Pod Save America - "Too Cruel for School."

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

Hysteria's Erin Ryan joins as co-host to talk about the wave of anti-LGBTQ and abortion laws moving through red states and the GOP's recent string of technology fails, and Mehdi Hasan also joins to talk about new ways to help Ukraine that won't get us into a world war.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. And I'm Erin Ryan. Erin, it's great to see you. Listeners are probably wondering, where's that other guy? Where's that one John or the other one named John? Listeners, I'm going to level with you. Pod Save America, we're playing Hurt today. Love it's feeling sick.

Favreau is under the weather. I'm going to spare you the details. But Erin and I are going to be your hosts for today. So please be excited about that. I'm excited for it. Did you watch that soccer game the other week? Which one? They had to do a shootout and it went through the entire roster and the goalie had to shoot out? I love that. Yeah.

I'm essentially the goalie of the team. Like you have worked down the entire roster. No, no, no, no, no. Erin, I want to tell you another story about another team that played hurt. no, no, no. Aaron, I want to tell you another story about another team that played hurt. This was September 23rd, 2001, week two of the NFL season. New York Jets linebacker Mo Lewis hit Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe so hard that his lung collapsed. He was out for the season and into the breach stepped a young Tom Brady. So congratulations. You're now married to Giselle and you have seven Super Bowl rings.

That's amazing. Yeah. Oh, my hands did feel weird coming in. I thought it was just like arthritis because that runs in my family, but it was all the rings on my fingers. The invisible Super Bowl rings that are- Giant rings. So yeah, we got a lot of sports metaphors for you today. We have a lot to cover. Also listen to Hysteria, Erin's fantastic podcast. If you don't- Thank you. You're only hurting yourself is what Also, listen to Hysteria, Aaron's fantastic podcast, if you don't. Thank you. You're only hurting yourself, is what I tell people about Hysteria.

Here's what we got today. The country and the world has been totally focused on Ukraine, so we're going to start somewhere else. Because Republicans have not slowed down their efforts to pass legislation attacking the LGBT community and the ongoing assault against Roe and a woman's right to choose that is happening in states across the country. And it's super fucked up and we should talk about it more. And Aaron and I are going to have some fun talking about all the problems that Republicans are having with technology these days, including some battles with Zoom over the weekend.

Don't let that get in the way of a geopolitical crisis, your mute button. And then Donald Trump's new social media site, Truth Social. I don't know. Have you tried Truth Social? No. No. No. No plans to either.

No. It's not working too well here. And then I'm going to interview MSNBC's Mehdi Hassan about Ukraine, the treatment of refugees, what about us in foreign policy, oil prices, maybe having to do more work with the Saudis. So stick around for that. And before we get to the news, please make sure you subscribe to Offline with Jon Favreau. Offline has all grown up. It's moving over to its own feed. So it's not on the Pod Save America feed anymore. So you have to subscribe separately if you want to hear it. And you do because this week, Jon interviews Kara Swisher, who's really one of the best hangs in the podcasting space, if you ask me.

Oh, yeah. She's an awesome hang. Like, her podcasts are just great hangs. They're just good. And also, she's also one of those guests who, like, you're a little scared of, and it keeps you on your toes, which is the right place to be with Kara. Uh-huh. The other week I listened to a Kara Swisher interview before I did a Hysteria podcast,

and I was afraid listening. I was like, she is coming for me and I can't sidestep this woman. No, you cannot. She famously made Mark Zuckerberg sweat through his hoodie on stage and he had to get up and take it off. So that was tough. What a claim to fame. I would get that as like collarbone tattoo. Anyway, they talk about the war in Ukraine, how it's being fought on the internet and why President Zelensky of Ukraine is such a compelling online hero. So subscribe to Offline with Jon Favreau. Okay. So Aaron, we're taping this on Monday afternoon. The Florida Senate is currently debating this don't say gay bill in the legislature that would prohibit the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms.

It's part of this broader trend where Republicans are focusing on laws targeting schools, targeting students. For example, Iowa recently became the 11th state in two years to pass a law limiting transgender students' ability to participate in school sports. And yeah, and it's also like it's a deliberate political strategy. This guy, David Carney, who's an advisor to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, recently told reporters that attacking transgender youth is a, quote, winning issue. That's so gross. When I saw that quote, I like retched. You're a horrible person. You're attacking children to score political points. Also, you know, Florida Governor Rhonda Stanton's spokeswoman said something similar, horrible,

tweeting that they don't say gay bills. Critics should more accurately describe the bill as an anti-grooming bill. So basically saying people who don't like the bill, if you're against the anti-grooming bill, you're probably a groomer was her quote. So she's accusing people who don't like this bill of grooming children. Like a dog groomer? Oh, a child groomer. Yeah, like QAnon light. So disgusting stuff.

We're both horrified. I'm just trying to imagine, Erin, just staying on this Don't Say Gay bill in Florida, how this kind of works in practice. The bill is supposed to be targeted at primary school students, so that's supposed to be kindergarten through third grade, but I guess the language is written in such a vague way that it could be

interpreted more broadly. But what I'm trying to figure out is like, okay, it's forbidding discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in this classroom in a way that isn't age appropriate or developmentally appropriate. And if that happens, the parents can sue the school district. Like, how does this work in practice? Parents are going to sue a teacher if a little kid is like, ask you a question about what it means to be gay. It's crazy.

Yeah. You know, when I hear about bills like this, I think my first thought is why is it sex ed? Why does it constitute something that's not age appropriate if it's gay people, but not if we're talking about straight relationships? Because sex ostensibly occurs within the context of both. So why is one vulgar and one not vulgar? Second thing is, here's something I was thinking about as I was kind of holistically looking at the show for today.

You know, you can care about multiple things at once, right? But you do have a finite amount of time. As a state legislator, as a governor, you have a finite amount of time as you are in charge of the people of your state. And for every bill that gets taken up, there's other bills that are not taken up. It's called the opportunity cost. And I feel like sometimes when we talk about these bills, we should talk about them. We should get into what they're doing. We should also think, what aren't these state governments doing? So in Florida, for example, there's a huge affordable housing crisis. What aren't Republicans in Florida doing for actual Floridians? And how many Floridians are they actually helping by attacking trans kids? And when you frame it that way. Remember that apartment building that collapsed?

Yeah. We should maybe work on that. Yeah. Also, there's insurance companies that are refusing to insure Florida homeowners now because of the stuff, environmental stuff. Climate change. Yeah, yeah. The fact that the state is going to be underwater in 20, 30 years.

There's all of these things that are affecting Floridians right now that state lawmakers could be taking up, but instead they are taking this on. And, you know, before we get into the nuts and bolts of about what the bill actually does, let's keep that in mind. Like, as we talk, they're not, they're not fixing the housing crisis in Florida. They are not fixing the healthcare crisis. They have a shortage of healthcare workers in Florida in an aging population right after a mass disabling event, COVID. There are more people with long-term disabilities now than we have any idea about. What is Florida doing about that? Nothing. Nothing. This is what the fuck they're doing. They're making it so

parents can sue school districts if teachers talk about Heather has two mommies. Right. And Mike, look, it's been a while since I've been in primary school, but my memory of it is that there's always some kid with an older brother or an older sister who knows more about sex stuff than everybody else. But it's probably not the full picture. It's probably inaccurate. But if like little, you know, Billy the bad kid says that like gay people come from dinosaur eggs, the teacher can't correct him in says that like gay people come from dinosaur eggs. The teacher can't correct him in that moment. You can't have a conversation. You can't like explain what the concept means to a child. That is insane. But you can explain the concept of sex itself to your point. I mean, none of this makes any sense on the merits in terms of like what a kid needs to know

to go through the world. Right. Every child is evidence that their parents had sex. That's true. Almost every child, unless it was an IVF situation. There's a miracle out there. Right. Exactly. Wow. Immaculate conceptions all over Florida. We might be getting to the heart of it there.

Yeah, right. It's so stupid because it's so obviously an attention grab. Because it's so obviously an attention grab. It's so obviously a ploy for Ron DeSantis to get on Fox News without doing anything, without fixing anything, and without making life better for anybody. No, making it a lot worse for low-paid teachers who don't want to get sued. How much further can teachers be pushed? That's a question I have. In Florida, in Texas, they are just punching bags for lawmakers. And look, this is me putting on my feminism tinfoil hat.

But I also think there's like a sexism to it. There's a sexism to ordering a profession that's 75% female to do the bidding of governments that are 80% male, 80% straight white dude. And you're, it's, it makes me really mad. My mom was a teacher for a really long time. She's a high school principal. Now my sister's a teacher, got a lot of teachers in my family. Teachers are made of tough stuff. They're good people. They care about their kids. And this, we keep beating up on them. And people like Ron DeSantis keep using them to score points for people, you know, who probably did the worst in school. That's exactly right.

Yeah, I mean, look, I had so many friends who were teachers. And it's definitely the one job that I know that I probably couldn't do well, at least, because it requires so much work and so much patience. And to your point about, like, the opportunity cost, like, it is a political strategy. and so much patience. And to your point about the opportunity cost, it is a political strategy. The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a piece about how 2022 is poised to become the year of the most anti-LGBTQ legislation

in the United States. And again, so much of it is targeted at kids. And that's what's sort of dark about this. You have dozens of state legislatures that are passing or working to pass laws that would limit transgender students ability to participate or use you know play in sports or use bathrooms you've got texas investigating and threatening to prosecute the parents of transgender and non-binary kids

and like it's just so hard to step back and think okay let me look at the what the past year we've been talking about it's been critical race theory in classrooms, and now it's this stuff. And so what's clear is what Republicans want to do and talk about for the foreseeable future is to target gay kids and literally create ways to punish their parents, punish their teachers. And they think that's a winning political strategy. And that's just a really dark kind of thing to know about the country and their mentality for me. Yeah. I mean, I feel like behind this is the assumption that everywhere is euphoria high school and these kids need some help. But really, that's not the day-to-day lives of most kids. And most kids that are LGBT, it's hard enough to be a kid that's LGBTQ, especially in a place that's inhospitable to them. It's rough and it's hard enough to be a kid that's LGBTQ, especially in a place that's not,

that's inhospitable to them. It's really, it's rough and it's gross. And I hate the fact that it's strategy. It makes me feel ill. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, it's creating mental health problems for kids. You know, I have a friend who lives in one of these states that's being targeted and has a non-binary child and to feel like you are doing everything possible for your kid. You are just trying to help them succeed and live and thrive in this world. And all of a sudden the state is saying, oh, you could be investigated or you could be prosecuted for loving your kid. I mean, I just can't even imagine like the rage I would feel as a parent. Right. And another thing that drives me nuts about this is I was listening to a Florida public

radio broadcast about the Florida bill. And they had a Republican on the Florida public radio broadcast talking about the bill. And he was downplaying it left and right. He was saying, oh, all this does is simply establish age appropriate, blah, blah, blah, blah. And these people are just giving it a bad faith read. Here's the thing. The law is deliberately written to leave room for Republicans to sell it to us,

like used car salesmen. We're just protecting kids, but leaving room for the worst possible interpretation. And like Democrats are right to bring up the worst. Hey, this is what the door is open for yeah and republicans it's so there's they're so slimy they are selling one thing knowing that what is at the root of it is the potential to be this in this like trojan horse of hate and and harm and one other thing that i that i saw as I was getting ready for the show is mandating that teachers report to parents if children are choosing to use they, them pronouns or pronouns that are different than the gender that they were assigned at birth. That endangers kids. And there was a Florida teacher.

I was reading an interview with a Florida teacher who said they didn't know of any teacher that would do that. I don't think teachers will comply if they know that they're going to put their kids in danger by telling their parents that, hey, your child is now they them. It's just they're not going to comply. It's just a horrible thing to force a teacher to do. Last thing just on this issue was this quote from DeSantis' spokesperson that this bill is about grooming kids. It's just so messed up

and it's so dangerous to like say, oh, if you support gay rights, you're a pedophile. It's also not remotely new in terms of a political strategy. I was reading a book recently that talked about

the fight for gay rights in Florida in the 1970s. And it was this famous singer, you know Anita Bryant? Yes, she was wild. She was a famous singer. You know Anita Bryant? Yes. She was wild. She was a horrible person. She was the wacky horrible.

Awful, awful person. Terrible. She was a spokesperson for the Citrus Council. So she was like the face of big orange shoes. More like shitress. There you go. I like that a lot. So stupid.

Cut that. So Anita Bryant led this campaign in Florida to repeal an ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. right? Like something that just seems like it's obvious. And she did this same exact demagoguery. She called it the Save Our Children campaign and accused gays and lesbians of trying to, quote, recruit our children. And what that history tells me is we are fighting the same fight over and over and over again. And it's not going to go away. We're not going to grow out of this shit. Like we just have to win. Yeah. I mean, time is a flat circle or a downward spiral. Still circular, but just descending.

Where are you in that binary right now? Is it a flat circle or a downward spiral? I think it's a downward spiral at this moment. Yeah. I feel pretty spiraling too. I feel like I'm spiraling. Not great. A quote that I picked up on as I was reading about this, I was reading about the Texas law.

And this is the thing that I found really insidious. There was a lawyer who represents some of these families. And he said, the number of people who have called me has exponentially increased. And the common thread is that everybody feels terrorized. So regardless of whether or not these bills are going to be enforced, be enacted, like if CPS is going to investigate trans kids, families in Texas, or if teachers are going to out their students to parents in Florida, the fear and the terror that these people are experiencing is real. And it's almost like that's the point.

Yeah, it is almost like that's the point. I totally agree. Another issue that, you know, has gotten a lot of focus from conservatives is abortion rights and abortion access. And, you know, a lot of abortion rights activists believe that by July, the Supreme Court will have overturned Roe versus Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion. In the interim, a lot of Republican state legislatures are passing a flurry of laws to make abortion illegal in as many ways or circumstances as possible, right? There's the bills banning abortion after 15 weeks, 12 weeks, six weeks, 30 days. There's the Texas bounty law that would allow, you know, private citizens to

go after people who, the Uber driver who drives a woman to the location where she gets an abortion, trigger laws. Just to step back a bit, I mean, how would you describe the status of abortion rights in the United States at this moment in time? Well, endangered, very much endangered. And, you know, the first episode of Hysteria recorded on the day that Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. And that was in 2018. And on that day, Alyssa Mastromonaco and I said to each other, Roe is over. Like it has been like it has been on the road to over for a long time. And I think that right now it's just the oh shit moment. People are finally realizing that the can cannot be kicked any further down the road.

The can is at the end of the road. And this is happening. The 15-week abortion bans that lawmakers are passing in Florida and other places basically would put them in line with Mississippi's proposed abortion law, which is the one that is at the center of the case that we'll hear about in the end of June or early July. And it's just, you know, it's once again, women, once again, people who can get pregnant are being used as bargaining chips in this culture war. I just wonder, once this happens, I really don't think

anything will ever be enough for these people. I think that 15-week ban will happen, and then 10 years from now, it's going to be a six-week ban that makes it to the Supreme Court, and then there's going to be people going after IVF, frozen embryos. If a child and an embryo are exactly the same, then if a fertility clinic was on fire and a two-year-old was trapped in there, you would save a tray of frozen embryos instead of the child. Everybody knows that an embryo is not the same as a human being, but lawmakers would like to make laws acting as though they are. And it's just a thing that really makes me crazy about this is the same places that are making it really difficult to access abortion care, people at the forefront of just shitting all over people with uteruses. They're also the ones making it super inhospitable

to be a parent. Like what safety net is there in Texas? You know, what safety net is there in Florida? And people like Greg Abbott, people like Ron DeSantis are still running on platforms of making life more difficult for people who don't have abortions. So, and the state of Texas, famously terrible foster system, like egregiously horrible foster care system and child protective services. And so essentially, you know, we have these laws that are building to an America where children are born into situations where their parents can't possibly take care of them. They either enter the foster care system or are put up for adoption. And they become just like fodder for even more like layers upon layers of culture war.

And yeah, it's gross. In the slippery slope argument you outlined, there are women who are being prosecuted or thrown in jail for having miscarriages. Yes. You know? Yes. There's no discussion of intent here.

There is just penalizing people for things that happen in their body that they can't control. Right. And another thing we need to think about is the number of hospitals in this country that are run by religious institutions and therefore can refuse care to people that are seeking medical care.

In Ireland, I want to say six or seven years ago, a woman who was having septic shock, I believe, because she was miscarrying, went to a hospital. She went to a Catholic hospital, was turned away and died. You know, like doctors don't want to get in trouble with their employers by providing anything that could be construed as abortion care. A religious employer probably has a right to draw lines about what care they're going to provide or not provide. Catholic hospitals won't provide abortion care. And another thing is that rural hospitals across the country are closing and being consolidated and eaten up by these religious institutions.

We are moving toward a future where the only people, the only women, the only pregnant people who will be able to access abortion care are going to be affluent women living in American cities, large American cities, or perhaps the mistresses of Congress people. Right. Who is the guy who's dating like the ISIS bride? How is that a one day story? Yeah. What about what about the guy? Republican congressman?

What about the Republican who is from, I think, Ohio or Pennsylvania, who got his mistress pregnant and tried to force her to have an abortion? Or maybe it's Kentucky. Honestly, I lose count because they're such fucking hypocrites and this stuff happens we should make like baseball cards of them right and trade them but like remember this guy like bush did with saddam what are we talking we talking about the guy that that locked a woman in a basement and sexually abused her and now he wants to be the governor of miss uh gritens gritens running for governor but i would have a baseball card of him and you'd be like hey hey, check out Scott DeJarlene.

He's the one who tried to encourage his mistress to have an abortion. It's impossible to keep track of all these chuckle fucks. There's just no, the hypocrisy is bottomless. So, okay. So stepping out of our spiral abyss, like, do you have a sense of what the most effective way to fight back is? Are advocates pushing, you know, packing the court, federal legislation, state legislation, all of the above? I mean, the task in front of us is so immense that unless we break it down into pieces, it's going to feel overwhelming. People need to engage in the local and state level with laws because a lot of this stuff gets snuck in at the state level.

For years and years, anti-abortion activists were trying to sneak things into South Dakota, just trying over and over again to pass like nutty bans, nutty bans. And then that would make its way up through the court system and then get slapped down. But they were always playing the long game with it when it comes to this. I think that we need to focus on state and local politics more. I think we need to focus on national politics around this less. And I realize the irony in saying that on a show that is about national politics. But I think like what the U.S. Congress can do and what the Senate can do and what the president can do around it is much less immediately effective in the lives of more people. You know, it's more effective to deal with states and local governments. I also think that it's really important for women who this matters to,

to run for something, not just vote. We have to start running for stuff. Nancy Pelosi, I think, got her first elected office at 49, 47 or 49 years old. So women over 40, it's not too late to. She did pretty well. Yeah, she's done OK. She's done OK. I think we need to start thinking about running for things. I think we need to speak up.

I think we need to be honest about the role of abortion in the lives of a lot of people who went on to choose to have families later. And I think that we have to be as serious and annoying as about this as conservatives have been. And that's, I mean, that's it. Just we're going to just have to be a pain in the ass for the rest of our lives. That last point you make, I think, is a real thing that I don't know that a lot of people understand. It's like, if you were our age, you probably think that there has been this right wing conservative anti-choice movement in this country forever. And the truth is it's a pretty recent thing. It's sort of like new right Reagan era, super religious abortion as the issue that motivates them. That's like a 70s,

80s thing, right? So for our side-thirds of americans don't think that roe versus way should be overturned yeah right we have public opinion two-thirds of americans think that a current abortion laws are too strict so it just becomes like okay how do we turn that that overwhelming opinion into political action and that's easier said than done but it's hopefully i mean you also have to think about the distribution of those people. I think this is half of a joke, but it's actually half serious. People who live in expensive cities, go ahead and open Zillow on your phone. Take a look at Fargo, North Dakota. I think it's a nice city. Fargo, North Dakota is a nice city and I will accept no detractors of Fargo. It's got a cute downtown, good bones, pretty houses. You can afford to live like a king in Fargo. We need

to mass migrate to smaller American cities. Wyoming. We could turn that place so fast. Montana's on its way. It's on its way. What about, well, how are you feeling with Wisconsin? I think Wisconsin just needs more people who care to do more stuff. There are a lot of people who care who do a lot, but I think there's just, right now, the seesaw is not in a good spot. Also, all these places you're talking about, I bet they have lower taxes than wherever

you live currently. Lower taxes, cheaper cost of living. Sometimes the public schools leave a little to be desired, but you can go be the change. I'm half joking, but I think that as it stands right now, the majority of the two-thirds of Americans who support Roe most ardently are major cities like L.A.

L.A. has 10 million people in it, which is bigger than most states, you know? So I just think that right now we're sort of behind the eight ball until the ideology gets a more equitable national distribution. I think it'll be hard to win on it in elections. Yeah, the Senate sucks. Yeah, so bad. So bad. What a dumb idea. What a dumb idea. You are right though. I mean, savvy people, you, Alyssa, a lot of your listeners, like, I think, saw the writing on the wall in 2018. I do wonder if there will be a moment where, you know, I mean, maybe the last screen quote ruling should have been that moment. But maybe the Mississippi ruling, if it goes the wrong direction and further eliminates the right to choose, maybe that will wake people up. I don't

know. Yeah. And then we'll have to rename hysteria Cassandra because we were right. People didn't listen all along. Yeah. Okay. We are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we will hear my interview with MSNBC's Mehdi Hassan about the war between Russia and Ukraine, the treatment of refugees, the coverage, and how we can use moments like this where we're talking about foreign policy and focus on it in a real way to also talk about US foreign policy and mistakes we've made and how to do things better. So stick around for that. I am thrilled to welcome back to Pod Save America, my friend, Mehdi Hassan. He is known as one of the toughest interviewers in the business. So I'm a little nervous right now, but he,

you can also catch him on Sunday night at 8 p.m. on MSNBC and on Monday through Thursday at 7 p.m. Eastern on Peacock. Mehdi, thank you so much for doing the show. Thanks for having me, Tommy. Good to be here. It's great to have you back. So the reason I wanted to bring you on and talk with you today because you and I started a Twitter conversation yesterday. And then I thought to myself, what are you doing, Tommy? Nothing good ever happens on this place. And I thought you and I could maybe model as human beings. Wise words. Yeah, how to have a conversation about a war and a war and US foreign policy and in a way that's actually

productive. And it's something I think you are uniquely good at. So where I'm coming from, we were talking about Ukraine and Russia today. All of us are horrified by this war. It's clear that what's happening is a war of choice. It's been made by one man, Vladimir Putin, who is lying and he's indiscriminately killing civilians. Just horrific stuff. There's no question about who is the aggressor here. But I do think that when you see suffering like this, and when there's an acute focus on Ukraine, Russia, NATO, whatever, it does give us a window to talk about the thing we control, which is US foreign policy, and what the international community might have done to try and prevent something this awful from happening again, or prevent it in the first place. And so interestingly, Mehdi, there's sort of two different versions of

this conversation. Sometimes it's helpful. Sometimes it's not spilling out on Twitter. One is the suggestion that the West appeased Putin for so long and that if we'd stood up to him earlier, he wouldn't be in Ukraine right now. The other version is maybe NATO expansion was too aggressive. Back in the day, it was actually controversial to want to expand NATO past East Germany. And then in 2008, you start talking about including Ukraine, Georgia, Balkan states have been added. So the conversation shifted over time. So with the caveat that none of this justifies what Putin is doing, and neither of us is arguing otherwise, how do you think we talk about or try to learn from

what's happening today and prevent civilian casualties and wars in the future? Yeah. Great question. It's a big question. I would start off with a few more caveats. Number one, i would say that we're all horrified by the suffering on the ground uh in ukraine and nothing takes away from that suffering and i think uh what it reminds me when i see what's going on is the number one uh uh one of the number one issues that's motivated me as a journalist and as a human being over the last 20 30 years is war is hell and anyone who says otherwise is bonkers and you know one of the reasons i've taken some of the political stances i've taken over the last 20, 30 years is war is hell. And anyone who says otherwise is bonkers. And, you know, one of the reasons I've taken some of the political stances I've taken over the years is because I think too many people think war is a video game, think war is something

that makes us feel good. War is a tool of diplomacy and international relations and foreign policy. And I just think, you know what, you see those kids running across the border. You see those kids arriving in train stations in Berlin and in Hungary. And you think this is what war is. This is a reality which many of us, thankfully, will never have to experience firsthand.

So that's the first point, which is war is how. That has to underlie everything. And then how do we get to wars? How do we avoid wars? How do we end wars? Huge issues, huge questions. And I think one of the problems we have right now is social media. To go back to your point about Twitter and the health site that is

Twitter, which I love to hate and hate to love, is that it brings out the worst in a lot of people when crises are happening. And I think we fall back into our tribes. We fall back into our groups. We try and score points, dunk on people. I'm as guilty of that as anyone else. Yeah, me too. And I think the problem is then you lose a lot of analysis. You get into a lot of bad faith discussions. I think the good faith discussion that we need to have is that there are multiple reasons why people go to war.

There are multiple reasons why wars are started and multiple ways in which they can be ended. It's complicated. It's not easy. Anyone who thinks they have the silver bullet on either side of the spectrum, as you pointed out, anyone who thinks this is all because we appeased Putin or this is all because NATO expanded, that's BS. It's just blatantly not the case. And I think we need to be a little bit more humble when we look at foreign policy crises like this. We in America in particular, who have messed up in so many foreign policy crises, so many wars. I see people online making the most definitive sweeping

statements about Putin or Ukraine or the left, whatever it is. Some of them are the people who were not just wrong 10, 20 years ago, were wrong last summer about things like Afghanistan. So we need some humility all the way around. And I think we need to find a way to talk about this, which is not in a point scoring. One thing that's frustrated me, Tom, I'm going to say this is the outset. Anytime you try and talk about anything other than ukraine somebody shouts what about ism i've got that a lot it's the most you know i feel like it's the most popular word on social media right now to be clear and i had to say this in a tweet just for people listening what about ism is when i say let's not talk about case X, let's talk about case Y.

Let's excuse case X by talking about how bad case Y is. Forget case X. What about case Y? It is an attempt to deflect from or distract from case X or justify case X by looking at case Y. That is wrong. That is not what a lot of us are doing. Some people are doing that in bad faith, including the Russians. I think what those of us in good faith are trying to do,

and my colleague, Eamon Moyodine, and I had this conversation on our shows on Sunday night, which is we're trying to say, let's work on case Y so that we have more credibility to deal with case X. Let's have consistency. Let me make a real world example of that. Right now, there's talk of having Vladimir Putin dragged before an international tribunal, having the Russians tried for war crimes. That would be at the International Criminal Court, ideally, but Russia is not a signatory to that. And guess who else isn't? We're not signatories to the Rome Statute. How about we sign the Rome Statute? That's not whataboutism to point that out. That's saying we would be in a much better position to hold Russia to account if we were party to the International Criminal Court. The ban on cluster munitions brought in in 2010, that's something that Russia has not signed and

is allegedly using cluster munitions in Ukraine. They deny it, but journalists, human rights workers have identified cluster munitions. Again, America did not sign, has not signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Wouldn't it give us greater credibility to condemn Russia's behavior in Ukraine if we were party to that? So I think when we talk about these things that we could be doing better on, when we talk about other parts of the world where we've done bad things, as long as it's not a distraction, as long as it's part of an actual argument to hold Russia to account, to prevent wars like this, I think it's an important part of the conversation. And it frustrates me that a lot

of people are using whataboutism to shut down any kind of moral discussion about what we could be doing better. Yeah, there should be a moral discussion. And just for listeners who don't know, a cluster musician is basically a big bomb that breaks into lots of little bombs. And then those sometimes explode. And sometimes they sit around for years until some little kid picks it up, and then it explodes. So it's just a horrific tool of war that indiscriminately kills civilians. You know, Matty, the other thing that kind of worries me is like even a good faith conversation about what the West or the US could or could not have done differently. It does something that always worries me, which is puts the United States at the center of almost

every problem. And then we end up assuming that all problems are ones that we could have prevented or that we could solve. And the latter formulation, you know, look, I think we should look back in history and question every decision that's ever been made. What I worry about a little bit is what's going to happen going forward, because there is clearly a lot of momentum right now towards sanctioning Russian oil and gas. The calls for a no fly zone have so far been shut down by both Republicans and Democrats, but I don't know. They're going to grow, and they're going to grow even more when you see videos of innocent families trying to escape Ukraine in so-called humanitarian corridors that are getting bombed. You came from the UK, you actually report on more foreign policy issues than most journalists I know.

How do you think about the limits on US power and that constant challenge of thinking about like, okay, where are we going to do more harm than good? It's a great question about the limits on American power. What we are seeing right now is the limits on American power. We cannot engage in a direct hot war with Russia because Russia is a nuclear-armed nation. It's the biggest nuclear stockpile on the planet. This is not Iraq. This is not Libya. This is not Afghanistan. This is not Somalia or the tribal areas of Pakistan that you can just send a few drones and kill people. Maybe they're terrorists. Maybe they're not. Maybe they're terrorists. Maybe they're not. This is a very different ballgame. And I think a lot of Americans have been slow to react to that. We're not used to that.

There's a whole generation of people who doesn't remember the Cold War, that doesn't quite get what a no-fly zone is. There was that poll the other day, Tommy, 74% of Americans said they support a no-fly zone. And I kind of joked online saying, how many of them actually understand what a no-fly zone is out of that 74%? It's interesting, in the UK, when they polled the British public last week, but the polling company explained what a no-fly zone would entail, shooting down Russian aircraft, maybe taking out anti-aircraft

defenses on the Russians. It was actually a plurality of voters that said, no, we don't want a no-fly zone. So it's interesting when pollsters do a bit more work in unpacking the question. But yes, the limits of American power are very clear to people. To Joe Biden, a man who's been on the scene for several decades, former chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, the man who was around during the Cold War when you and I were kids or not even born, he understands that you cannot escalate this into a hot war with Russia. And I think that's an important point for us to understand in terms of the limits of power. We have to live in the world as it is, not as we want it to be. So when we say, well, this shouldn't, Russia shouldn't be allowed to do this stuff, well, shouldn't be allowed by who?

There is no world police. And this is what my slight frustration was in the run-up to this conflict, which was, on the one hand, we were saying to the Ukrainians, stand up for yourselves. Don't let Russians bully you. But then are we going to stand up? No, we're not going to fight. We're not going to fight.

It's a weird, weird, weird situation there. And I understand all the reasons behind that. And I think the limits of American power are very important to acknowledge. I think you're right to say that there is a faction of people that wants to blame America for everything. It's interesting, it used to be that Noam Chomsky left that was accused of doing that. And yet right now, Noam Chomsky came out with a very blunt statement saying that the Russian invasion is inexcusable. There's no justification. It's a war crime. It's on a par with Hitler's invasion of Poland. And yet you have the Candace Owens of this world and the MAGA right saying it's America's to blame for this. I find that quite ironic now that it's actually the right

or the far right that's doing the America's to blame for everything. Look, I agree with you. America is not responsible for every problem in the world. Of course not. In some areas, we are the main driver of the problems, partly in the Middle East. In a lot of Middle East crises, yeah, we are at the center of it. But even not all Middle East crises. Take Syria, for example. The Syrian revolution was a lot of kids rising up against Assad as part of the Arab Spring, as part of multiple countries. Assad cracked down on that. Long story short, it turned into a civil war, turned into an insurgency. Some of the rebel groups we then got involved in were awful.

And I was one of those who opposed arming those groups. I got attacked as an Assad stooge for saying that. So this is the problem. So Syria is an example of where the limits of American power, we weren't going to go in and topple Bashar al-Assad after the craziness of Iraq. And what we thought we could do on the side, some of us would argue, made things worse in some ways. And I look at Ukraine, and I hope, God forbid, it turns into another Syria. People are talking about prolonged insurgency, if a Russian occupation. What we do know about

insurgencies is whether they're successful or not, in the end, the civilian population suffers massively. So that in Afghanistan, we see it in places like Kashmir. It's horrific. No one should want that as any kind of ideal outcome or scenario. And I think, look, when we look at the American role in this, I think that we can't blame America for everything, obviously. I think what we can do is, as I mentioned a moment ago, is what can we do to make things better at the margins? What can we do to change the ways we do things now? I'll give another example. Refugees, a point I made on my MSNBC show on Sunday night. We can't solve the Ukrainian refugee crisis on our own, not at all. Europe can't even do it on its own.

1.7 million people at the time we're speaking have fled their homes, crossed the border. It's the fastest growing refugee crisis in the history, in the modern history of Europe. You have to go back to World War II for this kind of speed. To put it in context for your listeners, in 2015, 1.3 million people at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis applied for asylum in the EU. That's across the course of 2015. This is 1.7 million in the course of 12 days. So it's massive. What do we do about that? Well, you know, one thing we could do is not just give Ukrainians temporary status, as Biden has done, not just take in more Ukrainians proportionately than other countries, but we can actually change our refugee policy as a whole.

Our refugee policy has been shameful, even under Joe Biden. Record low numbers. Look at Title 42 at the border. I'm not sure how we can sit and lecture countries in Europe about the need to take in Ukrainian refugees while we keep a Trump-era rule called Title 42, a Stephen Miller special, which basically blocks all asylum claims at our southern border right now. It's disgusting. That can't be in place while we lecture the rest of the world on the need to take in Ukrainian refugees. Look, I mean, point taken. Setting aside Title 42, though, I mean, look, you know, over a million refugees have left. Ukraine is what, 40, 44 million people. So, you know, you're likely to see that number double, triple, quadruple.

We will see. You're right. I mean, the one area where we have the most power, the most control is our ability to help refugees. Really, the only limit is political will. And so it's interesting, like having been in government, you want to create and build support for policies or things you're doing to help people, humanitarian relief. You want stories about how the American taxpayer is helping this innocent kid so you feel good

about the money you're spending as a person at home watching your show on Peacock. I'm also, though, very mindful of the fact, and I'm listening to people who are saying, okay, we are seeing this heartwarming treatment of Ukrainian refugees, but we didn't necessarily see as heartwarming a treatment of Syrian refugees or Afghan refugees, or frankly, like white refugees versus black and brown refugees, Christian refugees versus Muslim refugees. And I'm trying to think about how to have a conversation about that, that raises that inequity that tries to get us to do better, but that keeps people like wanting to be a part of this broader effort to help people who are suffering. Right. Cause like that is the acute need. It's just like getting everyone to realize

that you need to help out personally, like give some money, vote for people who support refugees. Like how are you, how are you thinking about that? I mean, you're right to raise that. It's something I raised a couple of weeks ago when this thing was kicking off, that the rhetoric right from the beginning, we saw it from certain reporters at media organizations.

We've seen it from governments. I mean, the Bulgarian prime minister said it very openly. These are not the same as the people from Syria. These are people who look like us. These are Europeans. We saw it in the Spanish parliament with the leader of the Vox party saying, these are

not invaders like the ones from the Middle East. So they haven't, you know, they're not hiding the double standards. I don't know if you saw the Danish government has a very, has a rather disgusting law, which is called the jewelry law, which they brought in for Syrian asylum seekers, which is anyone who comes from the Middle East during 2015, 16, 17, 18, had to sell any jewelry or valuables they had to pay for their asylum claim. Wow, come on. Kind of sick stuff. And guess what? This week, they've said it won't apply to Ukrainians. Wonder why? How come Ukrainians don't have to sell their jewelry? So the double standards are there,

they're blatant. You're right. How do we solve that issue? I mean, I don't think we can solve that issue unless we have the broader discussion about race that no one in this country seems to want to have these days, because it does fundamentally come back to, you know, if you want to ask why it is that we can take in Ukrainian refugees and not Syrian refugees or Afghan refugees, the reason is very simple, because the Islamophobic climate in this country that was fueled for the past 20 years, both by a combination of terrorist attacks by terrorist groups and right-wing politicians and some liberal politicians fueling Islamophobic myth, is that we think brown people are secret terrorists. They're coming here to kill us or rape our women. Those are the tropes that exist even in the liberal parts of the liberal imagination. And therefore, there's no easy fix to say, well, we need to treat these people all the same. No, we can't because there are years of propaganda has gone into demonizing refugees from brown

places. That's the key point, right? Because there's years of propaganda has gone into demonizing refugees from brown plates. That's the key point, right? Early on in the Syrian refugee crisis, there were Greek fishermen who dropped everything to go save lives, literally took their boats out, stopped doing what they're doing, saved so many people that they were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. A decade later, we read about those same fishermen pushing those boats full of refugees back into the water, right? Like horrifying horrifying completely. So what I'm saying is we have a chance, we have a chance to try to do

something and, you know, intervene and change policies or approve it or support these efforts in the first instance, while people are still feeling hopeful and caring and optimistic. And like the demagogues have not had the chance to rally support around, you know, the latter view of the world. And I'm just like trying to think through how to do that while we have this moment i mean the word another word that people don't want to hear because it's too woke is intersectionality i mean how do we talk about how do we bring together different crises different groups of people and say actually these are shared struggles these are common struggles these are common fights and the villains in each case are very similar and And I think that's why I've mentioned Turtle 42, because what about us and blah, blah.

No, it is, if we're going to talk about borders and refugees, we have to start at home. And at home, this is one of the vile things that we are doing with refugees that we could help on our border. So I think it is important that we draw those connections and say, you know, yes, your heart is bleeding, rightly so, looking at the images of Ukrainian fathers having to stay behind and fight and saying goodbye to their wives and kids on buses and sending them across the border into Poland. Horrific scenes. What do we do with that anger, that upset, that sorrow, that solidarity? Because as you say, the reality is political will is how much refugees we can take in.

The reality is Ukrainians are pretty far away, relatively speaking. They are going to go to the first countries, the neighboring countries. But, you know, we've got people in our own backyard, quote, unquote, who are fleeing conflicts and violence who we don't help. So I would draw that connection. And you're right.

We need to have the conversation about propaganda. You made the good point about how things can quickly change. Even Afghans, Tommy, like a lot of the Afghans last summer had a lot of sympathy because they were seen as good Afghans, Tommy, like a lot of the Afghans last summer had a lot of sympathy because they were seen as good Afghans who helped NATO and helped the American military. Why are we not supporting them? But that was very quickly weaponized by the Fox News of this world to talk about, well, what if terrorists come in, et cetera, et cetera. So unfortunately, and I hate saying this because all conversations come back to this, those of us who are on the

progressive end of the political spectrum, those of us who want to do more good in the world, who want to have a more ambitious political moral imagination, always come up against the fact that our opponents have a really well-funded and well-organized propaganda machine. Yeah. I like that I invite you on to ask you the most difficult, biggest picture questions I could possibly think of. Last one. How do we stop nuclear war? Yeah, how do we stop nuclear war? I mean, seriously, the nuclear issue is the most worrying issue. People use that cliche of keep you up at night, like literally keep you up at night. It should keep you up at night. No, I mean, look, I mean, I think if you're Joe Biden,

you are probably thinking that the greatest good you could do, the way you could help the most people or prevent the most suffering is by preventing a nuclear war. That's just the case here. But sort of in the near term, Biden is reportedly debating whether to visit Saudi Arabia to basically get Mohammed bin Salman, the sociopathic crown prince of Saudi Arabia, to increase global oil supply. He reportedly sent a delegation to Venezuela over the weekend to potentially talk about sanctions relief for Venezuela and get more Venezuelan oil on the market. Regardless of what happens with Russia, I actually think that the US should be rethinking sanctions towards Venezuela because talk about sanctions that have harmed the civilian population and not led to changes

in the government. I mean, that's just a failed effort. But the Saudi visit and dealing with Mohammed bin Salman is a tough pill to swallow, I noticed, for you as well. But look, there's that priority. There's the fact that this guy's a sociopath. And there's also the reality that gas prices are high. They're going to get higher. It could hurt consumers. It could destroy Biden's chance of getting reelected. What's your reaction to this news that we might be going hat in hand to the Saudis once again? I mean, on the domestic political front, it's interesting you had Joe Manchin, our kind of cold supporting Democrat and name only senator saying over the weekend, you know, I think Americans would be willing to pay more for gas

to stand with Ukraine, which is funny because his whole platform was to fight against inflation. Apparently he killed every progressive bill on Earth to fight against inflation. Now it's like every progressive bill on Earth to fight against inflation. Now he's like, inflation, it's fine. It's also bullshit. Russia. Such bullshit. It is bullshit.

And I think, you know, I would love in theory to be in a world where we say, yeah, we will pay gas, high gas prices to not have to import oil from Russia or Saudi Arabia. Before I get to Saudi, just a point about Venezuela. You're right. The suffering in Venezuela is massive.

Again, we can talk about, is America to blame? Maduro has to take a huge share of responsibility, but America has to take responsibility also for some of its misguided policies, both towards Venezuela and the wider Central American world. But collective punishment is not something I support. I've seen a lot of people tweeting recently, sensible, smart people say, well, it's the Russian public. They're behind Putin, so they should suffer. public, they're behind Putin, so they should suffer. The American public was behind the war in Iraq at one point. Does that mean ordinary Americans should suffer? That's a horrible road to go down when you start blaming innocent people, especially people who've been brainwashed by state-run media for their actions of governments who break the law. And Venezuelans have been suffering. And I think ending suffering is the key. And Russians now, my big worry, Tommy,

is that our sanctions on Russia, while you can justify them just from a practical point of view, what if they are counterproductive? What if they lead to a Russian public that is more nationalistic, more anti-Western, more aggressive, replaces Putin with an even more nationalist anti-Western leader? When we talk about the grievance of NATO, I mean, this is going to be a whole new series of grievances. And very quickly, I've got to say while I'm on the show with you, the whole NATO debate, very quickly, we haven't talked about this. There are people saying it's all to do with NATO. There are people who say it's nothing to do with NATO. Sorry to be the boring person and say I'm in the middle. It's crazy to say that Putin is fighting Russia now because of NATO. That's ridiculous. He's fighting because he's Vladimir Putin. But to say NATO has nothing to do with why we're here at this point is also completely ahistorical and just silly.

Yeah, we should be able to talk about it. I just want to dispatch with that. Saudi Arabiaia yeah i i am someone who has a lot of problems with our relationship with san diego but i'm old enough to remember when joe biden stood on the debate stage and said i will turn san diego into a pariah and instead now there's talk of him going hat in hand although i believe jen saki denied there are plans to do that but that's why axios was reporting on sunday um i mean for again, sorry to boil this down, big, big geopolitical questions to very simple moral principles. But the idea that we say we're going to stop important Russian oil, because Russia is bombing Ukraine, but we're going to substitute it with Saudi oil while

Saudi is bombing Yemen, something I'm not allowed to mention, because if I mention Yemen, people say, what about it? It's not what about it. There's a war going on in Yemen right now. It didn't stop because Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. We should be able to focus on more than one thing at a time. And I don't think we should be giving MBS a pass for what is happening in Yemen, nor should we have given him a pass for what he did to Jamal Khashoggi. So I think we need to reevaluate our entire relationship with Saudi Arabia. You still have puff pieces about MBS appearing in the US media. I find it bizarre that this debate right now about Russian oil is not provoking more discussion about climate change,

renewable energy, some of the stuff that Joe Manchin killed in some of that Build Back Better bill. This is a reminder that we shouldn't be reliant on any foreign oil, not just Russian oil, but foreign oil from a lot of autocrats and autocracies, because that's unfortunately where a lot of the oil tends to be. How about we use this, again, to go back to my point right when the interview began, to try and use this crisis to do something good at home and fix something we haven't fixed at home, which is our reliance on foreign oil? Yeah, look, in a rational world, this would jumpstart in a big way our investment in renewables. It might also jumpstart a rethinking or a relook at nuclear power,

although the Russian attack on a nuclear power plant shows the downside risk there as well. That said, in the near term, if I was like a hack political advisor in the White House right now, or any political advisor in the White House, not a hack, I don't mean to insult them, I would be saying to Joe Biden, the number one threat to your reelection is oil prices, and we have to do everything we can to get them down. I would love to say, though, that the path to doing that would be to get back into the Iran nuclear deal and get a bunch of Iranian oil back onto the markets, although I know that would be controversial as well. But the Iranian nuclear deal could now be a consequence, could now be a cost to this Russian invasion too, because without the Russians at the table, without Russians doing that deal, that could be gone

too. And then we could be talking about nuclear. I mean, there's so much fallout from this ridiculous man in Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. It's hard to quantify. It's hard to quantify. And the real challenge is ahead of us, especially when it comes to global food prices, wheat shortages, et cetera, et cetera. Mehdi, I really appreciate you giving me so much time today i know you're a busy man

and uh thank you again but everyone should check out your show on msnbc and on peacock uh it's uh it's a fantastic show and it's also you cover international stories that a lot of people don't cover and i always really appreciate that about you so thank you appreciate that and you know it's times like this when you're you're reminded of why we cover those international stories in the quiet times, because when it gets busy, like now, you kind of understand how we are all interconnected. One thing I would just one last thing I'd say to your listeners is, let us use this crisis to think about how we could be better, how we can change things about the way we do things, rather than just retreating into a kind of jingoistic rah, rah, rah, West versus Russia bubble. That would be the worst road to go down.

Yeah. Let's not do the Freedom Fries thing and start bombing. What if someone smashed up Russia House, a bar in DC? That's not going to help us, guys. Ridiculous. Yeah. Let's not do that. Okay. Thanks, Tommy. Thanks, my friend. Okay, Erin, it's been a serious episode, talking about serious stuff. Yeah. So we're going to close out the show by talking about something very stupid, which is the ongoing battle between Republicans and technology. There's a two-part war, two fronts, if you will. The first one is being fought on Zoom. So over the weekend, President Zelensky, again, the president of Ukraine,

he's holding a video conference with members of Congress to literally ask for military aid, literally from his bunker in a war zone. And he had to stop his presentation and ask Republican Senator Rick Scott to mute his mic. Part one of this, sorry. Part two was then Senators Marco Rubio and Steve Daines tweeted out screenshots of Zelensky during the video conference, despite specifically being told not to by Oksana Markorova, the Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S. So for security reasons. I guess my question is,

we've been doing Zoom for like two years. You can't figure out mute, Rick Scott? I mean... Mute? Yeah, yeah. Also, like, I just wish one of them would have turned into a cat. That would have been...

Oh, like the ears? I'm not a cat, you know. Oh, a filter would into a cat. That would have been a little bit. Oh, the little ears? Yeah, I'm not a cat, you know. Oh, a filter would have been funny. That would have been great. But I do want to thank President Zelensky, or whoever runs against Rick Scott for Senate, should thank President Zelensky for that incredible soundbite. Can you please mute her?

Yeah. Rick, Rick. Exactly. Just beautiful. Put it over an ad of Rick Scott looking like a googly-eyed goon, which he is. Oh, he is really googly-eyed. I mean, also, like, another thought I had, like, if you walked in here, said, gun to the head, describe what Rick Danes looks like. Steve Danes, sorry.

Oh, Rick Danes. I was picturing, like, a NASCAR driver. But Steve. I was thinking, like, Ric Flair. but Steve. I was thinking like Ric Flair. Yeah. I'm a goner in that scenario. I wonder if there's a chance that he's a made-up identity and it was just Vladimir Putin on the call. Your thoughts?

Possibly, but have you ever seen that website, This Person Does Not Exist? Mm-mm. Okay, after we get done recording, I'm going to show you. It's all computer-generated faces of people that don't actually exist. I think Steve Danes may be one of those people. I love that. Just AI faces. AI faces and they look real unless you look at their ears and you can tell it's something as well.

It's always the ears. Why is it the ears? I don't know. I don't either. I think the AI just kind of gets fucked up on ears. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe Elon Musk is wrong. Well, check out Steve Daines' ears, any constituents of Steve Daines.

Because if they're fucked up, he's not real. He's not real. That's a good tip. Jake Tapper interviewed Marco Rubio on Sunday, and he asked him about his tweet and why he tweeted a picture of Zelensky when the Ukrainian ambassador said, please don't do this for security purposes. And Marco said, well, first of all,

she said that like 30 minutes into the call after I'd already done it. It's just so funny to me because you think maybe ask first. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it makes me think, okay, on one hand, you know, these elected officials love to talk about how important they are and how they're in these important briefings and ostensibly taking in this very sensitive and important information. And that's why we spend our tax dollars, like, making sure they're protected and safe. Security and stuff. But also, like, does Marco Rubio listen ever?

Is he just sitting there drawing that unending, like, S chain thing that we all drew in middle school instead of paying attention? Yeah. Is he practicing his signature like he's an nba player he's the republican head of the intelligence committee too like you would think he would just think maybe maybe don't tweet this one right i mean you know look it's ironic for me to be making fun of him i am my notes are printed out email i like that um which is ironic but i admit my tech shortcomings. I'm not going to try to do some crazy tech. Also, these guys, of course they're going to tweet out a picture of the Ukrainian president because they want to feel like big shots.

And that is at the root of all of their actions politically. They just want to be fucking big shots. Yeah, they got to be in the middle of the story. It's deeply annoying. This story made me think about in 2008, we ran this TV ad that was like, John McCain doesn't know how to use a computer. John McCain doesn't know how to use email. And it was a not remotely subtle attempt to call him really too old for the job.

Sure. And like over the years, there's been some things in politics I regretted and some I didn't. I always kind of was like, I wish we could have had that one back. It was a little petty. This is making me rethink it. I kind of think there should be like a proficiency exam for technology. Yeah. Period.

For lawmakers. You should have to have a license to use Twitter. Yes. If you have a blue check, you got to pass your exam and renew it every year like an old man with bifocals. You got to keep passing. Right. Yeah. Or else you're going to just be tweeting RT if you agree all day long and everyone's going to hate you. Yeah, exactly. I know so many people, I don't know if this is true for you, that I worked with or was friends with who I just have watched lose their minds on Twitter, just become the worst versions of themselves.

I'm like, I know this broke you. It really did in a real way. It's a misery machine. It's a real misery machine. I've been trying to use it less because it makes me sad and TikTok has dancing on it, which is, you know,

like which one am I going to pick? Obviously, I'm going to pick the dancing one. Yeah, and people that being funny and stuff. But yeah, it just I think it really brings out the worst in people. And it makes you think that your world is so small that it fits into your hand. And this is your whole world. And the responses you're getting, this is how people feel about you. And it can be that if you spend all your time in it.

But you're opting to spend all your time in it, but you're opting to spend all your time in it. You're opting to become a tiny little Twitter man and you don't have to. You can put your phone away and do other things and no one will miss you. Nobody misses anybody who goes off Twitter. I'm always like, good for them or like, good, fuck you. It's the world's smallest, lamest chat room. Just the juxtaposition of these silly senators taking photos of their laptops while Zelensky is like in a T-shirt like begging for stinger missiles in a war zone. It just like couldn't be. Yeah, their weenies. It was like the most – it's such a weenie move.

It really is. The other technology story that caught our eye was Donald Trump is having some tech problems. You may have missed it, Aaron, because I kind of did. Donald Trump rolled out his own social media site for like MAGA types. It's called Truth Social. It apparently went live on February 21st, but I guess it was a soft launch because there's, I guess, a waiting list and like hundreds of thousands of people are kind of stuck on it. And so Ruby Kramer from Politico is very funny, very dry reporter, wrote a piece a couple of days ago about how she finally got an invite to the site, like 11 days in. She makes an account, she goes on, she's like looking for engagement and it's just a ghost town. No one is on it. Who's the social media guy who

was like his golf caddy? Oh yeah, I can red red face but i forget his name but i know who you're talking that guy's posting a lot but like donald trump's not even on it no one dan scavino dan scavino dan scavino um question do you think it was a mistake for donald trump to put famously stupid former congressman devin nunes in charge of his social media site. I am enjoying the show. I think Devin Nunes is a real, real dumb idiot. And since he left Congress, there's been a really heated battle for Congress's dumbest bitch. The rankings change week to week. Oh, is it Louie Gohmert? Is he the dumbest bitch in Congress? there's the rankings change week to week yeah is who is

oh is it Louie Gaumert is he the dumbest bitch in Congress he might be is it Jim Jordan is he the dumbest bitch in Congress

he's got no jacket on ever it's funny most of the dumbest bitches are men they're all men they're all they're all men

well you get some MTG where I don't know where she lands she did something who even knows she's not she's functionally

a person who runs around yelling she's not on any committee she has nothing to's not. She's functionally a person who runs around yelling. She's not on any committee. She has nothing to do. She's not really functionally a congressperson. She just raises money. You know why she's maybe not dumb? It's because she has managed to make all of us remember her name and get a lot of attention. And I don't remember anyone else's name, frankly.

And so she's kind of beating on these clowns. My phone corrects her name to Madgery. Like, I don't know. M-A-D-G? No, M-a-j-o-r-i-e madgery i don't i've never used the word madgery in my life my phone always does that autocorrects the wrong thing to a name that isn't a name but anyway devin nunez uh famous possible farmer because it's not even been established that he really was that involved in his family's farm. He's allegedly a farmer. One thing I really loved about Ruby Kramer's piece was how she's kind of spelled out what this thing is.

And it sort of reminded me of like Devin Nunes had a big report due and he didn't do any of the work. And then the very last minute, he just like copied the Wikipedia articles and changed all the adjectives and then like rearr do any of the work and then the very last minute he just like copied the wikipedia articles and changed all the adjectives and then like rearranged some of the sentences because it's twitter twitter it's twitter but instead of tweet it's truth the truth and reach retweet is read truth re-truth re-truth re if you have any problem with speech, you cannot say that fast. I have to pause. Re-truth. It's so silly. It is so aggressively silly.

I know. I know it's so small, but these are the things I need right now. The Daily Beast had a story about how apparently Trump is calling up his buddies and just shouting about how bad the website is. I don't know if it's true. She's surrounded by liars who lie to the news outlets but i love it yeah i love it too i think that at some point though um maybe somebody who is close to him can be convinced to just hand him a old style like phone receiver that's not connected to anything and be like this is your phone and then like put him in and i like this

was something that people would say when he was on Twitter. Like give him a fake Twitter that he can just send ridiculous things out. And we'll, yep, you're sending tweets, Donnie. You're doing it. You're tweeting. But he's just like tweeting into nothing. So maybe this like truth social is the fake Twitter of everybody's dreams before he got kicked off. Oh, that's a good call.

SNL had a skit recently where they had the Fisher-Price. You know who hates it when you call them skits? Who? People who write the skits. Oh, what should I call them? Sketch. A short sketch. It's a sketch comedy.

It's not skit comedy. What was that? The State? That was a great sketch comedy show. I want to dip my, anyway. That was a great sketch comedy show. I want to dip my, anyway. They had a great sketch where they had the Fisher Price podcast kit for white guys.

And it's a full-on podcast kit where you can say whatever you want. You can rap all the lyrics of all your favorite songs, but it doesn't record anything, so you don't get canceled. Yeah, yeah. It's very funny. That is essentially what this is for Donald Trump. cancels. Yeah, yeah. It's very funny. That is essentially what this is for Donald Trump because who's going to be on a waiting list several hundred thousand people long

unless it's like for an organ. For something good. For an organ. For a liver. For a front row seat tickets to Celine Dion's show in Vegas. My friends went to my girlfriend's here. They both just wept the whole time.

They said it was the best thing they'd ever seen. I would absolutely weep. I kind of want to see Katy Perry's show. I think Riri Chaney went to see that. I would definitely go. A stereo panelist, Riri Chaney. Yeah, I think that this is, I'm enjoying the failure of truth social. I think one thing that maybe Donald Trump is realizing now is that,

and this is kind of Shakespearean in how funny it is. He's a person that has always tried to do the thing that would get the most attention and get people to pay attention, you know, in the largest numbers tuning into him. But what is getting the most attention is his failures. People love to watch him fail, but he also hates to be a loser. So he has a kind of bittersweet choice to make. Like, do I keep failing on the, do I keep like belly flopping and getting attention for, for losing and have people tune in, in droves because they love to see me suck. But then I'm a loser. Right. That is a conundrum. Yeah. That's tough. I mean,

I'm a loser. Right. That is a conundrum. Yeah. Hey, that's tough. I mean, one serious thought or question I do have is you have these like so-called free speech platforms. You got Gab. You got Getter.

You got Rumble. And I just really do wonder whether a literal echo chamber like that where it's like this is the MAGA platform for MAGA people. I mean, you're similarly tortured by the internet. Like, can that exist? If there is no one to troll, can a site full of trolls exist happily? I wonder if all of these things aren't doomed to failure. No, it's like in The Lion King when the Pride Lands are taken over by the hyenas. It's essentially that. Like, what are they going to do?

Like, there's no more food left. Who are they going to steal food from? Yeah, exactly. They're just going to turn on each other. Yeah, not Simba, not Nala. Nala is the girl lion. She's a girl. Hannah's cat growing up was Nala.

Oh, that's cute. That's a cute cat. Okay, well, that's all I had on Republicans versus technology. I don't know if there's any stories I missed that you saw out there. No, no. But I do. I am enjoying Trump continuing to. You know, this truth social thing, I thought his app was launched several times ago.

Me too. I'm like, oh, this is the app. Okay. And it's failing. Oh, this is the app. Okay. Oh, it's still failing. Lovett did want me to bring up the time when Ted Cruz liked incest porn, I think.

Some sort of weird porn on 9-11 on Twitter. Wait, it was on 9-11? It was on 9-11. Never forget, indeed. Oh, man. Ted Cruz, I feel like, has a kink. A wrongness kink. He loves to just be someone that people dislike.

Well, back to your point about, like, loving to be seen sucking and failing Ted Cruz. I mean, he just loves to just get humiliated constantly. Yeah, he really doesn't. And, you know, for, you know, all of the ways that Donald Trump's political career has exceeded Ted Cruz's. Ted Cruz is really maybe the model that he's going to have to follow if he wants to continue to be in the public eye.

People will tune in to watch him fail. Bigly. Bigly. Bigly. Well, that makes me sad. Okay. Well, I think that's all we got for today. Thank you, Aaron, Tom Brady, for stepping in.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not really enjoying Florida as much as it seems that I am. Yeah, just the taxes stepping in. Yeah, I mean, I'm not really enjoying Florida as much as it seems that I am. Yeah, just the taxes. Yeah, yeah. You did get drunk on margaritas and throw that trophy off a boat that one time. You know what?

He won me over. He won me over at the end of his career. And it was Belichick that I didn't like. I know. It was such a human moment. He's just absolutely plastered throwing trophies off a boat to Gronk, which is just so funny. He's earned it. He's truly earned it. I trophies off a boat to Gronk, which is just so funny.

He's earned it. He's truly earned it. I wanted him to play until he was like 50 after that. It's just psychotic. Also, we won't talk about how the part of the story

where Tom Brady replaces Drew Bledsoe and then Drew Bledsoe never really plays again. But, you know, John, John, feel better. We love you. Thank you also to

Nettie Hassan for joining the show. And I'll talk to you guys next week. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Hassan for joining the show. And I'll talk to you guys next week. Thank you.