But they didn't push these people out who came to them with this crazy suggestion. They brought them in. And they met with them more and more.

And Jared Kushner started meeting with him and Eric Prince during the transition. And they got really close. And then it looks like Eric Prince lied about it under oath when he meet with the trump campaign a lot of people are not a yard sign a lot of people are not being straightforward about basic facts yeah the understatement and the summary let me get my red string out connecting dots you know you see all these people show up in multiple places and it's hard to know are these are these in are these meetings connected to each other or are they only connected by virtue of the fact that you had multiple people kind of just running individual scams and then trying to bring them to donald trump like there you see these transcripts or reports of conversations between like michael cohen and and nader and others and it's always like i can't bring this to the boss you know it's it's um don jr is the same way you feel that that these are people all out out there to try to bring him good news, to try to bring him things that can help.

Look what I did. Look what I made. Because it's not a real organization. It is like a crime organization. And so you see people pop up in multiple places, and you're not sure if the strings connect horizontally or if they only connect vertically. In the map of strings I'm making. I have a map in my head, too. But it's like these strings connect to the worst case

scenarios this is not just like don jr making a couple extra million nadir was trying to get the saudis to pay two billion dollars to send a private army to yemen i mean these are like billionaires intervening in major foreign policy challenges and it's and it's a group of unscrupulous neophytes being taking advantage of by countries and entities and people who have long-stemming motivations and interests that they view Trump as someone who can be – as someone who could be a vehicle for them, which is what's turned out to be true. I mean we see the way that Trump has been so obsequious to the Saudis during his time in office. The only reason it doesn't get more play is because he's so obsequious with the Russians. Well, it's like, geez, what a coincidence that a bunch of authoritarians all around the world

saw one of their own possibly about to become president of the United States and decided that they wanted to help him out. I mean, I want to talk about this other theory, too, that you hear, you don't hear it on the right, but you hear it among, like, the pundits set in Washington once in a while, which is the Trump people were too stupid and disorganized to collude disagree and i think this is bullshit i

i agree of course that they are very stupid um but you don't need to be super bright to be taken advantage of by all these corrupt goons all around the world that are offering you all i mean the trump organization like you said the organization that would do anything to make money and to win. And, I mean, yes, they're too stupid. They're too stupid to not get caught, which they're getting caught right now. Playing by the rules requires being smart and diligent and sophisticated. Not playing by the rules. All you need to do is either not know or not care about the rules.

And when you're this desperate. playing by the rules all you need to do is either not know or not care about the rules and when you're this desperate they the entire world including donald trump and his family and everyone in the campaign thought that he was going to lose overwhelmingly at this point so they were desperate and that's what makes sense so they bring these guys in and they accept these crazy harebrained ideas and then they think well if we lose there's no scrutiny anyway so it's no big deal and it's a relationship and there's money in it for us in the future. And yeah, it's... They weren't thinking that they were going to the White House. They were thinking that they were going to lose, that Donald Trump would be head of this

movement now, and that he'd make a lot of money out of it. And when you think about that and you realize that they didn't expect to win, it starts making sense why they were so flagrant in committing all these potential crimes. And they don't all need to fit together into one master plan. These are opportunists. Things pop up, meetings, connections beget connections, and they take meetings, they take another meeting, they go here, they go there, they're trying this, they're trying that.

All of these things add up to multiple kinds of crimes and and improper acts and and and decisions but they don't have to be there doesn't have to be a document where it was like step one get the saudis on board step two go to the seychelles yeah yeah they don't need to didn't doesn't need to be a master plan for it all to add up to a bunch of different crimes uh david klein is an independent journalist on twitter he summed it up well when he about the story he said this is why focusing only on russian interference misses the real story which is that the trump campaign would take money and support from anywhere the real problem is globalized corruption and at the center of the globalized corruption is the trump organization you know what guys hacked elections

saudi princes private militia forces, like boring, you know? Snooze alert. Oh, my God. Get out of here with this crap. So there's a few other crimes. Last week, the special counsel's team issued subpoenas to two different people close to Roger Stone, who had advanced knowledge of hacked emails. In the face of all this, Roger Stone went on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday and told Chuck Todd he is prepared to be

indicted by robert muller that's good for him but he added he thinks it's not inconceivable that muller and his team would conjure up some extraneous crimes pertaining to his business so basically this is the new now it's starting with roger stone but basically, this is the new... Now, it's starting with Roger Stone, but I guarantee this is going to spread to Donald Trump and the rest of the Trump crew by the end of this whole thing, is that it used to be like, oh, collusion isn't a crime.

The new one will be, it's not a crime unless it's collusion. That's what they're heading to now, like money laundering, obstruction of justice, perjury wire fraud bank fraud all these things they may be guilty of hey it wasn't collusion so it doesn't count as a crime extraneous crimes extraneous crimes is so funny well right it's also like this is none of your

business these aren't these aren't crimes related to the stealing of a democracy who cares these are my crimes these are my these are the crimes I did in my own time. That was my day. Those are my day off crimes. Slide this into the alternative facts Kellyanne Conway lexicon of just perfect. Extraneous crimes. None of these guys cared when investigations into the Clintons led down paths that were not expected when the investigation began. That's generally how investigations go. I get that they feel under

siege. They feel frustrated that this isn't immediately spelling out some evidence of collusion. But I'm sorry, you're a scummy businessman, Roger Stone. This is not anyone's fault but yours. None of these people had businesses built for the scrutiny of the of a special prosecutor like robert muller you know michael cohen was was in new york operating insurance scams and like trying to make money off taxing medallions and all of a sudden he's got like the most sophisticated investigators like up his up his uh business okay and he's like i'm not ready for this can i read you a quote uh a tweet that michael cohen just tweeted the problem today is if you don't watch the news on television, cable and or read the newspapers, you're uninformed. However, if you do watch the news on television, cable and or read the newspapers, you're misinformed.

So that really makes me think about that. Trenching analysis from Michael Cohen. He's not wrong. not wrong so here's where things start to get a little scary um oh wait what now we're just having fun with international crimes now this gets scary on sunday the president united states announced that he'll be teaming up with house republicans to sabotage the investigation into his own misconduct and potentially his own crimes of Of course, he's been trying to do this for quite a while now. But the tweet last night, Sunday night, was, quote, I hereby demand, which, as everyone knows, is how you issue a presidential directive. He thinks he learned he was watching

the Royal Wedding. King George. Yeah, it's just a federalist paper now i hereby demand and will do so officially tomorrow that the department of justice look into whether or not the fbi slash doj infiltrated or surveilled the trump campaign for political purposes and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the obama administration uh what is he talking about why does he think the the FBI DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump campaign? What he's referring to is our news reports that an FBI slash CIA source, a former Reagan official turned academic, was tasked by the FBI to go have coffee essentially with, you know, Trump campaign staffers like Papadopoulos to see if he'd get them to talk about evidence of collusion with the Russians. That is, that would be part, I assume, of a counterintelligence investigation, which would not be designed to target Trump in any way. It would be designed to protect Trump in the event that people who were working for him had been co-opted by Russian people, foreign intelligence agencies. So, you know, so that's the series of stories

he's talking about. But what he's doing is, is crossing a bright red line, where he is telling the DOJ, which is supposed to be independent, these are established norms have been in place since Watergate to investigate someone. And we have been so we are a bunch of boiled frogs because Donald Trump crosses lines every day. But this is a huge, huge red line. And the fact that it kind of just gets washed into the mix of stories is really frightening. I mean, we just have to start to say this again and just go through the facts calmly here because they have republicans in the house and donald trump and fox news have been trying to tell us now for a full year that the muller that this investigation into donald trump was started for political purposes by obama

and clinton whatever this started this counterintelligence investigation started because george papadopoulos a foreign policy advisor on the Trump campaign, got drunk in London and told an Australian ambassador that he had heard from a Russian that the Russian government had hacked and stolen Democratic emails, which we know is true. And then Papadopoulos lied about this later to federal investigators, which is why now he's a cooperating witness with Mueller and has pled guilty. Yeah. That is how that is. And there's a whole bunch of other strands of intelligence that led the CIA, the FBI. And now, by the way, everyone agrees that Russia interfered with the election to help Donald Trump, the CIA, the FBI, all of our intelligence agencies, Republicans in the Senate, Democrats in the Senate. Everyone agrees with this except the House Republicans, the Fox News apparatus, and Donald Trump. Everyone. Also, there's another sort of simple

set of facts related to the way both the Democratic and Republican campaigns were being investigated during the 2016 election. On the Republican side. They were carefully, diligently, secretly trying to find out whether the Trump campaign had been infiltrated in some way by foreign agents, by a foreign government. And they kept it a secret and they protected the Trump campaign from any public rebuke or any public speculation about it. In fact, it was so secretive that the New York Times managed to report something that was totally untrue, that there was no connection, that they didn't view there as being a connection to Russia or collusion. At the same time,

the FBI was publicly declaring that they were actively investigating the Clinton campaign and Hillary Clinton. And they had and had the they released a bunch of information about an ongoing investigation, talked about reopening the investigation, sank her campaign by publicly talking about the fact that she was under investigation or that the campaign was under investigation days before the election. So all of this boils down to a claim by Republicans that the FBI was biased against Donald Trump as the FBI protected Donald Trump. And basically, Tanya Harding Hillary Clinton in the days before the election. justice or anyone wanted to sabotage donald trump's campaign it would have it would have required a single call to a single reporter revealing that they were surveilling that they were looking at

the trump campaign that they thought that there was russian interference that there was going to be a fisa warrant on carter pate any of the things that we now went on one call like this uh jim comey for louise mensch please one fucking call could have ended the trump campaign and really help hillary clinton become president so if they were trying to sabotage the trump campaign they fucking did a bad job yeah terrible terrible honestly the worst saboteurs ever you look at this and you say guys where's the sabotage all right we really could have used some sabotage come out about october 2016 like what's so hard it was so frustrating about this again that was like he he's he's cooking up he's sort of like misinterpreting new information

to pretend like there's something nefarious in these stories and like he has no choice but to demand action but this is this is uh the Saturday Night Massacre in plain sight. And it's happening on Twitter again. And there is this right wing media ecosystem that just sort of goes along with anything Donald Trump says. And we have not figured out more broadly, like the press corps generally, Washington in general, how to deal with this kind of abuse of power in plain sight. Again, like if this was like leaked out because he called over to DOJ, it would be a blockbuster scandal. It happens on Twitter and like we just kind of roll with it.

Well, it's part of what makes me so angry about this is we just went through this a couple months ago with the release the memo bullshit. And I was looking at a list of all the theories that devon nunes and the fox people and trump have tried to dream up about why this was some sabotage of the trump campaign and first it was that obama wiretapped trump trump claimed that ended up being refuted by trump's own justice department that that wasn't true then it was the newunes unmasking controversy. Remember, Susan Rice unmasked a bunch of people,

blah, blah, blah. The Republicans in the House and the Senate said that there was zero evidence of wrongdoing in the unmasking scandal. Then it was the release the memo thing

that the FISA warrant on Carter Page was wrong. That was completely legal and proper. Everyone else decided that the house of senate republicans and now now we're dealing with this again that some informant you know screwed up the whole fucking thing and that's going to be proven wrong too like how many more times do we have to like how many more times we have to do this before the press realizes that every time something comes out of devin nunes's mouth's a lie. It's hard to figure out just how much to freak out when Donald Trump does something like this, ultimately.

It's a really big deal. Obviously, he has no regard. Apparently, it depends on what happens today. I mean, we're recording this and we don't know. But go ahead, love. No, it does. It depends on what happens today. It depends on what happens at the Justice Department.

It depends on what Rosenstein does. But part of it is that because we've been through this so many times and you have Donald Trump, which is a who has a who on Twitter does a combination of sort of bumbling id spilling of his thoughts, plus strategically placed attacks to try to kind of muddy the waters, plus threats like this, which ultimately either sort of fizzle out or get watered down or get, you know, get put through the the kind of White House, like calm him down, but still let him do his terrible norm violation stuff, but just a little bit less so we can get through it. So we just it part of it is that we've seen Donald Trump say these crazy things so many times and it just hurts the system. It violates the norms. And then the kind of the churn of the muller stuff continues it all keeps moving it's like it's like kind of just gumming up the works but things keep driving forward like the muller investigation keeps driving forward so i just think it it trump's terrible tweets alone calling for the basically

violating the rules of the justice department are terrible. But so far, the system has kind of held in terms of protecting Mueller's ability to do his job. Though, I mean, the Daily Caller, which originally reported the story about this informant, has basically outed the informant. So already there's been serious damage done because a confidential informant to the FBI has now been outed. I mean, what are the consequences of that, Tommy? This is a confusing one. I mean, from my own experience, I know that the government can cry wolf too often about classified information and disclosures.

That said, like usually when it's the name of a source like that is really serious compromising of sources and methods. And so, you know, you do have to wonder what might have been put at risk. I mean, the case that this is a massive deal is we don't like this guy is a former Reagan staffer. He's an academic. So but the ties he has to the CIA and to the Department of Defense are well known. They're a matter of public record. You worked there in the 80s. has to the CIA and to the Department of Defense are well known. They're a matter of public record. He worked there in the 80s. But we don't know if he's been helpful in other cases and foreign intelligence agencies can sort of reverse engineer meetings he had to figure out who was talking to him when and like screw up a bunch of stuff. That said, I mean, it is weird that some media outlets

are publishing his name. Some are holding it back, even though it's already been published. Like, it seems like this guy is not, you know, some double agent sitting in Moscow, right? It's all, both sides, I'm confused by the conversation. I was too, in part because it was clear that because he was someone who met with Page and Papadopoulos and Clovis, I guess. Yeah. They were able to figure out who it was they the fact that carter page knew now and could have told anybody at any time sort of tells you that it was kind of out there all that being said devin nunes's job is to provide oversight and

protect these kinds of people sources methods oversight of the agency as well he more than anyone else should take every step possible not to let these names get disclosed. The fact that he did that is unconscionable. You have no idea what messages sent to other people who might be helping us providing information, etc. If I were a source, and I thought I could just be outed tomorrow if Donald Trump hated me, there's no way I would help with the Russia investigation or anything else. Also, Devin Nunes's job is not to keep the press informed of what's going on inside the FBI. It is his job to do the oversight.

Like his relationship to this is so fucked up and so screwed up. It just – we just sort of – we're not so used to it. But like he – It's absurd. Also, by the way, didn't he recuse himself? Remember that? Not really. It's just unbelievable.

No, you remember he recused himself and the ethics committee reviewed what happened, but they couldn't review any classified information. So they couldn't actually figure out if he did anything wrong. So now he's back. Unbelievable. Great system we got. Yeah, we should talk about the level of how bad this could get. So Trump has this tweet on Sunday night where he basically orders a criminal investigation. He orders the DOJ and FBI, I i guess to launch a criminal investigation into themselves

and their own conduct um to try to stop this so the justice department responded just hours later that it had asked a inspector general to expand his ongoing review of the applications to monitor a former trump campaign advisor to include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation and how the fba conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election so it seems like so far that is stopping short of launching a full-scale criminal investigation they're basically saying the inspector general is already looking at some other stuff don't worry he'll look at this too it seems like r Rosenstein here is trying to placate Trump without actually doing anything.

I mean, so far, it's clearly like a political off ramp. I mean, the other thing they could do is say no. Then they all have to quit. Then God help us when Rudy Giuliani becomes the attorney general or like whatever happens here. But we're special. Special Prosecutor Kanye West. Right. But we're already we look we're already drastically moving the window of sort of what's appropriate and the president can do in terms of interfering with the DOJ. I mean, Trump has already won. Now, Rod knows he's not going to find shit. You know what I mean?

We didn't try to, Obama didn't try to like put a source inside the Trump campaign, right? It's ludicrous on its face. So I think, I think Ben Wittes wrote this today, but just try to imagine for a second if during the Benghazi investigation, Barack Obama decided to order an investigation of the people

doing the Benghazi investigation. That would have gone really well. If Bill Clinton had tried to order an investigation into the people doing the investigation into Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky.

I'm sure they talked about it. I mean, I'm sure they did. If George Bush, if George Bush ordered an investigation into the people who were investigating the Valerie Plame Scooter Libby affair. It's crazy that we're just like, a tweet, laughing it off. We're like, well, it's not too bad yet

because they didn't take him super seriously and they just said that the Inspector General is going to look at it and, you know, we'll see what happens. But president united states is ordering an investigation into the investigation of himself yes it's very very bad there's not i guess it just there's a it's a gross abuse of power yes there's no but it's we've all internalized the fact that this is how donald trump behaves this is what he does so this point, like I'm out of I'm out of shock juice for when Trump does this. What I want to know is what happens in response.

If you know, there's this debate like in hindsight, will what Rosenstein was doing at DOJ look cowardly, feckless, empathetic, or will it have looked sophisticated because he was managing a very difficult client? Yeah, you know, the calculus in Rosenstein's mind could be, we must finish this investigation before I get fired and Mueller gets fired. And if that requires us to once in a while placate Donald Trump's authoritarian impulses without seriously impeding the investigation, which would happen if he fired Rosenstein or Mueller, then so be it. And it's worrying. Right.

And because we don't know if we don't know if Rosenstein's heart is totally in the right place. And we don't know even if it is if what he's doing is the right strategy, because in a lot of ways, ultimately, if it is true that he's trying to just placate Trump, give him a little to get through this. It is a huge, huge bet on the power of the truth. Anyone who seems like they have information that we don't have, you see John Brennan tweeting these incredibly- Quotes from Cicero. Quotes from Cicero. He's crossing the Delaware on Twitter every day. And anyone who seems to have gotten close to whatever page, anyone who knows the truth and

who isn't sort of compromised by Trump, you get the sense that they've seen things that have shocked them and that they believe will shock the country. And so there's this feeling like, oh, these guys are betting on the truth. And I don't know that they're right. But when I saw what Rosenstein did, that he was going to sort of feed this into the inspector general report, it felt like it felt OK to me. Like that is the best that he can do to try to move this forward because all the wording in the rosenstein thing is like i'm going to look for improper whatever and it's like well it's clearly not improper so this is maybe the right thing for him to do matt miller who is a doj spokesman for a long time it made the point that like no other president in

history would have attempted this or gotten away with it uh you know the system is already failing in real time as this happens. And then, you know, to your point about Brennan, I mean, Trump sent out like 750 characters worth of attacks on John Brennan directly today on Twitter. So, you know, the people who know something are getting targeted. But I mean, just a quick thing, like we've been talking for a while now, like things we're not talking about. The attempt to uh get talks with north korea going are crumbling they pulled out of the iran deal and pompeo gave a big speech today that is like proposing a new iran backing iran into a corner in a way that is really frightening

fucking ebola just hit a city of 1.2 million people it was like there's all these major issues that presidents used to be forced to focus on and deal with that we just don't like executive time is just fox and friends it's not doing any of this other potential abuses of power that we're not even talking about the washington post reported last week that president trump has tried to fuck with jeff bezos by meeting multiple times with the postmaster general to push her to double the rate the Postal Service charges Amazon to ship packages. What the fuck is that? It is.

He's literally trying to use his government to punish a political enemy who owns a newspaper who's critical of him. Yeah, he's really, he's going, he's going full Nixon. He is, he is, he's the most corrupt. He's all the scandals at once. You's, he's all the scandals at once, you know, he's all the scandals at once. Which makes it, which is part of the reason it's become so hard to keep up with everything. And also just to Tommy's point, you know, for the most part, we have had a period of like relative tranquility and where we haven't had to look to the president to lead through a, through a war or through kind of massive upheavals.

What we have seen is when there has been some kind of crisis, some kind of natural disaster, we hope the government can function, but the president's not really there. We don't have a president. We don't have a president right now. We have a government. We have a very large government filled with a lot of civil servants who are doing the best they can to keep things running and to respond to emergencies we have a bunch of political goons that he's hired who half of them have all quit and they just keep recycling the revolving door between fox and the

white house and then we have some guy who just starts screaming on twitter all the time but that's what we have the major crisis response that he was handed was puerto rico and he's just failed right he's not tried and he's just attacked them you know so yeah that's right you're that's we have had crises it's just that he's not fixing them that people are suffering as a result tweets we've got fucking ice acting as like a rogue police force out there just stopping people now if they see them speaking spanish and asking them if they belong in the country for god's right he's ignored he's ignored the crises he was handled he was handled to fix um and because we're so focused on everything else it just doesn't matter so good segue to the midterms um dan balls wrote in sunday's washington

post that some republicans are looking at the latest data and seeing marginally better climate for republicans after this conversation i want to fucking pull my hair out in that sense marginally better climate for republicans that most will give the Republicans credit for. Republican pollster Neil Newhouse is a pretty respected Republican pollster. He noted that in previous wave elections, the percentage of people who felt the country was headed in the right direction was under 30. Right now, it's nearly 40 percent. Forty percent of the country feels we're on the right track, which is actually higher than it's been in some time. So the president's approval numbers have come up somewhat.

Unemployment's down. Generic ballot's getting closer. Are these warning signs that a blue wave might not be inevitable? Not that we ever thought it was. But why do we think this is happening? Do we think just... I mean, one of my thoughts about this is, as we just said the news

is so confusing and it's also become so similar it's always the same donald trump yells about something maybe there's crimes muller's investigating that i wonder if it's causing some people to tune out at least right now and that maybe they'll be more engaged as the closer we get to the midterms yeah i think there's there's that. I think that the news has been really disconnected from healthcare, from jobs policy, from tax policy. The debate has been really abstract and related to crimes and collusion and corruption without a lot of tangible, without a lot you can just sort of grab onto to understand. I mean, look, we just spent half an hour talking about it. It's complicated. There's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of confusing pieces to this. It's hard to know what matters and what doesn't. It's hard to know how it really affects people. What's a crime? What's not a crime? So I think that we're just in this period of time where people are kind of going back to say, okay, I think Dan Balls is incredibly smart. And I think the data is interesting. But I'd rather look at the special elections we've already seen happen and draw inferences from those. And those make me feel very good. I mean, the reality is Trump's approval rating is largely fixed. Democrats loathe him. Republicans mostly like him, although it moves

around a bit. Weirdly, the independents seem kind of fixed too and that that does make me nervous like what the hell do these people need to see before they stop liking him and i think like the the bottom fell out for bush at some point like his approval dropped below 30 and and it that was like july 2008 like a rock was going terribly katrina. Things were unbelievably bad. I do worry about what you were saying earlier, which is people tuning out. There's so much bad news. Everyone hates each other. They hate Washington, the partisanship, the rancor, and there's enough. Well, and I think what you mentioned about independents, independents tend to be the voters who pay least attention to politics and the news all the time, which is one reason for that.

I mean, you talked about the special elections. One reason for good news that has to do with that is pollsters often look at the strong, whether people strongly disapprove or strongly approve of the president of the United States. Trump's strong disapproval has fluctuated between 41 and 46 percent. It currently stands at 42 percent. between 41 and 46 percent. It currently stands at 42 percent. His strong approval, people who strongly approve of the president, has only fluctuated between 21 and 27 percent and stands at 24. So when you ask people, when you try to measure enthusiasm and engagement to people who are actually going to turn out and vote, Democrats are having a much bigger advantage in those polls.

And if you look at the generic ballot among people who are definitely going to vote, then you get Democrats in the double digits. So basically all this means is that we talk a lot on this podcast about what's the right message, what should we be talking about. It should be more tax cut, more health care, less Mueller investigation. But it's really going to come down to organizing on the ground, registering people and getting people to the polls and to making sure they showed up. I mean, it's a it's a joke everyone makes, like it's all going to come down to turnout. It's like one of the oldest cliches in politics. But it really is true. Like at this point over the next five, six, seven months, it's going to be all about making sure that we get our people who are committed to the polls. Because if the universe of people who

usually turns out in a midterm election shows up in 2018, then the Democrats will probably gain some seats in the House, but maybe not take it back. And we may lose seats in the Senate. That's just the reality. We have to expand the universe of people who turn out in a midterm election. That is our only way. And none of that, none of that changes whether Trump is resting at his low of 37% or his high of 43%. Exactly. And I will just, it is also just worth remembering that the fact that there's, you know, a quarter of those asks strongly support Donald Trump does tell you that America is in a crisis of, of, of extraordinary proportion that there is still, there's still a full quarter of the people walking around in the world,

look at what's going on and say, I'm in, tells you that we have huge, huge problems. But again, glass half full on that. If his approval is sitting around 42, 43%, and 21, 22% are strongly approved, that means that there's a segment of people who are only somewhat approving of Donald Trump. And they're like,

yeah, maybe he's fine, but I don't know if he's good. And those people, we should either, you know, they can be reached out to, or maybe they won't turn out for him at all. Maybe they won't leave the top of the ballot. They're going to watch Fox News and do what they do. Just stay in that requirement. And the other good piece of news is, the New York Times ran a piece

on Sunday about how new voter registrations among young people has picked up considerably in critical states during the past few months young registrants represented a higher portion of new voters in the states of florida north carolina and pennsylvania and the type of registrations leaned democratic in all those cases including in the county county where Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is. I mean, those kids have translated emotion and powerful speeches and public events into real action. And we should all emulate what they're doing. Yeah. And that's the thing to keep in mind because this is a long game. And as these news cycles freak us out every couple days, we should realize that on the ground, there are people like the Parkland students, people like Shannon Watts, who we're going to talk to soon at Moms Demand Action, people in Indivisible and Swinglet, who are working on the ground to register new voters, young voters, people who are going to vote Democratic to actually change this in November.

And we basically just have to hold on until then. Yeah. register new voters, young voters, people who are going to vote Democratic, to actually change this in November. And we basically just have to hold on until then. Yeah. And with that, we will be talking to Shannon Watts right after this. On the pod today, we are lucky to have the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, Shannon Watts. Shannon, welcome to Pod Save America. Well, thank you so much for having me on. I'm officially a friend of the pod now. You've always been a friend of the pod. I'm just glad that we finally got you on.

Yeah. So I want to start by talking about the school shooting that took place in Santa Fe, Texas last week. It's the 22nd shooting that's happened in the United States this year. And according to an analysis by the Washington Post, 2018 has been a deadlier year for school children in Fe shooting, it's important for people not to cave in to cynicism or hopelessness or the idea that nothing's happening to stop gun violence, even though nothing's happening in Congress right now. What are some of the things that are happening to stop gun violence out there? And where does the conversation need to go from here? There is so much that's happening on the ground. I think of working on gun safety similarly to

marriage equality. So if you remember, marriage equality activists went directly to Congress, asked them to change laws, and what they got in return was the Defense of Marriage Act. They kind of said, okay, this isn't what we wanted. And they pivoted to state houses and to boardrooms. And they started changing state laws and corporate policies. And as a result, they created that momentum on the ground that eventually pointed Congress and the Supreme Court in the right direction. And I think of gun safety very much that way. state laws to stop bad laws, first of all. The NRA is insidious in our state legislatures trying to force guns into K-12 schools or guns on college campuses to expand, stand your ground, to pass something called permitless carry, which is basically to conceal carry with no permit, no training, and in 30 states, no background check. They've actually passed that in 13 states. Since we started showing up at state houses, we have about a 90% track record of killing these bad bills.

But we've also passed really good bills. So in 10 states, we've closed the background check loophole that allows gun sales without a background check on private gun sales. We've passed bills in 26 states that disarm domestic abusers. And we've passed red flag laws and banned bump stocks. And we've had significant success even just since Parkland. And then there's all the corporate work, which, again, got a lot of charge after Parkland. But starting back in 2013, we were able to get Starbucks to change their policies around guns in their stores. And we've replicated that at dozens of major restaurants and retailers. So all of this

is happening on the ground. But because it's not this cathartic moment in Congress, it just doesn't get as much attention. So Shannon, that's a great list of sort of what's been accomplished. And that's important for people to understand. I think another thing folks are looking for is a sense of what are the most impactful policies that we should be pushing for? What is your wish list when you're lobbying a member of Congress or a governor of state? What is the best way? What are the best policies to protect kids and really anybody else that is sick of this epidemic of gun violence? Well, there are several things. Research shows us that background checks are one of the most significant ways to prevent gun violence. So when we look at the now 20 states

that have passed this law, we see gun violence almost cut in half across the board, whether it's domestic homicides or shootings of police, gun homicides, even suicides are significantly decreased just by passing a law that requires background checks on private gun sales. And the other law that saves significant amount of lives and also is popular now with Republican state houses and governors is to pass a law that disarms domestic abusers. A lot of people don't realize that, yes, federal law prohibits convicted domestic abusers of having guns, people don't realize that, yes, federal law prohibits convicted domestic abusers of having guns, but the definition of what an abuser is does not include stalkers,

it does not include dating partners, and it also doesn't have the teeth in it that allows law enforcement to remove the guns an abuser already has. So we go into states and we strengthen those laws, we broaden the definition of what an abuser is. And we also put teeth in the law that allows local police to come remove the guns of a domestic abuser. And as I said, we've done that in 26 states, red and blue states alike. So after the shooting in Santa Fe, Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick, you know, he said the problem isn't with guns. It's the security of our school buildings, right? He said there should have been fewer doors in the buildings, which is

bizarre. The new head of the NRA, Oliver North, who himself spent some time in jail for selling weapons to Iran. He went on TV this weekend and said the same thing about culture. He even blamed Ritalin for the effects it's having on young boys who take it. What have you found is the most effective strategy in dealing with the NRA? I mean, is it picking apart every one of these arguments that they try to make? Is it taking them on? Is it trying to ignore them and just organize on the ground? What's your strategy there? Well, it's a little bit of both. So I think it's incredibly important to shine a spotlight on NRA lobbyists and lawmakers beholden to them. I liken it to putting a flashlight under the refrigerator and watching the cockroaches run out. We've been ignoring the NRA's agenda for decades, and it's gotten us to where we are.

We have to make that agenda so toxic to lawmakers and companies that they don't want to be seen publicly as supporting it. And I think we are starting to get to that point, especially because of all the bizarre things NRA leaders are doing in doubling down on this culture war that they're fomenting. But also on the ground, what I think is so fascinating, you know, the NRA is always talking about how it has 5 million members. We don't believe that. And media has shown that's probably not true. The reality is the NRA could have no members and still be significantly important politically because they have a $350 million annual budget from gun manufacturers. But I can assure you

that we show up in the dozens or hundreds in state houses across the country. It isn't us versus NRA members. It's us versus a singular NRA lobbyist. So it's really important that people get off the sidelines and show up because when lawmakers see us sitting in state houses and gun bill hearings, it scares the hell out of them. And the more of us there are, the more scared they are that there will be consequences. Shannon, over the weekend, Obama's former Secretary of Education retweeted a suggestion that kids should boycott school until Congress acts to change our gun laws. And I think the reflexive response to that suggestion was that that's ridiculous or

unworkable. But, you know, I was struck by an interview with a Santa Fe high school student named Paige Curry, who said she expected to be shot at school. This has become so pervasive that she said, I always felt it would happen here. Why is it crazier to boycott school than it is to force kids to go to schools where they are not safe and do not feel safe? Yeah, I mean, the whole situation is incredibly bizarre. You know, I refuse to not send my kid to school. I refuse to allow lawmakers to not do their jobs. Getting off the sidelines and showing up and demanding action and change is the most important way that people can change gun laws and change policies where they live. Getting off the sidelines and showing up and demanding action is the way to

do this. And look, schools are letting out. My son is out of school. State legislatures are letting out. But people can still get involved. And one way to do that is to text the word ACT to 64433. And you will immediately be plugged into a Moms Demand Action chapter where you live. And the second important thing to remember is that on June 2nd, it's Wear Orange Day. And we have more than 350 events across the country. It's Gun Violence Awareness Day, June 1st. The events are on June 2nd. And we would just ask that people start looking into events where they are. Again, shows of support on a regular basis on this issue are incredibly important because Congress is watching, your state legislature is watching.

So Moms Demand Action is a group you started on Facebook in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting. What have you learned about organizing and politics since you put yourself out there to do this? A lot. You know, I was a corporate communications executive for about 15 years. I had never been an activist. I'd never been involved in organizing. It has been profoundly life-changing for me to work together with this army of badass women and men, too, who are dedicating their lives, other than raising their families and the jobs they have. other than raising their families and the jobs they have. They're figuring out how to carve an extra work week of volunteer hours to save the lives of strangers. I'm a full-time volunteer for Moms Demand Action, too. And I do believe that this is how you create change in America, not just by being a think tank or tweeting or posting on Facebook by actually showing up and demanding change and

refusing to be intimidated. You know, we show up and have rallies or events or state advocacy days at the statehouse. And we're often surrounded by men who are open carrying AR-15s to try to silence or intimidate us. And I think it's done just the opposite. I think it's empowered so many women in this country who realize it's on us to protect our children. And it's on us to fight back when lawmakers aren't doing what they were elected to do.

And one last question. What are your plans? What's Moms Demand Action's plans for the midterms? Obviously, there's a huge election coming up in November, plenty of opportunities, not just in Congress, but on the local level to replace some of these politicians with politicians who are in favor of common sense gun control. What are you guys thinking about that? Yeah, we're going to be very active. We already are giving something called a gun sense distinction. I'm not sure if you've seen that on Twitter, but candidates, both Republicans and Democrats alike, are bragging about having a Moms to Men action, gun sense distinction. And that's because we aren't toward the elections yet. Once we do, we will start making endorsements. But the power in having a grassroots army is that we are able to turn out en masse and canvas and knock on doors and educate people and turn out the vote

and also register people to vote. And we can do all of those things because we have hundreds of thousands of active volunteers. So we will be incredibly active in the midterm elections. We'll hold people accountable. In November of last year, you saw how successful we were in New Jersey and in Virginia. And the other thing that's really exciting to me is that last November, 13 Moms Demand Action volunteers and gun violence survivors ran for office, 9-1. We have dozens more running this coming November in states like Iowa and Montana and Arizona. Even Lucy McBath, our spokeswoman who's running for Congress in Georgia. And over 400 volunteers have said they plan to run for office in the future. So that's incredibly exciting to me. It's kind of the mom's 2.0. That's awesome. That is a

much needed dose of hope. Yeah, seriously. In a week like this. So Shannon, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. And come back again and good luck with all the work you're doing. Thank you so much. Thanks, Shannon. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Shannon. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you to Shannon Watts from Moms Demand Action for joining us today.

And we have our big Radio City show Wednesday night. That's crazy. That pod will come out Thursday morning, Thursday early afternoon. So you'll be hearing that show then. It's going to be exciting. You know, look, I don't want to get anybody too excited about Radio City, but let's just say we've got three pair of tights and we're going to do some kicking, we're going to do some dancing. It's going to be fantastic. The Lovettes.

We'll have the three of us. Alyssa Mastromonaco will be with us. Brittany Packnett will be with us. And we're going to have some fun special guests. Exciting. Exciting. We'll see you then.