Pod Save America - “Tuck Around and Find Out.”

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

Tucker Carlson hates Donald Trump but loves his insurrectionists, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake stops by to talk about Joe Biden’s new economic plan, and Chief Take Officer Elijah Cone joins for a game of Take Take Don’t Tell Me. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Tucker Carlson hates Donald Trump but loves his insurrectionists. Democratic pollster Celinda Lake stops by to talk about Joe Biden's new economic plan and the coming battle with Republicans in Congress. And later, there are some takes that need appreciating, and Elijah is here to give them to us. But first, if you're in the Los Angeles area, the Love It or Leave It weekly residency continues. Come on.

Weekly residency. Oh, boy. It's like a Dell. Tickets for the March through June live shows are now on sale. We've got a ton of great shows planned featuring an all-star lineup of comedians, actors, journalists, including some of the friends of the pod you know and love. Join us for a night of hilarious commentary, exciting games, and making fun of whatever bullshit came out of our insane political nightmare factory.

Don't miss out on the fun. Grab your tickets now at cricket.com slash events before they sell out. I'm going to start reading this housekeeping before I read it live on air. Very Trump of you. Yeah, I know. Honestly, we're being honest. A little Barack Obama, too. All right.

All right, let's get to the news. The Republican Speaker of the House and the extreme right-wing host of the country's most popular cable show conspired to air a few minutes of selectively edited surveillance footage from the January 6th insurrection in order to spread the lie that the violent attack on the Capitol was actually nothing more than peaceful tourists who were protesting

what they genuinely believed was a rigged election. Tucker Carlson, who we now know from his text messages, never believed any of that, got the footage from Kevin McCarthy after demanding it back in January as a condition of supporting him for speaker. Here's some of the lunacy from his show Tuesday night. These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers. Footage from inside the Capitol overturns the story you've heard about January 6th. Protesters queue up in neat little lines. They give each other tours outside the Speaker's office.

They take cheerful selfies and they smile. They're not destroying the Capitol. They obviously revere the Capitol. They obviously, they obviously revere the Capitol. Anyone who was around on January 6th watching the riot unfold, of course, knew that they revered the Capitol. Also, anyone who watched the primetime January 6th hearings, let's listen to a clip from that. Fuck you, police! We're still taking metal, sharpened objects, missiles to include bottles and rocks, and hand-thrown chemical-grade fireworks. Sounds peaceful, huh? Just some tourists out for a stroll? Reverie. That's what that is. People revering the Capitol. So I guess the 140 cops who were assaulted and the over 500 people who pled guilty to various federal charges in connection with January 6th were just part of some other insurrection that Tucker didn't see?

What do you think? I mean, it is wild because it is something we all watched in real time. And all the people, including the person who gave the footage to Kevin McCarthy, decried the violence in the days and weeks after. Everyone knew what happened. It is as Orwellian as really anything we've seen in this era, right? The Orwellian quote about telling people not to believe the evidence of their eyes and their ears, right? This is truly, it is wild. It is absolutely a wild thing that is happening. And it's even scarier or more alarming or more fitting,

whatever it is, that the person who made it happen is third in line for the presidency. Yeah. A person who, like you said, again, decried the violence and Donald Trump's role in it immediately after January 6th. We also all heard- Someone who could have died in the violence, right? He was a potential victim of the violence, who was hiding in his office, clearly scared in the footage we've seen. I mean, we could go on forever, but we all heard testimony from police officers. And as we know, Republicans are huge supporters of police officers,

police officers who testified under oath that they were brutally assaulted, some with their own weapons, their own weapons. An officer said that the fighting was medieval and a trip to hell. So I guess Tucker Carlson and Kevin McCarthy and Republicans just maligning police officer, not really standing with the blue right there. I mean, sorry to keep doing this, but Kevin McCarthy was on the phone with Mark Meadows begging him to send the troops to protect him from the tourists. Yeah, that's what was happening. So Tucker could spend his time, his hour every night, lying about all kinds of shit that's more believable than trying to convince people that January 6th didn't happen. Why do you think he has become so obsessed with this issue?

I think there are three reasons. One is he is a greedy grifter and he is in the outrage business and he gets attention. He gets money for being outrageous. And the thing about being in the outrage business is you have to get more outrageous every day. You have to up the dosage every single day to keep it going. And this is how you get from being angry about people saying happy holidays to great replacement theory and insurrections are good. And so he just is grabbing whatever third rail he can find, he will grab to get attention. And this is clearly one because it is an absolute edge case. Because there is a – not among the far, far right or even among like Fox Prime. The general consensus, even among Trump-loving Republicans is the election was stolen.

We've already done that. Donald Trump is not necessarily responsible for what happened. But the violence was stolen. We've already done that. Donald Trump is not necessarily responsible for what happened, but the violence was bad. And so he has to go take that last one on. The second reason is, and we're going to talk about this, he now has a tremendous need to prove his MAGA bona fides to his audience because he's been caught texting about Donald Trump. And so this is a way to do that. This is the sort of the he is sacrificing the credibility he lost long ago to do this. And the third one is Donald Trump's a front runner for the Republican nomination.

There's a very real chance he's going to be indicted for his role in January 6 at some point. And so you're going to have to begin creating a permission structure for people who don't like January 6, but do want to vote for Donald Trump to be able to do those two things. And one way to do that is just throw a bunch of mud at the thing and make it just throw disinformation at it in the hopes people throw up their arms and say, I don't really know what happened, but I like Donald Trump so I can vote for him. Yeah, I think that Tucker looked at the midterm results and just like we have and realized that January 6th and the pro-insurrection part of the Republican Party is a real weakness for Republican politicians. And he needs to somehow try to neutralize that.

And he knows he can't convince everyone. But you're right. He might as well just throw some shit at the wall and see what sticks i also think to your um outrage point like the fox texts are really revealing here like tucker and the rest they just reveal that tucker and and uh laura ingram and sean hannity they all just live in fear every day that they're going to lose viewers to some crazier outlet. So, you know, they probably spend their day checking out 4chan and listening to Steve Bannon's War Room and reading the Daily Stormer or whatever for the most outrageous conspiracies. So, you know, they can give the people what they want. That's it.

They don't want to lose viewers to someone else who's saying that the insurrection was a false flag operation. So they got to jump on that train. I mean, the thing about MAGA politics is you're defined by the people you anger. And so January 6th is a way to anger all of the right people to prove that you are as MAGA as can be, right? Now, you anger the press. You anger Rhino Republicans. Liz Cheney comes out of retirement to come after you. And so, I mean, this is what Ted Cruz does.

It's what Matt Gaith does. What Marjorie Taylor Greene does is that you go out, you pick things and inflame as many people who are the, quote unquote, enemy of right right wing Americans as possible. And this is a absolutely effective, very loud way to do that. And it shows what Fox is, right? It's obviously not a news outlet. It's not trying to inform viewers. It's not even trying to persuade people who tune in, like I would like to think we're trying to do. It's basically telling their audience that the craziest conspiracies that they believe are absolutely true. Whatever you're feeling, whatever you heard, whatever you saw in some comment section on some crazy website, it is true. And we're going to reassure you that it's true.

That's all they're doing. That's all they're doing. Yeah, it's really hard to establish where who's leading here right because a reason a lot of people want to believe these things is because fox has created the context for them to believe it so they believe it so then fox then reinforces it and it's not like fox is not leading people like sheep it's like they're both leading each other right off a fucking cliff well and i do think it's it's the competition within the magGA media complex that is driving this too, because like I said, you know, they don't want OAN to get out ahead of them or Newsmax to steal their viewers. So they're in a race to the bottom in terms of who can be the craziest. And that competition between outlets within the MAGA media universe is what's sort of causing all the content to become even more extreme. Do you think the Fox executives who are currently facing a billion and a half dollar lawsuit for lying about an attempted coup or excited to see Tucker lying about an attempted coup on Tuesday

night? I mean, there's some reporting about the tremendous discomfort some at Fox have with what Tucker's doing. You felt similar things that when he rare air, the documentary, and I've used documentary and air quotes about this a while back. And, but they can't stop them. And the reason they can't stop Tucker is because he calls the shots. He is,

he's the one who makes the money. And we tend to think about Fox is this true, phenomenally successful business because it's the most watched cable channel, not news channel, cable channel every year for the last seven years. It's the most watched cable news network for 20 years. They routinely kick the shit out of MSNBC and CNN. But Fox is also a dying business, like every cable company. Every year, they make less money. Every year, they get closer. Dying business with a dying audience. Yeah, exactly.

That is the exact thing. They know the end is coming and they have no plan for how to monetize the next phase. And so part of this is they are just trying to, it's real like end of Rome shit where it's like, we're going to try to make as much money as humanly possible in the very few years we have left. And that's why you can't lose Tucker, because he makes the money. That's why you can't piss off the audience, because you may not get them back, because every minute you're not monetizing that huge audience, you're not going to get that on the back end. There is no future. It is over soon enough, and they're acting like

people who know that. And so all these decisions come from this perpetual state of existential crisis that allows this shit to happen, which is greatly magnified by the fact that no one who works there has a shred of fucking ethics or shame or morality. And so those are two very bad things flowing in the same direction that give you this stuff. And by the way, Tucker and the other hosts know they have this power. And we know that now from the texts that have been revealed. There's an exchange with Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity where they're all texting each other and they're all pissed that the news side has called Arizona for Joe Biden. And I think Laura Ingraham said, oh, they hate us. We're working for a network that officially hates us. But you know what?

We have a lot of power here and we should be able to force some changes, the three of us. So they know how much power they have. And they did. Because they fired the people who made the call. They sent them all packing, even though they were right. Yep, that's right. So the broader reaction to Tucker's latest bullshit has not been positive. He was criticized by President Biden and the Democrats in Congress. Rare for

Biden himself to weigh in. He tweeted about this. The U.S. Capitol Police chief, who never gets involved in politics, called the footage cherry-picked, offensive, and misleading. Even Senate Republicans were critical, including Mitch McConnell. Let's listen. It was a mistake in my view for Fox News to depict this in a way that's completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at Capitol thinks. I think it's bullshit. I was here. The point is, what happened that day shouldn't have happened. Breaking through glass windows and doors to get into the United States Capitol against the orders of police is a crime. There were a lot of people in the Capitol at the time who I think were scared for their lives. Those were not a bunch of rhinos, a lot of very conservative senators you just heard there.

Why do you think they and Mitch McConnell found their voice on this one? Well, let's separate some of them from McConnell. I do think that there remain a handful of Republicans who are willing to hold a grudge when a member of their own party tries to have them murdered. Right. I mean, people were scared on that day. Everyone involved was scared, as they should have been. It was a deeply dangerous situation. on that day, everyone involved was scared as they should have been. It was a deeply dangerous situation. As we know from the January 6th hearing, one thing happens differently and a member of Congress, a Senator, a staffer loses their life on that day, right? That easily could have happened. Very close. It's a traumatic thing. And they, and some of them recognize that and they're willing to suck it up and support Trump over it. They're willing to continue pushing the big lie, but they're not going to let someone say, no, they were not almost

murdered or their staff was not almost murdered over it, or they were not attacked. They're not going to do that. Now let's, Mitch McConnell is not someone I think who operates out of morality or patriotism or community spirit. I think everything Mitch McConnell does and says. Community spirit is so funny. I don't think, so anyway, I don't think, so when Mitch McConnell speaks, it's part of a plan. And the plan is always about how you gather more power. And Mitch McConnell knows one of the reasons that he is the Senate minority leader and not the Senate majority leader is because a bunch of candidates ran on some insane MAGA big lie bullshit. And now you have the most powerful force in the Republican Party. Yes, the most powerful Republican Party, Tucker Carlson, creating another conspiracy theory that makes it less likely that Republicans can win

the majority in a good what it should be a very good year for them in 2024. And this isn't like us guessing. Stanford researchers did a study comparing big lie believing candidates to not big lie espousing candidates. And the ones who pushed the big lie got on average 2.3% less vote share than the other candidates. That's enough to win a whole bunch of races. And so now you have the forces that push the Republicans in a direction to lose the election in 2022 doing it again. And Mitch McConnell was trying to stop it, I assume. Yeah. I mean, he needs Republicans to win at a bunch of competitive states where being pro-insurrection isn't all that popular. Yeah. That's what it comes down to.

Where are the states where being pro-insurrection is popular? It's a good question. There isn't one. There's one where it may be tolerated, but there's not a competitive state. Not a majority position in any state. So on the other side of the Capitol, Kevin McCarthy defended handing over the tapes

in the name of transparency, even though other media organizations have asked for the tapes and none of them got it except for Tucker Carlson. And the House Republican Twitter account called Tucker's segment must watch in all capital letters. So it's safe to say that none of these House Republicans or most of these House Republicans aren't really concerned as about being seen as January 6th truthers. Most of these Republicans are in safe districts. They're more concerned about more vehemently pro-insurrection primary challengers than anything else. But when it comes to Kevin McCarthy, there's two reasons here. The first is he's a fucking idiot.

He didn't think this through. Just like Tucker Carlson asked him, he said yes. Tucker Carlson seems important, gave it to him. Did not once think about how this would play out. Didn't see around a corner, didn't know the next move. That is always the most likely explanation for all things Kevin McCarthy. Indeed. He didn't see around the corner. He

ran right into the corner. Constantly running into the corner. Just stepping on rakes like Sideshow Bob through a parking lot every single time. The other thing that I think is true for this, and it's going to be true in the debt scene and everything else, is Kevin McCarthy is not the Speaker of the House. He's not the Speaker. He's not the leader of the Republican Party. He essentially is Marjorie Taylor Greene's manservant, right? He works for the MAGA faction. Because we know that technically any member of Congress could throw

Kevin McCarthy out of the Speaker's job. That can happen. But no moderate-ish or less MAGA person is going to do it because they know the person who's going to replace Kevin McCarthy is going to be even more MAGA than Kevin McCarthy. So the people he's afraid of are Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene. They're the ones who might blow the whole thing up. So he's got to do a bunch of things that make them happy. And this could be something that Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested to him. It could be something that Donald Trump suggested to him. If Donald Trump turns on him, that could push these people to toss them overboard. So it is like the nature of his politics is it's better to appease those people and piss off 85% of the country than the opposite. Yeah. And it's worth highlighting here how much different his political calculus has been

from Mitch McConnell, who we just spoke about, because you're right that a lot of his caucuses and safe districts, so it doesn't matter. But there's a bunch, there's like 18 or so Republicans who are House Republicans who are sitting in Biden districts, those people definitely don't want to be known as insurrectionist sympathizers. And if Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans want to hold their majority in 2024, they probably don't want to be seen as January 6th truthers. But again, McCarthy cares more about keeping his job than even keeping his majority, I think, at this point. He just wants this job more than anything and you mentioned the debt ceiling fight too i'm sure you talked about this with celinda but like what he's done on the debt ceiling now is he's basically made all these promises to become speaker none of which he can keep right uh although i guess this

one he kept by giving tucker the tapes but on the debt ceiling stuff there was a washington good washington post story about this where it's like you know he promises one faction he's not going to cut medicare and social security promises another faction he's not going to raise taxes promises another faction that uh he's going to balance the budget in 10 years well the math doesn't add up for any of that so he does he can't even he's not even going to be able to pass a budget within the Republican caucus in the House because he made all these promises to get the job. And now he can't catch. They're going to cash in and he's not going to be able to keep them. This is a unique a problem that is uniquely bad for McCarthy, but it's been true of every Republican speaker since the Tea Party took over. When we work for Obama, Boehner used to do things just like this.

Right. He would set himself up for things that were obviously going to blow up in his face. And President Obama would do the thing he would do to us where he would like quiz you on why they did certain things. And all of a sudden you find yourself defending, trying to explain away the position. You're like, all of a sudden you're defending John Boehner and he's like pushing you. And you're like, why am I explaining this? And I finally, the way I finally explained this to Obama woman who was always like, why would he do this? It makes no sense. What you do is like, because Republican house leaders operate on a one week timeline. They are just trying to get through the next caucus launch without a blowing up in their face. So if, if, if I can get through

lunch without someone yelling at me by saying, I'm not going to cut military spending, I'm going to do that. If next week, the way I'm going to get through lunch is by promising to give Tucker Carlson a bunch of insurrection footage. I'm going to do that. And you never, if you can survive the lunch or still speaker when the lunch ends and that, and Kevin McCarthy has that to the nth degree compared to some of his predecessors. Yeah. I think this is all true. We should also dig down in the question, like, is there a politically important January 6th truther constituency out there for just the Republican Party? Certainly not in the electorate at large. But is there what's what's the politics of this? They're terrible. They're absolutely terrible. In all the polling we saw in 2022, huge swaths of Republicans believe some form of the big lie, that there was fraud, the election was stolen, Donald Trump should have won.

for what happened on January 6th. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 18% in some of the polling I've seen are quasi-supportive of the people who broke into the Capitol. Like you have picked the least appealing, the most polarizing, the most easily blamed group if you're going to side with the people.

It's just why it's insane that Donald Trump's releasing We Are The World songs for the January 6th prisoners. I think we have a clip of that right here. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. That is Donald Trump and the January 6th Insurrectionists. It's a new single that was, we're not joking, that was released the other week. It's a banger of a song. You remember that there was a time in your life many, many years ago where you wrote a victory speech for a victory that didn't happen.

Obama gave it anyway, and then Will.i.am turned it into a hit song. I do remember that. That's a thing that happened. This is basically that for Stephen Miller. This is his Will.i.am moment. If you had told me that in 2000, which has already felt extremely bizarre when it happened back in 2008 that this would be the mirror image of that this many years later yeah i would not have uh would not have believed

you it's safe to say but yeah so donald trump very pro-insurrection he has gone from like uh saying that it didn't happen it was a false flag operation all this kind of stuff to now and we all we all knew he would get there right the insurrection was good the people who have pled guilty have done so under duress they are patriots there are some who are being held you know wrongly unjustly i think i think kevin mccarthy and marjorie taylor green are trying to get like a a congressional group to go visit them in prison. I mean, this is a whole, the Republican Party is getting ready to run in 2024 with a good chunk of their politicians being unabashedly pro-insurrection and pro-insurrectionist with these numbers that you were just mentioned. It's fucking wild. Yeah. I mean, Trump has talked about pardoning them if he gets reelected.

I mean, you mentioned some of the polls. The most recent polls in these were like in January, February 2023, around the anniversary of January 6th. 67% of all Americans in an AP poll described January 6th is very or extremely violent. And that includes 40% of Republicans. Only 3 in 10 Republicans say the attack was not violent. You gov poll around the same time, 40% of Trump voters said they approved strongly or somewhat strongly of the supporters taking over the Capitol. Just over half said that they disapproved. And then Data for Progress did an interesting poll where they asked a question.

When thinking about the actions of Donald Trump's supporters on January 6th, which comes closer to your view? One, the supporters did the wrong thing by inciting violence and threatening our democracy. Or two, the supporters did the right thing by standing up for Trump and trying to overturn the election results. Wrong thing, 74%. Right thing, 17%. results. Wrong thing, 74%. Right thing, 17%. Only 27% of Republicans said it was the right thing. Now, then they did a messaging test, Biden versus Trump in 2024, and straight test, Biden versus Trump, 47 Biden, 45 Trump. So Biden wins by two points. When you tell people that Biden opposes the January 6th attack and Trump supports it, which is, of course, Trump's position, it moves to 49% Biden, 42% Trump. It's still wild that we have a ballot test with a candidate who's pro-political violence and that candidate's opponent still doesn't get to a majority in America, which is very concerning.

No, we have 40% of the country. We may have lost them, but we got that 60 that we're playing with it's important we are glass half full here the thing that's interesting about trump's rhetoric that yeah is he is the insurrection didn't happen those people are political prisoners but also I didn't tell them to be violent, to be very clear. And I also repeatedly asked for them to not to stop being violent. And Nancy Pelosi failed to stop them. So he's he's not he doesn't pick one item on the menu. He takes the whole menu.

Right. And it might have been Antifa, but also it was good. Yeah, that's right. Now, one notable figure in this extreme minority with Donald Trump, Elon Musk. Did you see that he was tweeting support for Tucker? He was supporting Tucker. A couple tweets from Elon Musk supporting Tucker. And he also attacked Mitch McConnell for not being pro-insurrectionist enough.

He tweeted, does Mitch McConnell, did he forget which party he's from? This is the great centrist Elon Musk, right? He's not right. He's not left. He's in the middle, just like most Americans. Yeah. Well, now Mitch McConnell is not pro-insurrectionist enough for Elon Musk. That's where Elon Musk is these days. I mean, the red pill is a powerful drug, my friend. So obviously another person who rushed to Tucker's defense here was Donald Trump, who said that he did a great job on truth social. Unfortunately for the former president, the feeling isn't mutual. In the latest batch of text messages from the Dominion lawsuit against Fox,

Tucker said this about Donald Trump. Quote, I hate him passionately. We're all pretending we've got a lot to show for the last four years because admitting what a disaster it's been is too tough to digest. But come on, there isn't really an upside to Trump. Tucker Carlson, welcome to the resistance. Just the reason they have the worst person good point meme right there. What do you think? Do you think Tucker will lose MAGA viewers because of this? It's the reason they have the worst person good point meme right there. What do you think?

Do you think Tucker will lose MAGA viewers because of this? Do you think Trump will lose Tucker fans over this? Or will fans of either man ever even know about these texts at all? Probably option three is that very, very few people who care about this will know Tucker said these things. I don't think Trump will get mad at Tucker because Trump does understand power dynamics quite well. He knows how much power Tucker generally has, but he also fucking loves leverage on people, which is why when those recordings from the Jonathan Martin, Alex Burns book came out about Kevin McCarthy. Did Trump attack Kevin McCarthy? No, he just called him and made him do his bidding.

And so this is probably, these texts are partially why I'm sure Tucker's doing the January 6th footage stuff because it is a way to appease Trump and Trump is very happy about it. And he'll go around in Mar-a-Lago bragging to the 85 year old real estate moguls and the Chinese spies and whoever else about how he made Tucker do this stuff. And so everyone wins and we all lose. Yeah. And Tucker knows this too,

because also in the text, he says that the one thing Trump is good at is destroying and he can destroy all of us if we're not careful. So that was by far the most enjoyable text of the latest bunch, but there were plenty of others that have been dribbling out over the last couple of weeks. What were some of your favorites of this latest bunch? And did we learn anything new? I just think we had all of our pre-existing notions confirmed about how terrible everyone who works at Fox News is and how just always a comfort. Yeah, it's just it's nice to be right. That's what I would say.

I'll just always, always a comfort. Yeah. It's just, it's nice to be right. That's what I would say. I think I particularly enjoyed everything involving Brett bear. The bell. I knew that was going to be your first,

your first comment. I have been, I'm not going to be one of those people who's going to go back and refer to my tweets from like 2017 about how right I was, but I've always hated Brett bear. I've always known he's a fucking fraud and it's good to have that exposed and my hope is that everyone in dc who cites him as the one real person at fox because once in a fucking blue moon he has a tough question of republican now recognizes what a propagandist he is i also enjoy we should tell people by the way what you're referencing with so brett

brett bear said that um it's at one point was texting that after fox made the call on arizona for joe biden obviously fox got a ton of blowback from their viewers of course not from anyone else but from their their hardcore fans and brett bear was texting fox executive saying that like they should seriously consider putting arizona back uh in Trump's column or at least not calling it for Joe Biden because they're getting killed on Twitter because they're viewers. And he basically says, look, I know I know the numbers are what the numbers are, but there's another layer of the Brett Baier stuff. One is the text that came out in this batch. And then there's been a bunch of reporting that is all kind of related to some of the revelations in this that was in a big New York Times story. Some of it even dates back to the book that Peter Baker and Susan Glasser wrote about Trump that gets into how Brett Baier repeatedly

pushed Fox to pull back the Arizona call because voters were mad and Trump was mad at them. And then even in a meeting with Suzanne Scott and the sort of high command Fox, Brett Baer and Martha McCallum, someone else who walks around with this sort of quasi journalistic legitimacy, argue that we should not just look at the numbers when making calls for states. We should factor in what our viewers want, which is definitely how math works. It's all fan service. That's it. That's Fox. That's Fox. It's just a fan service.

Anything else? Anything else for you in this batch of text? I also enjoyed Bill Salmon and Chris Steerwalt. Bill Salmon was the Washington Bureau chief or editor of some kind, and Chris Steerwalt. Bill Salmon was the Washington Bureau chief or editor of some kind, and Chris Steerwalt was the politics editor, both of whom were quickly shown the door when Fox's ratings went down, talking about how

Bill said that this was his greatest journalistic existential crisis in 22 years at Fox, and Chris said that they were following, basically losing a silent majority of Fox viewers to follow a bunch of nuts off a cliff, which really speaks to. And also, that's basically, I'm sure, what was in the post-January 6 PowerPoint for how Fox got their viewers back was just a bunch of nuts going off a cliff, right? Because that's the strategy they adopted.

Yeah. No, it's pretty clear they hate their viewers it's just for all they tell us about the elites looking down on real americans and liberals and coastal elites they fucking hate their viewers and all they see their viewers as a way for themselves to make money that's all i I thought that to the sort of decision desk point, like there's a couple there's a text from Rupert Murdoch that says, I hate our decision desk people. I hate our pollsters too. I think they're some of the same people. I think this is important going forward because one thing we've said, we've talked about Fox News polls on here because they are done by

legitimate pollsters. The Fox News decision desk, obviously, it proved itself to be a legitimate operation calling Arizona for Joe Biden. And I don't know that we're going to be able, I certainly don't think we're gonna be able to trust the decision desk at Fox anymore for future elections after they pushed out all the people who, you know, were not crazy. And I don't, I'm wondering what they'll do with their pollsters too. Like, I think that they are going to move to a place where you're not going to be able to trust you know were not crazy and i don't i'm wondering what they'll do with their pollsters too like i think that they are going to move to a place where you're not going to be able to trust even the numbers people at fox which i know sounds crazy but like we you you usually have been able to

trust them in past elections yeah is the example of how far it's gone is many people of a certain age remember in 2012 when fox was prepared to call Ohio for Obama, which was essentially give him re-election. Karl Rove was acting like a lunatic about, because he was talking to people in the Romney campaign who didn't know that black people could vote and was talking about how there are all these votes out there, Ohio, et cetera.

And Megyn Kelly basically walked back into the room where they made the decision and just completely embarrassed Karl Rove because it was obvious that Obama was going to win Ohio. You flash forward to now where you have Brett Baer pushing to not to rescind calls because it upsets the MAGA president of the United States. A few other good quotes, texts from this bunch, Tucker asking his staff, do we have enough dead people for tonight? Basically, this was him asking for examples of dead people voting in Nevada or Georgia, even reached out to the Trump campaign. Trump campaign gave him four examples from Georgia.

Three ended up proving to be false. And Tucker had to walk that back, but then said, well, there are dead people voting everywhere, just so you know. had to walk that back, but then said, well, there are dead people voting everywhere, just so you know. Murdoch said in the deposition that he never believed Dominion rigged the election, which seems legally problematic for them. And he said that Sean and Laura, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram, quote, went too far. He then told everyone, we've got to focus on the Georgia Senate by helping any way we can. Yeah, seems helping. I mean mean that's what that's what we try to do here but we tell you about it that's right the idea that it's just secret and that fox is ostensibly a new i mean come on it's just fucking big it's ridiculous oliver darcy had a good point about

this he was he's been interviewing people at fox too uh he's the cnn media reporter he said these people are just paid actors basically to make money for the network. That's who Tucker and Lauren, all of them are. It's true, they are. They're basically paid actors. That was a good point. There are two kinds of people who work at Fox. There are obvious propagandists

like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham. And then there are subtle, cynical, even more dangerous propagandists who pretend to be journalists like Brett Baer and John Roberts and the rest. They're all part of the same effort. And anyone who's ever read anything, written anything about how Fox was created knows the purpose was to push Republican conservatives into power. And if you took a job there, that's what you were agreeing to be a part of. I do think the dynamic, the sort of divide between news and opinion and the fact that

they don't like each other is interesting, even though none of them have integrity. So there's an exchange between Sean Hannity and Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends in the Morning, a brilliant journalist. And Hannity says, news destroyed us today. And then Doocy says, every day. And then Hannity said, you don't piss off the base.

That's the cardinal rule at Fox. You don't piss off the base. And then Hannity said, you don't piss off the base. That's the cardinal rule at Fox. You don't piss off the base. And then Ducey says, they don't care. They're journalists in like a mocking sarcastic way, which is also funny, by the way, because Ducey's son, Peter Ducey, is one of those supposed journalists. I don't even think, I don't think Peter Ducey puts journalist on his business card. think peter juicy puts journalists on his business card but it is interesting that like the news people because they like getting sort of the uh air of legitimacy from the larger dc set does get embarrassed by the opinion people from from time to time even though the news people are also doing

what the opinion people do yeah it's the all the people are. So you wrote a great message box yesterday about how Democrats can take advantage of what might be the greatest crisis Fox News has ever faced. Or maybe any media organization. I mean, this is one of the biggest media scandals, I think, in my lifetime. Because it's both a challenge of credibility and could be a massive financial blow all at the same time. Yes. So what should Democrats do here? What are the options? So I will give the short version here.

First is Democrats have to stop giving Fox full legitimacy. We say all the time that Fox is a MAGA network, propaganda, Tucker Carlson. But in the day-to-day life of most Democratic politicians and political operatives, Fox still exists in this quasi-legitimate place. They're in the network pool. They get to ask a bunch of questions. And if you think that sounds ridiculous, just remember like a month ago, the absurd conversation we had about whether Joe Biden should do a Fox interview at the Super Bowl. These text reveals that Fox and Breitbart are the same thing. So we have to treat Fox like Breitbart.

If Breitbart was doing a Super Bowl interview, no one would be like, why is Joe Biden missing this opportunity to speak to the American people through Breitbart? Like, what the fuck are we doing? Right? Stop. We don't, when Breitbart, like, this is not to say that Fox can't come to the White House. They can't cover things. Of course they can do it.

When we were in the White House, Breitbart, the daily caller, they showed up in the briefing room every day. And sometimes they'd call their office with questions. And what we would do? Not fucking call them back because we don't have time to deal with MAGA propagandists. They are as adversarial to us as the RNC. And we should treat them the same way. And Fox is the same way. Second, and related to that is we should stop pretending that Fox is a good way to reach persuadable voters. It's not. And the math is pretty simple.

Just think about it this way. There are 2 million people that watch Bret Baier. That's a shitload of people compared to like what CNN and MSNBC are getting at the same time. But it's a fraction of the overall electorate. And so let's generously say that like 10% of those viewers are persuadable viewers because the vast majority of all cable news viewers are not persuadable voters. And Fox is even to the extreme of that. So let's say that 10% of the 2 million are persuadable. So that's

200,000 voters. So let's say you're a Democrat in a Trumpy district and you do have some Fox, some Fox, some Trump voters you have to win to be reelected. What are the odds that of the small sliver of your 750,000 or so voters who are persuadable fit in that tiny 200,000 watching Fox at that moment? It's almost zero. It's like the odds of winning the lottery. It's insane. And so this is not to say people shouldn't go on Fox. Do you think, so wait, wait, wait.

This seems like an argument to, if you're working in politics, not to put your boss on CNN or MSNBC either. Well, you can at least be, you would at least talk to some of, I think in all. You talking a lot of persuadable voters on MSNBC? No, but there's, there's an argument for talking to your base sometimes as well.

Right. Which is why people may, I don't know, may want to come on a couple of podcasts I could think of off the top of my head. So yeah, it's just, thank you politicians for joining us. Like if you wanted, this is not to say no one should go on Fox. There may be reasons to do it. Pete Buttigieg is kind of the model of go on Fox, know what you're getting into, have the talent and a plan to make it a moment that will reach people outside of Fox. But if you're just going to be like, if I can just get on there and talk to my vote for the biff, it's going to move voters. It's just not efficient i want to i want to push on your pete budaj point because i thought it was great uh that you you made this in the um in the message box which is like the way

media works today you've written about this in multiple books now you don't necessarily if your politician go on a show to like reach that audience right there that's watching the show sometimes you do unless it's local news local news. Unless it's local news. Local news in the industry. Right, unless it's local news or it is a Super Bowl interview that's not Fox News, right? Yeah. Or someone with a huge following that's maybe non-political that could interview you, right? Like, there's a whole bunch of ways to do it. But what you're usually going to do is go on, get a clip of yourself,

and then blast it out to your supporters or put it in a paid ad or do whatever. And so I do think that if you basically advise people in the message box, if you're going to go on Fox, pick a fight and have a plan and also have the talent to pick a fight, right? Which you said Pete does and Bernie did a couple times. Like Katie Porter could do it. There are a whole bunch of people who have done it and can do it. i guess what my point is there should be more people who do that and and have the talent

to do that like you should you should practice and have them because like a clip of you fucking owning someone on fox news it's not only good for your supporters if you can get it in front of persuadable voters through whatever campaigner apparatus you have. I think that's helpful too. I do think we should have more people who can go on there ready to pick a fight and ready to sort of have a moment and sort of develop that talent that I think Pete and Bernie and some other people who go on Fox have. I mean, this is sort of what got around the whole Biden Super Bowl debate is there is an argument for Biden to go on Fox one day and have a battle with someone. The time to do that is not when people are stuffing their face with wings two hours before the Super Bowl. That is not the time to do that.

I very much agree with that. Very much agree. And then the third part here is there are all these efforts that have been afoot to try to hurt Fox in some way, shape, or form. Before this, and then they're sort of amplifying this moment. Like Lincoln Project and others have been running ads to tell Fox viewers that Fox lied to them, which is interesting, except the only, I think, flaw in that plan is, let's say you do finally reach some of those voters and they do get upset that Fox lied. I don't think they're going to go to PBS NewsHour for their news, right? They're just going to go somewhere else to get more radical news. And so I'm not sure that we're solving the de-radicalization problem that way.

And then there are these arguments about, you know, can we do advertiser boycotts or can we more importantly convince cable companies to take Fox out of the bundle? Which I appreciate that effort. Media Matters has one. It's worth putting pressure on people, but ultimately Fox is the most successful cable channel. And I don't know that cable companies in a dying industry are going to, out of the goodness of their heart, speaking of people who aren't into community spirit, I'm not sure like Comcast is going to be like, you know what,

we're willing to lose money in our dying industry for the good of democracy. I'm not sure that's going to happen. And so just my advice to people, and it is very biased advice as I summarize my progressive newsletter on my progressive podcast that is hosted by your progressive media company, is the only way we're ever going to beat Fox is to build up a progressive megaphone that can compete with it. Because Fox will go away in some shape or form, as we said, it's dying, but it's going to be replaced by something else that's probably more powerful and more dangerous. And the days in which traditional media, objective media could overwhelm that sort of propaganda and disinformation are so far gone. And to be honest with you, they're not coming back in our lifetime. And so we live in an era of ideological media.

And the problem with that for us is the right gets it and most in the left don't. And so what that means is if you are someone who spends some of your money on media, allocate some of it to progressive media. Invest in some progressive media. If you are someone who spends your time with media, allocate some of it to progressive media, right? Smash the subscribe button is a joke we do on Political Experts React, but it fucking matters because the more subscribers that progressive YouTube channels and Facebook pages have, the more the algorithm will show that content to people on those platforms. The right gets that. That's why Daily Wire has approximately one trillion YouTube subscribers and all of that. And then there need to be more people investing time and

energy and creating new platforms. That is ultimately how we're going to do this. All the other stuff is sort of managing the decline. Actually winning is building up a progressive megaphone. I'm going to leave it there because that was just such a great pitch for Crooked Media. And I'm just kidding. I'm not going to. I can't improve upon that. When we come back, Dan will talk to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake about Joe Biden's new economic plan. This week, President Biden released a budget proposal that tells us a lot about how he'll run in 2024. Joining us to talk about how it'll fly with voters is Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. Celinda, welcome back to the pod. Oh, thank you. I love being here. And thanks for your good

work and good analysis. Well, thank you. Well, we'll see how that analysis goes. For really good analysis is why we invite you on the pod. So for our listeners who may not know, presidents are required by law to present an annual budget to Congress. Because this Congress will not act on it, the budget is essentially a political document, a statement of values, as are, frankly, most of the budgets that Obama put out when I worked for him. But because it's a political document, I wanted you to help us understand the political environment that Biden is putting this budget into.

And it's largely an economic document. So let's start here. How are people feeling about the economy in your research? Has it changed from where it was in election day 2022, where people were concerned, less concerned about inflation? Do they feel a little bit better, a little bit worse? What are you hearing? So in general, people still feel negative about the economy, but they are feeling a little bit better. They're worried about recession in the future. They're worried about what steps we're going to take to get rising prices under control.

But it doesn't have as much intensity as it has. And people are starting to be open now and starting to pick up more on what the president has done, like the $35 on insulin, getting gas prices are down, which is always very vivid, particularly to men. And so there are a lot of things going on that are quite good the number one thing that the public wants and this has really been um underreported and under understood if you will uh two-thirds of voters say the most important thing for them is to have stability they want to get on a track and they want to get going back uh to a state. And that's what Joe Biden's budget plan offers. And that's what Joe Biden offers as his presidency, stability and security and making our way steadily back from the COVID economy.

I'll always pay attention to how the president and the staff present the budget. It's a several hundred page document. There are a million things in there. So what are the things they highlight? And they've really been leaning into how his budget's going to reduce the deficit. I was very sort of curious about that because compared to previous election cycles, we haven't heard a lot about the deficit recently. Nate Cohn wrote the other day that only one person of the 1,600 respondents he did open ending question with said that debt,

deficit, or spending was the most important problem. Is there this sort of subterranean growing concern about the deficit? What is it you think the president and his team are trying to do there? I think that what the president and his team are trying to do is create a permission structure. There is a very vivid contrast here in terms of what the priorities are for spending. They want to jeopardize the economy. They want to default on our debts. They don't want to increase taxes so the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share. They don't want a minimum tax for billionaires. They don't want to increase the investments or continue the investments we're making. But if you start from that point, a lot of independent swing voters will say,

well, that's just spending. We can't afford it. Prices are already going up. I think what the emphasis on the deficit does is to provide permission to draw these other contrasts more vividly and say, listen, we are getting the deficit down. We are doing that by cutting costs of prescription drugs, by making the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share, by cutting spending that doesn't make any sense. And we are not going to jeopardize Social Security. We are not going to cut Medicare. And it allows you to make those contrasts in a way that I think people will say, well, those are the right choices. The choices the Republicans are offering or the lack of choices the Republicans are offering is the wrong way to go. So sort of in a sense, maybe Republicans are going to say,

we know it's the math doesn't work. It's kind of bullshit, but we're cutting the deficit and we're cutting all this stuff you may like as a part of that. And Biden's saying, I'm going to do both. I'm going to do a bunch of deficit reduction over here. Some of it's very popular, like raising taxes on the wealthy or the prescription drug stuff. But because we're doing that, we can do these other things we know we need to do. Is that what you're saying? That's right.

And it gives permission to draw the contrast. So it's not big spender versus no spending. It's smart spending versus jeopardizing our economy, cutting Social Security and Medicare, which are sacred promises to our seniors. The other thing that the White House has really emphasized is the plan to strengthen Medicare. The president rolled it out in a New York Times op-ed a couple of days ago. He would extend the solvency by 25 years, in part by some increase in taxes on the very wealthy, making over $400,000, and expanding the prescription drug provisions that he passed

as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. We all sort of know intuitively that Medicare and Social Security are politically powerful issues. But one thing that I think some folks are curious about is, one, do they work with younger voters, voters under 40? And are they – we see the polling that shows that even Trump voters don't want to cut Social Security and Medicare. But is that sufficient or is that an issue that really could drive a wedge in the Republican coalition? It's an issue that could definitely drive a wedge in the Republican coalition, starting actually with rural voters, because rural voters are disproportionately dependent on

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. I grew up on a ranch in Montana. We never had health insurance the whole time I was growing up. And I can remember sitting around kitchen tables and people would say when Joe had his 60th or 65th birthday, but at least now we get Medicare, first insurance for lots of farm and ranch families, or the first plan that isn't a high deductible plan. So this is a great wedge. And what's happened is with Trump, for a long time, the Republicans and independent voters didn't believe that Trump would cut Medicare and Social Security. This budget fight is a great opportunity to say, no, look at their plan. Look at what Rick Scott put on the table. Look at what these candidates endorsed. Look at what their budget is addressing. People also think that Social Security would be just fine if politicians would keep their mitts off the money. But they think that Medicare could be in trouble because

of rising health care costs. So it's very reassuring to them that there's a plan here to make Medicare more solvent and including getting prescription drug prices down. And it goes back to that. What do voters want? They want stability. Number one, they want security. Number one, that's particularly true for women voters. And this is saying to those voters, we know what's going on. We're going to make this program stable. We're going to keep your Medicare. You don't have to worry about it. This budget has been talked about, and I frankly talked about it in the context of a 2024 reelection blueprint or roadmap, but it's also the first volley in the upcoming debt ceiling battle

that's going to happen later this summer. As you sort of look towards that fight, are there things that you worry about for Democrats? We know we sort of hold the high ground on Medicare and Social Security and some of the other budget cuts, but are there sort of, as you advise Democrats on how to talk about this, are there some guideposts or things we should be aware of? Yes. I think the first thing is don't debate the debt ceiling as the debt ceiling, because it's terrain that Republicans are stronger on. What you need to debate is whether we're going to default on our bills and whether we're going to torch the economy in the process. Are we going to introduce this major instability by defaulting on our debts and our bills? And Joe Biden comes across very strongly on that. But I

would warn other Democrats, don't get tied up debating the debt ceiling. That's a dead ringer debate, whether or not you're going to torch the economy, whether you're going to let the economy default, whether you're going to let people default on their debt, which could be a national and global crisis. You know, in 2022, you know, we're talking about this in the economy. We've all sort of worked in our careers in politics under the guise of it's the economy stupid, that it's always the single most important issue. And then in 2022, a surprisingly large segment of voters that were concerned about inflation

or disapproved of Joe Biden on the economy voted for Democrats anyway, because they prioritized other issues. They were more worried about extremism on abortion or the big lie or all of those sorts of things. Do you think that was an anomaly or are we seeing other issues rise to the surface? Or are we sort of seeing the end of it's the economy, stupid sort of politics? I think it was an anomaly. And I think it was also the fact that people don't expect their local congressperson or even their senator to solve the economy.

They do expect the president to solve the economy. So I think that and I'm really pleased to see the administration emphasize so much its economic message and repeat and repeat and repeat to break through because it's so frustrating how little people know what they've done for the economy. But it's going to be the economy stupid in 2024. And what I want to make sure is that when we're talking about the deficit and the debt and the budget, we don't forget the economy because the budget is inherently a very awkward prism for discussing the economy. And I think we need to make sure that our economic message takes advantage of the opportunities and the contrast in the budget document,

but that we lay out more fulsomely our economic vision for the future and our economic vision for jobs and wages and health care costs. Because the budget alone is just a very flawed vehicle for discussing an economic vision. Yeah, it's frankly, it's one that takes place on traditionally Republican territory, because we're now talking about spending and deficits as opposed to growth and jobs, which is where in wages where we have been stronger, traditionally, at least. That's right. And I think in the end, voters also think it's a lot of political games. And it is in this case, yes. Well, there you go. You can only keep the voters so long. And they also are not going to hold their individual member of Congress responsible for the entire federal deficit. The thing that I think Democrats have to keep focused on is on Election Day, we have to be even or ahead on the economy. We have never won the presidency when we have not been even or ahead. That's our goal. That's what we got to keep focused on. Were we even or ahead in 2020 on the economy?

Yeah, we pulled up even by election day. You recently surveyed voters in quote unquote factory towns and battleground states like Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio. And that was with the group American Family Forces. That was a fascinating survey that really laid out some of the challenges for Democrats. I would recommend that everyone read it. I think it's an incredibly important document. But could you maybe walk us through some of the big takeaways from that research? So this is Mike Lux's vision, and it's really very, very exciting. So the first thing is we're focused so much on what we've lost in rural America.

And again, I come from rural America. Rural America is important. But what Mike identified working with Target Smart and others was that the real losses and the bigger losses have actually been in factory towns, small towns that used to be the manufacturing base that aren't anymore. They dominate the Midwest, but they're also present in places like Georgia and North Carolina. factory towns, small towns that used to be the manufacturing base that aren't anymore. They dominate the Midwest, but they're also present in places like Georgia and North Carolina. These three things are happening in these towns. First of all, they're very populist economically.

They really are anti-big corporations, wealthy big corporations, anti-CEOs. I think they've been taken advantage of. The best thing to call Fox News, by the way, in these factory towns is to call them corporate media. These towns hate corporate media. And now we're seeing Fox really proving to have been corporate media after all, which is what we knew all the way along. They're very interested in trade. They're interested in bringing manufacturing back. They're interested in wages. They're pro-labor unions, and labor unions are very strong spokespeople to them because they once had labor unions, or their grandfathers and

fathers were in labor unions. And so while they're not labor members today, they're very, very responsive to that view of the economy. They also believe that all of their friends and neighbors and half of their relatives are Trumpists. And they think, okay, I'm just keeping my head down low. I'm not saying anything because I'm surrounded by Trump supporters. And so social math is very important to them. Letting them know, no, there are a whole bunch of people in this neighborhood who believe in that chips factory that's being brought in, who believe that we ought to be tough on China with trade, who believe that we ought to bring manufacturing home, who believe that renewable energy can generate jobs here at home, and who believe that the wealthy and big corporations ought to pay their fair share. And that there should be a billionaire minimum tax. Why should a secretary be guaranteed

a minimum tax, but a billionaire is not? So there's a lot to talk about in these cities, these small towns and cities, and they're like the Flint, Michigan, the Ottumwa, Iowa, the Waukesha, Wisconsin. These are places of great opportunity for us. And your research shows that a democratic economic message, if delivered consistently, incredibly, can overcome some of the culture war stuff from Republicans that's been pretty effective at moving some of these voters out of our column, despite our shared policies on the economy. Yeah. So that was really interesting. It was a tough test that we did. We put up, these places are being hit very, very hard

with cultural messaging. And we have good answers on the cultural messaging. But what we said is, can a populist economic message beat back the cultural wars? And it was resounding. It absolutely did. In fact, these folks are far more interested in jobs and then what kind of sex education their fifth grade teacher is giving their kid or their grandkid. And so this is a way to beat back. It's a twofer, right? It puts us ahead on the economy and it beats back the cultural wars that the Republicans are trying to wedge right now in these rural and small town areas. So Linda, this is fascinating stuff. Thank you so much for joining us.

Super interesting as always. And we can't wait to talk to you again soon. I love it. And thanks for your great questions and your fabulous analysis. Only superseded by your even more fabulous analysis. So thank you. That's very kind. We have to have real experts who talk to real voters on here periodically.

Hey, thanks so much. All right. Before we go, Elijah's back to play another round of Take, Take, Don't Tell Me. Elijah, tell us about the rules. I will. But first, I got to say, if you're the audience, you just heard the Celinda Lake interview, but for us, we just heard Dan talking about how you should subscribe to the Crooked Media YouTube channel

and the whole video slack. We're freaking out. Dan, wow. What do you want? I won the Crooked Media video slack channel. i don't know how i'm gonna get through this weekend honestly tough crowd tough crowd so i think that's pretty good all right i'll explain the rules now look if you can't win the video channel at an audio an audio company we're a multimedia company dan oh thank Oh, thank you. Thank you.

I apologize. That was very 2017 to me. Yeah. Real cross platform outlet here. Okay. Let's do it. Um, welcome to the second installment of take,

take, don't tell me this is Dan's first time playing. So this is how it works. I'm going to present you both with five news stories. You haven't seen these news stories. You're going to have to rank them from best to worst, with the worst story being number one. Here is the catch. You don't know

the takes that are coming, so be careful not to fill that number one slot too early. Are you guys both ready? So ready. Dan, do you understand the rules? Tell me again. Don't. Nope. Just kidding. Blind ranking. Blind resume season. And we do you understand the rules? Tell me again. Don't. No. Just kidding.

Blind ranking, blind resume season. And we do have, it's not each of us ranking. We both have to agree together on them. Okay. Consensus building. So there's no chance I'm going to lose to John yet again in another game here. Correct. No, you can only lose to yourselves in this one.

Fucking the story of democratic politics, I'll tell you that. All right, we'll kick it off with a classic meat and potatoes take that was sent in from Pod Save America fan at GP2K on Twitter. It's a piece from Brookings titled, Is this the end of Trump? Yes, but that's not good news for Democrats. So there's two takes in that headline. The piece basically argues that not having Donald Trump is bad for Democrats because he takes up media attention and he's uniquely bad and he makes the Republican Party worse. Here's a quote.

Donald Trump is in trouble. A return to a more normal Republican Party may be good for America, but could pose a problem for some Democrats who need to build a stronger rationale for their party than we're not Trump. What do you guys think? I kind of want to give that fifth place because I might. There's some truth to that. To be completely honest with you, look, I don't want to be like tucker carlson just tell you what you want to hear might be a little truth to that take yeah i think strategically it makes sense just to leave our options open for the rest so yeah i agree with that yeah yeah do you think that it is the end of trump oh no that that i'm not gonna i'm not i was i guess i was responding more to the part of the take that Democrats are going to need to make

a stronger case once Trump departs, which I agree with. I have no idea if it's the end of Trump. We don't do predictions here, Elijah. Yeah, as you know. Nice try, though. Nice try again. That's to try to predict. All right, cool. Well, we'll go ahead and put that at number

five. The end of Trump is bad for Democrats. Sorry. The problem with this game is I have to type the list in real time. There's a lot of scrolling. There's a lot of takes. But OK, next take. I'm really excited for this one. I texted it to Madeline and Andy like super early this morning. I think it broke both of their brains. a piece from the Wall Street Journal titled, The Fox News Lawsuit and the Public Taste for Lies. So this piece is hiding behind a seemingly non-problematic headline, but the author makes the case that the Fox News lies about the election are basically on par with the media's handling of Hunter Biden's laptop and COVID. It then argues that the tax revealing that the Fox News host knew they were lying is actually a good thing because it shows their quote that they kept their wits and that they took accountability. Here's an excerpt. When are the lives of a disreputable and widely discredited figure like Mr.

Trump a bigger danger to the republic than the lives that receive near universal endorsement of the establishment and its institutions i mean that's a pretty bad take what do you think of dan once again i'm trying to think about this strategically like a very i know on mccarthy way so i think maybe we want to go with three. Okay. I was going to say two or three. I'm, I'm comfortable with three. I'm comfortable. We got, we got room for a less good take or less bad take. And we got some,

we still got some room, some real winners here. All right. Let's slot it into three. Would you guys say that texting in private, that you're lying in public is being accountable? Yeah, no,

I would. That's the, that's the antithesis of accountability well it's it's personal accountability we tell people to take accountability for themselves all the time so maybe that's what they're doing yeah it's that one is who's that one's really special author is that a secret oh no i can totally tell you the author i actually prepped for this i put it in the doc so it's's Holman Jenkins. Holman Holman.

Never heard of that person. But I will note also that I almost want to make this one too, but I'll do three because this was also written in a Murdoch paper. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. It is the number one story on the Wall Street Journal today. They do rank their stories. Of course.

If I was going to write a novel and one of the characters was going to be sort of a preppy, shitty Republican takeover, Holman Jenkins would be a good name for that character. Yeah. Technically Holman Jenkins Jr., which is even better. Oh, it should be. You know what? Holman Jenkinsenkins the third is the way you go with this yeah so he's building a legacy okay i'm trying to think which one i want

to do next let's do this one next many people sent it to me including dan pfeiffer uh we have to go back in time a little bit it's a piece from the new york times titled in the fog of east palestine's crisis politicians write their own stories number one so number one number one absolutely number one with a fucking bullet put it right at the top i mean you should tell the audience the take but it's number one yeah give us the take okay so just in case you need a reminder a train derailed in east palestine ohio there was an environmental catastrophe this of course came in the wake of several train industry deregulations from the Trump administration. Here's a quote from the author. Democrats see East Palestine as actions and

consequences. Rail regulations were gutted, blame assigned. Republicans see it more as an operatic narrative, a forgotten town in a flyover state struggling against an uncaring megacorporation and an unseeing government. In some sense, both sides are right. Both sides are wrong. And the bifurcated politics of this American moment, none of those arguments matter much. Was this Jonathan Weissman or Jeremy Peters? Jonathan Weissman. Jeremy Peters wrote a very similar piece, to you have to find and replace uh

rural disaster with fox news oh right right right yeah no i'm very comfortable with this being number one also the whole like republicans see it as and everything that followed that uh hi i'm a democrat i see it as that too uncaring corporation unseen government meaning the trump administration which repealed all the regulations like a town that's been forgotten yeah no i i'm there on all of that it's just not a fucking republican thing to think just also what a fucking dunderhead to put both sides in the quote itself like talk about on the nose that makes me feel like that he is trying to troll his critics at that point. Like, you know, you at this point, you know, that both sides has become a punchline, the phrase both sides, and you're putting it in your piece.

I you think Jonathan Weissman is too stupid is what you're going to say. I'm not going to I'm not going to say too stupid. I don't think that's nice. I can see it on your face. It might be oblivious enough to have done that. I will say that when we play this game at the end of the year, I think this one has secured its spot in the top 10 worst takes of the year already. And we're not even- Wow.

Yeah. Whoa. Make that note, Elijah. Make that note. Oh, God. I know Olivia Martinez is already writing that down. Fantastic producer here. Yeah, that was really egregious.

So we wanted it at number one. That's where I would like it. Chad may disagree. Yeah, no, I'm with you. I'm with you. Let's do it. Okay, so to recap before we go to the next story, we have number five, the end of Trump is bad for Democrats. Number three, Fox News lying is not a big deal. It may actually

be good. And number one, both sides in East Palestine. So you have the number two and number four slots still available. Interesting. Okay, let have the number two and number four slots still available interesting okay let's go so for number four it's not really a take we're going to assign part of this to take but you guys requested that we talk about this elon musk public feud with his uh employee it's a i have a ton of context here so please just interrupt me at any time. So it's not just like me reading. So in case you missed this, this started when a Twitter employee named Hallie Thorleifson publicly asked Elon Musk on Twitter about why he wasn't able to access any of his work and why Twitter HR wasn't responding to him and if he'd

been laid off by Twitter. In the following exchanges, Elon Musk publicly said that Hallie didn't do any real work and that Hallie was using his disability as an excuse. He mocked him with memes for the movie Office Space. He said Hallie no longer was working at the company, but he wasn't fired because, quote, you can't be fired if you weren't doing any real work anyway. He also simply said, quote, he's the worst, which we'll go ahead and use as shorthand for our take here. I will go on in the story, but do you guys want to respond to any of that? Yeah, and he didn't just mock his disability. He basically said that the disability wasn't real.

And then this guy came back and was like, oh, actually, I have muscular dystrophy. That's what Elon Musk did. Dan? The guy's a shit. The guy's a shit. It's bad my only thought is the person who i learned about this from via their tweets and also the person who suggested this be one of the takes for this game is the host of crooky media's podcast offline you know what we use that joke

last time i complained about elon musk on this podcast and i'm probably going to use it the next time you do too, just as a fair warning. It's like, I thought you'd love it here. I got like one joke. I'm not going to give it up. I've come down the shit on the fly. Now, are we supposed to rank this thing that happened

or what's the take? What are we doing here? Well, I'll continue on so you can appreciate the full thing of the story here because I think we have to go into some of Howley Thorleifson's replies to Elon Musk and who he is

Howie Thorleifson is a designer who sold his company to Twitter for an undisclosed amount of money he as John noted has muscular dystrophy and was actually named Iceland's person of the year last year got in his own shots at Musk saying things like I've worked at big companies like Twitter when it started and small companies like Twitter when it started and small companies like Twitter today um ultimately

yeah story ultimately concludes with Elon Musk apologizing publicly to Hallie saying I did a video call with them it's a long story better to talk to people than communicate via tweet I want to apologize to Hallie for the misunderstanding of his situation.

For ranking the take, we could just go with Hallie is the worst. That's got to be two then, right? I mean, it's got to be two. It's one of the biggest owns on Twitter in the history of Twitter.

It was a real choice to lean into this one. Real choice. And then keep it going for hours. It would appear that Elon Musk exposed himself legally to a very large degree, and that led to the retraction there. Yeah. Yeah, I would say so. John, I mean, you have a company with several employees.

Could you imagine doing this kind of thing? No. No. No. I keep that kind of stuff to slack just kidding just kidding everyone just kidding all right let's give us the what's the last one so you it's the number four slot uh my employee who's who also is the person of the year is actually the worst is number two um let's end with this piece that set the crooked slack on fire last week. It's from the Washington Post, and it's titled,

The Bidens Ordered the Same Dish at a Restaurant. Who does that? The piece notes that the Biden went out to a restaurant called the Red Hen, not that Red Hen, and ordered the same thing. For those interested, it was rigatoni. Here's an excerpt from the piece for many it's verboten to choose the same entrees once dining partner it quotes someone who says getting the same thing as the person you're eating dinner with is silly the whole point of going out to eat is getting to try as many things as possible

this is our number four automatically but but any thoughts? You know what? I'm very comfortable with this in number four, I should say, because I think it is the same sort of level as that number five Trump take, but it has angered me a little bit more just because it's like, stop telling people what the fuck to get

when they go out to restaurants. They can get the same dishes as their partner. They can get a different dish as their partner. It doesn't fucking matter to you. Mind your own fucking business. Mind your own fucking business. Mind your own fucking business. Everyone's too fucking nosy. Move to the free state of Florida.

Yeah, I'm with John. Order what you want. Eat what you want. I don't even care if it's the President of the United States. Mind your business. My family, we don't order the same dish ever because we like to share, but other people can do other things. Sometimes you go to a restaurant that has something that's so fucking good that you don't want a half portion of it. You want the whole portion.

Right. That's up to you. Sometimes maybe Emily and I order the same dish. Sometimes a different dish. Who the fuck cares? Mind your own business. Also, as Sarah Lazarus pointed out,iden's like he's he's old he knows he knows what he wants dr joe biden she knows what she wants they can get the same thing

it's a new restaurant maybe not but they've been to every restaurant at this point yeah so all right the final list number five the end of trump is bad for democrats number four the biden's thing is bad number three fox news lying isn't a big deal. Maybe it's actually good. Number two, my employee who is the person of the year is the worst. And number one, both sides in East Palestine. How do you guys think you did? I think we fucking nailed it, Dan.

That's exactly right. There is no other way to order that. That is objectively correct. I'm no other way to order that. That is objectively correct. I'm two for two in this game. I'm two for two. I'm subjectively assessing my results in this game. In my podcast, my company. Yes.

I'm basically Tiger Carlson right now. Thank you once again to Elijah for taking us through the takes. Thank you to Celinda Lake for joining us. And everyone have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft, 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 podsaveamerica.