Pod Save America - “This is like a car crash.”

Episode Date: July 27, 2017

The Mooch has a meltdown, Trump bullies Sessions, and tweets out a ban on transgender Americans serving in the military. Then Jon and Dan get a Trumpcare update from Senator Chris Murphy, and talk with John Podesta about Russian interference in our election. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. What a day, man. I feel like this is one of those episodes where I should just sit here, read my Twitter feed, and we'll just comment on it as we go. So it'll basically be a day in the life of the Crooked Media office? That's right. Or just my life. I'm actually, Love It Yesterday called me. I'm basically the Crooked Media media monitor. All I do is just read Twitter all day and update people on the dire state of our world.

You're like the Andrew Bates or Pat Kidani of the legendary Obama clips people. Those were our media monitors in the White House. What they did all day is just watch the news, pour them, and send us around clips every five seconds. Okay, so on today's pod, we are going to get a Trumpcare update from friend of the pod, Senator Chris Murphy. We're also going to talk to the chair of Hillary for America and counselor to President Obama, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, John Podesta. Few updates. Pod Save the World this week, Tommy talked to David Miliband, the president of the International Rescue Committee, about the 20 million people at risk of starvation in Africa and across the Middle East right now.

It's an excellent episode. You should go listen to that and also donate to the IRC, Helping Refugees Worldwide. On With Friends Like These, an episode which should drop tomorrow, Friday, Anna Marie Cox talks to Greg Howard and also Rick Wilson about the transgender ban. They argue about that,

which should be a good conversation. Also, Dan, today is quite a day. We're actually recording early right now because as soon as we're done recording, I have to go across town and meet Tommy and Lovett, and we get to interview Al Gore, your old boss. Yeah. So we're doing a special interview with Al Gore

about an inconvenient sequel, Truth to Power, his new movie, which is now playing in select theaters and opening nationwide on August 4th. It's going to be a bonus episode. We're going to release it this Saturday. We all saw the movie on Monday night, Tommy and Lovett and I, and now we're going to interview Al Gore about it. Can I ask you a question about this? You sure can. Tommy and Lovett and I, and now we're going to interview Al Gore about it. Can I ask you a question about this? You sure can. Given what you now know about climate change, should we not even worry about some of these other things because we're all going to die anyway?

Is that the takeaway? I have to say it was like, I mean, reading the New York Magazine story was scary enough, and then actually seeing it in the documentary was even more frightening. Seeing it in the documentary was even more frightening. And the end is a bit sad because, spoiler alert, Donald Trump becomes president and takes us out of the Paris Agreement despite Ivanka and Jared's best efforts. Ivanka, screwing the world again. So anyway, so yes, we're going to go to Al Gore. And then we're going to talk to Chris Murphy. Then I'm coming back to the studio. We're going to call Chris Murphy.

So we are going to save this healthcare discussion to the end of today's pod, because I'm sure a million different changes will happen between now and then. Also, me and Tommy and Lovett are all going to be at Politicon this Saturday, which is in Pasadena here in good old California. And we are going to have a live show there. And our guests will be Simone Sanders, former Bernie Sanders, press secretary, and Joanne Reed of MSNBC. Lots going on, Dan. Wow. Wow. This is a big week for Crooked Media and Positive America. It's a big week. And our live show, we should say, our live show at Politicon that's going to be this Saturday afternoon, that will be the Monday pod. So you'll get that on Monday.

Anyway, I hate to do this, but let's start with the mooch. Last night, as we were all getting ready for bed, there was a tweet from the Mooch, Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director. I was told last week by the pundits he's very smooth on television, Dan. Very smooth, very effective, very savvy operator.

So that's what everyone said. That's what all the cable news said. We're dumping Spicer, we're getting Mooch, he's going to be much better. Dangerous. He's dangerous because he's much, much better. That's what we heard. He's better than Spicer.

Well, fucking A. So here's the tweet last night. In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info, which is a felony, I will be contacting at FBI and at the Justice Department, hashtag swamp at Reince45. What the fuck? Do you want to unpack this for us, Dan? Let's try to untangle so much of this. Yes, please. Okay. So the White House Communications Director, who works approximately 150 feet from the White House Chief of Staff,

decided the best way to resolve this dispute about his leaked financial disclosure was to tweet about it with absolutely horrendous punctuation, like periods where there should be commas. Not sure where the tagging was. It made it sort of hurt the brain anyway. Turns out to be the least of the problems, but yes. The least of the problems, but it still bothered me. So I think we should explain a couple things. One, your financial disclosure form as a government official is a public document. Yes. This is not the classified plan to get al-Baghdadi or some sort of intelligence operation in Libya.

some sort of intelligence operation in Libya. This is something that will be available, that the White House would announce, and they'll put out a press release with it at some point. So that's one. So I don't know what law. The way that the Mooch may have gotten a hint that it would become public is that it is called a financial disclosure form.

So I know, I mean, I know he went to Harvard Law and all, but like the word disclosure might give you a bit of a clue. Wait, the Mooch went to Harvard Law? I have not ever heard him mention that. He never mentions he went to Harvard Law. I have to say, and apparently he went to Harvard Law with Barack Obama. And so I don't know what's going on with that Harvard Law class. Also, friend of the pod, Norm Eisen, same class. Yeah. Also, our friend of the pod, Ron Klain,

was tweeting this morning. He actually tweeted a copy of a financial disclosure form. And it actually, the title of the form is Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report. You can circle public, you see it right on the form. So there you go. So anyway, this, so his public disclosure form, public as it may be, ended up in Politico. And I guess he thinks that Reince did it. Well, I got a couple things about this please did you read the new york times the peter baker story about this they posted very late last night i did so peter baker was texting with the mooch and when when he informed the mooch that first he asked him if he was specifically accusing rince of doing it, which he did not respond to that text. And then but he responded to some subsequent text.

But we should say, by the way, that that Ryan Lizza, who was a reporter who's been reporting on all this, broke the news last night that Scaramucci was talking about Reince and was accusing Reince of this. He said he could confirm that. So he confirmed that on Twitter. and that's what sort of sent everyone, you know, crazy. Yeah. And like all the sort of Trump White House experts like Maggie Haberman and Phil Rucker from the Washington Post all confirmed the same thing. Confirmed as well. But here's the most important part about this is Reince did not, who may, who was very clearly a huge leaker. Everyone knows that he spends most of his time backgrounding reporters when he and Sean Spicer were at the RNC, they would bring reporters in and explain, like as recently as like a few days before the election, they would bring reporters in and explain why it was not the RNC's fault that Trump was going to lose. And so they

are leakers. That is 100% true. So is everyone else in the White House? Does this not make him unique? Yeah. I mean, Mark Leibovich wrote a series of New York Times pieces called Tuesdays with Reince, where he would sit with Reince in his office and just sort of wax eloquently about the, or ineloquently about the goings on of the Trump campaign and the RNC. So, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So that's one. Two, but Reince did not leak this. And we know this because these financial disclosure forms, as you say, are available for public to be requested by the public 30 days after they're filed. The Mooch filed his on June 23rd, which meant that as of July 23rd, any person, reporter, Reince, random person in the

street, friends of the pod, could all just ask for it. Just send an email asking for it. And the political reporter who did this, according to something I read on Twitter this morning, said on the radio, that's exactly how she got it. I mean, when Mooch was confronted with this information, he did not respond. He just sort of. Now, we should also say that he did all this. He started this tweeting right after he had dinner with, or probably at the end of the dinner with, the President of the United States, the First Lady, the disgraced former Fox News executive Bill Shine, and Sean Hannity, Kimberly Girlf—whatever her name is, another Fox News anchor.

And so they're all sitting around at dinner yelling about Reince, and then Mooch decides to go tweet this, which he then deleted. Then he deleted the tweet. The White House communications director accused the White House chief of staff on Twitter of leaking something about him that would have become public anyway, but wasn't even leaked because it was already public and asked the FBI to investigate something which is not a crime. And the Justice Department. That all happened. and the justice department happened and the justice like why was the justice department putting out the justice department releases a statement in response to this saying hey we agree with anthony there's been too much leaking in the white house and the justice department promises to go after any leaker who leaks classified information it's like what what is that

and they referred to the official department statementament statement, referred to Anthony Scaramucci on a first name basis. As Anthony. Not even the Mooch, just Anthony. Which I'm like more disturbed that the DOJ was doing that. Trying to get back in the good graces of the Trump White House. So then you think this is over last night because Mooch like deletes the tweet and everyone moves on. last night because Mooch like deletes the tweet and everyone moves on and then I wake up this morning I think I don't know it was a text from you I think where Mooch then called into CNN while they were interviewing while Chris Cuomo is interviewing Ryan Lizza and just goes off in this

phone-in interview he says White House leakers would have been hung for treason 150 years ago he compares his relationship with Reince to Cain and Abel. We remember that one of those brothers killed the other one in the Bible. Said it's irreparable. Said that Trump may, in fact, veto the Russia sanctions, the bill that overwhelmingly passed the House and the Senate to sanction Russia, maybe by, like, you know, I think there was only, like, five votes in total opposed to it. And then said if Reince wants to explain that he's not a leaker, let him do that.

What is going on? I think the mooch is flying a little close to the sun because today I was doing my pre-pod research and I was looking for a Politico story. So I went to the Politico homepage. And I think four of the ten top headlines on Politico this morning have Scaramucci in the headline. So smooth, Dan. So smooth. Will the shakeup fix the White House's message? Early signs are good.

Early signs are good. Early signs are good. You guys talked about this on Monday. I'd just like to point out someone who had the job that Nathie Scaramucci has. That's right. He's as qualified to be White House Communications Director as I am to run a hedge fund. No, that is not fair to you. You could definitely run a hedge fund better than he could be White House communications director. I'm not so sure.

I think my high school calculus teacher would say otherwise. You just sit there and swim around in money. I don't know. But the other thing I'd say is I have been White House communications director and I have been a cable TV pundit. They are two very different jobs. And White House communications director is exponentially harder. And so, and it's two separate skills because when I left the White House and I was doing a bunch of like CNN stuff as a CNN contributor,

as I am today, it was during the, it was during the beginning of the Trump campaign. And like some poll came out that had Trump winning Iowa and New Hampshire by huge margins in the polls. And I somehow in my convinced myself of this talking point, I would go out saying all the time, well, you know, it's hard to imagine Trump winning, but no one has ever won the nomination without winning Iowa or New Hampshire. And so, and I said that over and over again, over and over again, and no one

corrected me. No one tweeted at me saying anything different. No one cared. It's also totally wrong. Yeah. When you're White House communications director, you say something wrong. Everyone writes a story about it and the RNC puts out a press release, which is the stakes are so different and he's so ill prepared for this. and we are seeing it every single day. Yeah. It turns out that getting a bunch of rich people who ran businesses to run the government wasn't the best idea. Perhaps. I guess the upside is when we were in the White House, everyone would always say what Obama needs is he needs to bring people in from business to help run the government better.

And we tried. We had some, like Jeff Zients, who was the head of the NEC, or Penny Pritzker, who are our commerce secretary, and there were some. But the Trump White House is proving the fallacy that if only we had more business people in government, the thing would run so much better. Yeah, I never really bought that. And then when I left government and went into the private sector for a few years, I bought that even less. So the more frightening personnel story here is the fact that the president of the United States this week has been threatening and verbally abusing his own attorney general for days. There were many tweets over the course of the week from Donald Trump and statements, but maybe the one that is most frightening was when he tweeted,

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a very weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes and intel leakers. He also attacked Sessions for not firing acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, because apparently his wife once ran for office and got a donation from Terry McAuliffe. He's just going on attacking Jeff Sessions all week because he's angry with Sessions because Sessions refused to help Trump obstruct justice and end the investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. I don't even – this is like pretty frightening, huh? the Russian government. I don't even, this is like pretty frightening, huh? Well, the, I guess you could say in some ways the Trump, just put aside the off-camera briefings, the lying, everything else, the Trump administration is perhaps the most transparent administration in history. They took the title away from us. Yes, that's right. Because we put out visitor logs, we released data, we did things like that.

But if the president and one of his cabinet secretaries ever got into a fight, we didn't tell people. I mean, that is true. Barack Obama would not tweet at Eric Holder. Eric Holder has been very weak on Fast and Furious. Yes. I mean, so it's hard i guess the question for me on this is is this just the rantings of an angry disturbed man yes or or is this the rantings of an angry disturbed man who was also trying to create the context where he can end the Mueller probe? Well, I mean, there's reporting in the Post and the Times that he is openly musing about, you know, replacing Sessions, ending the probe, all this other kind of stuff. He's asking about pardons.

He's asking about his pardon power, all that bullshit. So he's clearly musing about these things. Now the question is, is he musing about them and talking about them because there's lunatic pundits talking about these things on Fox News and Fox and Friends where he goes every morning? By the way, Dan, I have to tell you, there was a request that came into Crooked Media for me to appear on Fox and Friends. What? Are you going to do it? Well, it's a couple days late that I got the request yesterday, so I think they asked on Tuesday. It was about my tweet on the new Democratic slogan, which I only made fun of the slogan because of colons and commas. I don't think you put colons and commas in your slogans.

But anyway, because of that tweet, they're like, oh, we'd love to have John on Fox & Friends. I think they made a mistake, which made me want to say yes. And maybe if I go on Fox and Friends, I could communicate something directly to Donald Trump. Maybe this is my big chance. I mean, this could be. I mean, I think you should do this. I'd be happy to come to LA to help prep you for it. Excellent. And do you remember when Jon Stewart went on Crossfire? Yes, I know. And basically ended an entire generation of cable news shows. This could be you with Fox. You could end the network, I think, if you did this well. Except he didn't really succeed. It is one of the greatest moments, although the fact that Tucker Carlson is now in

Bill O'Reilly's slot just ruining the country still is tough to swallow. But anyway, so yeah, so all of these people are suggesting that he fire Mueller, you know, the Hannity's and all the other pundits. So I don't know if it's Trump saying, well, they're saying it on TV, why can't I do it? And then, you know, he won't actually do it. But I don't know. No one thought he would fucking fire Jim Comey. He did that. Yeah, I 100% think he's going to do this. Or I think the question is, does he fire him? Which Trump does not fire people for all of his bravado and toughness.

He is afraid of actually firing people. That's right. He just basically embarrasses them until they quit on their own, a la Sean Spicer. Basically turns them into such a public disgrace that they crawl out of the White House in shame. And he's clearly trying to do that with Sessions. And I think if he were to fire Sessions, there would be backlash. I mean, by backlash, I mean a lot of Republicans putting out statements of disappointment. And I think there'd be some people on the base who really enjoy Sessions' racism, Sessions' efforts to put more people in jail, and Sessions' effort to suppress the vote.

So they'd be pissed about that because it'd be a real setback to the racist voter suppression agenda. But if Trump can make Sessions resign, then what is Paul Ryan going to say? It's Jeff Sessions' choice. What am I to do? Oh, no, we already heard what Paul Ryan's going to say. He was asked about this. And he said, well, the president's personnel decisions are up to him. And then it was also asked in a question about firing Mueller, too.

And so everyone thought that Paul Ryan was basically giving him the go-ahead to fire Mueller. And then Brendan Buck on Twitter, Paul Ryan's beleaguered spokesperson, said, no, no, no. He was just talking about Sessions. He wasn't talking about Mueller. So apparently, you know, they're still trying to draw that line in Ryan world. But I don't have a lot of confidence that Ryan would do anything if he fired Mueller. Do you? No, of course not.

Paul Ryan, Brendan Buck, he's doing the able job of a spokesperson for a man without a spine. And he will regret that tweet because Paul Ryan will do nothing. He will put out a statement. He's disappointed. And then he will show up at the White House, put his shit-eating grin he gets on when fewer people have health care and rich people have more money in their pocket, and stand right behind Trump and kiss his butt. Like, that's what will happen. And it doesn't matter. Don't pretend like Paul Ryan has any history of moral courage.

He does not. of moral courage. He does not. And so I understand he was trying to... Brendan Buck may have been, and the Paul Ryan people may have been technically correct here, in the sense that that may be what he's saying. I'm sure he went back and asked Paul Ryan, what do you think of this? But when it happens, we know what Paul Ryan will do, because it's what Paul Ryan always does. Now, Lindsey Graham this morning, just before we started recording, talked to reporters, said, if Jeff Sessions is fired, there will be holy hell to pay. Any effort to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency unless Mueller did something wrong.

And Graham said he's drafting legislation to protect the special counsel job from firing unless there's congressional review, which is actually something. I believe that Lindsey Graham said that. I believe that Lindsey Graham probably even would like that to happen. I think Lindsey Graham also believes that by saying that, he has dramatically increased the number of Sunday show bookers who will call him on Friday and ask him to appear on their show. I have also been in meetings with Lindsey Graham where he has promised to help Barack Obama close Gitmo, where he has promised to help put in place a bipartisan cap and trade system, and where he has talked about trying to pass immigration reform. Lindsey Graham has as much cachet with his Republican

colleagues as you and I do. Good. That's OK. Well, there we go. And also, though, Chuck Grassley, no friend to the liberals, tweeted last night that there will be no confirmation of a replacement attorney general in 2017 if Trump does this. So now, of course, we should say, like, if these guys end up going nuts on Trump because he fires Sessions or because he forces Sessions out, it is not because they've had some, like, wonderful change of heart and are now, you know, protecting the Senate and the country and all this kind of stuff. It's because they really like Jeff Sessions. And as you pointed out, literally everything Jeff Sessions has done as attorney general has been wrong and awful, except for the one thing that

Donald Trump wants to fire him for, which is recusing himself from the Russia investigation. It is the only good thing that Jeff Sessions has done in his entire tenure as attorney general. I also don't, one of the things that people – I think you guys talked about this on Monday that the Republicans would refuse to confirm Rudy Giuliani. I do not believe that. Oh, you think they'd confirm Rudy? Yes. Yeah, maybe. I think Lisa Murkowski and Collins or Collins and Graham or Collins and someone else would say no, but they would get to 50.

They're not going to deny Donald Trump his attorney general. And if it's not Rudy, it'll be someone else terrible. Right. The whole point of this. And Trump, I think, can also – he can also just live in acting attorney general he can he does not have to make it be rod rosenstein right you can pick any almost anyone the criteria is pretty broad who you can pick to be your acting attorney general and just let that person fire muller it's uh it's basically the the saturday massacre from the nixon era i was

firing people till you get someone who will do what you want and make them the acting attorney general. And look, if we get to that point, we're going to have to, like, there's going to have to be massive, massive protests, resistance, people in the streets. Because that is just going to, I mean, usually if we got to that point, that would be the beginning of impeachment proceedings, for sure. that point, that would be the beginning of impeachment proceedings, for sure. But with Paul Ryan and this House and this Senate, you know, it doesn't, don't have a lot of hope that that's where we're going to get to. So. Yeah. Can I say one thing? Sure. That in like the run up to the election, we Democrats, Hillary Clinton, we host of the political podcast that is now called Pod Save America, painted a very dark picture of how bad a President Trump would be. And a lot of people, a lot of reporters, pundits said that we, and Hillary in particular, were being hyperbolic about it. Right.

hyperbolic about it. Right. Where we stand today, and this is most evident in the rollout of the transgender policy we're about to talk to, is we dramatically understated how fucking terrible our president Donald Trump has been for seven months now. Yeah. I mean, look, he is crazier and more incompetent than we ever possibly could have imagined. Look, I think that when he when he first took office, when he won, I think there was going to there was a lot of fear that there was immediately going to be some like Reichstag fire moment. And he was going to become this dark authoritarian and take power and trample on freedoms like immediately. And there was going to be be sort of authoritarian state like there was a little fear about that right but that hasn't happened right but what what we're seeing i mean it's only been six fucking months and it is this like steady but sure erosion of democratic

rights freedoms norms institutions um whether it's with the media, whether it's with, you know, how he beats up on people and bullies people, whether it's like the Senate now about to try to pass this health care bill by completely like breaking the institution and going around all the norms that you usually have in the Senate. Like, so it's slow, but sure. But of course, it's only been six months. It's actually it has been maybe faster than we think but it's happening and it's not like every day you wake up and there's something huge that has just happened it's just all these crazy fucking stories that at the time seem like one-offs that just build and build and build and build until one day we're going to look around and be like what the hell just happened you know one of the consequences of the way of just the constant leaking about what is people are thinking in the Trump administration and then Trump's tweets about things is he normalizes something like we are. Mueller. And over time, and that allows Sean Hannity and Fox News and sort of some Republicans

to build this case about why, like to arm people with their talking points to defend Trump on this and make it okay, as opposed to Trump just doing it. Right. And so like we've spent all this time, people are like, oh yeah, he's probably going to fire Mueller. Like, yeah, that's probably going to happen. And then when it happens, like, I thought that was probably going to happen. So let's move on to the next thing. Right. I mean, he fired Comey. Like, and we thought that was sort of like the end of the world. And now it's like, oh, yeah, of course, he just fired Comey.

And now we're just trying to figure out what the, you know, we're trying to just get the new FBI director in there. A special counsel is now running a whole investigation into the president. But, you know, it's just it's Tuesday. And now Mooch is on TV screaming about things. So next one week ago or 10 days ago, we learned that Donald Trump's son, his campaign chairman, his White House senior advisor and son-in-law met with agents of the Russian government as part of the Russian government's efforts to help and support Donald Trump. Right.

That was like 10 or 10 days, two weeks ago. And so, I mean, life is coming at us fast. Well, let's talk about a major policy thing that happened yesterday, or what appeared to be a major policy thing at the time, policy move at the time, and who knows where it will actually go. So yesterday, Trump tweeted that after consulting with his generals, he likes to call them his generals, which is very authoritarian of him. He has decided to ban transgender individuals from serving in our military. He cited medical costs and disruption. Very sad, very alarming. You look at the Politico story that talked about how this happened, and it's even crazier.

Politico story that talked about how this happened, and it's even crazier. Apparently, some House Republicans, conservative House Republicans, wanted to get rid of a measure in a bill that would have had the Pentagon pay for gender reassignment surgery. Moderate Republicans thought that that would be discriminatory to remove that measure. I agree, of course. Mattis, General Mattis, the defense secretary, also refused to upend that policy. And so these very conservative Republicans went right to Trump in the White House and asked him to step in. He said, let's go a step further and just ban transgender Americans from serving altogether, something that the House Republicans weren't even debating.

together, something that the House Republicans weren't even debating. So a senior congressional aide, Republican congressional aide said it was as if someone asked Trump to light a candle that was on a dinner table and he just set the entire table on fire. I woke up, I can't believe this was only yesterday, but I woke up yesterday morning at almost the exact moment that Trump sent that first tweet. And then I sat there for, I think it was like six or seven minutes, waiting for the next thing to come. Like, what? What is the thing our generals can no longer allow? Is it North Korea to have a nuclear weapon? Is it we can't allow Iran to be part of this deal?

You know, is it we can't allow them to continue to sell Kit Kats in the mess? Like, I don't know, what the deal is. And I have to say that I was, this was not what I expected to see coming. And just the cruelty and capriciousness of something like this, just being tweeted out by the president of the United States is, even with everything else going on, is fairly mind-boggling, especially with all the fucking reporters and pundits who spent all the time telling us how Trump would be different from other Republicans because he lived in Manhattan, and therefore he would care more about LGBTQ issues and would be different than the far-right Republicans who came before him. And it turns out he's just as big an asshole. Just as big of an asshole.

I mean, what people should know about this, thousands of transgender Americans currently serve in the U.S. military. In fact, one of them, Kristen Beck, was a member of Navy SEAL Team 6, was there for the Bin Laden raid. She's got a bronze star, purple heart, and more courage than most people in this country. This whole thing about medical costs is ridiculous. The military spends five times as much on Viagra as it does on medical care for transgender troops.

Other thing we should know is General Mattis was reviewing their policy on having transgender Americans serve in the military. It was supposed to be a six-month review, and Trump just decided to upend this without really consulting the Defense Department. He just sort of told them beforehand. Mattis is reportedly very upset about this. And at the briefing, at the White House briefing yesterday,

Sarah Huckabee Sanders couldn't answer any questions about what would happen to current troops who are transgender, how the implementation would work. And then when she was asked more questions about it, she threatened to shut the briefing down. You and I were both in the White House when Barack Obama rolled back the don't ask, don't tell policy. policy and made a whole bunch of changes even beyond that that affected allowing women to serve in combat, larger policies around benefits for same-sex partners or people in same-sex marriages that affect a lot of long-standing military policy. And these are long, painstaking, careful, deliberate policy processes that take months where you have, you know, you have meetings at all levels of the government with coordination where you and then when you roll it out, you have you have figured out the implementation of it, because especially in a situation like this, where you're affecting the lives of very people who are depending on for our national security, they're going to have questions. You want to be able to answer them so they understand how it affects them because that affects troop readiness if people don't know what this means for their lives. And you do all of this. And, you know, as communications people, sometimes like we want to get this out now. We want to be able to answer

these questions. Josh Earnest or Jay Carney or Robert Gibbs is getting beat up at the briefing. We're like, no, we can't say anything until we get it all buttoned up and dot the I's and cross the T's. And instead of doing all of that, Trump just sent some tweets. I mean, the Joint Chiefs, according to some reports, heard about this from Twitter. And that there were people in the Pentagon who, when they saw the first tweet, thought, were curious as to whether Trump was announcing a strike on North Korea. Yeah. Apparently, the Joint Chiefs just released a statement that said there would be no modifications to transgender policy for current troops who are serving right now, and they're going to continue to review. And so they are slowing this entire process down, despite what their commander in chief decided to tweet.

In the Senate, very conservative Republicans came out against this move. Richard Shelby from Alabama, McCain, Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst, Orrin Hatch. These are not, you know, these are not your more liberal members. But of course, there was a quote from the Trump White House to Jonathan Sweeney Axios that said, this person said, this forces Democrats in Rust Belt states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin to take complete ownership of this issue. How will the blue collar voters respond when Democrats are forced to make their opposition a key plank in their campaign? Fuck you. That was, it's the most cynical thing I could imagine. It's also the stupidest, right? Because like, then all these conservative Republican senators from the Midwest

say that they're against this, too. The Joint Chiefs don't like it. Former defense secretaries don't like it. Right. Like these people in the White House are just so dumb. It is really mind boggling because it is a really dumb thing to think. It is an even dumber thing to tell a reporter like this. You're not this is people have so little self-awareness of their own stupidity that they think it's a smart thing to tell a reporter. Like, you're not, this is, people have so little self-awareness of their own stupidity that they think it's a smart thing to say, and they think it's a smart, that people will think they're smart if they say it. And then, you know, you got a lot of

tweets from reporters who are pretty closely sourced to the White House saying, this is not the sentiment in the White House. This is not why they did this. Bullshit. It's exactly why they did it. If they did it any other way, then they would do an actual policy review. You can make a political decision in the time it takes to craft a tweet. Making actual policy takes time. And they didn't do that. Like the proof that this was a political decision that, you know, some say was made to sort of throw some red meat to the base or upset about Trump's attacks on his beleaguered attorney general. The proof of it is, is that they didn't ask anyone. They just did it without thinking about the implication. So it's obviously a political decision. I don't like these people.

I really don't. I just got to be honest with you. I really don't like them. We're on the fence. We should move on to healthcare. So things are moving very fast. By the time you listen to this podcast, you know, a lot of this news might be old. I'm going to read a quote from a Republican aide just now to Caitlin Owens at Axios, describing the health care efforts right now. This is a Republican Senate aide. This is like a car crash. Everyone slows down to look. No one helps. McConnell's plan right now is to pass literally anything that can get 50 votes in the Senate so he can move the entire process to a conference committee. What's a conference committee? When the House and the

Senate pass different legislation, the conference committee resolves the differences. It's made up of a few Republicans from the House and a few from the Senate. They meet in secret behind closed doors. They come up with whatever bill they want. They can basically start from scratch. When they're done, the final bill goes to the floor of the House and the floor of the Senate for a final vote. There are no changes, no amendments allowed, up or down vote. And then if it passes, it goes to the president for a signature. If not, it dies. And of course, the other option is that this, if the Senate passes something that gets 50 votes right now, it could also just go back to the House and the House could vote on that, and then it would go to the president.

Right now, conservatives in the House are saying there is no way that they would pass this skinny repeal as it is right now. But as we've seen a million times in this healthcare debate, things change every second. And statements that people give are no longer operable five minutes later because no one really cares. So the current plan that can maybe get 50 is called skinny repeal. Ridiculous name. It's a repeal of the individual and the employer mandates that say that people have to buy health insurance, that employers have to offer insurance, as well as the medical device tax, the tax on medical devices. So small stuff, but because young and healthy people wouldn't be required or incentivized to buy insurance, the Congressional Budget Office says that this plan would lead to 16 million uninsured and a 20% premium hike.

20%. Ted Cruz once said that the test for the republican party should be whether their bill lowers premiums this does not by any standards what do you what are your thoughts on this latest bullshit dan well i think we should stop calling it skinny repeal i'm for that i've been howling into the winds of twitter on this and no one cares but it's not skinny repeal it is just repeal without replace. Right. That's what it is. Because let's do idiot's guide to healthcare policy because that's, even though working on it for six years is the best I can do.

Yeah. The reason the mandate exists, which forces people to buy healthcare, is it means that healthy people get into the insurance bulls, which lowers premiums, which is why even though Obama opposed the mandate in the 2008 campaign, he was convinced that it was the only way to provide affordable health insurance was to include a requirement that people get health insurance. And so if you take the mandate away, what that means is the healthy people leave the insurance pools. It gets riskier for the insurance companies. Prices go up. People can't afford health care. That's why 60 million people lose it. And that's why premiums go up. So you are, this is repeal with no alternative to solve the problems the Republicans claim they want to

solve. Yeah. It is a horrible, horrible piece of legislation. And I mean, this is why one of the Republican aides was calling the whole thing a car crash is all these Republican senators, not all of them. There's like half of legislation. They know that this is a bad process. And none of them want to show the courage to be the one who is the final vote to knock this thing down and kill it. None of them want to stand up and do that. Dean motherfucking Heller. Let's start with him. Let us do some bipartisan shout-outs to Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who are people who have shown courage and integrity in this process. I disagree with them on a lot of issues. Yeah.

And if I lived in their states, I'd probably vote against them for other reasons. But they deserve plaudits for the way they've handled this. Huge plaudits. And, like, look, and Susan Collins has been like this for a while. Murkowski was under even more pressure because, you know, Collins was an early no and Murkowski was a later no. because, you know, Collins was an early no and Murkowski was a later no. And there's a story this morning that's completely insane where the Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, threatened Murkowski over her no vote, said Alaska's relationship with the administration in terms of energy production and energy jobs was in jeopardy.

So you'd think that would be illegal in a major scandal, but it'll probably just be like the 30th craziest story for today. And, like like there's a bunch of fucking goobers in the house uh blake farenthold and buddy carter who are like threatening physical violence on female senators over this uh buddy carter said somebody needs to go over there to that senate and snatch a knot in their ass about murkowski and blake farenthold challenged susan collins to a duel. So things are going great there. Dean Heller, a couple weeks

ago when he voted no on the motion to proceed to this bill, voted no. Said, quote, I cannot support a piece of legislation that takes away insurance from tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Nevadans. CBO score on skinny repeal. 16 million uninsured. Dean Heller.

He's just, he's politically playing this terribly. Terribly. Like, you can do one of two ways. He's just – he's politically playing this terribly, terribly. Like you can do one of two ways. I think you guys talked about this on Monday. But one solution, one view is I'm going to oppose this. I may get a primary challenge, but I'm the person most likely to win and I'm going to stand strong by what I believe. I'm going to fight that. The other way, which is it is bad for his state, but it is a different political strategy is to say, I ran saying I was going to repeal Obamacare. I have voted for it seven times or whatever,

and that's what I'm going to do right now. It's not a perfect bill, but it is what I said I was going to do. I'm delivering for my voters. I'm going to stand strong on that position. You have to pick one of the two paths. He can ask John Kerry what it's like if your position is you voted for it before you voted against it. It never plays well. Never plays well. So, I mean, everyone donate to Jackie Rosen's campaign, RosenForNevada.com. Let's like get Dean Heller out of the Senate in 18. He's probably our best shot at a Republican to defeat. And then like Shelley Moore Capito and Rob Portman somehow have decided that, uh, an extra, you know, 45 billion or a hundred billion, uh, and funds for helping people who get kicked off their Medicaid is going to make up for

like $750 billion in Medicaid cuts. Apparently they're, you know, math geniuses and that's okay with them. So they're sort of on board now. Um Paul, who is a no vote, he likes this skinny repeal because he's being promised all kinds of things by McConnell for what happens in the committee. In the committee, there's no doubt that this repeal, that this individual mandate repeal, employer mandate repeal will turn into something larger that basically does cut Medicaid, which is John Cornyn gave away the game yesterday when he said, oh, we're going to take care of Medicaid and conference committee. So it's bad. John Cornyn, also not bright. Not bright either. And then, you know, there's John McCain. He came back and, you know, he's dealing with brain cancer. And

obviously that's, you know, a tragedy. And we really hope he gets better and he gets the care he needs. And he comes back to the Senate and he gives this speech where he says, let's return to regular order. He said, you know, I vote I'm voting for the motion to proceed to allow debate to continue and amendments to be offered. But I will not vote for the bill as it is today. It's a shell of a bill right now. We all know that I have changes urged by my state's governor that will have to be included to earn my support for final passage of the bill. He calls for bipartisanship. He calls for people to get back together and work with Democrats and work with Republicans and go to the committee process. He does all these things. And we will now see if John McCain votes against this bill, which will not include the amendments that he wants for Arizona that his governor asked for and will not be a regular process if it goes into a secret committee like this. So I don't know. I don't know how John McCain votes for this and doesn't render the speech he gave the other day complete bullshit. I was going to say right now I was going to do what I often do and say, John, I want you to prepare yourself. You're going to be disappointed here. But then Lovett sent a tweet the other day that I

thought was pretty profound, I think, where he said something to the effect of being cynical and then surprised is not more sophisticated than being optimistic and disappointed as sort of a life attitude. And so I am going to try on optimism on McCain. Well, and it's not even, here's my thing with that. It's not even like optimism, right? Because people, like I've been tweeting this too or something along these lines and people are like, you know McCain's going to disappoint me. What the fuck's wrong with you?

He's not going to do the right thing, blah, blah, blah. We should know this by now. And it's like, yeah, no, no. I'm not predicting he's going to do the right thing, blah, blah, blah. We should know this by now. And it's like, yeah, no, no, I'm not predicting he's going to do the right thing or not predicting. I'm just saying if you lay out exactly what he's done so far, he hasn't taken the final vote yet, right? If he takes the final vote and it's for this bill, then I will pile on double on John McCain. And because then he has increased cynicism, not just in his career and in his words, but in all of politics and for all politicians.

He has done something really, really gross at that point. But he just hasn't taken the vote yet, and we just have to wait is all I'm saying. I'm going to try on optimism. The verb to McCain means to say things that sound really courageous and bold and maverickry and causes reporters to lose their mind with enthusiasm and love and basically act like a bunch of preteens at a Justin Bieber concert and then do the exact opposite of that. Like that is a long history of McCain, but hope springs eternal. And yeah, I was going to say, all I'm saying is no one should give John McCain a bunch of credit for that speech the other day, but no one should condemn him yet. We just got to, you got to wait for the final vote and then we can all render judgment. Okay. When we come back, we will talk to Chris Murphy about healthcare and what's going on on the floor. We'll get

an update soon. We'll be right back. Senator Chris Murphy, welcome back to Pod Save America. Thank you for joining us on this very chaotic day. First question, what the hell is going on in the Senate right now? chaotic day. First question, what the hell is going on in the Senate right now? So we're in a waiting game. The House Republican caucus, as we speak right now, is meeting behind closed doors, trying to gather votes for what they call the skinny repeal, which will be the repeal of the individual mandate and a few other additional items to try to get themselves to 50 votes. The CBO has already weighed in and said that that's a just different version of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Probably 16 to 18 million people lose insurance within 12 months. Rates start going up by 20 percent a year. But they're convincing their members that it's just a procedural vote to get to a conference with the House of Representatives, where the bill will likely get even worse. So we are waiting for them to unveil this stripped-down version of the original repeal bill. We are waiting for them to gather the 50 votes, and they don't have it yet. So we are going to try to make this as difficult for them as possible, and in every forum conceivable, make the case that this is just another attempt to take insurance away from millions of Americans, drop everybody's rates up, and see if we can't convince two people, one person besides Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins to vote no.

So here's what I don't understand. for Murkowski or Susan Collins to vote no. So here's what I don't understand. A lot of your Republican colleagues have voiced concerns about Medicaid cuts in previous versions of these bills, right? Don't they know that if this skinny repeal goes to conference, that all of those Medicaid cuts

will be back on the table, will be back in a bill, and they're just going to have to face a vote on cutting Medicaid again, right? Like, is that having any effect on some of your Republican colleagues, or what are you hearing? I think it is. You know, as we speak now, John McCain is on record as expressing that reservation,

and it's an obvious one, given the fact that they would effectively be going to conference with only one bill. This bill would be largely irrelevant, because it is just a means to get to conference. And so the House bill, which guts Medicaid funding, kicking 15 million people off, vulnerable kids and seniors, would be the only bill that they would be negotiating. And so the House would be in an incredibly strong position in that conference, would be in an incredibly strong position in that conference, and they would only have to agree to a handful of changes because there was no competing product coming from the United States Senate. I think some of this for Senate Republicans is about trying to share the blame if this whole

thing does eventually collapse. If they get this to a conference committee and they can't come to a conclusion, at least then it's equal parts of the House's fault and Senate's fault. Whereas if it dies now, the blame is all on Mitch McConnell. So it may be that this is all setting up blame for ultimate failure. That only happens, of course, if we keep the heat on, if we aren't successful in stopping this vote later today. That seems like a great way to make significant policy decisions. What are some of the things the Democrats are going to do to try to either raise awareness about this in the final stages here or delay the process? Well, I mean, first, I think we're playing to the ego of these senators. I mean, why run for the United States Senate if you aren't able to come to a

conclusion on the most important issue facing the country right now, the future of the U.S. health care system and the ACA? Why outsource this entire issue to the House, surrender to the House of Representatives? I think that that is persuasive on some members of the Senate who do see it as their responsibility to come up with a vote. Second, we're trying to make that case that you were, that ultimately you're going to end up with the House bill if you put no product next to it. And then we're just going to make it clear that we're going to make their lives miserable later today. We are not offering amendments now until they put their product on the table. But after they do that, we have the right of

unlimited amendment. And we are going to offer amendment after amendment after amendment to try to show the difference between Republicans and Democrats on health care. That will accrue to their accumulated political liability. And we are going to go for as long as it takes to make sure that those differences are exposed. It will be a long, long amendment process, and we're letting them know that right now. Does every Republican senator at this point know that their vote for this legislation is a vote to send it to conference, or does some believe that the House may just take a vote on the skinny repeal and call it a day, or is that done? I'm hearing sort of mixed reports about that. So what we know is that when they were still trying to do a comprehensive bill,

Mitch McConnell was telling various factions of the caucus different things. He was telling the conservatives that the Medicaid cuts were going to go into effect in perpetuity, and it was a fundamental change to entitlements. He was telling the moderates or the relative moderates in his caucus, don't worry about it. These Medicaid cuts don't go into effect for five or six years. Somebody will come in and postpone them. They're not real. I think he's doing the same thing now in answer to your question. I think he's telling some members of the caucus, the more moderate members of the caucus, well, you know, maybe the House will just pass this bill and only the skinny repeal bill will go into effect. And he's telling the conservatives, oh, no, no, no, this is just a way to get the conference so the bill can become

much more conservative with the Medicaid cuts. I have a feeling that there's two stories in the press because Mitch McConnell is telling two different stories to different parts of his caucus. And the question is, do they meet and compare notes before the vote tonight? Senator, have you heard anything from your Republican colleagues expressing any concern with this process, or are they just sort of fine with where this is going? I mean, so many of them are in the John McCain camp. We all love John, and we appreciate everything he said in that speech. But it's fairly meaningless sentiment if you continue to vote for and endorse the most backwards, behind-closed-doors process that the Senate has ever seen. So, yeah, I have lots of conversations off the floor of the Senate

with Republicans who complain about this process, and then they go in and they vote for it. They have been bullied by Senator McConnell and by President Trump into these votes, even though many of them in their heart are very uncomfortable with it. And, you know, that's a reflection on the fact that this president is still relatively popular amongst the Republican voting electorate, and a lot of them don't want to go toe-to-toe with him in a primary. That doesn't mean that they are comfortable with the things that they're voting for,

although who cares, so long as they continue to give their votes to this awful process. I mean, there's a ton of things wrong with this process. There's a ton of things wrong with this bill. As you talk to some of your Republican colleagues, what do you think is the most effective message in maybe changing their minds? What do you think is bothering them the most about this that might lead them to ultimately become no votes? Well, on this particular measure, I think what does worry them is the prospect that the House may actually take this up and vote for it, that they may not get to a conference, because repealing the individual mandate by itself is a prescription for the healthcare insurance market to fall apart. Do you think that your Republican colleagues know that?

Like, that they understand that taking away the individual mandate and doing nothing else would cause the market to collapse? I do. So I think the majority of these members understand that taking away the individual mandate would cause markets to collapse. And of course, the irony of it is that it would be most likely to collapse in Republican states because there would be some Democratic states that would actually pass a state individual mandate, which might have the effect of holding together insurance markets. It would be Republican states in which there would be a guarantee that the market would collapse because they wouldn't be able to pass their own state-based individual mandate.

So I think that is very persuasive to the extent that there are members worried that this skinny bill actually becomes law. It's the Medicaid cuts that are persuasive to those who believe this ultimately gets to a conference. Republicans in the Senate right now don't seem willing to put 50 votes behind a bill that guts Medicaid. And so our focus on that program and what it means for vulnerable kids and for seniors, if this bill gets to conference, I think continues to be the most persuasive for Senate Republicans, especially those from Medicaid expansion states. Senator Murphy, thank you so much for joining us. I know it's a chaotic day there. And keep up all the work you're doing. We really appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Keep us

updated on your beard, too. Oh, yes. Yeah, it's a really miserable excuse for a beard. It's a combination of my Irish and Polish complexion, but my protest-flash-rally beard is sticking around for a while. Playoff beard. Playoff beard. Do they work? You're going to love it. Thanks, guys. All right, Senator.

Take care. Thanks, Senator. On the pod today, we are very lucky to have with us former Obama senior advisor, senior counsel, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, former chair of Hillary for America, friend of the pod, John Podesta. How's it going? Oh, it's good. It's great to be on the show.

So you've been chief of staff in the White House. In what world would you choose to stay on the job if you were reince priebus right now well i probably would have left long ago uh but can you imagine having someone uh come into the white house and within a week call the fbi to investigate you for leaking what turned out to be a publicly available document and then find out that the president had agreed to that in advance. I mean, it's mind-boggling what's going on over there right now. Are you trying to tell me that Jen Palmieri didn't tweet at the FBI

to investigate you at any point in the last year of the Obama White House? You kind of wonder who he called. Did he call Andrew McCabe, who the president was tweeting about, or who did the mooch pick up and dial to? Look, there really is no precedent, and they've turned in on themselves. And one can only imagine what life is like over there these days. The only thing that we know for sure is they keep installing a new desk for the additional lawyers they're bringing into the White House.

John, you had a very unique experience of being on a cross-country trip and then having, while you're driving, finding out that the President of the United States is tweeting about you. I was just curious what your reaction was to that and just the general, what it's been like to be a personal target of the president of the United States for, you know, almost a year now. Yeah, Dan, it's funny. You know, my wife and I left early on a Friday morning. We were driving across the country and I pulled into our first, I kind of got off the phone and was, you know, listening to music and pulled into our first rest stop in West Virginia and found out that the president was tweeting at me from the G20.

And it just seemed insane that at a moment when he was supposed to be representing the United States and engage with world leaders in advance of the meeting with Vladimir Putin, that he took the time to start attacking me. So I attacked back. And as I noted in my original tweet, I thought our whack job president should pay more attention to his job and spend less time kind of fretting about and trying to, you know, disassociate him, whatever the press corps was thinking

about, and try to put him off on some other track. But really, that's what he's been about the whole time as a candidate and as president. And I guess at some level, I guess it worked for him as a candidate because he was able to constantly capture the public attention by saying more and more outrageous things. But as president, I think he's finding it extremely difficult to govern in the fashion that he utilized as a candidate for presidency. What's your best guess as to what Mueller uncovers in his investigation? Obviously, you're very familiar with the, all too familiar with the Russian interference in our election. And do you think that there's potential collusion? What signs do you see?

Or do you think that the focus of the investigation is going to move to obstruction and some of Trump's moves since he's been in office? to obstruction and some of Trump's moves since he's been in office? You know, look, I think that there's a certain amount of touch points that keep coming out, and we have the drip, drip, drip of additional meetings, information, who was there, that Donald Jr. meeting to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from Russian agents being the latest. But I think that their biggest problem, and I've seen that going back to when I was in law school during Watergate, is they can't seem to tell the truth about anything.

And you can lie to the American people and sometimes get rewarded for that. But if you lie to investigators, if you lie to Bob Mueller, if you lie to the Senate committee or the House Intelligence Committee or the Senate Judiciary Committee, that's a federal crime. And I think they just cannot seem to tell the truth. And that starts with the president, but it involves the people closest to him. And if they approach this investigation in the same way they kind of approach politics, then I think they could be in a whole world of trouble. What strikes me that Trump is most concerned about and why he's so freaked out with Bob Mueller and, you know, torturing Jeff Sessions to try to get him to leave so that he can ultimately get rid of Bob Mueller,

is Bob Mueller is touching now in on his business relationships, and particularly the business relationships with potential Russian money. And I think that's a no-go place for President Trump. And he wants to cut this off before Mueller, you know, begins to sniff around at what looks from the outside to be some connections to Russian money pouring into the Trump organization. And I think that's what he's really worried about. Going forward, I know from conversations you and I have had since the election that you have, you know, a high level of concern, not just about what happened with Russia in the 2016 election,

but what Russia is doing in terms of election interference across Europe, and then what they may be doing in 2018. I just want to get your sense, what your level of concern is on that, and what do you think we can or should be doing as a country to push back on what Russia's doing? Look, I think this is a class-A national security problem, because I think what the Russians have tried to do is not only undermine democratic institutions in elections across the West, in elections across the West. But I think their ultimate goal is really to undermine the Transatlantic Alliance, undermine NATO, undermine the EU, and in comparative terms, try to enhance their power by weakening those of others. So you saw them active in the French election.

They're already active in the upcoming German election. They've been active in the past in Eastern Europe, in the Baltics, and other places. And I think their end game really is to try to undermine the Western public's confidence in their own democratic processes. And in the case of the United States, I think they got a high return on their investment. So I think we've got to find a way to both call that out, treat it as a serious national security problem, as we've seen at least some voices on a bipartisan basis do, including Senator McCain, who I heard you just talking about. And I think that going

forward, obviously the sanctions bill that begins to both enhance the penalties on Russia and the sanctions on Russia and eliminate the ability of the president to unilaterally waive those is an important step in the right direction. I think the president has to sign that bill, and my guess is that he will because he's cornered. I don't think he wants to, but I think he's cornered and he'll have to. I think that the diligence of the overall response on both parties needs to follow what we've seen happening, again, amongst our European colleagues, which is in the context of the French election, the press was much more on to the fact that, you know, these were Russian active measures interfering with the potential for Macron to be elected.

In Germany, the parties have gotten a, you know, a sort of all-party pact to resist Russian interference in the election. So I think that, you know, there's a lot that needs to be done, but I think, first of all, we need to take this as a high-level national security problem, and unfortunately there's one person in the United States who doesn't share that view, and that's the president of the United States. So whether it's from Russia or Fox News, you know, future Democratic candidates will face disinformation campaigns, propaganda campaigns, fake news.

What lessons have you learned about how to overcome these challenges and what advice would you give to future campaigns about how to overcome? Yeah, you know, the one thing I think that if you're looking backwards at our own election, I think the propagation of fake news and the distribution, particularly through social media channels, was, you know, in part done with the help of Russian active bots, trolls. They were pushing information through their sites in Europe and other places, but it's absolutely also being done by alt-right sites, which have now some interconnection, at least, in terms of the stuff that they peddle. I think one of the things that I think that I would advise any future candidate

is that you have to take this stuff seriously. The most outrageous stuff that gets knocked down in the mainstream media still has a life of its own in distribution through social media. And so you can't just ignore it and think, well, no one will believe this. This is crazy. And, you know, you have to deal with it and come to terms with it. And I think that, again, the social media companies have a responsibility to try to do a better job of of uh... knocking off fake sites in and be able to uh... police at least

but to some extent uh... the the uh... propagation of fake news so uh... it's just a problem that i think we're gonna have to live with in our democracy big takeaway for me is that i think this goes back i think to uh... following the pattern that President Obama followed both when he was running in 08 and then for re-election in 12,

is the campaign used social media more as a platform to engage activists and to really try to reach core supporters, to raise money, to build your field program off of, to activate voters to make sure that they were getting out to vote of people who you knew were likely to support you. And I think in our campaign, I didn't do enough persuasion through social media channels. in our campaign, didn't do enough persuasion through social media channels. I think that we relied overwhelmingly on television to do persuasion, use social media, largely to talk to our own supporters and our activists.

And in retrospect, when those channels are flooded with information that's coming from dubious sources, you've got to be able to talk to people and get your message across in those areas that people are looking at. So that's just a practical takeaway from my perspective. I'm sure there are other people in our campaign who would disagree with that, but that was something that I feel strongly about. I think that's very good advice. John Podesta, thank you so much for joining us. And it was good to talk to you. And, you know, we hope to talk to you again soon. Well, I just have to say thank you for doing the pod. And my daughter and granddaughter are proudly wearing their repeal and go fuck yourself. Yes, we love that. Guys, we got to we got to make sure that this bill gets stopped this week. And as I think you noted, it resides on whether Senator McCain

will be authoritative in backing up what he said on the floor earlier this week. Let's hope and let's keep those calls up, keep the pressure up. Thank you, John. It's a good reminder. Thanks so much, buddy. All right, take care. All right. Thank you to Chris Murphy for joining us today. Thank you to John Podesta. and we'll see you all soon. Bye, guys. ...... you