Pod Save America - "Think globalist, act localist."

Episode Date: May 8, 2017

French elections, Sally Yates' testimony, Kushner family corruption, the latest on health care, and our interview with Senator Kamala Harris recorded live in front of a rowdy San Fransisco crowd.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Michael Flynn's beleaguered attorney. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm not. I'm not. I just thought of that. It's Jon Lovett. I love it, guys. Yeah, he's here. On the pod today, we are going to run an interview that we did with U.S. Senator Kamala Harris live in San Francisco on Saturday night. She dropped an F-bomb. They loved her.

That felt like a pep rally, not an interview. Those people were... That crowd loved a lot of things, including alcohol. We're going to banish the Q&A to the depths of hell. You're going to need to put four rings together to go find that thing. Yeah, let me just say, between Seattle and San Francisco, Seattle, you are much better behaved. And that's why you can hear the full episode of Seattle that we put up yesterday as a bonus pod. But you will hear the Kamala Harris interview after we do the beginning, and it's pretty great.

Tomorrow is the second episode of Pod Save the People with DeRay McKesson. Huge pod. It's great. It's up there on the charts. Smoked Bill O'Reilly on the charts. Let's be honest for a second. We launch a podcast. We don't know how good it's going to be.

We say it's going to be great. We really don't know. You don't know until it exists. It's awesome. And I'm blown away by how substantive. I knew it was going to be a great show. I'm so excited by how great a host DeRay is. It's awesome.

He does a very, very good job of starting with the basics and then getting into the weeds. I bet a lot of people who listened to his interview with Andy Slavitt didn't know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, because they sound exactly alike. It's horrible. And now you all do, right? Now you're stuck knowing. Tomorrow, he's going to be talking to tax expert and former Obama White House official

David Kamen about the Republican tax plan. And then he's going to be talking to John Legend about John's mass incarceration efforts. He's locking up a lot of people. Anti. Yeah, he's against it. John Legend is just... Short, cliff-note version.

He's against it. Feel better. The merch is still up, by the way. If you want to get a Repeal and Go Fuck Yourself t-shirt. Yeah, as seen with Paul Ryan. As seen with Paul Ryan. By the way, if you want to get a repeal and go fuck yourself t-shirt. Yeah, as seen with Paul Ryan. As seen with Paul Ryan. By the way, if anyone else gets a Crooked Media or Pots of America themed shirt in a photo with Paul Ryan, we're going to send you a prize. TBD prize.

TBD prize. Or anyone else. Or like Margarubio. Let's say you're a plus one to a Mar-a-Lago wedding and you wear it under your shirt. Oh, yes. And you can get Trump in the picture. There's nothing legal about that. We'll give you half the company.

So today, obviously, by the time you listen to this podcast, Sally Yates will have testified before Congress. So we don't know. Well, no, but luckily, we have a script from the future of how it's going to go. Oh, we decided we're doing this? No, we don't. Only if you know. We're not going to go. Have we decided we're doing this? Only if you know. We're not going to do it.

Just kidding. Yeah, so Sally Yates is testifying about General Flynn and his many lies. The breaking news is, first of all, just step back for a second and realize that Donald Trump and his team are blaming Barack Obama

for them naming Michael Flynn the National Security Advisor, which is absurd on its face. But now it is broken in the last few minutes that President Obama warned Trump not to hire him. Personally. Personally warned him.

One on one. Don't hire that guy. I don't know that Trump took any of the advice that was given to him at that meeting. And you know what, guys? I don't think Barack Obama went up to him and was like, yo, this guy's got ties to Russia. It's untoward. I bet it was more like, he's not up for the job. Which is why I fired him.

It's a risk to the country's national security. And he ignored that advice. Also, by that point, we'd already known that Flynn had taken money from Russia, was at that dinner with Putin, had tweeted out a bunch of conspiracy theories, gave that crazy speech where he said, I mean, like, it wasn't like, oh, surprise, Flynn's a bad guy. On the election day, regurgitating Erdogan from Turkey's talking points. And he's given his son, like, pizza gate guy number one, the security clearance. Flynn's son, man. That guy's a piece of work.

Obama warned him. Sally Yates warned them all that he had lied to the Russians and the Russians might blackmail him because they knew that he lied to the boss about discussing sanctions with the Russian ambassador. And so then, of course, to prepare for her hearing this morning, Donald Trump tweets and basically accuses her of leaking classified information. So just as a welcome to the hearing, that's what Trump tweets this morning. Anyway, I'm going to try to call her partisan when she's like a career official who put a Democratic mayor in jail.

Yeah, it's crazy. Anyway, France. How about France, guys? Macron. Oui. Is that how How about France, guys? Macron. Oui. Is that how you say it, Tommy? You did a whole French special. Yeah.

I mean, I don't like to pronounce things in French. I psych myself out because it's Macron, something like that. Oh, wow. That was pretty good. Four years of French over here. The bottom line is Le Pen didn't connect with voters, and she didn't campaign in Wisconsin. She didn't campaign in Wisconsin. She didn't campaign in Marseille.

I mean, he's a 39-year-old former investment banker who's never held office before. Just think about that for a second, a 39-year-old. The youngest French leader since Napoleon. We're just a couple years away from possibly being president of France. Not a good thing. He's not the most exciting guy. He used to work for Francois Hollande, who I believe has a 4% approval rating. He's the current president of Socialists. He's deeply unpopular. Macron created his party a year ago. So this is like this crazy new thing. But the woman he defeated is crazier.

Marine Le Pen, who's the head of the far-right National Front Party. They have a deep history of extremism, anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant language and policies. Her dad created the party in the 70s, and he's like boys with actual Nazis, incredibly anti-Semitic, openly jokes about this. One thing that was like, just this is how far to the right this party is. Israel is not allowed to talk to them. Yeah, yeah, that's right. He won overwhelmingly with 66% of the vote. She got 34%, but it was a very unenthusiastic vote. 26% of voters abstained. It's pretty remarkable. And her 11 million votes is a lot.

I mean, it's double what her dad got when he made the runoff in 2002. But he was even crazier. He was worse. She tried to whitewash that history and disavow him and literally kicked him out of the party. But this has cemented her party, the National Front, as a major opposition party. There are parliamentary elections in June. They could win a bunch of seats there. And ultimately, 49% of voters in the election's first round supported anti-EU, anti-trade

candidates. So you're handing the keys. The socialist-melancholy combo. And so you're handing over the reins to Macron at a time when all the problems they have economically as part of the EU still exist. all the problems related to the Syrian refugee crisis still exist. And now he's got to govern and try to solve some of these challenges. And, you know, everyone tries to draw this direct line between like Brexit to Trump to

France. And I feel like that's probably a bad idea because there's individual problems with individual candidates. And she stunk up the place in the in the debates and was terrible in a number of ways. But, you know, there's this like anti-globalism, anti-trade, anti-EU sentiment that still exists in France and like Germany and France are the heart of the EU and keep it together. Yeah, I think we should say that at the outset, all comparisons are obviously fraught when you're comparing our political system with others. Right.

So everything is taken with a grain of salt. Stipulated. It's every. And yet there are some lessons you can still draw. Right. I just I'm very sick of narcissistic American Twitter basically using France as a proxy for their own feelings and biases. Like every everybody's the same. Look, we have to be cautious. Can't draw comparisons except for the one that confirms everything that I think. That one

comparison that I agree with. Hashtag no labels. Well, so he won 66-34. What's interesting is Macron outperformed all the polls, and she underperformed all the polls. It was actually a bigger polling error than Brexit or Trump, but it was in favor of Macron.

But it was in favor of Macron, so no one's going to care about that. Le Pen, and you did say that she doubled what her father got, but Le Pen's team had said that anything under 40 would be a huge failure for them, even though they thought they were going to lose. So she did get under 40, so that's good. So yeah, you alluded to the fact that, so there's a couple different, basically the question, why no Le Pen, but we got Trump? Why did we get stuck with the ethno-nationalist authoritarian? And they didn't. I think that one answer is the party system. Yeah.

Different voting process and different systems. Ultimately, all the people that she defeated essentially lined up for Macron and said, no way. Le Pen. So that's different. Yeah, for sure. Right. Right. Like if Trump had run, look, if we are not a parliamentary system, we sort into these two

big groups. If Trump had run in some National Front party and then the Republicans had nominated Rubio, Jeb Bush or like, you know, whatever, a Goldman Sachs pamphlet or something, and then it ended up being Trump versus Clinton, I think you would have seen a different response. We just don't live in that system. You know, we were all so disappointed and so heartbroken by how many Republicans lined up behind Trump. And that's the difference. I mean, that made the whole difference. Yeah, Filon, who was the right candidate, the candidate from the right, declined to endorse Le Pen and actually endorsed, told people to vote for Macron.

And it's interesting because he is from a different party. and actually endorsed, told people to vote for Macron. And it's interesting because he is from a different party, but ideologically you could say that Fallon was closer to Le Pen than he was to Macron, and he still decided to, you know, which is no courage points for Fallon on that, but a Republican in the United States wouldn't have done it. And he also, his reputation was flushed down the toilet because of an embezzlement scandal,

so his endorsement wasn't worth all that much. Yeah, a few Republicans were decent. A few Republicans, Kasich, a few others who refused to back Trump, some intellectuals refused to back Trump, but the leadership of the Republican Party got behind our National Front candidate. You know, interestingly, though,

some of the same factors tried to intervene in the end. You had WikiLeaks coming in and dumping a whole bunch of emails from the Macron campaign, and you had Jim Comey penning a really nasty letter to the editor. Outrageous. I can't believe Jim Comey got involved again. He was like...

He couldn't see a door number three, guys. He said, I had two options. Fuck over France or conceal. And Lordy. Sacre bleu. I had no choice. One interesting thing. You did mention that Macron was fairly a dry candidate.

He wasn't exactly an inspiring campaigner. Very handsome. Not that it matters. I mean, it did help, I think, that he was able to cast himself as outsider, anti-establishment, not part of either of the main parties, right? Like he formed this new party. He's younger, right? Like all things that Clinton didn't have going for her in the United States, right? So there was that.

And there's this great quote from him in that final debate where he started attacking Le Pen as part of, I mean, National Front's been around forever, right? And so he said, she was the heiress of a name of a political party of a system that has prospered for years and years on the back of French people's anger, which is an interesting way to sort of attack the right and of the faux populist right. Like you could see someone doing that to Trump in 2020. Like you profited off the back of people's fear and frustrations.

The same thing that you and your people have been doing and the Republican Party has been doing for 40 years. And what has it gone for us? I like that. Isn't that good? I like that. I thought that good? I like that. I thought that was a cool... All right, take a note. Take a note.

Put that in our back pocket. But you alluded to the... Of course, there was a WikiLeaks Russian hack thing at the very end there. Didn't really work this time. Didn't do it. I mean, I wonder

why would they wait so long? Especially when there's an actual media blackout in the closing days of a French election. What do you think about a media blackout in the closing days of a French election. What do you think about a media blackout in the closing days of an election? I prefer the First Amendment. You prefer the First Amendment?

I do, too. I think it's an insane idea. It's so crazy. I don't get it. But it worked, oddly enough. Also, someone mentioned that they don't have Fox News in France. Yeah, I mean, you're right. They don't have a right-wing organ to churn out bullshit all day the way the United States does.

Thanks to Breitbart and Fox News and whatever Tucker Carlson's saying at the moment. But, you know, I also think like the gleeful nature with which the U.S. press went through them and sort of plucked out, you know, interstaff squabbles and stuff. That was one thing. But also, you know, an ongoing FBI investigation probably really amplified Hillary's problems. Some unique circumstances in the U.S. I'm worried that Uday and Cousin Murdoch are going to have an idea for what to do in France next. Speaking of Fox News and right-wing media, did you guys see the news this morning that Sinclair is buying the Tribune company, which will make Sinclair, which is fairly right-wing in their media, the largest provider of local television news

in the country. And where do people get their election news from? The number one source is still local news. And it's a very scary trend, by the way. Also, Sinclair ran a ton of pro-Trump stories under the radar. Kushner made a deal with them. Kushner made a deal. Literally cut a deal. I've never heard of anything like that. To run

pro-Trump stories in the final days of the election it was this quiet bias. And I will tell you local news, local television news backed by a right-wing organization is probably more dangerous than just openly conservative outlets. Yeah.

The fact Organization is probably more dangerous than just openly conservative outlets. Yeah, and like the the fact that local news and national news are inextricably tied was Came crashing down on my head in 2007 when I set up a series of one-on-one interviews with Barack Obama and local Iowa stations and in one of them he sort of offhandedly mentioned that didn't love wearing a flag pin and All of a sudden it was blaring across the national news within minutes of the interview ending. The local news used to be like, here's how politics is affecting us locally. And now it's much more just a lot of regurgitating of what national political news is talking about, which is why you've talked about this. Love it a lot. Voters are becoming pundits.

Right. Well, also, local news is under the same pressures that all parts of our economy are under. And so there's all this kind of effort to commoditize and aggregate. And so rather than having to buy up 150 stations and rather having 150 reporters working on 150 stories, you have a centralized process and you send one national news story to 150 stations and that saves them a lot of money. And that consolidation means that there's more control in the hands of very few determining what people see in their local news. Also, by the way, local news is often inherently conservative in how it presents information. I mean, it bleeds, it leads. It's like the old joke. But local news was making

crime the central focus of every night, before donald trump decided to goose apprentice numbers by running for president it is incredibly dangerous uh this this slow you know stripping of resources from local news outlets i mean look at the boston globe you know everyone saw spotlight or if you haven't check it out it's a really good movie but you know some of the local investigations can root out corruption at the local level um you know it's irreplaceable and to replace that with just having these local news stations be like a vessel for some conservative propaganda should tell you everything you need to know

about why people in the country view things the way they do. To replace it with Steve Bannon's whiteboard. Sounds like Crooked Media has to get involved here, guys. Yeah, we're going to have to get local. Think global. Think globalist. Act localist. But, no but but um

this is also by the way gonna increase I think you just got a title for the episode I like that a lot um it's also like local news

being this kind of an organ of right wing media is just gonna increase this divide we have around news which is people under 40

are cutting the cord they're not watching television they're not getting news in the same way and the Trumps the retired people the older people the people that have been watching news this whole time are going to continue to get this kind of narrower and narrower band of information in front of them. Yeah. And they're going to have a different worldview and it's not gonna be their

fault. It's going to be based on the information they get every day. And we don't, we don't spend enough time talking about this. Let's not remove their agency entirely, but you know. They have agency, but it is a propaganda works. Speaking of of propaganda let's talk about the Kushner family globalist grifters is the name of my notes I have jaw dropping corruption not even so Washington Post ran a story um about the Kushners in China so Donald Trump signed a law to extend a visa program this has been a controversial visa program that allows foreign citizens to win fast-track immigration in return for investing $500,000 or more in American properties. and urges them to invest in a New Jersey project being managed by her family's real estate company, which, even though they have stepped away from, Jared and Ivanka still have a huge stake in.

During the presentation, she mentions that Jared is in the White House. There's a slide with a big picture of Donald Trump on it. It was advertised as, Kushner's sister comes to China. And then what was the line at the end when someone asked a reporter, because the reporters were there, and they didn't know reporters were going to be there, and they asked a PR person there what the hell was going on, and the PR person said, this is not the story we want. The PR people tried to take away reporters' phones, and they physically surrounded participants and kept them from getting interviewed. My favorite quote in that story, it was a Washington Post did great work on this credit to them. Subscribe. George W. Bush's former ethics lawyer called it incredibly stupid and highly inappropriate, which is pretty good for a

former former lawyer. Yeah, I'm wondering when we can add the word illegal. Like, I don't know what it takes to be corrupt anymore. The other thing too, is it is so fucking disgusting. For these people to go to China, you know, this is going to be a larger problem, too, as like there's like increasing economic connection between China and the United States. But Americans going to China and then allowing China's lack of press freedom to harass and corral and mistreat American journalists or journalists reporting on behalf of the United States to avoid negative stories is, it's disgraceful. I just want to point out too that before, like, to your point, yes, this should be illegal. House is not illegal. And you saw, you know, you see, I saw the CNN headline walking up and it was like, raises eyebrows.

I think it's a little more than that. Raises eyebrows. I mean, before joining the White House, Jared Kushner raised $50 million from Chinese EB-5 applicants for Trump-branded buildings in New Jersey. That's the visa this is. First of all, the fact that you can invest $500,000 in the U.S. and just buy a visa is disgusting. How is that public policy acceptable? Originally, it was supposed to be for investing in low-income neighborhoods and investments that would help.

But the program doesn't have any guardrails right so it's now a bunch of a lot primarily a bunch of chinese investors just buying up like expensive luxury real estate when it was actually supposed to be the target of the program is supposed to be like low-income communities look it's like you know you can you can see how the pitch for this works you know why wouldn't we want to get a bunch of foreign investment to create jobs the united states and if what you get for that is a visa that's a good thing these are the kind of people we want to come and create jobs in the United States. That was the ideal.

But the end result is it's just visa for sale. Yeah. And the Obama administration had advised the Trump administration to change the program to raise the amount of money that you invest in. Which was probably a mistake because they didn't know it existed until then. Oh, wow. Ooh, that sounds good. Chris Hayes made a good point.

He tweeted, he's like, if this is the pitch made when reporters were there, can you imagine some of the pitches that have been made when reporters weren't at these things? And like, also, come on, Kushners. How much money do you guys need to be this stupid and this brazen? Well, they apologize. I saw some statement they put out this morning where they're like, oh, it was unintentional. We didn't mean to use this position. Bullshit. Bullshit. Who made this made this it's not they didn't fall down they didn't fall down and like accidentally reference donald trump somebody made a slide

yeah there's a slide yeah it's a long it was a plan so the question is where does where does the corruption stuff fit in in the overall messaging against trump what we're doing, because I feel like all of this quasi-corruption, maybe not so quasi-corruption, like, we hear these stories about it, there's these great investigative pieces, people get outraged for a day, and then we sort of, like, move on to all the other stuff, and just in the background, you know that this whole administration

is just doing unbelievably shady, corrupt shit. Criminal shit. I mean, it's everywhere. And it just, nothing ever happens, and then I don't know, but it's everywhere and it does nothing ever happens and then i don't know but it's like is harping on it good thing is it smart like it's tough i'm of two minds on the one hand i think i have in my mind a lesson from 2016 which is we tried to flog this and somehow it didn't stick right because it didn't feel connected directly to people's lives and this is something we've said over and over again that we need to make

sure we're always connecting things back to people's lives and And this is something we've said over and over again, that we need to make sure we're always connecting things back to people's lives. But at the same time, I don't want to overlearn that lesson, because I believe that this is really serious and really important, and that there has to be a way in which the fact that these people are profiting off their government service while they're mistreating the American people and pursuing these bad policies, that there has to be a case there. I don't know what you think about it. Look, I think you're right that the fundamental message is going there has to be a case there. I don't know what you think about it. for investment. And it's like Trump invites Duterte, the president of the Philippines, to the United States. And the next day we read about a $150 million Trump project

that Ivanka is on the advertisements for in Manila. And these things are big problems and they're corrupting our foreign policy and they're lining their pockets. And I would even take that a step further because on this one, again, I'm thinking back to Macron's line to Le Pen in the debate, right? Like, you've profited

off people's fear and anger. So what you can say about Trump, especially in this situation, is this guy campaigned on restricting immigration in this country unless you pay him. And if you pay his family, then you can come to the country as an immigrant. Oh, I forgot about the most galling

thing that I almost threw my phone across the room, which was that Kushner's sister got up in front of these people that are trying to buy a visa that they can profit off of and said, you know, my family, we were refugees. And I was like, you callow, insensitive, vicious, despicable people. How shameless can you be? They're putting a Muslim ban in place. They're keeping Syrian children out of this country. And you're going to call yourself a refugee? You people can go fuck yourselves.

Unbelievable. I was so mad about that. We're on the fence. As always, we're on the fence. My family was a refugee. And we don't care about them anymore. But we would like your money for a visa to invest in our real estate project. Because our brother, Jared, the scion of the family,

bought a building on Fifth Avenue and couldn't make it work. Jared didn't do this. I'm sure he is more furious than maybe anyone that the fact that it was reported, not that it happened. But let's just stop talking about him as some sort of liberal force for good in that building.

I'm sick of reading his liberal PR firm's talking points. Risa Heller. It's just not. To the rescue. She was in all the stories today. She didn't get to the first round of stories, but she got to the stories today. Look, they may have succeeded in watering down Pence's anti-gay

religious executive order, but again, I've been saying this for months. I have one test for Jared and Ivanka and Globalist Gary, and it's the Paris Climate Accords. I have one test. They stay in the Paris Climate Accords. I'm going to give them credit.

If they don't, we're going to never talk about them as a force for good ever again. They got the one. This is it. That's my one thing. Paris Climate Accords. This week could be it. If they stay in it, great job. If not, monsters.

I like your litmus test. Great. Good job. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's this great stuff coming. Lots of great stuff. All right, let's talk about what's next on health care.

Boo. Sadness. So all these Republicans decided to fan out on the Sunday shows to try to defend this piece of shit. God. And did they defend it by saying, look, there's a trade-off. We think it's more important to give tax cuts back to people than to keep people on health care.

No, they did not. Oh my, they did it? They did not do that. I didn't know that that question was a rhetorical. I thought you might have been saying they were doing that. Instead, they lied about it. Tom Price went on and said $880 billion in Medicaid cuts will actually not result in millions losing their coverage, despite the fact that the CBO nonpartisan analysis said $14 million

would lose their health insurance just because of the Medicaid cuts. Not just that they wouldn't lose coverage, that the coverage would be better. Right. He said he went even further, even better. Gaslighting. Which is also, and then Paul Ryan did the same thing when he said, oh, are we going to help people with pre-existing conditions? We actually have layers of new protections for people with pre-existing conditions. What? I just want to point out one important thing because it's fun to tie them around their own words. The amendment that actually got

all these people on board was from Congressman Upton. It was $8 billion more for these high-risk pools, which they claim, erroneously, will solve the problem of people with pre-existing conditions. When he was asked about his own amendment, he said, is it enough money? I don't know. I asked if this is going to get it covered, and the answer was yes. That's what was needed. He doesn't know and doesn't

care if his own legislation will solve this problem of protecting people with pre-existing conditions. And yet, the whole administration is out there acting like they do. You need $200 billion to fund these things. They want to do $8 billion. It's a drop in the fucking bucket. It's just not that complicated. If you take a trillion dollars out of the healthcare system and give it to millionaires, mostly in the form of a tax cut, that money has to be made up from somewhere. And it's going to be made up either with higher taxes or more medical bankruptcies or people paying higher premiums.

And because they're so bent on trying to claim that premiums will be lower overall, we know where the lion's share of these costs are going to fall. And they're going to fall on the near retirees and they're going to fall on the sick. That's it. So usually when Republicans go on and, you know, they have a whole conservative media apparatus, they go on, they lie about this stuff, they create an alternate reality. Usually it works, at least with their voters, right? And it could, again, right, we could see polls, you know, of Republican voters thinking that this is a good bill if you do like a month of this kind of salesmanship. I do think the problem they're going to have this time around is that there were enough Republican members in the House who said no, who are now on record saying, no, this bill doesn't protect people with pre-existing conditions, so this is why I voted no. There weren't enough of them, but there were enough that the words are out there. And then we saw this with Susan Collins, who was on the Sunday shows this weekend.

She's like, they're wrong about it protecting people with pre-existing conditions. The best part was, Paul Ryan was like, he tried to needle Susan Collins by being like, well, in Maine, there was a high-risk pool that worked very well. And so Susan Collins should know that. And then she was asked about it at the press, and basically she said, yeah, well, the reason it worked well is because there was a funding source and it was adequately funded. And this bill is not adequately funded at all for high-risk pools to work. Again, it's all just so much sophistry on top of basic math.

High-risk pools are people who are more expensive to insure. And for some reason, Republicans are enamored of this idea of high risk pools, which are basically another. It's a kind of a mini Obamacare that the Republicans love it because they can siphon out the sick people into this smaller market. But it only works if you put enough money in because everybody in the pool needs health care. Either they'll pay more or the government will pay more or the hospitals will pay more or the business will pay more. Everybody pays for the health care. You know, and what's so frustrating about this whole debate is underpinning it all is an argument that Obamacare is collapsing. And that's not true, A. But, you know, even you read stories about how the last insurer might pull out of Iowa and all but five counties offering plans for 2018. So I did a little research into why that's happening. It's because there's so much uncertainty has been created by Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress that these guys are saying, we don't know if we can offer plans anymore.

They are creating a problem that they're pretending to solve, and they're actually just going to hurt millions of people. That's been the plan the whole time. That's why he keeps saying Obamacare's dead. And every time he says it, these insurance companies who have to plan ahead of time worry that there's not going to be a market for them to participate in, which is why some of them are pulling out.

And look, you know, they have been complaining for years that, like, there were problems in the healthcare system, there system, their previous conditions, they were the uninsured, and they decided to fix it by revamping one sixth the American economy. Why did they do that? Why did they do that? We didn't think that was the right thing to do. Obamacare has problems, right? There are fixes that even like compromise fixes about regulation and more subsidies. Like there's a way in a sane, rational world, Democrats and Republicans could come together and put together a bunch of fixes that would make Obamacare work better. But instead, they look at problems, and there are real problems of insurers not being able to kind of work within these exchanges,

and they want to throw out the entire program because what they want to do is take the government out of the healthcare business. They want to cut a trillion dollars in spending, and they want to outsource Medicaid to the states so that they can basically slowly but surely erode the federal government's role in health care. Yeah, that's about it. That's it. The interesting thing, though, is Susan Collins clearly wants to start from scratch. Dave Brat, a House Freedom Caucus member this weekend, said about the Senate, they better not change the bill one iota.

If they do, you won't have the 218 votes. Okay, Dave Brat. Okay, buddy. Shut up. The Senate bill could go one of two ways. It could go in one direction to make sure that you get Murkowski and Collins on board, so it's moderate enough to get them to pass. Or it could go in the direction to make sure you get Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Mike Lee on board. Gee, I wonder which direction it's going to go in. Well, we know which way they're going to do

because only two of those people are writing the bill. They have the all-male writing committee. That's what it's called, the AMWC. Writing the bill and it has Cruz and it has Lee on it and Murkowski and Collins are sitting on the outside because they want to jam them or ignore them. So the test is, for all of us who are trying to stop the Senate from passing something horrible that goes back to the House and then becomes law is, again, it's going

to be on the moderates and it's not going to be on trying to hope that these far right wing people just decide to like, you know, stand up on principle and oppose this bill because it's not cruel enough. So they can they know that Mitch McConnell can lose two Republicans in the Senate. He can't lose three. If he loses three Republicans, the vote doesn't matter. Right, he gets to 40. So he could lose Collins and he could lose Murkowski.

He couldn't lose Heller then. He couldn't lose Flake. So you remember, you have two senators up in 2018, Flake and Heller, and you've got two quasi-moderates in Murkowski and Collins. So those are the four people to watch. Let's say that Collins is the last true moderate. She's a real moderate. Murkowski's a little less so, but once in a while she votes a little more moderate.

That's where we are right now. But NBC had a good story this morning about they went to Carlos Curbelo's district, who's a very vulnerable Republican House member. Hillary won his district by like 15 points. Emotionally vulnerable. Near Miami. Yeah, emotionally vulnerable. And Alex Seidwald went to his district and started interviewing people.

And one woman said, I have never canvassed before, but I will fucking crawl door to door to make sure you lose. I like her. She's this mild-mannered 60-year-old woman who had voted for Reagan twice. Get her on the pod.

This is just to tell you some of the anger that's out there in some of these districts, which is great. If what they're trying to do is create a pool of money for them to do tax reform with, it is just literally not possible for them to come up with a health care bill that cuts taxes by enough to then cut taxes for the rich people the way they want to, that doesn't end up screwing a lot of people. It's just basic math. There's no way out of it. Basic math from John Lovett, the Senate parliamentarian. Everything, healthcare is so complicated.

No, I suck at math. It's not, it's not even, I'm not getting into the math of it. It's like we, the whole healthcare system is so fucked that we lose sight of the fact that we all pay for it. And it's like, you cut a trillion dollars of spending that comes from somewhere. It comes from the working. Trillion dollars in tax cuts, paid your trillion dollars cutting health care spending. Is that what you think is going to happen?

For the estate tax. You can adjust the numbers. You can play with the subsidies. You can create high-risk pools. It doesn't matter. People get fucked. One-to-one ratio. So that a Koch brother can gift his daughter his wine collection.

That's what we're fighting for here. Without paying a tax. Without paying taxes. And the Kushners can prosper. And the Kushners can sell you a visa. We'll see how this bill turns out, but it's going to take them a while, too. It's going to take them like a month or so. So we have a lot of time to keep the pressure up,

which is great. Hopefully we'll have the summer recess, too. I don't know if they'll be able to get it done by then. We should also be prepared, just thinking forward, like what they will come up with will be very bad. It will not be as bad as the House bill, and that will be a big part of the coverage. A lot of the coverage will be about how, wow, it's a more moderate version, it's a more reasonable version.

This is the one problem with all the overwhelming focus on the pre-existing condition stuff and the amendment over the last couple of weeks is you forget that the greatest damage in this bill, in the House bill, was the $880 billion cut from Medicaid, which means 14 million people lose their coverage. John, can I ask you something? Sure. Are we being stupid by not referring to it exclusively as a tax bill? Like, are we giving into their notion that this is a health care bill? Because it's a tax cut, and then it goes through and reduces subsidies.

That's the biggest thing that it does. It's almost like it's not about health care. It's about wealth care. Can you engage with me? That's a joke. But no, I mean, yes, that's the whole... It is a tax bill. But what I'm saying is that wealth care is, I think, too cute by half. It's a silly, funny thing, yeah.

But why do we refer to it as the Republican health care proposal? Why do we not refer to it as the Republican tax cut proposal? Well, the only thing health care about is that it takes health care away from people. That's the only thing it has to do with health care. Because most of it is a tax cut, but the effect of the policy is to rip health insurance away from millions and millions of people. That's the only thing it has to do with health care. I'm wondering if we should never call it a health care bill again and just call it a tax cut, benefit cut bill. We'll workshop this.

More like high-risk fools. What's our word of the day for the pistachio? Sam Stein tweeted a picture and he said high-risk pool, and it was a pool with an alligator in it. That was perfect. I've been trying to think of a funny high-risk pool, and I couldn't come up with one. What if instead of having someone tweet pistachio at us, we have them tweet a word at a random person? No, no, no. Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan.

What should we have? Tweet Soylent at Dan. No, no, no. What if it's something like, hey, Dan, there's something on your shirt? You guys are making big assumptions that Dan doesn't listen to the Monday Pod. I know you guys don't listen to the Thursday Pod. No, I always do. I always do.

I usually do. But I don't think Dan... I just didn't want to accuse, just specifically love it. I'm prepping for a love it or leave it a lot of the time. I'm a busy man. Okay, when we come back, you will hear our interview with Senator Kamala Harris from Saturday night. Recorded live. She's really good.

She's great. She's great. We'll be back. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more good. She's great. She's great. We'll be back. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. We are very excited to have Senator Kamala Harris with us tonight. And we'll bring her out in a minute.

Good to be home. Yeah. Thanks for joining us tonight. It's so great to be with you guys. We really appreciate it. So we were just talking about health care. Yeah. So, yeah. So Democrats need 51 votes in the Senate to stop this thing.

Obviously very difficult. I saw Schumer said last week, you know, we're going to use a lot of procedural tools to slow this down as much as possible. Can you shed a little light on, like, what's the plan in the Senate to try to slow this down, stop it from happening? What can we do?

Well, the first thing we've got to do is to speak the truth. And the truth is that these folks are playing politics with public health. The truth is that I heard part of your conversation. If the Republicans want people to lose their health care, then the Republicans need to lose their job.

It's really that practical. And you know what's fascinating about it is the bill that they have sent over on many levels, in many respects, will turn back the clock to before the Affordable Care Act. It's worse than things were before the Affordable Care Act. So they're engaged in all of this happy talk

that is not truth. You can say whatever you want up here. We say bullshit on this show. We got an E right next to it. Swearing is very in with politicians. I have all kinds of words. And, you know,

essentially, fundamentally, the problem is that they, I believe this is an issue of values. They believe healthcare is a privilege, not a right. And this is a matter of values. And so

if you can pay for it, you can get it. Like this guy, this congressman, so you might as well say, well, people don't starve because they don't have food what the fuck is that nice

what are you saying very exciting how can you say that nuts it's just it doesn't make How can you say that? Nuts. Nuts. It's just, it doesn't make sense on a fundamental level. And it's not truth.

And that, you know, again, it's just not true. And that's what Democrats have got to do. We have to speak truth. You know, it's interesting. I was watching, you guys were talking about the town halls. I was watching the town halls during the last state work week when all these members were in their districts. And some of these Republicans were in the districts

having their town halls, and their constituents were saying, yeah, get rid of that Obamacare. But this here healthcare I got right now, I really like. Yeah, right. So, get rid of Obamacare, but keep ACA. Whatever that is.

The Affordable Care Act. ACA. So, you know, we've got to speak truth. So is there a plan in the Senate, though? I mean, have you spoken to any Republican senators or know of any Republican senators who, you know, might decide not to go as extreme as the House bill, like Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski or even some of these senators where there's been a Medicaid expansion in their state? Like, is there hope that maybe we can slow this down? I've not talked with them about this last one because it just came down.

Right. But based on what we knew before, I think there is hope. I think people like Susan Collins and others who know that if they care about their constituents and they are in tune with what's going on with their constituents, they know this is not a good plan. When you're talking about defunding Planned Parenthood, when you're talking about a situation where seniors are going to have to pay five times more versus three times more, just on the merits, it's wrong and they know that. And I think their constituents are going to speak truth to them if they

don't speak truth out loud. Let's hope so. Yeah, so thank God for California. In so many ways, as a person who moved here recently politically and otherwise but i

think there were seven uh members congress for 14 or seven seven seven seven california seven that voted the wrong way on this bill what do you think folks in this room tonight or listening at home should do to pressure those individuals right and to them, as you said, lose their job? So all of the Republicans voted for the House bill in California. All the House Republicans voted for the bill. Seven of them. Hold on, hold on, because we're going to put that boo into walking and talking and action. So the seven are the ones who are in districts that Hillary won, right? So let's just talk strategy.

Let's talk the fact that we all have limited resources. I mean, most of the people here have got other responsibilities in addition to this. So where are you going to put your precious time on this subject that you care a lot about? I say go to those districts. It doesn't make sense to call Nancy Pelosi. She's good. She's with you. She's with us, right? So leave Nancy alone, right? But go to those districts. Go to Daryl Issa's district and knock on doors. Hey, listen, I mean, part of it is I remember that back in many

campaigns where I've gone to campaign for other folks in states outside California, and people say, well, why are you knocking on my door? And I said, because the decision you're making is going to impact me, right? The decisions those House members are making in districts other than the district you live in will impact you. So go to those districts and knock on those doors and talk with our neighbors, because their constituents are our neighbors, and remind them of why we're all in this. You know, this is part of what is very troubling for me about just the tone, the rhetoric, and the policies coming out of this administration. They've convinced some people that we are a divided America. You know, Doug and I, my husband, we have a 17-year-old. She's graduating high school. She asked me to come and speak to

the seniors. I did. One of the questions they asked me, one bright young kid asked me, she said, what are we going to do about a divided America? And my response was, I challenged the premise. And I'm going to tell you why. In my experience, when people wake up at three o'clock in the morning with that thing that is troubling them, that thing that causes them to wake up in a cold sweat, they are never thinking about that thing through the lens of being a Democrat or Republican. And I promise you, when they wake up at three o'clock in the morning with that concern, it always has to do with one of just a few things. Their personal health, the health of their children or their parents. Can I get a job? Can I keep a job? Can I pay the bills by the end of

the month? Can I retire with dignity? So let's approach this from that perspective and walk and talk on those seven House members' doors and their front steps. So what do we... Thank you, Kamala! Oh, I love this. Before we move off healthcare, what do we say to someone like that who might say, you know what, I hate this bill, I think it's awful, I think it's terrible,

but even on the Affordable Care Act, I know some people in my life who've benefited from the Affordable Care Act, but my premiums are still too high. My deductibles are still too high. What are Democrats going to do better to improve this bill? Do we need a positive message about what we want to do on health care? Sure. I think we always have to have a positive message. We always have to have a plan. But step number one is do not eliminate it because there are people who are literally going to lose their health care.

And when we're talking about California, we're talking about 3 to 4 million people that will lose their coverage if this thing passes. Nationally, we're talking about 24 million people. Those are human lives. Those are real people. But then, you know, talk about improving it. I mean, I think one of the things that we've got to do is deal with prescription drug costs. And we've got to improve it by saying that let us negotiate those costs like the VA can do for vets. Let the government negotiate those costs so these prescription drug companies aren't just taking such advantage of us. You know, look at something

like the EpiPen. You know, there are so many things that people need to be able to just live, and these drug companies are experiencing such incredible unheard-of profits at the expense of human life. So there are things we can do to improve it, for sure. So what are some other things? I think we need to look at the Cadillac tax and deal with that and then

there is what we need to do around really at some point figuring out how at some level are we going to have a policy that is Medicare for all I just wanted to hear somebody say Medicare for all I know I have and I feel good about it. That would be the ultimate and great place to be, Medicare for all.

Do you think that this single-payer bill that's moving through California, good idea, bad idea, how do you feel about that? I like the concept. We've got to work out the details, but we do need to get to a place where we have, that it is not a function of your income that you have access to health care. It's just fundamental. Because I also know this, guys. This is something I know.

Having gone through, you know, family members who have gone through the health care system with acute illness. And poor people in this country are dying every day because they're poor. That's wrong. That's fundamentally wrong. So, you know, it's worth noting that you were one of Barack Obama's earliest supporters. Knocked doors in Iowa in the cold. But you have arrived in Washington just as Barack Obama has left

and I'd love to just get your sense of what you know what it's been like to be in the Senate for the first hundred days of Trump I mean like what causes you the most alarm you can swear in this answer living the dream

I was told one should not say motherfucker You can swear in this answer. Living the dream. I was told one should not say motherfucker in these kind of interviews. Very loose. So I'm not going to say it. Trump is president. You can say whatever you want. You can say anything now. No apologies.

Trump is president. So here's what it's been like. You know, it has been going from California and being attorney general for two terms. I'm a career prosecutor. Going to Washington, D.C. And, you know, part of the responsibility of the United States senators

to obviously review nominees of a president in terms of, as it turns out, his cabinet. So I serve on many committees, budget, environment and public works, Homeland Security, and the Senate Intelligence Committee. And a lot of the work in the beginning has been reviewing this president's nominees for the cabinet. And so it's been an exercise in frustration at best. And, but in all seriousness, guys, I mean, it's been,

let's take Homeland Security, for example. So Homeland Security as an agency has very important responsibility, came about, it was created after 9-11. Its title tells you exactly what it is supposed to do to make sure our homeland is secure. That is important, critical work. It is also the federal agency, more than any other, that makes decisions about the issue of immigration. Okay? So California has an outside stake in the outcome of this conversation. We have more immigrants documented and undocumented than any state in the country. Right. One of the things

that makes us great. And so, here's the deal. He appoints a guy to head that agency, General Kelly. John agrees. Right. And I'm sitting in the committee hearings

so one of the things about being a freshman you ask your questions last so I'm there and it comes to me and I ask this guy about dreamers and I say you know General Kelly so there is this population of sub-population of immigrants who are young people who arrived in the country, many as toddlers brought by their parents. They're dreamers and under the previous administration we rightly created a policy called DACA where we would defer action on deporting them. on deporting them, if these dreamers could answer a litany of questions and go through a vetting that would determine the circumstances of their arrival, what are they doing now, are they

committing a crime, have they committed crimes, are they productive, and if these kids answered those questions in the way that it cleared the vetting, they would receive DACA status. We would defer action on deporting them. So I said, General Kelly, I'm sure you're aware of this, and then I held up a piece of paper that was paid for by your tax dollars, the United States government, and I said, and in fact, this, I've learned all these acronyms, is an FAQ. It's called a Frequently question sheet. And so one of the questions, because it is frequently asked by the dreamers, is if I give you all this information about myself

and my family, will you share this information with ICE? And we told them no. So I said, General Kelly, are you willing to keep America's promise and commitment to these kids? And he would not. I then met with him in private, and I asked him, so, you know, these dreamers, and it occurred to me that I should ask another question. And so the question I asked him was, General Kelly, have you ever met a dreamer?

Turned out he hadn't. It's okay. Not everyone has had the kind of exposure and experience, and so we want to enlighten and educate people. And I said, well, so, you know, I'd like to set up a meeting for you. Because you need to understand that this is a population of people who are serving in our military, they are in our colleges, they are working in Fortune 100 companies. He says to me, well, can I meet with their representative instead?

Then I submitted questions for the record. Those are called QFRs. Asked the same thing, and he said, well, I will maintain and support essentially the policy of this president on immigration. And then within practically hours, the Muslim ban came down. the Muslim ban came down. And by the way, I voted no against him and I urged other people to vote no. And so then, because the story keeps going, so then the Muslim ban came down on a Friday. I was at our apartment in D.C.,

had to stay there through the weekend on a Saturday and my phone starts blowing up and it's all these lawyers I know who are hanging out at SFO, LAX, and Dulles to rush to these airports to assist the refugees who arrived on our shore and were being denied entry. So these lawyers are calling me up, Kamala, we're here. The families are practically on the other side of the door, but we're not being given access. So I called General Kelly at home.

Because I have his number. He appreciated that. So much so that he said, why am I calling him at home? And I said, because these families are there. And there's a stay that just got issued. So you need to let these lawyers have access to them and let them go, well, we're sorting out the details and we'll speak and, you know, the Department of Justice will render its opinion. And then within practically hours, Sally Yates was fired. But I'll tell you,

this is what caused it for me to, as my first bill, to drop a bill that we named the Access to Counsel Act, that if passed, would prevent them from denying refugees or immigrants who arrive at our border by sea, by plane, by train, access to an attorney. I can't believe that has to be a bill. That's not the law already. Well, and that's the point also. I agree with you, which is that this, I'm hoping, will receive bipartisan support because regardless of the issue of, you know, where you are on immigration and, you know, a so-called wall, the reality is this is about fundamental values and ideals of our country, right, that are present when we wrote the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth

Amendment, the Sixth Amendment. It's just about saying due process. And so we'll see where it goes. But this is part of what's wrong with this administration. You give people due process. Instead of just create, you're going to build a wall, you're going to shut people out of our country, you're going to say no access, without due process even. So it's hypocritical

when you talk about making America great again. And you are denying the fundamental values that created us as a country, those values and ideals that were present when we wrote the Constitution of the United States. So let's talk about the economy for a second. Because one of the things you talked about was that people are... Poor people aren't living as long, right? That they're being hurt by the fact that they don't have access to health care. But we've also seen, for the first time in this country's history,

life expectancy for groups of people drop. We also saw an election in which Hillary Clinton for the first time in this country's history, life expectancy for groups of people dropped. We also saw an election in which Hillary Clinton campaigned on a mostly positive vision, and she lost to somebody who said, make America great again. She got 3.5 million more votes, which she reminded him of recently. But we lost in the places we needed to win. What did you learn from that election? Again, I will say that I learned that we cannot buy into the premise that we're a divided country. Okay, so I'm going to give you another point. There's been a lot of post-mortem about what happened on the election. And one of the conversations that has been taking place is we lost that white unemployed man in Scranton or in Lansing and we got to go get him back.

And what troubles me about the conversation is when the inference is and so we need to stop talking to that Latina and black mom. the inference is, and so we need to stop talking to that Latina and black mom. And I think that's a mistake, and it's a mistake for a couple of reasons. One, it's a mistake because don't make those two ladies suffer for the box you put them in. When you decided, if I walk into a black church, all I'm going to talk about is criminal justice reform or black lives matters. When I walk into the Latino community center, all I'm going to talk about is immigration. Because guess what? When those two ladies and that man wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning with that thought that concerns them, they're having the same thought.

And so it would be a mistake to put them in a box, and the box you put them in, instead of seeing them for their full selves. You know, there's an expression in many African countries when you meet somebody for the first time, and the expression is not pleased to meet you. It is, I see you. I see you in your full being with all the facets that are you. And so as we go forward, I think one of the things that we have to rededicate ourselves to,

because we know this, but we need to rededicate ourselves to seeing people in full relief instead of putting them in these discrete demographic boxes that maybe some pollster decided makes sense but really doesn't make sense in a person's life. Yeah. So I guess that would lead to the question, what is the kind of economic message? I'm not talking about saying an economic message for white people only.

But what is an economic message? Because I agree with you, right? There's this notion that, you know, look, Donald Trump appealed to the white working class by reminding that they were white. But we need to remind people that they're working. So how do we do that? Because look, clearly what we've done this far isn't working because we lost the presidency we've lost the senate we've lost the house we've lost the states right so we have

to make a change and that has to start by learning what we were doing wrong yeah so part of it is we have to again go back to who people are based on their full lives right and talk to them in a way that is about truth and truth truth is difficult, right? Truth includes, you know, acknowledging that we are automating, you know, certain industries, and those jobs will diminish in terms of the jobs that your daddy and your granddaddy had. And we're going to need to transition

into the jobs of the so-called 21st century. So, okay, let me just back up. Did any of you see Logan, the movie? Okay. I'm a huge X-Men fan. I love X-Men series. So if you saw Logan, okay. So it's, you don't have to see it to know what I'm going to say. So it's, it's, so there's a car chase. So it's, it's the car chase. So there's a car chase. So it's the car chase. So there's like a multi-lane highway going this way and then another one going the other way. And our hero is in the chase, and so he's bobbing and weaving through traffic

and then goes into the opposite lane. Typical car chase. If you look closely, you will notice that there are a bunch of trucks on the freeway, and none of them have a cab. The movie takes place, it's Wolverine. It takes place in, like, 2029, and so it's just that, right? Driverless cars.

That is truth. It's going to happen. And there are people who have had jobs for generations around driving a car or a truck that in some relatively short period of time won't have those jobs anymore. And what we have to do in terms of the economic message is have a plan for one, one, speak truth, and then two, have a plan for transitioning them into the jobs that will be there.

I've been obsessed with, there's a study, an Oxford study, she's going to now start walking out. I've got a little nerd in me. Okay, so there's this study, 2013 Oxford, and it's basically looking at the American workforce. And so, for example, one of the industries where there will be 100% growth, and mostly because nobody is doing it, wind turbine.

The other piece is looking at it from the perspective of we have two majority populations in our country, millennials and baby boomers. So for the baby boomers, there are a lot of needs that they have that are not met with the skilled labor, that we don't have the skilled labor to actually meet those needs. And so that's going to be about thinking about and bringing people into those jobs that are going to be around public health, and that's everything from physical therapy to nurses'

aides to home health care work. That's going to be about more manufacturing jobs and more jobs that are around construction. And that's where, okay, I'm going to say with a bit of bravado, California has done a good job and can be a model, but other states have done a great job as well, which is really reinvesting in our community college structure. You know, and not requiring people to have a four-year degree

and also showing and making and reinforcing the point that those jobs are jobs that are dignified, important jobs, and can earn a quality of living. In addition, we've got to have a commitment to working families that appreciates that we need affordable child care.

Everybody does. And we need to have a national policy for that. We need to have a national plan for paid family leave. Everybody needs that. So, baby boomers versus millennials. everybody needs that. Baby boomers versus millennials. False choice. Who is more annoying?

Who's more annoying? More annoying. So I think the baby boomers have really sort of won the narrative, but I think it's bullshit. I think they're a bunch of complainers. I think it's Trump. And they sold us out. Agree or disagree?

Agree. False choice. Okay, fine. Sorry, John. So, last question. Maybe. Depends on what you ask. So, in the last election,

Trump told a story about America. It was a dark story it was a fearful story but he diagnosed the problem he told you who was to blame and he said what he was going to do to fix it it was a story i think paul ryan and the republicans have a theory of the case you cut taxes you cut regulations prosperity blooms everything's wonderful right it used to call a trickle down. It doesn't right. Exactly. So what's our story going forward? What is the story we tell about America in the 21st century? What we stand for, who we are and where we're going? I mean, because you're someone who, you know, is a leader of this party. You're, you know, up and coming big star.

Like you're going to people are going to look to you for that story and I'm wondering if you've thought a lot about that over the last hundred days. Well, the one thing is that exactly, the one thing is that we have to remember that telling the story we have to think of this as separating fiction from non-fiction

they're both stories but one is the truth and one is a fairy tale. And so let's start there, right? And that means telling the story about the truth, about what is existing in people's lives and actually seeing them and then speaking to them in the context that they're living every day,

in the context of what wakes them up at 3 o'clock in the morning. I'll say also that I think there is a part of it in terms of what we can rededicate ourselves to in terms of leadership, all of us being leaders, is to rededicate ourselves to coalition building. So this gets back to that point about the universal truths.

We all have so much more in common than what separates us. And one of the strengths of the Democratic Party historically has been that we bring coalitions together, understanding that people have more in common than what separates them. And I think this is a moment in time that we are doing that, and we've got to keep doing that, and bringing all these communities together, and not breaking people down by certain demographics, and instead bringing folks together, because we'll be so much powerful. You know, yet, and you mentioned, Dan, they have the House, they have the Senate, they have the White House, but we have the power. We have the power. And because we have people behind us. And so we just have to harness that power. And one of the strategies has to be to

dedicate ourselves to the coalition. I know what's coming next. I know what's coming next. I talked about this last night with Governor Inslee. Oh, he's great. Here at Pod Save America, we're focused on right now, and we're focused on 2018, but we are building a 2020 bracket in our minds. And we are assigning seed numbers.

And we're not going to say what it is, but we really liked having you. We're not talking about it. We're not talking about it. We're not asking about it. I'm not. Thank you for being here. We're not asking a question. There's a bracket.

There's a bracket and we're assigning seats. We're not going to ask a question. Let's pay attention to 2018, guys. That's the right answer. Really, we got to pay attention to 2018. Totally agree. It's so critical. We cannot lose our Senate seats in 2018.

I can't leave here without also just urging us to remember that of the 23 Democrats that are up in 2018, a historical number, so many at stake. Ten of them are in, at best, purple states. Five of the ten are in states that Trump won by double digits. Talk about when everyone asks me, what can I do? Also focus on those five seats. We cannot lose them. And here's the thing about speaking the truth. I guarantee you that especially, you know, my hometown San Francisco folks, there are many of us who will not disagree will not agree with as much as 20 percent of what those

five um say and stand for but i promise you you will disagree with 100 percent of what their replacement stands for so we cannot afford to be purists and And we gotta take care of them. So, 2018 is so important. Senator Harris, thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you so much. This was great. Thank you.