Pod Save America - “The shithole shutdown.”

Episode Date: January 18, 2018

Trump and the Trumpiest Republicans oppose a bipartisan deal that would pass the Senate, protect the DREAMers, and keep the government open. Then Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, and Greg Barker talk to Tommy about The Final Year, a new documentary that focuses on Obama’s foreign policy in 2016. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we will have a portion of Tommy's interview with Samantha Power and Ben Rhodes, who are the stars of a new documentary film about Obama's final year in office. Greg Barker is the director. He was also there at the first Pod Save the World live show last night. It was fantastic, Dan. What's the name of that documentary? Is it called The Deep State?

Ben reveals that he has been running The Deep State since he left the White House. He actually said that last night at the show. It was pretty funny. That won't end up on Fox News. Which is exactly what Sam said right after Ben said that. The documentary is called Obama's Final Year.

It's about, obviously, Obama's final year in office, but particularly focused on foreign policy. Ben and Sam are both the stars of the show, as well as John Kerry, Susan Rice, Barack Obama himself.

Anyway, the full interview, Tommy's full interview with the stars and filmmaker will be on Pod Save the World this Friday, but you guys will be hearing a pretty great clip. If it's the clip I think

they're going to use, Ben and Sam are both asked if they think Trump has been better or worse than they thought he would be after one full year. And the answer is pretty interesting, especially from Ben. Yeah, don't spoil that.

I will not spoil that. Okay, so we're back from Europe, Dan. Things went great while you were here. It was calm. There was little news. Yeah, it was great. We really went to the right countries too. I mean, we were in Norway, where Trump wants to get all his new immigrants from. We were in London, where Trump canceled his trip to. It was a full-on apology tour. It was weird. Last Thursday, I woke up. I had all this extra time I don't normally have, but I also had like 75 pent-up rants.

So apologies to my wife who had to listen to me basically say all the things I would say on the pod just in the house in the morning. I was going to say, I mean, you know, we have no time limit here. Feel free to rant whenever you'd like. It could come. Okay. Okay, so we will have more live shows soon enough. time limit here feel free to rant whenever you'd like um any of those it could come okay um okay so we will have more live shows soon enough love it goes on the road next weekend for a love it or leave it swing and there are still tickets available for portland and uh especially in

seattle so go on uh crooked.com slash events to find those tickets. We have a live Pod Save America show right here in Los Angeles on February 3rd at the Dolby Theater. And Dan, I can announce who our special guests are right now in this pod. Jimmy Kimmel and John Legend. Oh, that is huge. How about that? Both of them. Can we have a debate between Jimmy Kimmel andimmel and the and ryan's mid-level staff and the mid-level staffer in paul ryan's office who's been in a twitter fight with jimmy kimmel for the last 24

hours paul ryan's office is so like dismissive of jimmy kimmel he's not the first one to fight with jimmy kimmel from paul ryan's press office they they all they all like to fight with jimmy kimmel for some reason which is just ironic to me because like they have the all these problems with the late night comedian and their boss spends every day of his life defending this buffoon reality tv show host who's our president amid all his racism and everything else so um but that fight did not go well for them which we'll talk about so yeah we'll talk to jimmy kimmmel and John Legend at the Dolby. New podcast from Crooked Media, Keep It with Ira Madison.

We have another episode up this week. The last one was hysterical. I haven't been able to listen to this one yet, but apparently there's quite a funny bit about Don Lemon, so how can you go wrong there? I was on Don Lemon's show two nights ago. It was fun. Oh, there you go.

Also on Friday, a new With Friends Like These is out. Anna Marie Cox talks to Iljoema Oluo, who will be discussing her new book, So You Want to Talk About Race. Okay. So, Dana, are you recovering from the fake news award after parties last night? Yes. I was out all night with Dave Weigel, Paul Krugman, and the entire Russian collusion hoax team. So it was wild. I'm still wearing my tux right now. Yeah, so Trump tweeted out the fake news awards last night. It was a link to the Republican National Committee's website, which promptly crashed.

Everything about that whole thing was perfect. He delays the awards. The White House doesn't want him to have them. He finally tweets them out. They're on some fucking GOP website that crashes. I just, I don't even want to talk about that. It was in the long history of poorly constructed, half-assed RNC research documents, this one probably took the cake.

Like, you are in the salt mines of the propaganda empire when you have to do the fake news awards at the RNC research shop. I mean, the whole thing was just, it was a weak effort from everyone involved. Pathetic. Meanwhile, this is what Trump and the White House and the Republican National Committee are focused on as we are staring down the barrel of a government shutdown, or as we're calling it here, the shithole shutdown. Which we're going to give credit to Blake Hounshell at Politico, who coined that term yesterday on Twitter. Okay, so we are a day away from what may be the first shutdown in decades to happen when one party controls the presidency in both houses of Congress. Let's review how we got here, Dan, because people may be confused. The short version is Donald Trump is president.

Yes, if you don't want to listen to the next two minutes, just Donald Trump is president. to the next two minutes just Donald Trump as president. Back in May of 2017, when Republicans and Democrats negotiated their first deal to fund the government, Donald Trump was very angry that it didn't include money for his fucking wall and said that, quote, our country needs a good shutdown in September to fix this mess. So that was Donald Trump back in May. Then in September, Trump eliminated the protections that Obama put in place for the 800,000 Dreamers who lived in America since they were kids. But then he made a tentative agreement with Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress to pass a law that would give the Dreamers a chance to become citizens. That is something that Trump, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell all said they supported. They all said they would support

legislation to provide DREAMers a pathway to citizenship. They said it in September. Also in September, the Republican Congress let the bipartisan Children's Health Insurance Program expire, even though there was a bipartisan bill in the Senate to extend the program like Congress has done since the program's inception. Since then, the Republican Congress has done nothing about the DREAM Act, nothing about CHIP. And now the DREAMers are facing deportation. CHIP is almost out of money and the federal government is almost out of money. With that in mind, a group of Democratic and Republican senators led by Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham went to the White House last weekend with a bipartisan compromise on immigration that would offer the Dreamers citizenship and increase border security, which is what Donald Trump wanted.

So what happened next, Dan? Did Donald Trump, the great independent dealmaker, welcome the opportunity to make a historic deal on immigration that would avert a shutdown? Is that what happened? Based on my viewing of The Celebrity Apprentice, it seems like he would do that. Right. No, I mean, he is the great deal and Republican Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump called shithole countries. Dan, we talked about this in our London show a little bit, but I haven't got your thoughts yet. What do you think about this whole shithole debate? It is a pretty good microcosm of everything that is stupid about politics in this era. Like Trump is a racist.

Yes. That is just a fact. We know this because he says racist things all the time. Yes. And you don't have to take's word for it, who said when Trump said that a American-born judge of Mexican descent could not fairly adjudicate Trump's case about Trump University because of his dissent, Paul Ryan himself called that a textbook case of racism. Trump's entire life, he has demonstrated racist voice. I'm sure Trump does not think he's racist. Many racists don't, but he is. And so the fact that we got into a debate about whether he said shithouse or shithole is so dumb because they mean the same thing.

A shithouse is a shithole with a roof over it. They are both racist. roof over it they are both racist and then you had tom cotton and senator purdue whose name i want to say frank but i don't think he's the chicken guy um go out and sunny no i think it's a different purdue oh i think this is david purdue david purdue all right he may be an heir to the chicken fortune i don't know but one of some nameless, faceless, old white Republican senator. I take that. I don't even know if he's old. Some senator who seems terrible.

They went on air and they basically said, denied Trump said that based on the distinction between shithouse and shithole. It's also wrapped us around the axle because a bunch of media outlets stupidly wrote stories saying how the shithole comments are why we are looking down the barrel of a shutdown. That is not why. Yeah, no, it's the vulgarity. Trump's vulgarity. Yes. Yes. That's a good point.

I would like to point out I do not care that Trump swore. Barack Obama swore on occasion. Bill Clinton definitely swore that Trump swore. Barack Obama swore on occasion. Bill Clinton definitely swore on occasion. George W. Bush swore on occasion. I've heard some of those men swear themselves. That doesn't matter. Trump can use the worst language in the world behind closed doors. That is up to him. It's not the words. I don't give a flying fuck if Trump swears. How's that? If he had called them defecation pits instead of shitholes, it's not as profane. It means the same thing. The sentiment is what matters, not the language. And the reason we're facing a shutdown is Republicans – Donald Trump has said he wants to fix the problem for the Dreamers.

Paul Ryan has said he wants to fix the problem for the Dreamers. Democrats want to fix the problem for the Dreamers. They just refuse to do it, and it's not the language he used. The whole thing – I mean it's made for Twitter and cable,, but it is it tells us something we already knew about Trump. It's so perfect to like the Republicans or, you know, the the hill they're dying on is to fight over the distinction between shithole and shithouse. What kind of better example could you have of how much the people in this party have just debased themselves for Donald Trump? That they're going out there fucking Tom Cotton and Donald Trump's Homeland Security Secretary, who's like almost lying under oath when she's testifying before Congress and saying, oh, I didn't hear him say that word.

Like, okay, you were in the room, of course. So you're all thinking that Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham, your Republican friend Lindsey Graham, is lying? You want to call Lindsey Graham a liar? Is that what you're all doing now? Because you're trying to make the distinction between shithole and shithouse? Give me a break.

It is just... It was unbelievable. It's so stupid. Tom Cotton is one of the worst, worst people in politics. Worst people in politics. He's terrible. It's worth noting, you and I have been, through the fortune of our lives, been in many Oval Office meetings.

What presidents say is very memorable. So the idea that 72 hours later, Kirstjen Nielsen could not remember what he said is just a lie. She is lying under oath. I know why she did it, because she sold her soul and gave up her integrity to work for Donald Trump. But that is what she did. It is impossible to imagine that she did not know what the president of the United States said when he said it. Especially, it wasn't like he said it in passing. It led to a confrontation with a Republican senator who also happens to be Trump's most frequent golfing partner.

Right. That is not something you would miss. happens to be Trump's most frequent golfing partner. Right. Like that is not something you would miss. Like if Barack Obama and Dick Durbin got into an argument in an Oval Office meeting over a critical piece of legislation, we'd remember that. And again, no one is denying that what the president really meant and what the president wants is immigrants from rich white countries and not poor countries that have predominantly brown and black people in them. That's the truth. That's what he wants. And that's the problem with his position right now. Not what he calls it,, says he rejects it.

Now he rejects this bipartisan compromise because C-plus Santa Monica fascist Stephen Miller gets to him. John Kelly reportedly, according to the Washington Post, told him it wasn't a good deal. And then these immigration radical hardliners like Tom Cotton got to him as well. So after Trump in a meeting said, I'll sign whatever you people send me, whatever deal you guys send me, I'll sign. Now, because all of these right wing fanatics on immigration got to him, he blows up the deal. So now what's the latest? House Republicans right now are trying to pass another short-term funding bill that only funds the government for one more month, takes us to February 15th, that does not include protections for the Dreamers. It does include a six-year extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program, partially paid for by

repealing a bunch of Obamacare taxes to pay for it. So the question now is, can this even, before we even get to the Senate, can this short-term fix get enough votes in the House of Representatives? Well, it seemed like it was making some progress last night, and then Donald Trump got to his phone this morning and randomly tweeted, for no reason that I have been able to discern on Twitter, which is where I get all my information, that CHIP should not be included in a short-term deal, only a long-term deal, completely blowing up Paul Ryan's entire strategy. Because let's be clear what the Republicans are doing with the Children's Health Insurance Program. They could have extended this program on a bipartisan basis with huge bipartisan majorities in both houses at any time, any day, any minute for the last four or five months.

Just throw it on the floor, the thing would have passed. They could have passed a six-year extension. They could have passed a six-year extension. They could have passed a 10-year extension. Would have happened. They basically now have admitted, and they're admitting to reporters on background and some of them on the record and a whole bunch of different stories,

that they are using Chip as a point of leverage to dare Democrats to vote against the short-term government funding bill, which doesn't include protection for DREAMers. So they are using it as a wedge to pit children who need health insurance against Americans who are at risk of being deported when their protections run out in March. That's what they're doing.

It's the most cynical thing you could imagine. And look, they're saying it at press conferences too. I can't imagine the Democrats want to choose illegal immigrants over American children with their health care. Well, here's the thing. If you care so much about kids' health care, break off the children's health insurance program from this whole deal, put it on the floor right now for a vote, and we will extend it as long as you want. And they know that, but they can't admit that. Also, when they use the term illegal immigrants, which is offensive on its face, but they are specifically referring to the Dreamers, a group of people that Paul Ryan and Donald Trump have spoken very favorably of and talked about their desire to help them. Right.

So they are going to demonize the dreamers in order to get this done. And so, you know, you hear these arguments from some Republicans, which is like immigration policy is complicated. George Bush didn't get it done. Barack Obama didn't get it done. It's unfair to ask Donald Trump to get it done on this deadline. Here's the thing. I would love it if we would pass an immigration reform bill like the bipartisan bill that passed the Senate in 2013. But we don't have to do that. We can just solve a very specific problem that we all agree should be solved, except Tom Cotton and Stephen Miller. But the vast majority of the American people, some of the American people, the Speaker of the House, the Leader of the Senate, the Minority Leaders of the House and the Senate, and the President of the United States said they want to fix the problem. We could just pass the DREAM Act right now. It's that

simple. You could do it tomorrow. You could do it by lunchtime today. If people had their shit together, you could do it before this pod came up. But that's not what we're doing. We're trying to – they're using the DREAMers, literally holding them hostage, to try to get some weird see-through fake wall and all these other offensive things that Stephen Miller and John Kelly want. But why do that to the Dreamers? We think they should not be deported, so let's not deport them. It's that simple. Yeah. Quinnipiac poll from last week, 79% of the American people support the DREAM Act, and that includes 64% of Republicans. You don't get that kind of agreement on anything

anymore. And you have, like you said, you have Donald Trump said he's in favor of offering the Dreamers a pathway to citizenship. You had Paul Ryan who said that. You have Mitch McConnell who said that. That's the three leaders of the Republican Party. If this government shuts down, it is not because of the Dreamers. It is because of what Donald Trump and Tom Cotton and Stephen Miller want to demand in exchange for doing something that they have promised that they would do, that Trump promised he would do, which is protect the dreamers. So if they shut this government down, it's that they are shutting it down because they didn't get enough money for his fucking wall. It's because he didn't get enough restrictions on legal immigration. So he's, Donald Trump is making the shutdown about immigration, not the Democrats. Because the Democrats, the Democrats have a bipartisan compromise to fix a problem

that Donald Trump and the Republican leaders have promised that they would fix since fucking September. So, but there is a question of whether Paul Ryan even gets the short-term funding bill out of the House of Representatives. He should because all he needs is a simple majority. It's not like the Senate where he needs Democratic votes. He just needs Republicans to vote for this. But the right-wing fanatics led by Mark Meadows in the Freedom Caucus reportedly don't like the compromise right now. They don't like the bill that's there. caucus, reportedly don't like the compromise right now. They don't like the bill that's there.

So I can't imagine that, maybe I shouldn't say I can't imagine, but it's hard to believe that Paul Ryan won't eventually get this out of the House. Because it seems like his message to even the hardliners in the Republican Party in the House is, hey, even if you hate this bill, it's a hot potato right now. We just got to pass it to the Senate so we can pass the blame to the Senate. And then hopefully we can put this whole thing on the Democrats. So like if Mark Meadows and his crazy crew shut this down, then it's a real fucking joke. We went down this path when Boehner was speaker a couple of times in 2011 and a couple times in 2013. And what happens here is they just keep moving the bill to the right until they buy everyone off, even when it is so absurd that it's not even a law that Paul Ryan supports. They do it because passing something is better than nothing, because they think, with some

common sense, that having passed something strengthens their hand in the coming shutdown fight. So I will say this. If Paul Ryan cannot pass something out of the House where he has a large majority by midnight Friday night, then he is the most incompetent fuckstick to ever walk the halls of the Capitol. It's really true. I mean, that's why i just i assume this is going to get out of the house because you know he should be able to twist enough arms um so say it does then we go to the senate so mcconnell needs 60 votes to pass a bill out of the senate there are 51 republicans that he that he has which means that he also he needs nine democrats to pass something out of the Senate. There are 51 Republicans that he has, which means that he also he needs nine Democrats to pass something out of there. But Lindsey Graham and now Mike

Rounds, Senator Mike Rounds, have said that they are no's, that they do not want to vote for another short term government funding extension. Lindsey Graham wants protections for the Dreamers. Mike Rounds and possibly a few other Republicans we don't even know yet are just really tired of voting for one-month extensions for government funding bill that does offer protections to the dreamers because yesterday we had seven republican senators all said they were for the compromise that dick durbin and lindsey graham brought to the president so seven republicans plus the 49 democrats means you have 56 votes you have a majority in the Senate right now for a bill that would stop the government from shutting down, extend chip, and protect the Dreamers. But McConnell's still out there tweeting like Democrats are going to shut the government down over illegal immigration.

Fuck you. Yeah, that's right. McConnell is almost as bad as Tom Cotton. He's really a destructive, cynical force in American politics. up called gettowork.kirga.com where we are keeping our own whip count of which Democratic senators have said they will absolutely not vote for a spending deal that doesn't protect the Dreamers and Chip and which ones are either saying that they will vote for it or are waffling. And so if you're standing strong against any deal that doesn't protect the Dreamers, you're in the Fight Club. And if not, you're in the Waffle House. The only problem with it, I think what you guys are doing is great. I've been inspired by it.

Waffle House is delicious, though. Oh, I love the Waffle House. I don't think it's a place you want to stay forever. That's true. You want to have your breakfast there and then leave. So what do you think about the politics here for Democrats? So I think it is challenging. And so there was a story that when I sent it to you on Monday, and right as I sent it, I was like, this was probably a mistake because John is tired, jet lagged, and his wife is not home.

So you were just going to tweet about it for three hours, which you did. Sure enough. But it was a New York Times story about, it was framed in a stupid way, which was president's shithole comments pose risks for Democrats, which is not true. Trump's racism posed no risk to Democrats. It posed a risk to the general morality and decency of the American people and the world. But the shutdown is shutdowns are have tricky politics, right? The the president has won the last several shutdowns, whether it was Clinton or Obama. And we have a lot of Democrats in Trump state. So in that story, our friend of many years in one of our favorite centers, Claire McCaskill, was critical of the Democrats who were

pushing this maximalist position and saying, you know, those of her, like, she's from a Missouri, a state Trump won by a lot of points, and was saying that it was, there, but we only win this fight if we're united. And if we lose the fight, everyone will suffer in blue states and in red states, right? Like Claire McCaskill or Heidi Heitkamp or Joe Manchin are in tough races under the best of scenarios, but they are definitely not winning if the Democratic base is disenchanted.

And so the politics of this are is that we don't have a choice. We have a moral obligation to stand up for the Dreamers, and we have a political obligation to have the fight. We didn't ask for the fight, are turning out in record numbers in these off-year elections, who are standing in airports, who will be marching on the one-year anniversary of the Women's March. And if we don't give them a reason to believe that having Democrats in charge of the Senate will get us better outcomes for something as obvious as fighting for the Dreamers, then we will be hurt in blue states and in red states. Yeah. I mean, first of all, we're not asking Claire McCaskill and Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp

to vote for legislation that opens the floodgates to as many immigrants who want to pour into the country as possible here. We're asking them to vote for and stand up for a piece of legislation that is supported by

79% of the American people and 64% of Republicans. And I get that a shutdown is tough. No one wants a government shutdown. No one wants the government shutdown. It's not a good thing. It's not a fun political tactic. It's a serious thing.

It represents a failure on all sides in some way, a collective failure. And so no one wants that. But at the same time, and I've been saying that, like, this is not politics. The thing that most upset me about Claire McCaskill's quote in that piece, and I love Claire McCaskill, and I want her to win, and I'll do everything we need to help her to win. But if she just said, this is tough position for me and I don't want to draw a line in the sand, I would have disagreed with her. But I would have been like, you know, I'm somewhat sympathetic when she said, you know, we have some people running of Democrats who are standing strong, who are in Fight Club, who aren't running for president. Some of them, like, you know, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine in Virginia, which has probably the highest percentage of federal government employees of any state in the country, you know, who may be furloughed if there's a government shutdown,

they just came out and said they are voting against a short term extension, not just because of the dreamers, but also because it is absurd to continue to vote to fund this government in one month increments, you know. And Mark Warner's, you know, not running for president as far as I can tell. And so are like a lot of other Democrats who have stood strong in this. And so maybe and look, this is like what the, this is a media mindset because I saw another New York Times story today that said, oh, presidential politics is pushing the Democratic Party to the left because they're just running around looking for the base. Yeah, maybe there's politics involved in it, but maybe also a lot of

these Democratic senators and Democratic politicians out there are thinking that if we don't do this now, then March is going to come and 800,000 people in this country who've lived in this country their entire lives may have to leave forever and may have to break up from their families. I mean, we saw this story a couple days ago of Jorge Garcia, who is 39 years old, and he was brought to this country when he was 10 from Mexico, lives in Lincoln Park, Michigan, married, has a 15-year-old daughter, 12-year-old son, no criminal record, worked hard his entire life, paid his taxes, and he was informed that he would have to leave this country because Donald Trump's immigration services decided that they were going to kick him out.

And he asked these deportation officers if he could at least stay through the holidays to see if Congress could work out a deal on immigration. And so they actually let him stay through the holidays. And because Congress did nothing, because we kept passing short-term extensions without any protections for the Dreamers, last week he was told he had to leave. And there's such a sad scene at the airport when he's hugging his family and he has to leave and he can't come back for 10 years. And there's all these, like, UAW workers from Michigan, not the kind of people who you would imagine would be for, you know, immigration compromises. And they're sitting there and they're sad and they don't understand why their friend has to leave. And, like, we're going to see these scenes all over the country if people don't stand up for this right now, if Democrats don't stand up for this.

So this isn't even fucking about politics. This is just about, like, who we are as a country, you know? That is exactly right. And I would say that I don't know who's running for president, but I know who's speculated about possibly running for president. And just to, this is not an exhaustive list of senators, but let's say Hillary Clinton had won, right? And we were in a standoff with a similar,

and Republicans had control of the House and the Senate. And we were in a similar standoff. Yeah. Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Chris Murphy, Elizabeth Warren would be doing the exact same thing. Kamala Harris, all like this. Yeah. And it does them a disservice to think that this is a purely political calculation. Politics – obviously there is a political calculation. Yeah. They are politicians. Right.

This is politics. We're not naive here. We get that. Yes. But it's also – these are also real human beings with a long history of fighting for people like the Dreamers. like the dreamers. And so let's not impose cynical motives on people, whether that was from Claire McCaskill's quote, which I don't want to harp on that because that doesn't really concern me as much as the general tenor of the press discussion. And to be fair, there are people on the other side of the aisle, John Kelly probably included, who have strong views on immigration. And that does not

mean they are racist, but you can have a different view on the DREAMers or immigration reform and not be racist. That is a view. It is one I vehemently disagree with. What offends me is when people use racial code language or try to stir up racial fears in order to advance their position, which has been the strategy of the Republican Party. But people can have real sincere views on these issues. And we shouldn't assume it's 100 percent politics. Yeah. And I also think, too, back to the Democrats, like if there's one thing we've learned over the last couple of years, it's, you know, you don't win if you're running scared. You know, if you're always cautious, if you're always worrying about what the polls are going to say or what this is going to do to

your position or like you just like you said, these these senators, even in the reddest of red states, they win if Democratic voters show up and they can't win if democratic based voters don't show up and so like as much as they might need you know some trump voters or some obama trump voters or you know what have you or independents or swing voters or whatever they also really need like hardcore democrats to turn out and also by the way they need to get people who don't usually turn out in midterm elections who are reliable Democratic based voters. And one way to get those people to turn out so you don't need as many Trump voters is to stand up for your principles. And if look, if if Claire McCaskill and Joe Manchin, all these people, if they honestly

don't believe in protecting the dreamers, then, you know, I disagree with that, but I understand it. But if you believe in it, then this is your moment to fight for it. And it is it's not just we need the base to show up. Right. The base right now is not even the base is the wrong term because base implies it's people who vote all the time. You have a lot of people who did not vote in 2016, did not knock doors in 2016, were kind of disengaged from politics because they came of age when Barack Obama was president, and I think kind of thought everything was going to be okay,

who are deeply afraid and deeply offended by what's happened in this country since Election Day 2016. And they are, you know, I was at a San Francisco swing left meeting on like a Tuesday night in January a couple weeks ago. And there were 100 people there. And they had already spent the last year knocking doors, doing phone calls. They were going to register voters. And the idea that 100 people in the safest district in the entire country would come out on Monday night in January is a sign of where we are. And a lot of those people had never been to an organizing meeting before they joined swing left. Right. And so those people are there. And the only way that Democrats can truly screw this

up is if we give them a reason to doubt that their vote matters. If they think we're just going to, the same thing will happen, whether McConnell has the gavel or Schumer has the gavel or Pelosi has the gavel or Ryan has the gavel, then they're not going to come out. And so that is the obligation Democratic officials have to the people who have done so much to save the Affordable Care Act and let their voices be heard since the election. And it's incredibly important. These opportunities for this much engagement do not come around very often. It's been 10 years since the last one. And we could blow it if we look like we are not standing strong for the things that we care so much about. I totally agree. So we should, since a lot of people are going to listen to this on Friday, maybe Saturday, and who knows, the government could be shut down by then we should talk about what happens

if the government is shut down if they can't reach an agreement and then because there is going to be a a war over the message and who's to blame that if we want to get out of the shutdown which everyone's going to want to get out of the shutdown and they're going to want to do so with a deal that protects the dreamers we're're going to have to win that message war. And no one should expect the press to just get this. Because already they're sort of buying in. I've seen a lot of them buy into the Republicans' frame that, like, you know, Democrats are forcing a shutdown over immigration. like, you know, Democrats are forcing a shutdown over immigration.

And I think we're immediately going to have to start saying, if this thing shuts down, Donald Trump could keep the government open. He could reopen the government in a second. If he accepted a bipartisan deal on immigration that fulfills his promise to protect the dreamers and gives him money for border security that seven Republican senators and all Senate Democrats support. That's 56 votes in the Senate. You can open up the government today. But he is shutting down. He is keeping this government shut down because he's not getting enough money for his wall and he's not getting enough restrictions on immigration because he doesn't want people from Haiti and Africa to come here. And I think that's exactly right. But also he is asking American taxpayers

to pay for the wall that he promised Mexico would pay for. Right. Right. And he's keeping that's the thing that keeps getting lost in this. And he's keeping the government closed until he gets even more taxpayer dollars for his wall. That's what he's doing right now. The government's not closed because the Dreamers, because Donald Trump said he wants to protect the Dreamers. So did Paul Ryan. So did Mitch McConnell. And they could all fix it right now. And this government could be open and everyone could go back to work. So why don't they just do what they promised they'd do and do what they said they'd do? That's the message. And that's exactly right. And I think it is important for Democrats to be tough and disciplined on this if we

end up in a shutdown, which we should be able, which if we lived in a world of common sense and rational presidents, it would be very easy to avoid. But Republicans may put us in this position. And so the government shuts down at midnight on Friday. Saturday morning, Quinnipiac or CNN or ABC, Washington Post go into the field with a poll about who to blame. And it very well could come back that people are blaming Democrats. And what we should not do then? Not panic. Because you know what is not on this coming Tuesday? The election, right? You have to, like we, there could be rough seas here if this goes on for a week or two or three. And you have to stick it out.

And what will matter in the end is if we are able to deliver something for the dreamers. If we can get that and get the government back open, then that will be fine. The immediate short-term public opinion is a worthless snapshot in time. Yeah. And frankly, I was part of a shutdown in 2013. And the Republicans shut down the government in an attempt to repeal Obamacare. They also threatened to default on our bills and crash the global economy by not lifting the debt limit.

But they did that. We destroyed them in the messaging. Destroyed them. Like massive numbers, like you would disapprove of the problems like you've never seen. like massive numbers, like you would disapprove of the problems like you've never seen. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell had to crawl hat in hand to Barack Obama and basically reopen his government for the cost of nothing. So they,

they got nothing out of it. They were, they basically had to wave the white flag. It was very enjoyable. And then one, one year later, the Republicans took the gain more seats in the house and took the Senate. So what the short term of loss did not affect their long term outcome.

Now, this is a closer window because that was in October, I believe, of 2013. The election was in November. But as we know from the last week, every week is 10 years in the Trump era. So what I'm just saying is do not panic, right? Play the long game. And the more united Democrats are, the more likely they are to prevail. If we become divided on this, we will most certainly lose. And it will hurt our ability, not, this isn't just about the Senate. It will hurt our ability to win the House. Yeah. Oh, for sure. And also just don't, the politics of this could be good

for Democrats. They could be bad for Democrats. We don't know. But when you're out there, like, don't talk about the politics. Don't think about the politics. Talk about the stakes and think about the stakes and think about Jorge Garcia and think about the 800,000 dreamers and talk about them and talk about what's at stake here. Because I think in a lot of this conversation, we sort of just lose sight of the human consequences of not acting for the Dreamers. And like you said, the fact that Republicans are talking about illegal immigration, they never even used to talk about illegal immigration

when it came to talking about the Dreamers. The Dreamers were always a special category of people who were brought here as children through no fault of their own and who were American in every single way, but by law. And I think in the coming weeks, if this thing is shut down, we need to talk about these people who are our neighbors and friends and family and part of our communities. That's right. We've got a pretty human face on this because that's really why. The Republicans. Is at stake here.

Yeah, and the Republicans will try to otherize them like they otherize everyone else. And we can't let that happen. And just to talk about the political terrain for a minute, Donald Trump today is going to Pennsylvania to try to save Tim Murphy's house seat in western Pennsylvania. It's a district that there's a special election there. It's going to be on March 13th. The district is Pittsburgh suburbs and sort of like working class areas and sort of upper class suburbs. It is a very conservative district. Tim Murphy, before he resigned amid scandal, won it by 20 points in 2016. And yet Donald Trump is going to try to save this seat because Conor Lamb, the Democrat running in that district, is giving Rick Saccone, the Republican, a run for his money. What do you think about that race, Dan? I have to say,

we were in Stockholm, Sweden, and we got to the Q&A of the live show. And a Swedish gentleman walked up to the microphone and said, I have a question. It's about the special election in the Pennsylvania whatever. I don't even know what number the district is. And do you think that Conor Lamb has a chance? And we're like, what? So, yeah. I remember, like, I kind of dialed in on this, like, a month or so ago and looked at the partisan breakdown and was like, oh, that's interesting. But March seemed like a gazillion years away. And so I kind of forgotten about it until Trump said he was going there. Amazingly, it was an official White House event to promote the tax bill that just happened to be in that district.

So it would be an official event. So taxpayers would pay for it. And then Trump this morning tweeted that he was going there to campaign for Rick Saccone, thereby throwing the entire event into a very legal gray area where if we still follow laws in this country, the Saccone campaign or the RNC or some other political committee would have to pay the very large cost of flying Air Force One there. But then the White House said that's not what Trump meant. It is, this is, I mean, obviously a tough seat. You know, six weeks ago, or however many months ago, when Tim Murphy skulked out of the Capitol, the, no one thought Democrats had a real shot at this. Now we do. You know, if you can win in Alabama, you can win anywhere. And so it is like, we have a shot,

we should fight for it and people should contribute and volunteer and do all the things. And it would be an amazing win, right? Every win we pick up now is one fewer seat we need in November. So I think we have a shot. And the fact that we have a shot in Tim Murphy's district says so much about Democratic enthusiasm and how much the political train has shifted since November of 16. Yeah, I mean, look what happened on Tuesday. Tuesday, there were a bunch of special elections and Democrats won big across the country, perhaps nowhere more than in the 10th Senate district in Wisconsin, where which has been in Republican hands for 17 years. Trump won it by double digits in 2016. And Democrat Patty Shatner won it for the first time in 17 years, beat a Republican. So alarmed the Republican Party in Wisconsin that Scott Walker, the governor, started tweeting that it was a wake up call. And I'll tell you, that district in Wisconsin is a hell of a lot more Republican

than Paul Ryan's district, where Randy Bryce is running to take him out. So, look, since Donald Trump was elected, Democrats have flipped 34 legislative seats, one governor's seat, and one U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, of all places. So anything is possible, which is why, you know, everyone should go hope that Conor Lamb

wins and donate and help whatever way you can. And also back to our shutdown conversation, why Democrats should be confident in standing up for what you believe in and actually fighting for it, because the political wind is at our backs. And it's at our backs because we've been out there in the streets marching and going to town halls and persuading our representatives. Which raises a point I should have raised earlier, which is it is important to recognize that in our modern social media Facebook age of politics, there is no such thing as a North Dakota campaign, a West Virginia campaign, an Arizona campaign, a Nevada campaign. It is one campaign across the board. If Democrats in Trump states are seen as cozying up to Trump, that will deflate the base in blue states.

Right. And so we have to run one campaign and people will put slightly different spins on the ball. They will make cases for state specific things that they have delivered or worked in bipartisan ways on. But there cannot be a world where you think you can run your campaign in your state and be insulated from what happens in the rest of the country. And that's why standing together is so important. Because if you think you're going to split off and not hurt other people and help yourself or vice versa, then we're going to lose. It's very similar to the strategy that a lot of Democrats put forward in 2014, and it hurt. And because people in red states distance themselves from Obama, it hurt people in the blue or purple or states where they needed Obama voters to turn out. And you can have a very similar situation here where what Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp does affects whether Randy Bryce can win or whether we can win in the seven districts that are inhabited by the crooked five now, right? And so that all matters. And if we run this old school politics of state-specific

campaigns without acknowledging the larger contexts, we are doomed to potentially repeat the past. Yes. So just go out there and fight. Be confident. Call your senators. Find out where they stand. Go to gettowork.cricket.com and let's go win this for the 800,000 people who are in this country who are counting on us. When we come back, we will have a portion of Tommy's interview with Samantha Power and Ben Rhodes. Hey, guys. This is Tommy Vitor invading the Thursday pod. The following is an excerpt from the first ever live Pod Save the World that I did on

Wednesday night here in Los Angeles. It was a conversation with Ben Rhodes, Ambassador Samantha Power, and Greg Barker, who's the director of a new film coming out on Friday called The Final Year. It's about the final year of the Obama administration's foreign policy team's sprint to the finish line. This is a clip from that conversation. The rest of it will be released as the Pod Save the World episode for this week. So check out the clip, download the full Pod Save the World episode because it was a really fascinating conversation about all the stuff that you guys were dealing with and then Trump's

election and how it changed everything. Let's play that clip of Ben talking about what it means in personal terms, but also in terms of the Obama legacy. You think about the people around the country who are afraid. My assistant who works for me is a Muslim who wears a hijab, and she was crying for days. You know, that's what's meeting on your mind. And then you're thinking about things that we worked on, Cuba, Iran, climate. You know, what is going to happen to those things? And I cannot stress to you enough, there's no backstop here.

I mean, I think people assume, well, there's some grown-up somewhere, right, who will make sure he doesn't, you know, screw up too bad or something. There's not. There's no, this is it. Like, you're in the office. You decide whether to take a strike that kills somebody. You decide whether to take a strike to kill somebody. You decide whether to start a war. He will have to make hundreds of those decisions. That will happen every week here. And there's not anybody else who will make those decisions for him.

Make you feel better? It's funny. I remember having that conversation with you in 2009, because we had all these meetings about, I think, Sudan policy. And one time after one of them, you and I were talking, and you're just like, holy fuck. You always think when you're outside of government, there's another room where the important people are really calling the shots, and suddenly you're in the room, and it's not always the best feeling. Has Trump been as bad as you guys feared, both in terms of unraveling what Obama accomplished, climate, Iran, Cuba, but also just sort of generally doing damage to our reputation?

Yeah, I'll take this one. I just want to make sure I get the first crack at this. I get the first crack at this. You know, he's been worse. And here's why. Like, yeah, the scorecard, Paris, Iran, Cuba, you know, pull out of Paris, half roll back Cuba, not quite be smart enough to figure out how to get out of Iran. But, you know... Throwing a lot of red meat in there for him.

Sorry about that. David Deepstater. But what is more concerning to me is, underneath that, you know, the hollowing out of the State Department cannot... It can't be overstated. I mean, I don't think people can even get their minds around the extent to which, like, he's removed us from the field in the world. We don't have... This isn't secretaries of state,

we don't have a functioning state department. And so I anticipated the axe to the Obama legacy and the kind of wild hacking at the Obama legacy, but this kind of systematic dismantlement of government, and this emptying out of state and this hollowing out of EPA playing any function of environmental protection, which is the name of the organization, you know, is really, really stark. But I think one of the things that people don't appreciate yet is we're not the leader of the world anymore. That's gone in one year. One of the things, Tommy, I think you probably realized

when you got the job outside my office is something would happen around the world and we'd put out a statement about it. A crisis happened somewhere, a political development happened somewhere, and you have this very strange experience where we write a statement. It could even be issued from Tommy Vitor, National Security Council spokesperson.

From the back of a cab on your Blackberry. And an hour later, the British put out the same statement. And then the French. And then the Germans. And then the EU. And then the Japanese. And then the UN, and then the EU, and then the Japanese, and then the UN is coming in. And you get this sense of the weight of the fact that the rest of the world kind of looks to you to call the play.

And that's been the case for 70 years. Even under a president like Bush, who was not necessarily the most popular guy around the world, that was still the case. 70 years. It's gone. We are not the leader. Well, let me phrase this in a certain way. I want to phrase this in a certain way so it's not mischaracterized. The actions he is taking and the way in which he is acting in office.

Because this is another piece that's important. Here the reality show gets consumed. Maybe it's interesting that he drinks a lot of Diet Coke and watches television and tweets at Kim Jong-un and calls him Rocket Man. Around the world, they could give a shit about how many Diet Cokes he drinks. And they don't think the Rocket Man thing is interesting or entertaining. It's terrifying. I mean, it's fucking terrifying. Like, these are countries like Japan and South Korea who have banked their entire national security.

And when I say national security, I don't mean like a policy thing on the shelf. I mean the existence of their nations on the United States being a rational actor. And he's given that away in a year. And it's not a reality show. It's not like a story in the New York Times about how Jared doesn't get along with Steve and Donald drinks seven diet Cokes and he had two TVs installed. That's not the story. The story is that he has debased the office of the President of the United States in the eyes of the world.

He's taken us off the field in the world. We are no longer respected around the world. Our allies don't look to us to run the play. They have to run their own play without us to mitigate the damage that we are causing. That's what's happening run the play. They have to run their own play without us to mitigate the damage that we are causing. That's what's happening around the world. And I don't think we've fully absorbed that. I think we're incapable, in some ways,

of fully absorbing it, in part because there's a completely complicit governing party in Congress, in part because it's a hard story to tell, in part because we don't want to hear it. And the last thing I'd say is, it's tempting to think, and this is how I kind of make myself feel better,

that the pendulum will swing back. There'll be a correction. But the rest of the world is looking at this and thinking, not just like, who's Donald Trump? They're thinking, who is this country that elected Donald Trump? And can we trust these people? Because we basically trusted these people to run the world for 70 years

and to have troops in all these other countries and to tell us what to do and to run all these international institutions. And we elected Donald Trump. And this is why it's not important just that he loses. The scale of the defeat is really important. Because I'm serious. You know, if the Democrats pick up 26 seats and eke out a House victory

and then somebody wins with an electoral college, you know, they get the Wisconsin-Pennsylvania thing right. That's one thing. If there is a rebuke from this country of Donald Trump, of a wholesale rebuke, I mean a dramatic take of the House, a take back of the Senate, and then a landslide defeat for Donald Trump, then and only then will the rest of the world say, okay, this is the America that we thought we knew.

Right. I agree with that. Yeah. Having just gotten back from being in Europe, I heartily agree with your assessment. And, you know, as a country, we don't always take criticism from other countries well. We end up renaming French fries

or some other stupid shit rather than listening. Samantha, has this been as bad as you thought maybe that night or the day shortly after? No, I mean, I agree with everything Ben said. Just way, way, way, way worse than we anticipated. And for me, it's, you know, that just the systemic cruelty and coldness,

the way in which there's also no definable ideology or algorithm other than what did Barack Obama want or do and how do we do the opposite of that. I mean, a friend of ours tweeted, you know, if Barack Obama had discovered the cure for cancer, Donald Trump would be bringing it back, right? And it's an obsession, you know. So there's that. But I think, you know, I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly with Ben's point about how fulsome the rebuke needs to be. I don't want to wait, though. I think we can't wait until our elections to define who we are.

And I do think it's incumbent on all of us to take what has happened in our country already and do our best with what we have. The executive branch has a huge amount of power, but fundamentally, America is more than the sum of the decisions or tweets that our president does. We are also our courts who have refused to allow him to expel transgender people from our military. courts who have refused to allow him to expel transgender people from our military. We are the 25,000 women who are now running for office, shattering the record set according to Emily's List. Emily's List has been around now for 32, 33 years.

The prior record for a single year of women who'd engaged in Emily's List to get involved was 962. And now it's in a single year, 25,000. That gives you a sense of the Trump effect, I'll say. in this, you know, even though the party, the GOP, you know, seems disinclined to scrutinize nominees in any way, or appointees, no matter what they do. But, you know, we are, this is part of the story we will tell. So one part of the story needs to be, look, at our earliest occasions, we rejected everything he stood for. You know, districts that went for Trump by 20 points, even state Senate districts are now swinging, you know, 35 points. So it's a 15-point edge yesterday, I think, or Tuesday in Wisconsin in a state Senate race. You know, the more of these data points we have, extremely important. But we also have to show that there's continuity of the kind that Ben referenced earlier in our institutions and that, you know,

in a period even that extends as long as four years, that there are other entities that are defining American decision-making. That's our show for today. Dan, any other pent-up rants? Anything you want to get out? Yeah, so this is dated content, and I apologize. I should have just basically periscoped myself on Monday. But on Martin Luther King Day, Paul Ryan tweeted a picture of himself staring at a bust of Martin Luther King as if it was Ayn Rand. of Martin Luther King as if it was Ayn Rand and talking about how he thinks about the words of Martin Luther King as he goes about doing his job on a daily basis. I would like to make one point. I believe Paul Ryan probably thinks positively of Martin Luther King. I'm not sure Donald Trump does, but I think Paul Ryan probably does. And he probably does, in the massive case of self-delusion that he has,

thinks that in his work he is being true to the values of Martin Luther King. Do you think he is? That is bullshit. And I would tell you this right now, because this says a lot about our politics, that if Martin Luther King Jr. was alive today, Paul Ryan, his party in Fox News, would call him a member of Antifa. It's true, man. The idea that they love Martin Luther King Jr. is crazy. You cannot name an African-American,

or frankly, non-white political figure who is not a already member of the Republican Party, that the Republican Party, Paul Ryan included, does not demonize. You know, it reminds me that a bunch of people were tweeting this out on Martin Luther King Day. and include it, it's not demonized. You know, it reminds me that a bunch of people were tweeting this out on Martin Luther King Day. Like, Martin Luther King's approval rating back in the 60s, when he was leading the civil rights movement, was like 30-something percent. It was underwater.

When you asked Americans, do you support the boycotts and the bus boycotts? Do you support the sit-ins at the lunch counters? Do you support the sit-ins at the lunch counters? Do you support the march on Washington, in the march that Dr. King is leading on Washington? And majorities of Americans did not support those actions. And once again, it goes back to not worrying so much about the politics of doing what you believe in and fighting for what you believe in and fighting for what's right. Because like you said, back then, the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King didn't have a support of the majority of Americans. And you're right, if they were around today, they certainly wouldn't be supported by

most elements of the Republican Party. And so, yeah, I saw, it was quite an image of Paul Ryan, a black and white picture of Paul Ryan just looking ponderously at Martin Luther King Jr. Like, a couple days after Donald Trump said he didn't want immigrants coming from shithole countries in Africa, but he wanted them coming from rich white countries like Norway. Great timing, Paul.

And the full extent of the moral outrage that Paul Ryan could express at a racist sentiment from the commander-in-chief of the Oval Office was unfortunate. Unhelpful, too. Unfortunate is when you... And unhelpful. Yeah, unhelpful.

Unhelpful to Paul Ryan. The politics are unhelpful and it's unfortunate. Unhelpful too. Unfortunate is when you... And unhelpful. Yeah, unhelpful. Unhelpful to Paul Ryan. The politics are unhelpful and it's unfortunate. Yeah. It's like unfortunate is when your lift shows up late, right? I mean, that is just... It has some fucking self-awareness. And don't tweet about Martin Luther King and enable a racist president in the

same news cycle. Just separate them for us. Okay, I'm done now. Good to have you back, Dan. Good rant. Good show. We will talk to you guys on Monday. Have a great weekend. Bye, everyone.