Pod Save America - “The Trump Investigation.”

Episode Date: May 17, 2018

Trump hits a bump in the road on his way to the Nobel Peace Prize, Republicans try their hardest to make 2018 about immigrant gang members, and 700 Trump investigation stories break in one day. Then Jason Kander joins Jon and Dan to talk about the midterms and the new season of Majority 54, and Inimai Chettiar of the Brennan Center for Justice talks about the prison reform bill moving through Congress.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Big pod today, Dan. Big pod. We've got a lot happening. A lot happening. We're going to be talking to our friend Jason Kander about the new season of Majority 54. That's exciting. We'll be talking to Inamai Chediar of the Brennan Center for Justice

about the prison reform bill in Congress right now. We're going to talk about a little bump in the road on the way to Trump's Nobel Peace Prize. We're going to talk about the President of the United States referring to some deported immigrants as animals. And there were also about 700 stories about the investigation of Donald Trump and his crime family yesterday. So we will try to sort through those.

Dan, how are you today? I'm great. Happy Mullerversary. Today is the one-year anniversary of Bob Muller coming on the scene. Well, I was going to say, and in celebration of that anniversary,

we have Bob Muller right here in studio. No, wait, that's right. Wouldn't that be exciting? That's right. You would tell, he would tell.

Actually, I, I would like to have him on the show. I'd like him to focus on his job to get this thing wrapped up. So greetings from the Bay Area where we spend our time waiting for babies to come. So there's that. Any minute now.

Any minute. Could, like, could happen. I could get a, I'm literally downstairs from where Hallie is. So at any minute I might have to run upstairs

and head directly to the hospital. But we'll see if we get through the pod today. That'll be a great pod. So. I will miss you guys in New York and Boston next week. I will be otherwise occupied.

But I'll be glad I'm doing what I'm doing while I'm here. We had a big announcement on the book today. Book tour dates are out for the first set of cities. We're going to be in the Bay Area for a couple events. Coming to LA to do an event with you, Lovett, and Tommy, which will be wild. We've got an event in

DC with Alyssa, New York with Peter Hamby, Portland, Maine. We got a bunch of events. If you live in any, if you live in any of these coastal elite cities, please come check it out. Book is out June 19th.

All proceeds from the, a portion of the proceeds from the presale go to Swing Left. So you're buying the book. You're helping me feel better about myself, but you're also helping

a very important organization. So buy the book, people. It would be great if you would do it. Go buy it. Buy the book. You're helping me feel better about myself, but you're also helping a very important organization. Buy the book, people. It would be great if you would do it. Go buy it. Buy the book. Okay. Let's get to the news. Dana, I regret to inform you that Donald Trump may not have a lock on the Nobel Peace Prize after all.

On Tuesday night, North Korea issued a statement that said, If the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the North Korea-United States summit. Surprise, surprise. It looks like tweeting crazy shit at a madman was not the magical solution to a challenge that has bedeviled presidents of both parties for decades uh dan what have we learned here about diplomacy from from the north well i think i think you are you would maybe did not read the david brooks column that yeah credited donald trump with a brand new unorthodox view of foreign policy where maybe he just understood the mind of the quote thug better

than anyone else, which was why he was able to grant the release of two, of a handful of some Americans who were kidnapped during his presidency. With, let me, if you put aside the fact that a dozen or so were released during Obama's presidency and the whole thing is – I guess the thing I would say here is everything is stupid. It is – it's just the reaction to how everyone – like this is a very serious foreign policy thing. It was always going to be solving this problem is going to be a long shot. I think a meeting would be a very good thing. I think it is great that these Americans were released. great that these Americans were released. But the idea that this is now considered,

this is on the Fox News running list of Trump's accomplishments, is nuclear diplomacy with North Korea for a meeting that has not yet happened. A group of members of Congress tried to nominate Trump for the Nobel Prize. Attendees at a Trump rally started chanting Nobel while he was speaking for a meeting that had not yet happened and had not delivered a single change of consequence in North Korean policy. And in this and and then and then we already fast forwarded to a debate on the Internet about why won't liberals give him credit for a North Korean diplomatic breakthrough? We already got to that debate. There hasn't been a fucking meeting yet, people. Trump, quote unquote, conservative Republican, who needs to find a way to make himself fit in into a Trumpist Republican party. So this seems like the way to do it. So you rush off, just because it's 800 words in the New York Times op-ed page does not mean it's not just as vacuous as a Twitter hot take from someone, from anonymous Twitter user and with a red hat avatar like that.

It just like let's take a deep breath. Slow down. Let's see what happens before we try. We're so desperate to give Trump credit for something because he's so bad at everything else. he's so bad at everything else. So we don't even wait to see if he deserves credit for that thing. Because almost always, if you rush to praise Trump for something, you are going to end up looking stupid moments later, because it always ends that way. And this isn't even really about Trump. This is also just like, has everyone slept through complicated diplomacy for the last several decades? This was obviously gonna have a lot of bumps in the road. So maybe just like keep the

Nobel on ice for a few minutes and see how this plays out. Well, it's a couple of things. It's, as you said, a consequence of the Washington media having a fetish with balance. Every day it's like we must try to credit Trump with something because we've been so tough on him for everything else. Not to mention the fact that you've been tough on him because he's like a lying crazy insane president um so that's number one it's this this you know we must find something to praise trump about every day we're looking for it um and then number two it's a broader problem which is you know in this news environment um two main issues are we all have collective amnesia we

can never remember what happened yesterday um and so like things just wash away in news cycles in a matter of minutes and then the other problem we have is patience like everything has to be solved immediately and so the summit is announced it seems like we could have some kind of potential breakthrough and everyone rushes right to judgment about what happened like here's the thing after that statement we don't know the summit could still happen and trump could still be successful i'm not saying now that this statement means that it's all over because i want to wait and see what the fuck happens all we know so far is that north korea has not offered Trump anything different than previous North Korean regimes have offered previous U.S. presidents. The only thing new so far is that Trump has accepted the meeting with the leader of North Korea.

So if that meeting does happen, let's see what happens. Let's see, you know, Trump has been promising denuclearization, which we've thought from the beginning is not something that Kim Jong-un is going to want to do. Because why would he give up his nuclear weapons? Why would he give up all his nuclear weapons? So will there be some kind of progress or breakthrough that's somewhere in between him giving up all of his nuclear weapons and him doing nothing, the status quo? Possibly. But maybe we should all wait and see before we start writing our fucking takes. Yeah, here's a good first take.

This is a good first step. Like, that's the way to approach the scheduling of the meeting. That's what it is. Be patient. It's not a Nobel-worthy achievement. It doesn't tell you really anything about Trump's foreign policy acumen or his ability as president. You're right. It's about balance. It is because – like Trump should have gotten credit and we gave it to him here,

which should be notable because we don't do it very often, for getting a meeting on the books. If the meeting goes well and we make progress, even if it is short of the ultimate goal, if we improve the situation in some way, shape or form, whether it's inspectors or some changes to like to missile technology, whatever it is, we should give them credit for it. But let's just wait till something actually happens. The other thing that is that it was really revealing about this incident is that for As much as Trump and his minions claim to hate elites and the mainstream media and elite institutions, what they truly crave at the end of the day is elite approval. more globalist, cuck, elitist approval than getting European leaders to vote for you to get the Nobel Prize. That is the ultimate example. And they want it so bad.

Ultimately, so much of what drives this movement is an insecurity about not getting elite approval. That's why Trump cares so much about what Maggie Haber and the New York Times say about him. It's why he wants a Nobel Prize. He will be accepted in a club that he feels he is not accepted in yet, despite being president of the United States. That is exactly right. It's also why all these conservatives online are all angry that liberals are too mean to them. And because of that, you know, they're fueling Trump and everything. They are all desperate. As much as they like to shit on the elite media and elites, they are desperate for this approval. You're right. It's the basis for this whole movement.

There's one other interesting dynamic at play here in North Korea, which is it seems like what set the North Koreans off with the statement was our new national security advisor, John Bolton, who proposed a, quote, Libya model for North Korea. A problem with that model is years after Libya's Muammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear weapons, he was captured and killed. weapons he was captured and killed um so it seems like it seems like we from the beginning we've known this that when when bolton arrived on the scene he doesn't really he's not a big fan of diplomacy um do you think he's trying do you think he's uh the other thing i should say is it was pretty great in the statement uh that the north koreans released they said of bolton um we do not hide a feeling of repugnance towards him same same um is uh is bolton trying to sabotage the talks do you think i don't know i mean who knows i like bolton is he he has been a well credentialed foreign policy troll for his entire career. He is not someone who builds things. He just writes about destroying them in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. And so I don't think

he has any concept of anything other than how to be inflammatory in rhetoric. And so now he's in a position where he actually has to do something. but ultimately, this is what happens when a president has no coherent policy view on any issue other than immigration. There's no Trump vision or Trump doctrine that he's trying to implement. It's just sort of what some guy who knows very little about foreign policy thinks based on what he saw on Fox and Friends in the morning. It's very hard to work for someone like that. So I think he probably has no idea what he's on Fox and Friends in the morning. It's very hard to work for someone like that. So I think he probably has no idea what he's supposed to do. And no one in the administration does because Trump doesn't.

So it all sort of flows from incoherence at the top. All Trump knows is that he wants a deal. And now the world knows that Trump wants a deal. And Kim Jong-un knows that Trump wants a deal desperately. And that's going to play to the advantage of the North Koreans at the negotiating table. So art of the deal, man. We shall see. We shall see. I want to talk about the president's comments on immigrants Wednesday during a White House roundtable about California's refusal to force local police officers to become deportation agents. Trump referred to some immigrants who'd been deported as animals.

Here's the full context of what was said. A sheriff from Fresno was complaining about ICE, and she said, quote, there could be an MS-13 member I know about. If they don't reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it. Trump responds, We have people coming into the country or trying to come in, and we're stopping a lot of them, but we're taking people out of the country.

You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals. Dan, Trump people, conservatives, Republicans, are all saying that Trump was referring specifically to MS-13 members, that he's called them that before, which is true. He has called them animals before. What do you think about this whole thing?

The problem is Trump has forfeited the benefit of the doubt on almost every issue, but particularly the issue of immigration. We have been, the Trumpists have been trying to argue for more than two years now about whether – trying to explain that when Trump said rapists, that he was not referring to immigrants and Mexicans more generally, which he obviously was. Like this state – like irregardless, which I know is not a word I think, but regardless of what you think about – It is right now. It is now. Trump is president. Stop me.

But whether in this instance he was referring specifically to MS-13, I think is fairly irrelevant. scare white Americans by demonizing immigrants of all stripes and refusing to distinguish between the tiny percentage who are MS-13 members or criminals and the overwhelming majority who come here looking for a better life or who have been here for years and are part of the community. Trump has never drawn a distinction between the DREAMers and members of MS-13. And we know this because during the very brief shutdown, the exact thing he did was compare Democrats' efforts to help the Dreamers with Democrats letting members of MS-13 into this country. And so I don't really care about this specific instance. What is undeniably true is that this is Trump's message to America, and it is

consistent with how he describes immigrants and has for his entire time on the national stage here. Yeah, this is the, and it's not just Trump, it's the entire Republican campaign message. It's the central message for 2018. And we know that because it's been the message in just about every race in 2017. It's where they're putting all their money behind their ads is to talk about MS-13. They're running on MS-13. That's their issue. They're trying to say that all undocumented immigrants are like MS-13. The conflation has been happening from the beginning. And also, whatever Trump said or meant, which I think is ambiguous at best, just look at the policy.

This whole set of comments come a few days after the White House announced a new policy that attempts to dissuade immigrants from crossing the border by separating parents from their children once they arrive. And when the White House chief of staff was asked whether this policy was cruel and heartless, his response was, quote, the children will be taken care of, put into foster care or whatever. Daryl Lind, who knows this issue better than anyone at Vox, points out that since Trump took office, ICE has arrested 45,436 immigrants without criminal records. Up to 40% of the people ICE now deports don't have criminal records, and that is double what was happening during the Obama era. So just look at the actual policy, never mind what Trump's saying. He's trying to scare people about immigrants.

He's trying to say that the people in this country are criminals when that's not what the statistics say. And they want to focus on MS-13. Yeah, of course we want MS-13 fucking gang members arrested and deported out of the country. Of course we want that. But that's not what they want. Now they're all saying, oh, Democrats are rushing to the defense gang members arrested and deported out of the country. Of course we want that. But that's not what they want. Now they're all saying like, oh, Democrats are rushing to the defense of MS-13.

That's what Democrats are doing right now by pointing out that Trump just started talking about people who are animals at a press conference as he was talking about immigrants and deportations. It's ridiculous. Do you think this is a trollish question, but do you think we are once again walking into a trap here as Democrats? Well, I was going to ask about this because it's not that we're walking into a trap necessarily. It's that we're going to have to deal with this over and over again from now until November. over and over again from now until November. Trump said a couple weeks ago, this sort of went under the radar, that he wants to shut the government down in September over his border wall if he doesn't get funding for the border wall.

He is looking, and Republicans are looking, for every opportunity they can find to bring up immigration and to conflate it with violence and gangs and MS-13 and all the rest. And so I don't think the Democrats can just avoid that because that's their game plan. That's their campaign, and they're going to try to keep it in the news, whether it's something like this or whether it's Trump threatening to shut down the government or whatever it is. They're going to try to do this from now until November. So the question for us is not should we respond or not.

It's how we're going to respond because I don't think we can ignore it. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it is – we must call – like if the president of the United States is advocating racist views from a table in the White House, then we have to say something. And it's not an option to not say something. The question is, where do you go after that to make sure that people have a reason to vote for Democrats beyond just the fact, and it is an important fact, but beyond just the fact that we are ready, willing, and able to call out racism, misogyny, xenophobia, white nationalism, and all the other dangerous ideologies that are emanating from the president of the United States.

What is the next part of that sentence? Well, look, I think we've got to let people know what exactly is happening besides just waving it off as racist, you know, because we can say that. But like, let's let's actually talk about what's going on here. I mean, the story from Slate this morning that broke around the same time as everyone's been talking about these comments. ICE recently arrested a dreamer, revoked his DACA status, placed him in detention, and attempted to deport him, claiming he was a gang member. And a federal judge just ruled that ICE was lying, that they lied about it, that they actually tried to get a false confession out of this uh young person who has been in this country since he was a child he lived in seattle i showed up at his house to arrest his father who wasn't here it was here as

an undocumented immigrant and then said to him we're going to arrest you too and the kid says well no here's my daco work permit i'm supposed to be here legally it's fine and they said that doesn't matter and they ripped up the work permit. I'm supposed to be here legally. It's fine. And they said, that doesn't matter. And they ripped up the work permit, and they threw him in jail, and they tried to get a false confession out of him. And a federal judge had to rule that he was lying, and they tried to deport this man. So, like, we don't actually have to be going back and forth as whether what Trump said or meant was racist or not. These are the policies that are being carried out in this country right now by ICE.

And I don't think that most people in this country think it's okay to go up to an undocumented immigrant who has a DACA work permit, who said he's here legally, who said he can work here legally, and try to lie and arrest that person and deport that person. I don't think people like that. I don't think that's a good platform for Republicans to run on either. They only win if it's this conflated debate where we say, oh, Trump's racist, and they say, oh, Democrats love MS-13. And even then, that didn't work for them too well in the 2017 special elections. Otherwise, we'd be talking about Governor Gillespie right now. All right, Dan, let's talk about the Trump investigation. I decided I'm going to start calling it the Trump investigation now because I don't know why we call it the Mueller investigation or the Russia investigation because I started thinking to myself, if Hillary Clinton were president, they'd be calling it the Clinton investigation.

Because right now it's like a major corruption investigation into Trump and multiple associates that had like senior level jobs on the campaign in the White House. So that's what it is to me. Anyway, about 765 stories broke yesterday. It was really tough. Poor Michael was trying to do this outline, do some research. And it was just story after story about Russia. We'll go through all the highlights, but here's how you know it wasn't a great day for Trump. The day ended with his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, celebrating his belief that Mueller won't indict the president. He might only refer him to Congress for impeachment. And Rudy then argued to Laura Ingraham that there's actually nothing at all legal about asking a foreign power to undermine a U.S. election on behalf of your own campaign we finally finally got to um you know what collusion not really a

crime um what do you think of that what do you what do you think of the new talking point well it was inevitable we were going to get here it was inevitable because we know collusion happened i don't know what i don't know maybe everyone in politics like watch matlock too much and it's like waiting for the smoking gun to happen all the evidence is before our eyes it is right there it was in the documents released by the senate intelligence committee yesterday yeah so the senate intel committee basically they issued a bipartisan statement that their investigation has concluded that Russia interfered in 2016 with the purpose of helping Donald Trump. No shit. Every single intelligence agency and law enforcement agency in the United States government and in other governments have all come to this conclusion. As usual, the only people who disagree are House Republicans, Fox News and Donald Trump.

So that's the Senate Intel Committee. And then the the senate judiciary committee released a bunch of russia documents and the transcript of the interview with don fucking jr man who who apparently apparently started the infamous trump tower meeting by asking the russians so i believe you have some information for us i mean so like just take take a step back and like get away from the like this narrow question that apparently like the political world wants to hear which is like some sort of direct communication from trump to putin handshake deal let us let us collude now we will collude let us call yes thank you sir we will agree to accept your emails and collude. Now we will collude together. Let us collude. Yes. Thank you, sir. We will agree to accept your emails, and once we accept them,

we will undo the sanctions. Congratulations. Thank you. Please send your one copy of the P-tape directly to Trump Tower. That's not the thing. Let's think about... Just look at the evidence. You have Trump,

an agent of the Russian government promising information, promising dirt on Trump's political opponent, meets with Trump's son, son-in-law, campaign manager. campaign manager who's been out of politics for decades, who happens to be very closely associated with pro-Putin oligarchs and deeply in debt to them. Months later, the Republican Party out of nowhere changes its platform to be shockingly pro-Putin. Then you have, after the election, Trump's son-in-law agreeing to try to set up a back channel with the Russians outside of the eyes and ears of U.S. law enforcement, U.S. intelligence agencies. And you have not one, but two Trump advisors who have, who have revealed, who reportedly had knowledge of Russian hacking of DNC and Podesta emails prior to the rest of the world knowing. All of these things added together make it so clear that collusion happened.

That is just a fact, and we have to accept that. So now the question is, what happens? What are the consequences for said collusion politically and legally? But it happened. It just absolutely happened. And maybe it's a crime. Maybe it's not a crime. Maybe it's a crime. The question, I guess, is ultimately not did it happen is can – twofold. Can Trump face legal or political consequences through it from either Mueller, a court of law, or impeachment? And does Mueller have the evidence to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that various Trump associates who have already been indicted or could soon be indicted are guilty of those crimes? But let's just be clear about the obvious facts about what happened in this election and Trump's willingness to accept help from a foreign power promising their political opponent, knew that it existed, and decided not to go to the FBI or tell the FBI about it, could possibly consist as a crime all on its own. I mean, this is why we've talked about this before. There is a spine of all the indictments that Mueller is bringing to bear here, that they're all conspiracy to defraud the United States, whether it's Paul Manafort or the Russian troll farm or whatever else. And conspiracy to defraud goes to like knowingly concealing from the federal government information that could allow the government to do to function properly, which is to make sure that, you know, in the case of the

Federal Election Committee, there aren't illegal campaign finance contributions or campaign finance contributions that are coming from foreign governments or that emails have been hacked, which is also against the law. So there's plenty. Clearly, these people were in on it. They all knew they knew that emails are being illegally hacked and that they were going to be dumped by a foreign power in order to help their opponent. And they asked for it. They wanted it. And then they lied about it when they were going to be dumped by a foreign power in order to help their opponent. And they asked for it. They wanted it. And then they lied about it when they were asked. That's why a whole bunch of them have pled guilty and have been indicted,

because they kept lying to federal officials every time federal officials had said, why did you have all these contacts with Russians? Well, if they weren't guilty, why would they continue to lie about all the contacts with Russians? Come on. Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, there's so many more details. Donald Trump's son, in coordination with Donald Trump and senior White House aides like Hope Hicks, lied not once, not twice, but three times to the press and the public about the nature of that

meeting. You don't do that if that is something that you do not believe to be a crime when you do it. I mean, also, let's just focus one minute on it's not just the criminality, it's the stupidity. To lie knowing that there are all these emails flying around that have probably been turned over to Congress already. It's just, it is crazy. But it is worth noting, this gets glossed over a lot, but it is insane that they did not, if they are innocent, it's insane that they did not call the FBI after Russian government emissaries showed up with promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. I mean, it's crazy. So I will date myself as always. on hillary clinton i mean it's crazy so it's insane but also like let's remember what trump said right before the democratic national convention to a whole bunch of reporters

when he said russia if you have the 30 000 emails that are missing from hillary clinton please find them and give them to our press i mean people have made this point a million times but like this is why it's not super surprising to anyone. And everyone thinks they're like waiting. The scandal's in plain sight. The crime was in plain sight. And the timing of when he said that fits into the broader timeline of when they committed all these crimes. So two things on this.

One, you're so right here, which is like, we are not even focused on the trees. We are focused on like parts of the leaves of this. When you step back, we are living in a forest of crime and collusion like that. It's so obviously that. The second thing is, and I'm going to date myself here, but when I was working on it, when I was much younger, much, much, much younger and working on the Gore campaign in 2000, one day as we were preparing for the debates, one of our advisors gets a package in the mail. And in that package, it opens it up and it is George W. Bush's briefing book for the debate with all of his Q, all the suggested questions, all the answers, all the guidance. No idea where it comes from, no idea how it got there. And so the question is, what do you do with it?

And it really wasn't a question because no one was like, well, we should – let's read it and see what happens. call the FBI who came to get it and open a criminal investigation to find out how a proprietary information had gotten from the Bush campaign to the Gore campaign. And so if that was what you would do on a debate prep book from one campaign to the other, the idea that you would not call the FBI and not alert law enforcement when a foreign government, and this is not Great Britain or Australia. This is a country in which we are in a particularly tense relationship and in a global standoff over Ukraine and other issues at the time. It's just crazy and – or maybe it's a completely sane reaction if you are trying to engage with them in a criminal conspiracy to help win an election. I choose that one.

Sometimes it's just that when you're dealing with simple people, the simplest explanation is probably right. I choose that explanation. So the third big thing yesterday, I guess that's number three, was all the Michael Cohen news. Michael Cohen news. A financial disclosure released by President Trump on Wednesday revealed that he paid a debt of more than $100,000 to Michael Cohen, the fixer who paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 of hush money to keep her quiet about an alleged affair she had with Donald Trump. So this is now the proof that Donald Trump lied to us and has been lying to us for a long time. But there was more on this. The Office of Government Ethics, when they saw that disclosure, has now basically referred, they referred the disclosure, the

financial closure, to the Justice Department for criminal investigation because Trump previously filed false financial reports that concealed this debt. So that's something. Now we have an Office of Government Ethics referral to the Justice Department about the president lying on his financial disclosure because he tried to conceal this payment. I read that and I was like, this would be like the biggest story in the world two years ago with any other president. Is it even on the front page of a single paper in America?

I don't think it is. I saw it from some tweets. Walter Schaub, the former head of a single paper in America? I don't think it is. I saw it from some tweets. Yeah, I don't – Walter Shaw, the former head of the government's ethics office, was tweeting about it because he used to run the ethics office. And he thought it was quite weird when he got a financial disclosure last year that didn't have the debt on it. It is. Sometimes you just have to, like, step back and explain what is actually happening outside of the context. It's almost worth, like, anonymizing the information so It's almost worth like anonymizing the information. So it's not like Trump specific, but it's like the president United States had his fixer set up a secret shell corporation to funnel money to pay to pay off a woman he had an affair with. Then lied about it on his federal financial disclosure form until he was forced to reveal it

this year and and in reaction to that the office of government ethics referred the president united states to the justice department for potential criminal prosecution like that take put it don't say the words porn star or stormy daniels or michael cohen or don Trump, just that. Any president and the next day, any person other than Trump, the next day story is, is this the end of the presidency? Embroiled at massive scandal. And we barely put our phones down to focus on this because so much else is happening. And this is maybe the trap of the entire Russia thing

is there may be a bunch of really hard to prove crimes that we're spending all of our energy on. And then these very obvious crimes happening before our eyes. And maybe crimes is the wrong word, because the end result, we have to have a higher standard for our president than is their misconduct prosecutable by a criminal court or Congress? It should also be, did our president engage in misconduct? And that should be enough to get the body politic to react in ways that affect the president's ability to enact their agenda. And so we've so demeaned what we expect from our president because our president is terrible and that could have

consequences that extend long past the time that Donald Trump leaves the White House on flying off on Marine One back to Trump Tower or in the back of an FBI van. Well, one of the reasons that we sort of blew by that story yesterday is because there was more news about the Michael Cohen shell company, which now just looks like a bribery racket. Cohen was paid by a state-owned Korean defense company lobbying for a U.S. government contract. And they said the payment to Cohen was, quote, for government accounting procedures because he's such a stickler for government accounting procedures at Michael Cohen. Cohen apparently also asked the government of Qatar for a million dollars in exchange for access to Trump.

That was another story yesterday. And then we ended the day, thanks to reporting from Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker, about how Cohen's financial records were leaked in the first place. Apparently, a law enforcement official had grown alarmed after not being able to find two additional suspicious activity reports on Cohen's financial activity in a secret government database. So these reports on suspicious activity, which are generated by a

bank because they believe that someone may have committed fraud, that there was money laundering, that there was wire fraud or bank fraud. And so when that happens, they issue a suspicious activity report and it goes to the Treasury Department. The Treasury Department conceals these reports. They keep them very secret so as not to expose who it's about and not to disrupt any potential investigation. And yet there's a database that a lot of people who work at Treasury can find these suspicious activities reports. Well, two of the reports on Michael Cohen that total somewhere around $3 million are missing from the system. And we don't know why they're missing from the system, Dan. Either the records were destroyed, which as some people pointed out is sort of weird because the banks are going to have copies of the records anyway,

or they were so bad that Mueller got in there or someone from the Southern District of New York and decided to conceal them to make sure no one could find them because it would potentially disrupt his investigation um so that sounds bad yeah it i mean it's incredibly alarming and like you like we don't have to leap immediately to the idea that someone has destroyed the records. There could be an explanation here. Yeah. Mueller could have. Yeah. Mueller could have them.

But I would say that the sort of it is not also determinative that who whatever moron was decided they were going to try to obstruct justice was smart enough to know the banks would also have the record completely ham handed obstruction of justice is really on brand for the very crime family very unbranded so so but it is um like you tweeted i hope muller has these and if he doesn't have them i think he's gonna have them pretty soon because the banks would save them right but it does the fact that muller might have them may explain why we're you know thanks to this whistleblower and uh the media outlets and michael affinati and others who have revealed them we know about these like the the bright the potential bribery michael cohen bribery scam but muller has interviewed these companies last year and so he may have he may have looked at that he may even have seen these before – if they were destroyed before they were destroyed. But once again, you have an incredibly alarming piece of information that has been revealed to us the public on winning the next election, just on our ability as a nation in a political system to be able to have any sort of accountability for misconduct and misdeeds from our political leaders.

Yeah, well, it's a good segue to what I want to talk about next? So there's a great piece in New York magazine Wednesday by Eric Levitz that argues that, you know, Democrats are Democratic politicians are doing a pretty decent job talking about the things voters really care about, like their access to health care, you know, media outlets like CNN and even liberal-leaning media outlets like MSNBC are obsessed with covering the Russia story because it's good for ratings. I'm just going to read a part of this piece. He says, It's not MSNBC's job to promote the Democratic Party's economic message, and the Mueller investigation is an important and fascinating story that's tailor-made for television news. fascinating story that's tailor-made for television news. It would not be realistic for Democrats to expect any for-profit media company to prioritize conveying its preferred political narratives over conveying the most sensational events of the day. And yet Republicans do get that courtesy from the nation's most watched cable news channel. Fox News puts the GOP's messaging needs ahead of maximizing eyeballs. That is very true, I think. And then the question for us is like what do democrats do about it we've

talked about this a lot on this podcast like what how do democrats break through the noise when they don't have a media outlet like fox that is just trying to elect democrats and look i'll start by saying we are a media outlet a half media half political outlet that is trying to elect democrats and we talk about the russia story quite a bit here but i don't do it because i think it's good politics for democrats i do it because it is a fucking important story and i want to know the truth about what's happening because also the president united states is hugely corrupt and he's lied to us and four of his top campaign officials and White House officials have pled guilty already and many more have been indicted. And that's a big fucking

problem. And I think people should know about that. I don't know. What do you think? I agree with that. I mean, there's a couple of things here. And as you know, this is a focus of great fascination and obsession of mine. I spend some time in the book on Fox News and its horrendous impact on America and politics. But there's a couple of elements here. But one, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, Pod Save America, everyone else is not wrong as a media entity to focus on the Russia election. And it's not just that it's good for ratings. It is helpful that it's good for ratings. Of course, it is a for-profit. These are for-profit entities.

But it's also potentially the greatest political scandal in modern American history. And so it's sort of crazy not to focus on it, right? And it would be crazy not to focus on it. Right. And it would be and it'd be it'd be insane not to like all of these stories that we mentioned are gigantic, huge, world changing stories. They're just all happening at the same fucking time. So that's one. Two, nothing makes me more exhausted than when we talk about Fox News and then the press, then either conservative media, Republicans come back and say, what about CNN and MSNBC? Now, the CNN part has to do with, CNN doesn't have opinion shows like MSNBC. And so that is just, that is part of, you can insert the New York Times, Washington Post, that is part of the general critique from Trump and the right, bad faith critique, to try to say that the media is all liberal, right? And so put that aside.

That is such a simplistic view of a complicated situation, and it's absurd. But then – so MSNBC, which has Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and everyone else, Joanne Reid, everyone else. And so the argument is MSNBC is the Democrats' Fox. There is nothing true about that statement other than the fact that in prime time, MSNBC air shows with liberal opinion hosts and at that same time, Fox air shows with conservative opinion hosts. And at that same time, Fox airs shows with conservative opinion hosts. Although he has not been a supporter of Trump, the host of the morning show on MSNBC is a former Republican congressman. Could you imagine a world where it's like Fox in the morning was like ramen friends? Like, no, that's insane. It's like there's a Republican congressman who at one point was so close to Trump that Trump offered to officiate his wedding at the White House.

They gave Hugh Hewitt a show. Hugh fucking Hewitt has a show on MSNBC on the weekends. Come on, man. In the middle of the day, they have shows hosted by objective journalists from NBC broadcast. Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell, Katie Turr, Hallie Jackson. The same thing does not happen at Fox. Fox is a propaganda network designed to push forward Republican political power, not Republican policies. The policies don't really matter that much to them. It is Republican political power. not Republican policies. The policies don't really matter that much to them. It is Republican political power.

And the reason you know that the policies don't matter to them is Rupert Murdoch is a longtime supporter of comprehensive immigration reform. And every night his network airs three to four hours of racist propaganda against immigrants. Racist propaganda against immigrants. And during the day, the news – the quote-unquote news elements do stories that are designed to fit into a narrative that the network is pushing. During the time Barack Obama was president, it was an anti-of-touch, effete, big-city liberal who, frankly, did not have the interests of regular white Americans at heart. That's what it was. That is not what happens in MSNBC. And we, as Democrats, are at a massive disadvantage because the Republicans have built, over the course of the eight years of the Obama presidency in the first two years of the first year and a half of the Trump presidency,

a massive propaganda network of which Fox is the most prominent, but an entire array of websites and newspapers, Breitbart, the Free Beacon, Life's Ed, Gateway Pundit, all of these things that are pushing pro-Trump content and anti-democratic content into the social media, particularly Facebook ecosystem, and shaping the core, the context of the national conversation around politics in ways Democrats certainly, frankly, cannot compete. Yeah, I mean, you've said it before, but the big distinction for me is it's not conservative propaganda. It's Republican propaganda. And there is a difference. Their purpose is to get Republicans elected and to keep Republicans in power. Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow are liberals, but their purpose is not to elect Democrats. Their purpose is to be liberal opinion journalists. And they do that quite well. But so that that's going to take them in directions that are not necessarily helpful to the Democratic Party all the time. And that's fine.

That's good. I mean, you know, that's their thing. But that's on the right, there's something entirely different. It's an entire propaganda network just solely dedicated to keeping Republicans in power. That's what it is. And we don't have anything like that. Except we're trying to do it here, but that's about it. Yeah.

A couple of things about that. One, this media infrastructure advantage of the Republicans, more than anything else, with a possible exception of Russian interference, scares me more about the 2020 election. It is a very serious problem, and we do not yet have an answer. I mean, what you guys are doing at Crooked Media and what we're in Pod Save America is one answer to that, but you're going to need a lot more.

Yeah, a lot more. And two, the answer for Democrats can't be we need democratic propaganda. No. That will not work. If you look, and it should work. Even if we wanted to do that, even if we decided to throw our morals away and go down that road, that's not how our base responds. We don't do, we don't respond well to like lying and fear mongering and all that bullshit that they do.

We just don't. We need more, you know, inspiration and we need more like and more truth. That's just the way our base works. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so we need to find ways to help control and shape the political conversation in this country and allow it to focus on the issues we care about. But we can't do it. We will not have success trying to rerun the Trump Fox playbook and how we solve that problem over the next few years is going to be massively consequential to the short and long term future of this country.

Not to like make it not be overdramatic, but yeah, it's dramatic. Well, one person we're going to talk to about that next is our friend, Jason Kander, host of cricket media is majority 54, who we'll be talking with right after this.

On the pod today, we're lucky to have back Jason Kander. The second season of Majority54 hit podcast here at Crooked Media. Launches on May 25th. And your first guest, big get, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who's been doing some work with your team at Let America Vote. So tell us about the first episode. Why did you want to talk to Lin and what did you guys talk about? Yeah, it was really exciting. Lin, obviously, we wanted to talk to him about the work he's done with Puerto Rico, but also

about just activism. You know, he's somebody I talk all the time about the importance of grabbing an oar, getting out there and using their platform, and he's definitely done that. And then on top of that, he has this Prizeo campaign where folks can go to prizeo.com slash Hamilton, and they can make a small contribution and enter to win a chance to be his date for when Hamilton opens in D.C. And one of the beneficiaries of that campaign is Let America Vote. Lynn had reached out and said, hey, we want to we want to benefit Let America Vote with this.

And so it all just kind of came together perfectly where we could talk to Lynn and also at the same time promote that opportunity. So, again, I'm going to do it again, prizeo.com slash Hamilton. That's awesome. So what's your vision for the second season of Majority 54? What kind of conversations are you interested in having this time? And sort of what did you learn from the first season? Well, first, let me say thank you to you and to everybody at Crooked because y'all gave us the chance to do this. And it was, it's been fun to be able to work with you. And so I appreciate that a lot. And, and then, you know, for those who haven't listened to the show before, one thing I should, I should talk about is how it started in the first place, which is, you know, I've been in

now 40 States since Trump took office. And one of the most common questions that people asked me before the podcast was, how do I talk to my Republican aunt or my friend from high school who voted for Trump? But I want to preserve this relationship, but I want to be able to try and persuade them at the same time. And I got that question so much. And so then we pretty much built a podcast around that. So that's what it is. It's conversations with people who have been affected by these issues, who are within the 54 percent of folks who didn't vote for Trump. And it's all about how to have productive conversations that don't in any way compromise our values with the 46 percent of folks who did vote for President Trump and how to how to expand our majority. and I think one of the biggest things I learned from the first season is that people found a lot of value,

maybe more than I even would have estimated, in the part of the show where we sort of walk through strategies for talking about this stuff. They really liked it. I love that part of the show. You were one of them. I'm a big fan of that part of the show. Yeah, and so we're doing that a lot more.

We're still going to do absolutely the interviews with exciting people who are, you know, Lynn is a little bit of an exception to this, obviously, because he's hugely famous. But for the most part, it is with people who you really haven't heard much from or much about before, but are affected by the issue and who got moved to get involved by whichever issue we're talking about at that time. And so people like that, but then we're also going to continue and expand on the part of the show where we walk through, okay, here's what the other side says. Here's what you can say back. And it's not, you know, it's not the talking points that you are going to hear on cable news. It's, it's storytelling and it's, it's opening yourself up to people and saying, here's the journey that I went on to believe this and I want to take you with me.

Jason, in your travels and in your work with Let America Vote, you've been very focused on millennials and young voters. And I'm curious about what you're hearing out there from them. this, I think this week, that says that, you know, it's basically a third, only a third of voters under 30 are following the election closely. What are you seeing out there? And what can Democratic politicians do to engage that audience? Well, what I'm seeing is an enormous amount of energy. I mean, man, I'm sure you'll see it too. You do the live shows. I mean, you have these people who are turning out and then talking about all the work they're putting in. So, you know, I've seen all sorts event or I knock on doors because of this particular politician on TV. Now, they may they find inspiration like they listen to Paws of America or some of them will tell me, you know, they'll say nice things to me about it.

But but what brought him out when you dig a little deeper is, you know, their neighbor who was going to go to a, like a town hall during the Trump care debates and had never done anything like that. And they went with them. And all of a sudden, now they've started a new group in their area, you know, so I'm seeing that all the time. And, and I'm really excited about that because what I always remind people of, and this is getting to like how we engage folks. I remind people that the blue wave is not a weather event. It's not like your meteorologist doesn't come on and say, well, there seems to be some democratic momentum coming in from the West. It don't work that way. It's you got to execute. You get out and you do the work. And I think the most important thing to keep to engage folks is the stuff that

we're doing with Let America Vote and other groups are doing, which is give them stuff to do. Millennials, they're not satisfied to watch it on TV or read about it. They want to put their hands on it, and they want to go door to door, and they want to make a difference. They're looking to save the country. And so the best thing you can do to engage them is make their time productive and useful. them make their time productive and useful. Since you've been out there talking to so many people, what messages do you find resonating with and connecting with people the most? Like when you're speaking and talking to people, what are the moments that people start really shaking their heads? It's when I tell people that the Democratic Party is the party that is, that every policy we

have, everything about our party is about one thing, and that's making every American hometown a place where you can have success without moving away if you don't want to. And that is particularly true in the Midwest and the South. I live in Kansas City, and I've just come to believe that every American wants the same four things for their family, and that's what all of politics is about. And those four things are they want their family to be happy, to be healthy, to be safe, and to be nearby. And we have a lot, we should brag as a party a lot more about the fact that all the stuff we do, it's really about making it so that people don't have to leave their hometown if they don't want to have success. And if they do, they can move home. And, you know, whether it's college affordability, making it so that they don't have to leave their hometown if they don't want to to have success. And if they do, they can move home. And, you know, whether it's college affordability, making it so that they don't have so much debt that they could actually move home,

whether it's wages being high enough, whether it's criminal justice reform, allowing folks to have a second chance and come out and be a part of making for a safe, vibrant community that people want to stay in. All that stuff is about the same thing. And that's the folks who live in the middle of the country where I live, we're all just really worried about the fact that our kids may have to leave to find a good job. That's not what we want. What do you make about this whole debate about, you know,

how progressive someone should be to win in a certain district? Like, on Tuesday we saw candidates like Anna Eastman, who won the nomination for the second congressional district in Nebraska. And, you know, she was the more liberal candidate. And so you get a bunch of pundits saying, well, I don't know now if we can win that district in Nebraska because the more left leaning candidate won. You're someone who ran unabashedly as a progressive in a fairly red state. So what do you make of this whole debate? Yeah, I mean, look, I think the thing to take from the primaries is that an awful lot of people are interested in being a part of the Democratic Party.

And that's a great thing. The reason that I don't find the primaries, and particularly crowded primaries, to be a bad thing is because, I mean, it's a party and a lot of people want to go to it. That's a good thing. And I think that there's a lot of people who have run for like all those, Congress, but also city council, who probably were thinking about it for a long time. And then there are a lot of other people who I've met who never thought about it, but then said, you know what, it it's time i'm looking at what's going on in the country i want to run and they choose the democratic party that's momentum to me um and so i so no i don't i don't buy into that stuff i

think the most important thing to do now um is for everybody like if your candidate won great if your candidate didn't win and you you got really in the primary, well, it's not over. You got into this because you don't like the direction of the country, stick with it. And that's whether you were with the progressive candidate or the less progressive candidate, either way. And blue wave's not a weather event. We got work to do. Jason, there's been sort of a flurry of progressive economic ideas floating out there among Democrats. They were discussed at the CAP Conference, Center for American Progress, Ideas Conference last week.

We've had people on this show talking about them. Are there anything, whether it's universal basic income, federal jobs guarantee, or anything that you find really interesting as a solution to some of the economic challenges facing working middle-class Americans? Yeah, I think that all of them are worth discussing, and I'm having a lot of conversations with people about all of them. But I think that the most important thing in this is that we not get to a place where we think that the key here politically is to come up with some magic bullet solution or anything like that. I mean, we have to, and I think a lot of these ideas have merit and should be discussed.

But I think the key here is recognizing that we, and it goes back to what I was saying, that we are about things that make it more likely that every American hometown can be strong. And that's hometowns, that's Ferguson, that's rural areas, that's everywhere. Everybody wants basically the same thing. And I really think that when you look back at like 2016 and people have tried to draw a lot of lessons out of it, and they said, oh, well, you know, Donald Trump was talking about trade and people jumped onto that. Well, no, what people were jumping onto is economic anxiety about whether or not they're going to be able to achieve that

American dream. And to me, that American dream is what I'm fortunate enough to have, which is that my wife and I have good paying jobs, live on a safe street, access to a doctor. And this part's important. And our party misses this a lot. And we're able to live near where we grew up, so our son is 20 minutes drive from both sets of grandparents. And so any economic policy that makes that stuff more likely, that's exactly the direction we should go in. So I asked people on Twitter if they had any questions for you, and overwhelmingly the most popular question was will we get to vote for you again at some point uh jason kander so uh please let the people know uh what you think about that that's a great way of asking that question how's that nice that was creative

um that's very nice i uh well i'll just be very plain about it. You know, a lot of people have asked me about 2020 and that, that makes me think about it. But I think the most important thing I can be doing right now is focusing on fighting voter suppression with Let America Vote, fighting to, you know, help take back the house. I've now been to 40 states since Trump took office, campaigning for candidates and headlining events. And I'm going to keep doing that. And then after 2018, I'll consider my options. Well, if you have an announcement to make, you know where to make it, Jason, right here on Pod Save America.

We have become everything we hate. You asked a 2020 question, and then you did the thing where it's like, I know you kind of answered this, but didn't, but when you really want to answer it, do it on my show. Yeah, I'm going to go take a shower now. Let me make it worse. Let me make it worse. I am here to announce season two of Majority 54 and the Prezio Hamilton campaign that helps let America vote. Look at that. Look at us.

Look at all this promotion. I mean, we're all just, oh my God. All right, Jason. Thank you for stopping by. Come back again. Good luck. The new season of Majority 54 begins May 25th with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jason Kander. Check it out, guys.

Thanks, Jason. Thank you. And next, when we come back, our our interview with in my chediar of the brennan center for justice on the pod today from the brennan center for justice uh we're very happy to be talking to in my chediar how are I'm good. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. So I wanted to talk to you about the prison reform bill in Congress right now. I know you guys have been doing a lot of work around this. Last week, members of the House Judiciary Committee passed a narrow prison reform bill aimed at stemming the recidivism rate. But the bill is

not something that you and other justice reform advocates are particularly excited about. What exactly is Congress considering right now in this bill? And why do you feel it comes up short? Right. So this bill that's moving through right now is actually not a great bill. It's nowhere near what we've been trying to achieve. And I think in order to understand that, it's also important to kind of look back at where we've come over the last several years. So there's been this major bipartisan movement to end mass incarceration. And we've been working for years in Congress to advance real reform that would help reduce the federal prison population.

And we've worked with folks like the Koch brothers, Chuck Grassley, Democrats, really to bring up a very strong bipartisan group around this bill. So Jeff Sessions blew up that bill in 2016, even though he was one of the few people to actually oppose that. And so then fast forward a couple of years, and here we are now with Sessions as Attorney General, and he's trying to do that again. So he's trying to torpedo what there is a bipartisan consensus around, and instead has pressured the White House to offer a much more narrow bill that would do very little, if almost nothing, to reduce the prison population. And what does this bill actually do that they're considering right now that the House committee passed through? So the bill would do two very basic things. So one, it would provide

some very basic human rights in prison. For example, stopping the shackling of pregnant women. So that should be fairly obvious that that's something we shouldn't be doing in prison. For example, stopping the shackling of pregnant women. So that should be fairly obvious that that's something we shouldn't be doing in prison. And then second, it gives prisoners credits to earn toward being transferred from federal prison to halfway homes, but it doesn't actually let them out. So is it your view that this bill, obviously, it's not everything that you guys would like, or even some of the conservative advocates working on this issue, and certainly probably not would be considered had the 2016 election gone differently, and Jeff Sessions was not sitting in the DOJ. But is it better than nothing? So I think that if you look at what's happening

with the bill, it's basically Congress versus Jeff Sessions, right? So I think that if you look at what's happening with the bill, it's basically Congress versus Jeff Sessions. Right. So I think the idea that Jeff Sessions is playing this really strong role in bending Congress to follow his will is, I think, what we're finding problematic. So if Sessions was taken out of the equation, this bill could be passed with a bipartisan majority through Congress. with a bipartisan majority through Congress, the sentencing reform bill. What kind of sentencing reforms would you hope for in a bipartisan bill? Right. So the bipartisan bill that we've been trying to push forward is called the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act. That would reduce federal mandatory minimums. So basically, I'm sure, you know, I know you guys know this, mandatory minimums are where there is a very long sentence attached to specific crimes.

And so the bill that's the compromise bill would reduce mandatory minimums for federal drug and nonviolent offenses and thereby reduce the prison population. So that's the bill that we've really been trying to push. And that bill has bipartisan support as well. I know that Senator Grassley in the Senate and some other Republicans were behind a solution that looked like that. Is that right? Exactly. That is the Grassley solution. So that bill just passed through Senate judiciary. And so that bill is still has a bipartisan consensus around it. And what's interesting is that Chuck Grassley has really emerged as the person trying to push forward this bolder bill in response to Jeff against pushing against Jeff Sessions. against pushing against Jeff Sessions. And you were among, as I understand it, a group of advocates who met with Jared Kushner last year to talk about this issue.

Yes. What were your impressions coming out of that meeting? And how has the conversation changed since then? Right. So Jared Kushner started holding meetings with advocates starting in January of this year, where he met with conservative groups and then he met with progressive groups. So that was the meeting that we were at. So it seems to me, from my understanding, that Kushner and the Koch brothers had been pushing Trump to support the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, and Sessions didn't allow that to happen. And so instead, there's this push to do what the White House is calling, quote unquote, prison reform, which is basically code for helping people while they're in prison, but not actually releasing them. And so when I walked away from that meeting, we were basically told that, that the White House wasn't necessarily going to support sentencing reform because of

Jeff Sessions. And, you know, you mentioned the Koch brothers and their advocacy on this issue and the sort of weird world we're in where they have been allies. They seem to be able to get everything else they want in Congress done, whether it's passing the tax cut, whether it's keeping Scott Pruitt in his job. What is the dynamic here that's preventing the Koch brothers from having their usual influence on Republican Party policymaking? You know, I think that's a good question. I guess I would hypothesize that part of that might be a need to push a little bit harder on that. I think that there's a chance that they could have pushed Sessions more instead of now pushing all the members of Congress to agree with what Sessions

wants. So it seems like even if we have bipartisan majorities in Congress who are in favor of sentencing reform, we're going to have a problem so long as Jeff Sessions is Attorney General of the United States. So my question is, what is the strategy among sentencing reform advocates while Sessions is AG? Is there anything in the states or on a local level that's happening that people can get behind that you guys are trying to get through that could make a difference? Yeah, absolutely. So I think that there is a two-part strategy. So one is to prevent Sessions from doing more damage at the federal level and to convince Congress to reject this counteroffer that is being presented based on the opinions of Jeff Sessions. And I think at the state level, based on the opinions of Jeff Sessions. And I think at the state level, there are bipartisan bills moving in state legislatures throughout the country to reduce imprisonment. And I think that

people can let their politicians know that they care about this issue. I mean, one of the problems is that politicians think voters don't care about ending mass incarceration, right? So even though we're all aware of the statistics, there are 2.3 million people in prison, most of them are black and brown, this is the civil rights issue of our time, politicians are under the false impression that voters don't care. And I think that if people could make their voices heard on it, things would change. Well, that is a, we'll leave it there and hope that people do that. NMI JettyR, thank you so much for joining us and we appreciate the time.

Yeah, sure. Thank you. All right, everyone, that's our show for today. Dan, next time I talk to you, maybe you'll have a child. It seems fair. Let's just say Hallie really hopes that's the case. Okay. All right. Well, give Hallie my best and take care, and we'll talk to you soon. All right.

Bye, everyone. Thank you.