Pod Save America - “The smoking tweet.”

Episode Date: August 7, 2018

The President potentially incriminates his son on Twitter, Republicans try to rush the Kavanaugh confirmation, and more Democratic incumbents face progressive challengers. Then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talks to Jon Lovett about her big upset and the future of the Democratic Party.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Welcome back, Tommy. Thank you. Great wedding. Great honeymoon. We'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Welcome back, Tommy. Thank you. Great wedding. Great honeymoon. We've got a married man here. Yeah, it's good to be back. I missed you guys.

But boy, it was nice unplugging from this awful person that we talk about all the time for a little while. So let's get into it with that lead in. So let's dive in. Pretty cruel way to refer to Tanya. So let's get into it with that lead in. So let's dive in. Pretty cruel way to refer to Tanya. So later in the pod today, we have Lovett's interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Cool. Who stopped by the studio on Friday. She was more impressive in person, just to sit across from somebody. And it was a great conversation. Cool. Well, everyone's going to hear it. You know, I immediately added a red rose to my Twitter handle, and we're off to the races.

Cool. Show me where my people are going, and I will lead them. We're also going to talk about how Donald Trump incriminated his son by going bonkers on Twitter this weekend. We'll touch on the latest in the fight over Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court, and we'll cover some of the big primaries and special elections happening across the country. But first, tell us about

Love It or Leave It. Why should we listen? It was a great Love It or Leave It. I opened with a semi-impromptu discussion of people going after Kirsten Gillibrand because Al Franken resigned. I thought it was very well put, love it. Thank you. And we had a great show at Dynasty Typewriter in downtown LA. We've had a run of

really great shows, so just check it out. Steve Chiatakis from KCRW could stop by to be a newscaster for us. Amazing. And a great panel. Tommy, what about Pod Save the World? I would encourage everyone to listen to last week's episode with Bassem Youssef. He's been called the Jon Stewart of Egypt. He is one of the funniest people I've ever talked to on the show, although low bar, you

would say, on Pod Save the World since we touch on a lot of heavy topics. But he's a hilarious- Got a lot of comedians on there? He's a hilarious, incredibly influential person who was deemed so dangerous to the people in charge in Egypt that they basically threw him out of the country. So check it out. It's one of my favorite conversations I've done. And, you know, it was my honeymoon episode, so you have to listen. Awesome. And chapter seven of The Wilderness is out today. This is called The Newcomers.

This is about immigration. This is actually one of my favorite episodes. We had Cecilia Munoz walk us through immigration. She was President Obama's top advisor on that for many years and ran La Raza before that. Ali Noorani, Graecia Martinez-Rosas, who's executive director of United We Dream. And it's a great episode. It talks all about what Democrats should do about immigration, how we can solve this issue, where we've been, where we're going. So please check out The Wilderness. So I was on vacation the last couple of days. I decided to take a break from Twitter. Same. The day I left, the president was obstructing justice, telling Attorney General Jeff Sessions to shut down the Mueller investigation.

Five days later, I get back on Twitter and the president is potentially incriminating his eldest son in a conspiracy to defraud the United States. So this all started over the weekend, apparently, when The Washington Post and CNN both ran stories that reported Donald Trump has become increasingly worried that the Mueller investigation has put people close to him in legal jeopardy. You don't say. Namely, Don Jr., who's under scrutiny for his role in organizing a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Russians promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, has said in recent weeks that he's prepared to testify that Trump knew about the meeting in advance, which Trump has denied publicly, and Trump Jr. has denied when he was testifying under oath to Congress.

Big trouble. Big trouble. So the president tries to rebut these stories by taking to Twitter.com on Sunday, where he released the following statement. Fake news reporting a complete fabrication that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son Donald had in Trump Tower.

This was a meeting to get information on an opponent. Totally legal and done all the time in politics, and it went nowhere. I did not know about it. Tommy, why is this a big deal? It was actually very useful for me to have been checked out for a week and a half for

this discussion because I think when you zoom out, like you sort of led us here, it's very clear cut. Don Jr. was offered information that was explicitly described as, quote, part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump Jr. was offered information that was explicitly described as, quote, part of Russia and its government support for Mr. Trump that would, quote, incriminate Hillary. Don Jr.'s response was, I love it. We know that because forever ago, we saw the emails and because the guy Don Jr. met with checked into Trump Tower on Facebook.

That's how savvy he was. So current and future criminals, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner were in there, called that collusion. Call it opposition research. Whatever. But a lot of really smart legal experts argue that this constitutes taking something of value from a foreign entity and using it for a campaign, which is illegal. And we also know that the Russians ultimately released a ton of information about Hillary Clinton. So that's a big deal. Also a big deal is that everyone lied about it.

Trump dictated an initial statement that lied and said this was a meeting about adoption. Now that lie wasn't the smartest lie because it actually told you something about what the Russians wanted in return. They want sanctions lifted on them. The adoption issue is all part of the Magnitsky sanctions that we put on them. But they've lied about it every step along the way as well. They lied about whether Trump wrote the statement. They lied that he wasn't involved. Apparently Hope Hicks said on a conference call that the emails about Don Jr.'s meetings

would never get out. Not great advice, Hope. Oh, lo and behold, she was on the plane this weekend getting back in touch with the boss. So it's all just been in plain sight the whole time, right? And we know that Don Jr. sought out this information. We know the Russians wanted sanctions lifted. We know Trump knew about it. We know he lied about it. All we know is that this has bubbled up and led him to call on Sessions to shut it all down.

So, I mean, I think what Trump has done here is probably strengthen the argument for Mueller that he actually needs to interview Trump and Don Jr. and really crystallized just how deep their legal jeopardy might be. And if we lived in a normal world, their political jeopardy, it would be game over. Love it. What do you think? What was your reaction to this tweet? Some people were saying that, you know, Donald Trump back in July of 2017 did say, well, obviously you take a meeting like this yeah there's a huge difference between if i did it and i did it um just you know oj got it the difference uh so two things one trump tweets now we look at them like a dog giving us a sign that there's about to be an earthquake you know we're like reading the like what does it mean? Why is he agitated?

What's coming? We have no idea. Yeah, the interesting thing too is also that over the past year and a half, there have been probably two dozen major stories saying that Donald Trump is increasingly worried. They never come back and say that he's ever, there's never a story that says

Donald Trump is decreasingly worried. So has he just been getting more and more worried over the last year and a half? Well, it's just, I mean, you can see why Mueller is zeroing in on the meeting as well as the statement. Because Trump keeps saying that there was nothing wrong with this meeting,

but he keeps lying about it. Yes. Same thing with his lawyer, same thing with the campaign. Why lie about it? If was nothing wrong with this meeting, but he keeps lying about it. Yes. Same thing with his lawyer, same thing with the campaign. Why lie about it? If nothing was wrong with this meeting, then why have you continued to lie about it for well over a year? Yeah, that's right. You could argue, some people could say, well, because he was worried about the political fallout from the meeting. He's not worried about political fallout from anything.

What does Lester mean by he's worried about political fallout? Honestly, if somebody wanted to do a meeting with him and said, Mr. President, aren't you worried about the political fallout from anything. What is Lester? He's worried about political fallout. Honestly, if somebody wanted to do a meeting with him and said, Mr. President, aren't you worried about the political fallout? I'd be like, not familiar with the term. In all seriousness, though, I think sometimes it's helpful. Donald Trump has never, there was a great piece in the Times about what Twitter does to our brains. And it made me realize that the reason Donald Trump is good at Twitter and famous for Twitter

is because his brain is very naturally suited to it. He is a narcissist who is constantly trying to project strength and imperviousness, who is constantly worried and attentive to slights and perceived indignities. That's one. And two, he has no hierarchy around the importance of issues. If you look at any morning where he's gone off, it's like there's a North Korea tweet. There's a wildfire tweet. There's a metaphor tweet. There's a hoax tweet. He doesn't rank them. He doesn't see the scale of difference between them, between his job as president, what's affecting him personally, because it's all personal.

It's all just about what wounds his psyche. what wounds his psyche, sometimes I find it's helpful to think about him as like a racist, dotty old mayor of a small town to whom all of this is happening within about 500 feet of where he's sitting. So just imagine him as Rudy Giuliani. Yes, he is. They are becoming more and more similar, Rudy and Trump. I mean, I do want to get into sort of the legal jeopardy here because I think their line now is collusion isn't a crime. And I think the use of the word collusion-

It's confusing. It's confusing. And it's allowed them to get away with saying this. So let's be clear about what the law is here. It is against the law for a foreign national to contribute anything of value to a federal election. A foreign national cannot even participate in or influence the decisions made by an American campaign. So Bob Bauer, former White House counsel, wrote about this in Lawfare blog the other day. U.S. nationals, including campaigns, cannot, quote, substantially assist a foreign national in any of these activities if they're trying to influence an election. And Americans cannot solicit, accept, or receive any such illegal foreign national support. That is against the law.

So again, Mueller's case, he has now indicted a bunch of Russians for interfering in the election. So he has that down. Foreign nationals have tried to influence and contribute to our election. Now the question is, did anyone in the United States solicit that? Did they know about it and not say anything? Did they try to help? And the answer now with this meeting is yes. Well, we also, sorry, it was a yes from Donald Trump's email.

I love it. It'll be better later in the summer. And that's why I started my point by saying it was useful to have like stepped away for a week and then come back to this. Cause I saw these reporters fighting on Twitter, like, oh, is this new? Is it not new? Who cares if it's new? Again, it's all right there. And to the legality question, I read Bob's piece. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know if he's right. I've read other people say that that's maybe too broad an interpretation of the statute. And if you were to interpret it that broadly, it would sweep up all sorts of other ways you in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee by saying that his dad didn't know about the Trump Tower meeting. If Michael Cohen is going to go and say, in fact, he did. And Chuck Grassley, not a big liberal Republican from Iowa, said that's a crime and that's a crime that we dealt with by prosecutors. So there's a lot out there.

And their excuses, their spin is getting increasingly desperate. a lot out there. And their excuses, their spin is getting increasingly desperate. I mean, Jay Succo said he had bad information at the time about whether or not Trump knew about or dictated the statement from Air Force One. That explanation doesn't work here. You either dictated it or you didn't. There's no evolving set of facts that's complicated or confusing. Also, just sorry to interrupt. He either lied or he was lied to. Have you ever seen Donald Trump talk? You are familiar with the difference between a statement by Donald Trump and a statement not by Donald Trump. Exactly. Yes. I mean, whatever people think about the application of the law, it is clear that Mueller believes that this is probably a violation of that law.

Clear he's looking into it. Because that is the case that he's building. And we can see that from what he's doing with Manafort, what he's doing with Trump, what he's looking into that meeting. The fact that Cohen's now saying he's going to testify that Trump knew about the meeting beforehand because then that connects Trump to the meeting. There was reporting a year ago that he was narrowing in on this meeting and this statement. And also, like, you know, we will find out what Mueller believes about the legal ramifications of the meeting. about the legal ramifications of the meeting. But now we know that what they did was actively plan and solicit the help

of a foreign government that was committing crimes and hacking to try to influence the election. They welcomed it. They welcomed it publicly. They welcomed it privately. Whatever the law says, that meeting is unpatriotic. It is-american they are it should be politically untenable what

they we not let not just yeah not just politically untenable cass sunstein who we had on to talk about the book he wrote about impeachment and cass is not someone who's like yeah let's go impeach him for whatever you know he's pretty careful in that. He wrote a piece today that says, but here is a general principle. Successfully enlisting Russia's help to procure the presidency would count as a high crime or misdemeanor within the meaning of the impeachment clause, whether or not it's technically a crime within federal law. And by the way, it's sort of like, and of course it is. Right.

Of course it is. Do you remember what they cared? Like, I don't know. Like you, the conservatives, the one who say we got to carry constitutions in our pocket and have the federalist papers all over the place. I seem to remember that it was a big deal that America couldn't be taken over by a foreign country, which is why you have to be here and be born here. In fact, the founders debated this while they were debating the impeachment clause of the constitution. Exactly. And again, their initial lie by saying this meeting was about adoption actually harms them. Because now we know why the Russians went in there with that information. So, okay.

Because everyone keeps glossing over this. When Putin had killed a Russian lawyer named Sergei Mednitsky, we sanctioned them and a whole bunch of senior officials and human rights abusers in Russia. They hate those sanctions. And to punish us in exchange for those sanctions, they cut off US citizens adopting Russian kids. It's like very draconian, cruel thing that even members of Putin's own party in parliament in Russia or the Duma were speaking out against and saying this is like unnecessary and cruel. Which punishes the children. These are children who would have wonderful homes.

So they hate these sanctions because they go right at his inner circle. So they went in there and they said, if they are raising the Russian adoption issue, they don't give a shit about kids. They're going in there to say, get rid of these Magnitsky sanctions and we'll fix the adoption issue. So the quid pro quo is all right there in their own statements. Also, Marcy Wheeler pointed this out too, that when Trump dictated the statement saying that the meeting was about Russian adoptions, he was on a flight home after having just spoken to Putin. In Hamburg. Yes. And he told reporters after that meeting, you know, Putin started, we talked about all kinds of stuff. In fact, we talked about adoptions.

Yeah, he doesn't get it. And I didn't know that before. I didn't know this was a whole issue, but Putin said there was this whole thing about adoptions right so that was the question of did putin actually help dictate the statement covering up the meeting that was what marcy flint hadn't gotten caught lying about all these phone calls with kislyak early on like they could have probably made this exchange behind closed doors but right they tripped up early because they're so fucking stupid um the other thing we know from today, the other piece of news, is that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates,

campaign manager and deputy campaign manager for Donald Trump, are criminals. So here's Rick Gates. Allegedly. John, that seems overstated. How could he be so definitive in calling him a criminal?

Well, here's Rick Gates on the stand. I'm glad you asked tommy were you involved in any criminal activity with mr manafort yes did you commit any crimes with manafort yes i don't know that seems a little vague donald trump's campaign manager and deputy campaign manager are criminals rick gates and all and you know trump's excuse on manafort is oh he was only there for a couple months four months which was like you know a third of the whole campaign German Rick Gates ran day-to-day operations was on the inaugural committee and helped form Trump's pack after he after he went to the White House Rick Gates was there even longer than Paul Manafort fucking criminals it's uh it's imagine if imagine if uh Hillary Robbie Mook and his deputy were both criminals if David Plouffe and Jim Messina were saying this imagine what would happen imagine Imagine if Robbie Mook and his deputy were both criminals.

If David Plouffe and Jim Messina were saying this. Imagine what would have happened. Imagine what Fox News would have done if in early 2009 there was a trial where Jim Messina was on the sand saying, David Axelrod, he's the one who made me do it. Oh, it would have been like the OJ trial for them. They would have been wall to wall all day long. it. Oh, it would have been like the OJ trial for them. They would have been wall to wall all day long. It's actually, it's a testament to just how accepted Trump's and his goons rampant criminality is that this isn't even an even bigger story. A chairman, a leader of a presidential campaign is on trial. His deputy is accusing him of crimes. His national security advisor is pleading guilty.

His lawyer flipped? Hisading guilty. I mean... His lawyer flipped? His lawyer flipped. I mean, well, to this... My last question on this. We've now got the president admitting those top aides were seeking help from a hostile government

in order to win an election. The president's deputy campaign manager just testified that he committed crimes with the president's campaign manager. I realize that voters supposedly don't care all that much about Russia when they're asked in a poll. But how do Democrats not talk about this?

How is this not part of the case you make against Donald Trump and the Republican Congress for protecting Donald Trump? Like it does. This is rampant criminality in this administration. And the lack of interest in it on a part of congressional Republicans continues to be one of the great scandals of modern American politics. It's so hard because the scale of the treachery and the scale of the un-American behavior is so vast that it's hard to actually wrap your head around it and hard to explain it to people. it to people. We are in the middle of watching something so enormous and so horrendous involving so many people doing the wrong thing that it is hard to talk about. And then you get to this place where like, well, people don't understand it. People don't get it. We shouldn't talk about it. But you're right. I mean, it's so important. And I wish I had the, I don't know, the magic set of

words for how we can go from talking about the fact that the campaign manager's on trial, Trump's lying on Twitter, and how it affects healthcare. Right. But it's important. I know. This is important. Dan's been on this cronyism, corruption, chaos thing. And I'd like to see some polling on it, but I think it's there. And the ads write themselves.

It's also, I mean, it just makes the whole thing feel like a sprint between Mueller's investigation and the midterms. Right. Because, boy, like one of them has to be held onto, or we have to win the midterms. Right. Because, boy, one of them has to be held onto, or we have to win the midterms, or Mueller's got to conclude this thing pretty quickly, or else there's a chance we lose our opportunity. Well, and look, I mean, we keep waiting for the smoking gun.

It's all there. I mean, we've been saying this for a while. It's all out. I mean, there are a bunch of criminals running this organization here. There's smoking tweets. And like Cass was saying, at the very least, it's a betrayal of the country. Like, we know that they did that. Yes.

And so, look, and again, we're not going to reach Trump's base over this. We're not going to change any minds. I don't know if anyone saw on Twitter over the weekend or yesterday. Just stop right there. Oh, this was going around. There was a picture of two guys at a trump oh yeah with the t-shirts and the t-shirt said i'd rather be a russian than a democrat i mean idiots existed before donald trump you know what i mean like a cool shirt man so it's like

hope you make a buck hawk him yeah so it's like obviously we're not going to reach those people but there's a lot of other people that if you start wrapping this conspiracy to defraud the United States, which is the technical legal term, into the fraud that they commit on us in every other way with every other policy and wrap it into the corruption message, I think it's a pretty potent message. Yeah. And whether it's potent or not, it's real. It's a big deal. You have to talk about it. Yeah. You have to make it only about it, but you have to talk about it.

People are caring about this. The guy's one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history um there's a fucking special election uh on tuesday in a deep red republican district that donald trump won by 12 points that mitt romney won by 12 points or 11 points and uh it's all tied up he lost the connor lamb seat he's losing all these special elections. Like people are caring. Yes. Will it be enough with gerrymandering and everything else and all the other bullshit we're facing in the uphill climb to take the House back in the Senate? We'll see. But people are caring. Yeah, I guess I guess I guess what it ultimately comes down to is two things have to happen. People have to care and we have to prove to people that they're right to care and that they're right to cast their votes with Democrats. Yeah. So it's up to both the voters and the people trying to win their votes.

The other thing Trump was doing over the weekend is he ramped up his attacks on the media, labeling them the enemy of the people. He tweeted that the fake news hates that he does this because they know it's true and that the press is dangerous and sick. At a rally in Florida last week, Trump supporters chanted CNN sucks while jeering CNN's Jim Acosta, Trump's son Eric, I guess the non-criminal son. Don't get ahead of yourself, buddy. It was a softball for you guys.

He tweeted a video of the scene later that night. He's cool. How much should we worry about this? Is this getting dangerous? Is he inciting something? You know, I mean, Bret Stephens in the New York Times was talking about that Trump will have blood on his hands if there's, on his hands if there's violence against journalists. I think it's very real.

I think that the attacks on the press are outrageous. I think they're damaging. They're dangerous. They actually are inciting people. They're putting journalists at risk. It is actually a tactic used by autocrats forever throughout history to weaken institutions and hold their grip on power. That said, I do think reporters can take the bait a little too much sometimes on this front. Like I don't know that Jim Acosta demanding that Sarah Sanders

rebuke her boss at a White House briefing is all that useful, nor is it him like storming out after use. I think it makes it about makes it appear to be about them. And I think you sometimes see a backlash on Twitter and other places when journalists are so unequivocal in condemning the attacks on the press, but then they feel like they equivocate on issues around race or telling the truth. And like early on, there was always this annoying debate about, well, we don't normalize Trump. And there was some truth to that. And I think we've adjusted, we've gotten better at it, but we can still get squishy on really, really big things, but just pound them on these press freedom questions. And, you know, it doesn't make it, it makes it seem like it's about Washington

and those institutions rather than the broader things we know that they actually care about as journalists. But like that said, I also don't get why people were so mad at Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times for meeting with Trump off the record. I think that's good and fine. So, you know, it's a little, it's all muddled and Trump loves to attack them because he knows it riles people up. Yeah. No, I think it's absolutely true that he has spent most of his presidency inciting hate against the media and the media should be incensed about that, but they should be equally incensed that he's inciting hate against the media and the media should be incensed about that but they should be equally incensed that he's inciting hate against muslims against immigrants against black athletes right i'm sure they personally all are right it doesn't reflect in the report

one's politics and one's not one's partisan and one's not and it's bullshit right you're going to be personal as a reporter to talk about how you're very upset personally about how he's attacking the press, which all of them do, then you should also be able to be upset personally that he is attacking immigrants, that he is keeping children in cages, that he is inciting hate against Muslims. Like, it's got to be one or the other. You can't just because it's you, you can't get really upset. You need to have equal outrage. And I'm outraged about the press stuff, too. I am. But I'm also outraged

of what he's done to Muslims and Mexicans and everyone else in this country and women. Right. I do think there is a specific acute threat right now where he's constantly referring to the press as the enemy of the people.

I also do think that it's, that it is true that the freedom of the press has a privileged place and threatening the press has a specific historical component threatening the press has a specific historical component, but so does American racism. I guess the thing I would say about the violent aspect of this is we live in a violent culture. America is a violent place with a lot

of gun violence and a lot of mayhem. There's targeted killing all the time. But when we talk about kind of, oh, Donald Trump is inciting people, what people are talking about is he's going to cause some sort of random shooting, a mass shooting, something like what we see every few weeks. And I think that- Like what happened in Annapolis. What happened in Annapolis, which ultimately I believe hasn't been tied back to political rhetoric. But nonetheless, there are too many people out there looking for a reason. I think sometimes we, when there will be a mass shooting, and then there will be a question as to whether or not it was because of Donald Trump's rhetoric. And I think sometimes there are these partisan lines, even around the motives of mass shootings.

And if there is going to be that kind of a killing, there will always be two reasons. One is the fact that we allow people who shouldn't have weapons to have weapons and go on killing sprees we can't catch in advance. And the second is because of this rhetoric is enough to give somebody the reason that they've been looking for and that's just true everybody it's unavoidable people we all and by the way like donald trump is specifically despicable on this account but it's actually something we all have to keep in mind because america is a more violent place than it should be and because there's more guns here than there should be we all actually have to keep in mind, because America is a more violent place than it should be, and because there's more guns here than there should be, we all actually have to be even more careful because everyone's listening, including the tiny fraction of people who will take Donald

Trump's words both seriously and literally. So the good news in the fight against inciting hate and conspiracy theories is following up on the conversation Dan had with Nick Thompson from Wired on Thursday's pod, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify have now moved to kick Alex Jones off of their platforms. Info Wars, of course, peddles some of the most dangerous conspiracy theories you can imagine, like the idea that the Sandy Hook shootings were a hoax or the whole Pizzagate phenomenon. Twitter and Periscope still host Jones's content. Come on, fucking get rid of this. It's also worth checking out a piece our digital guru, Elijah Cohn, wrote for Cricket.com last week about how Facebook's too big of a platform for progressives to allow content rules to limit their reach. You know, back to the earlier conversation about Trump's

rhetoric. I mean, Trump went on Alex Jones and said, your reputation, your reputation is amazing. I won't let you down. And I think a lot of people dismiss that as your typical Trump hyperbole, but it really does matter because like a third of the country believes everything Trump says. It really does matter because like a third of the country believes everything Trump says. And Alex Jones says 9-11 was a hoax. Sandy Hook was a hoax. And he accuses people like Bob Mueller of being involved in like pedophilia rings. And those are the types of acts and crimes and allegations where you could really see someone taking vigilante justice. And that shit is so dangerous.

They have. Yes. They went to comment pizza with a gun. They went to comment pizza with a gun. They went to comment pizza with a gun. Right? So, like, that's why I'm glad that those, you know, those tech companies very belatedly got around to kicking this guy off

because there's no First Amendment right to calling someone a pedophile or inciting violence on a tech platform. It doesn't exist on Facebook. And we should also say that it was belatedly, it wasn't that these tech platforms like woke up one day and said,

oh, we're going to do the right thing. It was an incredible amount of pressure brought to bear by other media companies, by activists, by sleeping giants. By sleeping giants. And also, by the way, employees within those companies,

like these are buildings full of people who have eyes and ears and who care about this stuff too. And they report to their shareholders and they report to their employees. Yeah. Let's talk about a story that first broke about 35 years ago, the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Still happening. This past week, the National Archives has warned that it could be until October before senators can access requested records from Kavanaugh's time at the White House. Oh, you know what'll be so fun? reading these wonderful records that tell us why he shouldn't be a judge while he's a judge. These are records from when

he worked in the counsel's office for George W. Bush. We also learned in a report by the New York Times that the lawyer advising Bush on the release of the Kavanaugh records might have a conflict of interest in the matter. William Bruce was a deputy to Kavanaugh when he served as staff secretary in the White House. Republicans have rebuffed Democrats' repeated demands for access to emails and other records from the three years that Kavanaugh spent as staff secretary, a job that he himself has said was one of the most interesting and informative for me. past November by demanding that all these records are released, I guess, from both his time as counsel, but also his time as staff secretary. Yeah, I'm on two minds of it. On the one hand, I think to myself, don't fall for trying to win this argument on process. What we're talking about here is not actually his positions or his views on choice, on health care, et cetera, or presidential power. We're talking about records, information, may be interesting, may not be interesting.

I worry about getting bogged down in that story. At the same time, it is hypocritical beyond belief. It is morally wrong. It is obvious that when you're confirming someone to a lifetime appointment, you should have all the records available. If this shoe were on the other foot, this would obviously be the argument that Mitch McConnell would be making if he would even agree to have a hearing, which of course he wouldn't. And part of me thinks also this is the kind of thing where you could appeal to vulnerable senators, whether they're vulnerable because they're Republicans or because they're Democrats, whether it's Susan Collins or Joe Manchin, and say, look, we all agree you're in a tough position.

You don't want to say you're against this guy. Can't you come out and say that you deserve this information and you can't approve of a vote until you have the information? Is that so much to ask? Apparently, it's too much to ask for Susan Collins. She's already said that she doesn't need the staff secretary records. Of course she doesn't. But that she's fine with these and they all think that all the other records will come out in time for this. But has she responded since they've said that they won't be out until after the hearings are done? Well, so they said that they won't be out until late October. But then, now that they've got this guy from the Bush administration going through the records at lightning speed, they're basically like, no, no, no, don't worry.

We'll figure it out. We'll get the deadline before. We'll meet the deadline before the end of October. If only we had internet sorting mechanisms. I know. I just want to nominate something for the Hypocrisy Hall of Fame. U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, said, we can't keep going down this partisan, picky, stupid, dumbass role that has happened around here for so long. We didn't treat their candidates for these positions the way they are treating ours. Like that is just mind boggling. You have to know that's a troll. You're just

trolling us. I mean, he's just a, yeah, that or just, I don't know. I don't know what's going on with our hatch. Right. But so my, I agree with you. I know what you're saying in terms of the don't get bogged down in process versus the policies. But I sort of am of the mind that this is a huge uphill battle and that Democrats should fight every single one of them while we can. Because this is the most monumentally important fight any of these people are probably going to have in elected office. So why the hell do you run for office if you're not going to fight for these issues against this guy and i do worry that this is an instance where we really do get distracted by the daily trump show the professional wrestling match of jim acosta getting heckled at the rally then taking selfies like that shit bogs us down when we should be talking about it's a fucking 30-year appointment 30-year appointment and like i i don't know i

think it's pretty unprecedented to withhold a whole bunch of emails arbitrarily the only reason they're doing it is to hide his potential role in Bush-era scandals like torture, Iraq, warrantless wiretapping. And they're trying to downplay the role of staff secretary, which is the job he had, which, sure, it can be a paper pusher. But it can also be an incredibly influential, powerful advisor. I believe John Podesta was staff secretary in the White House. So let's get these records so we can find out what he thinks. And if you guys want to abdicate your vetting responsibility, that's good to know. We'll let you know for the next time if we're not going to vet people anymore. But

they have no leg to stand on to say that this process is somehow rushed or that the advising consent role of the Senate doesn't mean looking at these documents. I don't know where they're possibly coming from on this front, besides cynical politics. Yeah, that's the one. That's where they're coming from. That's the good one. So I agree with the process point, too. Here's how I would do it.

The Democrats have basically a three-pronged argument against Kavanaugh. They're going to attack his views on health care, his views on choice, and his views on presidential power. going to attack his views on health care, his views on choice, and his views on presidential power. It is clear this guy has some very disturbing views on presidential power and how much power a president has based on his time working in the Bush White House. Kavanaugh has argued that even an investigation or questioning of a president should not be permitted unless done by Congress. Today, CNN headline, Kavanaugh, presidents can ignore laws they think are unconstitutional. He had a very expansive view of signing statements, which were abused during the Bush era. So I think that the Democrats can make a case that we have a president who's

under investigation, who we're getting closer and closer to figuring out could have obstructed justice, could have committed a conspiracy to defraud the United States. And if confirmed to the high court, Kavanaugh may be called upon to rule whether the president can be required to answer questions from the special counsel, whether Trump can order the investigation to be shut down or whether he can fire Mueller. These are all questions. So if we are going to put him on the bench, we need to know everything he thought about, he wrote, whatever his thoughts on presidential power during the bush administration we need these records this man is about to make a huge decision about how much power this president can have and i think that's a legitimate issue and we need a

sustained pr campaign to make the argument because these things don't start a big deal in voters minds they become one when you push and you make an argument and that's much harder for democrats because we don't have a you you know, propaganda state-run TV organ in Fox News to do it for us all day, every day. Working on it. Just got this thing right here. Got a podcast. But like...

Just being as corrosive as we can. We have to try. I mean, you know, like the Republicans are saying this is a phishing expedition. It's called vetting. We're trying to figure out where he stands, right? Like we learned about Hillary Clinton's emails because there were 17,000 Benghazi investigations. That's not a good, wholesome precedent, but it's a relevant one. We still haven't seen the one she deleted. The, uh, the other thing too is actually, you know, there was a, um, there was a,

there was an article in, I believe Axios about the fact that there may be another push on healthcare by Republicans if they keep the House and the Senate in the midterms. And there was a member who was, there was someone quoted who said, repealing health care is like Fight Club. The first rule is don't talk about it. And you see this again and again. They are very much aware of the fact that their agenda, their policy positions, their politics are deeply unpopular. They know that those records will reveal Kavanaugh to be a deeply unpopular figure. They know his views on choice and health care will make him a reviled figure. They know this. And so their goal is to get through this as quickly as possible without us ever having a

true conversation about what Kavanaugh getting on the court would actually mean. And our goal should be to delay it by any means necessary. Yes. Which is the same fight we fought on health care. They know that with every day, it is more time for people to come out against Brett Kavanaugh. Brett Kavanaugh is already the least popular nominee in decades, if not ever. He's already underwater. So, which is unprecedented for somebody who's being nominated to something that's supposed to be a nonpartisan seat. So they see the writing on the wall. They see that the longer this goes on, the more the squishy people in the middle, Democrats and Republicans, will have more and more reason to vote now.

Before we go to Levitt's interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, we should check quickly about some of the other big primary challenges coming up. On Tuesday, August 7th, that's the big election day, in Missouri's 1st District, Cori Bush is challenging incumbent William Lacey Clay. Bush helped organize the protests in Ferguson, supports Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, and tuition-free public college. She does have an uphill climb there, as Clay is pretty popular there, but we will see. In Michigan, we talked about the gubernatorial primary between Gresham Whitmer and Abdul El-Said. That's also tomorrow. Down the road, there's a primary in the Massachusetts 7th between incumbent Michael

Capuano and Ayanna Pressley, the first black woman ever elected to the Boston City Council. And in Delaware, Carrie Evelyn Harris, an Air Force veteran and community organizer, is running a primary against Senator Tom Carper. And she has some of the Ocasio-Cortez crew helping her. She'd be the first woman, African-American, and openly LGBT candidate to be elected U.S. Senator for Delaware. Guys, what do we think about these primaries? Healthy for the party? Divisive? We're nervous about them.

We feel good. What do you think? I don't know how anybody thinks they can challenge a rock star like Tom Carper. I think if you're... Look, you know, Joe Crowley is a nice man. He was a good... I think he was a good representative. He was a good leader. But like, if you're not ready to defend

against a primary challenge, then the problem is with you. It's with you. It's with your candidacy. So you gotta, like, I'm fine with it. Turnover is good. I think it's great too. And I, you know,

the one thing I always want to be careful of is not to demonize either side or demonize either candidate in a primary but i think a lot of times it's win-win because if these challengers win then great we have a more progressive candidate out there who's out there pushing for a very progressive agenda whether it's medicare for all or 15 minimum wage or whatever if they lose then inevitably they've pushed the incumbent further to the left. I mean, that's what happened with Crowley. That's what happened in some of these other races because the incumbent starts taking more progressive positions because they're challenged.

And I think if you are not challenged and you're one of these incumbents and it's year after year after year, you get sort of lazy. You listen to people in Washington. You listen to consultants. You listen to people who tell you you have to trim your sails all the time. It's not good. One day you wake up and you're Joe Lieberman. You're in Connecticut. You got no business being there. God help you. Get out. So when Trump won, I was really afraid of two things. And I came to believe a third thing. The two things I was most afraid of were, one, that we would be trapped in this vice grip around institutions, that basically he would undermine institutions and we'd be faced with this challenge of how do you protect institutions

while fighting from within them, right? Like, do you play by the same rules that Trump plays? And that's a delicate and difficult fight and it was something I was worried about then, I'm worried about it now. The second was about democratic unity, that in the face of such a heartbreaking and terrible loss, there'd be a lot of infighting and anger and division within the different flanks of the progressive and liberal movement. And then the third piece was, I think the lesson was that Democrats were complacent on policy, that we were complacent about what people were going through, about what they needed, that we're complacent about winning, about facing the threat around gerrymandering and all the other political and policy problems that meant Democrats lost a thousand seats over the course of the Obama administration. And to me, it's about making sure we are solving the third part without giving up on the unity we need in the fall. So I agree with everything you said around the importance of these primaries. And then to me, it's about making sure that these primaries are about having an argument about the best way for Democrats to

win and govern. And then once those primaries are over, we are in this thing together. Let me just make the case, if you're sitting in the DSCC or the DCCC, or you're in an incumbent's office, you're sitting there, you're looking at a finite pot of resources, of time, of money, of political capital, and you're thinking, oh my God, why am I fighting on this? But I think a lot of the seats you talked about are pretty safe, democratic, and in those places, we should probably never worry about a primary. It's a good thing. And again, and we've talked about this a million times, but I think the notion of electability has been turned on its head. We don't know.

Yeah, we don't know. And so I don't want the arguments within primaries to be about electability. Make the arguments about policy, right? If one candidate's for Medicare for All and the other one's not, say why Medicare for All is too tough to implement or too costly or whatever it may be, you know? But this idea that, like, we're going to nominate some lefty and that person is going to be unelectable, you don't fucking know. Yeah. And neither do the pollsters and consultants in Washington. They have been proven wrong time and time again. And we've been proven wrong, but at least admit know. Yeah. And neither do the pollsters and consultants in Washington. They have been proven wrong time and time again. And we've been proven wrong, but at least admit it.

Yeah. And I would just say, you know, electability is not a concept that was invented after we lost everything. People were focused on electability for a very long time, losing again and again and again. So, yes, I think the electability argument is garbage. I agree with you. I forgot about the critical Le lebron don lemon oh the

bush primary i was going to end with that because as we talked about all the dumbest topic well no i was going to bring it up this way as we talked about all the primaries we also have a big special election on tuesday august 7th um in the ohio 12th we have troy balderson is the republican and danny o'connor who we had on the pod earlier. He's the Democrat. This is, as we said earlier, this is a seat that is R plus seven. Trump and Romney both won it by 11 points. It's now a toss up. Right. And so Balderson gets Trump to come to Ohio the last weekend. He's going to fire up the base and what does donald trump do he starts tweeting about an interview that lebron james has with don lemon and calls them both stupid and everyone's always like every time trump does this he does it because he wants to pick these culture fights it's like a political thing he wants to do it how fucking dumb do you have to be to attack lebron james the weekend before a special election in Ohio.

Do you think that helps him in Ohio? He's not playing chess. Helps get the base out in Ohio? Again, I do think this is yet another example. If you think of Trump as a small-town mayor who thinks LeBron lives down the street and Don Liban lives one block over, that everybody's sharing one tiny little village, it starts to make more sense. I don't know. LeBron, I don't know how happy the state of Ohio is with LeBron these days. I just think like one, this was a controversy I was very happy to have missed. Two, it is so sad and pathetic that Trump sits around on Friday night and he hate watches

Don Lemon. There was another piece in Axios about how he apparently keeps his favorite rallies and debate performances on his TiVo in like the little dining room off the Oval and makes people watch them and talk about how great he was. It's like the guy is thin skin and racist per usual. So it's pretty typical. To just my other little pet peeve on this is when someone incredibly rich and powerful and famous gets attacked by Donald Trump and everyone in Washington jumps out of like whatever, you know, lobbyist boardroom they're at at that moment to praise them like Jim Comey, Ahmadinejad, like every powerful person came out to defend

LeBron James, who probably doesn't need it from them. Maybe defend like the less famous people that get attacked by Trump. That's just me. No, it was silly. It was one of the things where I missed the whole fight because I was gone, but I still was reading news

even though I wasn't on Twitter. And I saw that it just... It all breaks through. That's what breaks through. Why the LeBron story? Why is that everywhere? That's the big story we're talking about this weekend.

There seems like a lot of other... I do think, though, that there's probably still a lot of love for LeBron in Ohio, and I just can't believe that was his closing message for Troy Paulson. Closing message. Screw LeBron. Here are some tariffs. He makes fun of Don Lemon all the time, but he always watches

Don Lemon. He loves Don Lemon. Really? I mean, does Donald Trump just need a friend? Yes. He just needs a friend. He doesn't have one. He's a nighttime hobby. Who's his friend? Melania put out a statement in support of LeBron. Yeah. If you could golf at night, this would not be a problem. I also like the idea that people are like, I think that this is yet again, you know,

first ladies being used to soften the image of their husbands. No. I don't know. No. I don't think Melania. I don't either. At a certain point, are we all going to admit that what everybody seems to know, which this is basically a fake

relationship and these two people hate each other and everything she does it only makes sense in the context of the fact that she fucking hates her husband when she wears a lebron jersey to the border i'll wear a lebron jersey get that jersey on um if you live in the ohio 12th if you know anyone who lives in the ohio 12, please get them out to vote for Danny O'Connor. It would be, this is the last special election, last stop before November. And if a Democrat won there, it would be pretty big. If a Democrat comes close, if he's within a couple points, that is because there are like 70 something Republicanheld districts that lean more heavily towards Democrats than this one. 70-something.

I'll get the exact number later. But so that means that, like, if Danny O'Connor comes close or if he wins, they're in big fucking trouble. Let's go, Danny. So, all right. When we come back, we will have Lovett's interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Joining us on the pod, she is the Democratic nominee for Congress in New York's 14th congressional district. She strikes fear in the hearts of Joe Lieberman and James Comey. Welcome, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Hey, how are you? I'm good. I'm good. So you've had this rise. You've been traveling the country campaigning. Candidates want you there. You've inspired people. One sign for me is a bunch of people from our team at Crooked wanted to meet you.

And you should just know that they're not banging down the door when Dick Durbin comes to town. What do you make of that? What do you think is driving that interest? I think that for so long, I think just lots of everyday people across the country have been frustrated with our politics. And I think there were certain aspects about my win, even if you take the politics off the table. The fact that we were a grassroots campaign, that I didn't take any lobbyist money, that I had defeated not just a 10-term incumbent but was outspent 10 to 1, and we still won, I think it was kind of this, okay, things are maybe still possible in America, that I think, you know, really resonated with a lot of folks across the political spectrum. So you've said, our swing voter is not red to blue, our swing voter is the non voter to the

voter, which is something that echoes what we've been talking about a lot. What do you think are the issues that are going to get non voters to become voters? And what have you learned being on the trail? You've been in Kansas, you've been all over the place. Yeah. Well, I think it's kind of this opposite of what I think a lot of folks in the political establishment think, that they think that this running to the center, moderating our policies, You know, this running to the center, moderating our policies, being as close to a saltine cracker as possible is what is going to make us win elections. And I don't think that that's the case. I think what animates non-voters is feeling like someone is really fighting for them. And I think there are a lot of folks that have felt as though the Democratic Party hasn't

been fighting hard enough for them in terms of being really clear about articulating our priorities, drawing a line in the sand, not just saying we care about education, healthcare, and housing, but we believe in single-payer healthcare. Just having a plan, an idea, instead of just reform. And so I think that in order to turn out non-voters, we need to be really explicit in how we are fighting for them. In New York 14, our district is half in the Bronx, half in Queens. Voter turnout is 3% in the primaries. And we expanded the electorate 68% over the last off-year midterm primary in order for us to win. And the under-40 electorate actually matched the over-60 electorate in our race, which is unheard of.

Yeah. But it's because we talked about student loans. We talked about climate change. We talked about the things that our generation is going to have to deal with. Yeah. So you face this blowback. I want to get to the conservative blowback, but there's even been some moderates or just, you know, Democratic mainstream politicians who have said, hold on a second, you know,

she won in the Bronx, but she doesn't know what works in the Midwest or she doesn't know what works in Kansas. Now, I know you've pushed back on that, but there are more non-voters that we can get to become voters than there are Republicans that we can make Democrats or independents that we can get to turn out for Democrats. But do you at least recognize that there's a tradeoff there or do you reject the tradeoff too? So I guess I would argue that, you know what, maybe there are some independents that might be turned off by moving to the left. But it's worth it because we can get the non-voters to turn out. Yeah. No, I definitely – I'm not here to say that like my platform is going

to win everybody across all electorates. But I agree with you. I think that there's much more to be gained by targeting non-voters than by targeting Republicans. And even then, you know, I was having this conversation last night when I think about a swing voter, all the swing voters that I know in my life, all the swing voters that I've also met in my life. They never make their decision based on who is the most moderate one. Like they don't. You know, the people who go, for example, you're Obama to Trump voter. They didn't vote for Obama because he was the most Republican of them all. You know, he didn't. Right. And they didn't vote for Trump because he was the most Republican of them all. You know, he didn't.

Right. And they didn't vote for Trump because he was the most Democratic of them all. I think that swing voters make their decisions on on factors that are actually independent of political ideology. we are so boiled down and myopic about left right political understanding that I think that we just like don't even understand what a swing voter is I think they I think they vote based on certain character based things I think they vote based on authenticity about I think they vote based on how much they think they can trust one candidate over another. I think they vote on certain even like emotional or character-based factors more in some cases than certain political ideologies. So then what does being for Medicare for All then represent to those voters?

Is it about being anti-establishment? Is it about advocating for what you believe in? Because if you take that position that these are people that are turning out for reasons other than ideology, what role does the ideology play? Well, the ideology, I think, plays a really big role because I think what people are really thirsty for as well is that I think they actually are looking for a working class champion. And as much as Trump was lying through his teeth the entire campaign trail, if you took the painful time to pay attention to his rallies, he was speaking very directly to working class people, especially in the Midwest. He was talking about trade. When you

heard him talk about health care, he was saying, we're going to make your co-pays cheaper. We're going to lower your deductibles. He was describing the outcomes of Medicare for all. He was the most liberal of the entire Republican field on health care. So I think that people are really just looking for someone that's willing to kind of stick their neck out in order to advance the issues of working class Americans. And I think that that is in conjunction with this idea of trust and authenticity. And whether it's deserved or not, I think there's a real hunger for it. One thing, you know, you're from New York. You're younger than me, which is annoying. But I think there's a lot of people around our age who grew up with Trump as a figure in New York. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. And actually, for me, when I hear Trump speak, I recognize a certain kind of New York working class voice. Do you have that feeling when you hear him? Totally, totally. I know that guy. Yeah. I know him really, really well.

I may not have met him, but I feel like in this very bizarre way that I understand Donald Trump's soul. I have bartended for Donald Trump. I have had guys catcall me who are Donald Trump in New York City. My father was an architect. He dealt with guys in business, like these shady real estate developers. I know that guy. And I also understand his personality.

It's like a very New York old school archetype kind of thing. Yeah. And he has that specific, his skill is that he doesn't sound like the kind of rich New Yorker he is and has always wanted to be. He does sound more like a Queens guy or a Bronx guy. You hear it. That's the one thing that I don't understand too. Yeah.

Like that's the one thing that is kind of a trip to me. I'm like, how does this like multi-generational silver spoon guy like sound like this? How does he sound like this? Not just sound like this, but like he is it in a weird way. Yeah. I think it also probably maybe has to do with the industry that his family came from yeah because like these new york like construction real estate developer guys they have that personality too so i think it has

to do with the industry that that uh his family comes from that he's able to to channel that because it's very much a thing like it's like like a thing, like he's not an aberration, which is why like I feel like I have the approach to him that I have because like I know how to deal with guys like that. And the way that you deal with them is not giving them more attention. Yeah, I think that, well, we've tried giving him

more attention and so far it hasn't worked. So I asked on Twitter what people wanted us to talk with you about. And there's two main categories. There was somehow it got into the conservative bloodstream. It always is. You seem to have that effect on people. I think they have like a search query up, like a Google alert. So, you know, there was a lot of bad faith.

You know, what happens after you seize the means of production and turn us into Venezuela. But there isn't a mentality around spending inside of that that I did want to talk about. You know, we don't talk about what defense costs. We're about to hit a trillion dollars in debt because of the corporate tax cuts. Yet when we talk about pre-K, health care, college, suddenly it's unrealistic because of the cost. And it's not just bad faith Republicans that make that argument. You hear it from Democrats as well. What's your response to that? Well, I think it's that same exact thing. It's that we, you know, they say, how are you going to pay for it? As though they haven't used these same ways to pay for unlimited wars,

to pay for trillion dollar tax cuts and tax cut extensions. They use these mechanisms to pay for these things all the time. They only want to know, it just seems like their pockets are only empty when we're talking about education and investing in human capital in the United States, education, healthcare, housing, and investing in the middle class. All of a sudden, you know, there's nothing left. All of a sudden, the wealthiest nation in the world has, we're just totally scarce. And we have complete scarcity when it comes to the things that are most important. And so for me, I think it belies a lack of moral priority. And it's unfortunate. I think that, but I also think a lot of these folks, especially those, I think, perhaps on the Democratic side,

perhaps they don't even see it. You know, I don't know. I don't know if that's a generous interpretation or not, but I legitimately think that they start kind of buying into conservative talking points. They get dragged into their court all the time. And I think it is because there's this really myopic and also just misunderstanding of politics as this flat, two-dimensional left-right thing. And so they always feel like, okay, the right says this thing,

we have to respond to it. And that's why they're winning. That's why they've won for the last 10 years, because they've dragged us onto their court. And we refuse to have our own strong message to force them to play defense on. Yeah. So I want to talk about what it means to have that strong message, because this is another thing people asked about, and it was around democratic socialism and about setting big goals versus when to compromise. I think there's a fair number of people like me who believe in Medicare for all, universal pre-K, debt-free college, higher minimum wage, progressive tax code.

But I'm not a socialist. I believe in those things because I believe in a regulated free market and a social safety net. What's the difference between you and me? and a social safety net. What's the difference between you and me? I think the thing is, is that it's such a big tent term, because I could easily say that you're not a capitalist because you believe those things. I could easily say that capitalists believe in complete laissez-faire, you know, invisible salad fingers, you know fingers economy, and that because you don't believe that corporations should dictate

every single aspect of your life, that you are not a capitalist. So I think it's like a similar thing in terms of this conversation about socialism, that unless you are a communist, you're not a socialist. Right. And I think it's one of these things where if you believe in the limitations of just pure free market, free market is, if you believed in pure free market, then you wouldn't believe in the ACA. You wouldn't believe in Medicare for all. You wouldn't believe in tuition-free public college. But in order for us to build wealth as a society, we have to

understand that there are multiple players and multiple sectors in our economy that can build wealth. Corporations and businesses build wealth, but also when we, for example, decided to take the affirmative and bold step into building an interstate highway system, into electrifying this country, into providing tuition-free public K-12 education for all. Those are not capitalist things. But we have to realize that there is more than one way to build wealth. And so, you know, democratic socialism and the idea of democratic socialism is a really big tent. So there are people that perhaps believe

all the same things you do. And the difference is that they would call themselves a democratic socialist, and other people wouldn't. And, like, I think that that's fine. You know, I think that we draw a lot of artificial lines in the sand. Plenty of socialists would say, I'm not a socialist. But it's like, I don't even think that that's really what's up for debate right now. Right. And I just think that we make a lot of these conversations about isms. But at the end of the day, a lot of these isms are ultimately academic definitions.

And the world is so much bigger and messier than that. Right. I guess I think that's right. You know, I'm of two minds of it, in part because, you know, I see the rise of democratic socialist groups and activists as a good thing. It's a response to Trump. It's a response to feeling left behind by the Democratic Party. It's very clear that you have pulled the party to the left in ways

that I think are positive. But at the same time, my worry is, well, if you have to be a Democratic socialist to advocate for these things, does that mean that you're implicitly saying that they don't have a home in the Democratic Party? Oh, I don't think I mean, I don't necessarily agree with that. I don't think that you have to call yourself a Democratic socialist to believe in these things. But I'm also not a hardliner. Some people are a hardliner. I'm not a hardliner kind of person. I'm very pragmatic.

So I meet everybody where they're at, even if you're like the most Republican, even if you call yourself a Republican. There are people who call themselves Republican that I would say believe socialist things. power so that a corporation doesn't dictate and kind of undermine your economic rights to basic human, things that I think are part of basic human dignity, healthcare, a living wage. Union organizing is like a very basic unit of democratic socialism. It's a form of putting democracy into the workplace, building collective power so that workers can have a say in what happens to them. But, you know, I think that, like, I'm not a hardliner. You know, you could say I'm a union worker, you may not call yourself a democratic socialist, and that's totally fine.

Yeah, I mean, it's funny, because I've never, I found it very frustrating when people would, as their sort of final point, and Bernie's not even a Democrat, right? Why he should have to run it. I think that's dumb. But at the same time, you know, one of my, I think, you know, after Trump won, to me, one of the greatest fears was, A, that he would attack institutions, but also B, that in the wake of this incredible threat and a sense of loss, that there wouldn't be unity on the left. And to me, that unity is really important. So I guess, what is the value of being a democratic socialist versus being a Democrat for you? And I'm not asking you.

I'm genuinely curious. Well, I mean, I think that answer is like, you know, super personal for every person. For me, the reason why I use this term is because, to be completely honest, I don't know what it means to be just a Democrat. There are Democrats who are anti-choice. There are Democrats who don't believe that the minimum wage should be a living wage. There are Democrats who are willing to allow fossil fuel companies to do whatever they want. And so while I am happy to call myself a Democrat, I also want to be more than that. I want to communicate very clearly that I believe in the United States there is a minimum we should aspire to establish institutions that provide a minimum level and guarantee a minimum level of human dignity in the United States.

Joe Manchin's a Democrat. I'm not Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin and I are both Democrats, but Joe Manchin believes in coal. He believes in, you know, he may be voting for Kavanaugh, you know, who's going to totally dismantle Roe v. Wade and allow, you know, Trump to get away with whatever he wants to get away with. And so it's not that I'm here to burn the house down, but it's that I tend to think that the Democratic Party, you know, I am a Democrat, but I also kind of think that it's a silver standard.

And for me, it adds a gold standard of aspiring to a guaranteed minimum level of economic and social dignity. And so there are plenty of people in the party who agree, who I think would identify, but there are also plenty of the people in the party who wouldn't agree. Right. And just sort of the Joe Manchin argument. So we had Joe Manchin on and we pushed him pretty hard to make sure that he would vote against Republican repeal efforts on healthcare. And he was a vote on that. And the fact, and I imagine if Joe and Manchin were sitting here, he'd say, that's all well and good, but these are the positions I believe I have to take. And when you've needed me on votes on health care, I've been there.

Wouldn't you rather have a conservative Democrat like me than a Republican who would be with you on none of these issues? Well, I think we look at – just look at what happened to Joe Manchin this year. Joe Manchin faced a little-to-no-talked- about primary from a woman on the left Paula Jean Swearingen I know Paula Jean Swearingen very well she's a coal miner's daughter she ran on no money like not only did she run on no corporate money but she she had nothing In two years for a United States Senate race, she raised $179,000 total. And, you know, like when you're figuring stuff out and campaigns, she really had probably less than $100K to run – to actually run that race. She was out there knocking doors herself, no money. Joe Manchin dropped $2 million against her and she still got 30% of the vote.

So that, to me, tells me that in West Virginia, which almost every county in West Virginia went for Bernie in 2016, who was further to the left, That to me tells me that we need to start reframing our issues instead of left and right to top and down. And it's not about like, oh, I have to weather my message to Republicans. There are people that really want to feel like there's an unapologetic working class champion for them. If Paula Jean Swearingen had $2 million, feel like there's an unapologetic working class champion for them. If Paula Jean Swearingen had $2 million, she got 30% of the vote on basically 79K.

30% like that's unheard of. And she never held political office before. So I think that it's going to require a little busting of this idea that we have of politics that has been so calcified, that we've taken so much as fact that I just don't think is necessarily true. And, you know, I even get letters from Republicans all the time who support me because I don't take corporate money. So you think that I just want to drill that. So it's this idea that like politicians like Joe Manchin, they look at their electorate and they say, I can be populist or I can be pro-worker on certain economic issues, but I got to move to the right on Kavanaugh, on nominees or whatever to demonstrate that I'm moderate enough to win in West Virginia. And your view is that there's actually a

more left progressive working class agenda that can work. The whole country is further left than Congress. The whole country. And this is in poll after poll after poll. 80% of Americans believe in responsible gun legislation. 60% of Americans believe in a single payer health care system. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in a living wage. The electorate is way further left than Congress. And we have low voter turnout. And I'm just amazed sometimes when I speak to either incumbents or when I speak to people in the party, and they act as though they don't exist.

They act as though it's harder to get someone who doesn't vote to vote than to get a Republican to vote for a Democrat. Like, good luck with that one. Good luck with that one. Good luck. Good luck with that one. Well, if it worked, we'd have President Hillary Clinton. Yeah. And the thing that that is like also sometimes frustrating to me is that this isn't just an idea. I don't have an opinion. This is backed by data. This is backed by 10 years of data. We have lost state legislators. We have lost gubernatorial seats. We have lost the House. We have lost the of data we have lost state legislators we have lost gubernatorial seats we

have lost the house we have lost the senate we have lost the presidency and the idea that oh you know we're we got to keep trudging on i won this one race and you would have thought that we took over half of the democratic party they're like the party has moved way too far to the left it's one seat out of almost 200. And they're doubling down on this strategy. But poll after poll after poll shows that the electorate is way further to the left. And then when you just look at the Democratic Party, the numbers are even higher. 60% of Americans believe in single-payer health care.

74% of Democrats in this country believe in single-payer health care. So campaign on it. So what do you think drives that fear for people like Joe Lieberman or even, you know, senators who have been critical of you? Do you think it's cynical? Do you think they're just naively wrong about what works? I mean, there are people who look at what you're advocating and they say, I know that we've lost a lot, but we shouldn't go down this path. This is a recipe for failure. What do you think makes them think that? So what I honestly think that it is, is that we have not had a party that has been investing in its own future.

So we have people who are constantly fundraising for their own reelection. The average age of a House Democrat right now is 65 years old. We are at the oldest point in American history. And not only are people just feverishly working on their own reelection for their second or sometimes third decade, But there's no investment in future leadership. We're putting all of this money into state parties, and those state parties aren't working on aggressively investing in young people running in state assembly seats, state house seats, so that they can later go on to Congress.

That is not happening. It's certainly happening on the right, but it hasn't been happening on the left. And so for me, I think what's happening is that, you know, a lot of these folks were in their political heyday in third way 90s politics and they were campaigning and they were really kind of connected most to an electorate when they were fighting for these seats, when they got these seats, when they were campaigning most,

when we had more of an American middle class. And so I think that politically, this like upper middle class is probably more moderate. But that upper middle class doesn't exist anymore in America. And thanks to the continued deregulation of Wall Street, thanks to the continued gutting of working and middle class people, we need stronger champions. But I don't think that they see exactly how rising income inequality has resulted in a very stark political reality. And it has changed our political landscape. But, you know, their heyday was in the 90s when like, know kids had furbies and like parents you have soccer moms with like two vans and stuff furbies and two vans yeah that's a dream that's not america anymore so i don't know so one thing that's happened too is i think a lot of people

that are considering running for president have seen this the way in which your campaign others have animated the base of the Democratic Party. Kirsten Gillibrand recently, she's one of many of the people that may run who are for single payer or Medicare for all of some form. She also just proposed a postal banking system so that people that are right now sort of subject to payday lenders who can't get the main banking system. What do you think about postal banking? I'm a huge fan of postal banking. I live in a neighborhood that would be enormously impacted by postal banking. I live across the street from a check cashing place. I walk five minutes to my subway stop. There's a payday lender. There's a pawn shop. And postal banking and public,

And, you know, postal banking and public, I haven't read her bill specifically, but I do know that postal banking is huge and it would be hugely important to working class communities. And so I think that postal banking is extremely important. I think it would be huge. I think it would be a game changer for communities like mine, for working class communities across the country. And there's a lot of really exciting policy ideas, I think, out on the horizon. I think postal banking, public banking is huge. Things that we've talked about, a federal jobs guarantee. Folks are exploring, like Michael Tubbs, who's the mayor of Stockton, he's exploring doing a pilot program of universal basic income in some communities. Yeah, we talked to him about it.

Yeah. And so I think that's also what people want right now. They want new ideas, not Yeah, we talked about it. They're overly predatory, logical ends. And I think they show the necessity and the benefit of having a public option. So you're going to go back and campaign for your seat. Hopefully you win that seat. You get to Congress. You're going to take office. Yeah. What are you hoping to do first? Well, for me, one of the reasons why I won my race and then immediately started going to places like Kansas and Michigan and out here in California and St. Louis is because, A, we have primary.

Another whole round of primary is coming up on August 7th and August 11th. But, B, I am most excited about working with a progressive freshman class because I know that that's the only way we can get things done. And I also know that there are really exciting people on the horizon. And so once we get in there, I think, you know, what I think I'd really look forward to, I think that strategically we've built enough power around certain bills that we can really push forward, like Medicare for All now has over 100 co-sponsors on it, which I think is just incredibly exciting. And it's a testament to the grassroots strength of the progressive movement right now. You know, and I really also look forward to presenting new bills, John Conyers put Medicare for All on the floor of Congress in

the early 2000s, you know, almost 20 years ago. And this bill has been like languishing on the floor of Congress waiting for its movement. And now its movement has come. And so I think that, you know, some of the work that I look forward to is maybe putting down some of those bills that perhaps won't have that immediate passage and support, but they need to be there. They need to be there so that we can build movements around them. And are you worried that Joe Lieberman is going to be able to stop you? I just think it's so funny. I just think it's so funny. The guy who campaigned for John McCain over Obama and like single handedly killed a public option in the United States is trying to tell us what the future of the Whatever the joke. Thank you, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for joining us on Pod Save America. It's great to finally meet you.

Yeah, no, likewise. And good luck in your race. Thank you. Thank you so, so much. I had such a great time. Thanks again to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for joining us. And I just want to be clear. It was a lighthearted Dick Durbin joke. And the only reason I chose Dick Durbin is because Michael Martinez, our producer,

had his name on an unrelated story. And so I just chose Dick Durbin to make fun of Dick Durbin. But it could have been a Schumer. It could have even been a Tom Carpenter. I'm a Durbin stan. I like Dick Durbin. I like Dick Durbin. I went to constituent coffee with Dick Durbin once a week for four years in the Senate. One of our favorite podcasts. I know. I'm a fan of Dick Durbin. You haven't even heard it. You don't even know the joke.

Senator Durbin. Schumer's stand over here. Senator Durbin. Please just block out whatever it is he said. Don't worry about it. We don't even know yet what it was. I don't even know what he said, but I'm supposed probably all of us. It was a very light joke.

I'm worried. It was a light joke. Michael Shivey word. You know what the problem is? It was a light joke. And the point is, I should have. You know what the problem is? I used to have Herb Kohl and Max Vaucus as my go-to senators that no one gives a shit about.

And the problem is. And now they're both gone. Now they're both gone. Now they're both gone. I forgot about Tom Carper. And so did Delaware. Now, next episode is going to be an apology to Tom Carper. You're going to go on a literal apology tour.

All right. I'll apologize to Tom Carpenter next week. Because we're always accurate. 72 Republican held seats with a more Democratic partisan lean than Ohio 12, including the Ohio First. Are we leaving this in the outro? Yeah. Always accurate, except for our Dick Durbin jokes. Whom we love.

Including the Ohio First, where our friend Aftab Perval is trying to unseat Steve Chabot. So, in Ohio, there's other ones. There's actually three others that are plus nines. It'll strike fear in the hearts of the Republicans you want to defeat the most. That's right. And Don Jr. We're just going to end on Don Jr. Have fun, buddy. All right, everyone.

Bye.