Pod Save America - “This snowflake is enraged.”

Episode Date: August 31, 2017

Alyssa Mastromonaco joins the pod to talk about the response to Hurricane Harvey and Trump’s visit to Texas. Then, Jon and Dan discuss Trump’s tax reform speech, and his impending decision on the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. In just a few minutes, we'll be talking to the one and only Alyssa Mastromonaco about Hurricane Harvey and the federal response. In addition to being a best friend of the pod, Alyssa oversaw the federal government's disaster response when she was Deputy Chief of staff in the White House. So she'll have some things to say.

Other pods. On Wednesday, on Pod Save the World, Tommy talked to reporter Hannah Dreyer about the crisis in Venezuela and what it was like to watch a country collapse. So everyone, go download that. Also, happy birthday to Tommy Vitor. Tom's

birthday today. And tomorrow, Friday, on Emory Cox with Friends Like These, we'll talk about Texas politics and Hurricane Harvey. Plus, John Lovett answers a question from a listener. On with Friends Like These? On with Friends Like These. How did she get Lovett to agree to be on an additional pod? Lovett will not rest until he is on all of the Crooked Media pods all the time. The Lovett visit on Pod Save the World is going to be amazing.

He's already on the ads there. Tour update. Our tour is basically all sold out, except for Santa Barbara. If you want to buy tickets to the Santa Barbara show in December, go to crooked.com slash tours. I don't know what's going on in Santa Barbara there. I know. What's up with that? That makes me sad. That's our home state. That is like all of Crooked Media

or all of Pod Save America is in California and we can't sell out Santa Barbara. Hour and a half from LA, maybe less. It's a beautiful place. Check it out. When we come back back we'll get Alyssa on the phone and we will uh talk about the latest updates around Hurricane Harvey all right with us this morning best friend of the pod Alyssa Mastromonaco Alyssa how's it going

hi guys how's it going out there it's good where's it going out there? It's good. Where are you today? I'm in upstate New York making jam because that's what I do now. You make jam. Wow. I do. I'm into canning, like Little House on the Prairie style. That's lovely. Will you send us some?

Are you preparing for a disaster? I mean, canning is very important. The food does not spoil. It stays for 18 months. And you can get up and go whenever you have to because it's in nice little portable jars. You're like, canning is very important. The food does not spoil. It stays for 18 months and like you can get up and go whenever you have to because it's in nice little portable jars. You're like the world is ending. I need some peach marmalade. I'm going to send you some. Careful what you wish for. Okay. Now, Alyssa, we wanted to bring you on because, and I know you've been tweeting about

this, talking about this a lot in the last couple of weeks. I want to talk about Harvey, but I don't know if a lot of people know this, but when you were deputy chief of staff in the White House, part of your job was to oversee the federal government's disaster response. I also remember way back in 2005 when Katrina hit and Barack Obama was a senator at the time, and he wanted to go and visit Katrina victims. You sort of put together that trip and oversaw that. So you had a lot of experience dealing with federal disaster response. Let's go back to Katrina for a second, since there's a lot of chitter chatter on the internet that Barack Obama was president back then. Definitely not. Definitely a senator And was one of the first people to actually go

down. And he went to Houston instead of New Orleans to visit the people who had been displaced with President Bush and President Clinton. And unbeknownst to us, Oprah Winfrey, who showed up as well. I just remember how much that affected him. Do you remember that, Alyssa? Because he had just gotten to the Senate. And I remember he took that trip and came back and was just, um, it's like when you, when you go to these, when you go to these places, I mean, and it's not like a badge of honor, but I think I've been to the, I've been, you know, to the earthquake in Haiti, Sandy, I went down to Katrina with him, the herd, the tornadoes out in Missouri and Joplin and wildfires out in Colorado, like we've seen a lot of devastation in our time.

And the thing that's so sort of wrenching, like you can't go and not be affected. It can't not change your life. And that was one of the first things. I mean, that was his first year in office. And he went down and saw both where the federal government can fall really short and where it's, you know, completely necessary. And so I think that it sort of colored how he approached disasters, you know, for the rest of our time together. Yeah. So just to give everyone an update on Harvey, here's where we are. At least 38 have

died, including a Houston police officer, a mother who drowned while her child survived by clinging to her. Such a sad story. Over 30,000 Texans are in shelters right now. There's disaster declarations in 33 Texas counties. Some people are saying this could be the costliest natural disaster in American history. One estimate has a GDP impact of $190 billion that exceeds the impact of Katrina and Sandy combined. This is devastation beyond comprehension. Alyssa, how do you think, I want to talk about the federal government's response before we get to weather pundit Donald Trump. How do you think FEMA and other agencies have done so far in dealing with Harvey? What do you think FEMA and other agencies have done so far in dealing with Harvey? So, you know, I think it's so like this period of time, people are glad to be alive, right? In the coming days, people are going to start getting really pissed. And the thing that we have to remember is that, you know, the federal government, FEMA, the state of Texas have done their level best. I mean, people have already started criticizing the mayor of Houston saying they should have evacuated. You know, you really can

only do with the information that you have. And a couple other things that I just wanted to flag for the pod listeners out there, that right now there are 40,000 homes that they estimate has been destroyed, and only 15% of those are estimated to have flood insurance. Over 325,000 people have already registered for FEMA assistance, and 22% of people in Houston live below the poverty line. So let me explain what that means. What that means is that this is a housing disaster. FEMA is not going to be able to make families whole, and that's not really what they're meant to do. And the biggest need, which is why money is so important right now, the biggest need will be for families who have no flood insurance, who cannot repair their homes, and who still have mortgages. And that's going to

be a lot of people in the Houston area. So that is why one thing I wanted to say is that I know, you know, when you tweet about how people can help and people say, oh, the Red Cross, like there's been such like shitty things said about them. Here's the thing to remember. Very few organizations can mobilize as quickly as the Red Cross. So long-term, there may be other organizations you want to give to, but in terms of like triage and preparedness, the Red Cross is kind of who you want on the front lines right now because they're trained and they know what they're doing. just said. And then a lot of people have been tweeting back at us, look at the ProPublica report, look at NPR. There's been a lot of reports that, you know, Red Cross has mismanaged some money in past disasters. And so I'm not sure of exactly what to do on this. I also have heard,

and you tell me if I'm wrong, that local charities, Texas and Houston-based charities, tend to stick around and are able to help long after, you know, all the cameras leave. And so it's also good to donate to some local charities as well. Yes. And so for me, since I have been tweeting up the storm, and this is sort of like one of the, it is the single most important thing I was ever, you know, sort of allowed to do when I was at the White House, you know, I did give to the Red Cross, but I also gave to the local Houston SPCA and to the ASPCA and to, you know, animal shelters up in New York where the pets are being taken because many people know that my beloved shroomie was a Katrina rescue. And in Katrina, 150,000 animals died. And so to me, that's something that's really near and dear to my heart, but I did spread it out between the local, the national,

and then like, you know, where the pets are going to be taken because they need the resources to feed them and keep them and, you know, and place them. So that's, I think people just need, you know, Red Cross, like, you know, Save the Children has, like, an 86% rate of, you know, money donated going straight to where it's supposed to go. That's obviously a better rate. money donated going straight to where it's supposed to go, that's obviously a better rate. But in terms of like right now and what people need and who's trained to get the people out, I do think that, you know, we do need to make sure the Red Cross is funded fully. Yeah, I think spreading it out is a good idea, too. I mean, there's Texas food shelters.

There's funds in Texas that can help people who are looking for shelter, like you were just talking about, because this is a massive housing crisis. So there's Team Rubicon. So there's a lot of good charities to spread out the money to. Just don't give it to Joel Osteen. Oh, God. Alyssa, we should point out for the five podcast listeners who have not read your book that Shrummy is a cat. Your cat that was a rescue cat from Katrina. And for those five people, go buy the book. Buy the book.

It is not the Democratic strategist, Bob Trump. No, and actually don't buy the book. Give to a pet charity right now. That's right. So do you think, Alyssa, overall that FEMA is doing as well as they can be doing right now? I mean, how does this compare to what you saw in Sandy and other natural disasters? You know, it's flooding is in terms of, you know, when you're dealing with people who have been displaced in a situation like this, flooding is probably in so many ways, the most treacherous, both emotionally and physically, because in a hurricane, and I'm not, I'm not staging things in one force than the other, but in terms of like,

mentally getting people back to where they need to be, you know, right now people are in shelters, mentally getting people back to where they need to be. You know, right now people are in shelters. They're safe. You know, the shelters right now are safe. And their homes are underwater. The National Guard, Coast Guard, and FEMA have to go out now and do a whole other path and make sure everyone's been rescued. And then they need to go out again with the military and basically not volunteers,

but people who are professionals and say, like, which homes can people return to, which are condemned. And then once the water levels start to recede, which in some places will be four weeks, then people can start sort of understanding their state of life. And so this is going to be a really long road for people. I think that between FEMA, Houston, the federal government, I think they're doing everything they can. It's just this is, you know, borderline apocalyptic. And so you're never going to have 100 percent. They won't have thought of everything.

And so I do think, though, that they are responding as quickly as they can, working really hard and trying to make sure that people are safe and dry. And that's really the best thing you can do right now while the flooding levels still aren't even going down yet. All right. So let's talk about Donald Trump. He made a visit to Texas on Tuesday. A couple points from this visit. He did not meet with or talk to any survivors.

He gave a few remarks where he said, What a crowd. What a turnout. He's been wearing these USA hats that he's selling to fund his campaign. He thus far has not mentioned those who've been killed in the storm he has not called on americans to help or give to relief organizations yet he's complained about press coverage wonderful dan what were your thoughts on this well i mean first i think it is worth saying that in case people haven't picked this up yet we do not like Donald Trump we are not

pro-Trump but having said that putting aside the optics and politics of the visit which we should we'll talk about but we actually want the Trump administration to succeed here we're all rooting for that and I don't want to get that

lost in our critique of various things is the best to succeed here. Oh, yeah. We're all rooting for that. And I don't think, I don't want to get that lost in our critique of various things is the best thing for everyone involved is that the Trump administration surprises us and does a great job. And this is a smooth, I mean, recovery. People are rescued. They have a plan.

They execute it. Like that is the hope, right? That this is more like Sandy than like Katrina. And even though we don't like Donald Trump, we are, this is a weird thing to say, but we're rooting for him there. I guess the question I'd have for you, Alyssa, on the visit is what did you think about, you plan, in addition to literally managing disaster response from the White House, you also helped in your previous role before you were deputy chief of staff

and you were head of scheduling advance. You helped plan some of these trips where the presidents went down and visited the survivors or saw the devastation. What did you think about the timing and their approach to the trip? So a couple things. One, I would have waited because really having the governor and the command center and go to Corpus Christi and Austin, like what does that really accomplish? It just sends the message that it's nothing. But a photo op since the briefing that he got

at the command center is the same briefing he'd get via secure video teleconference in the situation room i worry a couple of things that this is very much about him that this is like he wants the thing that struck me the most was his language and how it needed to be calibrated so he went down there and he's just he's not a fucking thoughtful person. And so he uses words like epic and historic, which are the words he used to describe his election instead of tragic and catastrophic. He said things like he's going to come back faster than ever is if he's going to get the credit for it when really it's a long, long road and giving people false hope and bad expectations is cataclysmic.

And so I didn't fault him as much for going, though I thought he should have pushed it back, but I just thought that he didn't give a lot of thought to the visit or what he should say. Like that moment is a moment to stand there with relief organizations on television and say, give to these guys. That's how they raise money. That was one of the most important things Barack Obama did when we went to these places. We stood with FEMA and the Red Cross and the local food kitchens and said, these people are helping. Give them money. And so I thought that they just, for all of the positive things they could have done, I just thought that they missed the mark and that his language was really cavalier.

have done. I just thought that they missed the mark and that his language was really cavalier. I think the most important thing he can do going forward, which may be impossible, is consistency. He has to stay the course. He has to be calm and he needs to lead and be thoughtful. And thoughtful is not just like teleprompter compassion, which is what he did yesterday before launching into this vitriolic tirade against Claire McChesnell. That is like not what the country means right now. That doesn't make people think they can trust him. It makes them see him as mercurial, which he may be. But like you have to rise above right now.

And he's not. And that is the thing that concerns me the most is that this can't be about him. It has to be about Texas. Yeah, that's that's what worried me the most, is that this can't be about him. It has to be about Texas. Yeah, that's what worried me, too, is, I mean, we know that Trump has the mindset of a low-information, casual cable news viewer. As you were saying, Alyssa, this is going to be such a long road. It's going to need commitment, and not just now, but, you know, a couple weeks from now, a couple now but you know a couple weeks from now a couple months from now a couple years from now it's going to need steady sustained commitment from the federal government to help people in texas back on their feet and i just don't have any

confidence that a week from now or two weeks from now trump will be caring about this at all because right now in the thick of it while it's still happening it's not i don't know how do you not even mention the people who've lost their lives in this storm i mean we all saw you know the bush administration badly botched katrina at the very least george bush was talking about the loss of life telling people to give to relief organizations i mean this guy is just not even it is it seems like it's all about him. It's about his ratings. It's about this is the most epic storm ever.

This is a record. We're doing the best we can possibly do. We're going to, you know, it was just, it's so off. It's so off. And here is the sort of concerning part, right? When I talk about staying the course, is that right now, people are happy to be alive. They're happy to know that their families are okay, right? In about, I don't know, a couple days, any day now, people are just going to be like, where the fuck is my shit? I

want to go home. Like, there's only so long people can stay in convention centers, and it's going to get dodgy. Like, it's going to get really hard. And he can't just cut and run, you know. And that's one thing about George Bush. And Katrina was a complete, I mean, it was devastation. And the way it was handled was not good. But at least the government learned the lesson, right? We learned the lesson. If Katrina had not happened, we don't know what might have happened on our watch.

I think that the level of our preparedness and having Peg Fugate as our FEMA administrator, we were just like, we were very lucky, and we kind of took it to another level, and they have to keep it there. And, you know, right now the thing that I see on TV and that is also really disturbing to me is, you know, Ted Cruz. Like, he and those Texas representatives, when it came to Sandy, they called it quirk and they voted it down, and when the $50 billion funding came through,

they all thumbed their noses at it, which, by the way, affected 24 states and the biggest metro region in the country and the U.S. Stock Exchange and everything else. Years before that, our vice president, Mike Pence, did the same thing with Katrina. And so while I would not say the chickens have come home to roost, because I do not believe this is a karmatic experience, I do hope that people now see you don't play politics with stuff like this. These are people's lives.

And I hope that this moment forever changes how they look at these events going forward because you shouldn't have to nickel and dime and take five months to get a bill together to get people the money. The longer they nickel and dime, the longer it takes, the longer it takes for HUD to get that money for these people to start being able to rebuild. So I hope that this is like a new broom sweeps clean moment and that we never have to deal with this again. You're putting a lot of faith in Ted Cruz, which I would not recommend. Could you talk a little bit, you mentioned how long a road this is. Like I remember in 2007, I went, so two years after

Katrina, I went with then Senator and candidate Obama to the Ninth Ward in Louisiana, and there were people's houses who no one had touched yet were still destroyed, and they were living in trailers basically in their driveway. So if you could talk a little – and they were very unhappy, as you can imagine. Can you talk a little bit about where – two things. One, what is happening in the White House right now? And then to once the floodwater start to recede? What are what's the immediate next step people need that the government should be doing? And you guys will remember when the earthquake in Haiti happened, President Clinton and President Bush got together and they had the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund. There needs to be a massive, and the White House should be organizing, a massive external fundraising operation. Ways to harness hundreds of millions of dollars to get them down to Texas faster than the government will be able to just because it is government. Even with all of the cutting of the red tape that you can imagine, it's still, you know,

still the government. It's still going to be hard. And there are a lot of reasons that it sort of should be a bit rigorous because you want to make sure that the money is getting to the right places. So if I were in the White House, I would be trying to coordinate a huge fundraising operation externally chaired by, I don't know, maybe former presidents, maybe heads of business to try to get money down there as fast as possible. back to, you know, close to whole, I mean, let's kind of level set. The maximum amount of money a family can get from FEMA is $34,000, and most people will not be eligible for that. You sort of incorporate the fact that only 15% of people have flood insurance.

That is a lot of people who are going to be dependent on charities and the government. And, you know, Katrina still, it's going to be dependent on charities and the government. And, you know, Katrina still, it's going to take years and years. Like when Donald Trump was sitting there with the governor saying, we won't congratulate each other now, we'll congratulate each other when it's all done. I mean, that's just kind of like, one, it lets the people who are listening to him think that this will be wrapped up in short order. And, you know, it clearly shows that he did not understand that this is not a weeks or months process. This is a year, five to 10 years before Houston is probably, you know, back to where it was a couple weeks ago. So it's a long road. It is a long road.

Can we talk about one last thing, which is Trump wearing these hats and fundraising at the same time and just talk in general about, because I know I saw on Twitter, Alyssa, you also said that, you know, both parties should probably stop the fundraising while this is actually happening right now, while the disaster is occurring. What are your thoughts? Yes. So a couple of things. If our president understood the gravity of what was happening, he would at least have buttons, like donate buttons, on the campaign website where you can purchase those hats. Moreover, the proceeds from those hats should be going to a charity for fuck's sake. Like, what is he doing?

They're just, there's not a lot of like skin in the game on that one. But what was almost more offensive to me and still is, are the emails we're getting with subject lines urgent from the DCCC and the DNC about giving money to them with no reference to Harvey. Now, before everyone attacks me on Twitter, I know that they retweeted what President Obama did. The point is not that. The point is that they should not be going out and asking people for money right now.

It is appalling, and I was embarrassed. And I got another one this morning, and I sent a very nice note back saying, you need to fucking stop. But, you know, they're not listening. Yeah, this is, this is, it's very interesting because anyone who has emailed those that at the end of the month you get brought, get inundated by these things.

And it happens to be that, and that's where most of the money comes in is at the end of the month. And so your people are getting inundated. I mean, there's, there's a weird sense of dislocation that you are either seeing on the news what's happening at Harvey or you're seeing email appeals from nonprofits and others trying to get help. And you're getting these fundraising emails at the same time that are existing in a world in which Harvey is not happening. And one more thing before I go, which is my love it like rant sort of,

is that last summer when I was on the pod, when Donald Trump was picking a vice president, I not so casually said it was too bad that Ivanka could not be his running mate because she seemed to have the most sense of everyone around him. I just want to say that I have really been hoping that she comes through for the women,

that she's able to do what she said she was going to do. But yesterday was the final straw. She rolled over on the last thing that she could possibly roll over on. And her V-card has been revoked. Shame on me for giving her any credit at all last year. And, you know, the doors to the sisterhood are closed forever avanka goodbye we should say that yesterday it was she endorsed trump's he

rescinded the uh equal pay initiatives that obama had put in place during his time in the white house for me she was hopeless back at the muslim ban and i think that her and her husband are complete jokes and i'm i can't I can't even talk about it. I can't even read about them anymore. I can't read about all the staffers in the White House that are trying to moderate Trump. I'm done with that conversation. But I'm glad that you were here for the rant. Yes.

And also, one last thing. Right now, I need the reporters who are writing, you know, that Donald Trump's persevering, you know, he should not be giving POTUS points for just not being an abusive dick right now. And so I'm going to start unsubscribing from those people who keep saying that like, oh, he's doing, you know, he's doing great, just because he didn't like take a poop in the command center. It's fascinating to see that with like this is the last remnants of the idea that we're going to treat Trump like a normal president because we sort of got blown past that everywhere else.

But there is still this instinct in the media, which is kind of a good one in every situation other than this, which is natural, you know, huge crisis in the country, either foreign policy or natural disaster. And we're sort of going to put politics aside and rally behind the leader. Unfortunately, the challenge here is Trump has done nothing to deserve that. And as soon as you give it to him,

he blows it by, you know, he's, as you point out, spent more time using his 36 million Twitter followers to try to sell Sheriff Dave Clark's book than raise money for a single nonprofit. It's not great. Exactly. All right, Alyssa, thank you so much for joining us and giving us these updates. And thanks for your rants as well. Bye, guys. Thanks, Alyssa. Bye.

Bye. Bye. so uh let's talk about tax reform quite a segue uh i'm glad you didn't even try just be fully transparent i mean the real segue would been, in the middle of this ongoing natural disaster, the President of the United States traveled to Missouri yesterday to sell tax reform, which is very bizarre. Can we just talk about that? Let's start with that. Could you imagine in the middle of Sandy if Barack Obama went to go talk about tax reform or any kind of policy like that?

I've thought about this a lot because we were often forced into a similar decision, which is you have a plan. You make the plan. You announce a trip. You write a speech. And something happens. And you have to make this decision about do you proceed with the original plan or do you change it? And we, and I in particular would often argue publicly, presidents have to walk and chew gum at the same time.

And it is a fact that this is an optics question, and we hate optics. Because there's nothing Trump can't do. Doing the tax reform is not taking him away from managing the disaster. It's not like he was just going to sit in the Situation Room all day and point in which direction boats go to rescue people. He can do both. But then you think like from a – tax reform is your last, I hope, last chance at a major legislative accomplishment in this first period of your presidency. And is the right – and you're going to try – you're basically trying to go out and fire off a starter gun for a big push. And even if you put aside the appropriateness of doing it, strategically you'd want to just kick it to a time in which anyone would pay attention to what you do. But then on top of that, the other thing that I found very strange about it was even if you agree to do, if you decide we already planned it, we got to get going. We can't wait. We got to do this, then you have to make sure it is tonally

consistent with what you were saying in Texas the day before. And they failed on that front as well. Oh, because he used an official speech as president to attack a sitting Democratic senator and tell people to vote her out of office? Yes, which we should note is illegal. Yes, which we should note is illegal. And if I said this on Twitter today, but if we still lived in a world of rules and laws, the RNC or the Trump Cohn, Stephen Miller to fly to Missouri to urge Missouri voters to vote against Claire McCaskill. And we all picked up the tab for that. Yeah. And we should just tell people why this isn't. I mean, you're not, as the president of the United States, you can either make campaign trips that are paid for by the campaign. And during those trips, you can talk all the politics you want. You could say, go vote against Claire McCaskill if you want, whatever. That's fine for a political trip. On official trips, and we had to do this, and we had to make sure in every speech we wrote for

Barack Obama, when he was on an official trip as president of the United States, he could talk about legislation. He could talk about the Republicans blocking certain priorities. He could not name Republican politicians and tell people to go vote against them because that is against the rules. And Barack Obama followed that. George Bush followed that. Bill Clinton followed that. All the presidents follow that except Donald Trump because the rules don't apply to Donald Trump. Yeah. And if you made a mistake, right, where Donald Trump, I think, probably ad-libbed that part of the speech. I'm sure. And if you made a mistake, right, where Donald Trump, I think, probably ad-libbed that part of the speech. I'm sure. And, you know, presidents are one person and, you know,

they have a lot on their mind and maybe they know it's a political trip. Maybe they forgot the rules, you know, whatever else. You would just go fix it and you'd write the check, which they're almost certainly not going to do. No. All right, let's talk about the speech. It was big on messaging, not so much on the details. The messaging behind the plan is to, if you ask the Trump White House, simplify taxes, encourage job creation and wage growth, provide tax relief for middle-income families, blah, blah, blah, companies bringing money back to the U.S. None of this was borne out into the speech because there were no details. The only real details we got is he wants to cut the corporate tax rate from 35%

to 15%. There's been talk about getting rid of the estate tax. Really, there's no other details here at all. What do you think about the politics of tax reform in general, Dan? Well, I think there are two elements of it. We can stipulate off the top that the tax code needs to be reformed. It's been since 1986. That should happen. The reason it hasn't happened is it's really hard to do politically, and there's a lot of disagreement on the ways to do it. You could do it, and you could get rid of a lot of these loopholes and make people pay higher taxes, or you can get rid of these loopholes. You can lower taxes and get rid of loopholes people like, like the mortgage interest deduction or things like that. I always tell the story that tells you how hard it is to reform taxes is we had a idea that we were going to pay

for, I can't remember what the initiative was but it was we needed to pay for it within the budget and we were going to eliminate the tax incentive the tax loophole for private jets that seems like a pretty easy thing to do do people think that people own private jets need more tax breaks seems like something that seems like something that would pull very well. Seems common sense, right? Who can't agree with that? But then everyone freaked out. Republicans freaked out. They were going to fight to the death to preserve the loophole for private jets. And even a lot of Democratic donors, Obama supporters, got very upset about it. And so if you can't eliminate the private jet

loophole, then you can see how hard it's going to get to get to things that affect lots of people, like the mortgage tax deduction and things like that. But here's what I'll say. Here's the political upside for Trump. Paul Ryan lives for tax reform, which is really a sad statement on Paul Ryan's life. Don't forget Medicaid and Medicare cuts, too. That's what he was talking about. Well, yeah, these things are related because he wants to pay for those tax cuts with Medicaid and Medicare cuts. Right. That's really the double whammy.

You can take things from people who need help and give those things to people who don't need help. But the political upside for Trump is most of the things that he advocates for are divisive within the Republican Party and make them uncomfortable. Immigration reform is one, at least among Republican elites and elected officials. Tax reform, every Republican's excited about cutting corporate taxes. That is what they get up in the morning. And it does allow him to unify the party a little bit. But the bad part for him is it completely undermines his, what we now know as a faux populist appeal. This is another one where, like, remember during the campaign, Trump was a, quote, different kind of Republican because he talked about protecting

Medicaid and Medicare and people's health care. He also said, I don't think rich people need another tax cut. I don't think they're tax, you know, I think we need a middle class tax cut. And so once again, on economic issues during the campaign, he tried to present himself as a populist, as a different kind of Republican. You also saw that when Steve Bannon was in the White House, he was floating tax ideas like a higher tax on millionaires. Bannon knows that Trump's base, the people who voted for Trump, are with Trump because of his immigration position, his trade position, you know, the travel ban, the wall, all that kind of stuff. They are not with him because these people want a huge corporate tax cut or for tax cut for rich people. Poll right after the election, 75% of Trump voters called for higher taxes on those earning more than $200,000 a year. 67% say corporations pay

too little in taxes. Only 9% say corporations pay too much. Just like healthcare reform, Trump is allowing himself on tax reform to be led around by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who still believe there is a large constituency in this country for tax cuts for rich people, and there is not. And that is the very bad news for establishment Republicans in Washington, is that they do not have a constituency for free market conservatism in this country anymore, because the Democratic base doesn't want it, And now the Republican base doesn't want it. So this is, I think at the end of the day, you're very right that it is the one policy that could finally unite the Republican party in Washington, business interest, special interest, Wall Street, all the rest. But when you

have two Goldman Sachs guys out there, Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin, pitching tax cuts for big companies and rich people, and no one who voted for Trump who's making $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 gets anything from this, I don't think that's a pretty good deal. I do not think that is a good deal. Do you think maybe Democrats would offer a better deal, Dan? Hashtag better deal. Hashtag better deal. See, Schumer, we did it. When we were in the White House, because the tax code needs to be reformed, many well-meaning policy people within the National Economic Council, and the Treasury Department would constantly be advocating for us to help jumpstart some sort of bipartisan tax reform process to put out a white paper on tax reform. And I was often a one man, particularly after I was, I was really a one man, blockade for

that for a long time. For two reasons. One, Republicans talk about tax reform, and they say they want it, but they've been unwilling to put an actual plan forward. And if they really want to do a bipartisan tax reform plan, we should make them show their ideas first, which they did not do in the entire Obama administration, except when Dave Camp, who's a moderate-ish Republican, or at least moderate relative to some of the current Republicans, and the House Ways,

who is the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, put out a tax reform plan as he was leaving office, basically, because the only person who could put out a tax reform plan was a person who was never going to stand for election again. And it was a reasonable-ish plan relative to the far right of the party. And it was massacred in two seconds. And Republicans

ran away from it as fast as they possibly can, which is an indication of what is going to happen when these people actually have to explain how much of a tax break corporations and wealthy individuals are going to get and what tax breaks they're going to eliminate to pay for that. And it gets really messy really quick because it becomes very clear that the plan they want is the opposite of a populist plan. It is a plan that would worsen inequality in this country dramatically. And then it gets very specific because you anger every individual constituency group you possibly can. And like so we'll see. I'm curious as to whether there will ever actually be a specific plan.

But if there is, it will – the politics will be pretty bad. Yeah, no, I think specifics and details are their enemy. And I think the challenge for Democrats is going to be, and you can see this from Trump's speech, the messaging that Trump's going to put out, which is messaging that's going to be carried by the whole party, that's going to be carried by Fox News, Breitbart, all the rest of them, is this is a middle class tax cut. This is about job creation in the United States. This is about growing wages. And that's going to be a bunch of lies because the details of the plan are going to be a tax plan that's tilted extraordinarily towards the wealthiest corporations and individuals in this country.

And so we are going to have to remind people constantly that this is a tax cut skewed towards rich people. Now, look, we could be wrong. He could release details and it could be this big middle class tax cut, tax cut for the working class, for the poor, and maybe, you know, rich people don't get anything. Who knows? I know. I know. That is not going to happen. Good. Okay. I'm just trying to be fair. We'd like to be fair on this podcast, right?

So what we're going to have to do is make sure that when details do emerge, and they're sure to leak out here and there as all these tax committees in Congress start writing this, that we make them fight on the details of their plan, not on the message of their plan. Because they're at least, or some people in that administration and in Congress are smart enough to know that they can't go out there and sell tax cuts for rich people as a winning political issue. And I think that is all true. I think it is also going to be incumbent upon us, incumbent upon everyone, I guess, to help explain to the public why this matters. Healthcare is a very easy one, right? You are going to, people have healthcare, you're going to take it away. That's a rallying point people understand. Most people out there, the people who fought so hard and so

valiantly to save Obamacare, may not have any, may not be affected by this in the immediate term, right? They may not have, you know, may not use, you know, a deduction that's being eliminated, or it just, it's much more esoteric. But the short But here are the short versions of why it matters. If you think inequality in this country is getting worse and you want to make it better, this makes inequality worse. That's one. Two, there is only so much money. to give that money away and tax cuts to people who don't need it, that will eventually be paid for by people, by education, by Medicaid, by assistance for people who need help heating their homes in the winter. This is what happened. To go back into what seems like

quasi-recent history for us, but may seem like ancient to other people is in 2001, when George W. Bush got elected, the US actually had a surplus. We had more, we were bringing in more money than we were spending. And the question is, what do you do with that surplus? There were all kinds of arguments. Do we try to save Social Security? Do we do this? As president, George Bush gave all that money away and then some in tax cuts. And then when that surplus was no longer gone, we were in a deficit,

we were forced to, spending was cut and spending was not, and where we needed spending, we're not able to do it. And so if we're going to give money away to gigantic corporations to get tax breaks, or to wealthy individuals, then eventually someone's going to pay for it. And the someone is always the people without the high-priced lobbyists. And it'll be students and working-class people and people on Medicaid and the like. And so if you care about the core important things that government does, you have to push back against tax cuts for the wealthy. Yes, that's right. I mean, they're going to say that you need more tax cuts because tax cuts are all about lowering taxes on companies. It's all about making our businesses

more competitive. It's about attracting more businesses and jobs to the United States. But you know what? Developing countries like places like China, India, they are always going to be able to lower taxes on companies and cut regulations even more than we are. This is a race to the bottom here. And they're always going to be able to do better. They're always going to be able to treat their workers worse and to cut more taxes for business. And the way that we compete in this country, the best way to compete is not to keep cutting taxes and cutting regulations and cutting protections for workers and stuff like that. The way to compete is to have the best education system in the world, to have the best health care system in the world, to have the best infrastructure in the world. That's how we compete for jobs in this country.

And as you said, we made all these promises in the 2000s about these Bush tax cuts and what they were going to do and how they were going to create jobs. It didn't pan out. It was the worst job creation in decades. There were no higher wages. It blew up the deficit. Inequality increased. Nothing came of the Bush tax cuts except for huge fucking deficits. And here we are again now, and they're making the same argument, and it's still wrong. Yeah, the trickle-down economic theory that has dominated the Republican Party for 30 years is one of the most discredited theories in history. It has been proven wrong time and again, but people like Paul Ryan are addicted to it. And perhaps they don't even believe it. I don't know.

But like how insane are we to keep doing this time and time again? So I mean this will be – this may not seem as important as healthcare in the sense that it is not so immediate that someone – that you or someone you know is going to lose healthcare. But it is going to – if they're able to succeed in doing this, we will look back on this two years, five years, 10 years, and deeply regret allowing Trump, Paul Ryan to do this favor for their wealthy friends. Yes. Okay, let's move on to the next more immediate emergency here, which is Trump has to decide by September 5th, whether he will continue the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program known as DACA. The program thus far has protected nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants from deportation. These are kids who were brought here by their parents through no choice of their own. They have lived here almost all of their lives.

They are American in every sense of the word. This is an extremely popular program, in addition to being the right thing to do. 64%. NBC just had a poll out today, the SurveyMonkey poll. 64% of people in this country support DACA, only 30% oppose. 71% of Americans support legal status for people who are in this country working, who want to stay here. Only 26% believe they should be deported. This is a program that, if eliminated, could put 700,000 jobs at risk.

Because, you know, we think about DACA as a program, it's all about kids. But a lot of these Americans have been here for so long now, they're in their 20s and 30s, and they're working. And the end of this program would be – it's incredibly cruel that we would deport people who have lived here most of their adult lives. But that's where we are right now. I mean, let's put a very fine point on it. Many of the people who benefit from this program were brought here by their parents when they were small children. They do not – they have in some cases no memory of the country that Trump may want to deport them back to, may not even speak the language. It wasn't a decision they made.

They were children and they were brought here and have been part of our society for their entire lives. As Barack Obama always should say, that they are American in every way but papers. And that's why he made the decision to use executive action to help these people. Just imagine you've spent all but the first few years of your life in the United States. You went to school here. You went to college here. You may even be starting to raise a family here. And you're going to get picked up one day and sent back to a country where you know no one and never be allowed back in the United States. And just the lack of empathy and compassion for these people is so mind-boggling yet par for the course with this administration that it's really hard to fathom. And remember, it's because many of these people are in their 20s and 30s.

Because many of these people are in their 20s and 30s, they have children of their own now. And they could be separated from their families and sent back to a country where they don't know anyone. and a bunch of other conservative attorney generals have been threatening to sue the federal government in an unfriendly court if Trump allows the program to continue. If they do that, the Trump administration could decide whether or not to have the Justice Department defend DACA in court. So basically what Trump's deciding is, you do we do we keep this program up knowing that we're probably going to be sued by these AGs and then do we defend it in court of course worst attorney general in history Jeff Sessions is very much opposed to DACA was when Obama was president so it seems unlikely that he would want to defend this in court but I love that you know this morning there were reports that well well, the Trump administration, Trump understands how important this issue is.

And he wasn't sure if he really wanted to end the program, but he thinks it just might not be legal. And that's why he might come down against it. Because you know Trump is famous for making sure that everything he does is legal. Noted constitutional scholar, Donald J. Trump. Come the fuck on. He literally broke a law yesterday. Didn't give a shit. So if the rule of law has become the new way in which Donald Trump makes all of his decisions, I'll be happy to see that.

But A, it is legal. Very smart people, much smarter than Attorney General of the Confederate United States, Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions. Many legal scholars smarter than him have looked at this and believe it is with great confidence that it is legal. We would not have done it otherwise. Right. So what can people do about this? In the Senate, Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham have introduced a bipartisan bill that would offer a path to permanent legal status for anyone affected by this program. So you should call your congresspeople, tell them to get on board with the Durbin-Graham bill. Also call your governors and your attorney general's office to make sure that state by state, as these attorney generals are thinking about suing the federal government or jumping on this lawsuit, that they think twice. So those are things that people can do.

I also heard, by the way, that there's reports that the Trump administration may be open to a deal where he extends DACA in exchange for Democrats voting for the wall funding. What do you think about that, Dan? I don't know. There's very little that I would not agree to to help these 800,000 people. From a political perspective, I don't know. I really, I have concerns about using these kids as leverage and giving Trump this win. But I don't know the idea of, you know, we met a lot of these people as they both pressured Barack Obama to, to make this, to, to enact this policy, and then supported him afterwards. And we're on the campaign trail in 2016 for Hillary Clinton. And so we know that the idea of these people that

we have had a chance to meet is, I mean, it's just very, I mean, the whole thing is so heartbreaking that we're even having this conversation. I know. I mean, I do think that the first order of business is to try to get as many people in Congress on board with the Durbin-Graham bill or something like it to separate this from all the funding disputes anyway and to just get this passed. And I think everyone should try to do that. That should be the first fight here.

And look, at least in the Senate, among a lot of Republicans in the Senate, some of them have been for extending DACA. A lot of them have. And a lot of them also fucking hate this wall. And, you know, they want to give Trump some sort of they want to give him some funding for some more security at the border and try to pretend that it's for the wall. And the question is, you know, can you fool Trump into thinking that he has a win on the wall by getting a little more money for border security? Seems like you probably could. The answer to can you fool Trump is yes. Right. So I guess we'll see how that goes. But I will amend my my rambling answer. You were correct that this is a bill that the Graham Durbin bill, and Durbin has been, to Senator Durbin's credit, has been fighting for the Dreamers for a very long time and almost passed this in 2010, but was filibustered by Republicans. And like we should, the right thing to do is to try to get that bill passed and everyone

should go on record about how they feel about it. If they don't think these people who've been in this country, you know, their entire lives should be here, then come out and say that. Don't hide behind Donald Trump's pant leg. Come out and say it. Hey, Dan, it's Lovett. Um, hello, Lovett. It's only, it's only a few minutes that I can sit here in silence before the microphone,

you know, I can't help myself. He was just, he was just hovering. He was hovering. Well, no, I think just hovering. I was going to ask that question. Can't help myself. So would you be in favor of giving him a victory on the wall? He can call it a fence. It can be border security. It's not an actual big, you know, it's not a Great Wall of China across the southern border.

But some fencing and greater border security if it was a larger deal on comprehensive immigration reform. So you save the dreamers and you do the path. Like basically like- Oh, if you get the path. So we would say you can have, we would say in all but name, you can have your wall if we can have a path to legalization for the people that are here and help for the dreamers. Yes. Yeah, I think so.

I think Democrats would be foolish not to take that. Why don't we say that? for the people that are here and help for the dreamers yes yeah i think so i think democrats would be foolish not to take why don't we say that well we should here's the thing is because so many people are just paying attention to politics now because trump is president like democrats you know well the reason the wall is stupid is not just because it is a morally repugnant thing to do the wall is stupid because there's so much fencing on the fucking border as it is there's basically a wall there this is the fucking problem do you remember that uh do you remember that speech where president obama wanted we we had a whole thing 2011 and all and we had to come up with a whole series of jokes about you tell i don't remember we were sitting with obama me and

love it doing the speech on immigration and obama's, the point I really want to get across in this speech is that we have given Republicans everything they wanted on funding for border security. Every time. They asked for more border patrol. Much more border patrol. We did that. They asked for more fencing. We did that. It's all stupid, but we gave it to them because we said we want comprehensive immigration reform.

And it's more important to give the millions of undocumented immigrants here a path to citizenship and so obama's like i want to get in this speech all the money we've spent on border security and i just want to you know flood them with statistics and we were like well we could but that's it's probably not going to get headlines just putting a bunch of numbers and and then obama just starts going off he's like they have they have all the border security that they want what else do they want do they want a moat do they want to put alligators in the moat alligators in the moat? Alligators in the moat. So he starts going off and we're like, we should put that in the speech.

Let's just do that. And so we gave him all. We just kept going with the metaphor, the alligators, the fire, all that kind of stuff. And it ended up in the headlines. That was the headline that he wanted. But it is. It's ridiculous. Part of the reason the wall is so ridiculous is because it's nonsensical.

I would like to state that I was White House communication director at the time, and alligators in the moat was not the headline I wanted, but who am I to say? Sorry, Dan. Sorry, Dan. It's okay. He's the president. He gets to pick. He's smarter than I am. But yeah, no, I do think the priority here in immigration is, like we said, there are people in this country who are American in every single way but their papers. And there's also millions of other people who are hardworking, hardworking Americans in this country. And they deserve a path to citizenship. And they've worked hard and they're, you know, and we need to do whatever we can to help keep these Americans in this country.

Before we quit, can we do one other thing real fast? Yeah. Can we talk about the Fox News poll from last night? Yes. Do you want to talk about that one part of the poll? Yeah, we'll talk about that one. There's two polling things I want to talk about, but first let's do the Fox News poll, which said that

75% of Trump voters thought the news media was a greater threat than white supremacists. that 75% of Trump voters thought the media, the news media was a greater threat than white supremacists. Dan, I saw you tweet that. And then I saw the people trying to defend the poll and I threw my phone away and I've been actually, I don't use technology anymore.

I don't know. Like, I mean, there's an element, everyone mean, there's an element. Everyone should know there's an element to polling questions like this, which are, you know, you get called up by a pollster. Someone asks you a crazy question like, what's the biggest threat to the country? The media or white supremacists? And you're a Trump voter.

And you said, I'm going to troll this person. And I'm just going to say the media because I know it's going to piss people off. You know, so there's it's hard to take these like it's. It's hard to take it completely seriously, but it is appalling. It is appalling that we have gotten to this point. You're like, look, are they trolling me? Yes. But I'm trolled! It worked. It worked. This snowflake is enraged.

Yes. It worked. This snowflake is enraged. One was, which is true, which is this is not all about Trump. Republicans have been running a decades-long attack on the media. And Josh Barrow, who really has grown into his role as liberal scold, attacked me for blaming Trump for it. It's not Trump's fault that Republicans hate the media. And that is true. But it is Trump's fault that opposition to white supremacy is now a partisan issue in this country. That if you say you are opposed to white supremacy, then you are opposing Trump. And that causes you to break faith with your tribe. So you must choose

white supremacy over the news media. And that is something that we can only blame Donald Trump for. We should also say in this poll, 56% say that Donald Trump is tearing the country apart and he's got the worst approval rating in any Fox poll since he became president. 55% disapprove, 41% approve. So he's an unpopular president, but more unpopular is the media, especially for Trump voters, than white supremacists. That's where we are. But I think what you said, Dan, was right. And when you tweeted this is, it's yet another example of if we survive Trump and Trump is off the scene, the damage he's done is with us for a while. The Tim Carney, who I think is some sort of conservative person at Washington Examiner or something, he tweeted at me that, well, how many white supremacists are there? Are lots of media members? Obviously, these Trump supporters are correct. I was like, well... What's their audience, Dan? What's their audience? I saw that. That was the last tweet I ever saw.

That was, I saw that. That was the last tweet I ever saw. What is their audience? It's like, well, maybe, it's almost as if a white supremacist literally killed someone two weeks ago and the media writes things that you don't like. Like, that is such a stupid argument. Like, the fact that you would have to defend that

as a part of pro-Trump media or external media, you would feel a need to defend that point of view is part of the whole problem. It's bad. Do we have a happy note to end on? Yeah, I'll give you one. Okay. In the SurveyMonkey poll.

We're in the polling session. If we're going to be in a dystopia, can there be fucking robots or something? Can there be like something? Anyway, go on, Dan. I'm sorry. Yes. or something can there be like something anyway go on dan i'm sorry yes that 61 percent of people oppose the arpaio pardon yeah so we'll take that and but amazingly and this shows i actually think this is a good thing so that happened on friday it is now thursday morning that poll came out of the field i think yet last night so 60 percent of people opposed it, and 34%, I think, supported it, which means 94% of respondents

were aware that it happened and had an opinion on it. So people are fucking locked in on what's happening, and that's probably good. I guess it got the ratings that Trump was hoping for. Exactly. Point to Trump. He was right. He was right about those ratings. All right, everyone.

That's all for today. Please go donate to Harvey Relief if you haven't already, or if you have, keep donating. And also, be sure to call your congresspeople and tell them to get on board the Durbin-Graham DACA bill. And that's all we have.

That's it? We're in the outro? This is it? Is there music? This is the outro. It's happening. We're being outro-ing right now. Did you see the Bloomberg story on the Kushner businesses?

Hoo boy. Would that be a topic of Love It or Leave It? Maybe. Benjamin Wittes from Lawfare Blog tweeted this morning, today is going to be a long day. I know he likes to... Sometimes he's a bit of a drama queen, that one. But he's also been very correct on a lot of big stories.

No, of course. Here's an idea. Tweet that every day as long as Trump is president, and you'll be right more than half the time. So who knows if something on the Mueller investigation will break today. You could be listening to this right now, and it's already broken, and you're like,

why did they record the podcast so early? I can't believe Trump did that, but it's a shame that Paul Ryan won't stand up to him. There. That's our reaction. If only we had a Congress to hold him accountable for these very obvious crimes. Oh, man. Anyway. Alright, this is the Health and Health

Show. We're making up for last week. Alright, everyone. See you later. Bye, guys. Oh, happy birthday, Tommy. Happy birthday, Tommy.