Pod Save America - “The moment of truth for the resistance.”

Episode Date: May 4, 2017

House Republicans stake their careers on Trumpcare, and stopping the bill in the Senate becomes the biggest test yet for the resistance movement. Then, Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello joins Jon and Dan to talk about the Democratic Party’s economic vision, and Ana Marie Cox joins to talk about health care.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Today on the pod we have a Democratic candidate for governor in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Tom Perriello. And later we'll talk to the host of Crooked Media's With Friends Like These, Anna Marie Cox. Also, subscribe to DeRay McKesson's new pod, Pod Save the People. He had his first episode this week. It was outstanding.

He had a great conversation with Cory Booker. He talked to Andy Slavitt about healthcare. It's exciting. It's a great podcast. It's wonderful. I do feel, I know we're all part of the same family, but I kind of feel like DeRay stole Cory Booker from us. We'll talk to Cory Booker at some day, too.

I thought it was a great interview with Cory Booker, too. He was pretty loose, which is good. Yeah, that's a very good format for Cory Booker. Yeah, I thought so. Anyway, we'll be talking to DeRay more. We're going to talk to him on Monday's show, too, about what he's got in store for next week. So subscribe to Pod Save the People.

We will be in Seattle on Friday night, me and Dan and Lovett and Tommy, all together with Governor Jay Inslee. We'll be doing a live show there, and we'll be doing a live show on Saturday night, all of us in San Francisco, with Senator Kamala Harris. So yeah, and we'll be putting some of those out as pods as well, so you'll be able to hear those if you're not going. And also, merch is on sale again. You can get yourself a Pod Save America t-shirt by going to Cotton Bureau. So, all kinds of stuff happening.

Can you get a Repeal and Go Fuck Yourself shirt, too? You know, I was going to ask Love at that, because he just sent me the link that it's live, and I feel like it might just be the Pod Save America shirt, but it really feels like a time for the Repeal and fuck yourself shirt like I might buy like five right now that's right that's right um I think we should begin there I know on our outline we were um we had the uh 2016 Comey Clinton redux first but I feel like since uh house republicans have just voted probably by the time you hear this to uh deny millions and millions of americans medical care that's more important than uh relitigating the fucking 2016 election for the hundredth time so maybe it's hard it's hard to know what's less enjoyable right yeah talking about the passage of

wealth care or relitigating the 2016 election. Both sound awesome. Yeah, no shit. Okay, so like I said, by the time you hear this podcast, because I think they're voting at 1 p.m. Eastern, the House of Representatives will have voted on Trump care, Ryan care, wealth care. Ryan care wealth care and it looks like right now unless something crazy happens that they have the votes to pass this

shit burger as Dan likes to say this is a shit burger was an old phrase we like to use in the White House since there are quite a few of them that we got there so we should go over what's in the version of the bill

um because it's very very very very bad uh it is basically a trillion dollar tax cut for the rich financed by near trillion dollar cut in health care funding for the middle class and the poor including special education services for children that was a new one that i saw last night because this bill, of course, is cutting Medicaid by $880 billion, even though Donald Trump promised a million fucking times during the campaign that he would never cut Medicaid. So that's one big promise broken for Donald Trump. Of course, what allowed the House to pass this bill is the fact that they brought along the Freedom Caucus, which was opposed to the bill because it, of course, wasn't cruel enough earlier. And so they added an

amendment that said states can choose to allow insurance companies to charge unlimited rates for people who have pre-existing conditions. All they basically have to do is set up an insurance pool, which basically throws like a few dollars a day at people with pre-existing conditions. That's what it amounts to. States can also eliminate essential benefits, hospitalization, ambulance rides, checkups, a cap on lifetime benefits, maternity care, prescriptions, substance abuse, mental health. One thing that the Wall Street Journal noticed

this morning, employers, if you get your health care through your employer, your employer can reinstate annual limits on the amount of care that they cover, that insurance companies cover. So that could affect not just people who buy insurance on the Obamacare market, but about 91 million Americans could be affected and could see caps on the amount of health care that their insurance company provides every year because of this bill. And of course, members of Congress are exempt from everything that they're about to pass right now. So what do you think? But I guess they're going to take that provision out today, right?

Well, what they're going to do is they have to pass a separate bill for it. But that separate bill requires 60 votes in the Senate. It's not part of reconciliation, so they don't really think that's going to go anywhere. Well, let's kind of break this down for a bit. Yeah. It is true that the people who've really been living fat and happy in this country for too long are cancer patients. Cancer patients. Yeah, cancer patients. Access to too much good health care at the expense of everyone else. So I'm glad that we've decided to fix that problem.

Cancer patients are the new welfare queens. Also, by the way, in this bill, under what qualifies as a pre-existing condition, being pregnant, sexual assault qualifies as a pre-existing condition under this bill, so you could be charged more if you're a victim of sexual assault. I mean, it is just, it is so fucking gross.

And, like, what is happening right now is also proving the point that Donald Trump is a symptom and not a cause of the sickness at the heart of Washington, D.C. right now. sickness at the heart of Washington, D.C. right now, because what the House Republicans are doing is such a combination of incompetence and maliciousness that, you know, it's just, I mean, because they are voting on this bill. There were no public hearings. There was no time for debate. The House Republicans own rule said that they would have to post the text of any bill that they are voting on online for at least three days. It's been up for about 10 hours now. Most of them have not read the bill. And, of course, they have refused to wait for a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which would tell us both how much this bill costs and

what impact it would have on people. Every single bill gets a CBO score, every single bill. And this bill, which will remake one sixth of the American economy, they are going to vote on it with no score from the congressional budget office. I mean, well, why wouldn't you? Why would you wait to know how much something costs before you buy it? Would you buy a house if you didn't get the inspection or know how much what the price was? It's fucking insane. And they have basically, there is something impressive about this. When you go through everything, everyone who's affected by this, you know, people, pregnant people, people who are victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, cancer patients, people who have health insurance from their employer, people

who have health insurance in the individual market, people who have Medicaid. It takes a lot of effort to fuck everyone over. Right. They didn't miss anyone. They missed themselves. The only people exempted from the royal fucked-overness of this are members of Congress. And then they're going to do a symbolic vote to suggest that's not the case. I also feel, listening to you today, that every good podcast has, like, a yin and a yang.

And usually the yin is, you're more hopeful. You wrote a lot of yes-we-can speeches. And I'm more kind of the dark guy in this. which is, and I'm more kind of the dark guy in this. I feel like today I really have to step my positivity to counterbalance a guy very upset about this and getting into Twitter fights with the dregs of the internet until late into the evening last night. Well, look, I am not cynical and hopeless right now. I am fucking angry. And I think that everyone who's angry should turn that anger into as much activism as we can possibly muster right now. I am fucking angry. And I think that everyone who's angry should turn that

anger into as much activism as we can possibly muster right now. I'm not ready to give up by any means, but I am. You know what it is, Dan, is that I want to believe, and I thought this was true, that there are some Republican representatives in Congress who, even though we completely disagree with them, even though they make bonehead moves, even though they fucking supported Donald Trump, that there is some semblance of a conscience in there. and that those people would stand up for a bill like this and say, this is too much for me. I'm going to say no, or even be smart enough to know that they're in vulnerable districts and that they might lose their seat. Right. And they can just say, you know, I'm going to stand up against this. Right. And I wouldn't even call them moderates. They'd still probably be conservatives, but at least they'd be principled conservatives.

And it doesn't appear that those Republicans exist in Washington anymore. Or it appears that, I mean, right now I'm looking at a whip count where hard no's are about 15. So there's about fucking 15 of those Republicans in the House of Representatives. And it's just like, you know, I like to believe that there's possibility for bipartisanship. I like to believe that there's two parties who just disagree on things and we can come. But, like, I don't think that's true anymore. I don't think that's true in Washington at all. Maybe it's, hopefully it will be true in the Senate by the time we get there, but it's certainly not true in the House of Representatives and every single Republican in the House of Representatives who votes yes on

this bill should lose their fucking job in November of 2018. I mean, it's depressing. There is no question about it that the system only works with two parties and we only have one functioning political party. Right. The fact that Martha McSally stood up and like, let's do this fucking thing, or whatever it was she said in caucus today. As they played Eye of the Tiger. Oh, it's just like, one, can we update our fucking cultural references? It's 2017. That movie came out the year I was born. It's just, I mean, also like the array of groups that are opposed to this legislation,

the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the American Nurses Association, the American Cancer Society, the AARP, the March of Dimes. I mean, you can't get that many interest groups to agree on anything in Washington. You can't get that many interest groups to agree on anything in Washington. This is the point, to your point about Trump being the symptom, not the pre-existing condition that plagues our political system, is everything is about putting points on the board. They would pass anything right now. Anything. So they can say they passed something. And they are passing anything because they can't tell you what's in it.

Half these people couldn't tell you what's in the bill. Certainly not the president of the United fucking States. Well, and you know what it is, too? I said this on Twitter, too. I would invite any Republican politician or maybe any Republican consultant to come on Pod Save America and try to defend the merits of this bill. No one, if they were making an argument, if they were saying, no, this is what we believe. We don't believe insurance companies should be regulated.

We don't believe that the government should provide any assistance to pay for medical care for any American. We believe the free market should handle it. And we should believe all the money that we spend to care for sick and poor and the elderly, we should put that, we should give that money back to the wealthy people who pay taxes. If they wanted to stand up and say that, I'd say, OK, well, at least at least you have a principled stand. It's not a principle I agree with. I think it's gross. But at least you're being honest about it. None of them will be honest about it.

They're all lying. And like, you know, all of our like, you don't see any Republican consultants talking about how awful this bill is. You didn't see any Republican politicians online talking about how great this bill is. No one will talk about the merits of this bill. No one has the courage to actually defend this piece of shit. None of them. And if they had the courage, they don't know what's in it. So it's impossible to defend. Right. The passing it without a CBO score is so unconscionable and irresponsible that it's hard to fathom. The fact that we, for a long time in this country, particularly in Washington, had to treat Paul Ryan like he was some serious deficit hawk, policy wonk, cared about government.

He is leading the charge on the most irresponsible legislating possibly in history. This is one-sixth of the economy, and we're not going to even know what it costs. I mean that's insane. We're not going to know how many people are affected by it, but pass it anyway so that you can make it in the winner's column of Chris Eliza's winners and losers column that will inevitably come after this. I mean, what we do know is we know that we know people will go bankrupt because of this bill if it became law. We know that people will lose access to medical care and we know that people will die because of it.

We know this. And Republicans don't even want to find out how many will be affected like this before they vote. They refuse to even calculate what their actions may cost the rest of the country. They refuse to even calculate before they vote. Because the whole argument is why they're not getting the CBO score. The truthful argument is the last version of this bill collapsed when they got the CBO score. So we definitely should not get the CBO score. That's one option. The other option would be write a better bill that gets a better CBO score. But

instead they're just like, well, why would we wait for the CBO score? Let's just pass it while we can so we can all go home. Donald Trump will send nice tweets about us. Breitbart won't savage us. Maybe Tucker Carlson will be nice. We can live in our little right-wing bubble and deal with the consequences later. I mean, it's the short termism of the politics of this is so crazy. It's hard to fathom. Yeah, well, no, you're right. I mean, they think they can be protected

like on Fox and Friends this morning. That group of fucking, you know, bright light bulbs there said that pre-existing conditions are a luxury. Being protected for pre-existing conditions is a luxury for Americans. So they do know that they have an entire right-wing propaganda machine that will prop them up if they take this vote.

But I think, I mean, the reason they're doing this, or like if you, you know, reporters have asked a lot of them or had sources that said this, is they believe that if they pass this bill and they send it to the Senate, there's no way that the Senate will keep the worst parts pass this bill and they send it to the Senate, there's no way that the Senate will keep the worst parts of this bill, which, you know, is, I mean, we should talk about the Senate because that's what's going to happen next, but it is probably true that the Senate will strip out the worst parts of this bill. But, you know, passing a bill that you know will seriously harm the American people and really deny medical care to millions of people because you're hoping that the other chamber will fix it seems to be pretty weak sauce to me. It is weak sauce, I think. I mean, this is all about for the last 105 days or whatever we've been suffering through this eternity of the Trump presidency.

Every day, the press, the right wing infrastructure, Trump are like, when are we going to pass? When is Paul Ryan going to pass repeal of ACA? When is Paul Ryan? No one is asking when is Mitch McConnell going to do it? Right. when is Paul Ryan? No one is asking when is Mitch McConnell going to do it. Paul Ryan would like to pass the shit burger, if you will, to McConnell and let people start asking McConnell what he will do without any regard for the consequences of his members who he's making vote on this, or the country. It's just, get this off my plate, get them so I can get to cutting more taxes for the wealthy. That's what this is about.

Or if McConnell can't do anything with it and this thing gets stuck in the Senate, then Paul Ryan can say, and the House Republicans can say, hey, we did our jobs. It's the Senate's fault. Don't look at us, right? Like that's what they're looking for. So like, let's talk about what could happen in the Senate. Basically, the reason, and you know, some Democrats, some people yesterday were saying like, well, we should want them to pass this because, you know, it'll be a politically suicidal vote for a lot of these House Republicans to take. And then it'll die in the Senate, so we'll be fine. It'll be the best of all worlds. I'm not there because I think this is just, it's playing with fire and I wouldn't count on, I think anytime you're counting on Republican politicians to be smart or to be somewhat principled, you're in a bad spot. You should not be betting on that in any way, shape, or form.

But what the Senate can do is they can take this bill. It will go over to the Senate. Mitch McConnell can decide that most of the provisions are fucking crazy. And he could basically rip up the entire bill and start from scratch. crazy and he could basically rip up the entire bill and start from scratch and the senate so then the question is what can you pass in the senate with 51 votes um to send back to the house so they could come up with some bill that i don't know i mean i'm sure it will i'm sure it will not have the provisions for pre-existing conditions um maybe it will cut medicaid less than this current bill cuts Medicaid

because a lot of Republican senators in the Senate have already said that they don't like the Medicaid cuts in the House bill, in the first version of the House bill. So let's say, you know, McConnell passes something that is not as awful as the House bill, but it's still fairly awful. Then at that point, the Senate, it would go into, so they'd take it into conference, and then the Senate version would go back to the House, and the Senate will basically jam the House. And at that point, because the bill is not quite as cruel as this one, the House Freedom Caucus is likely to not approve of the bill that comes back to the House. But then the question becomes, does the House Freedom Caucus decide that they're the last people standing in between Obamacare

repeal happening? And then you have to count on basically the House Freedom Caucus, the hard right members of the House to stop Obamacare repeal from happening. And I just don't know that we can, I don't know we can expect that. We should not expect it. If McConnell sends a bill to the House, it will pass. I mean, I think we have in the prediction game for a second, but there's no way that that 10, 12, 15 Freedom Caucus members are going to be the ones who stand in the way of this, of the Republican wet dream of the last decade. They just won't. It will be, this is why this is so dangerous.

Is, you know, Democrats, it's nice that Republicans took a really shitty vote that we can run ads on and protest them, but this is very dangerous for people who need a lot of help because now Paul Ryan is an incompetent fuckstick. And I know that may seem disrespectful to the office of the speaker, but so what? Mitch McConnell is competent as fuck. He is evil, but he is competent.

And this in his hands makes me nervous. The other guys on the left on the house are just a collection of numbskulls who can't organize themselves. But McConnell is good. He's very good at his job. And if he can send something back with 50 votes, that will become the law of the land. And so for McConnell to pass this thing, he can only lose two Republican senators. to pass this thing, he can only lose two Republican senators. And if he loses three, it doesn't pass the Senate. So now the question becomes, who do we pressure in the Senate to oppose whatever McConnell comes up with? It seems like Susan Collins is one good bet because she actually is a moderate in the real sense of the word. So it does seem like Susan Collins may resist voting for something that's bad.

But then, you know, it's hard to figure out who's next on the Republican side. And I think most of the pressure ends up focusing on Dean Heller from Nevada and Jeff Flake from Arizona because those are two senators who are up in 2018 and they are in two purple states. Obviously, Nevada more so than Arizona, but still, you could qualify them both as swing states and they could both lose their seats in 2018 if we run the right candidate and it's the right environment. And so it seems like putting pressure on those two is the next step. Yes, I think that's right. And this is, so people are asking like, what should we do? And there is put pressure on those specific members you mentioned in the Republicans in the Senate. We should do that. But also the resistance, whether it's in the form of phone calls, showing up at town halls, protests, donating money to challengers, has to show that this vote has lit a fire under Democrats that should make Republicans very nervous.

They have to know that this has massive political consequences in a way that can maybe force them. If they believe the House is at risk over this, then there's a chance to get them to pump the brakes at some point. there's a chance to get them to pump the brakes at some point. And so this is – we got a recess or a district work period or whatever the term is coming up. I know all of the – our various progressive organization, Friends of the Pod are doing a lot of work. I know you and I both have been promoting Swingleff's effort to raise money for the challengers of vulnerable Republicans who are going to support this bill. But all of that activity sends a message that is important. This is the moment of truth for the resistance right now. I mean, this is it's like if and Ben Wickler move on made this made this point that you were just making this morning, which is you're right, like, eventually, we're gonna have to focus our efforts on the Senate and members in the Senate, but we have to prove that the House members who voted for this will pay a political price.

And it's like, I want to see all of the energy that went into organizing the Women's March, that organized the Climate March, the Science March, all the different marches, all the protests, everything that we've done up until this point, that has to be replicated on an even larger scale to let the House of Representatives know how we feel about this vote. That means protesting their home offices, protesting in D.C., swarming town halls, calling them. I mean, like all of the anger, all of the resistance, all of the opposition should be it should be demonstrated in the next week. And and I do think you mentioned the swing left thing, which is great. We I was talking to Ethan at Swing Left last night and he was and we were talking about, you know, these district funds and how they're doing.

And, you know, we thought maybe like some of the members, House members who are undecided and who are have quadrupled the amount of money raised for Daryl Issa's eventual challenger just since late last night. And I think that we could, you know, with a concerted effort, we could all probably do that for a lot of the most vulnerable Republicans who are up in 2018 over the next week and just a show of force at how much money we could raise for their challengers to help them lose their seats. I think that's very important. And it's a way to channel the, I think, real immense anger and fear that people feel in this vote, because everyone knows someone who's going to get screwed by this bill, everyone. And to channel that into action is the only logical response to

the logic, the insanity that's happening in Washington right now. Right. Because clearly right now, a lot of these Republican House members, they thought all the energies they saw at their town halls, all the opposition, all the phone calls, they still believe that this represents a small minority of their constituents or that it's outside activists that aren't even their constituents. So we have to show them over the next couple of weeks that that's not true, that it's more than just and we have to make sure that it's not true, that it's not just a minority of people out there who are very noisy, but that it's enough people to cost them their jobs.

Oh, man. minority of people out there who are very noisy but that it's enough people to cost them their jobs oh man they'd have to then they'd have to go in the individual market and get this shitty health care that they just passed these fucking people man i don't know can i rant about something for a second please do all right so per usual, I woke up early. Do you want to talk about Donald Trump marrying Joe and Mika? No, I actually don't. I don't want to rant about that, but we can rant about that in a second. Good. No, I just wanted to bring it up. Okay. Thank you. And if he's unavailable, Jared Kushner is also a volunteer. Right. No, they have a backup, which is great. Or Jared could be the ring bearer. It'll be great. If Jared is not in the Middle East,

brokering Middle East peace, bringing Silicon Valley values to the federal government or having a bilateral with the Chinese government, he will be able to do this. Perfect. So I woke up early. I read the tip sheets this morning. Ooh, I didn't even read them this morning. I know.

It was just it was torture. It was torture. And there is nothing that infuriates you and I, our fellow Pod Save America co-hosts and rational thinking people all across the world more than when politics is covered as a game. Yes. And so if your response to millions of people losing their health care, including cancer patients, people who have been the victims of sexual assault or domestic violence if your response to that is to decide which politicians are the winners in this quit your fucking job there are only losers here there are only losers and they're the american people this is not a quote-unquote win for paul ryan does it mean that donald trump is a master negotiator does it mean that the new

reinz prebis gary cone wing of the White House, whatever, did anything right. It just means that there is a section of American people who needed help, got help, and now may have that help taken away. That's all that matters here. And the fact that we cover this like the NBA playoffs is how we end up in a situation the republicans in the house think all that matters is putting points on the board by passing something no matter how horrible it is or how ignorant they are at the details of it okay rant over i feel better no once again trump is a symptom and and not the cause and um and and he donald trump and and official Washington deserve each other in every way. And we should fucking clear that city out and start from scratch because it is gross in every way.

And it is ruining the rest of the country. So that's where we are right now. Shall we move on to uh the 2016 redux i just want to i want to raise in the on this pod for all of our listeners the same question i asked you over text earlier this morning yeah why did the house democrats not adopt the favro pot save america strategy of holding i don't know their votes on the omnibus hostage for this? I don't know. We could be sitting here right now and the House Democrats could be saying, we are not voting on the spending bill to avoid a government shutdown unless we wait for a CBO score or you don't vote on this horrible, horrible

health care bill. And we are willing to shut the government down over this. They had leverage. And I don't, I'm not sure why they didn't use that leverage. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go off and rant about this because possibly there's a good explanation. And so I don't, you know, I don't want to jump the gun here, but it's, it's very strange to me why they didn't use that leverage. Yeah. I am also not using an additional rant for this because Nancy Pelosi is a master legislative strategist. She is – I mean we would not have passed the Affordable Care Act or a million other things without her. We wouldn't have stopped a bunch of terrible shit the Republicans did without her. So I imagine there is a reason.

reason it's not the one that you know a bunch of the democratic aides have said on background that democrats really want republicans to vote for this because it'll now they have a bad vote we can run campaigns against them yeah that is true that this vote makes the house more in play but the risk of lose of 24 million people losing health care is not a risk worth taking for to get one bad vote you might be able to run some ads on. So I just I'm just I hope someone someone out there with better knowledge of legislative process than us can explain to us via Twitter what happened here, because it seems strange to me. Yeah, me too. Let us let us know, House Democrats. We really actually don't have much time, thank God for the 2016 redux before we get to before we call up Tom Perriello. But do you have any thoughts

on... Hillary was interviewed by Christiane Amanpour. She said, of course, I take personal responsibility for my loss. I was the candidate. I was the person who was on the ballot. But of course, she also said, if the election had been on October 27th, I'd be your president. Of course, on October 28th, that was the day that James Comey released a letter saying he discovered more of her emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop. Emails that, of course, turned out to be duplicates that had no bearing whatsoever on the FBI's investigation. Trump tweeted about this later in the night. He said, Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary. He gave her a free pass for her many bad

deeds. The Trump-Russia story was phony. It was just an excuse used by Democrats for losing. Maybe I just ran a great campaign. And then Comey testifies before Congress and he says, it makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact in the election, but honestly, I wouldn't have changed my decision because he thought, he said, quote, concealment in my view would have been catastrophic. I don't know. What do you make of all this? Well, Comey's answer was terrible. It was terrible.

I mean, it is not true that if he had just waited five days, he could have known what was in the emails and then not set the entire world on fire and shifted the election to Donald Trump. Right. First point. That's my thing. He didn't have to conceal forever.

He just had to basically wait to see what the emails were before letting the world know. It would have taken one fucking week. What Comey did is basically the equivalent of a doctor telling you you probably have cancer before they do the biopsy to find out that you don't. Yes. Right? Yes, that is exactly right. they do the biopsy to find out that you don't. Yes. Right. Yes, that is exactly right.

And what it does not explain is why he felt such a compulsion to tell everyone about the emails, but not about the ongoing investigation into Trump associates colluding with Russia to shift the election in Donald Trump's favor. Also seems like a piece of relevant information voters might have been interested in. And the reason which he can can't say, is he thought Hillary was going to win, and it would be better to say this, and therefore be in— he thought Hillary was going to win, the problem was going to take the House, we're going to keep the House and the Senate, and therefore he was not going to be up Schitt's Creek with his appropriators for the next four years of his life.

And it was a tragic mistake that has very real consequences we're seeing today. My other takeaway from this whole annoying conversation is that the body politic, the press, the pundits, politicians are incapable of having a thoughtful, nuanced conversation about anything Hillary Clinton says. She makes people insane. And some of that may be through the fault of some of her secretiveness over the years. And she will stipulate she should not have had a private email server. That was not smart. She did not handle having a private email server great. And she should have gone to Wisconsin. All true. But it's like people are incapable of holding two thoughts in their head at the same time.

She can take responsibility for her mistakes that created the situation where they made the election so close that Comey could tip it and also say Comey tips and have those two things not be in conflict. But we can't do that. Well, yeah, I mean, absolutely. And my thing is, like, when I complain about the media not taking any responsibility for their coverage in 2016, I do not say that to absolve Hillary Clinton of responsibility or fault or any mistake she made. Because, like, forget about Hillary Clinton for a second. The way that the media covered 2016, that could happen again and probably will happen again in 2018 and 2020. And the mistakes they made, they will likely repeat, not just for Hillary Clinton, not just for Democrats, but probably Republicans too. Like this idea of covering things as a game and sensationalizing things and overhyping things

like the Comey letter, which they all did for an entire week, like that will happen to other candidates of both parties going forward, unless the media is reflective about how they acted. And many reporters are reflective about it, and they've told us privately that they're reflective about it. But there are certain reporters at certain institutions who refuse to admit any problem with their coverage whatsoever. And that, to me, is a problem. And it has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. It has nothing to do with defending Hillary Clinton. It has to do with how you cover politics. And I worry that it will happen again in the future.

The network news spent, I think, three times as much time on Hillary Clinton's emails as they did on every other policy issue combined. Like, that's not defensible. You cannot – even if you think it was very wrong – even if you take the most extreme case of what is wrong about having a private email server, it cannot be that you think that should be covered three times as much as all the other policy issues combined. That's just not defensible. And why can't we all reflect? Hillary Clinton has never said that she'd pay her own responsibility. No person that I have talked to who worked on the Clinton campaign privately, publicly, on Twitter has ever done anything other than acknowledge they made multiple mistakes that contributed to the outcome of the election. It's such a straw man argument to say Hillary doesn't take responsibility. She blames us. That's, it's such a straw man argument to say, Hillary doesn't take responsibility. She blames us. That's not what's happening. And it's just so, it's just such a, it's such a stupid

conversation that we should just all stop it. Right. I disagree. We're not going to talk about it. Yeah. And look, like, it's like, we, we all fucked up. We all made mistakes. We like, and we should all acknowledge that it's not that hard to do that. Right. Like Democrats acknowledge it. Hillary should acknowledge it. Obama made mistakes. All of us made mistakes. Everyone did. But the media is part of that. It didn't have to be that way. I remember when you guys

on the pod interviewed Pete Williams, a very smart, sober reporter who covers the Department of Justice for NBC about the Comey letter. And he was like, you know, it's very possible that this that this these new emails are nothing, that they're duplicative, that they're not going to tell us anything about the investigation.

So we should pause. We should wait. That was a very smart, serious thing to do. That was a much more responsible way to handle it than the way that the New York fucking Times handled it by plastering it all over the front page with six stories. Um, and then, you know, leading, and then, or a lot of times the network news, which like led with it every single night. And look, if Hillary was a Republican, it still would be irresponsible for them to have done that. It just is. It has nothing to do with like them being partisan or them being anti-Hillary or anti-Democrat or anything else. It has to do with them being irresponsible at how they cover political revelations, which a lot of times the political media is.

And they need to learn that lesson. And maybe that's why they're trusted less than Congress and Donald Trump. Maybe they could reflect on that. Why bother? Why bother? Why bother? Okay. When we come back, we will have the gubernatorial candidate for the Commonwealth of Virginia, Tom Perriello.

Who I should disclose that I have been supporting and signed an endorsement letter for. Okay, the disclosure. I may do it after this interview. We'll see how it goes. Okay, when we come back, Tom Perriello. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. On the pod today, we are very fortunate to have Tom Perriello, who is running for governor in the Commonwealth of Virginia and longtime friend of the Obama administration and a lot of us Obama folks. So, Tom, welcome to the pod.

Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here. So we have you on in a day where, by the time people listen to this, it seems like the House of Representatives will have passed Trumpcare. You took a very tough vote for Obamacare in 2010 and then lost your next race for Congress. But you've said since then that you were very proud of that vote and it was worth the political consequences. What are your feelings watching this go on today? Well, you know, I just wish I could sit down with all of the Republican members and say, you know, there's still time to do the right thing uh... the reality is you know i have not regretted for a second supporting that

bill and uh... rarely the week go by that i don't hear from the family either that was a constituent uh... or anywhere in the country talking about the fact that uh... in some way their lives were saved or their family was protected from bankruptcy by the affordable care act and you know those stories stick with you an impacts stick with you a lot more than having a couple extra years in the House of Representatives. So I said before, there are a lot worse jobs than being a former member of Congress.

And I really enjoyed all the service I've gotten to do since then. So, you know, ultimately, I think the members can get stuck on the idea that this is a political game instead of people's lives. And in this case, the consequences are very, very real. And I do think those Republicans who step up and resist this march towards ruining a lot of lives are going to look back and be proud that they did that. I was wondering, how do you think this issue would play out in the context of your governor's race? I know Virginia has had epic battles around Medicaid expansion over the years. And so how do you think health care affects your race, either in the primary or for the general election, were you to win the primary?

Well, look, people have definitely been using the word karma in this case, where it was a vote that was seen as very unpopular when I cast it, but is now seen as a positive vote, particularly in the Democratic primary here in Virginia. But I think sometimes what's tough in politics is doing the right thing is something that pays off over, you know, a decade. But our political news cycles are 24 hours and our election cycles are every two years in Virginia every year. hours and our election cycles are every two years in Virginia every year. So here I think there's a deep appreciation among Democrats across the state for, first and foremost, for the Affordable Care Act itself, but also for the idea of sticking with President Obama when he was a little less popular. There were lots of Democrats lined up to stand there when he was at his peak, but then there were others who stuck with him when those numbers were a little lower

because they knew it was the right thing to do. So there's a lot of goodwill for that, and a lot of folks across Virginia who I think at the time rightly just weren't sure what the ACA was going to mean, and that was partly on us for not doing a great job of explaining it, and now have seen what it means, which is that there are actually more opportunities for small businesses to buy in on exchanges and people to not feel like they have to be stuck in a job for the rest of their life just because that's where their health care is instead of pursuing their dreams.

So very positive. I think the Medicaid expansion issue is actually something, though, that's going to be a major, major problem for Republicans, not just at gillespie the likely uh... governor's nominee but also for delegates around the state who've come out and voted against it uh... because it's something that just makes a lot of sense some of the reddest parts of virginia uh... where the legislators voted against it they can literally look across the border into kentucky and have

relatives and friends who are getting the Medicaid expansion and are asking why the heck we don't have that here in Virginia. So, you know, I think these are going to be electoral issues, and I think they're going to be ones where the Republicans have tough answers to give. So, Tom, you first chose to run for Congress in 2007 against a six-term incumbent whose lowest margin of victory up until that point had been 19 points. You ran as a progressive in a deep red district of Virginia, and you came from 30 points behind to win by about 7,000 votes. I think it's all of our hope that a lot of people choose to make that choice and to run for office in 2018. What kind of advice can you give them? How did you do that?

How did you pull it off? Well, I hate to correct the pod ever, but I was actually 36% behind and won by 700 votes. Oh, 700. Oh my God. Okay. Well, there you go. You know, the first thing, and I think we've already seen this from the resistance across the country, is to never let other people tell us what's possible. You know, just a few months ago, people would have thought it was impossible to save the Affordable Care Act. We're still at least in the game on that, regardless of today's vote. We've seen people show up at airports around the country to resist Donald Trump's terrible travel ban, and the courts start to do their job behind that. So I think, you know, the most important thing at moments of great change like this

are to take a bold idea of what's possible. And I think we did that in running in the 5th District, not just the idea that the district was winnable, but that the way to win it was actually to stand strong for progressive values, call out inequality, call out corruption in the system, including those who had helped, like these incumbents, to make it so. And you see that in our race today. You know, I came out and the first candidate to refuse any money from Dominion Power and the electric utilities and come out against these two gas pipelines, which some of the pundits want to pitch as sort of a left or progressive position, which is fine, but it's also extremely popular with a lot of people on the right

who see the utilities as having too much control and choking out farmers and small business owners from being part of the new energy economy with distributed power. So I think that actually when we stand up strong for these and fight for a fairer system, there's a lot of appreciation across the political spectrum for that. So it is exciting to see people get into politics who've never done that before. I can assure you that I did not have that political experience, and I think some of the best advice I got at the beginning was to try to follow my instincts and not listen to necessarily what the political professionals thought.

And generally speaking, where I did follow those convictions, those are the things I have no regrets about. And where we made compromises are the ones that, you know, I do look back on with some regrets. So I think it's an exciting time to have so many people coming into politics, whether as candidates or with new organizations, the indivisibles and huddles and everyone else. And it's just been awesome to see. by both Bernie Sanders, John Podesta, the chair of Hillary's campaign, and a bunch of senior Obama administration officials, many of whom supported Hillary Clinton very vocally. How have you been able to navigate that divide? And where do you see the party going? Well, we're kind of trying to be the greatest hits album in a way. I think what we want to do

is learn from the great leaders that have come before, but put that together for kind of a new generation of ideas and solutions, because we have a new problem. So we try to draw on, you know, Secretary Clinton's unbelievable managerial skills and policy depth. I think Warren and Sanders really get the extent to which people feel like the system is fundamentally corrupted and broken and leaving people behind, and also from President Obama, that idea to keep an eye on the aspirational, to not just resist and be defined negatively against what's going on, but to always try to call us to our highest values. And I think right now we want to not just resist Trump by stopping his agenda, but actually going to the root causes of what allowed someone

like Donald Trump to rise. And I think there are two forces in particular we're taking head on in this campaign. One is this idea of genuine economic anxiety, and the other is the issue of resurgent racism, both overt and structural. And I think it's important to understand economically right now, because both of these were factors. And I think it's important to understand economically right now, because both of these were factors. The people's economic anxieties are not because they are too dumb to realize how great the economy has been for them.

It's actually because I think they're 10 steps ahead of the policymakers in Washington and Richmond in understanding that the economy today is leaving a lot of folks behind. And it's actually about to get proper because of the factors of automation and consolidation in the economy i think these are things the democratic party needs to start talking about on the automation side we could be thirty five to fifty percent of jobs in the next fifteen years disrupted uh... which is a nice word for screwed

by automation the obama administration put out a couple of really important papers on this late in the administration. And the fact of the matter is workers are bringing this up to me. If you take coal jobs, for example, the biggest killer of coal jobs has been automation, followed by natural gas, not the things Donald Trump is claiming. When we talk about consolidation, in the Clinton years, in the Clinton recovery, 70% of new businesses were actually created in small and medium-sized towns and counties. That was very different in this recent recovery, where we saw mom-and-pop stores replaced by Walmart, and now Walmart replaced by Amazon. And when we see that, we shouldn't be surprised that

people feel like their communities are being left behind. And we're going to have to rethink workforce development and pathways into the middle class. That's why we're the first campaign in Virginia history to offer two years of free community college, trade school, or apprenticeship programs, because we're going to see people getting on a revolving door of workforce training over their careers, not a one-time hit at the outset. And the other is, I think, dealing honestly with issues of racism and racial injustice. Virginia is an incredibly progressive state compared to when I was growing up in many, many ways, but we still have a very repressive criminal code, essentially a new Jim Crow

era state where the level of felony larceny is two hundred dollars in value which means telling doing a cell phone constitutes a felony and we severely under supply indigent legal defense though we have these problems are on the books that we have to draft and i think we're looking for kind of a new generation in the politics of these issues have changed and i actually think they've changed in some ways that open up some real opportunities for progress. So it seems like Democrats do, or some Democrats, President Obama, you do a fairly good job diagnosing the problem, right?

Like I can remember writing, I don't know how many passages and how many State of the Unions about globalization and automation. And then when you get to the solutions, it seems like we have a checklist of policies that sometimes we just sort of throw under the rubric of opportunity or fighting for the middle class or something like that. Have you been able to think about or articulate a vision, a positive vision that sort of connects all of these policies that are a response to the realities of globalization and automation, economic inequality.

I sometimes joke about our campaign trying to be a bridge between the Elizabeth Warren and Mark Warner wings of the party, because I think, you know, if we don't start out with a pretty fired up critique of the system, people aren't even ready to hear the policy solutions consistent and that we just don't get how uh... how worried people are about where this is headed but then when you get to the policy solutions i think there are people like uh... center warner who've actually been thinking for ten years about how we use more of getting back to trade community college system etc

how we look at relocalizing, and this sounds like a crazy idea, but actually relocalizing energy production and food production as well as beverage production in ways that create and keep more value in the community. Between Teddy Roosevelt and Reagan, we basically had two concepts behind antitrust. One was keep it cheap, and the other was keep it small. And in the 80s, we got rid of keep it small, and we got exactly what you would expect, which was, you know, an economy that kind of crucified us on a cloth of plastic. It was very low consumer goods, but also a destruction of a lot of the resiliency in the economy from

small business. So I actually think this is something we've kind of been around the edges on. To some extent, the Dodd-Frank bill started to talk about what it would mean to actually switch from too big to fail back to kind of smaller and localized economies. And to be clear, we're not talking about going all the way there. But if you just look at the beer industry, where we went from about 96% duopoly to about 85% duopoly in the last 10 or 15 years, it's only an 11% delta in that industry. But the impact has been enormous on rural communities and main streets and small towns in terms of jobs and small businesses and life in those communities. So I do think that some of this is going to have to be getting back

to that. I'll give an example from Richmond Richmond where there's a small welding business that has developed an apprenticeship program for former felons, training people. And the question is, the only limiting factor is whether there's enough demand for their services after the apprenticeship program. And if there was just a 10% plus up in contracting for locally produced products, then we could have an entire set. We could have literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the community who, instead of becoming repeat offenders and costing us $30,000 a year, are actually moving into $35,000 a year jobs. So there is no quick fix. There really isn't. And I think that's one of the challenges in politics. But I think people appreciate when we're at least connecting on what the problem is we face. Thomas, you look forward to your primary, which is in a couple weeks here now, I guess.

Some of you have described this as your opponent, as sort of the establishment, and you as outside the establishment. What are the core issues of difference in your race? Are there policy issues? Is it a difference of approach? What should voters be thinking about in Virginia as they make a decision? Well, look, when I got in the race in January, no one was talking about a $15 an hour minimum wage or eight weeks of paid medical leave. No one had put out an aggressive platform on criminal justice reform

or was talking about the issues of automation and consolidation in the economy. No one had put out a proposal for two years of debt-free community college or trade school. I think it's important right now that the Democratic Party be a party of ideas and solutions. We've put them on the table. I think, in addition, when I came out in January and said we're going to be a firewall against the hate and bigotry of the Trump administration, my opponent actually hadn't had much to say about Trump between his election and his inauguration. And I think there was a difference of understanding about whether this was simply another transfer of power from these to

ours, or was this a more serious and existential threat to kind of our constitutional and progressive values? So we've run a positive campaign. We've tried to put out there an agenda that we think makes a difference. And I think part of why it's working so well is that it does two things at the same time. It gives our coalition a reason to show up when we stand strong on these issues. But these are also issues that can make a real difference in the lives of people who haven't necessarily come around to the Democratic Party.

In Virginia last year, Trump didn't just lose. He lost dramatically in Virginia. 56 percent of Virginians came out and voted against him. But a majority, unfortunately, also voted a slight majority against the Democratic candidate because there were 7 percent of voters who went third party, and Virginia mostly McMullen and Johnson voters. That means we have people who have been willing to take one step away from the Republican Party, but we're not yet ready to engage with the Democratic Party. We believe when we stand strong for living wage and paid medical leave and universal pre-k and we pay for all of it with the tax reform proposal that act

just a little bit more from people making five hundred thousand dollars a year uh... and pop but this is something that actually switches the growth uh... myth that we've been talking which is this trickle-down idea that tax cuts for the rich constitute an investment, but giving people debt-free community college is somehow a welfare entitlement program. We now know that growth comes from the middle out, not from the top down.

I think that's what we put forward in a bold way in this campaign. I do believe that the next generation of clean energy jobs are part of the answer on the automation and consolidation problem that you talked about. We take on those monopolies. It's not just because of climate. It's because of what can create real jobs and value in communities across Virginia, including a lot that have been left behind. I think that's why we've done so well in this race and why we're going to continue to try to make sure the Democrats are the party of the next generation of solutions. Tom, thank you so much for taking the time to stop by Pod Save America, and we wish you all the best in the primary in a few weeks.

Well, thank you so much. Folks can go to tomforvirginia.com. We really appreciate what you guys are doing, and thanks for having me on the pod. Yeah, come back on when you're the nominee. All right, we look forward to it. Thanks, guys. Take care, Tom. Thanks, Tom back on when you're the nominee. All right, we look forward to it. Thanks, guys. Take care, Tom. Thanks, Tom. Bye. Don't go anywhere.

This is Pod Save America, and there's more on the way. Joining us is the host of Crooked Media's with friends like these, Ana Marie Cox. Ana, how's it going? Well, again, you always ask me that question. I always have to have

to think about it because i you know today i think even in trump adjusted terms i'm not great like same this is a this is a bad day we had a very we had a very angry pod today so yeah there's a lot of ranting it was like basically we're the o'reilly factor for liberals today. Let's see if we can keep it up. I'm pretty angry. You know, it's funny because this week's With Friends Like These, it's actually a pretty personal one. You guys know it's coming. It's a crossover pod with my friend John Moe, who does My Hilarious World of Depression. And we talk about depression, something that he and I both struggle with. And I sort of, we both tell our kind of personal stories about dealing with depression, and in my case, bipolar disorder, and addiction. And, you know, we sort of before we taped it, we thought,

well, we should probably have some policy discussion here. But we wound up, you know, those are personal stories are pretty took a long time time to tell and we didn't get into policy now i really wish we got into policy because like fuck man you know this the repeal of the aca is going to screw a lot of people let's not you know there's a lot of people that were suffer but you know I just have a real personal relationship to it. And I'm angry. People with mental health disorders, including depression and bipolar, would be considered pre-existing conditions. Drug addiction would be considered a pre-existing condition.

If you had a serious mental health history, which i actually have like i could be banned for life um from having health insurance um it's it's it's monstrous it's it's you know pardon my language but it's insane yeah no i mean dan was saying earlier how um when he read the morning tip sheets and it was like someone was like like, oh, who's going to win from this? Who are the winners from this debate and losers? I feel like a day like today is when we are really hurt by having a system where politics is covered as, you know, winners and losers and the human toll of what's going to happen if this thing passes has been, uh, it feels like it's been an afterthought in a lot of the conversation.

Yeah. And even, you know, the Jimmy Kimmel story, which was so affecting and personal got turned into a political football for some reason. Of course, you know,

I mean that fucking asshole, Charlie hurt, wrote a whole piece taking down. He had the hottest take ever, right? Like the fires of hell hot. Where he will burn for taking Jimmy Kimmel's like plea that infants be covered by healthcare

as a sign of elitism. You know, I mean, you can't win. And I think this is true. I mean, you do see it online, there are people organizing around this, there are people telling their stories. They should, people need to know that this is something that's very real. Like, you know, I had just, I'll tell just, this is what happened to me, which is that, you know, I bottomed out, I spent time in a psych ward, I had to go to long-term treatment. I didn't have a job after that.

I had to go. Thank God I was lucky enough to move to Minnesota where there was an existing high-risk pool that I was able to get health insurance. And even then, my health care, my depression meds weren't covered for three months because that's where they sometimes manage the high-risk pools to keep costs down.

They don't cover. The thing that you're a risk for, people don't understand this. The thing that put you in the high-risk pool, they won't cover that for a certain amount of time. Right. I was going to say, I think a lot of people don't know how these high-risk pools work, except for they don't seem to work very well. And it seems like the Republicans have not allocated nearly enough money for them to work well. But what was your experience with a high risk pool? I didn't know that you were in one. Well, Minnesota had one, MNSURE, because Minnesota is, you know, I mean,

it's an awesome state, basically. It's a very progressive welfare state. And I was able to get health insurance, even though I had been hospitalized for mental illness and I'd had a long-term inpatient addiction treatment. But the thing that made me part of the high-risk pool, which was that mental health issue, they didn't cover for three months. I had to pay for my own meds. They do that as a disincentive to lapse coverage. That's how all of this kind of works right like even in this bill it's not that they they are you can't get coverage if you have pre-existing conditions what they do is they just make it really fucking expensive right right like prohibitively expensive and they create all

these disincentives to lapse coverage but i I'll tell you something, if you're someone with mental health issues or an addiction issue, your coverage will lapse. You are living a life where you're probably going to have some lapsed coverage, you know, because like self-care is like not your number one priority sometimes. Yeah. Well, I mean, people forget that the entire reason that we had to pass the Affordable Care Act to deal with pre-existing conditions was high risk pools didn't work. Like that was the argument. We tried it. It didn't work. So we did something else that did work. And now we're just returning to the thing that didn't work. there's still huge problems with the way the american health care system works there's particular problems with how it deals with drug addiction and with mental health issues but like in the community that i live in that you know the recovery community here in minneapolis st paul i know plenty of people who never had health care before this like i'm getting chills thinking about it like yeah well i just i mean it goes to show too because you're right like

obamacare was by no means perfect there was there's plenty that we should be doing to fix it and to improve it. And it just, it makes you even angrier to imagine what if we had a scenario where, you know, we had Democrats saying, well, here are fixes to the ACA and Republicans are saying, well, we have some fixes to that are more market oriented than yours. And, you know, let's get together and figure out how to make this better and i mean it's just it's like it sounds silly me even saying that because we are so unbelievably far from that you know that they can't they can't even describe what they're doing as a fix for the aca right now and you know why that is it's because they reverse engineered their legislation from a slogan right you know they they came up with a slogan in an attitude, which is repeal Obamacare. And then they had to come up with something. Because, you know, like I think Matt Iglesias says this all the time. We should just, you know, and other people too, you guys too. This is not about health care reform.

This is about a tax cut for the rich. And this is about people who don't want you know poor people to have health care like that's they don't give a fuck right like that's one of the things i worry about when we we tell all these sob stories about people you know being denied coverage or people um having to to live without certain kinds of you know care is there's a certain percentage of the republican party that's just like well fuck them you know like that's not my concern no Party that's just like, well, fuck them. You know, that's not my concern. No, and that's certainly how these representatives feel or these Republican politicians feel in the House. What do you think moves people out in the country, Republicans? I

mean, do you think, you know, you talk to a lot of Republicans, you talk to people from all different sides of the spectrum. You know, is there a sense that we should be fixing ACA? We should be improving it? Or is anyone with the House Republicans that you've talked to and think this is a good idea what they're trying to do? I think we've talked about this before. I talk about it a lot on my podcast, which is that we've entered into an age when people adopt the tribe first and then the beliefs that come with that tribe. And so I think there are people that are kind of unthinkingly behind this,

behind the House Republicans, behind whatever it is that Trump wants, because they're sort of identify as Republicans first and then kind of the policy comes later. But I think that most people who think this through, even people who are conservative, realize we cannot go back to the way it was. And also that Obamacare is market-oriented.

Well, that's why they've had such a problem replacing it, is because they called it a government takeover. It really is one of the more market-oriented health reforms they've had such a problem replacing it is because they called it a government takeover. It really is one of the more market oriented health reforms we've had. And so therefore, there's no other place for them to go with with replace, you know. Right. Exactly. Like that's my problem with Obamacare is it's too market oriented. Right. Like I'm a single payer person myself, you know. But and this is just this was like this was kind of, know jury-rigged and backward you know engineered from having to have it be market oriented i mean we're the only help in you know we're the only

let's see like first world uh nation um you know first world economically developed nation that does health care the way that we do as far as i think there's one other country that does job based health care like most other countries like don't like, this is crazy the way that we do these things. So it's already kind of fucked up, but you can see, but it is market oriented and you can see that in the people that have come out against the,

a, a CHA or a, am I saying that is a, a, a, a, a, a,

a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

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a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, around here um wealth care i heard someone call it once um uh you know like the american medical association which is anti-single-payer like all these insurance companies which are of course anti-single-payer like they're for obamacare because obamacare is something that takes care of doctors and health insurance companies pretty well um and they're they're definitely against

this repeal like i'm just baffled mean, you guys probably already talked about this, but I just, for my own information, I got to know, like, what do you guys think is going to happen if they pass this? And then the CBO score comes out and it's, you know,

like poison pill. I think that they're, all their hopes are pinned on the Senate, um, sort of undoing the worst things that they've done, which is a fucking crazy way to go. But we just saw that Bob Corker said there's no way this passes the Senate. So I think that the Senate tries to pass a—

Senate Republicans try to pass a less awful version of this that is still pretty awful. And the question is, you know, can they get Susan Collins and two others on board with that less awful version so they can send it back to the House and then have the House swallow it? The interesting question here, I think I would usually bet said they would not vote to defund Planned Parenthood as part of this bill in the Senate to make it not be able to pass. Right. And so could they pass a version without that and send it to the House? And then how does Paul Ryan and the Freedom Caucus ever want to respond to a bill that doesn't defund Planned Parenthood? Right. that doesn't defund Planned Parenthood. I think they still pass it, and then Paul Ryan makes some pledge

to force Democrats to shut the government down over defunding Planned Parenthood at some point. But they're going to rewrite it. They're going to reverse engineer it to 50 Senate votes and send it back to the House and dare the House not to pass it, and I think it's going to be pretty hard for them not to do it. It's pretty hard for them to not pass it? So you think some version of it's going to pass i think that there is a

greater than 50 likelihood that we're headed in a very bad place this is so fucked because you guys know the other like that this the times reported this last night that this bill also eliminates school reimbursements from medicaid oh yeah special education services yeah i mean like you if you were trying to come up with ways to seem cruel yeah it's like this bill does it i mean i can't believe that that anyone thinks this is i mean i mean do we need to show trump pictures of children again like i mean he bombed syria over it like do you think he'll like bomb the republican house caucus i mean look i think that since there haven't been a ton of uh signs of hope right now i think you know the way we have to end this is yes we could

be headed to a very bad place but the only only tool we have left is overwhelming protest and activism uh in the next couple weeks And we were saying this earlier. I just, I think that all the energy that went into the women's March, the climate's March, the science March, everything else, the resistance has done over the last couple of months.

It has to come. This is, this is the moment that we have to, we have to step up in these next couple of weeks to stop this thing. Because I think that's the only hope. I agree. Like get your jerseys on team. Yeah.

You know, I mean, this is it. And it's do or die in the, unfortunately, most literal way possible. Like, you know someone who will suffer from this. People, everyone knows someone that will suffer. And do it for them. Yeah. Yeah, this terrible bill and this deeply insane, irresponsible process that they ran is either the beginning of the end of the Republican Party as we know it or the country as we know it.

And it's probably up to us to decide which path we take there. That's right. On that note. We found some hope. On that note. So you've recorded the crossover already with John and then it's going to air tomorrow? I did. Okay. It's going to air tomorrow. So on. Okay. It's going to air tomorrow.

So on Friday. It's an intense trigger warning, everybody. But I think it's pretty good. So have a listen. I will very much be looking forward to it. And you are brave for doing it. So thank you. Okay.

I'll talk to both of you guys later. That's all the time we have on Positive America today. Thanks again to Tom Perriello for joining. Thank you, Ana, for calling in. And we will see you guys this weekend and talk to you on Monday. Bye, guys. Take care.