Pod Save America - "The misadventures of Paul RINO."

Episode Date: September 7, 2017

Trump cuts his first-ever deal as President with the Democrats on Harvey relief and the debt ceiling, and makes Republicans on the Hill very sad. Then, Senator Dick Durbin joins Jon and Dan to talk about passing the DREAM Act and the rest of Congress's busy fall agenda.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we have the number two Democrat in the Senate, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. Also, Dan, I am recording right now from the brand new, long-awaited Crooked Media podcast studio right here in Crooked Media headquarters. Congratulations. You have hit the big time, Crooked Media. We've launched this company in January.

It is September, and we have a studio. The only sad part of this is the producer we worked with at CBS Newsradio, Bill Nesb bill nesbit is incredible we love bill so we will miss bill hopefully once in a while we'll head back to cbs and do a show or two there but um wanted to give a shout out to him because he has been outstanding but yeah so now i'm in now i'm in crooked media studios so uh you know anytime there's breaking news we can run in here and record emergency pods which is also great you're making a real promise there that you're not going to want to keep. No, I know. I know that.

Okay, so what should we talk about today? Probably the congressional clusterfuck of a fall that we're heading towards. Once again, yesterday you sent me an outline very early in the morning, which meant that you jinxed everything. But not in the normal way, though. Not in the normal way. You sent the outline and you said, Trump's going to appear in North Dakota later today and he could do something crazy there that changes all of this. So you were right about him doing something crazy, wrong about where it happened.

What he actually did that was crazy was make a deal with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. That's fake- tear schumer to you so let's let's start with that so yesterday donald trump pants paul ryan and mitch mcconnell in the oval office paul paul rhino had a bad day as uh thank you thank you yeah we'll we'll get to lou dobbs we'll get to lou dobbs yeah okay'll get to Lou Dobbs. Okay. So I think we should give everyone some background on what happened because I've seen a lot of confusion about this deal from people who don't follow the machinations of Congress and debt ceilings and

government funding fights and all that bullshit. Why would you? So here's the background on everything that happened. So there are three huge things that Congress has to do by the end of September. There's actually a ton of different things, but the three biggest, I would say, are one, pass relief funding for Hurricane Harvey. By the way, we have Hurricane Irma headed towards Florida. So we are keeping everyone there in our thoughts and prayers. And hopefully, it hasn't struck Florida yet, but it has struck some of the islands in the Caribbean. Very, very scary, scary storms. We'll be watching that over the next couple of days. But anyway, so number one,

Congress is supposed to pass relief funding for Hurricane Harvey. Number two, Congress has to fund the federal government to avoid a shutdown. Number three, Congress has to fund the federal government to avoid a shutdown. Number three, Congress has to raise the debt ceiling, which is paying the bills that Congress has already racked up so that America doesn't default on its debt and cause a global economic catastrophe. Again, the debt ceiling is sort of this made up bullshit that Congress put into practice somewhere along the line where all it does is say to the Congress, you are now legally allowed to go pay the bills that you have already, already incurred. Has nothing to do with actually adding more debt to, you know, at all. So even though Republicans control both houses of Congress, all three of these things, relief funding, federal government funding, and raising the debt ceiling, require Democratic votes. Both because you need 60 votes in the Senate to do these things and because the crazy caucus in the House, the Freedom Caucus, will not vote to fund the government or raise the debt ceiling without like insane cuts to Medicaid and education and health care and all the rest of it. So basically, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell need Democratic votes to pass these measures.

So for a while, they were like, what the fuck are we going to do? How are we going to get this done? And then Hurricane Harvey funding actually presented them with an opportunity. Their solution was to tie the debt ceiling increase to Hurricane Harvey funding, figuring that even their own crazy caucus and the Democrats would not vote against Harvey funding. The Democrats wouldn't attach a bunch of demands to it. If you tie everything up in the hurricane relief package, it's going to be easier politically to pass this thing. And while they were at it, they figured, you know what, why don't we raise the debt ceiling high enough so that we won't have to raise it again until after the 2018 elections. The Democrats won't be able to attach any demands to it.

So we'll just get this out of the way. So this is Ryan and McConnell's plan. Conservatives in their caucus, in the Freedom Caucus, complained about this plan because they're annoyed that they'd have to raise the debt ceiling with any corresponding cuts, which is their big deal, their big ask. So there was some complaints about it. So yesterday morning, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer see some of the complaints on the right wing of their caucus and say, okay, we have a plan. We're in, we'll raise the debt ceiling, but we're only going to increase it and fund the government for three months, not until after the 2018 election. Dan, what was the thinking behind that move? From the Democrats?

For the Democrats. So why did Nancy and Chuck put that statement out? Well, I think it's, we don't know yet. And I'm interested to talk to Senator Durbin about it. But I'm sure the Democrats would like the Republicans who have the majority in up for election to be forced to vote for the debt ceiling multiple times between now and the election. And second, it is an opportunity to force votes on other things or tie other things to it because the debt ceiling essentially becomes a, you know, what you would call a must pass vehicle. So which is why they wanted to put Harvey funding on it, which is that will get it through if it's attached to the debt ceiling, because we don't want to

theoretically crash the global economy. But I want to say a couple of other things about the debt ceiling. Please do. In your very well done, very detailed explanation of this. You made it sound you know, you said it's the Freedom Caucus who wants cuts. And that is true, but it's important to remember that that was the position of the entire Republican Party

when they took power in 2010. Even though they all, even though people like Paul Ryan are theoretically smart enough to know better, they wanted to, they demanded commensurate cuts. If you needed to raise the debt ceiling by a trillion dollars, you had to cut a trillion dollars from government, which is not a thing you can actually do if you want to have an army and Social Security and things like that. And that was their position all the way through 2011. And so when we were in the White House, we in 2011 had a negotiation with them, which was they wanted all these cuts.

We wanted zero cuts. And we negotiated. And we came up with a set of cuts that were closer to Obama's opening bid than the Republicans' opening bid, but not things we would have done ideally. And that was a very painful process. And we almost crashed the global economy. The United States lost its, its credit, its AAA credit rating is a part of that. So the stocks took a huge hit wiping out billions, if not trillions of dollars in overall wealth. And Barack Obama had a principle after that,

which he would never negotiate on the debt ceiling again, right? And that it would just be up to Congress to do it. And so here we are now in this new phase where the Democrats, Republicans are in charge, it is their job to do it with Barack Obama is different, because John Boehner had the hat was in charge of that Republican charge of the house. And they were refusing to do without anything else. So it was basically, you know, a standoff. In this case, this, Donald Trump is the President of the United States. His party is in charge of government. And yet he still needs Democrats to do it, not just beyond the eight Democrats you need in the Senate to avoid filibuster. You need

the majority of Democrats to vote for this to get it through the House, most likely. Right. And again, some of you listening right now might say i don't get it why do you need this debt ceiling thing if it's all it's gonna you don't cause the answer is you don't it is a political invention entirely the government the entire government could function without it it is not an ideological need it is not a need for functioning government it is just a made-up bullshit thing that could cause economic global catastrophe great okay so in response to nancy and chuck's proposal paul ryan goes ballistic and accuses them of playing politics with a debt ceiling which is hilarious because here's paul ryan in december of 2013 and i quote

we are going to meet and discuss what it is we want to get out of the debt limit. We certainly don't want nothing out of this debt limit. So Paul Ryan, who's played politics with the debt ceiling for a living for most of the time period between when Obama became president and when Trump did, now suddenly was upset about playing politics with the debt ceiling. Amazing behavior from Paul Ryan, Dan. I don't know how closely you listen to the Crooked Media podcasts, but Paul Ryan is not a particularly principled individual. He might be full of shit. And this may be another piece of evidence to that.

So he does his whole, oh, how could they play politics with this? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We're not going to accept that deal. That's crazy. Fine. So now, with all of this as background, all of our heroes head to the Oval Office yesterday. Schumer, Pelosi, Ryan, McConnell. They meet with Trump.

Ryan and McConnell say, okay, we're proposing an 18 month debt ceiling increase tied with Hurricane Harvey relief and we'll fund the government. What do you think? And Mnuchin, Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, Trump's Treasury Secretary, also says, yes, this is a good idea. This is important for markets. We don't want a short term debt deal. Great.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Schumer and Pelosi say, say no we're not doing 18 months and so the republicans say okay how about six months democrats say no how about three months and donald trump says deal shocking paul ryan and mitch mcconnell, who could barely contain their anger. At that moment, Ivanka Trump walks into the Oval Office. The conversation is derailed because Trump can only pay attention to something for a couple seconds. And that is the ballgame. It's so funny.

Why do you think Trump did this? Let start there because he's dumb that's why i'm glad you gave that answer he just paid sticker price for his car that's what he did because here's the funny thing about it is you know one of the ideas when Trump became president was he's not – some fears among establishment conservatives is Trump's not really a conservative. He may not even really be a Republican. He may just be playing a racist Republican on television. And he doesn't have doctrinaire conservative views on things like government spending or entitlements or whatever else. And the fear was he would come in and he likes to build things. So he would come in an agreement with, you know, with the Democrats on a democratic priority that would be, you know, good politics for him

and would upset conservatives. That is not what happened here. He took the worst. That is not what happened here. He took the worst. There were three deals on the table, and he readily agreed to the worst deal by far. If you're president, you want the longest debt ceiling possible. But your president really wanted the debt ceiling to go away forever. But 18 months, deal with this after the midterms. Six months is twice as good as three months months and he just took three months just because so i mean i've thought about this a lot and i realize a general rule of thumb is you're not supposed to think for more than five to ten seconds about trump's motivations because

most of the motivations are driven by narcissistic impulses to get good press coverage, appease your Fox and Friends hosts, or Sean Hannity, or like whatever the last newscast you saw that day, and then you just sort of move on. And that's how Trump operates, right? So I don't want to delve too deeply into Trump's psyche here. But to play devil's advocate, and I actually saw our friend Brian Boitler was tweeting about this too. Like, let's play the other way around. What could Trump have got from Chuck and Nancy? What more could he have got? Like, let's say they said, no, no, no, we want three months or else we're not providing democratic votes, which you need. What if then Trump said, well, okay, I'm going to go ahead and tell Mitch and Paul to put a six month or 12 month debt ceiling increase on the floor of the Senate and the House. And you now, you Democrats are going to have to sit there and say, you're

going to vote against Hurricane Harvey relief. And you're also going to vote against preventing economic catastrophe by not raising the debt ceiling and you go see how that works for you guys yeah that's what he should have done right i mean it's it's like so patently obvious then what did chuck and nancy do at that point they they basically bluffed yeah Yeah, they're put in a position of blocking hurricane relief and not lifting the debt ceiling. And what would probably happen in the long run is there would then be some negotiation and you would get something in between the two positions. Right. I mean, we'll ask Senator Durbin this, but I don't think Senator Schumer and Leader Pelosi went in thinking they were actually going to get – I think that was just their starting bid.

So I'm sure they just like walked out being like, great. I'm sure that six months was probably fine. I find it impossible to imagine that Democrats who beat the crap out of Republicans over the debt ceiling and Republican opposition is Sandy funding. And if you remember, Senator Schumer is from New York, where Sandy hit. We're going to be in a position that they could at the end of the, if Republicans had called their bluff, I think it would have been very hard to stop that bill. Right. I think that's right. Because, well, the other thing that they would have had to bet on, or I guess they would have had to say like, look, you can put this on the floor, but if you don't get republican votes to pass this if if this measure fails because not only did democrats vote against it but you couldn't even get some of your own i mean

you guys control a majority in the house and a majority in the senate why couldn't you find the votes you couldn't even find the votes in the house to pass this thing then it looks like it's republicans who fail to do this not democrats right the what would the senate would just sit quiet and just wait the senate would sit quiet and say all right paul ryan you pass an 18 month debt ceiling increase and you pass hurricane harvey relief out of your house with your majority let's see it and paul ryan probably i don't know i don't know if he could have gotten that done because of the freedom i don't he probably he could not he is also very weak so't know if he could have gotten that done because of the freedom. He probably, he could not. He is also very weak. So it's unlikely he could have gotten it done. But that suggests that basically Schumer and Pelosi had all the leverage anyway,

the whole time in the meeting. And of course they were going to get there three months. They did have the leverage up until you attach it to Harvey. And I think the Harvey part makes it very hard. If it's just a straight debt ceiling vote, that's an easy one. You're in charge. You do it. When Democrats are being forced to vote against hurricane relief, that is hard. And I think a lot of Democrats would not do it over what is the debt ceiling is important if it doesn't get lifted. But it's hard. You know, it's just it's this is basically a piece of political maneuvering to make them vote for it again. So you also have leverage on the larger government funding bill in December. Right.

So at the end, like are Democrats truly going to vote against Hurricane Harvey relief over three versus six months on the debt ceiling? I think that's a hard thing. If it was the DACA bill, the DREAM Act on there, that might be a different thing, where you had a stronger, a more strongly held principle to adhere to. My theory on what happened here is, up until 15 minutes before that meeting, Trump had heard of the debt ceiling, but had no idea what it was, and what happened if you didn't lift it. And I think they briefed him beforehand. And Steve Mnuchin did what Secretary Geithner or Secretary Lew did for us and went through the horrors of what happens if it doesn't get lifted. And they scared Trump. And so he took the,

there's no question the Democratic deal is the path, the least risky path in the short term. It's like, great, Democrats will vote for this. We need Democrats. Done. Take it. And so I think he might have acted out of fear. And look, it's a scary proposition. me down when I had to write a speech in the event of a potential default on our debt when we were, you know, dealing with debt ceiling brinkmanship in the Obama administration and writing that

speech about what happens after default or even when the rest of the world thinks you're about to default, the catastrophe in the markets, the people who don't get paid, the benefits that don't go out, the checks that don't go out. I mean, it's pretty frightening stuff. It's much worse than a government shutdown. A government shutdown you don't want, you want to avoid it, it's bad, it's a self-inflicted wound. Breaching the debt ceiling is just horrendous. Another thing that happens in the meeting is Trump also calls for scrapping the debt ceiling all together, which I agree with Donald Trump. There you go. Great idea, Donald Trump. And Democrats have been trying to get rid of the debt ceiling for a long time. And today,

Pelosi was like, sure, yeah, let's do it. And of course, Paul Ryan said, no, no, no, I don't want to do that because I want to continue playing politics with the debt ceiling well into the future. Yeah, I would say Paul Ryan's explanation for this was he wanted to keep the power of the purse. The debt ceiling is not the power of the purse. The power of the purse is when you appropriate money for government funding, which they already did. All the debt ceiling does is say you can pay the bills you've already incurred. And so that is bullshit. That is a bullshit argument. And probably in his, when he's home alone doing P90X and

genuflecting at a statue of Van Rand, Paul Ryan knows this is bullshit, but he is the leader of a large group of morons. It's just there's no other way to put it. They're a good portion, not all of. You can divide the Republican caucus in the House into two groups. People who are too dumb to know what the debt ceiling actually does. And people who know what the debt ceiling does but feel like they have to pretend like they're dumb enough to not know what the debt ceiling actually does. Yep. And people who know what the debt ceiling does, but feel like they have to pretend

like they're dumb enough to not know what it does. Because they're too scared. So that they can be accepted in the Republican Party of 2017. Yes. You are either too dumb or too scared as a Republican member of house. That's one of the two options. So did you know, do you say,

and I want to ask Durbin about this as well, some activists, Luis Gutierrez in Congress as well as United We Dream and some other activists on the left are actually upset about this deal that Schumer and Pelosi struck because they said they should have said we want a vote on the DREAM Act attached to this deal. And so they're upset. They think that the Pelosi and Schumer c caved what do you think about that i just want to know more i i still think schumer and pelosi probably had three or four moves uh left in their game plan and they still don't really understand

why donald trump took this deal because i can see a world where they're like Republicans won 18 months Democrats won three Republicans say we'll take six Democrats will say great we'll take six we give us the dream act and then Trump just took the three months and so yeah uh they but they live to fight another day we can replay this whole thing out in December yeah that and yes that that's my thought too it's like if in three months they don't demand the dream act the next time we do this then we can criticize them all we want but it seems to me as if what they did is let's attach the dream act to something that doesn't have hurricane relief on it because that's going to be politically easier to do than attaching the dream act to a Harvey relief package. To me, that seems like that's why they did this. So Republicans were not too happy about this deal.

Mike Simpson of Idaho, Republican in the House, a three-month debt ceiling? Why not do it daily? He's the best dealmaker ever, don't you know? I mean, he's got a book out about it. Another senior Republican aide told jonathan swan the democrats have bluffed their way into total victory uh and another gop aide said the president just handed a loaded gun to nancy pelosi and chuck schumer so uh republicans on the hill are not too happy about

it also so what the media reaction the maga media, Breitbart has a picture of Trump, Pelosi and Schumer together and it says, welcome to the swamp. But at least at least one member of the Republican media, Lou Dobbs, is with Trump still on this deal. video, a couple minute video from last night where he just uses this whole thing as an opportunity to attack Paul Ryan. Which like, we don't love Paul Ryan here, but it's certainly not Paul Ryan's fault.

Paul Ryan fought against this deal. This was Donald Trump's deal. So he called him Ryan the Rhino, which as you pointed out is a mistake because he should have just gone with Paul Rhino. I think there's both. There are some bigger lessons or thoughts to take from how this has played out in the last 24 hours. But it's worth noting that Lou Dobbs is so ridiculous that he's on JV Fox. He's not on Fox.

He's on Fox Business. So they're like, you are a blowhard. You shill for Trump. You use racist and misogynistic code words and language. But you're just not talented enough to make Fox. So we're going to put Jesse Waters on Fox and move you to Fox Business. So that's not good for Lou Dobbs. Maybe that's why he's so angry.

Not good for Lou Dobbs. Not good for Paul Rhino. Quite a bad day. The Misadventures of Paul Rhino. That was yesterday. That's a pretty good episode title. Oh, here we go. Some of the other thoughts about this are,

I think it says a lot about sort of the ideological vacuum within the Republican Party, because the debt, like using the debt ceiling as some mechanism is not an ideological principle. No, it's not something that Reagan, you know, said at the 1984 convention or came from the writings of William F. Buckley. It's just low-grade legislative thuggery, and that's been taken from them. Schumer or, you know, do infrastructure to Schumer by raising taxes on, you know, wealthy people or something that would violate what are theoretically long-held, quote-unquote, conservative principles. That's not what this is.

This is just a big – the Republicans are all upset over a legislative strategic maneuver that Trump did in the wrong way. But I think it would also – the response of the media should scare the shit out of ryan and mcconnell right because trump screwed up here absolutely screwed up looks like a moron doing a deal with schumer and pelosi is the only thing he could have done that would have theoretically upset the bit the the pro-trump media more would be doing a deal with hillary clinton upset the pro-Trump media more would be doing a deal with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And so with sort of the two bogey people that they use, and their response is, for the most part, to support Trump. And so it just shows what limited leverage the other Republicans have

over Trump. Yeah. I mean, Washington Post has a story that Mark Meadows, the head of the Freedom Caucus, and Steve Bannon yesterday were talking about how to replace Paul Ryan as speaker. This deal happens. Trump cuts this deal. And they talk about Lou Dobbs is yelling about Paul Rhino. And these guys are talking about how to replace him as speaker, which tells you everything you need to know about how fucked up their caucuses, fucked up their politics are. Can we just diverge a second to talk about the lionization of Steve is fucked up their politics can we can we just diverge a second to talk about the lionization of steve bannon and breitbart i know i mean do you know what 60 minutes this sunday let's tune in on breitbart's best day it is exponentially

less influential than crooked media i mean that's like, I'm half kidding, but not really. It's a, it's a fucking website that's run out of some dude's house. And like, not that many, not as many as you would think. And we're not sure how many,

how much of that engagement is driven by Russian bots. And like, so what Steve Bannon and Mark Meadows met. Who cares? And they met at the quote-unquote Breitbart Embassy, which is what Breitbart calls their headquarters, which is a row house on Capitol Hill because they say it's the – they are ambassadors from real America. That row house was purchased by multimillionaire, former Goldman Sachs executive, Steve Bannon, Hollywood elite,

Steve Bannon. It's so fucking ridiculous. But while we're talking about Steve Bannon in, in a 24 hour period, I have agreed with Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. What else did Steve Bannon say? Steve Bannon was asked on the, by a Charlie Rose on the 60 minutes interview that's airing on Sunday about Gary Cohn.

And he said Gary Cohn should resign. He should. And his reason was either you support the president and stay or you – if you are so upset by what the president did that you feel compelled to tell every reporter who will ask that you're upset, then you should resign. Yeah. He's right about that too. That makes a lot of sense. How about yesterday? We should breaking news yesterday that Gary Cohn is now not going to get the seat on the Fed that he was looking for Fed chair. And that is because he was very upset that the president of the United States refused to condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists. So upset that he got up and went to work for that very same president the next day.

Because he wanted the Fed chair. He wanted to be Fed chair. And so he decided to keep working for the white supremacist sympathizers. And now he doesn't get it. So there you go. As Lovett tweeted yesterday, thanks for playing, Gary. Enjoy the steak knives. And now he's sort of stuck for a while because he will look even worse if he leaves in the wake of not getting the job that he was so obviously staying for but didn't want to admit he was staying for.

And that makes me happy because Gary Cohn's pain is funny to me. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. So I want to make a few more points about the new, the new bipartisan Trump, the dealmaker. Number one, not only was this a stupid deal in the short term, it was also, like, it's kind of dumb, I think, maybe in the long term, to piss off Ryan and McConnell, who are essentially Trump's jurors in his impeachment trial. Down the road. Like if Bob Mueller comes knocking and makes an impeachment recommendation at some point

down the road, the best friends Trump needs to have are Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. Right? Yes, I think that's true. I would say two things about that. One, Paul Ryan is a moral coward. So it doesn't really matter what happened there. He'll be there for Trump. Yeah, he will be the last soldier on the island.

Trump could kick his ass every day from now into the impeachment trial, and he'd still probably save him. Yeah. But if I was Trump, and my goal was to make it through my first term without getting impeached. The last thing I would do is pass tax reform.

Yeah. As long as tax reform is out there. That's true. He has Paul Ryan and most of these Republicans in the pocket. As long as he can dangle the idea that we can cut taxes for rich people and make poor people pay for it, they will not hold him accountable for anything. Once that's done, that's it. That's all all they care about and then all bets are off yep i think that's right that's a very good point so the second thing is like we are now in for three or four days of fucking think pieces about the new bipartisan trump working with the democrats it'll

be on all the sunday shows thousands of words will be written about this and all i'm gonna say is like let's wait i don't know four or five days before we start dragging out the ronald reagan tip o'neill fairy tale bullshit um because we know donald trump we know he turns on a dime something's's going to piss him off. He's going to go back to yelling at everyone on Twitter. Let's just pump the brakes on the new bipartisan Trump thing. This is not bipartisan. I mean,

technically, this is bipartisan in the sense that Republicans and Democrats are involved, but if two chimpanzees had walked in the Oval Office with signs around their neck that said three-month debt ceiling deal. He would agree with that. This is like he was just looking for.

There's no long game here with Trump. I was like, I do this with Chuck and Nancy. Maybe they'll be more friendly on tax reform. And then maybe we can do infrastructure. It's just he just reacted to a shiny object. And it just happened to be the Democrats were holding up the shiny object at the time. Yeah. I mean, my view is like we have to remove this man from office as soon as humanly possible.

But in the meantime, like we should also do everything we can to limit the damage he causes. And if his own fucking narcissistic impulses lead him to accidentally do that and help us with that, then great. But it's not something we can ever count on, you know. Washington DC's fetish for bipartisanship has knows no bounds never it'll never go away um it'll never be let's say bipartisanship is good yeah we should have it if it's if it's real yeah that's not what this is well this is a tiny deal it's it's kicks the whole thing to three months we're going to be talking about this again in december and then we'll have to see.

Like bipartisanship is compromised where one side gives the other side what they want. Like there's not – Trump did not give in to some core progressive agenda item in exchange for a conservative agenda item. He just agreed to have a vote three months sooner than he was already going to have a vote. That's right. He shouldn't lose sight of that so let's talk about daca because that's obviously one of the big issues that you know we want to resolve uh over the next couple months particularly when we get this vote again in december so the other weird thing over the last couple days is that Trump has basically said, oh, I told Chuck and Nancy I want to do a deal on this. He tweeted the day that DACA was rescinded by Sessions that he'll revisit this issue

if Congress doesn't act. This morning, apparently on the request of Nancy Pelosi, he tweeted that Dreamers shouldn't worry in the next six months and then said no action, which is also confusing because it sounds like he's telling them they don't have to take action, which they certainly do. If you're a Dreamer and if you were a young American who's undocumented in this country, you should apply within these, you have to apply within these six months to renew your work permit for the next two years. And you can apply within these next six months if you already have one. So, you know, everyone should know that Trump's tweet was a little confusing. But anyway, so what do we think? What do you think he's doing

this for? Do you think he just saw the awful coverage, both from Republicans and Democrats in media about how bad this decision was, and he wants to do something about it what's going on there i i i'm going to assume that per usual he's reacting to something he saw on the news right without much thought i agree and i don't believe he's ever met a dreamer i think he probably would cross the street as opposed to speaking to a dreamer um but i'm sure he did not like the headlines he saw challenged his warped self-image of himself and so he reacted to it and if the coverage was he was too soft on dreamers then he would respond to the other way i don't i do not i never bought the story that about syria that avanka showed him these photos of children and that motivated him to act.

And I don't buy the theory now that he is so moved by the stories of these dreamers that he feels – that he was forced into this position because of his deep understanding and reverence for constitutional law that he had to make this move, but he desperately wants to fix it. I think he's just reacting to pieces of stimuli in the environment without much thought. That's probably right. So it seems like we should prioritize a measure that protects the Dreamers over the next three months. What else does Congress have to get done? Or what else do we want it to get done? Now that the decks have been cleared on Harvey relief, debt ceiling and government funding for three months? Well, there's a bunch of other things that are critical. I mean, one, there's a obviously a possibility they're going to have there's going to be this is not the Harvey package, there's going to have to be much more money for Harvey.

And if Hurricane Irma that you mentioned earlier continues on the path in which we fear it may, then there's a – there may be an unfortunate possibility that we have to do even – do an aid package for Florida and Georgia and North Carolina and the other states that are – South know, at least on the in the possible track over the next week here. But also, so we have to fund the government. We have to lift the debt ceiling. We have to do hurricane relief. They're the FAA bill expires. And so we have to reauthorize air traffic controllers, which seems important, like pretty critical. Yeah, I say this to a man with a

fear of flying. Particularly important. Pet issue for me. The state children's health insurance program expires at the end of month. We have to do that. And this seems like it may be particularly relevant at this exact moment in time. The National Flood Insurance Program also expires

at the end of this month. Today is what, September 7th? September 7th, yeah. And it'll come as a shock that Congress is not planning on doing a lot of five-day weeks. And so there's very limited time and no discussion is how they're going to get these other things done. And so that should be very concerning to people with children or people care about health care, people are in the path of floods or people who like to avoid having, who like to have planes take off and land in the right places. Yeah. And also yesterday, there was a bipartisan hearing on how to stabilize

Obamacare and to strengthen Obamacare. And so I think some sort of fix that stabilizes the health insurance markets would also be welcome in these next couple of months, too, to say the least. And to make sure that Trump makes these payments, these cost sharing reduction payments to insurance companies, which would keep the insurance markets functioning for the people who have health care through Obamacare. So, I mean, there is a long list of demands that Democrats should force Republicans to act on if they want to keep, you know, my view on this whole thing is playing politics on the debt ceiling and using the debt ceiling as hostage is, you know, I don't like that because that could cause some real serious scary damage. But in terms of keeping the government open and keeping government funding, yeah, I think they should make those demands for that for sure. Yeah.

I also think it's worth understanding the difference between what the Republicans tried to do during the Obama years and what the Democrats are doing. Yeah. The Republicans controlled Congress. They controlled the House of Representatives. They were the ones responsible for bringing the bill up, and they were refusing to do that unless the bill met some set of demands, including at one time saying they weren't going to lift the debt ceiling without repealing Obamacare. And in this case, Republicans

are in charge. They bring the bill up. They were unable to muster their people, enough people to do it. And so they need Nancy Pelosi's votes to do it. And so she has every right, because of a failure on the part of the Republicans, to ask for. That's true. Like, I don't, I do not think they should, like, they have leverage and they should use their leverage to push for progressive priorities. That is different than one branch of government going to the other branch of government and saying, we will destroy the economy unless you give me what you want. This is an internal congressional dispute. And if Paul Ryan was better at his job, or there were fewer dead enders in the Republican

Party, then this would not be an issue. But it's because of Paul Ryan's failure, he has to go to Nancy Pelosi, and she's under no obligation to do his job for him, even though she's been doing the job of John Boehner and Paul Ryan since 2011, when the Republicans took over. Yeah, when it comes to governing, the Republican Party is a failed state. It has been throughout the Obama administration and now the Trump administration and Donald Trump winning the presidency does not paper over that basic fact that they cannot govern because as you said, they have these dead enders in their party, particularly in the house, who just say no to everything um because people elected a bunch of

morons to congress donald trump getting elected proves the republican party is a failed state right exactly the ultimate expression of that okay when we come back we will be talking to the senate democratic whip from illinois dick durbin don't go. This is Pod Save America, and there's more on the way. On the pod today, we are very lucky to have Illinois Senator Dick Durbin with us. Senator Durbin, welcome. Good to be with you. Let's start with yesterday's deal. What was the pitch that Senator Schumer and Leader Pelosi made to Trump about a three-month extension, and why do you think he said yes?

Well, I think it was a pretty clean proposal. We said to him, we don't think it's in your best interest or the economy to shut down the government or default on the national debt or to get into a long, protracted fight over it. Nobody's arguing about helping Hurricane Harvey victims. We're all for that. So here's what we'll offer to you. We're going to give you three months right now. All Democrats are going to vote for it. Three-month CR, continuing the spending of the federal government so it's not shut down. A three-month extension of the debt ceiling.

Now that means in December we've got a bigger job ahead of us, but we havemonth extension of the debt ceiling. Now that means in December, we've got a bigger job ahead of us, but we have 90 days before we get there. So let's work on this together. Let's get it done in a bipartisan fashion and show America in the time of a natural disaster crisis and other external threats, we can do something on a bipartisan basis. Senator, how surprised were you that he accepted that deal right off the bat? Senator, how surprised were you that he accepted that deal right off the bat? I won't say totally, but almost. It was a surprise to us.

I think it was a surprise especially to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell in the same room. And they said as much afterwards. But, you know, the president is unpredictable in many ways. And in this case, it turned out he nodded in our direction. And I think he did the right thing. From our point of view, we avoided a protected political battle and all the bad things that could have come if we couldn't reach an agreement. So Senator, your colleague in the House, Luis Gutierrez, has criticized the deal, along with some other activists like United We Dream, saying that Schumer and Pelosi should

have demanded a DREAM Act vote in exchange for the debt ceiling increase. You're obviously the original author of the DREAM Act. You've been fighting for that for 16 years. What do you think about that? Well, listen, Luis is my buddy. We've worked on this together for so many years. I respect him so much. He has the arrest record to show for his dedication to immigration issues. He's the best. We just disagree here in terms of tactics. Here's what I think it boils down to. The DACA dreamers now enjoy 76% approval from the American people. 58% of the Republicans say, don't deport these young people. We're in an amazingly positive position today that I think we can build on and will ultimately lead to the passage of a great DREAM Act

that is going to help hundreds of thousands of young people. Now, let me put this scenario on the table that's been suggested by Luis and others. What if we had said, no, you can't go forward with this bill unless we have the DREAM Act involved. So what would the Republicans have said? Oh, isn't that just perfect? These folks supporting the DREAM Act won't provide help to the Hurricane Harvey victims unless they get their bill up front and center. In fact, they're even threatening to shut down the government and maybe to shut down the American economy. I think that's a bad tactic and a bad position for us to be in. And I think the 76 approval rating would have started to disintegrate. The more practical side of that is I can't get

anything through the Senate to help the DREAM Act now or 10 days from now or 10 weeks from now without 60 votes. I have 48 Democrats on a good day, and I think I have 48 who will be with me. I need 12 Republicans. Threatening Harvey victim support if we don't get the DREAM Act doesn't win me one single Republican vote. So I get their anxiety. I get their emotion. But let's think about this coolly. How are we going to get to the finish line with 60 votes plus in the Senate?

So three months from now, now that the Harvey relief package is off the table and we face another vote on both funding the government and the debt ceiling, do you think that Democrats should make that vote contingent on a DREAM Act vote? Is that is that the plan to sort of kick the pressure down three months down the road? We are not saying, you know, we're not saying making a contingency a quid pro quo. We're saying that at the end of the day, in the middle of December, when we have the big bill, we want to see two things included, the DREAM Act and whatever we need to keep the American health care system moving forward. And we believe, because of the decision which we're about to make today for a three-month extension, we'll be in a better position to make that happen.

Because look at what we're going to face in December. We're going to face additional Harvey aid. This is a down payment. The billions of dollars that we're coming up with, I should say, is a front-end payment. We know it's going to be a dramatically larger amount of money that's going to be needed come December. God forbid what's going to happen with Hurricane Irma in the meantime, the fires in the West. So I'm putting together this scenario of all the things that need absolutely to be done. The problem is the Republicans can't deliver on those things.

They have a spotty record when it comes to disaster assistance. They tend to be in favor of disaster assistance for their own states only. And that, to me, is unfair, and we ought to do better. But that's going to be the reality when it comes to Republican votes. Many of them are not going to be for a long-term spending bill. A lot of them have sworn that they'll never vote for extending the debt ceiling. The Republicans are going to need Democratic votes. We are in a better, stronger position to make sure that our priorities, the DREAM Act, the Affordable Care Act are included.

Senator, Speaker Ryan today was asked about whether he put the DREAM Act or the House version of the DREAM Act, I guess, on the floor. And he said he was looking for a measure that would combine border security with enshrining DACA into law. Is that something that you are open to? And have you heard from some of your Republican colleagues about how they're thinking about the situation over the next six months? Many of them publicly and privately have told me border security is an important part of it. And I haven't ruled that out, but I have ruled out some specifics. I am not going to vote for a 2,200-mile wall. I don't think any Democrats will. Many Republicans will, incidentally. Secondly, I am not going to change the sanctuary city provisions that Attorney General Sessions has been talking about. And third, I am not going to

protect the Dreamers with a deal that means their parents are going to be deported. So take those things off the table, and if you're talking about actual border security, I'll pull up a chair. Let's talk it over about what might get this done. Do you know who those 12 votes are in the Senate that you'll need to get to 60 on a Dream Act? Have you been thinking about that? Pretty close. I've got four already. I have a fifth one today is ready to step forward.

And I know Lindsey Graham's working as well. He believes that reaching 60, the 12 Republicans, is not going to be a heavy lift. He thinks they're out there. Once we put together this package that he supports,

and I've kind of deferred to him. But as I look across at the Republicans, there are a lot of them who've come up to me and said, let's sit down and talk it over. So I think they realize it's the right thing to do, and it's a popular thing to do. And they're willing to take on some people on the right. If President Trump endorses whatever we come up with,

it's going to give some of them cover to join us. I was curious whether you thought this deal from the other day was a just sort of a one-time deal, or you see some opportunity to maybe work a little closer with President Trump going forward? Well, I don't know. You know, listen, I've been in politics for a while, and I've had a lot of people sitting across the table from me, political adversaries, and even if we disagree completely, I've generally understood their thinking as to how they reach a point, their political position. I find it very difficult to grasp the president's logical train of thought when it comes to political issues. After all he said about immigration, he continued to make exceptions

when it came to the Dreamers and DACA over and over again. We love the Dreamers, and he told me personally, don't worry, we'll take care of those kids. And then last Tuesday, he sends out Attorney General Sessions and drops a ton of bricks on 780,000 of these Dreamers. Not 12 hours later, he's tweeting about how we have to fix this. So I'm trying to stick with the president and his logic on this, and it's hard. But I think at the end of the day, I really believe at this moment as we speak, I think

at the end of the day, he does want to fix it. He doesn't want this on his record, on his conscience. Senator Durbin, thank you so much for joining us. I know you've got to go vote. We appreciate the time, and good luck with everything. Take care. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you. All right, everyone. Thanks again to Senator Durbin for joining us today, and we will see you next week. Bye, guys. Outro Music