Pod Save America - “Turd in the GOP punchbowl.”

Episode Date: July 13, 2017

Donald Trump Jr. admits to a failed attempt at collusion, Republicans pretend it didn’t happen, and Mitch McConnell picks Ted Cruz over Medicaid in his new health care bill. Then Republican communications guru Tim Miller joins Jon and Dan to talk about where his party has gone wrong, and Ana Marie Cox discusses Trump’s presser with Macron. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Joining us on the pod today, Crooked Media's favorite token Republican, Tim Miller. We haven't talked to Tim since the Keepin' It 1600 days. I know. We actually had had i was thinking about that that was the that was the podcast we taped in the empty like storage room that was the ringer studio when they're very early days very early days and you and i had this debate about who was more electable trump or cruz yes we did what did we i can't we probably said the wrong we probably guessed the wrong well we disagreed

i said trump you said cruz and then i sort of backtracked kind of like a wuss uh abandoning my what would have been my one correct prediction for 2016 i do remember feeling proud of myself from that conversation that i said even if i do think trump more electable, I still don't want him to be the nominee because I think it would be dangerous. And I agreed with Tim Miller on that. So we each got one thing right in a long election cycle. Lesson is, don't talk about electability anymore. We are also going to talk to Anna Marie Cox later,

host of Crooked Media with friends like these. Also, check out Pod Save the World this week. Tommy talked to Derek Chalet, foreign policy expert, longtime campaign staffer too. They're going to talk about whether you should sit down and meet with foreign governments in the middle of a campaign. It seems apropos. Also, Love It or Leave It was taped last night because Love It's on some kind of vacation for two days here. But it was very exciting, Dan. There was something very big happened at Love It or Leave It last night, which was there was a marriage proposal. I have a joke to make that I'm not going to make.

I was there. It was magical. So, everyone, I think that'll drop on Saturday like it usually does but we'll see also a reminder you can now find Pod Save America and other Crooked Media

podcasts on Spotify you can find it in the podcast section you can just search for it you can follow them and they'll automatically download for you it's great

check out Spotify there's also like Spotify ads that people have found in Subways with Pod Save America on them which is very interesting you were on your honeymoon when this happened we felt very cool

for a week when people our friends in new york kept texting us uh very cool positive america the subway um okay so let's get into it um there is a brand new health care bill out this morning but uh because um because things are still developing right now, I think all the Republican senators are at a lunch with Mitch McConnell and he's unveiling a new bill to them officially. We're going to start with boy genius Donald Trump Jr. first in case there's any news that breaks while we take the podcast, which of course there will be. Of course there will be. Every time someone says lunch with Mitch McConnell, I can't get the Obama White House Correspondents Center joke out of my head.

You have a drink with Mitch McConnell. You have lunch with Mitch McConnell, Dean Heller. And he's still with us. Okay, so on Tuesday, political wonder kind Don Donald Trump Jr. tweeted out the full email chain between him and a music publicist with ties to Russia named Rob Goldstone. tweeted out the full email chain between him and a music publicist with ties to Russia named Rob Goldstone. Lovett said this last night during the show, but please, if you haven't taken some time to Google Rob Goldstone, go ahead and treat yourself to that. And during this email chain, Trump Jr. agreed to meet with a Russian government attorney who promised to provide information that

would undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign. Only thing I can do here is read some excerpts because it's basically no different than one of those Nigerian Prince emails. First of all, the subject line, Clinton, Russia, confidential. Very subtle. Another excerpt. Good morning, the Crown Prosecutor of Russia. First of all, I didn't know there was a position, the Crown Prosecutor of Russia. There isn't. I just read an excellent explainer about this on The Atlantic that we can get into, but I don't want to interrupt your flow here. Okay, great. Well, we'll get to that later. The crown prosecutor of Russia offered to provide

the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information, but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump. I can also send this info to your father via Rona, his personal assistant, but it is ultra sensitive. So I wanted to send it to you first. Outstanding. So what was Junior's response? Of course, quote, if it's what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer. Junior goes on to set up the meeting with the Russian government attorney, Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner,

and then forwards the entire email chain to Manafort and Kushner just to make sure they have no plausible deniability. Fantastic. Fantastic. And just a cherry on the top of the sunday there uh goldstone the guy who set up the whole thing on the email uh checked into the meeting using foursquare because it was the year 2010 yes he also posts about it on his myspace page the last person who's still using foursquare the whole thing you know we have the long-running sad joke on this pod was if yes i was just thinking this today if we if there was an email found from the russian government to, coordinating hacking of Hillary Clinton, Paul Ryan would still do nothing. And that was, I use that example as the absolute extreme thing

that would obviously never happen. And lo and behold, it does. And everything we predicted would happen after that magical pretend email came out has also happened, which is the entire Republican party shrugging their shoulders and saying no big deal. Okay, so what does this tell us? Number one, it tells us without a doubt that Trump's senior campaign advisors were told that the Russian government was supporting Trump's candidacy, something that they cast doubt on when it was concluded by U.S. intelligence unanimously. It also tells us that Trump's senior campaign advisors were willing to collude with a foreign adversary of the United States in order to undermine their opponent's campaign.

It told us that Trump's senior campaign advisors lied their asses off about all of this for a year. It told us that Trump senior campaign advisors lied their asses off about all of this for a year. At one count, they denied about 20 times that any such meetings took place with Russians. They scoffed at this notion on any number of interviews. And of course, we also know that Jared Kushner, who's currently a senior White House advisor with a top secret security clearance, lied about the secret meeting. Also lied about a secret meeting with the Russian ambassador, also lied about a secret meeting with the CEO of a Russian state-owned bank on his security clearance forms, which is a crime. So that's great. That's what we know. What don't we know yet? Dan, how much trouble is Trump Jr. in? It feels like a lot. I'm not an attorney, but it doesn't feel good. I like the

legal opinion. Well, I'd say a couple things about this. I think it's worth, to really put this in context, the set of lies that we're told about this specific meeting are so suspicious. And you guys did a little bit of this on Monday, I believe, but it's New York Times calls Trump and Trump Jr. And I guess the White House and says, we know you met with this Russian attorney who was very closely associated with Putin and the Russian government during the campaign. Trump Jr. says, yes, I did. It was about adoptions, Trump says, Junior says, yes, I did. It was about adoptions, which is a code word for sanctions. Because when the when the U.S. put in past the law that sanctioned Russian human rights violators, Russian ended an adoption program.

The next day, it is it is revealed that he that the meeting was actually about Russia. And then he puts out the email. And before we applaud Donald Trump Jr. for transparency here, the New York Times had the email. I was in no danger of doing that. Yes. The New York Times had the email. They called Donald Trump Jr. and said, we have the email. Trump's team, whatever moron lawyers he has hired, said, give us some time to respond. The New York Times holds, which is the responsible thing to do in this case. And in that interim period, Donald Trump Jr. tweets out the email so that he can be applauded for his transparency when all he did was just beat the New York Times by like three minutes. It's the lying that is most suspicious here and stupid, right? And there are some interesting things about this too, which is Senator Lankford from Oklahoma, no friend of the pod, but he said that the intelligence

committee and the Senate has known about this meeting since April. Yeah, interesting. Kushner revised his SF-86, which is the security clearance form, to acknowledge this meeting since April. Kushner revised his SF-86, which is the security clearance form, to acknowledge this meeting, I think about a month ago. And so the White House knew what this all was and yet still lied about it, which is just hard to understand what the thinking is there, unless there's something much bigger you want to hide yeah or the fact that they're just they lie about everything all the time um compulsively yeah um so like look tim kaine even seth moulton run to the pod uh they throw out the word treason we should just tell i mean we've said this before because i remember there was an episode where we

wondered about treason and then we asked our brilliant listeners and those with legal backgrounds instantly replied. The reason that what Trump Jr. did is not treason is a very simple reason. You can only commit treason by aiding a country we're actually at war with and we're not at war with russia um so the the in a from a legal standpoint the treason charge does not apply here just very simple um is it illegal so according to quite a few lawyers possibly yes um uh it's possible that it involves conspiracy to commit election fraud uh conspiracy to commit campaign finance violations, which are both federal statutes. The law prohibits accepting anything of value from a foreign government or a foreign national in a campaign.

And courts have held that a, quote, thing of value can be something intangible like information and not just money. So that is why he's possibly in legal jeopardy. Trump Jr. finally hired a criminal defense attorney after this was revealed. So, you know, we don't know. It could just be, it could not be a real legal case. He could not be in legal jeopardy, but it seems like certainly the potential is there, right? Yeah, it changed the dynamic here in a huge way, because we now have absolute proof, like the textbook example of a smoking gun, that the Trump campaign was at least open to and willing and saw nothing wrong with accepting help from the Russian government to beat Hillary. Now, we don't know what happened after that meeting. Maybe this was the only meeting that happened and then it never happened again.

I'm very skeptical of that fact, given all the other things that have happened. And Jared Kushner's very specific amnesia that relates only to meetings with Russians. But you can no longer say credibly, although we have an entire cable news network in Fox that will do that, that the idea that there might be collusion is fake news. We now have evidence that collusion was possible and they were open to it. I don't know that attempted collusion, I don't think is a crime, although you could, the conspiracy statute that you referenced could affect that, but they were certainly willing to collude. And Donald Trump Jr.'s explanation of this is so fucking stupid,

but it's basically like, it wasn't wrong to do the meeting. It was, they promised me information. They didn't give us information. So you can only be left to assume that if they had showed up with a flash drive with Hillary Clinton's 33,000 emails, the Trump campaign would have used them. They were, I mean, that's what they would do. And they brought in the campaign manager and the senior most campaign aid,

Trump's two top strategists to the meeting. This wasn't just like a bunch of flunkies. This was the brain trust. I use the term brain trust very loosely. Yeah. I mean, look, if you go to rob a bank and hold up the whole bank and there's no money there, you still tried to rob a bank. You don't get off just because there was no money in the fucking vault. I mean, come on. We should have gone to law school. I mean, we were meant for this job. Seems easy. Seems easy. All right. So how much trouble is Jared in, right? Because a lot of people have been making this argument that Jared is more screwed here for a few reasons. One,

Donald Trump Jr. is not currently in the administration, but Jared is. He's a senior advisor to the president. He holds a top secret security clearance. And also, you know, as far as we know right now, this was Trump Jr.'s only meeting with Russian government officials. But Jared is just swimming in them. Right? Jared Kushner met with a Russian diplomat to try to set up a secret communications channel between the Trumps and the Kremlin using Russian equipment. So that still goes unexplained. He met with the CEO of a Russian state-owned bank. I don't know what that's all about.

And he had this meeting and he lied about all of them. And he had this meeting and he lied about all of them. And Mueller, according to reports, and I think some of the investigating committees are looking into whether the Trump campaign data operation, which Jared Kushner ran, utilized or coordinated with the hackers or used this information in some way. So I think the way to think about this is Donald Trump Jr., by virtue of being an absolute moron, is in bigger PR trouble. Kushner is in bigger legal trouble. Significantly so. Well, did you notice in the New York Times story last night, they said that, of course, like Jared had to go back to his SF-86. We keep using that term. That's what the security clearance forms are called, the SF-86. And when he initially omitted these meetings,

he went back and added more than 100 names to his SF-86 of people he met with that he had forgotten about, quote-unquote, forgotten about the first time around. 100 names! I don't even remember 100 people that that I met with like this year. Right. And that's a hundred foreign nationals. Right. Right. Sorry. Yeah. A hundred foreign nationals. Man. My favorite is, of course, Axios always, you know, one of Axios' many White House sources is, must be, you know, Jared's PR person or Jared himself or one of Jared's most staunch defenders. And so yesterday

they said, the view in Kushner's orbit is that the brutal new revelations are more PR problems than legal problems. And if he makes progress with his Middle East peace efforts, perceptions will be very different. Yes. Okay. Yes, I'm sure Jared is just one Middle East peace agreement away from sweeping this all under the rug. Can I just help the Trump White House and the rogue Kushner PR operation or something? If your measure for success and salvation is completing Middle East peace, something that no president has done, you're in big fucking trouble.

Like if you want to spend something, say something like if, you know, he, you know, if Kushner is able to roll out some new regulations, then he's not like pick it, pick an achievable goal for your bullshit spin.

And we should, let's just talk a little bit about Kushner security clearance. I think it's important. We've talked about this before. I assume we talked about on the pod, but I basically am running like a full-time explainer course on the SF 86. Cause that's all everyone wants to ask about because of Kushner. And if you lie on that document, you lose your job and you are potentially prosecuted. One thing that does not happen if you lie on it is you get to keep your security clearance. And it's worth noting two things.

Every person who goes to work in the White House, even if they're an intern, has to fill out an SF-86, which is basically this long document. The FBI looks in your background. They make sure that there are no flags there and you get to go work there. And that's just to answer the phone. Kushner, every morning, has an iPad delivered to him with the nation's most classified, deepest secrets, like plan to kill bin Laden-like secrets. Yep. And he still has access to that, even though he lied about meeting several times with members of the Russian government, and in one of those meetings, concocted a plan to communicate

directly with Russia in ways in which the U.S. Intelligence Committee community and law enforcement could not hear him. That raises a flag to me. Yeah. And also, it's no wonder why our allies like no longer want to share intelligence with us, with the United States like they have forever, because they feel rightly so that the Trump administration may be compromised and that the Russians may be listening to everything that they share with us. And I don't blame them. I just can't believe that not a single, oh, I got some questions for Tim about this, but I just can't believe that no Republican is concerned enough about Jared Kushner's security clearance to even say a word, like,

don't even do anything, just say something. Like, it is very concerning that he still has that clearance because it just suggests that the entire, I mean, maybe he's a Russian double agent, but it also suggests that the entire process doesn't matter. You can just lie if you want about anything and you'll get the presidential daily briefing every day. It's pretty scary. I mean, it's scary. It's almost as if we didn't run an entire campaign where Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information was treated as a threat to the Republic. Right. Right. You know, I do remember that. Look, I mean,

a lot of people like, oh, enough. Democrats are obsessed with Russia. It's an investigation. Let it play out, blah, blah, blah. And like, you know, I always like to talk about how this actually, why this matters going forward, why this affects people's lives. Like Russia's not done with us yet, right? They remain an adversary. Putin wants to meddle in our elections again, wants to do it in 2018, wants to do it in 2020. This means spreading fake news. This means hacking into people's emails, stealing people's emails, stealing people's information, spreading it around, turning us against each other, exploiting the divisions in our country. He wants to do this again.

And if we don't figure out what happened and who's responsible, then he's going to be able to keep doing this. You know? Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay. Does not make me feel good. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. So the other question, what did Trump know, right?

What did Trump know and when did he know it? So, you know, Trump in an interview yesterday denied knowing about this meeting until a few days ago. Of course, he said, you know, I had nothing to do with it, blah, blah, blah. But what we do know is that just hours after, hours after the meeting with Don Jr. and Manafort and Kushner and the Russian government attorney took place, Donald Trump went out on the stump and promised publicly that he was going to give a major speech on, quote, all the things that have taken place with the Clintons in a couple days. And he said, it will be very interesting. Hopefully the press will be there. And then the day comes and he never gives the speech.

So that's quite interesting, no? Yeah, I'm interested in that. It's so, like, the level of guilt here, even if they didn't succeed in the things they were doing, is so patently obvious. It's mind boggling. Of course, of course, Donald Trump Jr. or Jared Kushner or Paul Manafort told Trump about this meeting. It is impossible to imagine they did not. It just is impossible to imagine they did not. It just is impossible. And even if they didn't tell him in the moment, which I believe they did, we've been talking about Russia in the campaign for a year now.

And at no point in that time did someone think to bring up, hey, we met with someone representing the Russian government promising information on Hillary? Even if you were innocent, you would talk about that to say, we better figure out a way to get that out and make sure people understand the context of it. And so it's, of course they told him, of course they told him. And it is just, the idea that we would even presume that they didn't when they lie all the time is so fucking ridiculous to me. Well, and also let's remember that line from the email where it says, I could just send this information directly to your father through Rona. First name basis with his assistant. By the way, if I'm Rona, I may be looking for a good attorney because I think Rona's getting a subpoena. Oh, yeah.

Someone's bringing in Rona to figure out what she's going to have to say about the whole thing. So, look, other question is, everyone's like, oh, fake news, fake news, right? That's the you know, that's what Fox and all of them are going to say. Number one, you know, Donald Trump Jr. released this email himself. Number two, in all these New York Times stories, it says the sourcing is three people in the White House. Keep saying three people close to the White House, three people in the White House. And there's now reporting that they are so angry inside the White House and they're wondering who the traitor is and who has been leaking all this. So who do you think the leak is here? I've done a lot of thinking about this.

Okay. And it's Jared Kushner, obviously. It is 100% Jared Kushner. Really? Because I don't know why it was Jared Kushner when the email shows that the whole thing was forwarded to Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. So it's just, it implicates Jared Kushner because Kushner now can't say he didn't know about the email or the meeting or didn't know what meeting he was going to because there's a four-page email that says the whole thing that he's on. Yeah, but Kushner's attorneys knew that that email – so Kushner's attorneys found the email when they went looking for documents. So they've known about this for a long time, and they've been anticipating this and gave the document to – or and changed his SF-86, which the investigating committees have,

I believe. And so my theory here is they didn't proactively just say, hey, you know what would be fun on Saturday? Let's leak this. They know the New York Times has been working on this for a long time. And the best, I don't know whether they gave the email. The email might be in the hands of the committee. I don't know. But Kushner's people worked to frame the story because the story puts all of this on Donald Trump Jr. And we forget about Kushner. I 100% believe that it was Kushner's attorney, Kushner's 75 spokespeople in the White House, Kushner's outside PR person, trying to take a story they knew was coming and frame it in a way that White House, Kushner's outside PR person, trying to take a story they knew was coming and frame it in a way that was best for Kushner. And that came at the expense

of Donald Trump Jr. Well, we shall see. It's a good theory. I mean, I could see it. I could see it. Do you have an alternative theory? No, I have no idea. I mean, like, I don't know. Hope Hicks hasn't been in any of these stories. I saw a few people floating that theory. She's the only one we haven't heard about in any of these stories. I don't know what the motive is there, though. It could be one of the people who we've been told are trying to protect all of us from worse things to happen, like Dina Powell or someone like that. But I don't know but i don't know i don't know um so

where does this go from here um sorry you you shared with me a story yesterday uh there are a couple democrats former democrat former democratic staffer who filed an invasion of privacy lawsuit against trump and roger stone accusing them of conspiring in the release of hacked emails. This suit was organized by Protect Democracy, which is made up of some former Obama lawyers, friends of ours. And this lawsuit is basically all about discovery, right? If they sue for this, a judge can do what the congressional committees have refused to do so far, which is allow witnesses to be deposed, campaign emails and other documents to be subpoenaed. And so we could learn a lot more than we are from the Republican-run congressional committees. What do you think about this lawsuit? I think this is a very interesting thing for all of us to watch because it's been thought of in a

very smart way, which is one of the challenges in all these things is standing. Who is the actual grounds to sue? And we have people whose privacy was violated through these leaks. It's pretty clear in the plaintiffs here that they suffered damage from it. And it'll be up to the court to determine whether, through the process, to determine whether the Trump campaign was liable for that damage. And because it's a civil suit, there's a lower bar here, there's discovery. And it's a very interesting way to get to the bottom of what happened here on perhaps a more expedited timeline than might happen through the much longer, much more opaque Mueller process. And I think each one of these things, these investigations put tremendous

stress on an already overstaffed White House. And even a fully staffed, competent White House is under tremendous pressure from these things. And so this understaffed collection of nimrods who are currently working in the White House are really pressure for it because they are responding to Mueller. They're responding to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the House Intelligence Committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee just sent a letter asking for Donald Trump Jr. to testify. You have Mueller. And now you have a couple of these lawsuits here. And so they are responding to document requests. They're responding to deposition requests.

They are. And so every one of these puts more pressure on them. And every time someone is interviewed under oath in some way, shape, or form, they are exposing themselves to tremendous legal jeopardy unless they tell the exact 100% accurate truth. And, you know, the last scandal that really sort of rocked Washington before this was the Valerie Plame scandal back in the Bush administration when the Bush administration was accused of leaking that Joe Wilson, a that Joe Wilson, a guy who, a Bush critic that his wife was a CIA agent. And the person who ended up going to jail for that did not go to jail for leaking classified information. They went to jail for obstructing justice and lying to the special prosecutor. And so that's usually where these things happen. So the more that's happening, I think the more, uh, chance something, for the Bush folks to step in and get

in trouble. Yeah. So it doesn't seem like things are going well for them. But one place where things are going well and everything seems copacetic and wonderful is the land of Fox News and the conservative media, the Republican media, as as you say so let's talk about the reactions from trump from republicans from uh republican media um donald trump gave an interview yesterday where he said my son well he tweeted my son donald did a good job last night he was open transparent and innocent he also called him high quality which is always a phrase you use for your children um is he a pet is he parachute sheets like what is that it's something um congressional republicans we're going to talk to tim more about this when he's not here but like just you know a

fewer it ranges from a few who are concerned and said they wouldn't have taken the meeting to some who said, oh, yeah, I would have taken the meeting. And this is no big deal. And this is overblown. And some are just punting and saying, well, we'll see what the committee say. But not a lot of courage there. conspiracy theories on Fox. Democrats set up Donald Trump Jr. They planned this whole thing. You know, Obama let the lawyer into the country in the first place. What about the Ukrainian meddling in the election? I mean, pick your crazy fucking theory. It's all right there on Fox. Go ahead. My favorite was not on Fox, Alex Jones, which was that Trump Jr. was accomplishing his mission of outing Russian spies. I didn't hear that. Yes. It was an undercover mission to identify Russian spies on behalf of the U.S. government, basically. Wow. Good job. Good job, Jr. He's a hero. I didn't know that. So look, I mean, when we see, again, when we see like polls a couple of weeks from now that shows that like 35, 40% of the country doesn't think there's anything wrong, doesn't think Donald Trump Jr. did anything wrong, doesn't think there's anything to Russia collusion. Those people are primarily getting their news from Fox and Breitbart and InfoWars and Rush Limbaugh and all the rest who, you know, are just continuing to peddle propaganda for the state because that's what they do. There's been a couple of interesting examples of this. So there was a Hill story which suggested incorrectly that Comey's memos contain classified information. And you know, there's nothing the

Republicans like more than to accuse someone of being a leaker. So Fox News ran with that story, Fox and Friends in particular. The Fox and Friends Twitter account tweeted about it. They spent 24 hours talking about this, about, oh, look, Jim Comey's in trouble. Do not look at the Russian collusion happening over here. Donald Trump retweets the Fox or sees it on Fox and Friends, tweets about it. Turns out the whole thing is wrong. After 24 hours of talking about it, Fox News spends five seconds saying, oh, that was wrong. Like, and I don't, we say all the time, like there are these, there are some real journalists who work at Fox bullshit. I will give, I will give Chris Wallace the one exception

for this, but Shep, Shep. Yeah. Yes. Fine. Chris Wallace and Shep. But I don't understand how, if you are a journalist and even a conservative journalist, right, you believe that all these other outlets are biased against conservatives, or they don't cover conservatives, whatever that is. But you, it is not, that is not journalism that happens there. I don't care if you're a real journalist, you work at a propaganda outlet, and you, by showing up on the air every day, you abide by a specific process to make America dumber so the Koch brothers can get their policies and Rupert Murdoch and his sons can get rich.

That's what it is. And if someone, if there's a quote unquote real journalist on Fox who wants to explain how what they do is not horrendous for the country, I would love to hear it, but it's bullshit. They are. I would love to hear it, but it's bullshit. They are. I was thinking about this yesterday. I don't think there's a group of people in this country that I have more antipathy towards than the people who work at Fox News. And that includes like the White House, that includes the House Republicans, that includes all the politicians we talk about all the time. I think that the people of Fox News and the people who run it, you know, they have been engaged in trying to lie to and brainwash Americans for years and years and years, and nothing will stop them from doing it and they do it for money and they do it for ratings and there is no ideology attached it's not like they believe

certain things it's not about partisanship it's just about um they just that's how that's how they get the ratings that they get people angry and afraid and it is so poisoned our country i just i don't even if someone can figure out a project to figure out how to get people to stop watching Fox News, then we would all be better off. If there were, if Fox News ceased to exist tomorrow, the country would instantly start improving over time. I just, I can't emphasize this enough because like all these Republican politicians, the reason they take such cowardly positions, one of the one of the big reasons they take such cowardly positions is because they get pressured by a base that has been told by Fox News all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories. And that's and because these people get their news primarily from Fox and don't read other news outlets because they've been told they're all fake. Why would they believe anything different? other news outlets because they've been told they're all fake. Why would they believe anything different? And it's not just the voters and the people in the country who watch Fox. The only TV

station allowed in almost every Republican congressional office is Fox News. It is what the members watch exclusively. It's where they get all their information. It is where the staffers get their information. It is where they believe the things they are saying. They don't think the Russia, much of the reasons why Republicans are not freaking out on Capitol are not freaking out about Russia is they're watching Fox News and moronic blowhards like Eric Bolling, are telling people that collusion is not a crime. It is just, and it is so damaging. And I do believe that there is room for a conservative journalistic enterprise, whether it's a TV station or anything else like that. I am okay with that.

I do understand the idea behind Fox News in the beginning. I don't think they ever abided by it, but the idea that, look, all the news decisions are made by a bunch of people who are almost certainly liberal who live in LA, New York, and DC. And there's large swathes of the country whose interests or life experiences are not covered by that. And so there is a place for it, but that is not what Fox is. It is a – and maybe that's how it started. I don't know. I'm not old enough to really remember the early days of Fox, but it is a destructive propaganda outlet that creates an alternative reality

where it is okay to collude with russia with no regard for the facts because last when i was in the white house and putin invaded uh crimea fox ran 24 7 about how obama was too weak to take on putin this horrible threat that we were we were reliving rocky 4 24 7 on fox news now it's like, who wouldn't take a meeting with Putin? The whole thing is fucking crazy. Yeah. I guess we got to the part where I said, I want to talk in the outline where I said, I want to talk about Fox. Cause I'm really pissed. We got there. Look, and there's, there's just, there's no equivalent on the left. We just don't have anything like this. We have, and we shouldn't, we have liberal, right, we shouldn't. We have, on MSNBC, we have hosts of shows who are liberal. Chris Hayes, Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews.

You also have a bunch of Republicans now on that station. And the liberals on that station, they are based in reality. They are based in facts. You can quibble with them. You can disagree with them. You can say some things that are unfair that they say. But they are based in reality. They are based in facts. You can quibble with them. You can disagree with them. You can say some things that, you know, are unfair that they say, but they are based in reality. They are based in fact. So is the Huffington Post, but for at least all the journalists that work there, I can't speak for

all the people who blog on the site, but all the journalists who work there are some of the better journalists in politics. And any other outlet on the left or most other outlets on the left, certainly outlets on the left, none of them with an audience as big as fucking fox um do anything like fox you know and it's uh it's just gross it's gross and look and i i separate fox too from places like national review and places like that which i vehemently disagree with and think are wrong about a whole bunch of things but they don't necessarily spend their days trafficking in conspiracies and like and flip-flopping so insanely like fox does just based on whatever you know the trump line of the day is that's right they're they are conservative media

trumpet fox's republican media yeah it's bad um okay let's talk about health care uh new bill out this morning so uh to summarize the whole thing, I'll say this. Basically, the biggest problem with the health care bill as it stands now is that it cuts $1.2 trillion in health care coverage for people, right? And so that is both Medicaid coverage and subsidies for people to buy insurance on the individual market. Basically now, in this new bill, Mitch McConnell has kept some of the taxes on high-income people, but not all of them, just some of them, added a couple billion for the opioid crisis,

a few other things, and it might total up to near $400 billion. That still means that there are $800 billion, $700 to $800 billion worth of cuts to people's coverage. Like we said before, this is probably going to take the CBO score from, you know, $22 million uninsured to like $18 million uninsured. That's just, that's the best guess. I talked to Andy Slavitt before we, who ran Medicare and Medicaid and the Obama administration has been following this closely before we started recording this. You know, he basically said, look, if they really wanted to have a better CBO score, they could have taken all that extra money and plowed it into Medicaid. Instead, they plowed it into like some of the subsidies. There's like an insurance company slush fund that's free insurance and hoping that

insurance companies will use the money to lower premiums for people. They use it for health savings accounts, which basically only rich people can use anyway. And so they didn't actually take all the money that they saved from keeping the taxes in place. If they really wanted a better CBO score, they would have put that money into Medicaid to stop some of these horrible Medicaid cuts, but they didn't do that. And the biggest problem that the wavering Republican senators had with the original bill, the one, the Republican senators who are, who are so far against this bill is the cuts to Medicaid. And he didn't do shit about the cuts to Medicaid. So it's and what they but what he did do, what McConnell did do to

try to get Ted Cruz and Mike Lee on board was to add this Cruz amendment, which basically fucks people with preexisting conditions and people who need, you who need essential health benefits and need things like cancer treatment and maternity care and ambulance rides and doctor's visits and all that kind of stuff paid for because they're sick or because they have pre-existing conditions. So he tacked far right to try to get Cruz and Lee and didn't do anything on the Medicaid front to help people like Collins and Heller and Murkowski and Capito and Portman and all these people who were worried about Medicaid cuts. And that's where we are right now. This is sort of a perfect parable for the Republican Party in the modern era, which is you have a set of, there are two ways to go here. You could compromise,

you could try to appeal to the center right of your party, or you can go hard right. And McConnell went hard right with the belief that if he could get the hard right, get Cruz and Lee, he could pressure the moderates to giving in to do what he wants to do, which is how the House bill passed. And instead of trying – this really was an exercise to throw together some bullshit talking points for people maybe like Portman or Capito to say that they got something for their states and the opioid money. But it was to make the bill meaner. The critique of the bill was even though it was devastating for healthcare, too many people got too good healthcare out of it. So we had to change that fact. Too many cancer patients would be covered. And so that was somehow offensive to some number of Republican senators. And so we had to make sure that more cancer patients would not be able to

afford their coverage. And I think it's interesting, as you point out, that they didn't fix the Medicaid, right? They could, like, that would be the easier way to do this and certainly the more compassionate way to do it. But you couldn't do that because if you pared back some of the Medicaid cuts in the original bill, then more working people would get health care. And that was not okay. And so we live in this world. And I think it is hard to see where this is going to go because the vote count seems very challenging. But per the Favreau rule of never betting on the integrity or goodwill of Republican members of Congress, we should be very worried. And I think it's worrisome that McConnell extended the recess

two weeks. And so he's got two additional weeks that McConnell extended the recess two weeks. And so he's got two additional weeks to beat the hell out of people. To pressure people. And that worries me. Well, so nothing was done to improve Medicaid cuts at all. Nothing was done to improve subsidies for older Americans or for low-income Americans. So that's a problem too. The Cruz Amendment would result in massive premium increases for those who need real insurance and not shitburger insurance, which doesn't cover anything. Still lifetime limits, annual limits back in place so they can

put a cap on how much coverage you get if you're really sick. It's really bad. So the question is now what happens? Well, Rand Paul, who again, I said we still can't count on these right wingers here, but Rand Paul basically wrote an op-ed yesterday that he published in Breitbart that said that the bill is a fucking travesty and he's voting against it and it was still Obamacare. And, you know, unless he sees a completely new different bill, he's voting against it. And he wasn't even on board with the bill, even if the Cruz Amendment was amended. So it does seem that Rand Paul is a no.

Susan Collins said, if nothing is done to the Medicaid cuts, I will still be a no. And not just no's, they're no's on the motion to proceed. A motion to proceed basically says, all right, let's get to a process where everyone gets to offer their amendments to the bill. And we either vote in the amendments or we vote them down and then we take a final vote. You have to get there first. And Collins and Paul, at least, are saying we're not even letting you get there. So now if one more Republican senator says they will vote no on

a motion to proceed, this thing is dead. And so the question is, who does that? You know, Dean Heller voted no on a motion to proceed on the last version of the bill. So someone just asked Dean Heller this morning as he went into the lunch with McConnell, are you undecided? Are you still undecided on whether you're going to vote for a motion to proceed? And he said, yes, I'm still undecided. I have heard that Dean Heller is getting tremendous, tremendous pressure from one Steve Wynn fucking casino magnet in Las Vegas. He runs the Wynn Hotels and is basically making all kinds of threats to Dean Heller. He's going to, you know, put money into a primary opponent and all that kind of stuff. So Dean Heller is now

caught between his own Republican governor, who's about 20 points more popular than he is, Governor Sandoval, who hates this bill and is against it. And Steve Wynn, the casino magnet, who, you know, could bury him in all kinds of campaign donations to an opponent. So that's where Dean Heller is right now. And you have to think about Dean Heller's calculus, right? Because he might be at the point where he's thinking, fuck, I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't, I'm going to lose in 2018, either because I have some Republican primary opponent that Trump and win, sick after me, or a Democrat's going to beat me. And if that's the case, then he's got nothing to lose. And then you have to figure out like, you know, does he vote

against this bill because he thinks it's the right thing to do? Does he vote for it? Because then maybe Trump makes him an ambassador somewhere. Like what does Dean Heller do? But we should also point out that Murkowski is also very upset with this, with the fact that there's no changes to Medicaid. She's voiced some real concerns about this bill. So she's possibly gettable as a no. And I guess Capito and maybe Portman, I don't know, there might be a few others out there, but you know, it's getting down to it. Yes. A couple other notes on this is one, John Hoven of North Dakota went, so I guess Murkowski stood up in the Republican launch yesterday and was very angry at the leadership about

the Medicaid provisions in the new bill and the old bill and the new bill. And she was backed by Hovind, who's very close to the Senate leadership. So that was interesting. And then Lindsey Graham and John Cassidy have put out their own plan today, which was a more sort of a straight repeal plan. Right. All right. Good point. It's just not, they're not necessarily no's on the McConnell plan. I think they just like this plan better because I believe McConnell fixed – there's a specific Louisiana issue around hospital funding that I think McConnell fixed in this bill to buy off Cassidy. So those are not guaranteed no's, but it is interesting they felt compelled to release their own plan at the same time McConnell was releasing his. So we have no control over where this is going.

The only thing we can do is continue to call offices, sit in offices and be as engaged as people have been for the last few weeks, which has been very impressive and impactful, I think, on the state of play. It has, it's working. I mean, Murkowski was saying this in an interview the other day with a reporter that it was like all these conversations she's having back home in Alaska that are really, you know, forcing her to really question this bill and wonder if she's going to vote for it. And so I would just say, like, all the pressure, everyone who can pressure Susan Collins collins to remain a no um dean heller

everyone get to nevada could be if you know people in nevada call nevada nevada nevada i was i know i was saying there i just i caught myself halfway through um anyway get there pressure dean heller and um and murkowski i really think that's where that's where this goes and look we just heard too that um mcconnell might not have the CBO score the Cruz amendment because it would be so terrible for the overall score that they might have like their own partisan organization score the bill, which is fucking bullshit. to just basically sow chaos and confusion so that no one knows what's going on and they can just vote in this thing as fast as possible and tell members like it's fine. One thing, one thing McConnell's telling members is, uh, the, some of the moderates is, you know what, these Medicaid cuts, they'll never go into effect anyway. They're so far down the road, just vote for it now and you can fix it later, which is just the height of cynicism. McConnell is not a good person.

He's just not. I mean, he, I mean, let's, I'll be fair. Maybe he not a good person. He's just not. I mean, I mean, I'll be fair. Maybe he's a good person when he's not in the Senate, but he is a bad person in the Senate. He is what he is a walking, talking reason why Americans hate politics. It's pretty bad. Okay. So everyone keep it up, keep it up because you know, we're, we're close, but we are by no means out of the woods just yet. And this is actually the time you could argue where it's most dangerous for this thing to pass because we're getting down to it. So keep up the pressure. When we come back, we will talk to Republican communications guru, Tim Miller.

This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's this great stuff coming. Lots of great stuff. On the pod today, we have one of the original friends of the pod from way back in the Keeping It 1600 days. Our favorite token Republican,

Tim Miller. Tim, welcome back. Tim, welcome back to the pod. Thank you. Good to be with you. I did some googling. I was on episode 3 of Keeping It 1600. I feel like I'm the OG here. I was walking to the airport the other day with a guy in a Friend of the Pod shirt. He walked right by me three times. I kind of wanted to shake him and get my recognition now that you guys are so famous. But I guess no credit for the third episode.

And you've been in hiding ever since. I guess no credit for the third episode. And you've been in hiding ever since. I've been in deep hiding. Late last year, after Donald Trump won, I basically just watched Manchester by the Sea on repeat in my basement. Was that to cheer yourself up? Now I live in Oakland. It's as far away from any Trump hotels as possible.

Welcome to California. I'm happy to come back out of hiding with you guys. Okay, so let's talk about Junior's meeting, which was just for opposition research. Obviously, you've done a lot of opposition research in your time in politics. You usually get stuff from foreign nationals. Is that something that you usually do,

or would you have advised Jeb Bush or John Huntsman or any of your Republican candidates to take such a meeting? Yeah, for all the noobs to the pod, I actually started an opposition research firm called America Rising. There you go. It's a Republican opposition research firm, so I know my way around this. this and i have to tell you guys like i have as little regard for uh uh don trump jr and jared and that crew as i thought was possible and if i had come on the pod last week and you guys had said you know man we're hearing in our crazy liberal circles that there's an email where somebody writes this is obviously sensitive

information, but it's part of the Russia and its government support for Mr. Trump. And one of these guys would reply, great, I love it. I would have told you that was conspiracy talent. I mean, it is just so far beyond what I thought to even be imaginable, that it's shocking to me that, you know, people are even trying to kind of brush it off. You know, I mean, I think that, you know, obviously, there is the foreign government play here, you know, and not, you know, accepting information, illicit information from foreign governments when you're trying to, you know, run for the highest office in the country. But just putting that aside, like, this isn't any foreign government. It wasn't Switzerland that they were getting information from. And Russia actively is attempting to undermine the

U.S. all around the world. That was Republican, one of our top complaints about y'all's old boss, that, you know, he wasn't standing up to Russia where it was trying to undermine our influence everywhere in the world. The Russians, on every fundamental American value, stand against us and want to remake the world in their image and in the Chinese image of what government should look like. So the idea that you would take help from these guys

is just mind-boggling. I don't have the language to discuss my fear. No, look, I'm willing to say that in 2012 when we all scoffed at Mitt for saying that Russia was our number one geopolitical foe, I think we were a little off there. I stand by that statement. Well, thank you for that humility, humility John I guess we've all been humbled a little bit over the last year in our predictions but yeah I think you guys

were a little bit off on that one it's nice to have everybody on the home team I just saw right before I got on that Paul I haven't seen the context on this I hope I'm not taking him out of context but he said that Trump should consider bombing Russia and I enjoy I welcome all of you Democrats to the neocon fold in recognizing our threat.

Yeah, I don't know if I'm ready for that, but okay, Paul. So let's talk about some sample reactions from Republicans on these latest developments. You get Deputy GOP Whip Marshall Blackburn said that Junior might have been duped into taking the meetings. Ted Yoho said he probably would have done the same thing. More respectable Republicans like Bob Corker said the new developments don't concern him. Orrin Hatch said it's overblown. McConnell and Ryan both dodged the question. Basically, I've only counted John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, and some random Republican congressman I hadn't heard of

that said that this was really problematic and they want Junior to testify and all that kind of stuff. What's going on with the party, man? How much time do we have on this week's podcast? Anything you want to say. There are two elements to this. I'll put on my analytical CNN pundit hat first, and then we can kind of talk real talk. But, you know, what is happening and what is driving this is the Republican voter support for Donald Trump.

You know, I've seen a lot of private polling data, and the reality is that the Republican base wants unadulterated support for Trump. You're seeing this in the Alabama Senate primary right now, where there's basically just a big fight between all the potential Senate candidates on who loves Donald Trump the most, you know, who was the most loyal viewer of The Apprentice. There's a poll I saw that asked Republican voters who they'd rather have as President Trump or Pence. It was three quarters for Trump, over three quarters for Trump. And so that tells you, you know, with Pence being at this point a generic kind of Republican that is Trumpy, you know, I think that shows where the party is and so people are responding to voters you know i have the greatest example of this was when ted cruz gave his vote your conscious speech at the uh convention um his internal polling had him drop with republican voters 40 points in three

days so and that's that's where that's where the voters are. So we could have a longer discussion about why that is. But that is what's driving these guys in Washington's reactions to this. But, you know, just explaining why is driving it doesn't excuse us. I get the political calculus for why these people, these Republican members would sell the country down the tubes. But like you, I mean, at least prior to today's podcast, you have a lot of Republican friends. What are Republicans like the ones who work on Capitol Hill or others? What are they saying privately about this White House and Trump and and just the idea that they are carrying water for this guy. I assume many of them did not like him before he won the nomination.

Yeah, nobody liked him before he won the nomination. But, you know, privately they're saying he's a disaster. But so? You know, what does that get you? You know, that doesn't advance the ball in any way to criticize him privately or to kind of shake your head at them privately and then move on. I mean, the big, the overwhelming feeling among my peers in Washington is we want to get our agenda passed. And I recognize that. I support for that.

I'm going to disagree with the pod listeners on Neil Gorsuch. And, you know, I'd like to see tax reform and I'd like to see deregulation. But we're in a new, this is a whole new ballgame here. And you have to respond to, you know, the facts of what's happening in Washington and the fact that the rules are completely changed. You know, I think that there's this sense of going about business as usual in Washington and just kind of like trying to ignore the crazy uncle who happens to be the president of the United States. And I mean, that is, you know, what's driving all these reactions. I think

that probably 50 years from now, if we're all still around uh... you know the figure sociological study to be done on why everybody went along with that uh... why people you know or jacket i mean you know like i said earlier that idea that that that in email as the email to john

john junior director response would come out and that those responses would be the ones that you tell. I mean, some of those guys you listed are not for election again for six years. And where is the political courage to say, okay, you know, I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I can try to pass tax reform, but also make sure that we investigate to ensure that the president's son and his son-in-law, you know, weren't directly colluding with our biggest enemy on the world stage. I don't understand why that hasn't happened. And,

you know, historically, there have been plenty of examples of politicians who have stood in the face of, you know, unpopular issues, you know, and taken the right position despite its unpopularity. And, you know, that is largely absent right now from my party. So I do want to talk about why you think that Trump is still so popular with the base. Before we called you, we were just talking about how big of a role Fox News and Republican media plays into that calculation. Do you agree with that? I mean, do you think it's like Trump and his personal attributes that get them going?

Or do you think it's this sort of this ecosystem from where a lot of the base gets their news from? Or something else? Yeah, Trump definitely tapped into, you know, he's speaking to people who felt like they hadn't, they weren't being spoken to before. And so a lot of these folks disagree with Trump on some issues or disagree with Trump on how, you know, you see the polls, like only 20% of them like that he tweets. But they like the fact that he has signaled to them that he cares about their issues, and that they felt like there were two parties in Washington that were not speaking to them. This is a big part of working-class America.

This is not, you know, our peers, my peers in the Republican, you know, establishment. And so I think that's a big part of it. Fox News is a big part of it. But it's tribalism, you know? And I have a column today in the Daily Beast about, you know, how we got here. You know, and one of the elements of it is, you know, what you're talking about with Fox News. And, you know, it's not just Fox, it's MS, it's Twitter, it's everybody. the way that they cover politics as a game, as sort of no different from a reality TV show or no different from a sports match.

So why are we surprised that a reality TV show host ended up taking advantage of it? And so this tribalism that is political and that is cultural of, you know, those of us out in flyover country, the exurbs versus the coast and the elites, you know, are leading people to, you know, basically just cast aside, you know, their concerns in order to fight for their team. And, you know, part of that is Fox News, but part of it is how they feel that they're alienated from, you know, the liberal media. They feel like they're alienated from mainstream news. They don't see people that reflect their values. They don't see people in movies and TV. And, you know, they're angry about this. And so, you know, you need to have an anthropologist on the next pod

to explain exactly how it got this extreme. But it's that, you know, anthropologist on the next pod to explain exactly how it got this, how it got this extreme, but it's that, you know, cultural tribalism that is, that is driving a lot of this. I get the political calculus, particularly for some of these folks who are running for Senate and have primaries upcoming. What advice would you give some of the Republican members of the House in districts that are much more purple? Is it better to stick with Trump or is it better to create some sort of distance? Putting aside the moral quandary of Trump and Russia. You know, I don't really get why there are not a couple of House, that aren't guys that are just going to be, you know, never Trump, Twitter trolls, like poking them in the eye over every controversy,

but that haven't picked a couple of big high profile things, particularly in national security and carried the flag for, you know, standing up to, you know, what could potentially be, you know, major, major threats, you know, to our security. That would be my advice to these guys is pick a couple of issues where you disagree with Trump and and and, you know, make those no be visible on them. If you look at the mid, not the midterms, if you look at the 16 election, you know, the candidates that struggled with the ones that wavered with Trump,

that kind of waffled and went back and forth. There were Mike Kaufman in Colorado 6th, essentially ran an I'm not Donald Trump television campaign, and won re-election. Carlos Curbelo, a guy I know down in Miami, did the same thing. So there is room for people in the House in certain districts to do this, in addition to what you said, the responsibility of people that do this. You know, and it's this kind of fear of reprisal from Trump that is driving whether or

not, but with all the number of people on the Hill that could carry this message, I don't get it. I mean, I don't get why none of them have said that Jared Kushner needs to come and testify in front of Congress. I mean, Jared Kushner said that he wanted to create a back channel with the Russian ambassador, and he attended a meeting premised on the fact that Russia wanted to help us, and he met with the head of a Russian bank, you know, Putin's preferred bank. This guy has national security clearance. I mean, could you imagine if your pal Ben Rhodes had done that? No!

I mean, oh my, you know, his head would be on a pike. You know, we'd have Ben Rhodes' blood in the streets in the southern parts of the country if he had done even one of those things. So it feels like there is, you know, room for someone to fill that void and still win re-election, whether that be a House person in the State District or a Senate guy who just got elected. But that's missing right now. Speaking of Kushner and the Russian banker, the one thing I haven't been able to put together in the whole conspiracy, the whole collusion story is where all the financial ties fit into this. And I know that Mueller's looking into this and obviously Jared's implicated in this as well. But like you did a lot of research in the in the primaries on on Trump's business ties.

Are there any other shoes you're expecting to drop here? Are there any other things that people aren't paying attention to when it comes to the financial ties? Yeah, I mean, I think that the that the funding of Trump's hotel is far undercover. is far undercovered and that there is, you know, not necessarily, just like I didn't expect there to be an email as direct as the email to Don Jr., I don't know that I expect necessarily a direct quid pro quo. You know, I don't want to pull a Louise Mensch here, but the funders of Trump's hotels are all tied into, you know, the kind of Russian oligarchy. And there's a guy named Felix Sater, who every once in a while his name will pop in a news article. Trump's hotels are all tied into the kind of Russian oligarchy.

And there's a guy named Felix Sater, who every once in a while his name will pop in a news article. I think there was a Financial Times article about him just last week. But it hasn't really bubbled into the mainstream consciousness. And Sater helped fund, Sater was born in Russia and is deeply tied with the Russian mob and with Russian oligarchs. And he helped fund Trump hotels in, I know, Miami and I think Atlantic City and maybe some other places. It's been a while since I looked at the research. But Sater alone is a major potential problem. But then when you look at all these other Trump hotels, he had trouble getting financing for a lot of these places. I mean, Deutsche Bank is really the only major bank that was willing to work with Trump.

put money into the banks that did fund Trump without a direct paper trail that we would know about that we'd be able to get through opposition research but that Mueller could get to through financial records, I think is highly possible. And then you've got the Kushner. Right, well, that's what I was going to say. You have the whole Kushner family right now going around the world. They need money.

That's a highly leveraged business. And there's a lot of potential Russian ties there, too. Last question, we'll let you go. I noticed the other night on Stephen Colbert's show, Joe Scarborough announced that he is no longer a member of the Republican Party, that now

he's going to be an independent. What about you? You still a Republican? You want to make any news on Pod Save America or no? I'm not making any news on Pod Save America. I'm still a Republican. That's very hard in the Trump era. Your party, I think, is about to go into cuckoo town as well. Based on the ads in my Twitter, I'm concerned that you're going to have a socialist celebrity as your nominee in 2020.

You know, we'll see. So I'm certainly not ready to become a Democrat. The Scarborough thing, though, is so galling that we need to have a quick aside. I mean, Joe Scarborough was the biggest Trump cheerleader throughout the primaries. When I was working for Jeb, Trump would call in from his bathrobe in Trump Tower, and Scarborough and Mika would just giggle. The questions would be like, Trump, how did you come up with that little Marco name? How did you come up with that? That's genius, Brent.

These were the questions that they would ask. Then after he won the nomination, they went on a victory tour, like a celebration tour where they had an ad out where they were talking about how they had predicted it. And they were the ones that knew. And now Scarborough, you know, wants to be the leader of the resistance. I mean, I welcome converts. I wish there were a couple more converts on the Hill. But, you know, I would like at least a little bit more humility from Joe Scarborough. He gave an interview last week

where he said that Trump is different than the guy I knew two years ago. Which is such bullshit. Trump is the same guy that he was when he was in kindergarten, basically. The same guy he was when he was lapping around Don Jr. when he was a college kid. Trump is

an asshole, and he always has been. And he's the exact same guy that he was two years ago and four years ago. And, you know, I would hope that Scarborough, you know, rather than try to get the PR effect of going on to Colbert and pretending to be a resistance leader, would have a little bit more humility in that effort. So I don't want to scare away future converts. I'm not going to go off on everybody like that,

but Scarborough, he would grind your gears. Seems like I might not be on the level, huh? Look, we'll take what we can get here. Tim, please come back again. Love having you on, and we'll talk to you soon. Tim, can I give you a piece of advice as a new Californian? Yes. When you meet people, introduce yourself as a friend of the pod before you say,

former Republican staffer. You know, one of the nice things about being a new Californian is I got, and coming on this show uh i guess demonstrates that um i i got kind of tired of being the one you know person in dc in my republican circle so it's always like the turd in the punch bowl and so it's nice to be around all of these like insane socialists uh to remind me that i do still have you know a conservatism at heart. So I kind of would rather lead with being a Republican and feel their anger and then kind of soften them by letting them know that I'm a friend of the pod at the end.

Well, let's talk in six weeks when you're drinking a green smoothie a day. I was just going to say, enjoy your kombucha after your yoga this morning. I'm going to go do a vinyasa yoga at 1230. So we got to end up now. All right, man. Take care.

This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. On the pod, we have the host of Crooked Media is with friends like these, Anna Marie Cox. Hello. Hello, gentlemen. How are you? I'm quite, I'm well.

I'm well. Again, all things considered. Yes, as always. Yes. So we'll start. Dan has a readout of the Trump-Macron press conference. So we can live react to that here. Dan, go ahead.

Yeah. Have you been watching it, Anna? I know. I'm in the studio. So this will be a fresh reaction from me. Okay. Well, I would say it does not appear to be, based on Twitter, to be super interesting. But Trump did get asked about, obviously, Donald Trump Jr.'s meetings. And he sort of repeated the he's a good kid situation and that anyone would have taken that meeting with perhaps our greatest global adversaries government um but he did blame uh seems based on twitter he blamed loretta lynch

for letting the russian lawyer into the country anna your reaction thanks obama god um wow well that's you know it is amazing you know donald Trump doesn't look like he's a very flexible person physically. We know that he's a boy's exercise. But wow, does he twist himself into knots looking for ways to blame Obama and mention Clinton? That's some dexterity. That is, he rolled a high number on the 12-sided die for that particular skill. I'm not sure what else he has going. By the way, I think his defenses of Don Jr. are weirdly the kinds of things you would say in a not very

enthusiastic employee review. High quality. He's high quality. Transparent. He certainly comes to work he is he is absolutely one of my children he is completely my so far as i know one of my children he is in the top five of my children he's the third least favorite um Pretty high up, really, all things considered. And I also understand he did the shaken pole with the French first lady. I saw a few images of that.

He's really got this weird greeting style. I mean, I know it's like a small thing in the grand scheme of what we're dealing with here. So I don't like to talk about personal interactions as much, but pretty weird. It's a window onto who he is. What do we want to talk about in the grand scheme of things? I can tell you what we talked about on, uh, with friends like these. Please do. Please do. Before we do that, can I do one more press conference thing? Yeah. A French reporter asked Trump about whether his friend, Jim, the one who famously said he no longer went to Paris because it was so dangerous, whether that friend actually existed because there was a hard hitting AP story this morning, which Paris because it was so dangerous. Yes. Whether that friend actually existed because there was a hard-hitting AP story this morning

which suggests that it may be an imaginary friend. Trump refused to confirm that Jim existed. He's from Canada. You wouldn't know him. That's right. It's his friend from camp. Yeah, his friend from camp. So anyway, with friends like these, i'm actually really excited about this week's

episode it's a interview with anita cameron who is an activist with adap the national disability rights organization oh they've been doing incredible work on the protesting the health care bill amazing good work i actually didn't get this end of the interview with her but i'll let you guys know which is that so they've been getting arrested a lot right they've been doing civil disobedience um and people pointed out the reason they can get arrested is that police vans are wheelchair accessible and that is because of the protests they did 20 years ago um to help get the you know ada started so it's sort of an ira and then also but on the other side of that um one of the jails that they got put in i think in Ohio, had to release them because it was not wheelchair accessible, the jail.

So they've got some, you know, they've got, you know, some pluses and minuses to things being wheelchair accessible for them. So anyway, so Anita Cameron and then Van Newkirk, who you guys probably know as a writer for The Atlantic. for The Atlantic. He works, did a lot of really interesting reporting around race and disability and healthcare policy and voting rights, which are four things that intersect in really important ways. And he and I talked about the history of the disability rights movement and its roots in the civil rights movement and healthcare as not just a civil right in the way we think about disability rights being a category of people who deserve civil rights, but that a lot of disabled people and disabled people of color were active in what we think of as the original civil rights movement. And that the Black community

has really pushed forward public health in part because they had to, because those were the only hospitals, public hospitals were the only hospitals that black people had access to for many, many years. So it's a conversation I was really excited to have. And I think people will learn stuff. It's an important conversation to have right now. Has she talked about what they've heard in a lot of these protests from, you know, when they have been able to talk to staffers and haven't just been arrested? Have, you know, do they think this has been working? They feel like the pressure has been working. What did you hear about that?

I don't. They had not had a ton of luck in terms of the pressure working. They've mostly just had to do civil disobedience. I think that it's interesting, though, because their tactic is slightly different from the ones from the tactic that we discuss, which has to do with putting pressure on vulnerable senators. The ADAPT tactic is to just make as much noise as possible and draw attention to the fact that this is not so much an ACA repeal as it is a drawing and quartering of Medicaid, that this is a Medicaid repeal. And people really need to understand that. And this bill also reframes the way we talk about Medicaid. It tries to reframe Medicaid as a welfare state thing and as something that is about giving aid to people who are

invalids somehow. And that's not what Medicaid is about. Medicaid in many ways, for many people with disabilities, Medicaid is how they become a part of society, not how they sort of leech off of society. It's what enables them to do the kinds of things that we want people to do. Vote, for instance, get an education, go to school, have children, take care of children. take care of children. So I hope that that's something people come out of this episode realizing that one of the really big things that's happening in this bill is a lot to do with Medicaid, not so much the ACA. No, it's interesting. I learned this in the White House when we were writing about health care from both Phil Schoelera, who was our legislative director at the beginning of the administration, and Gene Sperling, who a lot of people know, is our economic policy director. And they talk a lot about Medicaid, and they say so many people think is Medicaid is just health insurance for the poor, you know. independent lives and be productive members of society, which is what Republicans say they want people to be because they get support for Medicaid, you know, and it is just it's empowering

to a lot of people. And the idea that it's like this hammock, you know, that everyone's just jumping on Medicaid because they don't want to work and they want to get free health care is just doesn't line up with the facts of the program. No, Van actually put it really well. He said, you know, people think of it as a safety net, but it's really a scaffold. It is what supports the people who need it the most. And it allows them to climb upward, you know. And I also I just want to point out something.

So this bill is still really unpopular. I don't know. have you guys thought about i mean so it has 12 approval rating you maybe know my conspiracy theory on this which is that the only reason you would vote for a bill with 12 approval rating is that you're not worried about winning a fair election so that's a little little a little crazy perhaps you know i i haven't thought about that as much as like some of these senators aren't up in 18 right like the ones who are well the two are up in 18 are uh dean heller who's obviously you know so far no but we'll see and then jeff flake who's much more of a yes because he seems more worried about a primary challenger than he is a Democratic opponent because it's Arizona, you know. And so some of the other ones, I think maybe they think to themselves, well, if I'm up in 20 or 22, maybe by then, you know, the Medicaid cuts won't go into effect or people will forget about this vote or not have to worry about it.

And I feel like that goes into the thinking a little more. But, you know, I don't know. I mean, I'm being a little, like I said, a little conspiratorial just because it is hard to get your head around. I think if you're just a normal, non-venal person, like if you're just someone who tries to think through what bills do, like what legislation does, it's kind of hard to get your head around why you would still vote for something that's this unpopular and that does such damage to what had been agreed upon, what had been a consensus program. Like, you guys know this probably better than I do. Like, how, like, Medicaid is not, was not controversial. Yeah. Well, so we probably have to get going, but I should break some news here from Twitter before we do.

There are now three no's on a motion to proceed on this bill on the new bill uh who's the third paul is a no collins is a no and portman just said he was a no you know what you know where you know where anita got arrested last week portman's office that's right so maybe they were listening um so who i mean portman said he's you know it's because of these medicaid cuts they still haven't gotten in touch with heller and some of these other people so there could be more but um all three said as of now now of course the bill could change between now and next week or you know mcconnell's like dan said has given himself some more time for recess but this version of the bill as it stands now they have three no's which means they cannot proceed which means the bill

for now uh is dead but you know you know, we're not resting yet. There will be more than three no's by the end of the day. McConnell is out there with his CPR paddles, you know, which were probably paid for by Medicaid, but, you know. He'll cut it off right after that. We'll see. There's a lot of time left, a lot of time for people to still get involved. Yep, get involved, keep going,

because McConnell can still dole out favors here and make some tweaks. And then all of a sudden the thing's back. So keep up the pressure. With Friends Like These is out tomorrow, Friday. Go download that. I can't wait to listen to this episode. Thank you, Anna, for joining us. Dan, good to talk to you.

And we'll see everyone next week.