Pod Save America - “The neocon recycling program.”

Episode Date: January 31, 2019

Trump attacks the threat assessment from his own intelligence chiefs, and a debate breaks out in the Democratic primary over Medicare for All and taxing the wealthy. Then the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner talks to Jon Lovett about his interviews with Trump aides Rudy Giuliani and Cliff Sims.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Dan's on vacation this week, so we've got the Monday crew here today. And later in the pod, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with The New Yorker's Isaac Chotner, who's recently conducted some of the best interviews with Trump staffers that I've read. We've also got a lot of news to talk about today, from Trump's attack on America's intelligence officials to the 2020 debate over issues like Medicare for All and the wealth tax.

Before that, just a quick reminder, we're headed out on tour next week. It is next week, guys. I got to pack. I'm going to do some laundry. There's still a few tickets left. If you want to come to our shows in Charleston, New Orleans, and Durham next week, they're going fast, but you can snap up a few. You can.

Get those tickets. Get those tickets. You're also going to want to get your tickets now for our April show in Boston and our May shows in New York and D.C. Because those are going fast. Don't wait. April's going to be here before you know it. And then, you know, we're going to be in Boston. The whole stage will be covered in Dunkin' Donuts.

There will be no Starbucks to speak of. Because we do not like Howie Schultz. I'm still getting Starbucks. You're still. I don't think the Starbucks boycotts are going to do much. Yeah, I know they don't. For the ex-CEO of Starbucks. Yeah, no kidding.

It's so futile. It's perfect. But anyway, you know, whatever. Okay. Let's get to the news. America's highest ranking intelligence officials released an annual worldwide threat assessment this week. It basically called bullshit on Donald Trump's entire foreign policy, including his claims

that the United States has defeated ISIS, that climate change isn't real, that there's no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea, that Iran is violating the terms of the nuclear agreement, and that Russia isn't meddling in our elections. The president took this in stride, responding on Twitter, quote, The intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of iran perhaps intelligence should go back to school oh man did he buy like a comeback book or did he get that one fucking the jerk store called go back to school unbelievable what a moron so let's let's just to point out the last time he was in school he was uh uh waiting to take his father's loans while hitting on Candace Bergen.

That's how he went to school. Very specific. Tommy, what is the worldwide threat assessment? And how unusual is it for the intel community to completely contradict the president of the United States like that? It is rather unusual. I mean, so once a year, the heads of the intelligence community issue an unclassified report to Congress that basically ranks like all the major threats the United States faces around the world. And it's really the only chance the public gets to hear from them about these issues in an unclassified setting. There's a classified annex to it that goes around to select individuals and they get classified briefings in addition to this. But, you know, it's a real chance to like level

set administration statements versus the intelligence community assessments. So when I was in the White House, Rhodes and I talked about this yesterday on Pod Save the World, a great show you should check out. Check it out. Great episode. We talked about the fact that these hearings used to make, like, my life in particular a living hell because I would worry that statements that had been made by Obama or spokespeople

would be contradicted by updated intelligence community assessments. So we took it very seriously. And if they said something differently, the Intel guys than we did the White House, we would correct what we were saying to match what they thought. Now, every president has the right to disagree with the intelligence community assessment. That is fine. But Trump, there's no rhyme or reason to it. You know, he's not saying like, you're too cautious or you're too hawkish. He's saying, fuck, its nuclear weapons program. And you wake up one morning and the president of the United States called you an idiot because he doesn't agree with what you said. And he sides with like fucking Fox and Friends or Jesse Waters. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, one of the biggest scandals in the last, say, I don't know,

hundred years is the efforts of Dick Cheney and the Bush administration to manipulate intelligence to justify case for Iraq. But it was worth remembering that they felt it necessary to do that under the assumption that it must come through the intelligence community. They have to go to the Defense Department and get into the actual information so that the information could be cooked before it becomes public, because the assumption was it was unacceptable for the administration to just disregard the intelligence community. Trump's like, what are you doing all that extra work for? No one cares what those goobers are saying in front of Congress. That's a story in the New York Times.

I have my Twitter feed. I will tell you what is true and what is not. You don't need information. You don't need to go find people inside. You don't need to find acolytes inside don't need to find uh acolytes inside the defense intelligence agency don't do any of that just say they're wrong based on fucking nothing love it you're right i mean the bush administration set up specific intelligence components in the defense department and working groups in the white house to cherry pick and

manipulate and then release to the press this kind of intelligence trump just like nah north korea you're wrong he's like oh you have a fancy report and testimony to Congress? You know what I have? Fucking Sean Hannity. It's just so. I got this noggin, huh? Got me this far. I got my Twitter feed and I got a whole network that's going to back up whatever I say.

I'm the smartest person I've talked to today. I just can't imagine how demoralizing this is to work in these agencies. I mean, I guess like he did start in 2017 by comparing them all the nazis so yeah you know it hasn't been a rough road get off on the right foot but still um tommy what did you find notable in the assessment because reading through that new york times story um i was fairly terrified partly because if you listen to donald trump or any of the coverage about donald trump and politics and and you're not a careful listener of Pod Save the World. I mean, anything above 1.7 speed and you are not a careful listener.

Walk it back. 1.5. You would think that the only national security threat to our country is a couple caravans coming over the southern border, which, by the way, was completely absent from this report. So what did you find notable? So on North Korea, they said they assessed North Korea will seek to retain its WME capability and is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons and productions capability. Additionally, Gina Haspel, the CIA director, said North Korea is committed to developing a long range nuclear armed missile that would pose a direct threat to the United States. So that is not good. That's what the threat has been all along. Remember that Trump tweeted,

there's no longer a threat from North Korea. So problem is not solved. Iran is particularly stark. They said basically Iran is still complying with the Iran deal. Trump called them passive, naive, and wrong when it comes to Iran. They disagree on Russia. They disagree on ISIS. Trump keeps saying ISIS is defeated.

Dan Coats, the DNI, said ISIS still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria. One really interesting one is climate change. They said that climate change is now a global and U.S. national security risk because of irreversible damage. That's the intelligence community saying that. Trump thinks climate change is not real because it's cold in Chicago. So it's like it's his entire worldview. Like it's not Trump fighting the intel community as much as fighting reality. Yeah, it's really interesting that Trump has done this thing almost, you know, partially by accident, partially on purpose, where his positions that the intelligence community disputing his positions both makes him both a normal Republican and abnormal in the sense that in part he cares what the intelligence community says about North Korea and Iran because it avoids psychic injury in contradicting him publicly.

When in actuality, if we had a Republican president, we'd be seeing the exact same dispute play out over Iran, say. Yes. But it would just be done in a more intellectually semi-serious or given the appearance of seriousness. Yeah, it would be much harder to continue with this stupid policy they have. I mean, look, Iran's not good. They are arming the Houthi rebels in Yemen. They're arming Hezbollah, other terrorist groups. They do all kinds of terrible destabilizing activities. But regarding their nuclear program, like the IC assessment is what it is. And that is like the core existential threat for Israel, for U.S. interests. That's the thing we should be focusing

on. It's a reason we had the Iran deal, and he just walked away from it. Can I make one point, just a little hobby horse thing real quick? The same Republicans, when Susan Rice misstated intelligence on Benghazi, when she said, actually, no, Susan Rice didn't even misstate intelligence on Benghazi. She repeated old intelligence that hadn't been updated for her about Benghazi. repeated old intelligence that hadn't been updated for her about Benghazi. Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton acted like she should go to jail. Those guys are fucking silent.

Silent. That's one of the biggest fake scandals in the Obama administration because of a disagreement over the reading of intelligence. One thing that stuck out at me is they ranked cyber attacks as the top threat we face particularly cyber attacks from russia and china which it said were now quote more aligned than at any point since the mid 1950s talked about russia having the capacity to try to bring down our electric grids during a crisis um that's pretty fucking scary that like we tend to think of trump ignoring russia's meddling as all about the election and his victory and all that bullshit but you know russia's going it seems

like russia wants the capability to go beyond just interfering with our elections and actually launching cyber attacks that interfere with our infrastructure yeah they said they're mapping out critical infrastructure so So I mean, look, I think most people think the first shot in the next major war will be some sort of cyber attack to take down air defenses. That's what the Russians did in Ukraine. It is assumed that that's what we did in Libya, you know, you start with some sort of cyber capability to take their defenses offline. And then, you know, the kinetic fighting comes next. I mean, you can, I think there's this debate about, you know, how to take these things seriously.

On the one hand, we know we're underprepared. On the other hand, there's, you know, people spin out speculative possibilities. Right. Oh, Russia shuts down the election grid on Election Day, what have you. And I I just the thing I always come back to is you don't need to you don't need to discount crazy scenarios to just recognize that we are not doing nearly enough to insulate ourselves from these kinds of attacks. It is not important to people. It is not important to a lot of people. It's not central to our conversation, and it is not central to the expertise of people in charge of our security to worry about cybersecurity. They are all there. A lot of them are older, and a lot of them don't understand these issues, and a lot of them don't know how to make it central to how we operate. Not the thing they think about last, but the thing

they think about in the planning and execution of how we defend ourselves. Yeah, I mean, where John started this thing is an important point. I mean, there is a real massive growing threat in terms of our vulnerability to a cyber attack. There is not a real growing threat from people jumping over a nonexistent fence and running through a desert. Yeah. Across the border. It's just, you know, we're focused on the wrong shit. So where does what's happening in Venezuela fit into all this?

Because that seems like it is not quite the nonexistent threat of people jumping over our border. But is it the biggest threat that we face right now? And yet it seems like the Trump administration is very focused on it. Well, I mean, if I'm Donald Trump, I look at Venezuela and I think that could be the greatest migration crisis imaginable because, well, let's start at the beginning. So Hugo Chavez dies in 2013. Nicolas Maduro takes over. Chavez had a lot of charisma, a lot oil money he was beloved maduro had none of that he's a fucking idiot he's not good at managing the country and unfortunately for him the global uh oil markets collapse in 2013 right so they're basically a socialist petro state propped up by

oil money and when that money goes away they are fucked and so it has gotten dire uh like people go to hospitals and there's not you know know, there's no cotton balls. There's no saline drip. There's nothing. There's no food on shelves. I mean, people are like picking through, lining up to pick through trash. It is a humanitarian catastrophe. So despite all that, Maduro runs again for president in 2018. And he gets reelected by basically banning two opposition, most of the popular opposition figures from running against him. So it's a totally illegitimate election. So what happened a week ago is a guy named Juan Guaido, who was the leader of Venezuela's legislature, sort of declares himself the president because under the Venezuelan constitution, if the president is illegitimate, the leader of the

assembly rises to the presidency. So the U.S. had been talking with him about this plan. And when he announced, the White House immediately recognized him as the president. And to their credit, they did a great job coordinating regional allies. And they got Europeans and folks in the region to go along and also recognize him at the same time. So basically, now there's two presidents in Venezuela. And now they fight it out. Like now things get dicey, because we've rolled out this huge measure to recognize a new president. And the question is, will he be able to actually take power because Maduro still controls the military. And they're pulling a lot of the strings here. So they've taken a whole bunch of other steps to pressure Venezuela.

They're cutting off their sanctioning their state-run oil company, which is like the only way they get money. Because all the oil they sell to the Russians and the Chinese is basically servicing old debt. Like 40% of their oil goes to us. So that's how they get dollars. So, you know, the state could collapse. And it's the size of Texas. There's 32 million people who live there. Millions are going into neighboring countries already.

It's completely destabilizing the whole region. And so it's right to focus on this humanitarian situation. It's right to focus on the potential impacts of a migration of that scale. But John Bolton going to a press briefing with 5,000 troops in Columbia written on a piece of paper is a weird way to go about it. What does that mean? What, what did you like, is there a scenario where we send 5,000 troops to Columbia and then what do they do? What was that? Ben and I were trying to figure this out yesterday. I have no idea. I mean, again, it's a huge country. Um, I don't know why you would either. You're so stupid that you didn't know you'd written that on the, on the piece of paper, or you did that to to send a message another message they sent was they named a guy named elliot abrams to

be the special envoy to uh to venezuela so the u.s has a we have a fraught history in latin america generally we've sponsored coups we've fucked around in their politics like all kinds of awful things elliot abrams in addition to being one of the Iraq war architects, the neocon recycling effort. Totally. That's right. Elliott Abrams was like charged in Iran Contra, where we where we funded right wing terrorist groups. So, you know, he's a he's a terrible human being to put in charge of this effort, given that history. Great, great people working in the administration right now. So the New York Times ran sort of a follow up piece on Wednesday about how Republicans in Congress are also disagreeing more and more with Trump's foreign policy. In addition to the intel community on trade, on NATO, on Russia, there was even Mitch McConnell's decision to introduce a measure denouncing a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan. Is this a good sign? Are they right?

I mean, it's it's certainly interesting. I mean, first of all, the fact that it comes from Mitch McConnell, you know, he introduced a measure denouncing the precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan, and that advanced 76 to 22. And that was part of a bigger bill. But like, that's a major rebuke of the president. And there have been a couple other instances of Republicans voting to bar him from pulling out of NATO. I mean, like, you shouldn't have to introduce that resolution. That should be a no brainer. But, you know, like, do I agree with him? Are they right? I mean, I think on Afghanistan, we should get out of Afghanistan yesterday. And I think that, you know, we went there to take out Al Qaeda to deny them a safe haven. We've accomplished a lot of that mission. We trained up a pretty big armed forces there. They're not great at it, but they have a pretty big Afghan security forces. Like it's been 17 years. It's time to go. I think Syria is a little more complicated.

You know, we've taken all this territory back from ISIS. We've been fighting with the Kurds who, if we just abandon, are likely to get attacked by ISIS and by the Turks and just slaughtered. So I don't think we should just immediately pull out. We have to have a grace period where we figure out a way to protect them because they've been fighting alongside us. So these are very hard questions. I would ultimately like to see us get the troops the fuck out of both places, but it doesn't have to be instantly in Syria. Just one more question before we move on to 2020, and it's a 2020 question. a 2020 question when i read the the sort of the story about the threat reports and all this you know my first thought was it's weird that this has not been an issue none of these issues

none of these foreign policy issues have really been central to the democratic primary yes far do you think do you think democrats are talking enough about these like how do you think democrats should i know you guys you and ben talked and Ben talked about Elizabeth Warren's foreign policy speech, which might be one of the only big ones that I've heard from a candidate so far. Yeah, I mean, credit to her for going first, because you always get shot at. I mean, I think she's been pretty clear about getting US troops out of Afghanistan. Now, I think that will be a consensus position, I think going every single Democrat in the primary. Her speech was more about trade and economic inequality and the economic drivers of foreign policy problems, which I think is smart, but it does leave out

some big problems like nukes and proliferate, you know, actually nukes was part of her bill, but like Iran, Israel, I think where you'll see some debate is issues like US support for Israel and what that should look like. Should that be changed? Because there's the folks in the House now who support the BDS movement, which I don't think will gain much traction, but there's space between Trump and BDS that could be occupied. So that could be the debate. I will say from a messaging standpoint, one of the lines from Dan Coats, our DNI director, he said that China and Russia are more aligned now and they're trying to, quote, take advantage of rising doubts in some places about the liberal democratic model.

I do think part of, as democratic candidates talk about Trump and Russia, it's not just about the investigation. It's not just about the crimes. It's the fact that the whole Trump presidency and what we're seeing all over the world with the rise of right-wing populists or left-wing populists in the case of Maduro is a challenge to the liberal democratic order. And it's a challenge to the United States leading the liberal democratic order. And it seems like a democratic candidate standing up on behalf of the liberal democratic order, defending it, defending the values of that would be something that, you know, the American people would like to hear and that also be important for them to say. Yeah, I think it's I think that's right. I mean, you guys, you and Ben talked about this as it relates to Venezuela, that here

comes this administration trying to claim that they're defending the rights of people when they've been kowtowing to Saudi Arabia, Russia, the Philippines, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think one of the problems and one of the reasons that this hasn't been a big part of the Democratic debate is to John's point. I think there really isn't there really hasn't been a great articulation of what democratic philosophy is on the world stage. You can go issue by issue. We should remove troops from from Afghanistan. We should not be we should have a more nuanced approach to places like Venezuela. But then you step back and it really does feel like there's this need for a conversation about what a

democratic foreign policy is once you make it something other than what it has been for a very long time been, which is defined against the kind of bellicosity and warmongering of Republicans. I think Obama faced that challenge. How do you unwind those kinds of wars and articulate a better vision in the face of so many long simmering global problems created by previous American mistakes? And I think the truth is, I think John has just articulated one way of kind of putting those things together, but so far, very few have even tried. Yeah. I mean, there's some basic low hanging fruit about standing with allies and standing up for alliances and strengthening alliances and not standing with Russia to the detriment of NATO and constantly questioning Article Five, which is the the the provision that says an attack on one member of NATO is an attack

on all. It's the core of the alliance. Every year we go through this stupid song and dance where they refuse to stand up for a specific country like Montenegro. Like, would you defend Montenegro? And like, well, we'd take case by case. That's not how the treaty works. So all of that sends a message to the world that we're walking away from them. And I think Americans want us to be respected and allied with, you know, friends in Europe, for example. And that would be a winning message against Trump if people really want to hear it, if they care. There hasn't been an action-forcing event in the world to make people care about foreign policy.

That's right. All right, let's talk more about 2020, because this week we saw our first big policy debate of the presidential campaign unfold over Medicare for All all a policy embraced by just about every democratic presidential candidate who's announced thus far during a cnn town hall when jake tapper asked kamala harris what medicare for all would mean for private insurance and how it would mean potentially getting rid of the insurance industry she talked about the bad parts of the insurance industry and said, yes, let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on.

For this, she was attacked by Republicans, by Mike Bloomberg, who said that Medicare for All would bankrupt us, by Howard Schultz, who said it was un-American. Her campaign then said that while Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill is Kamala's preferred plan, she's also open to other health care plans that she's signed on to in the Senate, like one where any individual or business can buy into medicare at an affordable rate but where private insurance still exists for this she got attacked by a lot of lefties including a former bernie sanders staffer who said that kamala's openness to a medicare buy-in

option means she's okay with people dying for being too poor that That seems extreme. So guys, the 2020 healthcare debate is lit. What did you make of these exchanges over Kamala's line at the town hall? Also love it, did Howard Schultz write you back yet? No, I've not gotten any response from Howard Schultz. I would like him to get, I mean, it's correspondence. I'm owed a response. You know, I was catching up on all of it and it's this um it's so frustrating it's such a frustrating debate so first of all

there's because there's so many different ways people are disagreeing at once so i think you have to take you have to break this down piece by piece so first of all i think you have to take this the mike bloomberg argument it will bankrupt us just sort of start with the 30,000 foot Medicare for all. So first, I think it's worth saying that Michael Bloomberg deserves credit. I don't agree with Michael Bloomberg. I think he's too conservative on economic issues. I don't think he represents where the country is or where the Democratic Party is. But in fairness to him, he has been approaching this in a much more, I think, fair and forthright way than Howard Schultz, because he's basically saying this is what I believe if I'm deciding whether or not I'm going to go into a Democratic primary to express it or if I'll stay on the outside and try to help from the outside. But in the meantime, I'm going to get into this argument and make my case. And I respect that. The thing that's very frustrating when someone says that Medicare for all will bankrupt us, it is is it

allied something very important, which is at the end of the day, America pays one health care bill together. We divide it up. We do it through private insurance, through taxes, through hospitals, eating some costs, through individuals paying a lot of money, through the way bankruptcy ripples through the economy. There's a lot of ways we pay for health care. But at the end of the day, if we were to switch from a private system to a public system, as a society, we'd be paying less for health care because Medicare costs less than private insurance. And so if you think about it that way, to say that Medicare for all will bankrupt us

is another way of saying America cannot afford to insure everybody. And that is total bullshit. That's the first thing. Paul, just to add to that, and I'll shut up. Paul Waldman for The Washington Post wrote a piece where you keep seeing this figure of the cost being $32.6 trillion over 10 years is the cost for Medicare for all. But the current system, we're projected to spend $50 trillion over the next decade. And every country that has universal health care spends less than us per capita. So that seems like important context that the media might want to fold into the coverage. So I think Bloomberg's comment was wrong and it was careless and it was not well thought out. I mean, this is the problem with

debating health care is you do have to be very exact, right? There is a financing issue with Medicare for All. And just about every state that's tried it, other countries that have tried to move to a single payer system, where they get caught up is once they try to figure out, okay, whose taxes are we going to raise and by how much to finance this? Because what happens is, right now, everyone's paying premiums, they're paying co-pays, they're paying deductibles, they're paying out of pocket, they're paying co-pays, they're paying deductibles, they're paying out of pocket, they're paying for their prescription drugs. They're paying all this money. In a single-payer system, you're not paying premiums, you're not paying co-pays, you're

not paying deductibles, but your taxes are likely higher. It's raising money on the rich, these wealth taxes that we're going to talk about, this kind of stuff, that's not going to finance Medicare for all. There's going to be some kind of taxes. What you have to think about is how do you prepare people, especially because some people, by the way, right now, their employers are paying for a lot of their health care. So even though the individuals are paying for health care, they don't see it because it's the employer paying it. So suddenly when the employer stops paying for it and it comes out of your tax bill, it's about helping people figure

out it's going to be the same cost because we're shifting the cost to taxes from premiums, copays, and deductibles. But that's still a political issue in that average people have to know what that change is. Yeah, I think that's right. It's also worth remembering that right now, if you are an individual who is buying insurance yourself, but make over a certain amount of money, you don't receive as much of a subsidy to get healthcare as, say, the biggest corporations in the United States, which all receive a subsidy, a tax break for insuring their people. So that is the first thing, this kind of conversation about cost. There's two others. The second is smaller,

but really important, which is if the whole debate about how we insure everybody turns on, do we do a buy-in? Do we do Medicare for all? Is there private insurance? Are there private plans? Are there not private plans? You actually skip a really important part of the debate, which is it's not just about what you as a healthcare consumer get as a benefit. It's also what we're going to do as a country to lower healthcare costs and attack some of the anti-competitive, anti-consumer practices

of pharmaceutical companies, of hospitals that happen in, not just in other countries, but in how Medicare manages costs, how the Veterans Affairs Administration manages costs. So we miss this really big piece of this, which is how we make the system work better no matter where you get your insurance. And then just the third piece of this is, I think as Democrats, it will be a mistake if we spend the next year and a half debating whether or not there will be private insurance at the end of this. That is an important question, but it's not the only question. And I think one thing and and and so to me, I would like to start from a place of saying we want everybody to have health insurance. OK, I think that if that if we're talking about a system where everyone can get Medicare and they're still private health care or there's some kind of transition window where people in private insurance are then given the option for Medicare or in the more kind of the boldest plans where there's a transition window where private insurance is wound down.

This is an important debate to have, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the most important debate is making sure that everybody in the country has access to health care and access to a public plan. That is absolutely true. I think the transition is everything here. And I think it is a good public debate to have. And people are not educated about this. People do not know what this means, right? So like in Bernie's bill, which is the bill that Kamala has signed on to, Gillibrand has signed on to, Booker, Warren, Beto endorsed it during his race. In that bill, it's a four-year window. So in four years, the entire country transitions from private insurance to one government-run plan. And you get four years to do that. But at the end, there is no more private insurance. And that is the thing. And we should just be clear that that is not a popular position.

Getting rid of private insurance, like 70% of people in a Kaiser poll think that their coverage is good or excellent. And when they ask people, if you support Medicare for all, 56% were in favor, 42% oppose. When you told them it would eliminate private health insurance companies, it jumped to 58% oppose. So there's a lot of... 37% approved. Approved, yeah.

Yeah. So there's a lot of scary polling data about how Republicans can and will message this backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from the insurance industry. And look, and I will say about that too, we have said a million times, do not base your policy on what the Republicans are going to say, because even if you propose, I want 10 more people to have health insurance, they will call it a government takeover and run the same ad that they're going to run if you propose a medical program. Don't worry about the Republicans. Do worry about how ordinary people, voters, people in the country, are going to respond to your plans, because look, we have all been through this with if you like your

plan you can keep your plan and let's remember the genesis of that barack obama was going to set a bunch of standards that every insurance plan had to cover a certain amount of benefits and a certain amount of services and a lot of insurance plans didn't do that they were junk insurance and so the idea was every insurance plan is going to get upgraded because now they have to cover all these good benefits and services. And so then someone said, well, what about all the people who like their insurance plans? And we said, you know what? A lot of people do like their insurance. And so we're going to grandfather in all the people who like their insurance plans and let them keep that. So then we said, then we passed the bill. And then as it started getting implemented, health and human services said, you know what? There's a lot of insurance companies that aren't going to sell these

junk insurance plans anymore now that they're going to have to sell these good new Obama plans that have all these benefits. And even these grandfathered insurance plans, eventually people are going to have to let them go. So people start getting notices that say, by the way, your insurance is canceled. Now, the truth is they're going to get every single person who got one of those cancellation notices got a better insurance plan. They got an insurance plan that had more benefits and more services.

But the freak out that it caused, and not just from Republicans, from real people who got notices in the mail saying their insurance was going to cancel, was severe. And if you're going to do that on a national level, we have to be prepared to let people know what's going to happen.

I have family members who got those notices and, you know, I don't think they would describe their plans they had at the time as junk. They just didn't include like maternity care because they were over an age where it was necessary anymore. So, but it all just speaks to the fact that this is really personal and fraught politics. Yeah. And it's worth remembering that. So there was a few things that contribute to those letters, one of which is that the insurance companies took an opportunity to change plans, adjust their risk pools. And by the way, those insurance companies, this is an existential threat to them. All right. And they are going to respond in kind. So the fight is going to be enormous. One thing I'd say just that runs counter to that polling on

people's fears of Medicare for all is one of the realities is people are afraid of losing their current insurance because they are well aware that the current system will rip you to shreds if you're not careful. Because it will. Right. And so one of the arguments, so one of the reasons people might be worried about what happens in this transition is because they are terrified of the current system, another argument for Medicare for all. But I think we sometimes combine the policy question and the political question. I think the political question is incredibly hard and actually worth considering insofar as ultimately this will be about persuasion and passing something. But it's also worth, I think, pausing and saying this is also a policy

question. And being in favor of maintaining private insurance, say, for big companies, there's a debate as to whether or not if you work at, you know, some small businesses might have in a Medicare buying system might have access to Medicare for all, whatever the system. It is a genuine policy question as to whether or not it might be a better outcome, given how complicated the system already is to say, all right, if you have insurance through an employer, that'll remain in place. But if you don't, you get access to Medicare or you can, or you do another system where if you get insurance through your employer, you can choose, do you want Medicare? Do you want to stay with your employer? All of these have a more kind of Medicare access for all as opposed to just

Medicare for all. So Kaiser also pulled this, 74% favor creating a national government administered healthcare plan plan similar to Medicare that also allows people to keep the coverage they have if they prefer. This is basically the plan that the Center for American Progress came out with, which basically says, okay, we're going to enroll all newborns, all people over 55 or something like that, and anyone who's uninsured in Medicare. That starts. So everyone gets Medicare who doesn't have insurance and all newborns do. And that's, so we're Medicare. That starts. So everyone gets Medicare who doesn't have insurance, and all newborns do,

and so we're moving towards that system. But we're also saying to companies and individuals, if you want to get into Medicare too, you also have the option to get into Medicare. Everyone has the option to get into Medicare. But if you're a company or an individual and you like your private health insurance, you can keep that for now.

Knowing that eventually, the bargaining power of Medicare and the fact that Medicare is going to deliver better services the fact that medicare is going to deliver better services at lower prices to people is going to compete with health care with private insurance the private insurance industry and eventually squeeze that insurance insurance industry like to death maybe uh maybe and it's just it now the downside everything's a trade-off the downside is it's a longer transition away from private insurance and so you, you know, there's some things that will still fall through the cracks. But is it more politically doable? Is it make people feel better about the transition?

Who knows? That's a good debate to have. And I think we should have people on all sides of that debate. Yes. And I think it's just to me, there are legitimate policy arguments in favor of a an act of Medicare access approach as opposed to a Medicare for all approach that is not ideological in the sense that it doesn't make you less liberal and it doesn't make you less progressive to view it as a positive outcome. Because again, we are all going to end up paying for healthcare. The ultimate goal here is not a process one. It is not, you know, a private health care plan versus a Medicare plan. If you have good insurance that you can afford, that protects you when you need it most, that gives you the option to get the preventative care that you need without bankrupt you and your family that makes you feel safe and protected, that is the goal. As a country, our goal is to

pay for everyone's health care in a way that doesn't eat up a greater and greater share of our gross domestic product. That is the ultimate goal. The debate about policy, the debate about process is a really, really important one, but it should not be always reduced to this ideological question as to whether or not you're going along with Bernie or if you're part of the neoliberals. It just is, it is more complicated and more nuanced than that. That's all. Yeah, I think we all agree with that. I mean, in the day-to-day fight of sort of influencing these voters, I think that we're also going to be fighting up against general mistrust of government. The healthcare.gov rollout debacle does not help, right?

We can say, like, Republicans have been attacking government for decades and reducing confidence in government, and that is a huge part of the problem. But they also have a recent data point that would make you wonder if you want to fully transition to a government run program. So it's just I just don't think the party really has wrestled with how risky the politics of Medicare team to this right which which basically they said no no no no she definitely is still for eliminating private insurance and the bernie plan and she did sponsor those other plans and they're fine like it would it's they seem to be more worried about the attack from the left on that than they were about just saying which uh elizabeth warren was asked this question yeah and el And Elizabeth Warren just said simply,

I see many paths for achieving the goal of universal coverage. We know where we're aiming, and that is every American has a health care at a price they can afford. And then she talks about signing on to multiple bills. Now, she didn't get a tax from the left on that because in some ways Elizabeth Warren has more credibility for the left. But that to me is the easiest way to deal with this for all the candidates. Like, look, we know what the goal is.

The goal is guaranteed health care that's truly affordable for every single person in this country. None of this bullshit with insurance industries. None of this bullshit with high deductible plans. None of this. We know what the goal is. There are many ways to get there. Once I become president, we will figure out those ways to get there. Yeah.

Also, I think that's right. Also, one thing just worth remembering, there is still private insurance, even for seniors on Medicare right now. There are supplemental plans. And so so it's all we learn this over years of dealing with this policy. It is so complicated. It is so hard. And the details really, really matter. They do. So that was the debate about health care. There's also a debate about taxes. Howard Schultz also saw saw to it this week that he would attack Elizabeth Warren's tax plan. In an interview with NPR's Steve Inskeep, Schultz said that Warren's plan to increase taxes for the very wealthiest Americans was ridiculous, that the idea was designed to grab headlines, and that she knows for a fact it's never going to be passed. He said in another interview that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's recent comments about raising marginal tax rates for the wealthiest Americans were a bit misinformed and punitive. So, like, how much? Health care is very complicated.

Medicare for all is very complicated. I would argue that proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy are a bit less complicated, certainly from a political angle. There are policy implications there, making sure you figure out what's legal, what's doable and stuff like that. But raising taxes on the rich seems a little simpler to me. What do you guys think? It's not remotely complicated, right? Like everyone went crazy when AOC mentioned a potential 70% tax rate for people making over $10 billion a year. And it was seen as like it was going to enter a political career.

And it turns out it's pretty popular. With Republicans too? Yeah. But like an out-of-touch billionaire saying that he doesn't like a plan that would raise taxes on him is not a good candidate. That's the funny thing that's getting lost in this whole Howard Schultz thing is if he ran as a Republican, if he ran as a Democrat, if he ran as an independent, he's a shitty candidate. He is not delivering a good message. He is kind of embarrassing himself day after day while savaging Democrats as he claims that he wants to defeat Donald Trump.

He's doing real damage to our chances of defeating Donald Trump. I mean, how many times have we said the person who has no no constituency no real constituency for their policy platform is paul ryan and his game of goobers because the one thing that trump's base and hillary's base agreed on in 2016 was that they were pretty sick of rich people getting away with shit trump's base just listened to lies from donald trump that he was going to give everyone health care that he was going to raise taxes on hedge fund managers, all this bullshit. Trump had a economically populist platform in rhetoric, even though it was complete bullshit. And he did something that other Republicans weren't able to do. And then Hillary's base all was populist as well. So the people who are

populist are the Paul Ryans and the Howard Schultzes and all those people. They don't have a real constituency in this country. Howard Schultz has been running around saying, I'd have to say things in the Democratic primary. I don't believe like the fact that we need to raise taxes on the rich because there's. But don't worry, there's this silent majority of people who agree with me. And all these outlandish Democrats calling for these far left policies. These higher taxes are not just popular. It's popular in every single.

You've united people in opposition to your policy. One other thing on our friend Howie Schultz. What are you fucking for? You are a billionaire. You can buy any white papers that you want. You're doing a giant media tour. And so far, all I know about you is what you're against. And you're against a few Democratic positions. You're against Medicare for all. But what do you want to do on health care? No idea. You're against raising taxes on the rich. What are you for? I have absolutely no idea. So again and again, you have this guy out there and he's claiming he represents some positive vision about needing to bring the country together. He is not for fucking anything. No. So far, the the guy who wants to bring everyone together and partisanship and division is just calling policies and people that uh that don't agree with him un-american that's basically what he's got so far look i don't think high-minded there is a howard howard

schultz's candidacy is a threat because in a close race even one to two percent of the vote could tip it right that's why it's a threat but there is a version of a third party candidacy that is far more threatening to Democrats than Howard Schultz's candidacy. Because like I said, the constituency for someone who's socially liberal and fiscally conservative is not a large constituency in this country. When you travel in a hermetically sealed bubble from boardroom to private jet to Davos to the set of Morning Joe to back to a boardroom, you don't hear from real people who might let you know that, oh, actually, your bullshit policies are not supported by anybody. Okay. When we come back, we will have Lovett's interview with the New Yorkers, Isaac Chotner.

Joining us on the pod today, he's written for The Times, The Atlantic, and Slate. He is currently a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he most recently conducted some pretty excellent interviews with former Trump aide Cliff Sims and future reverse mortgage salesman Rudy Giuliani. Welcome, Isaac Schottener. How are you doing? Good. How are you? All right. Let's talk about these interviews. How are you doing? Good. How are you? All right. Let's talk about these interviews. And if you haven't read them, you know, I we never suggest pausing podcasts here on a moral level, but you should read them. What were you interested in learning from Rudy Giuliani and Cliff Sims?

Well, I think that there are two different people. And so I was interested in a couple of different things with Giuliani. I was interested in. There's just been so many stories coming out of the White House and from the president's legal team about exactly what they were trying to say and what they made of all these different things going on with Michael Cohen. And, you know, I know sort of nailing Rudy Giuliani down on any of these things are hard, but I just sort of wanted to get a better idea of exactly what their response was. This was last week to the BuzzFeed story about Trump pressuring Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, which obviously the story's been very contentious and has been disputed by people, including the special counsel's office. And then with Cliff Sims, it had been, basically I read this book, his new book, Team of Vipers, which is about his time working in the White House. And the sort of portrait that he puts forward of the president and his administration was interesting to me. And then just more broadly, this idea of people who are going to work for the White House for the Trump administration,

going along with very controversial policies and then making a lot of money writing books about it. controversial policies and then making a lot of money writing books about it. Yeah, it seems like in both, you know, with Giuliani, right, it's everyone's trying to pin him down and he's sort of all he's all over the place. He's it's sort of a fusillade of of words, some of them seeming to be intentional, some of them unintentional. And yet even inside of that interview that you conducted with him, you also wanted to get at something deeper. You know, Rudy's about to jump in the shower, but he ends up talking about what it's going to say on his tombstone. You know, why, what are you trying to,

like, so this goes, I think it goes beyond what other interviewers have done. It seems like you're trying to get at something underneath something about his motivations. Well, I guess something that's interesting to me about the Trump administration, I had two related things. One is the degree to which people are sort of true believers in the president, and some of them are and some of them aren't. I think most of them are not. And then also just the degree to which people know that a lot of what they're doing,

what they have to say publicly for this administration is not true, and that that has some cost to their integrity or to their sense of self. And so I was interested in that in both cases, and especially with Rudy, who my sort of pop psychological reading is that he's someone who knows that he's saying a lot of things that are not true. And this is a guy who's had a career, controversial career, but a very sort of important career, I think, in American and in New York political history. And that this is sort of where he's ended up. And then there are people, whether it's Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, now his attorney general nominee, John Bolton. These are people who had reputations, careers, we can define those reputations positively or negatively, who are now kind of hitching their name to Donald Trump. And it seems like a lot of them do struggle with that.

Yeah, and, you know, I think that's true. And I also think with the case, you know, one of the things the Sims book, which one of the things I tries to raise in the interview with him is that, you know, I think sort of Trump inherently, I mean, you do have these figures like Christie and Giuliani, but you do have these other figures who I think are basically out to make a quick buck. They've joined the White House because they want some sort of outside business deal. And, you know, I think one interpretation of that is that the president himself is someone who very clearly cares about his own business interests. He's surrounded by people who

have been involved with various forms of corruption and lying to investigators. And I think that that does stem from the top, that if you have an administration this chaotic and this crazy, where there's this much sort of stuff going on that is, you know, not always 100% legal, that you're sort of destined to end up surrounding yourself with people who are also looking to make a quick buck. Yeah, right. And that's, I suppose, like, you know, I think a lot of people out there, myself included, like, one of the questions you asked, like, how does somebody get themselves to do that? Like, are they different from me? Is there something broken about these people? Or are they just people in a different circumstance? And do you feel like in your, in these conversations, so with Cliff Sims, you pushed him pretty hard on questions around Charlottesville, on questions around birtherism. And it's hard to tell, even in that conversation, whether he's not open to you or he's not even able to process it himself. What do you think? Well, I think that one of the things for Sims and for other people is if Sims' book is very

critical of people around Trump, but it's not really critical of the president himself. He basically still respects the president. He doesn't agree with everything President Trump says. He says, you know, sometimes he's kind of uncouth with his words, but basically he likes him and he thinks he's been misserved by his staff. And, you know, I think for a lot of people in the Trump orbit, and, you know, Sims has been rumored to wanting to have a political career as a Republican in Alabama, where he's from, I think that they're trying to walk this line, which is you want to sell a book or you want to do something that makes money and, you know, gets you a certain amount of attention.

So you have to have some criticisms in there. But you also want to stay on the president's good side. And so you kind of have to tiptoe around what you say about him. I mean, in Sims' case, it doesn't seem to have worked because apparently Trump is angry about the book and tweeting about it, even though Sims himself is pretty complimentary to Trump. But I think that that's one of the things going on, that just because of the character of the president and who he is and how he responds to stuff, that people kind of have to tiptoe around what they say and sort of what it would mean for their future in a Republican Party that for now is still led by Donald Trump. All right, this is going to be, this is going to demand some

speculation, I guess, but you're talking to Rudy Giuliani. You know, he is currently one of the most important figures in American public life. He is the lawyer to the president of the United States. And yet I think as a political culture, we genuinely don't know if he knows what he's doing. We genuinely don't know if he's even, you know, up to this task at the most basic level. You just had a conversation with him. Do you think he's sharp? Do you think he's able to follow the plot here? Yes, I do. And I actually thought he was responding to me very quickly and clearly. I mean, he said a bunch of things, as he has in other interviews, that may be contradictory in some way. But I don't think that that was because he's somehow losing it.

And I have no reason to speculate. I mean, he may have changed as a person what he wants in life. What he's willing to do may have changed. But I don't think he's sort of losing it in any way. That was not, I've seen speculation about that, and I think that that's, I'm not a doctor, so I would not speculate about that, but he seemed very clear to me. I suppose it's just this question is, is there a method to the madness? That when he goes on television in the span of two or three days and says multiple contradictory sentences, statements when he

makes outlandish claims about collusion when he, yeah, what do you think? Sorry. Well, no, I was just going to say, I mean, I think just to throw in a word for Rudy here, half jokingly, I mean that. Essentially, I think people maybe sometimes understate how hard it would be to work for this president. You have a president who changes his story all the time. I can only assume that the president, I mean, there have been news reports about this, is calling up people who work for him, like Rudy Giuliani or people, Kellyanne Conway, whoever it is, in the Oval Office, probably giving them different marching orders every

single day about what they should say. And he's tweeting different things that change rapidly. So I don't think there's any way to really go out and defend this president and seem like you're a logical person or you're saying things that make some sort of coherent sense. And I think that that's led to a lot of speculation about the people around him. Do they know that they're lying all the time? And I kind of assume most of them do, and most of them don't have a choice because, you know, this is the man that they serve, and this is the character that he has. So there's others who have left the administration, people like, you know, Mattis, people like John Kelly. Are you interested in talking to these people? Do you think that you could, would you be interested in hearing their perspective?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, Mattis and Kelly would be two people that I'd be fascinated to hear their perspective. The short answer is I am. Why? Does something appeal to them about you more than other people who've been interviewed? I think that there is, well, I would put Rex Tillerson, Mattis, Dina Powell, John Kelly in this category of people, unlike Sims, unlike Rudy Giuliani, and even for a time, unlike Chris Christie, who never, who seemed to have signaled either

explicitly or implicitly that they were going in with eyes open, that they knew who Trump was. And in some sense, they were doing it for the country. And these are the people who have actually been more quiet. And I'm wondering if you think that there's a distinction there. And if you think if you think these people have an obligation to say more about what was going on while they were in the White House. I mean, I think that if you really think is there have been sort of reports that people like Kelly and Mattis think that what's been going on with the Trump administration is some sort of, you know, I don't know if they've ever used the phrase national emergency, but that they're worried about it.

And, yeah, I do think they have reasons to speak out. I mean, I also think, you know, if you are someone who believes that going to work for the Trump administration is basically morally objectionable, which I think a lot of liberals, a lot of people in America think, I think at the very least if you're the Secretary of Defense, you can make a sort of case for why we want, or we being people who believe this, believe that, you know, Jim Mattis should be Secretary of Defense, or, you know, McMaster should be National Security Advisor rather than Mike Flynn. That makes some sense to me, even if you think Trump is engaged in policies that are,

you know, immoral and he shouldn't be served. I think it's much harder to make the case that Clifton should go serve in the communications office of the White House. So, you know, I think that those people in a way are more interesting because I think whatever you think of the choices they've made, I think the sort of ethical decisions around them are more complex. So just to close out here, you know, your interviews with these figures have been unique in trying to attack the moral reasoning of these candidates. Is there an implicit critique about the way people like Cliff Sims, people like Rudy Giuliani, people like Kellyanne Conway have generally been treated in the media? Do you think that these people have not been given the kind of scrutiny that they deserve?

No. I mean, well, you know, look, I think Giuliani and Kellyanne Conway have been given a lot of really tough interviews. So I wouldn't want to say that. I think that the response to Cliff Sims' book, I was sort of surprised by, that he was sort of presented on some segments of shows that I saw as kind of a figure who is, you know, sort of speaking out in some way or was writing sort of a brave book that was truth-telling. And, you know, I thought that that should be interrogated. I mean, this is a guy who basically says, as we covered in my interview, that the president is in no way a racist and sort of had a both sides approach to Charlottesville, and Sims and Trump both, obviously. And so I was sort of surprised that he had not been given a tougher interview.

But, yeah, you know, look, I think that people who are in this administration, and we look at some of the things going on. I mean, look, this is true in any administration. are in this administration and we look at some of the things going on. I mean, look, this is true in any administration. I would like to think that people in the Obama administration, which you served in, that there are policies that people don't like about Yemen or anything like that, that people who served in the administration are asked tough questions about them. But I also, I think in this administration, as much as ever, more so, there's a need to put tough questions to people. And I think that there are a lot of good journalists who are doing that. All right. Isaac Chotner, thank you so much for joining us.

Very excited to see who you interview before they bathe next. I think that's a good— Me too. Well, hopefully, or after they bathe. Before or after? Anything but during? Yeah. Really? Well, there's the thing about doing interviews over the phone. You don't have to worry too much about that. All right. Isaac, thanks a lot. Thanks. After? Anything but during? Yeah. Really? Well, there's the thing about doing interviews over the phone.

You don't have to worry too much about that. All right. Isaac, thanks a lot. Thanks. Thanks again, Isaac Chotner, for joining us. Good chotting with you. Good chotting with you. Wow. All right, everyone. We'll see you next week Bye.