Pod Save America - "Tweet your feelings."

Episode Date: July 3, 2017

The President shares a video of him fake wrestling a CNN logo, Republicans face bad local headlines about their wealthcare bill, and a closer look at Trump's fraudulent voter fraud commission. Then Jon and Tommy sit down with New Jersey Senator Cory Booker to talk about health care, criminal justice reform, and how to maintain optimism in the Trump era. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor. We're in three different places today. I'm in Los Angeles, Levitt's in New York, and Tommy's in D.C. We're like four different people away from like a nine-person CNN box on cable news right now. I'm actually doing this from Jeffrey Lord's basement. All right. So our interview for today is going to be the interview with New Jersey Senator Cory Booker that Tommy and I did on Thursday in Washington, D.C. We were only supposed to,

I should let everyone know, we were only supposed to have like a couple minutes with Cory Booker. He gave us a lot of his time. We still didn't get to ask a lot of the questions we wanted to ask. We'll have to have him back, but it's a good interview. And you will hear it after the three of us get done talking. Lovett, how was Aspen? I know you did a Lovett or Leave It there. You did a little Pod Save America there. And there's a Lovett or Leave It that everyone should go download from Saturday. How was it? It was great. I had a great conversation with Governor Hickenlooper about health care, about Democratic Party economic policy and democratic vision. I had a good time with Julia Yaffe of The Atlantic and Trayvon Free, who writes for Samantha Bee.

So we had a great coastal elite, mountain elite, Aspen version of Love It or Leave It, Rocky Mountain edition. It was fun. Excellent. And Tommy, who do we got on Pod Save the World this week? Well, I should first point out that we have Colorado covered this week because we also got Senator Michael Bennett last week in D.C. But on Pod Save the World this week, we have former National Security Advisor Susan Rice. So that's a big get. It was a really cool interview, a good chance to sit down with her. She has not done a ton of these things since leaving the White House.

So check it out on Wednesday. Oh, also, I forgot to mention, so you guys went to DC, but I did a live Pod Save America, joined by Amy Walter and Molly Ball, who were gracious enough to fill in. And apparently, in the audience was a Koch brother. And I heard the Koch brother was sleeping. Yes, but I don't know whether he fell asleep before or after I said that Koch money was spending millions upon millions of dollars to stop the health care bill. And the whole audience was uncomfortable, and I realized it was because there was a Koch in the room. Well then. Anyway, Aspen was fun. That's great. Great audience. Great audience for that message.

Okay, so go download Love It or Leave It. Look out for Pod Save the World on Wednesday. And then, guys, we get some merch for sale again. One week only until July 10th. Go to cottonbeer.com slash crooked and you get your own Friend of the Pod t-shirt and a Repeal and Go Fuck Yourself t-shirt, which are very much in vogue right now. They keep coming back into fashion is the problem. Yeah, that is a problem.

Hopefully there will be a day when no one will want that t-shirt anymore. That's what we're hoping. And hopefully that day will be soon. Okay, so let's start off with a topic that, you know, I know we don't want to spend too much time on, but it seems as though somebody has been tweeting his feelings over the weekend, and that person controls the greatest nuclear arsenal in the world. I'm just going to go ahead and read the New York Times lead. President Trump posted a short video to his Twitter account on Sunday in which he is portrayed wrestling and punching a figure whose head has been replaced by the logo for CNN. Cartoonish in quality, the video is an unorthodox way for a sitting president to express himself.

No shit. Yeah. First reactions on that, Tommy? Well, I saw your question on the on the outline, like, is this worse than usual lately? And I was thinking about it. And like, actually, I think it's kind of a return to form, right? I mean, the attack on Mika sort of vintage Trump, you pick a female enemy like Rosie O'Donnell, you relentlessly attack her in the most sexist way possible. Rinse, repeat. Obviously, the context has changed. He's the president of the United States. He shouldn't act like a complete child. But, you know, this is kind of this is his M.O. And it is unbelievable still that he's plucking videos made by anti-Semites off of Reddit four days ago. And they're

winding up on Donald Trump's Twitter feed. But I mean, I guess here we are. This is the guy we elected, which is why it's kind of funny when you see, you know, Joe and Mika saying, this isn't the person we knew two years ago. Here's where I disagree. I mean, I think the attacks on them were outrageous. But I mean, not long ago, Trump was attacking gold star parents, and he was saying a judge couldn't rule in a case fairly because he was a Mexican. So this is the bad person he's been for a very long time. So, Tommy, you think that there wasn't this there wasn't this period of time where Joe and Trump were playing chess and Brahms was on the Sonos and they were talking about philosophy and culture. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, exactly our institutions. Oh, he's just

kidding. He's just being a funny guy. None of this is to be worth is worth taking seriously. It's all part of the way in which he kind of undermines everything that we care about. Yeah, no. So my thought was, look, I think one of the consequences of Twitter information age is that like we have shorter and shorter memories. So of course, he's done stuff this bad before. Right. Especially during the campaign and all the instances that Tommy pointed out, too. But I do think lately he's sort of been ratcheting up his attacks on the media lately, trying to delegitimize the media, like even more than usual. And it doesn't feel like it's proportional to how he's being covered right now. It feels like something's going on with him where he's like deteriorating in a way, or like I suggested on

Twitter, like maybe he knows something about the investigation that we don't, you know, maybe he's worried about something in particular, or maybe he's just impulsive Trump. Like we don't know. I think we are long past the time when we sit around and wonder if Trump's tweets are part of some like Machiavellian strategy. Like the guy's not playing chess. He can barely fucking play tic-tac-toe. But I noticed in the Washington Post story about this that Ashley Parker and Phil Rucker wrote, they said, stoking the base was hardly a pre-planned strategy. Instead, some White House officials described it as an inadvertent upside of the president's impulse to punch back at critics and the media. Some White House advisers said they were frustrated that the Brzezinski feud overtook the president's fight with CNN, which seemed in their eyes to have clearer villains and heroes. I love that.

I mean, Jake Tapper did a rough analysis of Trump's tweets since his presidency. This was on June 29th. Jake Tapper did a rough analysis of Trump's tweets since his presidency. This was on June 29th. He counted 85 attacking the press, 67 mentioning jobs, 27 about troops and our veterans, which is particularly relevant when Trump complains that the mainstream media never covers the important issues that he's been working on in these alleged successes. So, like, you know, to your question of is this purposeful, I think the obvious answer is he hired a total moron named Dan Scavino with no relevant experience to run his social media strategy. But also, I do think it's purposeful that they like keeping the fight with CNN front and center. It rallies the base and it's like a one-stop shop where they can blame all of their problems, all of the lack of coverage of their so-called accomplishments. But, you know, this is the backdrop of this is that they're systematically dismantling the White House press briefing.

They are floating changes to libel laws to make it easier to sue news outlets they don't like. So I do think this is like a piece of a puzzle, even if they're sort of like bumbling around. Yeah, so Lovett, is this dangerous or deranged or both? Is it dangerous? Yeah, I mean, of course it's dangerous to have the president tweeting himself beating CNN to a bloody pulp. Like I just, we're so beyond normal you know the other thing too is you can watch the way these things ricochet from dan scavino's field of reference to to the presidents and it's a little bit like it's like it's almost like we have like an email forward as president right like these dumb, like, these are the dumb, shitty videos that sort of travel around beneath politics, right? Like, they're on Reddit, or they're forwarded around

from like, you know, older, older people who watch Fox News. Like, this is, this is another example of like, Donald Trump as like, Fox News viewer become president. It is deranged, it is dangerous. But again, like, I don't know how it's not surprising. There's no consequences. Dave Weigel had a really good point about this, which is like, wow, all of these Republicans sure are going to call this unacceptable before voting for Donald Trump's reelection and donating to his reelection campaign. You know, the thing that's dangerous, the thing that's actually deranged is that we live in a world in which Donald Trump faces no real consequences for this kind of behavior.

And we're so used to that now. We're so used to the fact that the way people behave when when Donald Trump diminishes the office is just to say it's really bad and try as fast as possible to move on. You know, they like all these guys, the Paul Ryans, the Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham's, even all of them. the mitch mcconnells lindsey grahams even all of them they want to say as little as much they want to say something because they know they need to but they wanted to do it they wanted to achieve nothing have no consequence and move on as fast as possible so they can get back to their agenda which is like the central dynamic between the republicans on the hill and donald trump this whole time which is basically he's not really a president he's a useful idiot to be a vehicle for their agenda we don't have a president. We don't have one. He's only as good as his pen to sign the fucking tax cuts.

That's what he is there for. Do you remember in the movie, do you remember in various versions of Superman, there's always this part at which Lex Luthor swindles an old woman to get her fortune. And he whispers like, I love you, I love you, just sign right here, just sign right here just sign right

here so we can get in the will paul ryan that's the relationship we have between the republicans on the hill and donald trump i mean what what do we do about this like what what is the reaction because you know every time this happens with trump we get into this cycle of like don't talk about this it's a distraction from health care or distraction from other issues or the investigation or a distraction from whatever. And we're making too much of it. And then the media becomes too self-involved and they all talk about it because it's an attack on the media. So it's about the media. So then we get into these news cycles where all we talk about are these fucking tweets and we don't talk about anything else. And so on one hand, you think, yeah, we

shouldn't spend too much time on it. On the other hand, you're like, you know, it's the president of the United States. And he is, you know, he's doing something that whether he intended to or not, it could incite violence. Right. I mean, the only sort of right wing defense is getting mounted is like, calm down, snowflakes. This is just having fun, you know, which is sort of the latest iteration of the take him seriously, but not literally trope. I mean, literally a couple of weeks ago, a reporter was literally body slammed by a guy named Greg Gianforte who's running for Congress. So, you know, this isn't kind of this isn't a crazy thing to suggest. I think I think the best talking point for us is to calmly point out this is an unpresidential thing to do and that he should get back to work, because I think for every 100 Trump supporters who love this stuff

and are his fans, there's 20 like soft Republicans who voted for him, who shake their heads and think, man, I wish he would be doing something else. And who fundamentally understand that free speech benefits everyone, even if they hate the press. But remember, guys, Obama started this because he did an interview with a YouTube star once. Yeah, right. Yeah, he did use a selfie stick. And one time he said Fox News is not news. So I do believe that we are. Look, the bottom line is Donald Trump is just is batting cleanup on Barack Obama's assault on the free press.

That's what we're looking at here. It is funny that that is the first point that a lot of the never Trump conservatives jump to. Or just maybe they're not never Trump at this point. But like they'll first condemn it. They'll say, oh, this is awful that Trump did this. So unpresidential. And they'll be like, but Obama, guys, Obama did start this. I'm not saying it was equivalent.

I'm not saying it was equivalent, but I am saying this breakdown in our culture and institutions did start with President Barack Obama. They just want to make sure they're not saying it was equivalent. I'm just suggesting it. Just suggesting it. Suggesting it. Just suggesting it. There's also a kind of, this is a kind of bipartisan version of this too, where you see somebody who's either a conservative, who's uncomfortable with how much they have to go after their own side or, you know, the kind of nonpartisan press.

And they'll say something like this, you know, we've just got to stop electing the kind of people that want to divide us. Right. Hold on a second. Like, totally. That's a very valid point. But like, Donald Trump is the problem. He's the, he is the thing

there's no you don't need to put him in context like we have a national emergency it's not like the national emergency isn't like a larger cultural problem it's the fact that donald trump is president that's good he found a target too because npr has a pullout today do you trust the media only 30 of the country said yes eight percent said a great deal only nine percent of republicans say they trust the media. So like he's got an audience that's ready and willing to listen to this message. Yeah. Remember it was just last week that Orrin Hatch was tweeting out that Democrats making the factual statement that going without health care is likely to

lead to death. And he was like, oh God, I thought we were all supposed to be coming together after the Scalise shooting. And now Democrats are out there saying crazy things like not having health to death and he was like oh god i thought we were all supposed to be coming together after the shooting and now democrats are out there saying crazy things like not having health care might kill you that's the equivalent that we're going for now two sides of the same coin one is referring to a harvard study that looks at the meta-analysis over many many years of research the other is a meme made by a anti-Semite of the president wrestling CNN to the ground. These are the two sides today. 601, half dozen of the other. I can't believe an 80-year-old senator from Utah didn't have a nimble social media response.

Well, that's a good transition to healthcare, which is what we really want to focus on. Okay, so Mitch McConnell could not get a deal by recess on a revised version of the health care bill so instead um he sent a few different proposals to the congressional budget office to score because it takes about two weeks to score a new proposal he want he's basically testing out what an extra 45 billion dollars in opioid funding would do uh he wants to see how many more people they could cover if they spent a few hundred billion on more subsidies instead of tax cuts for the wealthy.

And he also wants to see what the CBO thinks of Ted Cruz's proposal, which would let states sell plans without protections for pre-existing condition. Lovely. So I was talking to some smart numbers people about this, and they thought that on the tax proposal, basically like the best McConnell can do if he gets rid of, keep in mind, they're cutting about $700 billion to $800 billion worth of taxes. a tax cut, costs about $172 billion. So I was talking to people that said the best they could do is probably get the CBO score from $22 million uninsured to like $18 million uninsured. So the question now is, is that enough for Susan Collins, Dean Heller, Capito, Murkowski,

and all the rest of them? I don't know. What do you guys think about where we are now? It's, again, we're sort of trapped in this crazy process where there are all these different versions of a health care bill that affects 160 the economy and tens of millions and health care for tens of millions Americans. And nobody's seen it like this kind of half baked. OK, we'll test a couple. It's you so feel this artificial deadline, right?

Like what you're sending multiple things in to get multiple scores because you can't take the time to actually develop a bill and have it go through one single process. Now we have like multiple drafts like it's a choose your own adventure. But what's crazy to me is, okay, so they start getting rid of some of the tax cuts so they can put some of the subsidies back. And again, it's like this whole plan is about what version of Obamacare light is shitty enough to get Mike Lee's vote, but generous enough to get Susan Collins's vote. It is a ridiculous, ridiculous farce. Now, if we were in a rational world where these people were going to vote their conscience, there wouldn't be a place where you could find some happy medium that you could appease Ted

Cruz and Mike Lee, but also Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and Capito in West Virginia, because these people all have equities in their state. This bill would obviously harm them. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have a legitimate ideological disagreement with this version of the bill. They could never support it. But that's not the world we're living in. We're living in a world where these people are going to be bought off. But the fact that they, like there is an original sin here, which is they decided they were going to use the structure of Obamacare to do this.

And ever since they decided to do that, there's really been only one, there's been only two possible outcomes. Either they pass a version that, as you said on a previous show, guts Obamacare, but leaves the structure in place, or they don't. And that means that either the bet that that means they're going to end up with status quo or something worse. There's no other outcome here. And every time they kind of go back to the negotiating table, they just come back with a different version of shitty Obamacare. What do you think, Tommy?

Yeah, I think politically, the polling, you know, the best you're seeing for this bill is like 17% of adults approve of it, 55% disapprove, which is a devastating number. McConnell's fear all along was that the longer this bill was in the public eye, the more scrutiny it would receive, the more bad press it would receive, the harder it would get. And that is playing out exactly as he feared. Dan Diamond, who covers healthcare for Politico, has been tweeting local headlines from papers in South Carolina, Houston, like all across the country showing that are localizing the impact of these cuts and how much it would devastate regular people. It would hurt rural communities by cutting funding for telemedicine that's critical for people who don't live near cities, don't have doctors. The only health professional they see, even for kids, is like the class nurse. So I don't think a CBO score with a four or five million person delta is going to really

change public opinion. It feels pretty hardened. At least I'm hopeful that it is. But we all, people out in states, need to get to work to make sure that these local papers, members of Congress, senators hear from us. Yeah, I want to make a point on those local headlines, too, because, you know, a couple of weeks ago, I saw some liberals on Twitter complaining like the media is not covering Obamacare or the Obamacare repeal stuff. Local news isn't covering it. Look at all these headlines. They're not, you know, people should understand that like local news and polls

to an extent, too, are both lagging indicators. It's hard for us to realize that because we're all on Twitter and we see everything unfolding in real time immediately. And so we're always in the news cycle, but it takes a while for news to seep in to local coverage from things that are happening in DC. And I think those local headlines we're seeing a result of all the activism and all the rallies and all the protests that have been happening over the last couple of weeks really having some effect. And so I think that like when we keep saying like now is the time for everyone to go to their 4th of July parades and to go to these rallies over this recess and to keep up the pressure, like that will have a

real effect and it might not have a real effect immediately. But next week or the week after when McConnell's actually, you know, having this debate on the floor of the Senate or not a debate, but just trying to get a vote on the floor of the Senate, you know, it's going to make a real difference, I think. Yeah, just to quickly add to that, because I like when I was Obama's Iowa spokesman, like local press was my bread and butter, I would pitch local radio, weekly newspapers, like anything that was read in the state of Iowa. So if you guys have a group of people in your local community, then you want to go down to a local center member of Congress's office, call the local paper, call the weekly, call the radio, ask them to cover it. If they can't cover the event, email them photos or a letter to the

editor and see if they'll take that. If you have a personal health care story about how this bill impacts you, your family, your friend, record a video of it, post it on Facebook, call your local TV or radio or newspaper and ask them to talk with you about it. If there's events in your community, you can like set up a booth, hand out literature, just talk to people. I mean, local outlets are looking for ways to take a national story and make it about their community. You're right. You're exactly right, John, that it's a lagging indicator, but it's going to happen more and more and more as this thing goes through the process. Yeah. And if you guys are looking for a list of rallies and protests this week, especially in the states where there are wavering Republican senators like Nevada

and Alaska and Maine and stuff like that, Topher Spiro, who's at CAP, who's at Center for American Progress, he's just at Topher Spiro. He just tweeted a list of all the different rallies, Fourth of July parades and stuff like that. So go check that out and keep up the pressure there. One other thing I'll say is we're talking about CBO scores on coverage, 22 million, 18 million. What's the score going to be? I do think one important message for us to get out that's been sort of undercovered is the fact that the Senate bill would get rid of these essential health benefits. that the Senate bill would get rid of these essential health benefits. Because no matter what they do on taxes, no matter how much they bump up the subsidies,

no matter how much they try to fix Medicaid, the bill still wants to allow states to waive these essential health benefits. And the only one that's really broken through so far is maternity care. And you have a bunch of conservative guys who are like, oh, we don't need maternity care, we're men, right? Which is a ridiculous argument for a number of reasons. But there's also a whole bunch of other essential health benefits like hospitalization, ambulance rides, prescription drugs, cancer treatment, right? They're trying to say, oh, well, they can't discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. Well, yeah, if you have cancer, they still have to sell you insurance, but now they

don't have to fund your cancer treatment. They don't have to pay for your cancer treatment, which makes your insurance pretty much worthless. So I do think we should be talking a lot about these essential health benefits in the weeks to come. Yeah, and also the Ted Cruz proposal, right, which is about let's insurance companies offer a variety of plans.

Some cover things, some don't. You know, everybody gets a choice. Like, again, like every part of this bill is about shunting sicker people into more expensive plans and like that's just another way they're going to try to do that this is pod save america stick around there's more great show coming your way okay um i want to talk about something that hasn't been getting a lot of coverage in the mainstream media, the Trump's Fraud Voter Fraud Commission. So we found out last week, as everything else was going on, that Chris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state that's in charge of this voter fraud commission, asked every state to provide detailed information for all the voters on their rolls.

So he wanted name, address, birthdate, party identification, social security number, and asked for all of this information. Fortunately, about more than half the states now told him to go fuck himself, basically. One actual response, quote, My reply would be, they can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico. That was from the Republican secretary of state in Mississippi. What's going on with this with this voter fraud commission? Tommy, I know you've been tweeting a lot about this. What's the what's the story behind it? I mean, on the most basic level, I think doing a countrywide state by state survey or research project like this validates the idea that there is this massive voter

protection. And remember, we have a president who claimed that three to five million people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton. That's why he lost the popular vote. So they're still seeking to prove that allegation. But generally, I mean, these sort of voter integrity projects are great ways to push for voter ID laws and more stringent voter requirements, they make it harder for poor people, for minorities, for more marginalized groups that tend to vote Democrat. What a surprise to get to the polls. So, you know, this is some really nasty stuff. This is a massive, expensive solution seeking a problem and demanding some very personal data in a way that's that's pissing off everyone right to left. the lead secretary of state of Kansas. And also just one of this is part of a larger campaign against voting. So there's a I think it's a there's a long piece New York Times about Texas

and gerrymandering. And you look at a city like Austin, obviously very liberal, what well, the city of Austin has been carved up and basically distributed amongst suburban districts so that they're represented by conservatives, which is why Texas has 25 Republican members of Congress and 11 Democrats, even though the state has shifted to the left in recent years. So there's this larger effort to remove accountability for their behavior, right? And it's not, and it is an anti-democratic trend. It is something that extends from the way Mitch McConnell handled both a vacancy on the Supreme Court and this health care bill being written in secret. It is this commission that we are fortunate is run by, you know, these are the carefully laid plans of stupid men, which is benefiting us, right,

that they're doing this in this ham-fisted way, and as well as a national campaign of gerrymandering that has put the wind in our faces in our attempt to win back the House. So all of this is a larger anti-democratic trend. It includes Donald Trump wrestling a CNN figure to the ground. And we really need to have a larger conversation about the lack of faith in democratic values at 23.5 million votes and found a total of 30 cases in which a noncitizen voted, 30 cases. Another analysis said that of 2068 alleged election fraud cases, there were just 10 cases of voter impersonation. Study after study after study, it doesn't matter where you look, they all say that voter fraud is basically non-existent. It doesn't happen that much, right? And so why are they doing this? As we were saying, they're doing this because they're hoping it would lead to a purge of the voter rolls. Now, why is a purge of voter rolls a problem if there are people who shouldn't be voting? Well, one of the things they do is they say, okay, we want to make sure that only citizens are voted.

So we want to use a database for immigration to make sure that only citizens are voted. Well, sometimes what they've done in the past is they will purge someone from the voter rolls for not being a citizen of this country, but then later realize that at the time this person was in the immigration database, they were an undocumented immigrant or they weren't a citizen yet. And since then, they have become a citizen. And now they're purged from the voter rolls and they don't know it, right? So that's just one example of how this is used to purge, you know, Latinos from the voter rolls. Also for African Americans, again, 25% of black voting age citizens do not have a government issues photo ID compared with only 8% of whites. Minority Americans are less likely to have flexible work hours or own cars, so they have a harder time affording or obtaining a voter ID.

They rely more on early voting. They require a nearby voting place. So there are all these things that they are trying to do to make it harder for people to vote, even though they are citizens who have a right to vote. And that is the fundamental problem here. And by the way, this is a long term mission. You know, we've saw this. The voter rolls were purged in Florida by Jeb Bush before he was an amicable, decent guy we thought was befuddled and silly. Like he purged thousands upon thousands upon thousands of legitimate voters before that election. I mean, this has been, you know, you purge, you have false positives, you purge a ton of people, you say, Oh, well, it was, you know, it was an accident, right? Some people are obviously going to get caught up in the net. Oh, but they can just re register. But of course, they show up to vote on election day,

and they don't find their names. And it's just whatever. Yeah. No, you're exactly right. I mean, Kobach demanded this data. DOJ is demanding that states answer questions about what steps are taken to comply with laws that require states to maintain accurate voter lists, a.k.a. get rid of ineligible people and purge them. Then they announced the addition of this guy named Hans von Spakovsky, who sounds like a diehard villain who dies at the end. And he's been like the— I was honestly going to make that same fucking joke today about his name. Yeah, he's like Count Dracula's cousin. He does sound like Count Dracula's cousin. He does sound like a diehard villain. He's a creep. I mean, he's a person who Obama actually tangled with back in 2007 because he pushed for these voter integrity projects in Florida, like Lovett was saying, that purged thousands of black people from the voter rolls by erroneously tagging them as felons when they were not. His former DOJ colleagues wrote letters to Congress to protest

his meddling in these efforts to disenfranchise voters. I mean, they are bringing in all these people to push for these voter ID laws because they know it helps them electorally. There's just, there's no other logical reason. Yeah. And I mean, we should just say too, like, it should not be hard in this country with our wealth and our technology to make sure that every citizen has the opportunity to vote. It's like you were saying, Lovett, about democratic values. This should not be partisan. This should not be difficult. Other countries do it much better than we do, right? Like it should be very easy and doable to make sure that every citizen in America can easily cast a ballot on election day, can be registered automatically, right? Some states are

doing automatic voter registration, has access to a ballot, has the time to cast the ballot, doesn't have to wait in long lines. Like, this should be easy, you know? Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report was talking about a survey, and I thought it raised an interesting problem here, which is, you can ask people, you know, do you think, I'm going to paraphrase it, but basically, do you think our democracy is better off when more people vote or when basically the right people vote, people who know what they're talking about vote, right? And you see this partisan divide where the vast majority of Democrats say America is stronger when more people can vote, and fewer Republicans think that now, less than a majority of Republicans now believe that America

is stronger when more people can vote. It's this sort of seeping, this seeping kind of anti-democratic trend. But the other thing, too, is I always feel like we're a little bit on defense on this issue. Like, yes, of course, we believe that more people should have access to vote. But we're in this political fight where there's just a concerted effort to make sure that doesn't happen, which is why it's really good that Jason Kander has started this organization called Let America Vote. But I increasingly think that Democrats need to sort of think long term in the way Republicans set in motion these voter ID plans, these voter fraud plans for years and years and years, right? They've been thinking this through as a way to disenfranchise people under the guise of protecting the vote. And I keep coming back to the idea of constitutional amendments,

whether at the national level or the state level, to guarantee every citizen the right to vote. And I wonder if that's not going to be something Democrats start campaigning for and making a part of our push, that we want to make sure that any person can show up on Election Day, if they're a citizen, they have the right to vote, that that's a sacred thing. You know, it's this crazy thing where the right to vote is not directly enshrined in the Constitution. And I do think it's something we could change. Love it. I think that's a good point about the constitutional amendment. I do think people should start campaigning on that.

But also, like, you can see a lot of results in the states, right, as people are pushing for this. Rhode Island just passed automatic voter registration. Of course, they have huge Democratic majorities. But this is another reason why a lot of these state elections are so important, because a lot of state elect a lot of election law is made in the state. So I think we could help this issue there really well. OK, when we come back, we will have the interview we did with Cory Booker on Thursday.

Stick around for that. I can't believe that Cory Booker announced that he was running for president on our show. Don't go anywhere. This is Pod Save America, and there's more on the way. Save America, and there's more on the way. Okay, so I just want to start off with the health care bill, since obviously that's in the news. How do you see the chances of stopping this thing now? I know there's a flurry of activity today. They're now talking about getting rid of some of the tax cuts and maybe using them to beef up the subsidies. And I'm sure if they do that, they'll call that some big compromise. What's the game plan? Well, first of all, I think anybody in the last year in politics that still wants to talk about the chances of something happening,

you have to fight like this is imminent. This is people's lives. This is the very character of our country at stake. This is not a time where you should sit back and say, maybe he'll get this. No, this is happening unless we stop it. And everybody should take personal responsibility. When I was growing up, I was taught the 10 two-letter words that are most important in moments like this, which is, if it is to be, it is up to me. And if we're going to stop this, people have to take personal responsibility to stop it. How do you keep in the headlines? I know you and John Lewis had that great sort of organic protest on the Capitol steps a couple nights ago. How do we continue to do stuff like that

over the next couple of weeks? So I'm the last person that should be telling folks how to do creative protests. I should try to think of myself about it, but I want everybody who's listening to think about like, what can I do to break through the noise? What can I do in my circles to get people to pay attention? One of my favorite moments of history, I think Taylor Branch calls it the children's miracle, is when King was failing doing his normal marching in Birmingham. He had just come out in 1963 from the Birmingham jail, wrote one of the most amazing pieces of American literature ever, the letters from the Birmingham jail.

But it was two young people that came up to him, Dorothea Cotton, James Bevel, that pushed him to try a different type of protest involving different people, something he had resisted doing before, which is to get young people, and I'm talking kids like eight, nine, 10 years old, to stand against Bull Connor. And it so shocked the American consciousness that suddenly within days, segregation fell in Birmingham, Alabama. And so all of us are creative agents of change. And often we don't flex those muscles. And in my entire career, you know, I've lived and worked in Newark, New Jersey since I've been a professional coming out of law school.

And, you know, I've done – I've lived in mobile, parking on the worst drug corners in our city. I did a 10-day hunger strike out in the projects in Newark. We thought of, my team and I, who all took on Conan O'Brien when he insulted our city by banning him from Newark Airport. Everything creative we could do to break through the noise for a city that had been disregarded, disrespected, or just plain dissed, communities that people weren't paying attention to. We fought to get our city on the map. We fought to get people to pay attention. And we fought to bring in resources and opportunity for our residents.

So this is a time where you are a creative artist. And it's time for everybody to think, what can I do? And don't allow your inability to do everything to undermine your determination to do something. If you just say to yourself, between now and the vote on this health care bill, I'm going to do one concrete thing every day. Maybe it's filming a video of myself with my grandmother who's in a long-term nursing home and just let my grandmother speak. Maybe it's doing something like, you know what, I'm going to write a poem and read it out loud or have my kids read it. There's something we can all do every single day. It may seem small, but as I was taught and now that I know I've done the research,

it was tiny actions done by activists that literally radiated out to change my life. And that's one of the reasons I'm here right now. Senator, what do you think the Democrats in the Senate, their posture should be in terms of trying to block this legislation? Do you believe that the filibuster by amendment tactic is something that should be pursued? should do a filibuster. In the last Voterama, we were talking about trying to get to start because we knew what was coming. And we were some of those agents that said, let's stay here two, three, four days until we're at the end of our exhaustion, which is easy for the young men and women in the Senate to say when you have other folks, this is not Festivus feats of strength sometimes that we should be doing it.

Look, I'm about winning, and I want to do whatever tactic can stop a bill that will devastate not only the lives of tens of millions of people, but I think it will be a damage to the character of our country and will change the very idea of what it means to be American. And so Schatz Murphy and I are part of Schumer's leadership group. He has sort of young rabble-rousers in the Senate. And I say that in Senate years. Under no other measure am I young. But all the way to some of the state's people in the Senate, like Senator Patrick Leahy.

And we all are passionately committed to trying to stop this bill. And I think that from that, the right ideas are going to come forward. I saw that Center for American Progress today came out with some ideas on how we might have a bipartisan proposal to sort of improve the Affordable Care Act. And Murkowski, Collins, a couple other people over the last couple of days have said, oh, we should be doing this in a bipartisan way. Do you see any chance of reaching out to Republicans, trying to get a working group as this thing maybe looks like it's collapsing on the republican side to try to scoop up some of the senators on the republican side who are thinking maybe we should do this in a bipartisan fashion

and go from there or what's the posture what's the posture i've gotten a lot of legislation passed here that's not in the public glare and has become politicized over years and years and years. Remember, Obama was attacked consistently by people whipping up fears of death panels. Obamacare became, I mean, you could literally go to some Republicans and say, are you in favor of this thing called the Affordable Care Act? Yeah, I love that, but I hate that Obamacare because it became so politicized. But this place does that all the time. We get things done. I've passed legislation with Ted Cruz to help public radio stations coming out of a natural disaster. So that kind of stuff can get done. And by the way, there have been phenomenal ideas lying around the Senate in the last two Congresses that could have made tinkers with Obamacare to make it better, more affordable.

So I have no doubt that that can't happen. better, more affordable. So I have no doubt that that can't happen. But this is a political moment that's become so charged where common sense is going to the wayside of an all-out political brawl. And the great thing is we have the numbers. America is with us. Republicans, mainstream, in the community, they are with us on all the policy. So fine, we've got the policy right. But the politics is where this battle is going to be. And the only way we're going to win this is if people get off the sidelines, if people refuse to be silent at a time like this. When you look at all the things Trump has done in these first few months, where does the nomination of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General rank in terms of things that we might most regret or might have the most lasting consequences.

So I think it's an undercovered question problem, except for your early stand against him. Right. So I listened to you guys and I love you guys. So you're, you're part of the people that as I get up here in the morning and the Senate, and I listened to your podcast, you sort of like you guys are, are sourcing, uh, uh, beleaguered spirits. And I'm, I'm one of those, I'm one of your fans, but I just want to challenge you all in the way you talk about these issues to not make it somehow as if the happening of Donald Trump created all the problems in a sense. And talking about Jeff Sessions really in some ways neglects the fact that under President Obama, there were issues going on where Americans should have been marching in the streets.

There were issues, if you look at Black Lives Matter protests, in which tens of thousands of Americans were marching in the streets. What drives me crazy, I had a massive afro when I came to the Senate. I ripped out all my hair. That is a joke. a joke. But what makes me pull out my hair metaphorically is the fact that W.E.B. Boyce said a longer quote where he said, the tragedy of man is not that people are poor, who has not known poverty. It's not that people are ignorant. He said something like, what is intelligence? It's that man knows so little of man. We live in a country where there are such outrageous injustices going on every single day that would shock the consciousness of this country if they only

saw each other, if we didn't render massive populations of Americans invisible. And this is happening under Sessions and that Justice Department, it's happening now. I just came back from Alabama and Louisiana just to visit the most outrageous instances of environmental injustice, arguably environmental racism. Standing in communities where corporate villainy has put, let's take Uniontown or Tallahassee, landfills in historically black communities who can trace their histories back to the slavery. The wealth that they have is in their land, but now landfills have been put in there to drive

down the cost of their land. Landfills letting off such toxins that people, as I went to church after church, tell me they can't put their clothes on the line outside because they end up smelling so rancid. They can't open their windows. Their respiratory illness rates, their cancer rates are so high because some corporation is doing hateful hypocrisy, something they would never allow in their children's neighborhoods. They're putting it on ours. for years trying to build relationships on the other side and decided to risk relationships with a lot of my Republican colleagues by breaking tradition is because I fully believe that the biggest sin, the biggest shame in our country that folk aren't talking about nearly enough, that people are indulging in the worst type of privilege, which says if there's an injustice out there, but it's not happening to me or my family, so it must not be that serious or that urgent. We live in a nation right now, as one of my greatest heroes I was with in Alabama this past weekend, Brian Stevens said, well, you get treated better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent.

We have prisons, and I visit them often, was in one at the beginning of the month up in Connecticut, where as I walked in, I said to the warden, it was a women's penitentiary, I said, how many women here are victims of sexual assault, sexual abuse, of those kind of crimes? And she looks at me, this strong, tough warden, looks at me with a moment of just compassion, and she says about 95% of the women. and she says about 95% of the women. We incarcerate in this country in a way that is so sinful, so violative of our American principles, where if you look at the experiences I had growing up in a wealthy, comparatively wealthy neighborhood, went to Stanford University and saw so much drug use, people who joke about it with a cavalier attitude, but being in Newark for the last 20 years,

you see that there's an entirely different justice system for the poor and for people of color that preys upon them. And now our criminal justice system, there's no difference between blacks and whites for using drugs or even dealing drugs. In fact, young white men have slightly higher rates of dealing drugs, but black people will be arrested for it almost four times more likely. As a result of that, it drives poverty in neighborhood. It breaks up families. It rips apart communities. The American Bar Association points to 40,000 collateral consequences. the felony charge for doing things two of the last three presidents admitted to doing. And you now, your life, you can't get a Pell Grant, you can't get business licenses, you can't get jobs, can't get loan from the bank, you can't get food stamps, you can't get public housing. We have a system now that so devastates our country that now we have more African Americans in America under criminal supervision than all the slaves in 1865.

And so we are at a point where other countries, I've traveled now on the foreign relations committee in other nations, I sit in countries that are struggling to establish their democracy, but they look at me about our prison system and they say, you say we have human rights violations? You do things that countries consider torture in your prisons, like juvenile solitary confinement. They look at us and say, you complain about not having money to invest in your infrastructure as our roads, bridges, tunnels are collapsing. But we were building a new prison in this country every 10 days between the time I was in law school to the time I became mayor of Newark. So you asked me about Jeff Sessions, and he is but a dangerous point on a jagged, broken system that is so outrageous that we can sit comfortably right here, right now, while in America right now, people's rights are being violated. Right now, there are children in prison who've been rotting there in solitary confinement for not days, not months, but over a year, waiting for a trial. And so I get very emotional about this issue

because the only thing that's stopping this issue from being dealt with is that good people are doing nothing about it, that don't seem to care that it's ripping apart our country. In fact, one university said, we'd have 20% less poverty in America if we just had incarceration rates like our other industrial peers, because we're only 5% of the global population, but one out of every four imprisoned people on the planet Earth is right here.

So this is what just pisses me off and what I'm trying to make my Senate career about is shining a light on stuff that folk don't want to admit. that folk don't want to admit. How can we live in a nation that, as I saw in Alabama with my own eyes, where you have raw sewage running in the streets, running behind people's homes? There are tropical diseases in this country that doctors don't even think exist in America. They only think they exist in developing nations that black communities are living in because of a woeful lack of poverty, not a material poverty, but a poverty of empathy and poverty of love. And so Trump is, yeah, I'm going to protest Trump. I'm going to resist him. I'm going to fight him. But this stuff was going on well before Donald Trump. So can I just follow up on one point on that? I mean, one of the injustices that people are

finally starting to see more and more are these instances of police shootings. And we've talked about how to talk about this on the show and cover it when you see Philando Castile and just the injustice of that verdict. But it's never clear to me what people should be pushing for on a federal level versus a local level to make changes that would get some measure of justice or, more importantly, stop these things from happening. What do you recommend? So I have legislation specifically to this that I just would love to get more people talking about that can bring people's attention. Look, we had a police problem in Newark and I was mayor and I still remember when the Justice Department came in and I got angry. I'm like, I'm a black mayor in a black city. And it wasn't until they collected the data and showed me the data on police stops and did millions of dollars, frankly, or hundreds of thousands of dollars of

accountability work. I was like, oh, my God. And we ended up partnering with the ACLU just to collect data. And this is the thing that I got the former head of the FBI, James Comey, to agree on so much so that I put it in my book. And he's like, look, we talk about these issues, police shootings, implicit racial bias, which is real, which is measurable, which black folk, white folk, Latino folk, we all have implicit racial bias. But when it starts infecting our criminal justice system, undermining what it says across the way from my office on the Supreme Court wall, equal justice under the law. There should be an urgency to do something about it. So my legislation does a number of things to try to bring about better police accountability. But one of the most basic things it does, and Senator Boxer in the last Congress was my partner on it, is just say, I learned this as mayor.

I used to say, God, we trust, but everybody else bring me data. And if I don't have the data, if I can't measure it, you can't manage it. And so most people are shocked when we say we don't even have federal collection of police shootings. I'm not just talking about police doing the shooting, but even police getting shot. We don't collect that data. So let's start collecting the data. And this is what Obama did that was brilliant. And this is what you could do. Let's stop getting people in defensive postures when we start talking about race in America. Let's start dealing more with a sort of courageous empathy and love for each other. And so what Obama's 21st century policing task

force did, and they brought in, and by the way, I ran a police department. These are the bravest human beings on the planet. I mean, I remember being on the phone with my police director, and we're talking about a hostage situation, A woman who had shot at her boyfriend. Boyfriend jumps out the window, but now she's still got a gun. Her child's in the building. It was a dangerous touch-and-go situation. Gunshots start going off while we're discussing what we were supposed to do. And I hear in the background the police yelling, go, go, go.

They storm into a building, no situational awareness. Gunshots going off. This is the kind of things cops do, especially in urban communities where guns are acquired in illegal manners, exploiting huge loopholes that even gun owners believe we should close. This is the bravery of cops. And what Obama's task force did, which was so brilliant, is that let's focus on the data because the data is how we're going to start solving some of these problems. So let me give you an example. There was a horrible incident in the South. Many of you remember, just the visual alone still haunts me, of a white police officer sitting on a black teenage girl at a block party. Unacceptable use of physical force. Well,

what Obama started doing through their effort was saying that there are things called predictive analytics. That if you look at certain things that start happening, you can actually predict when a police officer might lose themselves and do something that's heinous and should be condemned. But I know cops. You don't understand what cops deal with today, the kind of disrespect. Imagine being that cop that just stormed the building I told you about, an incident that all of us would remember. But yet when you get there, this is the truth of that incident. There is a dead baby that's just been shot that you then pick up and try to save.

Rush to an ambulance waiting outside. Imagine the trauma of that. What's that cop do that night? They go home, they see their wives, they come back to work, and they show up the next day. And they're expected to go to a traffic stop, make a stop,

and that person in their constitutional rights cusses out that police officer. That gives no police officer who gets cusses out that police officer. That gives no police officer who gets cussed out has any right to pull you out of that car, to put you in a headlock. They should take that cussing and if the person's violating the law, you're in your First Amendment rights to tell me, a U.S. Senator, which I hear often, call me a mother. On Mother's Day, I should get an award because that mother usually is followed by something else. But this is what they found with that cop that sat on that 14-year-old. One of the best predictors of police

officers losing it and crossing that line is suicides. Now, I worked at a suicide crisis hotline. It is an emotional thing when you're dealing with somebody that's mentally ill or on the verge of taking their lives. And what they found is that a person who has that, it almost should be a ping in someone's file that that cop should be pulled aside, get some counseling and support. Well, and they said that's one of the best predictors for when a police officer loses it and crosses that line. Well, the guy that did this, this is from one of Obama's data people said to me, had two suicides in the last few weeks before that incident. So I'm just saying,

why are we fighting each other when if we stop and take a breath and all of us admit, if the former head of the FBI could admit, we have a problem with police implicit racial bias. It is a problem in this country. I've seen police directors around our country admit we have a problem with implicit racial bias. Let's all take a breath, not get defensive and say, let's do something about this constructive, practical and evidence based. But right now we're engaged in almost a dumb debate because we don't even have the data to argue over. I believe from my own personal life growing up as a young black guy that when I lived in a community with my white friends, I got pulled over a lot more than they did. And we should do something about it. But we should start arming ourselves with the data and the information. So my legislation is about collecting that data

and creating incentives for police departments all around the country to confront the truth of implicit racial bias in policing. So everything you're just saying, data-based legislation, looking at each other, having empathy for each other, reaching across the aisle. It sounds a lot like our old boss, Barack Obama, right? When he started running in 07, I remember he started, you know, one of his first speeches at the DNC was, you know, one of our biggest battles isn't about legislation, isn't about ideas, it's about we're battling cynicism, right? People don't believe. And because politics is broken. You're right that Trump is more of a symptom than the

cause of all of our problems. But one thing I worry about, and of the many things, even after Trump leaves the presidency, is the damage he's done to people's belief in what this country can be and in working with each other and seeing each other and being one united country is severe. And it's going to take a lot of digging. Where do we begin on that? Because now we have, you know, even on our side of the aisle, we'll have people who are angry and think the Democrats should fight more and be tougher and be more strident and more partisan. And how do you weave this back together? How do you begin to weave this back together and get people to believe in something again? Look, you're asking on a day that I lost it, my temper,

and had to tweet back at the President of the United States who talked about a person in the media who was on Mika on Morning Joe in such a vile way. And I just said, this is unbecoming for a 10-year-old, not to mention the President of the United States of America. And, you know, James Baldwin has this wonderful quote where he says, children are never good at listening to their elders, but they never fail to imitate them. says children are never good at listening to their elders, but they never fail to imitate them. And so the highest office of the land is embodying a level of character that is offensive, a lack of character that is offensive. But this is a problem, and this is what I personally struggle with. We tend to project out the change we want to see in the world. These people need to change. These people need to change. And we never look at ourselves. I don't think anything changes in this world unless we're willing to. And so in my own life like I'm sorry to go back to another poor black

community now let's go to North Carolina there's nine million pigs in North Carolina you're gonna wonder where I'm going with this how to Corey how to just give me a little attitude here let's go give me some runway I know this may not sound like a kosher story, but give me a moment. I promise you I will circle back to what we're talking about. There are 9 million pigs in North Carolina. There are 9 million people in New Jersey. Pigs produce 10 times the waste matter that human beings do. New Jersey, we have waste treatment plants that deal with this in an ecological way. In North Carolina, that is a whole lot of pig stuff. And so they fill massive lagoons with it. And they take that lagoon stuff, I've gone down and witnessed this, and spray it over fields. I watched it missed

off of the property of these massive pig farms into black communities. And these African American communities, I've sat down with some of these amazing grassroots leaders, are like we're prisoners in our own home. Can't open our window, can't run our air conditioning. We have, again, respiratory diseases, cancers, the industrial animal processes. The biggest company down there, I think this is the biggest one, is a Chinese-owned company. And so they've poisoned black communities. Land value has gone down. Again, abhorrent. I challenge everybody. The stench and the spell in the air. Why am I talking about that? It's because I'm as an individual every day enjoying to go to the market and buy my bacon. I get it for cheap prices. Having no understanding that this corporation is outsourcing its pain, its costs onto poor black people in North Carolina and some white people in those communities

and internalizing all their profits, and I'm benefiting from it. I'm participating in a system that is evil because of the suffering, human suffering it's costing people and cancer. I mean, I literally had a Vietnam veteran tell me, I left to go to the Vietnam War, so excited to come home to my community. And I suddenly became a prisoner in my own home. And so what I'm saying is, is that I do this. It's my job. I point out injustices. I fight for legislation, but I really go home every day and say, I'm this. It's my job. I point out injustices. I fight for legislation. But I really go home every day and say, I'm responsible. What am I doing?

How can I change better to see the world, to change the world around me? I was at a Humane Society event. And we're talking about compassion and love and animals. And somebody brings me a tweet to Paul Ryan that is so angry, mean, and vile. I'm at this loving, I'm glowing. I'm feeling the energy here. Moby was there, and he's such a great dude.

And they show me a tweet that is so Connor to that. And I hugged him and was gentle because I want to look to myself before I criticize somebody else. But I couldn't help thinking that if you want to see love in the world, you're not going to accomplish that by being hateful. If you want to see more kindness in the world, you're not going to accomplish that by being mean. And so we are at this point now in American politics where it has gotten. And I hate to tell you this. I'm a progressive Democrat. I desperately think we need to be moving towards universal health care. I have views that I desperately think that we need to change the way this country is going. But I also know that we're not going to get there in a Democratic way.

We're not going to get there in a Republican way. The only way to get there is finding ways for us as citizens to go there together. And I want to win the intellectual arguments, and I work that way. But something's happening right now where we are so reflexively against each other. One of the lowest points of the last presidential election for me, not as low as the outcome, but was watching the presidential debates, the Republican debates, where my governor, where I can write a dissertation on my disagreements with Chris Christie, but he's a human, and I see his humanity, I see his dignity, and I acknowledge that.

He's getting pilloried for hugging Barack Obama. Pillaried for hugging, for human contact is being vilified in our public discourse. And when did he hug him? It was after Hurricane Sandy. The president comes in to view the damage. He walks down, and the two of the men hug. And I'm a hugger. And it wasn't really a good hug.

It was one of those. Sort of an awkward. It was an awkward man hug. You know, it was like. Bro slap. Bro slap, exactly. I don't really want to touch you because, you know. But my point is, is I'm going to fight like hell against this president.

But I'm not going to let him change me. I still remember I got a lot of flack from my side of the political aisle because the president during the conventions tweeted out something negative about me, which actually made me feel really good because he had attacked everybody in the Senate from Elizabeth Warren to John McCain. I was like, I feel left out. I'm not important enough with the president to say something really vile with me. And I was sitting next to Chris Cuomo and he goes, what's your message to the president? What are you going to say? And I think Chris Cuomo was ready for me to fire back. And I said, look, I'm going to say I love you. And I don't want you to be my president. I'm going to work as hard as hell against you to

be my president. But I'm not going to let you turn me into something that I'm not and something that I don't think we need in this country. I know this is that people can make fun of me for saying this, but I think this country was founded by imperfect men who put forth genius, but they were savagely imperfect. I mean, in fact, they called Native Americans savages in our Declaration of Independence. It's still there. That racism is still there. That bigotry is still there. Women weren't referred to at all. I always say that Stokely Carmichael, who I think had the best joke, he said, constitute, constitute. I can only say three-fifths of the word. So this country seeped in bigotry, sexism, hate, racism. These men, these geniuses were able to put forth ideals that were bigger than them, but they knew something

that is so important. They knew that this country could not make it because we're the first oldest constitutional democracy on the planet Earth right now. We're not formed because we all pray a lot. We're not a theocracy. We're not formed because we all look alike. We're not a descendant from the same family tree. We're saying what's going to hold this country together are these ideals, which are not worth the paper they're written on unless they're lived in the hearts of the people. And the great thing about it is those ideas that these geniuses put forward that were so much more bigger than they were, inspired generations of people to say, yeah, you may not have included me. Susan B. Anthony said, this is going to include

me. You may not have included me, but Sojourner Truth says this is going to include me. But the point I'm trying to make is the one thing in the Declaration of Independence that is at the end, rather, and isn't that nod towards racism like calling Native American savages, is the end where they basically make the greatest testimony to love. They say we must mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Now, I try to think about that a lot. Like, am I showing sacred honor as I go about in my politics? about that a lot. Like, am I showing sacred honor as I go about in my politics? I cannot get to anywhere in this country I don't think that's noble and right without that ideal of love and

commitment to my fellow American. And we don't have to like each other all the time, but we shouldn't be striving just for tolerance. Tolerance is a cynical state of mind. We should be striving for love. And this is what I know about why I'm here, why I'm the fourth elected African American in the history of our country to the United States Senate since Reconstruction. I got here because of a conspiracy of love. I got here by ordinary Americans who got woke and saw the dignity of someone who was in Birmingham that was black and they were white, and they came from New Jersey to march with them. I'm here because of people who literally in this town fought against companies that weren't hiring blacks and had my dad become hired as the first black executive salesman for IBM. I can go through the stories on how individual Americans,

just seeing things that were wrong and deciding to stand up and do what was right, not waiting for the president, not waiting for senators, not waiting for Congress, but said, you know what? I may not be able to do everything, but in the cause of this country and in the cause of love for my fellow American, I'm going to make a sacrifice for this country. And so, you know what? The biggest thing we underestimate is how powerful we are as Americans. Alice Walker said the most common way people give up their power is not realizing they have it in the first place. And we, each of us, can do individual things that could radiate on history. And I know we're running late, but I just want to tell you this. It was a shocking moment for me. This week, I had the incredible privilege of

sitting on the Capitol steps, which I thought was just going to be a Facebook Live, me and John Lewis. I called some of my friends, stopped by. It turns out to be hundreds and hundreds of people coming to see John Lewis, sitting on the Capitol steps. It turned out to be one of the affirming moment, talking about this healthcare bill and all that. I had a chance to say this to John Lewis, which I was surprised. I don't think I ever said it before. I wrote about it in my book, but I never said it to him. I grew up in a very privileged town because of civil rights activists through something called the Fair Housing Council. And literally white people, black people in a storefront that said this is crazy that most towns in Bergen County won't let black people live in there. And the experience blacks would have is they'd go look at a house.

The real estate agent would say this has been sold. Oh, this was pulled off the market. That's what my parents experienced when they were moving from D.C. to New Jersey. They got the Fair Housing Council. Some lawyers set up a sting operation. My parents would go look at a house. The white couple would follow them, find out the house is still for sale after my parents told me it was already sold. They fell in love with this house, the one I grew up in, and they were told it was sold.

The white couple comes. It's still for sale. The white couple put a bid on the house, and the bid was accepted. Papers were drawn up. On the day of the closing, the white couple doesn't show up. My dad did, and a volunteer lawyer, they confront the real estate agent who then doesn't just say, okay, you got me. I'm breaking the law. No, this guy punches my dad's lawyer in the face, sigs a dog on my dad. So we moved in there under this terrible cloud of just violence.

And so then we become, as my father affectionately called us, the four raisins in a tub of sweet vanilla ice cream. And so now picture this this Monday. I'm sitting on the Capitol steps. I am now a United States senator. And trust me, if those folks hadn't done that fight, I wouldn't be here. And I can say that a thousand times over. If my dad, born poor in the Deep South, if family that wasn't their blood didn't take my dad in, I wouldn't be here. If the people in the church in that town didn't put money in a collection plate, dollar bills, what's the ROI on helping my dad go to college to break our history of having no college in my family? But this is what got me on those steps talking about health care with John Lewis, about individuals

in this country not realizing their power. I turned to him and tell him, I don't know if you know this, but I had to go back to write my book. I had to fact check every story I was telling in my life because I didn't want a Ben Carson moment and have something I was saying. Smart. Smart, yeah. So I decided I'm going to go back and track down. And I was going back. I lived in high-rise projects in the neighborhood I still live in right now. I found guys that were dealing drugs when I first arrived on the scene. Everybody I could find. But I said, I've got to find these lawyers.

This story, I mean, my dad, every time he would tell the story, the dog would get bigger. And, you know, soon it was a pack of wolves that he fought to get me into the town. So I had to find all these folks. Long story short, long story longer, I find the lawyer that organized these folks,

the guy that got a case file handed to him carrying Carolyn Booker. And I said, why would you, a white guy in the 60s who is barely making it, struggling to start your business, anybody who's tried to start a business knows how hard it is. I said, why would you do what you're doing? And this is his response to me. And this is why I told this to John Lewis on the steps during one of the most important healthcare fights. I say, this is what he said to me, John, Congressman Lewis. And he said to me, I know the day that I made the decision. And I go, what day was it? He goes, Corey, it was

a Monday. And I go, how do you know it was a Monday? He's 84 years old, thinking back to the 1960s. And he goes, Corey, because I was sitting comfortably home on my couch watching TV, and I saw a bunch of people trying to march across a bridge called the Edmund Pettus Bridge. and I saw a bunch of people trying to march across a bridge called the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And I was so shocked and moved that I told my law partner that Monday we have to go to Alabama, and he just shook his head and said, we can't afford to close this place. So we decided, you know what, we're just two guys. Let's get on the phone and find out if anybody in New Jersey might need some legal help. And we found the Fair Housing Council. And I told that to John, and he looked surprised. And I said, sir, I don't know if you and those other marchers knew the power of love. And one person standing up for injustice in

Alabama instantaneously changed the heart of people in New Jersey, who then instantaneously, through their work, changed the outcome of thousands of people's lives in New Jersey, literally leaped geography and leaped time to affect generations yet unborn. I'm here because Americans whose names I don't know put dollar bills in collections plates. Americans I don't know and can't name stood on a bridge for one act of protest. One act of protest changed hearts and lives. That's the power of love. Don't let Donald Trump turn you into something that you're not. Don't let hate make you hateful. Don't let darkness make you dark. We have one choice in America, a country conceived in the Declaration of Independence through this commitment to an uncommon commitment to one

another, that we have to give each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Don't let a healthcare bill turn us into something we're not. That's about tax cuts for the millionaires. We come from a country that says, you are important to me. We need each other. I'm going to give you my sacred honor. I'm going to give you my love. I'm going to give you my life if necessary. And in this battle, we've got to remember that. In this time of a president of the United States demeaning and degrading other people, don't demean him. Don't degrade him. Don't be what he is. above that and as King and Gandhi who defeated some of the most powerful forces

on earth will have shown us that love if we are bold and sacrificing and willing to give it all love ultimately will win the day

and we as a country will get out of this period and get back on the road to justice alright that's a good place to end my questions feel kind of small I was going to ask about Stanford football. Oh my God. Well, the older I get, the better I was at Stanford.

Thank you so much. You're very generous with your time. We really appreciate this. I appreciate you. This is great. Thank you. Okay, everyone. That's all the time we have for today. Are you guys going to any state beaches this 4th of July or what's going on yeah there's this uh big beautiful empty beach and there's just one criminal on it otherwise empty so i think it's something that i might go check out gruff talk chris christie ladies and gentlemen you you gotta love i forget what the name of the hospital association is like horizon or something like that. Their spokesman just absolutely savaged Christie and called it like the twilight of his failed political career.

I mean, he cannot catch a break. This is one of the dumbest political moves I've ever seen, just sitting on the beach with your family while everyone else sweats it out. But congrats, Chris. Would you say that it has made him a big target? For people who don't know what we're talking about um chris christie uh closed all the state beaches in new jersey because of a budget fight and except he decided to go to one of the closed beaches with his family outside of a very expensive residence that the taxpayers pay for for the governor in new jersey which i don't know why they do that by the way um but

anyway and then he lied about it they asked him have you had any have you got any son this weekend and he said no and then they're like okay. They asked him, have you got any sun this weekend? And he said no. And then they're like, okay, well, we have this picture of you on the beach with your family while it's closed. And then the governor's spokesman was just like, oh, well, no, he wasn't getting any sun because he had a hat on. Nailed it.

Good move. Good cleanup. I also just love that, like, hey, governor, you get any sun this weekend? And Chris Christie kind of looks him up. Um, no. But like, hey, governor, you get any sun this weekend? And Chris Christie kind of looks him up. Moron. Gotcha. The guy has a 14% approval rating on his way out of office. He's on his way to try to break the record for a low approval rating.

He couldn't get hired in the Trump administration. That's how toxic he is. Currently holding the record is Rod Blagojevich of Illinois. That's who has it right now. He left office with a 7% approval. He's an actual criminal. He left the office in fucking handcuffs. That's the level. So Chris Christie is knocking at the door, Rod Blagojevich. But you know what, though? Honestly, I will say that there's one aspect of this I respect, which is when your approval rating is at 14% and you're leaving in ignominy and disgrace,

like, okay, go to the beach. What's going to happen? What can they do to him? Go to the beach, Chris. You've destroyed your career. He gives zero fucks right now. Have a great time. Get some sun. And that's our show. This is what you get for standing behind donald trump at his fucking press conference looking like a moron everyone everyone

who just sort of gives in to donald trump and decides to like give up their dignity in exchange for i don't know some white house job in the fucking trump administration this is what you get just couldn't happen couldn't happen to a better guy. You are the equivalent of a small businessman who took a chance and decided to make Donald Trump some cabinets. You end up with fucking nothing. By the way, it's funny that we're doing this because I'm just remembering in the Cory Booker interview,

which all of you just heard, he says some nice things about Chris Christie. I bet he does. Because they work together in New Jersey. So anyway, but he sat in the sun on a beach that he closed that's not a great thing everyone have a great 4th of July and we'll talk to you all on Thursday

take some pictures with members of Congress who are against healthcare make good TV, we live in a TV culture tweet pictures at us, we want to see parades the media is broken. People only care about the dumbest shit. Be part of it. Bye.

Bye, guys.