Pod Save America - “This is who we are.”

Episode Date: May 28, 2018

Trump pretends a staffer doesn’t exist as his will-they-won’t-they drama with Kim continues, Customs and Border Patrol begins tearing away children from their parents at the border, and the trouble grows for Trump’s inner circle. Erin Ryan joins Jon, Jon, and Tommy on stage at Boston Calling, and then our interview at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute with Senator Elizabeth Warren.

🎵 Hello, Boston! John, John. This is Harvard. We're outside of Boston. Hello, school outside of Boston. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Erin Ryan.

I'm Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, later on you'll be listening to the interview that we did yesterday at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute with Senator Elizabeth Warren. But just so everyone here is clear, she's not at this music festival. We talked to her yesterday. That's for the people at home. But you guys handled it well. You clapped. That's for the people at home. But you guys handled it well. You clapped. That's what we needed.

All right, so we have a lot to discuss this afternoon, but I want to begin real quickly with some developing news today about the on-again, off-again, will-they-won't-they relationship between our two favorite nuclear-armed maniacs, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Today there was a surprise meeting between Kim and South Korean President Moon to try to salvage the summit that Trump had canceled. And then Trump tweeted that the two countries may meet on June 12th after all.

Tommy, what the hell is going on here? God, I don't know. I mean, I don't think they know. That's the problem. And then the other thing Trump tweeted about today was he plucked a quote out of a New York Times article that said, we might be so close to the actual date

of the proposed summit that the logistics would be too hard to put it together in time. And he tweeted, fake news from a fake source. The failing New York Times does it again. And then a bunch of reporters outed the fact that this was a background

briefing done by his senior director for Asian Affairs in front of literally hundreds of reporters. There's a transcript, there's audio, there's video. Like, they have him dead to rights. So this fucking guy doesn't know what his own team is saying. They don't know what's going to happen. There's no reason that we needed to

turn this thing into a public breakup. They might as well be doing this on Instagram. So who knows at this point? I really like Trump. A member of the National Security Council speaks to several dozen reporters and then Trump says actually that guy doesn't exist.

I just picture that Asia policy expert being like Mr. Trump, I don't feel so good. Well, it was great because finally a reporter, not a White House reporter who agreed to the on-the-record, off-the-record deal, but another reporter, Yashar Ali, said he revealed the name of the staffer, this guy Matt Pottinger. He does exist.

He's the NSC director for Asian Affairs. Unlike Melania, who might not exist right now. This guy, Matt Pottinger, he does exist. He's the NSC director for Asian Affairs. Unlike Melania, who might not exist right now. Yesterday, actually, Donald Trump, in front of a bunch of reporters, again, pointed to a window in the White House and was like, there's Melania, she's right there. And everybody turned around and nobody was there. Melania is like, we're a couple of days away from seeing Melania in a mask at a pipe organ, you know?

So, Tommy, do we think that the summit happens on June 12th? I mean, it seems pretty soon. I don't know, man. Who knows? I mean, the real problem here is that Trump canceled the summit without telling the South Koreans. So they were very pissed and upset because they live adjacent to a nuclear-armed madman, as you noted. Sort of like Canada. Totally.

And so the South Korean president had a meeting with Kim Jong-un today to try to sort of piece it all back together. And historically, we spent a lot of time when I was at the White House on the NSC trying to coordinate our activities with the South Koreans, with the Japanese, because they find that to be very important. They really need that reassurance. They like planning and coordination. Yeah, they like when we talk to our allies. And the fact that Trump's behavior has led the South Koreans to start just breaking away from us and meeting with the North Koreans really without us knowing or having any sort of say in it means the alliance is splitting, which is not good. Not good. It's not good.

Not good. Got a title. All right, I want to talk about what I think is the most cruel, inhumane policy of this presidency or, I think, any presidency in our lifetime. The Trump administration is now taking children away from their parents at the border. Yeah, we should do that. Their children as young as 18 months old, ripped out of their mother's arms, put into a government detention center.

This has never happened before. put into a government detention center. This has never happened before. And these aren't necessarily families that are sneaking into the country. A lot of them are showing up at the border asking Customs and Border Patrol for asylum because they're scared of the violence in their own countries. A lot of them are from Central America,

from places like Guatemala and Honduras where there's a lot of violence. And the government's response is to take their children away. Erin, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has defended the practice, saying children are taken away from criminals in prison for breaking the law all the time. Chief of Staff John Kelly said in an NPR interview earlier this month that the new policy is supposed to act as a deterrent

and that children will be taken care of, put into foster care or whatever. So what is wrong with these people and how does that even work as a deterrent? You know, I was thinking about this today and it's one of those things that makes me so angry I can't be funny about it. I know. But the one way that I was able to be a little funny about it was I was thinking about ICE and Customs and Border Patrol and the people that are in charge of enforcing these awful immigration laws and hurting people. And I almost think that...

I was thinking, what kind of a person would become somebody that enforced this kind of a policy? It almost seems like you're not brave enough to join the military and actually go fight people that have guns, but you're also too racist to be a cop. What's really upsetting to me, though, is that I've always trusted that there was some kind of layer in between this sort of mouth-breathing idiot group that would keep the worst of their base instincts from being made into law. And now they're actually in positions of authority. Like John Kelly, you know, for all of the credit he got for being somebody who would be

a moderating person in donald trump's circle he's not just as bad he's just as bad if not worse and also nielsen's uh kind of image rehab tour there was an article in the washington post about her and trump allegedly clashing and i'm i'm so wary of any news report that paints a Trump official that seems like they're on the verge of exiting as in some way sympathetic, because it seems to me like it's an apology to her so that they can get on CNN and Fox or whatever. Yeah. I mean, the other thing is John Kelly, a couple of months ago, was asked about this by Senate Democrats, are you going to do this? And he said, no, we are not considering separating children from their families. We wouldn't do that. Yeah, but John Kelly is a liar.

Well, exactly. John Kelly got in front of the White House press briefing room, and he said that Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson had been bragging about dedicating an FBI center. And in reality, video evidence to the contrary existed. John Kelly lies. He's a liar. He's not somebody who we can trust at all. Love it. So Trump responded with one of his worst ever tweets this morning, I think. It said, put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from their parents once they cross the border. Democrats are protecting MS-13 thugs. I guess that's in reference to 18-month-olds. I guess what I'm wondering is, is this lie that he told on Twitter

a sign that even Trump knows how gross and inhumane and unpopular this policy is? And like, gross and inhumane and unpopular this policy is. Is he that much of a coward that he can't even own this policy? Yeah. It's, you know, he wants to have his kids ripped away from their parents and eat it, too. Yeah, I felt the same way as Aaron did about it it's really hard to to find something to say other than just to be horrified um you know as always Trump's Trump wants to muddy the waters he knows that that for his base he's making a point and that's a point that a lot of people

unfortunately will welcome and we should be honest about that that there are people who will like this uh and that's ultimately why he's doing it. At the same time, he is a creature of television, and television will not make this look good, so he'll be cowardly about that. It's interesting that they're using the defense of, oh, well, we rip children away from their parents all the time when we lock them up. And it's a reminder that this is not out of nowhere,

that this is the end result of a process by which these kinds of ideas became rationalized, not just Trump saying that immigrants are animals. And reminder, we had a whole debate about how nuanced Trump was in the use of the word animals when, in fact, what we are seeing is the end result of a process by which you dehumanize people coming into the country. But also, we do take a lot of kids away from parents unjustly. We do take a lot of kids away from parents who then are then incarcerated for too long, often for minor drug offenses or minor offenses. We do have a police state that separates children from their parents.

We do that every single day. This is, you know, you see a lot of politicians, Democrats, saying this is not who we are. And it is very annoying because what we do is exactly who we are. We're doing it. It's who we are because we're doing it. It's who we are because we're doing it. It's who you don't want us to be. It's who we shouldn't be.

It's who we shouldn't be, but it's exactly who we are. It's 100% who we are. And it's not just something that Donald Trump did. Donald Trump is able to do this because Republicans have capitulated to this politics. Republicans across the country are not campaigning on the Paul Ryan trillion-dollar tax cut for millionaires and billionaires and corporations. They are campaigning on MS-13 and fear-mongering about immigration. This is the end result of a shift in the Republican Party

and a shift in our culture that makes this feasible, and I'm glad people are decrying it, but now we will see just how far the Republican administration and Republicans in Congress have fallen because I am not confident that we are going to see some kind of an outcry from Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. I do not anticipate that happening, which tells you that this is exactly who we are. Yep. Yeah.

I think the other thing that's important to note here is that we're throwing more people into a system that's already broken. So if you're a kid and you show up at the border unaccompanied, you are placed with a relative or some sort of sponsor via HHS, Health and Human Services. And within 30 days, they're supposed to check in on you to make you okay. Now, it's batshit crazy that they wait a month to check and see if a kid is okay. But a full 20% of the kids they checked on, they couldn't locate. So they're missing one-fifth of these kids. So now an accompanied minor shows up, and we're ripping more kids away from their families. And you're reading stories about people who are separated from an infant for four months.

And that does permanent psychological damage. I mean, it's not an inconvenience. These are kids who can't talk. They're terrified. The parents are terrified. I mean, the level of cruelty, it's not just like bureaucratic incompetence leading to cruelty.

It's willful policy choices designed to scare people by being cruel. I mean, and to add, we know that it's not just bureaucratic incompetence because a different justice system exists for people who have means. Harvey Weinstein has been charged with rape and he was able to turn in a,

like in a choreographed effort, turn in a $1 million check to, you know, the Brooklyn courthouse or wherever he was being raided and walk. And meanwhile, there are people who are lost. 1,500 kids have been lost. They can't be located. So it's just, we live in two different Americas. Well, and I will say, like, our immigration system is badly broken. It's been broken for a long time. It was broken during the Obama administration. It was broken during the Bush administration. It was broken during the Obama administration. It was broken during the Bush administration.

It was broken during the Clinton administration. And the problem that you referenced, Tommy, a lot of those kids that were missing, that happened during the Obama years. And part of what happened was in 2013 and 2014, we had a surge of unaccompanied minors who came to the border by themselves, children. They weren't children as young as the ones

who were being ripped away from their parents right now, but they were like 13, 14-year-olds who their parents sent to the border by themselves, children. They weren't children as young as the ones who were being ripped away from their parents right now, but they were like 13, 14-year-olds who their parents sent to the United States because there was horrible violence in Guatemala and Honduras, and they show up, and you get to the border, and you don't know what to do with them. And so what the first thing they do is they try to pair them with a relative,

and if they can't find a relative in the United States, then they try to put them in foster care, and if they can't do that, then they try to send them back together. So they're trying to do the then they hope then they try to send them back together so they're trying to do the right thing but the system is so broken that they can't figure it out what's happening so that's a bad system right but what's happening now like it's i think it's important to realize that what trump has done has never been done before this is a level of cruelty far beyond what any administration, Bush, Obama, Clinton, like, because it is all, even when Obama, the Obama administration was dealing with

immigration and deporting people and everything else, there was always, always a belief that we would keep children with their parents. And now we've decided that that's not something that we're going to do. Well, all this from the party that touts itself as being pro-life. That is the thing that really drives me insane. How can you call yourself pro-life or pro-family? Pro-family is another label. Pro-family.

Are you fucking kidding me? You're breaking families up. And look, and they know what they're doing because John Kelly said, look, hopefully we won't have to do this for too long, but we need to dissuade them from coming in, which is also ridiculous. Do you think

the people in Guatemala and Honduras who are fleeing from violence are looking at the fucking news and are like, oh, I better not go to America. They're taking away children now because they're on Twitter? Look, they want... This is also... We're only as good as the unfairness will tolerate.

They believe, they have a sincere belief that these are people faking asylum, that these are people who just want to come to America, that yeah, they're escaping violence, but there's always been violence. That doesn't really count, right? Trying to escape with your kids from violence, from drug cartels or just the immiseration

in parts of your country shouldn't count and shouldn't count as asylum. And they view brown people trying to come into this country to start over because where they were living was so heinous and so unforgiving that they needed to try everything to escape. They think that's taking advantage of the system. And so they view that taking advantage of the system as more wrong, as so costly to us as Americans,

even though it doesn't cost us anything to welcome people who are going to come in and get jobs and build lives here, that it's worth this punishment of people that they're dehumanizing. The other thing, too, is, just to your point about the brokenness of the immigration system, one of the reasons all of this is happening is because not just Republicans, but also Democrats over many years have decided that the only pain to be visited upon people in our immigration system are the people trying to come into the country. You know,

we build an extra legal system where you can come here and work for cash under the table, work in all kinds of industries. You can become a subcontractor so that you can work at places that couldn't technically hire undocumented people. Your kids can come and have new lives here. We built a system on the backs of undocumented people. But when there are raids, you don't see owners of companies being carted off in handcuffs. You see undocumented people as the only people who pay the price.

So we have spent 30 years building a system telling people to come here, and the only people who get hurt are the people who are the most desperate and most in need, and that is a collective failure, too. That's all. So I think the question

now is, what can we do about this? And I think that obviously it's the weekend right now, you can we do about this? And I think that, obviously, it's the weekend right now. You're probably listening to this on a Monday. But, like, there should be an uproar in Congress next week over this. And Democrats should lead it. You're right that we can't expect fucking Mitch McConnell to do anything about it. But, like, I've been looking around for statements. Kamala Harris said something.

Brian Schatz. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Chris Murphy and a couple of other Democratic senators and some Democratic congressmen too. Every single elected Democrat should be up in arms about this, should be screaming from the rooftops about this. So call your congresspeople next week as much as you can. And also, there's a lot of lawyers and there's a lot of people trying to help, public defenders trying to help these immigrants and help these children on the border right now. And they could use a lot of help because they don't have the resources.

So you can donate to United We Dream. You can donate to the ACLU. Those are two organizations that are helping out a lot. And we'll post the links on Twitter afterwards, and people should go donate. Yeah. I'll just... It's a crime.

It's a crime to take kids away from their parents who are coming here and following the rules. It's not just wrong. It's not just morally reprehensible. The United States is committing crimes against these people. And it's state terror. It's as bad as it gets. That's all. It's worse than just a policy. Chris Hayes did a great segment about this last night, and he had an ACLU lawyer on, and the lawyer said, if some of these politicians could go sit in one of those ICE detention

centers in one of those courtrooms when the child is ripped away from the mother or the father and see what happens, I don't think they would be quiet right now. And you should tell your congressman to go do that. So, all right. Let's talk about some real criminals. Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, and Don Jr. So we're going to start with Cohen. A few weeks ago, it was revealed that Cohen received a million-dollar payment from a private equity firm owned by Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian oligarch so shady that he's been sanctioned by the government for interfering in our election and questioned by Robert Mueller's investigators at an airport. Now the New York Times reports that Vekselberg met with Cohen at Trump Tower

to talk about U.S.-Russia relations just 11 days before Trump's inauguration and a few weeks before the million dollars hit Michael Cohen's account. And we know this because the C-SPAN camera caught them at Trump Tower. That is so stupid. Remember that camera and everyone's like, I wonder what use this will be. It's a fucking documentary of crime. It's like, there's Kanye and there's the Russian oligarch that's helping interfere in our election. Yeah. Tommy, what did you think about this story?

I mean, it's so fucked up. So just like real quick on what an oligarch is. These aren't just like when. So when the Soviet Union broke up, they privatized all these assets, like oil and gas, like aluminum mines, like big things. And people that were politically connected took ownership of them. But you had to be powerful and influential. So these guys amassed a ton of power, and then Putin came along

and was like, fuck that, I'm going to slap these guys down. So he took the richest guy in Russia, arrested him, put him on trial, had him literally sit in a cage like Saddam Hussein or someone in a banana republic and he was like, you work for me now. So when you read about Michael Cohen meeting with an oligarch, this isn't some rich prick from Wall Street or a guy who exited at a VC firm. This is someone politically connected that is probably a pseudo-agent or agent of the

Russian government. So it's a carve-out that's useful because it gives them some distance, but no one should be fooled. If these guys are sending 500 grand to Michael Cohen, there's a reason. Wasn't for real estate advice. It wasn't for real estate advice. It's not for real estate advice. They weren't trying to get into the taxi medallion game. Yeah.

Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen was looking around in 2009 and he was like, taxi medallions. This Uber thing? Uber's a flash in the pan. I'm going all in on long-term taxi-related assets. Yeah. And print newspapers. term taxi related assets.

And print newspapers. It is just fascinating to me that somebody who has $500,000 deposits going into his account, $1 million deposits going into his account, how does he still so aggressively look like shit? If I had that much money,

I would look amazing. You're going to start spending some of that oligarch cash. I know. Unless it's not going to you. Maybe it's going to Donald Trump, you know? We're at this sort of, you know, there's been this question about, like, well, what kind of corruption do we really need here? Like, do we need the equivalent of, like, blocks of cash they find in a refrigerator?

Like, we're getting there. That's what this is. We're now at the... Well, we're getting the reports of it. Who knows what we... Again, we don't know what Robert Mueller knows. He probably knows, he almost definitely knows

a lot more than we do. Right, but these reports are reports of basic corruption. Not complicated corruption, not influence peddling. I'll give you money, you give me a government service. Michael Cohen, at some point,

we take a photograph with a briefcase where there's cartoon dollars coming out of the sides of it. That's how you know. He's going to be in a 19th century muckraking yellow journalism cartoon with a big top hat. I mean, so my take on this is I think that as long as, you know,

the economy for right now, which is pretty much decoupled from decisions that are made on the executive level, or it's lagging enough that we're not seeing results of these decisions right the second, as long as the economy, as long as people feel like the economy is doing well, I think they're not going to freak out about corruption because it's like, well, whatever, I'm doing fine. But I think eventually the shit's going to hit the fan. Eventually what we're seeing in our own lives and our own pocketbooks is going to be a reflection of what's been happening for the last two years. And when that happens...

You're already seeing it, right? They're announcing double-digit premium increases after the Republicans tried to sabotage the Affordable Care Act for next year. So it's starting to happen, too. It's not in a broader level. We're not in a recession. Right. Yeah. I mean, but to be fair, though, if you don't want high medical bills, you should just consider not getting sick.

That's true. That's true. That's true. So it's not just Michael Cohen. We should talk about Roger Stone. Oh, my God. So it's not just Michael Cohen. We should talk about Roger Stone. Emails obtained by the Wall Street Journal show that in September of 2016, Stone asked a New York radio personality who'd been in touch with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks for access to stolen Clinton emails.

Stone withheld these documents from the House Intelligence Committee, which seems rather problematic. And things have also seemed to sour since then between Stone and this radio personality, Randy Cridico. Stone wrote to him in an email in April, Everyone says you are wearing wire for Mueller. And according to an email Cridico provided to Mother Jones, Stone also wrote to him this spring, Prepare to die, cocksucker. But he put up space in between cock and sucker, which I thought was the most

Roger Stone-esque. You know what I appreciate about that? It really focuses you on the true meaning of the term. You know, so often, it's like how Diet Coke, you don't really think of it as diet and coke, it's just Diet Coke. Like, when we say cocksucker,

it's just like, you know, it's say cocksucker, it's just like, you know, it's a term of insult. And in the back of your mind, you know what it refers to. But cocksucker is so much more vulgar somehow. It's subtle, but worth highlighting. We're going to earn that explicit rating on today's episode. It's the news, John. This is like 1998 all over again. How will we talk to the children? But love it. How funny would it be if Roger Stone goes to jail because of Hillary's emails?

Oh. I hadn't thought about that. That's so nice. It's like it's a real thing. Lock him up. You know? That is terrific. Roger Stone seems eminently screwed. It's like, it seems like there's no one who's ever met Roger Stone

who would care enough about Roger Stone to not fucking rat him the fuck out to the FBI. Like, no one who's spent any time with him has walked away saying, I'd fucking die for that man. I'd jump in front of a train for Roger Stone. What they say is, yuck, what do you want to know? So that's cool. But let's, you know, there's no justice in this world. He'll be on a list of ten names pardoned in a tweet.

It'll be a screenshot from a Samsung S2 with a bunch of names, and Trump says, I hereby pardon them to stop the Democratic witch hunt. Also, Gillibrand should be in jail. As should Kamala Harris. Vote for me. That's it that's the message so last but not least we have Don Jr.

everyone's favorite Democratic Senator Chris Coons wrote in a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley this week that he's concerned Donald Trump Jr. may have lied to Congress

when he testified that he wasn't aware that any other foreign governments besides Russia had offered help to the Trump campaign and that he wasn't aware that any other foreign governments besides Russia had offered help to the Trump campaign and that he hadn't sought that kind of help. The reason he thinks he lied is because the New York Times reported last week that Trump Jr. took a meeting with an emissary representing Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the head of an Israeli social media company that had drawn up a plan to carpet bomb social media

for Trump's campaign. So it does seem like he lied to Congress. Meanwhile, not enough for Don Jr. to have that happen. Yahoo News reported Friday that the FBI has obtained wiretaps collected by Spanish prosecutors of conversations involving a close Putin ally who met with Trump Jr. at an NRA convention in 2016. The man leading the Spanish investigation of the Russians who were monitored said this week, Mr. Trump's son should be concerned. So that's exciting. That is great.

Oh, man. What do we think, guys? Don Jr. going to skate by? Don Jr. rotting in Spanish jail seems also cool. It seems... No, I would say it's muy divertido. But also, I think it's really funny that Don Jr.'s, like, espionage and corruption form

is about as good as his squat form. He's really... I don't know if you follow him on Instagram. You should not follow him on Instagram, but I follow him on Instagram. Aaron follows him so you don't have to. Yeah. He posts photos of himself doing squats in a way that will very

seriously injure his knees. Oh, he's going to fuck up his back. He's going to fuck up his back. His knees are so far over his fucking toes. Legally and physically. I know. When you think about it.

He's not protecting his back. My favorite John Jr. piece that I read today was about how his recent Instagram posts are your classic thirst trap because he's newly single and he's posting pictures of himself sweaty at the gym with captions like literally Donald Pump. So he's out there. He's out there, ladies. Meanwhile, he's on those bird legs because, you know, he's the kind of guy that just doesn't do the legs.

No, he skips leg day. He definitely skips leg day. He says he doesn't, but he's full of shit. He skips leg day. He's definitely doing air squats and calling it leg day. We can get into it, but it's vain and revealing. I will say, though, just kind of going back to, I don't know, Donald, his place in the pantheon of pop culture.

It does, you know, other people have pointed this out, but it does really bother me that SNL's characterization of him is that he's the dumb one and not Eric. Or no, that Eric's the dumb one and not Don. Because Don is, like, clearly the idiot. Eric Eric's the dumb one and not Don. Yeah. Because Don is like clearly the idiot. Eric's smart enough to shut the fuck up. Yeah. Yeah.

We are sort of getting a picture here, though, of where this might go, even though the story is pretty vague. John's getting us back on track. I was just like, hey, guys, there's collusion happening. I don't know. It does seem like we also found out that Russia was funneling money to help the Trump campaign through the NRA. And now we have, and we know that Trump... National Russia Association.

Episode title? Episode title, yeah. National Russia Association. Will it work? Maybe. And now we know that the FBI has these wiretaps. So it tells us a couple of things. One, again, that Mueller and the FBI have a wiretaps. So it tells us a couple things. One, again, that Mueller and the FBI have a lot more.

They know a lot more than we do. And two, the whole thing is like, everyone's like, is there occlusion? Is there no occlusion? It's pretty all out in the open there at this point. There's Donald Trump. Donald Trump Jr. has taken meetings. He's accepting it. Roger Stone's asking for hacked emails at this point.

Right. And I think a key point about all of this, too, is it all doesn't have to add up to one grandmaster plan. Right. These are a lot of different people kind of, you know, operating either with Donald Trump's explicit or implicit encouragement to just try to help in any way possible. It doesn't matter.

No legal issues didn't matter. Being scrupulous or moral didn't matter. And they're just trying to bring try to help in any way possible. No legal issues didn't matter. Being scrupulous or moral didn't matter. And they're just trying to bring stuff to him. Don Jr. desperately wants the love of his father, and he cannot have it because Donald Trump is incapable of love. It's the core of everything. He wears it on his face every single day. There's not a picture of Don Jr. that doesn't say,

how can I get my father to love me? Is it possible? What is it like to feel the love of a father? But, yeah. So, here's the thing about Don Jr. Obviously

the intent to collude is there and it appears that a semi-successful collusion is there. But I will say that all of the Trump kids that Donald Trump acknowledges as his kids, so like Sans, Tiffany, and Baron, I feel like their entire lives...

What are you oohing? Yeah, no, let's be real. Good for Tiffany and good for Baron. Right. So I feel like Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka were forever going

to the office with their dad and being given like a pretend phone to act like they're at work with their dad. But now their father is the president

and they're still thinking that there are no stakes. But in reality, they might have been compromising American interests at the expense of porn.

Right. And Jared was the one that we were all told was the smart one and married into the family, noted Harvard grad, I believe. That's right, yeah. We learned recently, good work, all of you. Yeah, what do you think paid for this place? You think it was the sweatshirts? We're in the Kushner arena.

We learned recently that all the people in Saudi Arabia and the UAE that he's been cozying up to and handing over our foreign policy decision making to refer to him as the clown prince because they think he's a fucking idiot. So the crime family is very stupid. Tells you all you need to know. He's not doing well.

That's it for the news and now we have something else. Now for a game we call OK Stop. There we go. Finally. Here's how it works. We'll roll the clip. When we feel like it, we say OK Stop to talk about it.

Every year, the sitting president delivers the commencement speech to the U.S. Naval Academy, and this year was no different. Luckily, Fox News show The Five was there to review Trump's commencement speech so we didn't have to watch the whole thing. Let's roll the clip. President Trump putting America first front and center during a rousing commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy graduation. We are witnessing the great reawakening of the American spirit and of American might. The fight must come. There is no other alternative. Victory, winning.

OK, stop. What is he talking about? Okay, stop. Okay, why? Okay, so the other day Mike Pence tweeted hashtag winning in response to the NFL's rule change. Right now, Donald Trump is saying winning in this speech. The origin of winning was Charlie Sheen in a manic episode. Meltdown.

Meltdown. Meltdown. When he also introduced the concept of tiger blood to America. I will say it ironically when I have just thrown up from drinking too much. It's not cool. It's not cool. Honestly, the Trump administration is the Charlie Sheen manic episode of governance. We're living through it. We're all dealing with it right now.

I just want to make one point about Donald Trump's eyes. I don't know if he's tanning or if he's refusing to put down his phone when he's getting makeup around his eyes. I don't know. But the American Psycho 1980s tanning bed raccoon eye thing? I think it's great.

I feel like there's a portmanteau there that somehow combines the word raccoon with the word oompa loompa. Like raccoon paloompa. Raccoon paloompa. Just one note about the speech. He was speaking at the Naval Academy. John McCain graduated

at the Naval Academy, served his country for many years, held prisoner, was tortured in Vietnam, served in the U.S. Senate, is dying of cancer. Didn't mention him. Didn't mention him once in the speech. And also, not surprising at all. The least surprising thing in the world.

Browsing speech. Were you prepared for that? You seem stunned. I'm trying to figure out what I should talk about. Should I talk about North Korea or that amazing commencement speech? Finally a commencement speech for the rest of the... For the second wave millennials in the room, MTV used to show music videos. The woman there in yellow is named Kennedy.

She was a VJ. Oh, that's Kennedy. That's Kennedy. What happened? I was my least favorite Kennedy. Where are they now? But if it were pronounced, where are they now? So I was trying to figure out how the fuck Kennedy jumped from failed VJ to this show.

Well, I think, I mean, people can't see it at home, but the look on her face tells you all you need to know right now. I'm just looking at Greg Gutfield. Yeah, Kennedy doing this is a lot like Mr. T selling, you know, infomercial ovens. Careers are long. Save. So, I was... Save. Save money.

You done? Yeah. So, I was Googling her today. She was a big Nixon fan. She was Republican. And then she said, the quote was, social conservatism was, quote, really bringing me down. So she became a libertarian because Kurt Loder gave her an Ayn Rand book. I just wanted to share that with everybody. is from her wikipedia page that is real that's a bummer kurt loder hard to hear and he's speaking a language that everyone around the world understands including our adversaries so when he says stuff that that is conveying america first

and we're back and we're great it's kind of of meant for Russia. It's meant for China. Okay, stop. Why are all of, like... Okay, so, like, maybe half of the Trump guys are all evolving into the same kind of vaguely Rankin and Bass villain guy. Like, Jeff Sessions looks like a little bit of a claymation elf. Oh, yeah. Greg Gutfeld is evolving into a claymation elf.

It's the ears. Roger Stone, also a claymation elf. It's the ears. Roger Stone, also a claymation elf. It's just an observation. I think it's just that it's like how the force, when you go to the dark side, it slowly starts to show itself in how you look, just inevitably. I just think you can't sit at this table and do this

without it slowly coming out of your pores. I just feel like I'm talking about the America first message. The headlines are filled with the fact first message. Like, the headlines are filled with the fact that they asked Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia to help them win an election

and, like, took a ton of money for them. And then they're still sitting there talking about an America first policy right now. It's so helpful to see Fox,

like, to see its form now because it's, we'll know in any future administration, just, like, be aware this entity would defend anything. Our version of state TV, it's the way the NRA's version of fascism

doesn't look like German fascism, it doesn't look like Italian fascism, it looks like American fascism. And our version of state-run television propaganda doesn't look like North Korean propaganda, which is someone in a 1980s sort of pink, big, shouldered like business suit. Looks like Greg Gutfield in a fucking unicorn mug.

It's great. It's Greg Gutfield. This is what American propaganda will look like. It's red, white and blue. And somebody from MTV is there. It's a bar in a Long Island bar. Yeah. It's meant for everybody who actually understands it. And I know that it works because it upsets the elites who prefer

the flaccid lexicon. OK, stop. What are these? What is he talking about, elites? I just heard him say flaccid. I heard him say flaccid. I don't want to imagine anything involving hardness or softness in the context of Greg Gutfeld.

No, I just... This is the thing that happens on Fox News all the time. This decrying of elites. It's like, what are you talking about? Also, your party controls the presidency, the Congress, the judiciary, and you're on the largest, most popular

cable network in the country. You're fucking there, buddy. You're on the elites. You're at the very top of the fucking pyramid. You're winning, Greg Gutfield. Look at you. You're a champ. They're hashtag winning.

They're also in this alternate universe where the only way that they know how to talk about anything is if they're from a position of imagining themselves as the victims. Right. And we're in a world where Beyonce is the president

in Fox News world and like campus culture is out of control and like snowflakes are dictating what everybody can say and it's Fox News is on top of it. Fox News is the representation of the most powerful human beings on planet earth who want to feel like victims. The typical political platitudes. This speech was about America first. It was wrapped in patriotism. He wrapped himself in the flag. He wrapped himself in the military.

I think that's, Jesse, why he spent time. He wants them and their stamp of approval and their high approval ratings among the American people to transfer to him. When you question somebody's patriotism, that means you can read their mind. If somebody's actually expressing... Okay, stop. What was Juan Williams saying just there?

The hypocrisy is so glaring, it's almost hard to talk about. The notion that Fox would take offense at questioning someone's patriotism when they just savaged John Kerry for years when they accused Barack Obama of apologizing for America, of not loving his country, of not being born here for years and years. It's just so fucking infuriating. It's also, by the way, not

a Trump thing. Remember what Marco Rubio said, that he didn't think Barack Obama had America's interest at heart? He said he was intentionally trying to destroy America. Intentionally trying to destroy America. You know, the patriotism, like, they're like, ah,

we know this is getting the elites all hot and bothered. Like, when Donald Trump says we're going to put American first and American might and all the right,

we're not, I don't feel as though we're fuming. I think we're rolling our eyes and also remembering that he did a bunch of anti-American crimes which continue.

It's not, it's not getting us. It doesn't make us, you know, crimes, which continue. It's not getting us. It doesn't make us. You know, it's up there. It's just like the idea that, like, got those liberals again by saying America comes first. I mean, and also to bring it back to kind of a downer of a topic that we were talking about earlier, like, talk about people that value America, people that are risking their lives to come to America because they value, like, the idea of America so much

and what it can do to their family. These people are sitting in an air-conditioned studio that might be like five degrees too cold. And meanwhile, there are people coming up from Honduras and Guatemala who value America more than anything. They got to work in a town car that picks them up every day and drops them off. Yeah, but they really wanted the SUV.

They wanted the Suburban. I think these guys are full of shit, guys. What? I think they're full of shit. The love for a country, you can say, oh, that's just, you know, he's trying to play to this audience. But you don't know that. You don't know that. So what you're doing is, it's not an argument to say that you're kind of...

Okay, stop. So it just went through all five of the five uh which still hasn't said anything his point yeah we haven't heard from jesse waters uh the scamp of the group you know the vixen we haven't heard i have i hate them beat his mind that he yes not. Yes, you did. You basically said it was all an act. He was wrapping himself in the flag. He wrapped himself in the flag.

Maybe he loves America. I think we all learned a lot from that. It's the worst show on TV. Just poison being pumped into the brains of ex-urban senior citizens all over America. All day long. All day long. All day long. Should we do a game? And that's okay, stop!

Now for a game we call Alternative Veritas. Harvard University, where a young student who has worked tirelessly on every paper, assignment assignment and test can finally sit shoulder to shoulder in the same classroom as the docile semi-literate grandson of a coal magnate. Oh, I see.

I see how it goes. How many people here went to Harvard? It's going to get worse. If you were really that smart, you would have known not to woo. There's been some good students here at Harvard, or as the worst of you would say, Cambridge. Students like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Malia Obama, Jeremy Lin.

But for every FDR, there's a real POS. When it comes to American public life, Harvard is not sending its best. So we thought we'd highlight some terrible Harvard alumni in a game we're calling Alternative Veritas. Would anyone out there like to play the game in merch? But it's already done. She's the biggest fan. You're playing and you went to Yale.

We'll let you play. It's fine. We'll just say hi to her for one second. Hi, my name's Grace. I'm a big fan of all of you. Thanks for coming to Boston finally. Thank you, Grace. Hi, what name's Grace. I'm a big fan of all of you. Thanks for coming to Boston, finally. Thank you, Grace. Thanks for being here. Remember Grace.

Hi, what's your name? Matt. Matt. You have a Yale hat on. I do. Okay, I like the trolling. I appreciate that. Don't care where you went to school.

It's not that big a deal about you. Stop making it such a big deal. Well, we couldn't all go to the NESCAC. That's right. I'm not an EIF. Matt, you're stalling. Here's how the game's going to work. We're going to read you questions about various people who may or may not be Harvard graduates. It'll be up to you to figure out the answer.

Are you ready to play? I'm ready. Great. Question number one. Academia is often accused of being a safe space for the liberal elite to get together, smoke pot in generous locker rooms, and shut down some free expression. Pretty good. Which of these proud non-PC truth-tellers grace the halls of Harvard where conservatism is supposedly a crime?

Is it A. Famous sexual harasser Bill O'Reilly. Is it B. Wise-cracking anti-gay thought leader Antonin Scalia. Or is it C. Is it B? Or is it C? C. It's all of the above. O'Reilly went to the Kennedy School. Scalia went to Harvard Law.

Dershowitz, youngest professor ever at Harvard Law. I don't know what you're shouting. Question number two. These Harvard people are like, call on me, call on me. Give it a goddamn rest. You already got in. The only hard part is getting in. on me. Call on me. Give it a goddamn rest. You already got in. The only hard part is

getting in. Getting through the application process and it's A pluses so you get it into the law school. Question number two. Scientists at Harvard demonstrated the first successful heart valve surgery, introduced the small vax vaccine to America, and luckily for Donald

Trump, invented the blood test that detects syphilis. But despite saving all those lives, which famous killer walked the hallowed halls of Harvard University? Is it A? Attractive cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. Is it B? Unabomber and tiny house enthusiast Ted Kaczynski

Is it C The least funny clown of all time John Wayne Gacy Or is it D The Zodiac Killer Ted Cruz It's B It's B and D But we'll give it to you

We'll give it to him We'll give it to him It's true Kaczynski got a B.A. in mathematics And Ted Cruz and D. But we'll give it to you. We'll give it to him. It's true. Kaczynski got a B.A. in mathematics and Ted Cruz, the Zodiac Killer, went to Harvard Law School before he took to filibustering and murder.

Question number three. Harvard has been home to great musicians and poets like Pete Seeger, T.S. Eliot, and friend of the pod Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine, who always plays guitar next to Michael Moore on the steps of Wall Street banks. But which artist is Harvard not so proud of? Is it A? The guy who told Drake to release a song called Duppy. Is it B?

All four members of the band Nickelback. Is it C? Is it C? And Nickelback. Is it C? Is it C? Ernst Hoppensteigel, a former Harvard cheerleader and Hitler confidant who claimed to have based a famous Nazi march off of the Harvard fight song. Or is it D?

The audio terrorist who wrote all of Justin Timberlake's most recent music where he finally lets us meet the real Justin. And then it has to be D. Do you think it... Did you say D? No. It's the Nazi. It was the Nazi.

Also, like, two of these answers were Canadian. Really? Yeah, Justin Bieber and Nickelback, both Canadian. Anyway, that's weird. Weird. Good for them. Weird. Weird game.

Yes. Yes, the Ernst-Hofnagel class of 1909 even came for his reunion in 1934 while he was Hitler's leading international propagandist. I hope they had punch. Other fact, he met Hitler through a friend from the Hasty Pudding Club. Question number four. Matt from Yale. Donald Trump's cabinet is filled with the best and the brightest minds of our generation. Which of these Trump cabinet members

proudly wore the Harvard Crimson? Is it A? Senior advisor to the president, Jared Kushner. Is it B? Senior advisor to the president, Steve Bannon. C? Cocaine in human form, Anthony Scaramucci. D.

Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. E. The guy who held up a soup can on TV, Wilbur Ross. F. Disgraced piece of shit, Rob Porter. G. Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta. H. The vice chairman of that bullshit voter fraud committee, Chris Kobach.

I. Deputy Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Rosen. Everybody knows Jeffrey. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao. K. Associate Attorney General Rachel Brandt. I. The only person between us and certain death, Rod Rosenstein. What do you think, Matt? I think this is why I went to Yale. Oh, good.

Not a great comedy program at Yale. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. You always denigrate. I get it. Honestly, I hate both Yale and Harvard. It's like alien predator.

Whoever wins, we lose. Is it? All of the above. All of the above. All of the above. You got it. That's only in the interest of time. There are 14 other names we didn't list, and we didn't look that hard, and that doesn't even include Kennedy School Visiting Fellows, Sean Spicer,

Reince Priebus, and Corey Lewandowski, or Senior Fellow, Dina Powell. What happened to the Veritas, Harvard? You know, when you think about it? Although Steve Mnookin, Ben Carson, and John Bolton went to Yale. So I just think another plug for Williams College here. And that's our game. Give it up for Matt, who won a parachute gift card.

Give it up for Matt, who won a parachute gift card. When we come back, we'll have our interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren from the Edward M. Kennedy Institute. We are very lucky that Senator Elizabeth Warren is in the building to welcome your senator. Senator, thank you for joining us. Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. This is fun. Did you bring Dunkin'? No, not this time. I had it this morning. I was very excited. John, in Los Angeles, John Postmates Dunkin' Donuts coffee and breakfast sandwiches to his

home on a regular basis. It's a long-standing story. In fact, you know me, I'm always watching the finance end of things, and I saw that when the announcement was made that John and Tommy were going to be here, that Dunkin' stock went up another 15%.

We're staying at the W Hotel, and right across the street, there's a Dunkin' Donuts. There's a Dunkin'. And I woke up this morning, and my wife's like, should we get breakfast ordered? Should we go to a nice restaurant? What's your favorite place in Boston? This is home for you. And I said, no, no, we're going right across the street. Right, right, exactly, exactly.

You know, I think they actually amend the directions on your app here. You know, most apps are like you go down five-eighths of a mile. Here, you go down two Duncans and then turn left, and then you go past a Duncan on your left, then at the Duncan on your right. You make another turn and then come around. Next to the packie. It works. It works. Senator, so the last time we had you on the pod,

you talked with John and Tommy about the partial repeal of Wall Street reform that was being debated in Congress. You call it the Bank Lobbyist Act, which we like to call it. So the president signed this repeal this week after 33 House Democrats and 17 Senate Democrats voted for it. Yeah, we're really starting out with fun stuff, aren't we? Well, I was going to ask, why do you think your Democratic colleagues,

all of whom supported Dodd-Frank, that voted for this, why do you think they voted the way they did? And I guess more importantly, where do we go from here? I saw that you tweeted, this isn't the end of this fight. Right.

Okay, so let me start with the fact that the overwhelming majority of Democrats voted against it, took a strong stand and said no. And just to remind everybody what we're talking about here with the Bank Lobbyist Act, and the reason we call it the Bank Lobbyist Act, is it was driven by the bank lobbyists. They're the ones who made big money off this. They were hired by the giant financial institutions to push this. Now, for those who voted in favor on both sides, they said, hey, there was help in here for community banks. And, you know, this is what's frustrating about Washington. Both sides were willing to offer some help to community banks.

That was not the dispute. The community banks were held hostage so that the Republicans said, we're not moving this thing forward unless the help for the community banks is accompanied by help for the giant banks. And the help for the giant banks came in two different forms. One form is that we have about 40 giant banks in the country right now that are on a special watch list. That's just the way to think of it. So they get extra scrutiny. Every other bank gets the regular regulatory stuff, but those banks, you check them more often, you do stress tests. Why? Because when they screw up, they take down the whole economy.

And they're the ones out there running a lot of fast plays. So the first thing this bill does is it takes 25 of the 40 biggest and just moves them off the watch list. So it treats a bank that is a $225 billion bank as if it were the tiny little community bank out in Enid Oklahoma okay and poses no more risk to the economy than a bank of that size and by the way just so everybody's clear on this about kind of what that means in terms of size anyone in here remember Countrywide? Oh, Countrywide. Countrywide. That was the bank that was pushing out the lying, cheating mortgages that basically blew up this economy. At their height in 2005, 2006, they were pushing out one in every five mortgages in the entire country. And what was Countrywide's

capitalization? About $225 billion. In other words, the next Countrywide will be treated like a tiny little community bank has been taken off the watch list. So that's one problem. The other is there were a few just small technical adjustments. Don't worry your pretty little heads about them. Tiny little adjustments that mean that the ones that are still called the too-big-to-fail banks, that we still leave them in that designation, can do things like reduce their capital standards so that if things go wrong again, you, the American taxpayer, can pick up the ticket on it. And keep in mind on this, in terms of risk, because that's what this is all about with these big banks. In terms of risks, the Wall Street Journal editorialized against this bill,

saying don't let those big banks take on more risk. It doesn't work out well for the rest of America when that happens. Bloomberg Business editorialized against it. Even the government agencies stepped in and said, not a good idea. And yet, Congress rolled this one on forward. And if you'll let me, I want to do one more piece because this just drives me nuts. So it's bad enough the big banks are pushing, muscling this thing through. They're holding the community banks hostage, but as long as it's moving, what they do is they say, let's get on just a couple of more punches for hard-working families. First punch, lending discrimination. Lending discrimination

is real in America. There's a new study that came out that showed 61 cities where they did the analysis and found out basically that African Americans, Latinos have a harder time getting loans than whites who have the same credit scores, same credit histories. And when they do get those loans, they pay more. And think about the implications of that over time. Okay, 61 cities, new study. Now how do you get a study like that? You get a study like that with something called HMDA data, okay, acronym Welcome to Washington.

But the point is data that every bank has to report. Man, if you've got a lending discrimination problem, there are two approaches you could use. One is you could say we need to attack lending discrimination head-on. We need to call out the financial institutions where it's happening. We need to enforce the laws, the anti-discriminatory laws, right? That's one approach. The approach in this bill is to say 85% of banks no longer have to report data on lending discrimination. Think about that. So that's in this bill. And then one more. Home mortgages. That's how the big banks blew up the economy last time. They did it

one family at a time, selling them one lie and cheat in a home mortgage that people didn't understand. But boy, the bank was clear. They knew. They knew that you weren't going to be able to repay that thing, that you were going to have to refinance and that meant more money. Or if you couldn't, they were going to get the house back and resell it again, which in an up market was money, money, money, right? So when Dodd-Frank was passed, Congress said, we're going to create, okay, everybody get ready to applaud. We're going to create this new consumer agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Yay! But, just in case, we're also going to say there are certain things no matter what else the CFPB gets tied up in, they must

do on mortgages. There are going to be some new rules that have to come out basically to say if these big banks want to cheat people in the future, they are not going to be able to do it through home mortgages. So some things about what's called steering and yield spread premiums, which is just kind of a way of doing kickbacks and some tie-in arrangements on how they could make more money and cheat more people. So these rules get passed, and these rules apply, I just want everybody to follow me here, to regular bricks-and-sticks homes, mortgages on those kind of houses, the kind you'd expect.

They apply to condos. Sounds right to me. And they also apply to people who live in manufactured housing, trailers, double-wides, people who are trying to buy. Trailers, double whites. People who are trying to buy their homes, that's their entry-level point. What this bill says is the rules are still going to apply to bricks and sticks. They're still going to apply to condos.

But you know, those people who live in trailer parks, let them get cheated. It's not going to make a big difference. That's the kind of stuff that, when that happens, you just want to say, what kind of a government would let something like this happen to its own people? What kind of government would say,

we're going to help out for the profitability of the giant financial institutions, or in this help out for the profitability of the giant financial institutions or in this case for the companies that make these manufactured homes sell them, repo them, sell them, repo them sell them, repo them and make their money that way

we're going to let them we're going to move the needle over let them trick people a little more cheat people a little more fool people a little more so that the folks at the top can improve their bottom line, their profits. And here, if it weren't enough, at what moment in America does this happen? It happens at a moment when the banking industry is making record profits,

and it's true for all of them, so the rich get richer and everybody else eats dirt. That's what that new law is all about. Bad law. Yeah, bad law. Sort of... Bad law. So just sort of to follow up on that a little bit,

I mean, obviously there are big banks and financial institutions and their army of lobbyists pushing for laws that are clearly self-interested and going to hurt people. But I also think you have incredibly well-educated, well-meaning people making policies and making decisions based on policy papers and things they've learned. How do we ensure that more people in Washington who are working in the White House or Congress have actually experienced poverty and understand the implications of what they're doing on everyday folks so that it's not just lobbyists and then think tanks sort of figuring out what happened.

So I'm going to push this in a slightly different direction, and that is to talk about what I think is really going on in Washington. We've got to name it for what it is, corruption. This is just corruption. And it's corruption in so many ways that pervade what happens in Washington. And look, the American people have tumbled to parts of it. We talk a lot about campaign finance reform on our side, about Citizens United. We need to get money out of politics. And what, yes.

That would help a lot. It would help a lot. But it's not the only way that the influence of money is felt in Washington. It's not just the campaign contributions. And that really goes to your point. It's who Washington hears from every day. So folks go over and over. Think about this.

This has happened before. People say, I'm going to the polls to vote the bums out. And then they go to the polls and they vote. And government keeps working just the way it worked before. It just doesn't change. And so the cycle starts again. And they say, I'm going to the polls to vote the bums out. And it stays about the same, maybe gets a little worse. What's the reason for that? One of the reasons is because the people who are really running much of Washington aren't on the ballot. They're not there. Michael Cohen. Yeah, right. So let's at least pick the pieces that are the most obvious. So I'm

working right now. I'm working on a big piece of legislation. There's just an anti-corruption legislation. Clean government. That's what I want to see. Thank you. And let me offer three quick parts to it, just as a taste, right? These are the previews of coming attractions. But three quick parts to it just as a taste, right? These are the previews of coming attractions. But three quick

parts to it in thinking about all the work that gets done through the agencies, through the administration, through the cabinet officials, right? All that work that gets done in Washington. So what could you do? Well, I can think of three things. The first one is, you could say nobody gets to bribe people on their way in. So this business, for example, of giant financial institutions that will pay millions of dollars to their own employees to go take a leave of absence to work in government to regulate the very institution they are leaving. Anyone see anything wrong with that, right? So the first one is, no. If you want to serve in government, that's great,

but you don't get a parting gift from your company that suggests that maybe while you're in Washington, you're going to be doing a lot of work to help out your former and future employers. So that would be one. A second one would be, when you go to work in the government, you've got to get rid of your assets that create... No more conflicts of interest.

You've got to divest. That's it. Divest and disclose. And if you're not willing to divest and disclose, then don't take the job. We'll get someone else. And the third part is when you leave government, especially one of those really fancy jobs in government, you shouldn't get to trade on the list of friends you made while you were in government, because I think that changes how people think about it. So here's one. How about if we put a lifetime ban on lobbying, just to start, on every president, person who serves in Congress, agency head, and cabinet secretary. To say you want a fancy position like that, fine, but you're signing on the dotted line that you're not going to turn around and become a lobbyist

afterwards. It might help. Senator, so... You know, this bill that seems to put more power in the hands of the banks has just passed through Congress. The Supreme Court just ruled against workers who have arbitration clauses in their contracts. There is this debate about how Trump happened. It's a long one. But I think there's- Or a short one.

Sure. But I think there's these competing theories. One said, oh, it's our norms, our values, they've been undermined. But on the other hand, that what we're seeing is entrenched corporate power using that power to consolidate its authority in Congress, in the agencies, in the courts. 17 Democrats voted for something that you think is an emblem of the power of these banks. You're saying that we have elections where people vote for change and they don't get it.

Are Democrats right now representing the kind of change we need that if we were to win in 2018, people would feel as though their votes were validated? All right. That is a really good question. So I'm going to... I take this question really seriously.

In fact, it's a big part of what I talk about, is we've got to win in 2018. and we actually have to watch this in pieces. We win in 2018, we still don't have control to get everything through that we need to. So let me just play it on out. We win in 2018 and that puts us in a much stronger position to be able to, for example, stop some of the worst nominees that the Trump administration is pushing through, particularly lifetime judicial nominees. That's a powerfully important thing if we have control of the Senate. It gives us a chance to put a brake on something like a tax bill that gives away a trillion and a half dollars to giant corporations and billionaires and puts us in a position to put a brake on where at least the House says it and actually the Senate, Republicans say they want to go next,

and that is to cut Medicare, to cut Medicaid, to bring the budget closer back to balance. So it permits us to do that. If we are in a position in 2020 to, please God hear me, have Democrats in the House, in control of the Senate, and in the White House, then it's not just, that's the end goal. That's only the beginning. At that moment, we have got to deliver real change for the American people. That has to be our job. We can't just say, okay, we're here now. It cannot be that our goal is to go forward saying, we're not as bad as those guys. We do not suck as bad as the other side. We actually have to do something positive at that point.

So one follow-up on that, one of the many, many things that keeps me up at night, if the Democrats take the Senate, if we should be so fortunate in 2018, and we get to the place where there is a Supreme Court vacancy. If it's Ginsburg, if it's Kennedy, if it's someone on the court. Democrats at that point

have the power to make sure we don't get another Gorsuch. But to use that power, it may look like what Mitch McConnell did in holding that seat open for Gorsuch and making sure that Garland didn't get in. Do you think the Democrats, if faced with a nominee like Gorsuch,

when they're in control in the Senate, will hold the seat open or will block a nominee like that? So let me reframe this just slightly. In thinking about it this way, this is how I think about it. We had the filibuster for a very long time, but it was very rarely used. And the reason was because knowing that there was a filibuster meant you had to kind of keep those folks within a certain range. I get it. The people that George W. Bush would put in wouldn't be exactly the same as the people that Barack Obama would put in, but they'd be along the same road, right? They'd be somewhere in that close in. Merrick Garland. Look, Merrick Garland is the kind of man who could have been nominated by a Republican or a Democrat.

And decades and decades and decades in our past would have been that kind of guy. And what's changed, first with the loss of the filibuster, and can we also talk blue slips, or will that just make us sound so wonky that everybody else, right, it'll cause people to die laughing. Not this crowd, not where we're sitting, right? Anyway, there's some senate minutiae it's very frustrating it was turned against us yeah yeah there you go but the but that the bottom line is all of that was there but rarely used because it was a way to get us to come together and not politicize the judiciary, not get people who'd said things that just are disqualifying on its face, and not get people who come in with strong

ideological bents or already beholden to someone. You know the big problem? You just mentioned, actually, in the Supreme Court, you specifically went to the most recent decision that just said, sure, employers can require you to sign an arbitration clause. And to some folks, that may sound like, okay, so what's the big deal? Arbitration sounds cheaper than going to court. Yeah, except who picks the arbitrator? And if you get cheated, if you get harassed, if you get discriminated against, and you're told, go to our bought and paid for arbitrator, that's a bit of a problem. It's a bit of a problem because it takes legal rights that you are entitled to and says, you no longer have redress in an American court. Yes, you're an American citizen. Yes, your rights were violated.

But sorry, way back at the beginning of this employment relationship, before you knew who that guy was that you were working for or what this company was going to do, you signed and somewhere there in paragraph 39 in technical legalese, you just said, I don't care what you do to me. I'm never going to have the right to take you to court. And I'm not going to have the right to join with other people who were discriminated against, who were harassed,

and take you in a class action lawsuit. That's pretty stunning. So which Supreme Court justice in a 5-4 opinion just delivered that gift to corporate America? Answer, Neil Gorsuch. Neil Gorsuch.

But here's the point. Would you hold the seat? Well, so... So the question is who you put up. Because that's how I see it. I don't see it as starting out, saying I don't care who you put up, I'm holding the seat. That was what Mitch McConnell did. He said you send me anybody.

If it comes from Barack Obama, there's a two-letter answer, and the answer's no. I think that's wrong. But I do think you send a Neil Gorsuch to us, and the answer is no. We do hearings, we do it substantively, the answer would be no. Senator, we have to let you go, but I just have one last question, because I read something you said recently and I frankly found it a little shocking and I need to use this opportunity to ask, which is that you said that you're a big fan of the show Ballers.

Oh, yes. Now, we're HBO guys, but Game of Thrones, John Oliver, Barry's really good, but is it The Rock? Is it the whole thing? Why Ballers? It is the rock. Okay. Very cool. Thank you so much for being here.

Senator Elizabeth Warren. And that's our show. Thank you guys so much for coming out. Thank you Boston Calling. We love you. We'll be right back. I'm out.