Pod Save America - “Trump’s Covid World Tour.”

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

Democrats and journalists still haven’t figured out how to handle the threat of another Trump presidency, Senator Chris Murphy joins to talk about Congressional action on gun violence and whether Joe Biden’s economic agenda can pass by Christmas, and the White House announces a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.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.

The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun restrictions in states, overturning Roe v. Wade, and severely threatening our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Lippman, and each week on Strict Scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes of Strict Scrutiny every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Democrats and journalists still haven't figured out how to handle the threat of another Trump presidency. Senator Chris Murphy joins to talk about whether Joe Biden's economic agenda can pass by Christmas. And the White House announces a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. But first, if you're still looking for last-minute holiday gifts, check out all of our holiday merch at the Crooked Store, including our Santa My Ho-Ho Home is Melting ornament. Yeah, when you say it, it hits a little differently, doesn't it?

It's better. It's funny to read. It's a little differently. We also got some Yes We Dan t-shirts and mugs. Those are flying off the virtual shelves. Sweatshirts, too. Sweatshirts, too. Wait, there's a sweatshirt?

I believe there's a Yes We Dan sweatshirt. If there's a Yes We Dan sweatshirt, I'm wearing it tomorrow. I wore the t-shirt two days ago. Anyway, make sure to place your orders by December 11th to ensure holiday delivery. Head to kirken.com slash store. All right, let's get to the news. The front runner for the 2024 Republican nomination is back in the headlines for knowingly exposing hundreds to a deadly virus and laying the groundwork to steal the next election in the event that he loses it. A new Washington Post report says that from the day that Donald Trump first

tested positive for COVID and started feeling sick until he was hospitalized a week later. He came in contact with more than 500 people. 500 people. Trump responded by saying, quote, Biden goes around coughing on people all over the place. And yet the corrupt news doesn't even cover it. That's pretty good. Credible credit is such a funny. I'm rubber.

You're glue. It's a bias and then he added in at the end just for good measure probably because he's not supposed to be in office in the first place again it doesn't make any sense but he had to message discipline right uh but alas a new analysis from the washington post dana millbank found that joe biden's press coverage for the past four months has been as bad as and for a time worse than the coverage that donald trump received for the same four months in 2020. I mean, in fairness to the press corps, maybe they thought it was cool when Trump tried to kill Michael Scheer on the plane. Yeah.

He tried to kill all of them. He only succeeded in wounding one. He really murked Michael Scheer. Milvink went on to write, Really murked Michael's ear. Milbank went on to write. So while Trump's allies are busy trying to give Republican legislatures control of elections in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia right now, Milbank wrote, quote, My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy. So very understated there. Lots to unpack here.

So Dan and I touched on this story about trump and covid uh last week briefly but ashley parker and josh dossie at the post did a pretty great job laying out just how many people he knowingly exposed to a virus that nearly killed him i saw a few reactions to this that were some version of why does this matter now or like it doesn't matter he's gonna get away with it um what do you what do you guys think love it what do you what He's going to get away with it. What do you guys think? We can get to that. We can get to all of that. And I have to say, like when I first saw the story, yeah, we can get to what does it mean? How does it help us in the midterms, I suppose. When I first saw the headline that Mark Meadows was too stupid to realize he was revealing something incredibly damning in his book and that Trump had had a positive test days before the debate. I had the same sort of instinctive reaction,

which is I honestly, I can't, I can't get back in that water. You know what I mean? I just can't get myself to go back into that inky black Trump personality disorder water. And then I saw the, the, the post piece and I started reading it and it is it is the one of the more galling pieces of journalism i've ever consumed not only did he go across the country on a fucking covid spreading world tour every person he infected became a person he later blamed yes for infecting him one by one he's like like, I'm going to go give it to some veterans, those dirty veterans who probably gave it right back to me. Hope Hicks. Gold Star families.

The parents of veterans who were killed in action. And he blamed them for it. He blamed them for it. And the other piece of this, too, is Mark Meadows says that Trump was sick when he got that first positive result. Yeah, we saw he was sick. He was sick the whole fucking week. And then Mark Meadows, almost as a joke, is like his

bronze hue had returned before the debate. Did you think that was a joke? That comes in a fucking can. That doesn't cure COVID, you fucking assholes. It is genuine fucking evil. It is evil. And I thought about the Dana Milbank piece too, because you have people like Ryan Lizza

who took some shit from Milbank in that post about Politico's headlines being too favorable towards Trump, too neutral, whatever. And it's like, oh, you're arguing on points. You're being neutral to both Biden and Trump. Trump tried to fucking kill half the press corps and then for good measure, tried to take some grieving families with him. Chris Christie was so sick. He had a priest rubbing oil in the shape of a cross on his forehead first of all how do you get that job if you're a priest is that the

last race that's what priests do guys not when there's a deadly pandemic yeah no that's maybe hopefully he was wearing protection but anyway but anyway you're wearing protection right on his fucking collar john i'm saying is like are you i'm not doing that they got protection right here so i know i love it i had the same go ahead go ahead tommy sorry you were no i just i i second what you said trump is bad trump is bad i think the broader like the political point is biden was sort of like asked about this and he's like i don't think about trump and i i get the instinct of not engaging with trump every day and getting in a colloquy with this former lunatic who's just like stomping around Mar-a-Lago, giving angry speeches at weddings about like the press corps or whatever.

But I do think he has to recognize that Trump is running against him every single day. He is putting out a message that is anti-Biden every single day, whether it's that he stole the election or that he's too old or that he's doing badly on the job. And at some point you have to respond. And I just wish Biden had said putting gold star families at risk of dying after all they've been through, because you're too fucking selfish to admit you got COVID and maybe cancel a debate is one of the worst things I've ever heard and why you should never be president again. That's a pretty, that's an easy, understandable message. Pick a fight.

Now you want him to get down in the muck. Well, that was great. I like that. That would have been better than whoopsie doodle. Well, yeah, I don't think about the former president. First of all, everyone, please stop calling him the fucking former guy. Just fucking stop it. Like, here's the thing.

This is not like Obama talking about Bush or Trump talking about Obama. This is not someone in the past who's gone. If Trump says tomorrow he's not running again, I completely agree. We should never talk about it again. Let's put him out of our mind. Let's drop it. That is not the case, unfortunately, right now. But put all politics aside.

Try to think about this story not from the perspective of Biden, Trump, politics, who's going to whatever. Think if you knew someone in your life who knew they had covid and then came in contact with 500 people this was before the vaccines before this is what it was a deadly virus killing still is a deadly virus killing thousands of people every day a lot of them unvaccinated most of them unvaccinated but like what a fucking awful human being truly get about the politics part of it just just someone in your life who did that. You would never talk to that person again. And that is why it's sort of like, oh, you know, they're quibbling.

Like, first of all, if you would have said 10 years ago, like, it's interesting who got sorted into the I'm just going to treat Trump as normal category and who fucking took out a flaming sword and joined the resistance.

It's like, hey, here's Jennifer Rubin and Dana Milbank. Weird, weird shit. Whatever. It was a good piece. It was a good piece because it was honest i think that so like jumping to the dana milbank piece i think what people need to know he's a washington post columnist and he is someone who i don't know his politics but he has written some of the most scathing takedowns of elected officials i've ever read in my life both parties one time both parties one

time i ran into him trolling around the Senate parking garage because he was like looking to see who was hypocritical when it came to cafe standards. Something like that was the kind of reporting he did. And for him to come out and write this big piece about how the media is being too hard on a candidate was completely out of character and suggested that he read something that actually bothered him. What did you guys think of the analysis? It was shared widely.

A lot of people talking about Ron Klain, White House Chief of staff, shared it. As you pointed out, love it. Some Politico reporters, particularly Ryan Lizza, pretty angry because he started off by rightly calling out Politico playbook as trash, which other Politico reporters think as well, as well as other reporters at other outlets. But anyway, what did you think about sort of the analysis in the piece? I think it kind of goes back to the same. We're back in the same rhythm we were in in 2016, where a lot of the issues was not about is Trump getting bad coverage? Trump was getting plenty of bad coverage. But there's this instinct, there's this need to then make sure the coverage is reciprocal, that the Democrats is reciprocal that the that the democrats are covered with the same degree of harshness and like you can quibble with the methodology quibble with any kind of survey that involves applying a a number yeah we should talk about how they did it he basically used like some ai it's code you know they code headlines and and

it's like a sentiment measuring system of a huge bunch of articles. And they get a score. And I'm sure there's plenty of reasons to argue with it. But like fundamentally, even the point Ryan Liz and make was actually, if you look at the numbers, we were pretty neutral on both. And it's like, well, if you're neutral on a normal politician who is by no means perfect, but is aiming to do good for the country and maybe has progressive biases and doesn't always see Republicans on the level, whatever it may be. And then the other one is a fucking authoritarian COVID super spreader trying to destroy our country from within, activating the worst instincts of human beings at their most base and kind of aggrieved level.

And you're like, I'm going to give them both a three out of five. Like, that sucks. That's bullshit. Chris Christie is getting an oil cross rubbed on his forehead by a priest and Trump called him to say, you're not going to blame me for this. Sorry. That really happened. It's in Christie's book. I read Milbank saying, I thought it was worth reading. It was interesting. I too am surprised that political playbook has decided to adopt like a New York post tone. I don't think that's sort of what that outlet used

to be. And I don't think it's very good. But more broadly, like I think every administration in the history of White Houses has thought their coverage was too mean. So setting that aside, but I think what sucks about working in politics is that the coverage is so reductive. So when you have a headline, like the headline will say Biden fails to pass spending agenda or whatever, and it never really digs into the reasons why, which is that Republicans are blocking everything. Right. Biden fails to top the pandemic. Well, the main reason seems to be that one party is turned into the anti-vaxxer party and is doing everything possible to sabotage that effort. And that's unbelievably frustrating because it means that cynicism works and that like the Mitch McConnell's of the world stealing Supreme Court seats and gumming up everything. It's it's an effective tactic. And like, yes, Democrats do that, too. We obstruct things as well, but we've never gone as far as they have. And I think that's sort of like my

general frustration with D.C. political coverage. I think Milban kind of blended a different critique with that one, which is about this ongoing threat to democracy itself. And I think that's an important, much more important, but kind of separate point than like the sentiment of the coverage towards Joe Biden. Well, I think that's why this is different, right? Because I actually don't think that the Biden administration has received any worse coverage than we did, than the Obama administration did, putting political playbook aside, which again is particularly bad, but I think the rest of the mainstream media, I think it's pretty close to what we have. And it's just mainstream media has a bias towards negativity and conflict and

over-hyping bad news. And they have all thought since Watergate that their main job is to criticize and take down people in power. And, you know, and that's what they do all the time. And look, I also think a lot of them were appropriately tough on Trump when Trump was president. And now they're trying to overcorrect because what they're more petrified of than anything else is being accused of liberal bias. Right. So that's all going on. But the reason this is so different than your normal administration, Democrat or Republican complaining about its press coverage is because of this threat to democracy from Trump. That's what makes it different than what we've had before. Yeah, I think that's right. Like, you know, one thing that Milbank points out in the piece, I mean, we've said a lot in the past, which is,

we need partisans for democracy and what makes journalists really uncomfortable. It's not that I feel like the idea of like, oh, there's a liberal bias there. Now we think there's a conservative bias. It's almost beside the point. Like it's to Tommy's point, to your point, right. It's like it's not about finding this like perfect balance in terms of the coverage of Trump versus the cover of Biden. That all presumes a kind of normal politics where they're playing the form of a ref between two teams. What makes, I think, a lot of political journalists the most uncomfortable is not being told that their coverage is skewing one way or another, but is being told by us. And I think correctly, hey, I have really bad news. You're no longer a ref between two teams. You're on a fucking team. You're on the team of the liberal

order, small L liberal order, in which people come together and make decisions based on consensus and shared facts and shared information that violence is never the answer in a democratic system, that if you lose an election, that that is a reasonable outcome that should be accepted. And being told that actually you're now part of a team arguing against this force that's outside of it trying to make you irrelevant is very hard for them to accept well no one's saying you have to be on the democratic team exactly you don't have to have our positions on health care or anything else like that but like you know if donald trump wins again it's not gonna be too great for the press he just called them all crooked bastards uh at a speech saturday night at mar-a-lago like a

wedding at mar-a-lago yeah it was going off it-a-Lago. Yeah, it was going off. It was like, congrats to the Bergsteins. The Elks Club or whatever. Can I pitch a theory? Please. Yeah, sure. I think alliteration is worth negative three points to Democrats because Democrats in disarray

is just, it's so fun to say. Okay. Yeah, I think that's a good, put that in there. Can we quantify that with some AI? Yeah, let's AI that. Let's get,

let's get, let's get big blue on that. Let's get Watson on that. I will say that I, I think Trump, especially towards the end of his term, actually got the right tone of coverage from the press. I think right now there's a problem and not that they're being too soft on Trump. It's that they're not actually covering Trump enough. And I think part of the reason is not necessarily a fault of their own. He's off Twitter.

So we don't hear about him all the time. But I think that like, I'm worried that people are not taking the threat of another Trump term seriously enough. And we're not hearing about it enough. Like part of me is like, maybe he should get back on Twitter just so we can tell. Careful what you wish for, I realize.

Wow, what a journey. Yeah, I know. Look, I think the point you're making, which is that Kamala Harris was wrong and that it's actually been really bad for the country to not have Trump on Twitter, I think is really an interesting one. That's not my view. I want everyone to know that that's not my view.

All right? For once. Yeah. But, you know, the whole don't amplify him, don't talk about him, it just – it bothers me only because he is not in the past. He is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination and we should be talking about him. The whole, like, don't amplify him thing. It's like Fox News is amplifying him. Sinclair News is amplifying him.

Facebook, right wing radio, like they're all talking about him. It's out there. Can we just pause for one minute though and just talk about, again,

how funny it is that Mark Meadows disclosed like the biggest cover up of the entire administration. He just put it in his book and then he called his own book fake news during an interview.

I mean, he's so stupid. Also, the debate commission just letting the schlub stroll in and not take a covet test is is yeah what were they doing that was one reason i do think this is kind of important is i do i do one thing you see in that story in so many ways is how many different organizations and institutions from the press to the debate commission to even the the the kind of non-political parts of how the white house runs were kind of bullied by this person bullied by these people

like service that that people are so afraid to make a scene so afraid to assert their power whether it's chris wallace at that debate uh whether it's the kind of sycophants and weaklings and little quizlings around trump like little fucking evil little sycophants being like yes sir yeah take your covid to the fucking gold star families. Good, good, good. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Mark Meadows. Mark Meadows. But, but get out of here. Get you, you're not well, you have to take a test and you have to have a mask on to be in this room. Unfortunately, we'll have to have a security to escort you out. I know you're Ivanka Trump, but that doesn't matter because this is America. And the fact that your last name earns you the right to come in here

shouldn't stop you from following the rules. Look, hopefully they'll tighten things up by the first debate in 2024 to protect Joe Biden against the Zeta variant that Trump will be carrying. When Chris Christie is once again running debate prep, despite the fact that Trump almost killed him. When he's back on board. Listen, I enjoy his quotes that are anti-Trump, and I would love to see them actually get spoken on outlets that Republicans listen to. But so far, it's a little MSNBC tour. That's probably not too much work. One thing the press should be covering is Trump's attempt to steal the next election. There's a new report this week that Trump's allies are plotting ballot measures in Wisconsin and Michigan that would bypass the state's Democratic governors to give Republican legislatures control of elections.

In Georgia, former Senator David Perdue announced a primary challenge to Governor Brian Kemp, saying that he and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger are to blame for not protecting Georgia's elections. And he blamed Kemp for an election that he lost, Perdue. It's just very funny. It's unbelievable. And also like running to the right of Brian Kemp. Like what? There's no space. Yeah, there's no space there. The space is he didn't overturn the election. And I wrote the space. That's the only issue. The potentially good news here is that the New York Times has reported Democrats and Republicans on the January 6th elect committee want to pass legislation that reforms the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

What would that do? And would it be enough to prevent election subversion in 2024 i mean i i obviously did the reading on this and and have a great handle on it but i just kind of want to know what you think yeah i want to know what you think oh i okay uh here's the let's see if he's right here's the potential changes they're talking about on the electoral count act of uh 1887 one one uh limiting grounds for a lawmaker objecting to counting a state's vote. So maybe you can't get fucking Holly and Cruz to do their bullshit again.

You got that one. Two. Clarifying the vice president's role. So just so you know no one's yelling for Mike Pence to be hung again, you know. Yeah, not Viceroy Supreme overseeing whether or not we're a democracy. And then three clear time limits for states to choose

electors is the three things that there seems like some good ideas. Seems like some good ideas. Who's on board? Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger are Republicans in the House on board because they're on the committee. And apparently the Times reports a bipartisan coalition of state and local lawmakers. I do think this is important on the margins where it usually isn't because this, of course, then goes to the Senate. And do you have do you find 10 Republicans who maybe they weren't interested in H.R. one or democracy reform, whatever the latest iteration is, but on this narrow thing, they're willing to join in. Who knows? I do think there's one huge thing missing here that I don't know if federal legislation can fix, which is the greatest threat to election subversion in 2024 is Republican state legislatures. The real danger here, and you know, Barton Gellman wrote another very, very long Atlantic piece today. We're always commenting on the length of these pieces. It was just so long this morning, but basically all it boils down to is we're fucked because of the Republican state legislatures. They're up to their old shit again. Because what they could do is, you know, try to say it doesn't matter what people in the state, how people in the state vote.

Right. We're just going to send our own slate of electors to Congress. And then no one has to object in the Senate. The VP doesn't have to get involved. Nothing like that has to happen because of Republican state legislatures decide this is how we're going to apportion electors. And it's not going to be about the popular vote or they just make up something because you know uh they make up vote fraud like they did before then they can send their own fucking slate of electors and then i don't know i don't know what you do and well then one thing that has to happen is democrats have to object

and then we're accused yeah imagine then we imagine we reform the electoral i mean look we should do everything we can to build stronger walls around our democratic processes. We have to do that. But there's no wall that is stronger than an authoritarian movement that wins elections. There just isn't. There is no recourse. If they don't believe in the laws, but they use them when they are in power, which they have gained democratically, which they have in state legislatures, obviously with gerrymandering, obviously with vote suppression, obviously with a host of advantages that we don't have. We should do everything we can to protect the system, but we

should be clear-eyed about this. We will not be able to protect the system from authoritarians with democratic power. We just won't. And unfortunately, these state legislatures are likely to look even worse in some states that are going to get re-gerrymandered at the state level and become even more MAGA. And, you know, listen to my friend Steve Bannon on the way in. We didn't even get to the C block yet. You're already on Bannon. Boris Epstein, the marble mouth guy who did booking for TV or whatever, was like— He's now on Newsmax or something.

Yeah. One of those— He was on Sinclair for a while. Yeah, Sinclair. He's camped out in Arizona trying to force them to decertify. And he's like, right. They're these MAGA types are deploying to states to pressure specific state legislatures to try to get the results they want, which will make it easier to subvert elections. And so, well, that is all bad news.

And there's probably little we can do about extremely gerrymandered Republican state legislatures. There's probably little we can do about extremely gerrymandered Republican state legislatures. What is not gerrymandered are the statewide elections for secretary of state and governor and all of the swing states. And so I do. And they and the governor and the secretary of state and all of those states play a huge role in this. And in many instances, they can't the legislature can't get away with their bullshit if there's a Democratic governor, Democratic secretary of state or some combination of both in place. And so when you think about how important it is to

reelect Gretchen Whitmer, Tony Evers, like just these are really, really important elections for governor in these swing states and for secretaries of state. So we should really focus on that in 2022, because that could protect us from an election theft in 2024 by Trump. OK, when we come back, we will talk to Senator Chris Murphy about the Build Back Better plan and what Congress can do about gun violence. The Senate has quite a bit on its plate before everyone heads home for the holidays. The Senate has quite a bit on its plate before everyone heads home for the holidays. Among the most important are passing a defense funding bill, passing Joe Biden's economic agenda, and avoiding a catastrophic default on our debt.

Here to chat with us about how it all gets done, as well as what Congress should do about gun violence in the wake of last week's horrific school shooting in Michigan, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy. Senator, welcome back to the pod. What's up, guys? Thanks for having me back. I imagine you are incredibly sick of having to answer questions about your two colleagues from West Virginia and Arizona. I am quite sick of asking those questions, but here we are. CNN reported the other day that Manchin still has Build Back Better concerns about what he calls budget gimmicks, paid family leave, climate taxes, and Medicare expansion. Does that track with your conversations?

Do you feel like he's asking for small changes here or big changes? Listen, I think we're going to get this done. I'm confident we're going to get this done. I've been around this place long enough to know when there is enough momentum behind something big and important for it to be inexorable. And I think that's the case with Build Back Better. I think Joe is in productive conversations right now with leadership in the White House about how to settle the differences that remain. I mean, some of them are no secret to anybody. I think it's been clear for a while, unfortunately, that Joe is not going to support a package with paid family leave, at least not the version that's in the House of Representatives. There are other conversations that are more nuanced, like exactly what tax incentives are going to be included in the $550 billion renewable energy package. But my sense is that this is going to get done. And my

sense also is that Chuck Schumer is not sending anybody home for the holiday break until this thing is done. So I remain optimistic. So you're feeling pretty confident about the deadline to the Christmas deadline? I do. I do. Listen, I mean, Joe's never, you know, hid the fact that, you know, if it was up to him, this package would be closer to zero. And so his case that he makes to the rest of us is that, you know, to get to the neighborhood we're in today, $1.75 trillion is a pretty significant concession. But I think we're getting closer. I think we'll get there. Do we have to worry about the Republicans tanking the global economy over the debt limit, or do you guys have a plan there?

I think we do. I mean, I think over and over again, they have made perfectly clear that they believe in one thing and one thing only, which is hurting Joe Biden. And if people's economic destitution or global chaos hurts Joe Biden, then they chalk that up as a victory. That's the reason why they are also blocking all of the president's national security nominees, as Russia sends tens of thousands of troops to the Ukrainian border, because as far as many Republicans are concerned,

an invasion of Ukraine weakens Joe Biden and ultimately helps Republicans. So on debt ceiling, all we're asking for is for them to allow Democrats to deliver all the votes. We just want them to allow Democrats to deliver all the votes. We just want them to allow us to proceed to a vote in which Democrats would deliver 50 votes plus Kamala Harris to raise the debt ceiling. So we actually don't need their votes. We just need their permission to allow for a process that allows Democrats to do it alone. Senator, last week, there was another horrific

school shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan. You went to the Senate floor and asked for unanimous consent to pass a bill that would expand background checks on gun sales. Republicans blocked it, as they've done many times before. As you pointed out in your speech that day, I mean, this proposal is wildly popular, but again, we can't even get a vote. the angriest I've ever seen Barack Obama, I think John would probably agree, was when Republicans blocked similar action after Newtown. Do you see any path forward here? Like, is there anything we can do as listeners or activists or any hope people should feel? People should absolutely feel hope. Listen, this is a great social change movement, the fight to make our community safer. In the tradition of the civil rights movement and the marriage equality movement. And whether we like it or not, those were movements that took decades that had to meet obstacle after obstacle. That's what this is, right? There are enormous vested interests on the other side, the gun industry being chief amongst them,

which means even if we don't get everything we want passed this year, we have to continue to build this movement. There will be a day in which the gun lobby is not as powerful as we are. So I just hope that people see the sort of long-term arc of this fight. Now, listen, I have asked Senator Schumer for time this year

to try to work out a compromise on background checks that could get 60 votes. And so the only reason we haven't voted on it is because I've asked to be given as much space as I can to negotiate a compromise. I'm here to report with 10 days, 20 days left in the year, we're not going to get that bipartisan compromise this year. So we will and we should put a background checks bill up on the floor of the Senate next year and dare Republicans to vote against it.

So what people need to do is in the short term, put pressure on their members of the Senate to vote on what will be a compromise background checks bill that we'll put on the floor early next year. And second, join the movement, right? Sign up with any one of a myriad of national or local anti-gun violence groups and become part of a social change movement that will go down in the history books as successful as ones that you have read about. Someone who is probably not going to follow that advice is Congressman Thomas Massey. He put out this bizarre Christmas card

with his family arms to the teeth. It looked like a remake of the Predator movies starring the Little Rascals. Is he a real human being? Does he represent the gulf between you and I don't know, sort of hardcore gun fans? Is this just psychotic trolling? Like, what do you make of that bizarre stunt by Massey? I know I did see the photo and I was like, just hoping that there were other members of that family that aren't in that photo, that there were a couple that didn't consent to that picture, or at least there were big blow up fights before everyone was forced to take that photo, that there was some level of dissent. I mean, listen, there is, you know, there is a just celebratory culture around guns in this country that is wild for the rest of the world to watch.

And it is what rationalizes for these mass shooters, their belief that they can exercise the demons in their head by pulling out a gun and shooting it because we have just legitimized guns to the extent that they are now Christmas card photos. And so it just doesn't seem, you know, that abnormal, that out of the mainstream to bring a gun into a school. It doesn't seem that abnormal or out of the mainstream to some of these very broken brains to fire that. That is due to this culture in which we, you know, just see them as part of Americana, like grandma and apple pie. And listen, I understand America has a little different story with guns than other nations do. But this celebratory nirvana that happens over firearms, it is part of what motivates these mass shooters.

I know you were working this year with John Cornyn and Pat Toomey on closing gun show loopholes and other reforms. Have you reached out to either of them since Michigan to see if you can start those talks up again, or has that ship sailed? Yeah, I think we got to the logical conclusion on both of those processes. We were working with Senator Cornyn on tightening up the definition of who qualifies as a seller of guns, so you'd get more of these private sector sellers conducting background checks. Then when those talks collapsed, I moved on to Lindsey Graham, who said, listen, we can do the gun show loophole. We ultimately couldn't get anything there that would have come close to 10 votes, which is why we'll have to put one of these measures on the floor early next year. I do think that a lot of

Republicans think that this movement is losing strength. I'm going to be honest. And we have to show them that that's not the case. I think many Republicans think that this country has become anesthetized to gun violence, that there isn't as much outrage anymore over school shootings as there was. and avoid any political price. Our mission now has to be to not normalize this, right? To not lose our sense of outrage when our kids fear for their lives when they go to school. I take this personally. I send my seventh grader and my fourth grader to public school every day, and I just am beside myself that too many people

just sort of shrug off these mass shootings, shrug off these active shooter drills. So yeah, Republicans are hard to get right now, I think because they are making a bet that we're going to go away. President Biden just announced a decision to put forward a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Do you agree with that? Do you think that goes far enough? I don't think it goes far enough. I agree with it. But I mean, I don't think we should oversell the impact of a diplomatic boycott. I mean, what China really wants is our athletes. They really want the TV coverage that doesn't stop simply because we are engaged in a diplomatic boycott.

What they are doing to the Muslim Uyghurs is a genocide and we should treat it as such, which means taking much more heavy-handed economic sanctions against any and all products that are produced in that part of China to make clear that forced labor has got to find absolutely no safe harbor anywhere in the world's economy. So listen, I support this measure, but it's not enough. And I worry sometimes that we engage in a little bit of box checking with sort of light-handed sanctions policy. We do this all the time with sanctions in which we sanction a handful of people and then we move on to some other area of foreign policy. Here, when a genocide is happening, this can't be the beginning and the end.

Some of your Democratic colleagues in the House who are running in pretty tough districts told Axios yesterday that the party should stop talking about Trump and January 6th, avoid nationalizing the midterms, focus on selling the benefits of Biden's agenda in their districts. What do you think about that? I mean, I don't know that there's necessarily a choice to be made. I think it's absolutely true that we have to pass the Build Back Better agenda and then go sell it, right? We are, at times as Democrats, understandably addicted to legislating. We love legislating. And so we pass something, and then we move on to try to pass something else, right? We're not so excited about messaging, in part because messaging involves saying the same thing over and over again. And that gets like super boring after a while. And as Democrats, we want to be stimulated, right? So on this,

I'm not saying we have to stop legislating, but for a while, after we pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the Build Back Better bill, and the American Rescue Plan, arguably the most consequential set of legislative achievements for any first year president since FDR, we got to go out there and sell it. That being said, I don't think we should stop talking about Donald Trump. I do think there is a sizable portion of the swing electorate that is deeply offended by his politics, that is deeply worried that he is going to come back in 2024. And I don't necessarily think that we have to make a choice. We can talk about how we were able as Democrats to turn the corner from Donald Trump. The tone of our politics changed by having Joe Biden in the White House, but the practical impact on your lives changed because no longer is it the Fortune 500

companies that get the tax breaks, it's tax breaks going to you, it's childcare savings going to you. So talk about the stakes of this election being preserving this focus on help for middle class families and the specter of your life being once again dominated by Donald Trump's Twitter feed. I don't necessarily think that you can't make that argument in an elevator speech together. Final question for you. Your friend, your colleague, Senator Brian Schatz is up for reelection in 2022. Why did you decide to endorse Tulsi Gabbard in a primary against him? Where did he fall short? Every chance I get, I feed any morsel of information I have to shots about reputed primary challenges. I have good information on all sorts of billionaires that are thinking about moving to Hawaii that nobody else has, that only I know about, that I share with Brian.

And so anybody that has some tidbits of information that you want to pass along, please let me know. Because we got to, you know, I mean, these Hawaii senators, the weather, the climate, and the Democratic constituency can lull them into a sense of complacency. We can't let that happen with shots. I think it's really screwed up that you haven't maxed out yet. That's all I'm saying. I think it's just... Are you paying attention to my finance reports that closely? We're deep in the NBC over here. If I told you that I've maxed out yet that's all i'm saying i think it's just are you paying attention to my finance reports that closely we're deep in the nbc over here if i told you that i've maxed out would you would you know otherwise i feel like what the the the undertone was that uh one uh very well sunscreened billionaire surfer uh might be running against him one one zuckerberg might be jumping in this race that sounds like the that's rough all right i will commit to you here i will

go and check and if i haven't maxed out to Brian, I'm maxing out. I just wanted to start you. I have no idea. I don't know. But now I'm going to look at your next FEC report for sure. Yeah, I'm going to settle it tonight. Senator Chris Murphy,

thank you so much for joining us as always. Take care and come back again. Thanks, guys. All right, let's talk about an issue that's usually the main topic of conversation on Tommy's favorite war room podcast, China, the Olympics. Oh, the Biden administration announced on Monday, they will not be sending US officials to February's Winter Olympics in Beijing, citing China's, quote, ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity. American athletes are still expected to attend, but Jen Psaki told reporters that the White House, quote, will not be contributing to the fanfare of the games. China has threatened to take firm countermeasures if the U.S. proceeds

with a diplomatic boycott, while some Republicans have called for a full boycott of the games. Tommy, how big of a deal is this decision? And why do you think the Biden administration made it? I think it was, well, it's interesting to hear Chris Murphy say, you know, he doesn't really think it's sufficient. Obviously, it will not solve the problem. It will not convince China to stop throwing, you know, a million or more Uyghurs who are a Muslim minority group

into these re-education camps where they face torture and forced labor and just the worst things you could ever imagine. Sterilization. Sterilization. I mean, the stories are some of the most harrowing things you've ever heard, and that's why it's been called a genocide. But I think the hope is to create a way to get the world talking about this genocide that's ongoing in China and talking about China's human rights record, but also do so in a way that

allows US athletes who've been training their entire lives to compete in the Olympics to compete because they didn't have a choice about where the Olympic Games are. The horribly corrupt IOC decides where these games go. It's a broken, bankrupt, disgusting organization that is more than happy to help China cover up the disappearance, we'll say, of a tennis star who made sexual assault allegations against a very powerful Chinese official. So I'm glad they did this. I personally am glad that they're not punishing athletes as well. In 1980, Jimmy Carter kept all athletes out of the games in the Soviet Union after they invaded Afghanistan. And I think there was some feeling

that that might've handed Russia a propaganda win at the time because they just mopped up and won all the medals because 60 countries didn't participate. Tom Cotton is saying this isn't insufficient. It's a half measure, but you know, people like Mitt Romney had pushed for this, the Biden solution beforehand. So I do think there's some bipartisan agreement around this. Yeah. Hey, Hey president. Hey, president. You want to meet Chastain and Pete? Go fuck yourself. Diplomacy. I was going to say, I thought that Senator Murphy's point was well taken that like what

China really wants is the television coverage of the games and all the athletes. And, you know, there's probably not going to be as much coverage of the lack of a diplomatic presence from the U.S. I mean, if you could inject this set of questions a set of issues china's human rights record whether it's xinjiang tibet uh hong kong you know you pick your many issues that china has a terrible record uh into the coverage into the conversation around the games they will hate that the chinese will hate that the question is like will the nbc i assume it's nbc broadcast ever mention these things during the broadcast of the games from Beijing. I don't know.

Do you think other countries might follow suit? Is it possible that like I saw that Australia was maybe thinking about it? Yeah, Australia and China are in a bad place because the Australians called for investigations of the origins of COVID-19. So they're at loggerheads with China right now. But you could see other countries following suit. There's something sort of like feckless about what we're doing because it's like, oh, there's a very serious issue. What are we willing to do?

We're willing to prevent our diplomats from going there, our officials from going there. Meanwhile, there's a controversy. I don't know if you talked about it with Murphy, but there's a controversy over Rubio trying to get actually what is a bipartisan bill about the Uyghurs into the defense authorization. There's some technicality by which they try, try to not allow it, but there's a bipartisan bill that would stop the importation of goods from the, from the region in which the Uyghurs have been, uh, uh, uh, subjected to forced labor, forced labor. And it has, you know, there's a version that's passed the house. There's a version that has, uh, passed the Senate is incredibly bipartisan yet. It just

doesn't happen. And usually when things like this just don't happen, it's because everybody recognizes that an important message bill, but there's some corporate influence or other influences behind the scenes, preventing them from actually doing it. And so we end up in a situation where, you know, the Deputy Secretary of State can't go visit Beijing for the Olympics. And meanwhile, there's an actual substantive measure that can't seem to be passed. So Murphy said he supports the Rubio bill, not in those words, but he said that he would support barring all imports from the Xinjiang region. I'm not sure where the administration is going to land on that. I think they might think

that's, I mean, Xinjiang is the size of France, Germany, Spain, and the UK combined. It's a huge place. So maybe they think there's a more narrowly tailored way that would get at the forced labor issue without, I don't know, creating some sort of import challenge. I'm not defending opposing that, that provision, but that's sort of, I think, the context. in 2008. So you've seen in the past representation at the presidential level, Obama, um, went to London in 2012, the 2018 delegation was Pence and Ivanka. So, you know, like, yes, you know, denying them, uh, mayor Pete and Chastain is like, you know, right. Like they're, they're, I don't mean to knock, maybe it could be others cabinets, like denying Marty Walsh, right. Denying, um, you know, I don't want to insult somebody, like denying them any representation. They're not going to be all that upset about it. But in the past, there have been presidential level delegations.

And I do remember, too, around Beijing in 2008, there was a controversy around Darfur and China's contribution to the genocide in Darfur. You know, what's interesting is Steven Spielberg was supposed to be the director of the Olympics at the time, and he pulled out in February before those games. But then there was also, I think, huge protests around the torch route where it goes from Greece to China,

and there are all these protests. And interestingly, it created this very nationalistic fervor response in China that, you know, it didn't necessarily help like people. The Chinese reaction was to feel like the international media were treating them unfairly, especially when it comes to Tibet. I think that it was actually, I think Ronan and Mia Farrow wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal calling out Steven Spielberg that forced him to back out. Really? I don't think their

relationship ever recovered. Wow. Shit. You can only get that kind of stuff on your podcast. Pull that clip up. Check the facts. I think that's true. So, Trump and MAGA assholes like Steve Bannon have really revved up the anti-China rhetoric in recent years.

You guys think that's... They see that as effective politics for their base or effective politics more broadly? What do you think? What do I think? Yeah, I mean, I think they want to have a villain. And I think they, if it's not going to be, sometimes it should be Democrats. Sometimes it should be some foreign fucking adversary.

And I also think there's plenty of very legitimate reasons to be worried about what China is doing to influence the global economy and throw its right around. We see U.S. corporations, big multinational corporations censoring themselves, censoring our own films and television shows, basically ceding power to censors in authoritarian countries. So I think it's both a I think it's a useful tool for them. I think it's a genuine concern that they have and it's an exploitation. It's exploitation. Yeah. I mean, the Trump, I think saw the China tariffs as very good politics for him at the end of the day. And I think we saw, I remember seeing some like DNC polling and focus group data is where people gave him credit for trying because they heard about it. He made enough of a, a stink about it. And, about it. They also obviously blamed the entire COVID response on China and made that a way to deflect from Trump.

And by the way, the sort of Bannon wing and the Peter Navarro wing is that the Chinese manufactured and then purposefully spread COVID-19 to harm us, right? So they go that far in the enemy. For Bannon, I think it's part personal. I think he's found this Chinese dissident billionaire who funds all his operations. But more broadly, politically, there's an effort to conflate progressivism and socialism with communism. And they lump it all together with this one enemy. So Gallup did a poll in February of 21. 79% of Americans have mostly or very unfavorable opinions of China. 41% very unfavorable. And that number was up 24 points from the year before they dug in a little bit and they found it was driven by not by COVID,

but by the human rights concerns. One out of every five people asked about China brought up human rights just on their own. Interesting. The poll, um, 69% of Democrats and 72% of Republicans support promoting human rights in China, even if it hurts economic ties. Nice to say to a pollster, we'll see what happens if the economy actually takes a hit. Um, 60% think China's economic power could pose a critical threat to the US of all Americans. So it is, there is some evidence that there's obvious, I mean, we know there's evidence because in democratic politics for a long time, you talk about like, I want to make sure the jobs aren't created in China. I want to make sure they're created right here in America. Huge applause line pulls off the charts. Right. So there is this sort of economic nationalism that spans both parties that I do think, you know, Democrats should at least recognize. And I think the Biden administration is in their rhetoric and in their policy.

recognize. And I think the Biden administration is in their rhetoric and in their policy. Yeah. But look, I also think when you talk to tech people about the questions around breaking up Facebook and how to regulate social media and other tech giants, the first response you hear is you will be hamstringing us in the fights to come against China. I think it is a accepted wisdom amongst a lot of people that like this is the great competition we are. This is the next hundred years, right? How the U.S. faces and tries to compete with China. That is something Democrats, Republicans, independents, experts all seem to say. And I think right now you see a version of that language from the right that is a bit more xenophobic, a bit more extreme, a bit more nationalistic. And the question is, what is the democratic way of speaking about these issues that is not as hate-filled? And bellicose. And bellicose. You don't want to be like tiptoeing

towards war with China just based on overheated rhetoric. Yeah. I mean, look, the consensus opinion in Washington is basically that we are destined for conflict with China. And that's not a great place to be. I mean, I think Democrats need to be full-throated in their criticism of China's human rights record, the failure of transparency around COVID, Hong Kong, Taiwan, their efforts,

the censorship abroad that you were talking about. I mean, the Chinese government decided to kick the shit out of the general manager of the Houston Rockets for posting a tweet or an Instagram about Hong Kong. And half of the NBA kind of cowered in fear before they'd finally decided to fight back. That's nuts. We cannot let that happen. I think we need to stand for what we believe. But I too am worried about this Cold War 2.0 jingoism. And if Democrats and Republicans are constantly trying to outcompete each other on denouncing China, like foreign policy by, you know, like overwrought adjective, right, you could end up in a place

where you lose the ability to work with China on climate change. Or you, I don't know, you can't work with them in North Korea, or, you know, there's less transparency on COVID-19 there might otherwise be. So I don't trust the Chinese Communist Party. I don't trust the Chinese government. What I worry about is the kind of polling sentiment you just mentioned among Americans. And then also what that polling must look like in China, who are fed nothing but state run propaganda about how evil the West is, how evil America is, and how inevitable conflict might be. Yeah, I do think the Biden administration's rhetoric, which is sort of a, I'm wondering what you think about this, is it's like a bit of a progression of the Obama administration's rhetoric around China, which is they sort of, yeah, escalation is the word I was looking for, which is there's sort of three messages there. One is on human rights, which we've talked about a lot. The other is on economic competition. And so it's not necessarily about like being on a war footing with China, but saying we're going to create good jobs here. We're going to outcompete them. We're going to have better schools. We're going to attract more businesses. We're going to pay better wages. Right. Like you, you do that whole thing. And then the other that you hear Biden doing, and I heard Obama do this a couple of times, too, is look, we're in a fight for democracy all over the world right now. And it's threatened here in the United States. And this is an authoritarian government. And what authoritarian governments in China and Russia and all over the world are trying to prove right now is that that's a better

system, that they can have better standards of living for their people, and that democracies are weak and soft and inefficient. And they can't build a fucking train. And they can't build a fucking train. And that's, you know, and so we are in a competition with that worldview. And I think proving that democracy works, that democracies are strong, that democracies can survive, particularly multiracial, multiethnic democracies is probably one of the most important things that any U.S. administration can do right now. And I do feel like Democrats should feel confident in that kind of message about China. Yeah. It's also, it's worth noting that, you know, Biden announced this AUKUS deal where we are selling nuclear submarine technology to the Australians that the one that infuriated the French, the whole goal there was to create

better navies in the South China Sea to push back on China. So like Biden is saying and doing some things that I think are a step above and are different. The other just sort of broader context is that Xi Jinping, the president of China, is kind of, he's not a singular figure in Chinese political history, but it's basically him, Mao, and Deng Xiaoping. It's like, there's like sort of three, there's a pantheon of like three top officials and Xi is just sort of inserting himself into one, being one of the most powerful Chinese leaders of all time and kind of acting accordingly, like crushing Hong Kong and, or, you know, potentially some sort of military action against Taiwan.

And I think that's why people are so worried about it. And you're right. Like the Republicans, we should be talking about these things. There should be, um, a healthy concern and conversation about all the areas where China is doing bad things. But I just, I worry about the cold War 2.0 stuff and the inexorable feeling that there will be military conflict with a rising and a falling power.

Well, look, I just want to close by saying, I know, Tommy, you're getting a lot of criticism for it, but I think it's wonderful that you have agreed to go on Steve Bannon's podcast and debate these issues

about China with him and Peter Navarro and Boris and the whole crowd. I was thinking about the other day, like, not that I would ever go on stage pod, but if I got invited,

it would be nominated. No, I do. I did. That's how I first talked about being gay. Remember when, um, remember when Bannon,

uh, was supposed to go to that big New Yorker festival and we all browbeat him out of it. Oh yeah. I still think that was the right thing to do, but it would be, it would be interesting to hear him actually debate somebody instead of just talking to like naomi wolf about how like the maybe vaccination is like maybe like look before we uh before you jump right into the uh boiling uh the boiling guys or maybe a hot spring like a joe rogan or something you know something a little bit little something is warm and bubbly but not

yet um scalding like the beginning of the film dante's peak i don't know shout out that's fair shout out to the tourists who died at the beginning of that movie. Okay, we've definitely reached the end of the podcast. It's got that feeling now. Do you want to make fun of Chris Cuomo or anything before we leave? Anything topical? I think, you know, let's just step over him on our way out of the studio. Leave him where he is.

Thank you to the other Chris, Chris Murphy, for joining us today. Thank you to Tish James for taking out two of them. Tough week for homosexuals. Okay. Turn those sweatshirts, people. All right, everyone. We'll talk to you Thursday. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Mews, and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Sandy Gerard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Hallman, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.