Pod Save America - Trump White House Secrets Revealed

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

Vanity Fair publishes a candid interview with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in which she makes eye-popping admissions about Trump, Elon Musk, and many more. Trump interrupts the season finale of Survivor to deliver an angry, meandering primetime address on the economy, and the administration moves closer to war with Venezuela, announcing a blockade of oil tankers trying to enter or leave its ports. Jon and Dan discuss all the latest and then turn to Trump’s new executive orders on gender-affirming care and medical marijuana, Speaker Mike Johnson’s inability to hold his coalition together, and DNC Chair Ken Martin’s decision to bury a much-anticipated postmortem report on the 2024 election. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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New episodes drop every week, so go listen to I've had it wherever you get your podcasts or watch full episodes on YouTube. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Fabro. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, we'll talk about the fallout or lack thereof from the 11 extremely candid interviews. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles did with Vanity Fair. We'll also cover Trump explicitly making the case that we might go to war with Venezuela to take their oil. His executive orders banning gender-affirming care for young people and relaxing marijuana restrictions. Mike Johnson losing control of the House over Obamacare subsidies.

the DNC's plans to bury its 2024 autopsy report and Trump's latest home decorating project, personally writing the copy for a new set of presidential plaques designed to troll his predecessors. Lovely. Lovely, Dan. But let's start with Trump's decision to interrupt the Survivor's season finale Wednesday with a primetime address that sounded like an angry old man who'd taken too much Adderall, yelling at us about how the economy is actually great. And if you don't believe that, it's Joe Biden's fault. If you have the good sense to skip it, here's a taste of how it went. Good evening, America.

Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess, and I'm fixing it. We had men playing in women's sports, transgender for everybody. Our country was laughed at from all over the world, but they're not laughing anymore. Much of this success has been accomplished by tariffs. My favorite word, tariffs, I negotiated directly with the drug companies and foreign nations to slash prices on drugs and pharmaceuticals by as much as 400, 500, and even 600%. One year ago, our country was dead. We were absolutely dead.

Our country was ready to fail. Totally failed. Now, we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. Needs more garland. It's very festive there at the White House. It's been a fucking jungle. So, Marist poll from this week, guess which percentage of Americans

have some degree of concern about the impact of tariffs on their financial situation? Would it be two-thirds of Americans, John? It would be two-thirds of Americans, Dan. That's the host of Polarcoaster right here. Go check it out. Subscribe-only show, Kricka.com.

Oh, an organic plug. I love it. You know, it's, I should have, I should have named this as one of my New Year's resolutions. Around 60% opposed the tariffs. And he just, it's like the main policy he implemented that is causing people to feel that prices are too high and that they can't afford life is the one he keeps bragging about in the speeches where he's supposed to allay people's concerns about affordability. He can't help himself He can't help himself What'd you think of the speech? What'd you think of the speech?

He didn't start like an old man on Adderall yelling But if you could tell by the last couple clips we did He really picked up some scene there He was trying to get it done by 20 minutes And God help him, he did I have a lot of thoughts on this But just from a basic strategic point of view This is an epic disaster

It serves no purpose If the goal was to improve his political standing If it does anything, it does the opposite Because you just can't tell people You know, you have two-thirds Americans who think prices are too high, two-thirds of Americans are unhappy with the direction of country, two-thirds of Americans who are unhappy with the economy, you know, majorities who disapprove of his economic performance, which is now in the 30s in most polls, and even lower than in the low 30s when it comes to inflation, you can't tell them that things are good. That is like just, he might as well just go around and just stick his thumb in the eye of every persuadable voter in America, because that's what he's doing. From a strategic point of view, it makes no sense. It is absolute disaster.

Poorly delivered. I got a lot of thoughts on the networks giving him the time for this. They kind of got snowed, huh? What? Like, first of all, it's hard, as we know, right? It's hard to get, you've actually asked networks for time, I imagine. It is, it's hard to get time from the networks for a primetime speech that interrupts their primetime programming, particularly the three-hour season finale of three hours, wow. Season failure of Survivor.

I know. Imagine if we had to watch Leavitt for three hours in that finale. I was going to say. That's quite a hypothetical. I'd say that. Lucky for us, that was about three minutes. Imagine if we had to watch me in the NBA finals. Yeah, so they don't like to give that up.

They especially don't like to give up prime time to presidents when they make purely political speeches and have in fact turned down presidents. President Obama, in fact. For that they deem to political. And this one is like, you know, Joe Biden was a senile old man and he fucked up the country and, you know, it's like, what is he doing? Yeah, there was no news. We'll get to the fake news in here in a minute, but there's no real news in the speech. There's no purpose. Like to get this time, and this time was obviously much more valuable in the 2010s than it is now.

But still, this is run the Survivor finale. It's CBS's biggest, I would assume, non-sports night of the year. And normally you need to be responding to a national tragedy. declaring war, like a major piece of legislation that is passing. Maybe it's very, like in the first 100 days of your presidency, but it's just a year-end wrap-up rally speech is not something you would get time for. And even in the past, if they gave it to you, they would have given a response time to the other party, where so like a Hakeem Jeffries or Alyssa Slacker, whatever else could have

responded. And so they just gave it to them. And that does, I think, speak to the way which Trump has intimidated major media companies, right? Like you think CBS in the midst of the, you know, trying to get controlled Warner Brothers discovery is going to turn them down. Do you think the Disney company wants another fight with Trump? So they're going to turn them down to ABC. Comcast, which is also looking at various mergers, you think they're going to turn them down for NBC?

No, this is where Trump has bullied the president giving him something. They would not have given another president. Yeah. And, you know, their fault for doing it. But also kind of glad they did. Yeah, do it again. Like, here's my thing. On a purely principled point of view, it's absurd they gave it to him.

Do it again. Do it tomorrow. Once a week. Every Wednesday. Let's go back to like Fireside. It's the fireside chat of 2026. Do it. Old Donnie Trump, every once a week he's going to come.

He's going to yell at us about how good everything is and why we should be mad at Joe Biden if we're not happy. And just, you know, yell some more. And that's great. And all these people who don't, who've tried to tune out Donald Trump and aren't paying too much attention of politics when he jumps into their screen and starts yelling at them, you know, maybe they'll think about that when they go to vote in the midterms. So, yeah, rule number one, you don't give a speech when you have nothing to say. He didn't have anything to say. The only nugget of news, I guess, you could call it, is he announced that there would be a bonus, a bonus stipend.

For troops? For all the troops, all of our troops getting a bonus stipend. Do you know how much that bonus stipend is? $1,776. What are the odds of that? get it because it's 250th anniversary coming up 1776 that guy he's a marketer i know first of all for the average salary that someone in the military makes that's like a a two to three percent bonus so nice bonus very generous and then we found out actually where's he getting the money from this well he's getting the money from the housing stipend that congress appropriated for the troops yeah so he's robbing peter once again once again just you know Once a scammer, always a scammer.

And that, I mean, that was the only news in the speech. Like, Carolyn Leavitt had teased a new policy. I mean, we did think, and we'll get to this later, but like, all the rumors were, and this goes to the gravity of getting the national time, is that if Trump is getting the national time, it probably meant we were going to war with Venezuela. Instead, we were going to war with Joe Biden and the facts. Which honestly makes sense from a political perspective for the White House, which is like, do we want to make our insane case for war with Venezuela, or should we just,

do it and have him just lie to people about how good the economy is instead. Yeah, except the lying to neither are good choices. But just I really can't emphasize enough how politically negative it is. It's toxic to when people are mad about the economy to tell them the things are great. That like we've said this before, you and I have watched focus groups where people have literally tried to flip the table over. They're so mad when you give them a message that suggests that they're wrong and things really are good. And he's just, he seems, which I think is true, out of touch and delusional

with how people actually feel. Because he really, it's like, it's all golden age of America, pat ourselves on the back, more progress than anyone has ever seen before, done more than every president ever in the history of time. And no one, even like, other than his like true fanboys and like the true magabase, no one believes that. Large, the majority of people who voted for him don't believe it. And so you sound crazy when you say it. And, and, you know, a big part of it is, his delusional narcissism, but I think all presidents can find themselves in a bubble once they're in the White House. And at the end there, that last clip he was talking about, you know, all these foreign leaders come up to me and say, the country's so hot, it's never been better. It's like,

you know who used to say that actually? It's Joe Biden. Remember he would say, all the foreign leaders tell me that we're doing a great job. They're coming back and all this kind of stuff. And it's like, yeah, first of all, one of the reasons that the foreign leaders might be telling you that is because they are kissing your ass because you're the American president. And so they are telling you nice things. And also, they probably have the same frustrations with their people. And so they're all like, they're all defensive foreign leaders all talking to each other like, oh, we're doing so good and look at all the great decisions we're making and why aren't people happier with us?

It is like Joe Biden would not have given a national televised address like this. That would not have happened. But there is similarities in both their economic message in the way they frame their presidency. And this is even in the way they frame president, it's less Biden and more. the people around Biden, who would just would insist on calling him like the greatest president since LBJ or FDR at every time, which, like, you can believe that, but no, and you even, maybe even have some sort of case based on your legislative record if you want to make that case, but that's, that just rings so hollow to voters who are giving you a 41% approval rating at

the time. Like, you just, you just sound crazy. You sound absolutely crazy then. More of a show not tell thing, you know? Yeah, that's a, yeah, these are two very core speech writing rules, which is don't give a speech of nothing to say. more showing, less telling. That's right. So the reporters that were in the room for the speech said that after it was over, Trump turned to Susie Wiles and said some version of, quote, Susie told me I had to give an address to the nation,

which is notable for a few reasons. One being that Susie Wiles still has a job and influence with the president after her Vanity Fair tell-all was published this week in case you have not heard yet. Wiles spoke to writer and historian Chris Whipple on the record, knowingly 11 separate times over the last year, which resulted in candid observations like J.D. Vance, quote, has been a conspiracy theorist for a decade. Pam Bondi, quote, completely whiffed on the Epstein files.

Russ Vote is in, quote, absolute right-wing zealot. Elon Musk is in, quote, a vowed ketamine user. As for her boss, Donald Trump, Weil, said that he has an alcoholic's personality, admitted that revenge is his motivation for trying to prosecute Tish James and James Comey, that she was aghast at Elon feeding USAID to the woodchipper, that, quote, overzealous border patrol agents might be responsible for mistakenly deporting people, and that Trump did, in fact, fly on Epstein's plane. Trump and nearly every senior administration official have decided to respond to the piece by

defending Wiles in a series of very embarrassing tweets. they are all blaming Vanity Fair for the crime of printing the words that she said to them which were also recorded on audio tape and just for fun the piece was accompanied by a glossy photo shoot that included some horrifying close-ups of Wiles, J.D. Vance, Marco, Stephen Miller, and Caroline Levitt.

Dan, putting your old White House Communications Director hat on what did you think watching all this play out just what an absolutely amusing enjoyable disaster like how does this happen they how do you how do you do 11 on the record interviews and just like I mean I guess we've seen this people do this before and we've seen Trump Aides do this before this is what brought down Steve Bannon and uh it's Garmucci when they work for Trump is you is they begin treating these reporters as something between a confidant and a therapist and you start having these conversations

and it is like basically this is the White L. Shiva staff like there has been nothing but praise for how savvy and smart she is and like she obviously did a good job running that campaign but like she would have failed the test at the end of the first week of press secretary school

by the way she handled this interview which is like absolutely embarrassing. The other part about this is and we can get into the individual revelations and what they mean but just from a pure communications perspective and just looking at them is the idea that they all hate the press is such bullshit. Like, here they, like, Susie Wiles obviously is talking to Chris Wable because she wants

to shape her own legacy as a chief of staff. That's why you, that's why she would do this. But here you have these people like Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance and Marco Ruby who go on the, you know, they go on cable, go on Fox and they shitle over the press. And J.D. Vance just the other day tweeted about how terrible the mainstream press was. And then they get the fucking glam squad to show up in the White House and do their hair and makeup for a photo shoot for Vanity Fair, a publication that has the word vanity in it. Like they absolutely thirst for the approval of the mainstream media establishment stuff that they love to just in a professional wrestling like fake way trash on TV. It's like it's just so revealing about how vacuous the whole shtick is.

you know how long the photo shoot took i don't tell me an entire day for all of them yes so the wall street journal has a sort of uh details on how this all came together and why she decided to do the interview and the in the photo shoot and all that photo shoot took an entire day um i'll just read you one one paragraph from the story white house officials said there was no machiavellian master plan by wiles to participate in the interviews with vanity fair writer chris whipple after coming to like Whipple. She agreed to talk to him regularly about what was going on in the White House, often on the weekend.

She told others that it was for a historical project. The conversations weren't minded by a White House press staffer. Yeah, no shit. Wiles told others that she respected Whipple and was upset by the final stories that were published on Tuesday. Unbelievable. Is this the point at which you and I are required for journalistic purposes to disclose that we participated this very same vanity fair photo shoot in 2009?

we sure did we sure did Dan didn't take an entire day though probably took an entire day for everyone that they because they did the whole they did like there's like eight 10 different pictures or something yeah and they did the cabinet they did a bunch of different staffs they yeah a whole bunch of people yeah but i think it probably took 15 minutes is the folks of it i don't think we got hair and makeup either which they have the picture which definitely not what does not suggest that we did i'll tell you that had my shaved head and it was uh me me you will listen bobby gibbs that's right that was our that was our that was our picture Well, no, ours was...

Oh, no, we didn't have Alyssa in ours. We didn't have Alyssa, yeah. Alyssa was in with the scheduling people. The scheduling. Yeah, no, we did it. Well, we didn't shit out all over Vanity Fair. I think it was like, right? Was it the first week we were in the transition headquarters?

I think we were so much transitions. Yeah, yeah. So they also talked to the photographer. Someone interviewed the Chris and this guy is great. He's, he pointed out that, or he revealed, I should say, that Caroline Levert has her own personal groomer that was there. And I don't know if. you've seen any anyone go check it out if you're if you're feeling brave the uh the close

up of caroline levitt yeah that's i mean it looks like it looks like there was some lip filler which i'm saying this because it was all over the internet and chris andersen was asked about it in his interview and he said well what can i say that's the makeup she puts on those are the injections she gives herself if they show up in a photo what do you want me to do did you see that I saw this, this is like unverified because I just saw this on Instagram, but the conversation between the photographer and Stephen Miller. I have it right here. Okay, please go ahead. Read it. Real anecdote. Real anecdote. This is just, it's just fun for us. We deserve this. He said, I'll give you a little anecdote. Stephen Miller was perhaps the most concerned about the portrait

session. He asked me, should I smile or not smile? And I said, how would you want to be portrayed? We agreed. We agreed that we would do a bit of both. And then when we were finished, he comes up to me to shake my hand and say goodbye and he says to me quote you know you have a lot of power and the discretion you use to be kind to people and i looked at him and i said you know you do too that's so fucking good so good he didn't look great he didn't he didn't i mean like don't never does don't put like what what photographer could that's what i'm saying the guy's only he guys only human Pod Save America is brought to you by Hymns. Confidence shouldn't be complicated. Through Hymns, you can skip the guesswork and get access to care that actually fits your lifestyle. You might say all things are possible through HIMS. Straightforward, stress-free, and designed around you. Through Hymns, you can access personalized prescription treatment options for ED, like hard mints and sex RX plus climax control. What? If prescribed, don't get too excited yet. Hymns offers access to ED treatment options ranging from trusted generics that cost 95.

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what do you think was the most damage? So I think there's probably a couple different ways to answer this question. In the short term, the way she talked about the political vengeance campaigns, particularly against Letitia James and Jim Comey, could, if they can ever get indictments in those cases, which is an open question. But like, she's going to end up in a court filing for that. So like there are short term consequences to that or could prevent them from getting an indictment. Over the long term, I think it's calling J.D. Vance, say, long-time conspiracy theorist. That's the kind of thing you're going to be, you're going to hear if and when he is the Republican nominee in 2028. So they're just like, the White House chief of staff said he was a conspiracy theorists. So I think that's powerful. And then I think the most revelatory one with the most implications for like the way the White House runs is just Susie Wiles herself, herself, basically calling herself an enabler, which was I thought was very revealing about how she viewed her job, which is not to protect Trump from himself. It's to let Trump do whatever he wants, which helps also explain why those people all defended her because like, you know, I said this to Jen Saki on MSMC the other night.

But it's the same reason why my kids want their grandparents to watch them because there are no rules. So it's like, you know, we got to keep Susie around because the next guy might try to stop us from doing all this crazy stuff. You're like, may not like really let the deputy chief of staff try to wage war in Venezuela as for as one example. Also, she's like not too savvy a move to do the interview in the first place. But I feel like the interview itself reveals that she might run a good campaign, but isn't so savvy when it comes to governing. because there was a lot of like, oh, and, you know, at first, Elon broke up USAID and I was aghast and I couldn't believe it because I thought they'd do such good work. And then they all convinced me that it was, you know, it was fine, but the process was bad. And, oh, were people mistakenly deported?

Well, I imagine that must be some overzealous border patrol agent. But, yeah, we got to, we should probably double check that. And then, you know, later they're talking about the boats and Venezuelan blowing up the boats. and she's saying, oh, that they know that, you know, they know the people on the boats. She's like, you know, you'd be one of the great untold stories of government is how much the CIA knows about people. Is she really? Do you just show up? It goes to why she was such a poor decision as chief of staff.

One, she doesn't fully understand the job. And two, you really need someone who, like the chief of staff has to be able to do most of the following things. Run the White House staff, like be an actual manager of the White House and the bureaucracy. And maybe she can do that or not, I don't know, has to be sort of an expert in Congress, right, to help the president pass their legislative agenda and or be an expert in how the bureaucracy works, like how to use the federal government to enact the president's agenda. She doesn't know to do any, or the last one is maybe be like a very savvy communicator, spokesperson, principle who can represent the president in places. She certainly does not do that. Like she put, she like really insists on me behind the scenes and not in photos. So the only thing she does really is just tell Trump, yeah.

And that is by definition of bad chieva's death. The other big one I thought was she, he asked her about Galane Maxwell being moved to. This is another one. Yes. From like a real prison to club fed, this cushy prison that she sits in now. And Whipple asks about that decision. So, oh, yeah, I had no idea. And Donald Trump was, the president was very unhappy about that, very unhappy.

And it's like, well, then who did it? We don't know, but I can, and she's like, I can, I can get back to you. I can find out, and she never, she never got back to him on that point. So this means that somewhere, someone made the decision to transfer Galane Maxwell. That person exists in the federal government somewhere, and either this person is going to say, well, I got the order from someone else higher up, or we are led to believe that the White House Chief of Staff and the President of the United States have no idea how this extremely prominent prisoner was moved to a minimum security prison known as club fed. Well, in defense of Donald Trump, he is a firm believer in the independence of the Justice Department.

And you can see he would not even allow someone on his staff to dig into that sort of decision. So I mean, here's the guy's fucking firing line prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia so they can prosecute specific people. And he's like, well, this is a decision. I don't know. I'm just an observer here. I can't. I don't want to add. It's not really my job to ask.

It's nuts. Like, she is either lying or is being willfully ignorant on the scratcher because she doesn't want to know the answer. Why do you think they're making such a point of rallying around her? Like I said, because I think they want the chief of staff. It lets him do whatever they want. I don't mean, like Trump defended her. But in that original, that first like is in New York Post interview, I believe, he said he hadn't read the story yet. Which, so, I mean, they all look really.

ridiculous defending it. They all sat down for the photo shoot. They all did the interview. She said the thing she said. They can't even, they don't even have a complaint. But like, the complaint really comes down to the picture, the photos were too, were too, they're, were too close. Because they're not, she's not saying she didn't say those things. She tried it first and then he produced the tapes. She's not saying he violated off the record or anything like that. Yeah. She's just saying context was left out, which is, you know, it's absurd. I, I guess they're defending her because they, I don't know. I, it just, I think if you, if you really look at each revelation, each newsy part of it, none of them really make Donald Trump look too

bad in Donald Trump's mind. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like there's not, she's pretty loyal to him in the interviews and to the parts where she says, you know, like I didn't always agree with them on the January 6 people. Like, he doesn't care about that. Yeah. That she didn't agree with him.

And he doesn't really care that she called J.D. Vance a conspiracy theorist or, or that she's, you know, like, I just don't know if any of the revelations hurt Donald Trump's image of Donald Trump to himself. Yeah, I think that's right. And he, a lot was made right away about her saying that he has an alcoholic's personality. That's nothing. And like, it did seem quite damaging. And then when you, this is the one place where you actually hear him say that he said that before. And it kind of, it's honestly one of the more self-aware things Donald Trump has ever said about himself.

Like that one probably doesn't bother him. And so, yeah, I guess for me, we should say for people who haven't read it, she meant alcoholic's personality in the context of, because her father was an alcoholic, and she said, alcoholics sometimes, you know, alcoholism sort of magnifies the personality that exists, and also they think that there's nothing they can't do. And Donald Trump is someone who thinks there's nothing he can't do. And of course, it's public, and she knows and everyone knows that he doesn't drink. And so it's not, I didn't find that as a bad thing.

And it probably doesn't bother him. Yeah. You just never know where things are going to see. If they continue on the political trajectory they're on, this could be the putative reason why they make a change. Yeah. But in the moment, just they'd much rather. And they're all, the other thing is, all the president's top aides are all guilty here. They're all in on it.

This isn't like she was just having these conversations with Chris Wibble privately. They all stood in a room, apparently for one entire day with foundation and mascara on to get their pictures taken together. So it's kind of hard to throw under the bus when you have all the Debbie Chiefs of Staff, the Senior Advisor, the Secretary of State and the Vice President, all holding the same embarrassing bloody knife. It was news, I believe, that Trump was flying, flew on Epstein's plane. And I feel like he has been saying that Bill Clinton was on the plane a bunch of times and he's never said he was on the plane. I wonder if he knows that revelation was in the piece. That's one that I could see him being a little annoyed. by. And saying that they were

young single playboys in Palm Beach together. Yeah, in his 50s. He was 50. So slow down there, buddy. One of the most fuck. Wouldn't call those playboys,

that's for sure. One of the most damning comments from Wiles in the story was an admission that Trump, quote, wants to keep on blowing boats up until Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro, quote, cries uncle. So, we are murdering people with cocaine in their boats as a way to overthrow a regime

that Trump doesn't like. Pretty stunning, because I guess it's not about the drugs. I thought it was about the fentanyl that's not fentanyl because it's cocaine that was coming to America, to our shores that were killing 25,000 people with every boat. But apparently not. Apparently, we're murdering people in boats so that I guess Nicholas Maduro is like, no, I can't traffic drugs anymore, so now I will leave Venezuela. That seems like a plan to me.

Well, if you were looking for another insane rationale for war, Trump posted on Tuesday that Venezuela is, quote, completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America, which will, quote, only get bigger until such time as they return to the United States of America, all of the oil, land, and other. assets that they previously stole from us. The post said Trump was ordering a quote, all caps, of course, total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela. He then repeated the threat on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday. Let's listen. Remember, they took all of our energy rights. They took all of our oil from not that long ago.

As you know, they threw our companies out and we want it back. getting land, oil rights, whatever he has. Stephen Miller, who is reportedly the brains behind this entire operation, yet again, delivered the fascist GPT version of the rationale for war on Twitter. His tweet said, quote, American sweat, ingenuity, and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela. Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. What the fuck is he talking about?

What are any of them talking about? Okay. So I looked into this because why not? And it's just, here's the context, which is Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world. U.S. companies have been developing and oil in Venezuela since 1900 and did for a very long time. And then. And other foreign companies, by the way. Yeah, yeah, lots of other people.

But yes, all over the world, people, all kinds of foreign countries were had, were pumping oil and exporting it, oftentimes to the United States, but also elsewhere. And then in 1976, Venezuela nationalized their oil industry and took the entire oil industry and put it under one state-owned oil company kicking out all the U.S. companies. Over the course of time, there was some like backsliding there back and then 15, 20 years ago, you know, further U.S. companies were kicked out, including Exxon. mobile. And so now there is this one, all of Venezuela oil is pumped out by this one state-owned company. And although they do have some deals with the U.S. company Chevron, who does some work for them. But it is a nationalizing. Now, it's very, the most important thing here is, there is no, in international law, the oil is, was and always will be Venezuela's. The national resources belong to the country itself. This is a principal in national and international law that goes back to after the world wars when we were dealing with the end of colonialism around the world. And when countries kicked out the colonizers, they got to keep the stuff. It did matter which country

dug the mine or put the, the rig and the oil rig in the ground, the people in charge of that country, the citizens of that country, the government of that country, they owned the natural resources. And so it is not a like a legal basis for us to invade Venezuela to take back oil that is Venezuelan. I'm I'm almost laughing because I'm just imagining telling the American people that we're going to war in Venezuela to defend the honor of Exxon Mobil and Chevron from 50 years ago. And all of our brave oil companies. because it's not really going in there to like take the even if American companies I don't know it's first of all it's so fucking stupid that we have to go down this path

and explain this but even if American companies are allowed back in Venezuela to pump oil that oil is not necessarily just going to America their international they're American oil companies that sell oil all over the fucking world on the world oil market yes it's not coming to us it's most likely not coming to us it's going elsewhere it is literally it is literally invading a country so they so they that ExxonMobil can start pumping again. It is, I mean, it's so, so fucking stupid. Amazing.

And then, like, broadening it to be like, in the land. What land? There was no land. Like, you're talking about assets. Yeah, maybe someone leaves like a fucking, an oil derrick there. And it was like, oh, that's Exxon's oil Derek from the early 1900s. We're taking that back. But, like, what land are you talking about, you fucking idiot?

There is just, like, such a mask off moment here, which is all throughout the early 2000s, the argument of a lot of liberals was we went to war in Iraq for oil. And even the Bush administration. It was the protest sign, yeah. Right. And even the Bush administration was so scared of,

of even anything that would suggest that they wouldn't even use the oil revenues from Iraq to pay for stuff because they thought that would be, that would validate the critique that we were going there for war for oil instead of war for non-existent WMDs and democracy. The Trump's just like, we're invading Venezuela. a country that I would bet that large majority of Americans have no idea, has oil.

So just imagine if, like, Trump had given the speech on the speech that Tucker Carlson, other side he was going to give on Tuesday night, Tuesday night, Tuesday night, Tuesday night. And had said, we're going to war in Venezuela for oil. Like what, like Wednesday night? Wednesday night. Today's Thursday. Today's Thursday. Was that speech last night?

You're listening to this on Friday. And that speech was last night. Yes. That's last night. Fuck, nothing matters anymore. Like, I've had a sick kid at home. I've truly have no idea. like what, what day it is.

Like, we can be doing the Tuesday pod now for all. Did Christmas happen? I don't know. But just, it's just, it's so, it's like an unbelievable, silly stupid thing substantively, and it's insane politically. And it's just so confusing for the American people to even imagine that this could be happening. What, uh, you think this is going to be popular with folks? Because, uh, I saw the, uh, the UGov has a poll out today, just the most recent, uh,

ask people, uh, what they think about using military, forced to invade Venezuela, 18% support doing so. 18, 66% opposed. Now, in fairness to Donald Trump in the administration, they did not ask, do you support the U.S. using a military force to invade Venezuela so that ExxonMobil can make more money next year. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So if you throw that in, it might change the messaging a little bit. It might change the the support levels. It's also funny that Trump's out lying about how low gas prices are at the same time he wants to invade a country for oil. It's like just very. Did you see the post story about how Stephen Miller originally wanted to do these boat strikes, also known as just

extrajudicial killings, war crimes, murders on the high sea? He wanted to do it against Mexican cartels. And then when Mexico started taking care of things on their own, he needed a new target. So they just shifted. They just picked Venezuela. Yeah, it's the story is truly unbelievable because there's what originally what they, like the theory that Stephen Miller has is that if you could break the cartels, then that would lessen the number of migrants coming to the U.S. because one of the things the cartels do is they traffic minor, immigrants to the U.S. border. Mexico starts doing the things that we wanted them to do. He did want to use, like, special forces in the CIA to do like covert attacks the Congress and the administration

and some people the administration opposed that so he couldn't do that then the Mexico kind of solved the problem to the extent that the problem could be solved so then he goes looking for somewhere else to attack picks Venezuela which is and the theory then is if you could I mean this is so crazy is picks Venezuela just because he wants a place to attack then and we do have migrants to come from Venezuela I don't know why launching war there would help sustain the flow of migration history, which suggests no. But it's just like comedy of errors where he then picks Venezuela, but it's about drugs, but then he like hangs out, maybe at the photo shoot, I don't know, with Marco Rubio,

who has long wanted to overthrow Maduro because he thinks that would help overthrow Castro in Cuba. And so he and now he, now we've transitioned from drugs overthrowing Maduro. Pete Hegstaff is like, I need a win. so because So maybe Yeah Former official

Familiar with Miller's thinking said Pete very much wanted to keep Stephen in his good graces and also the president

which just tells you everything you need to know And so because this was post Signalgate fallout and Heggs

like fuck I need to Stephen Miller's the guy really running the government and so if he wants

to kill some people in boats and my buddy Marco wants to overthrow this dictator I'm in

Yeah and now we're on the cuss of war with Venezuela because three fucking morons got together looking for something to do. It's unfucking believable. The execute order, the legal rationale to kill these people in these boats, contains targeting instructions that do not require positive identification of any individual,

but rather reasonable certainty that adult males are members of or affiliated with a designated terrorist organization. Yeah, you don't want to be too precise when you are. murdering people on boats. And also, there's no legal authority to name these organizations, terror organizations. I just, uh, Wiles admitted to Vanity Fair that, that Trump would need congressional approval for any land strikes, uh, though Trump forcefully denied that in the Oval on Thursday. Does Congress try to get involved here? Like, it seems like Trump is thinking to himself, well, it's, I'm not going to send troops in. I'm going to, like,

lob some missiles. Maduro hopefully leaves. Maybe we can get him out without the missiles. Maybe he's just going to be scared by the Armada because we use the word Armada now because it's like the 1700s, I guess. And so

he's hoping Maduro leaves. At worst, you know, he does, you know, he bombed Duran and we're, you know, everyone just sort of moved on. Maybe we can bomb Venezuela and that's that. Like I don't, I think he believes this is very low risk. Oh yeah. I think he is, and he's he's pretty right that anything absent ground troops, the U.S. population has a pretty high

tolerance for, right? If we're just lot drones, missiles, that is, I mean, it's terrible that this is the case, but it's been true for a very long time. It's when people start getting killed or wounded from your community is when everyone turns. That's what happened in Iraq when we sent National Guard troops all over Iraq. Absent that, Congress is not going to want to get involved here. like, I mean, there will be a coalition of Democrats and a small handful Republicans who do not like this, which is probably like Rand Paul, Tom Massey, and maybe like one other one. But, you know, Congress has no interest in getting involved in something like this. They're not going to try to stop them.

He'll file war power reports and feel like he is adhering to the War Powers Act. And that'll be that. Well, at least there's no history of American wars of choice and regime change coming back to bite us in the ass years later. could possibly go wrong from starting a, look, look, if you want to keep the border secure and stop the flow of migrants, I can't think of anything better than turning Venezuela into a failed state. Do you think there's no way Trump could pick out Venezuela on a map, right? Not a chance. Doesn't know the capital. I don't think he would be able to answer the question what continent is in. That's the next cognitive test. Map of South America

and he has to point to Venezuela, then he has to point, we just make him point to some countries since he, since the new, the new Pax Americana here is, we're going to create an American empire in the Western Hemisphere,

stretches from Greenland to Venezuela. Oh, geez. I mean, it's, it's not really a joke. It's kind of their theory. And I guess he thinks that's what's going to get the Nobel Committee to call. Nothing will lock up the Nobel Peace Prize like bombing Venezuela.

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Just go to this exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter.com slash crooked. Again, that ZipRecruiter.com slash crooked. ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire. So, Trump made those most recent comments. about strikes on Venezuela at an Oval Office event where he signed an executive order accelerating the reclassification of marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3, which would allow it to be studied for medical uses.

But before you get too excited, Trump made it clear that he has zero plans to legalize marijuana recreationally under federal law anytime soon. Unsurprisingly, this decision came about not because of any change of heart, but because of heavy lobbying from the weed industry, which has poured millions into Trump-aligned political groups. In fact, aside from the research, one of the other benefits of this is, I believe, a lot of tax breaks for businesses that sell marijuana. So good for them. Thursday's other executive order came from RFK Jr. This one was much worse, who announced a new set of rules that would cut off Medicaid and Medicare funding to any hospital that provides gender affirming care

to children under 18, which would essentially, if it holds up to legal scrutiny, shut down hospitals that refuse to follow the order since Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly half the money spent on hospitals. And I guess the big question is, how likely is it that since he signs a million executive orders a day and many of them are just blatantly not legal, how likely is it that this takes effect and how long until it takes effect? Yeah, I mean, that is, there's like a, I think it's a 60 day review period, comment period. So there are many months that go through the process of signing the order to actual implement to the actual like proffering of the regulation in place. And as you point out, there are a lot of legal questions about whether he has the authority to do this.

Their courts seem to believe that questions around gender affirming care for minors are to be decided by the state because they've allowed states to ban them, which conversely would suggest that they would allow states to allow it as well if it's a state decision. I mean, and it was a very recent decision. It was a 6-3 decision because Tennessee has a state ban, and they upheld Tennessee state ban, and Roberts wrote in the majority, in part because he's like, we're not taking a position on the policy itself. We're saying that these are decisions, much like they did in Dobbs. These are decisions that should be decided by the people and their elected representatives through the legislative process. So very difficult to square that with now allowing an executive order that's not even a piece of legislation to supersede blue states that allow this to. that allow gender affirming care for minors in their hospitals. I think there would be a question of whether a federal legislation, which the House

actually did just pass something similar, but that has no chance in the Senate, could do it, but you're relying on a, like basically one line in the Social Security Act that gives you to do this and some real questions about what is in the Medicare and Medicaid legislation that would prohibit the federal government getting this involved in health care decisions and using Medicare and Medicaid funding as leverage. which we're, like the example people are using as the Hyde Amendment, which prevents the spending of federal funds for abortion services, but that is an actual law that's not a regulation. And this, by the way, goes, this would go further than Hyde. Yes.

Because that's like money that's specifically appropriated for Medicaid and Medicare to then go towards abortion care. This is basically saying, if you do this, we're not, we're not saying that like you can't spend Medicaid and Medicare money on gender affirming care. We've already said you can't do that. And some hospitals all over the country have already stopped gender affirming care for children because they rely so much on, because they do a lot of Medicaid and Medicare funding. This is just like if you're a hospital that gets Medicare and Medicaid funding for any reason, which is all hospitals, pretty much, you can't do it, which. And so this is the, you know, it'll probably takes a long time for the court act. The question is what do hospitals do in the area. We've already seen a bunch of hospitals and academic centers shut down their clinics, their, their, their, their,

you know, their practices here. And this is all part of the larger, horrifying Trump project of basically defining trans people out of existence. Right. Whether it's what's on the passport, it's every policy that you have no legal status, no cultural status, we will not recognize you. And it's horrifying. It is just, this is the, this is a cruel and capricious federal government turning its site on the most vulnerable population possible and bullying them, essentially. Yeah, and especially, I mean, in one of the pieces about this, like, we're talking about kids who are already either transitioned or already using gender affirming care and are now having to like ration the care that they have worried that it's going to like run out or be blocked or be eliminated. And so it is just, it's hardifying. It's so horrifying.

On the weed one, what do you make of this? He doesn't seem like he's going to, it doesn't seem like as big of a deal. as I thought it was when I first heard it. It seems like it's mostly for research. And so it's kind of a, it's, I think it's a, it's good. I mean, it started, Biden first did this and then it like got, uh, basically the process was held up. And so it just kind of got, uh, held up in the bureaucracy and then, you know, Trump finally

finished it. But it doesn't seem like a big, big deal, but it's a good step in the right direction. Yeah. It's like, it's one of the few things he does, he has done. It's not horrifying. Um, so we'll take it. Um, you know, as you point out, this is a minor step. this is not full legalization. He cannot do that. It require Congress to do that. But the reason I

think is you've nailed it, which is not some epiphany about libertarianism or the potential benefits of cannabis use. It is corruption, right? It's just the right people got money in the right people's pockets and therefore Trump did it. Yeah. Trump got a bunch of questions at the signing event for the marijuana EO, including whether he wants Congress to do something to extend the expiring ACA subsidies. Here's his non-answer. But do you want Congress to extend these ACA subsidies? Well, I'd like not to be able to do it. I'd like to get right into this and I'd ask Oz this question in particular,

but I'd like to see us get right into this. I don't know why we have to extend. This could be done rapidly if the Democrats would come along. We have a problem. The insurance companies own the Democrat Party. They own it. I love Dr. Oz walking close to the president, like he was about to say something and then realizing he should run back away.

Also, I don't, what was that answer? I don't think he, I think he knows much about this policy? No, this doesn't seem like it, no. You think this is another one where he's not really in the details? The reason that Trump was asked about this is that, lo and behold, four House Republicans have signed onto a Democratic discharge petition to force a vote on a clean three-year extension of the subsidies, which means the vote will happen, but not until Congress returns in January. after the subsidies expire, and it's still unclear what can pass the Senate.

John Thune said no on the clean three-year extension, but that maybe the Collins proposal for a two-year extension with some new income eligibility limits is possible. Who knows? And as we just heard, even if that works out, it's still unclear if Donald Trump signs it or not. Nevertheless, it was a tough week for Mike Johnson, who has now lost so many Republicans to discharge petitions that he got this question for. from a reporter on Wednesday. I have not lost control of the house.

Because this is the third time. Look, we have the smallest majority in U.S. history. These are not normal times. There are proceeds and procedures in the house. I have not lost control of the house. That's a sign that you have lost control. If you have to answer that question, you've lost control of the house. So funny. So funny.

What do you think's going on here? First of all, let's start with Mike Johnson losing control. of the house, which he has. This is now, I've lost count of how many discharge petitions. Discharge petitions used to be a thing where you had to be like a real fucking congressional nerd to know what they are and they rarely, if ever, did anything. But now, if you have a majority of people in the house, sign this discharge petition, then it forces a vote.

We recently learned this for the first time with the Epstein files in this season of Trump. And now suddenly Republicans are feeling their oats. and there's discharge petitions all over the place that Republicans are signing left and right and Mike Johnson can't do anything about it because he is trying to keep all of these votes from coming to the floor, but he's failing. The narrowest majority thing,

excuse does not help at all with the discharge petition? Right. They're still losing people. That's the point. And so I think there are a couple things going on here. One, said it before I'll say it again, Mike Johnson's kind of a deufous. Like he's just, like he's not up for this task is one.

Two, he owes his entire job to Donald Trump. And so he is always protecting Trump's flank as opposed to his members. His members know that. So they're starting to break from him in various things. And this part is against the defense where the narrow majority defense works is he's always in danger of losing his job because some conservative Republicans leave him. And so he is optimizing the House's strategy for unity among all of the caucus as he has it today and not trying to protect the vulnerable members so he has a majority tomorrow. Because if you were doing this for what was best for the, you know, 28 House Republicans who are in seats at Trump won by less than 10 points, you would have allowed, you would have passed this thing or pass or you would have

some. You would have them the real thing to vote. Not this absurd health savings account. We're going to give you money so you can just buy your own insurance thing that like, I mean, they have, they voted on a health plan that the CBO looked at and said would call, would mean less people will be insured and health care would be more expensive. Like a truly insane thing. You would have just voted on a two year extension, a one year extension with, you know, costs. You know, he would have done some things that made it unpalatable. You give them a vote, but he can't do that. And so his members like Mike Lawler look at the polls. They see where they are. They see what their district is. And they are bolting for safer waters. Now, for the first time, especially

when I heard that Trump sort of non-answer, I started thinking like, I could see a scenario. where the subsidies get passed, the extension gets passed when they come back. Trump would have to care. Yeah, or he, I mean, like, the way to, because the thing he's not going to want to do is say that he like, you know, the Democrats won this one, right?

Like if it goes to the Senate, if passes the House, goes to the Senate, and, you know, they change it, so it's only two years and it's got some limits on it, he can say, like, you know, I didn't really want to do this, but whatever.

It's like, I'm, you know, I think we should replace health care. I'm going to have a great plan, but we'll do the extension for now. And Republicans did some good things in the Senate. I don't know. That would be the smart thing to do. I think it only happens if Trump tells the Senate to do it because you're not, like,

the Senate majority is such. And they really only have one vulnerable incumbent. And so they can, they can have these votes every day until the election. And Susan Collins can keep voting for the extension and they're fine from that perspective. There aren't eight Republicans who need to come over the Democrats to get, whatever. They don't, there aren't enough Republicans. to do it. So unless Trump were to get in a room and say, if we don't do this, we're going to lose the House majority, figure it out. I know you guys can't do three years. I'm going to bring everyone

in the White House. We're going to do two years and something. But absent that, it's not going to happen on its own because the House will not pass anything or they'll pass it and it will go to the Senate and it'll die unless Trump gets involved. And he doesn't seem to even know what it is or to care. You know, he's too busy like building ballrooms and doing other dumb shit. So like, there's no momentum with in Congress absent Trump saying, I need this for the majority. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I have to say, though, nice job Hakeem Jeffries for shepherding this strategy through the House, because basically some Democrats, one of the problem solvers, were floating around some bipartisan proposal. It was like a one-year extension, a two-year extension that then got some Republicans on board. And Hakeem was basically like, no, no, no, no. I'm not back in that. I'm not having Democrats sign onto those discharge petitions. It's three-year or nothing. And the Republicans, that had signed on to the one year and two year, finally were like, well, I don't like the, I don't like the three year clean extension, but if it's the only game in town, I'm going

to do it. And so he played his cards very well. And frankly, we can look back at this at this discharge petition, the fact that everyone is scrambling is scrambling to come up with a health care affordability plan. The shutdown worked from a political perspective. It worked. It is health care affordability is on the agenda. It was not even being talked about before. The Republicans are twisted in knots about their inability to do anything. They are like floating Obamacare repeal plans. Trump's saying insane things. Like this is a moment. We talk all the time about how hard it is for Democrats to set the issue agenda in American politics. And they did it with a shutdown. They changed the contours of the race. And they made an issue that is better for us near the top

of the agenda. And kudos to them. And Jeffries. So kudos to all the Democrats. Schumers included who on how the shutdown was played out. But they. then on the discharge petition, Jeffries has played his cards very, very well and put the Democrats in a position of maximum leverage here. I will also say, I think someone asked Schumer today about whether when funding, when government funding expires at the end of January, would they shut the government down again if they don't extend the subsidies? And I think he said like, no. And I will just say, I get it. Like, I don't, I don't, because if they shut the government down again over this, then the debate becomes a, about Democrats shutting the government down and the government being shut down and not about the fact that

Republicans will not extend the subsidies. And I think that will actually give the Republicans an excuse to not do anything about the subsidies because then they'd be forced into it by the mean old Democrats who we don't want to give a win to. And the only chance that you might get some kind of extension pass is now the Republicans feeling pressure themselves in their own districts, which clearly some of the House members did that signed on to the petition and some of the people in the Senate who proposed, you know, other types of extensions and still doesn't mean it's going to happen. And probably, like you said, the chances are, you know, may be low on this. But I think it's a better chance of happening than if Democrats shut the government. Yeah, I think shutting it down

the government would ensure that there could be no, nothing would pass because it would negatively polarize everyone against it. And now it becomes you can't give in in the midst of the shutdown. So, and it just, and it's just from a purely practical point of view, those members who threw in the towel when they did. They're not signing a backup for this again. No. No. No, they're not. Okay, lots more when we come back from break. But first, a quick reminder, we got the perfect last minute gift for you, a friend of the

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Give it to your friends, your family. If you're not a subscriber yet, grab one for yourself. And we'll have a lot more subscription offerings coming in the new year. Head to crooked.com slash friends now. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Rewriting traditions. Therapy. You know, therapy can give you the space to create new meaningful traditions around this holiday season. Maybe a tradition of telling somebody how you feel instead of just sitting there in a kind of broken silence, kind of a silence that's loud, you know?

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taking care of you. Our listeners get 10% off at BetterHelp.com. PSA. That's BetterHelphelp.com slash PSA. Well, unfortunately, not all Democrats deserve praise this week, Dan. We've talked before about the DNC's much-anticipated 2024 postmortem, also known as an autopsy, unless you're talking to DNC Chair Ken Martin, who calls it a, quote, after-action report. According to NBC News, Martin told reporters after he won the DNC election back in February that he would make the final report public. And he even criticized the party then for not releasing the 2016 postmortem as an example of why he was going to release the 2024 postmortem if he won the election,

which he did. And here he is talking to me about the importance of the report back in August. We're finishing our after-action review to really dig into this, to give people a sense who invested so much time, energy, and money what happened and why we lost. 10 billion dollars spent in the ecosystem last year. What we're looking at is the campaign, the party, of course. We're looking at the tactics, the spending, the messaging, the timing, you know, all of them. There are no sacred cows. What we're looking at right now is everything. No sacred cows, Dan. Well, on Thursday, the DNC announced that just kidding, they won't be releasing the report after all. Martin said, quote, here's our North Star. Does this help us win?

if the answer is no, it's a distraction from the core mission. You want to just, you want to, you want to take it? Well, I just sit here and seethe and then I'll go if you, if you miss anything. This is such an infuriating decision on so many levels. One, we should know what happened. Like that is, especially if you did all the work. And like, there have been some really good reports. have come out. There was deciding to win. We talked about a bunch. Way to win has a report that

came out last week or the week before. Very useful to read. The DNC report wasn't going to settle all the debates in the party, but it would, they have the most access to the funders, the operatives, the donors. Like this would have been a very, very valuable. They interviewed tons of people, hundreds of people. I think there were 300 interviews. Yeah. On the Biden campaign, Harris campaign, states, the super PAC people, where the money was spent. the polling, all of it they had. And so, like, very valuable, both for, like, the direction of the party to, like, tactical things about door knocking and peer-to-peer texting that would be valuable for

people running for a state legislator or city council. The fact that the two reasons that the DNC is not released in this report, one said, one unsaid, just are so emblematic of everything that is wrong with the Democratic establishment. The first is we don't want to mess with the momentum. Like, this has been a good year for Democrats. we won in blue states. We've lost by less in red states. We've had, you know, Trump's not doing great. But the idea that these victories in an off year when we're supposed to do well suggest that we've solved our problems is just a repeat of the fatal error the Democratic Party made

in 2022 when we took the results of a midterm that just happened to happen three months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade where we did better in the Senate than we thought, But still lost the house and said, pat ourselves in the back and said, we're going to ask no hard questions, have no difficult conversations about running an unpopular 80-year-old for re-election in this political environment. It is pure complacency. In fact, and then anytime someone suggested in 2024 that the polling might be making us a little anxious and that, oh, maybe we have some problems and maybe there was a course of the same people who would say, oh, you told us there was going to be a red wave. Remember all the pollsters that said there was going to be a red wave in 2022 and there wasn't? Which, first of all, no, people did not say there was going to be a red.

And also, it wasn't a blue wave. It just wasn't as big a red wave. And then the second reason, which is, this is the unsaid reason, I think, is the report was obviously going to piss some people off in the coalition. It was going to piss off some donors. It was going to piss off some of the groups. It was going to piss off members of Congress because any report worth its salt was going to look at how money was spent.

It's going to look at our positions on issues, immigration, who's going to almost certainly have to dig into the role that Biden's Gaza policy played in this election. And no matter which way the report came down, it was going to piss off one of the two sides of a very, a very contentious thing. And this is a huge problem within our party for a very long time now, which is an unwillingness to anger parts of our coalition or even have difficult conversations with them. We treat our allies as children, unable to have an adult conversation about where the party goes. And so we're so afraid of that that we would rather shelve the report.

And when you have, when your entire being is to anger no one, offend no one, then you automatically have lowest common denominator strategic thinking. Like you can't be good. You can't be sharp. You can't be incisive because you're just trying to do no harm. Like you're not taking the fucking Hippocratic oath. You're trying to win. The last point here that I will make. And is that I think it is very, like even if you look, even if you look, at all of our success in 2025. Do you know what the approval rating of the Democrats in Congress is right now in the most recent Quinnipiac poll? We're 55 points underwater. Fifty five points underwater. The Democratic Party brand, still worse than the Republican brand, on most issues,

including some of the key issues of this election are going to be sent around. The generic ballot average today is 2.9 points, much less than it was at this point in 2017. And it is very possible that we could do not change nothing, do the exact same thing, run the same playbook in 2026 and win a narrow house majority. Trump is that unpopular. The economy is that infuriating people that we could win. But that's not, we should be thinking much bigger than that. We should be thinking about how to have a bigger majority.

We should be thinking about how to win the Senate. And most importantly, we have to recognize that the demographics of this country are changing in a way that is going to make an impossible for the Democratic Party to win the Senate and win a presidential election, unless we reshape our coalition, we become more popular with young people, we rebuild our coalition with Latinos. And if all we're thinking about, there's a short-termism that is, if we can just win this next election, then we can all pat ourselves in the back and be happy without thinking about how to actually think big and think long-term, then we are going to be doomed to fail here. This is just, it is an infuriating lady stupid

and self-defeating decision because of cowardice and caution and complacency. one of the reasons that we do what we do and especially you know whether it's a message box with you and polar coaster or wilderness or any of the things we do here are crooked is i think there's a group of democratic establishment uh pollsters strategists staffers officials many of whom we've worked with many of whom are very smart great people heart in the right place who do all this research, have all this data, have all this experience, have been on all these campaigns, and there's this sort of like hoarding of information that they don't share with the rest of the public, which I think comes from like an old school model of, you know, what happens when there's too much information released and, you know, you get bad press forward or whatever else. And then the people that are not providing everyone else with the information that they have are the same people that then yell at and disparage activists and organizers

and other volunteers online or elsewhere who are like saying stupid shit or don't get the politics or don't get this. And the reason that they don't get it is because they don't have the same information as the people in the democratic establishment. And one thing we try to do is to talk to a lot of these people that will talk to us and share polling and share the information with people so that we can like make the audience who wants to also by the way volunteer and help on campaigns smarter. So when they're talking to voters, they know what's working and what's not. And just hoarding this information, hiding stuff from people, it's not only like counterproductive. It also feeds the distrust people have of the Democratic Party and they think it's a fucking cabal. And you know

what? On days like this, I agree. Because it seems like they're just, it's like if you're in the club, you get the report and you get the information. For all you plebs out there, we think this is going to hurt the party. And so we don't want you to have the information. We just want us to have the information. The danger here isn't that the D-Triple C is going to get insight into the best way to win the election, right? Or the DSCC. Like, the value of this is it is the person running the state legislative campaign in Ohio. It is the person running, starting a long-shot congressional bid in a Trump plus 15 district that we might be able to win here. Yep.

It is the people who run local indivisible in swing left chapters. It's the people who are thinking of they may want to run, you know, they're thinking about signing up on the run for something website. Those are the people who would benefit from this information. I have talked to House candidates, House candidates that are like, you know, working with the D-T triple C, and they're like, oh, we listen to, we listen to Pod Save America, or you read the message box because you don't get a lot from the D-Trip or the DNC on messaging and what you're supposed to do. You're kind of on your own. And those are candidates.

It's just, this is just like to do all of the work and then just shelve the report is just like it's an insane choice. If the report sucks and you realize the report sucks, say that, right? To say the idea, we did a great job. We have all the answers, but we're going to put them in a secret crypt somewhere. It's because we don't want to upset our momentum from. losing a congressional race by 13 points less than we thought. This is a small point, but the idea that the public backlash from a report that is somehow embarrassing or bad or could cause some kind of fight is going to be worse than the public backlash from keeping a report secret here in the age of the Epstein files.

What are we doing? That's a good idea. Hey, this report that I've been talking about for the full year, we're keeping it secret. and I'm letting everyone know. Hey, Kee, R.A. D&C. Chair, Pam Bondi, what are we doing here? Hakeem Jeffreys? You know what? Get us a discharge petition. Let's get this thing out. Anyway, look, we've talked to Ken Martin. We reached out. Hopefully he can, like, come on and talk to us about this and we can have a civil argument about it because it's, it really, it pissed me off a lot today. Yeah, I'm quite angry about this. More than I expected it would. All right. One last thing before we go, in case you're worried.

that the president's tireless focus on affordability is taking him away from his true passion, interior design. Fear not, Dan. He's been working on something special that you're sure to find both aesthetically pleasing and hilariously entertaining. You might remember the back in September, Trump added gold-framed portraits of all the U.S. presidents along the White House's West Colonnade, which he is now calling, quote, the presidential walk of fame. Again, this is an outdoor walkway. Now we're just hanging stuff up on it. The great joke at the time was that Joe Biden's portrait was a photo of an auto pen. Which was funny, I would say.

Mean, offensive, but funny. Very offensive but funny. But apparently there's more where that came from in the comedy category. Trump has been personally writing out captions to go on engraved plaques below each presidential photo, which he unveiled on Wednesday. The Biden plaque begins, quote, Sleepy Joe Biden was by far the worst president in American history, and it goes on from there.

Keep in mind some of these plaques. The captions were so long that Trump himself wrote, they needed two plaques to get all the caption. So the Biden one went on for two plaques. Barack Obama's reads, quote, Barack Hussein Obama was the first black president, a community organizer, one-term senator from Illinois,

and one of the most divisive political figure in American history, it also mentions the, quote, unaffordable care act. Bill Clinton says that his wife later, quote, lost the presidency to President Donald J. Trump. Even Ronald Reagan's says that Reagan was, quote, a fan of President Donald J. Trump long before President Trump's historic run for the White House.

Time well spent, Mr. President. Who is this shit for? Who is that for? I truly have no idea. It is stunning the lengths to which they will go to not work on making people's lives better. Imagine him just like... They're reading in the Kennedy Center

after Trump today, just is another thing they did? You think he's just like sitting there in the oval, just dictating the caption? He's not writing anything. He's not typing. He doesn't type.

I don't think he uses a pen other than a Sharpie. He's got his former golf caddy turned whatever he is now, Dan Skavino. Wasn't he in the video? He was in the photo shoot too. Yeah. So maybe they,

long day at the photo shoot, they finish up and they're like, we got to, you know, this is a tough job. House. There's no off days. There's no off hours. So we're going to stay up late, work on these captions for all the presidents because we're only at Millard Fillmore and we've got to get all the way to the end. So then he's just, this is what they're doing. This is what they're doing with their time. So that they can unveil it to reporters in hopes that we get

mad, I guess. Barack Obama gets mad, Joe Biden gets mad. And then what? It's just so stupid. It really is the entire philosophy of the Republican Party over the last decade is just own the libs at all costs. And I think this is just a, like, I don't feel owned as a lib myself, like, do not care. No, I feel sort of, I feel like embarrassed for the country, which I feel like, I mean, he does a million things every day that, so it's not like on high on my list of things that make me embarrassed for the country. But, you know, it's one of them.

It's just, it's so. I don't feel mad. I just feel like, you're, like, you're a pathetic fucking list. It's pathetic. It's just, the whole thing is pathetic. He's like, what are you doing? Relatedly, did you see the wonderful news that the board of the Kennedy Center,

which is of course made up of handpicked Trump supporters chaired by Trump himself, has taken a vote. Now, this surprised Trump, he didn't know this was going to happen. Not at all. I can't believe they did this. And they're renaming it the Trump Kennedy Center, even though that is not legal to do.

Because it is named the Kennedy Center by law, in a statute that was passed by Congress. And so much like the Department of Defense and the Gulf of Mexico, we now have the Trump Kennedy Center, which is not really the Trump Kennedy Center. Do you... Wouldn't it be funny if that was a thing that took him down?

The illegal renaming of things. It's like January 6th, the crypto... Official act, you know, so John Roberts says it's okay. Yeah, it's just... Also, it's interesting that they just... didn't go full tilt in his name at the Trump Center? Yeah, yeah, they wanted to, I think, I think because that's, well, no, I think that somehow makes it more, like, they think that will troll people more to keep Kennedy in there.

It's almost like it's like, fuck you Kennedy family, because we're going to remind you that you're still part of it, but now Trump comes first. Who knows? Who does? Like, are they going to change the signs, I guess? It's already changed on the website. They changed the website. Yeah, I mean, that's not surprising, but like, there's a lot of signage at the Kennedy Center.

Yeah. The other website that changed this week was the FCC, which called itself an independent commission because it is an independent commission. And then when Brendan Carr was getting grilled by Congress and he refused to say that it's independent anymore, you couldn't say that. Then 20 minutes after he said that, boom, independent came off the page. I would love to just see the email traffic or text traffic around that where he said it. They're like, to the website. Get it to the website. Get it down. There's still one thing left. once again more dumb pointless shit also like Democratic president gets to the White House God willing

like I also feel bad for the people they're going to have to undo all this because it's going to be like a first week thing you're gonna you're scraping all the plaques off the wall and the sign outside the Oval Office and all the other fucking bullshit you're taking the

obam punk the yellow fucking umbrellas uh off the off the the Rose Garden, and what else? There's a lot of shit. Yeah, the ballroom. The ballroom is, I don't know, that's a tough one.

You can bullies. Yeah, I have publicly, I've angered a lot of my message back subscribers by publicly arguing that the, we should not tear the ballroom down. But we should definitely rename the Kennedy Center and back to the Kennedy Center. We should take a lot of the other stuff down for sure. Yeah. And then we should figure out some ways to troll Donald Trump if he's still kicking. I mean, we can't, we could leave his, uh,

What we do? Keep the wall of presence. Let's put his mug shot up. No, he'll love that. You know what we do? We put up the image of him that's been used on South Park this season where he is naked except for his teeny tiny little penis. Oh, the micropenus one. Mm-hmm. That's a good one. Or, and Austin just pointed the picture of him and Jeffrey Epstein.

We could put that one up there. Oh, that's another good one. Which we have in our office we look at all the time. We can like rename federal prisons after Trump, the Trump-Ebstein prison. Oh, that's a good. Yeah. rename Rikers. Or rename the Club Fed

where he's St. Glea and Maxwell. There's a lot of options. You know what? With the transition comes, President Newsom, Shapiro, AOC, whoever, call me, this is what I want to work on. Petty shit.

We will undergo an after-action report on this. Interview a lot of people come up with some ideas and we pledge to release it. This is a great idea. We're going to need some content in early 2029. All right, Dan.

That's our show for today. It's our last show of the year. You and me, yeah. Austin, yeah, Austin's shaking his head. I know, I love it. There's the last one that you and I already record. We've already recorded some other ones that are coming, but yes. We've recorded 5,000 shows this week so that you all got plenty of content in your feeds over the two weeks.

But for the two of us, Dan, we're off until January. Wow. I know. On a time. Exciting. And happy birthday. Happy early birthday, December 24th birthday. Thank you.

Happy birthday to Teddy. And yeah, yeah, Teddy's the 22nd. So Tommy's going to be back in the feet on Sunday with a conversation with Rahm Emanuel Speaking of potential 2028 contenders There's a there's a chief of staff who ran a tight chip As he'll tell you And then we'll be back on Tuesday

With the 2025 pundies Which we just recorded yesterday Very fun So check that out And everyone have a wonderful holiday Merry Christmas Happy New Year Happy Hanukkah

And talk to everybody soon Bye, everyone. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illick-Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer.

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