Pod Save America - “Tweets and Reconciliation.”

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

The fallout continues from last week’s Trump-inspired attack on the U.S. Capitol, as the House prepares to impeach Donald Trump for the second time, and the President’s personal Twitter account is banned forever. Then former Bernie Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir talks to Jon Favreau about how Joe Biden can get a progressive agenda through a closely divided Senate.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, the fallout from last week's Trump-inspired attack on the U.S. Capitol, including new details about how close we came to catastrophe, the debate over a second impeachment, and the end of Trump's tweets forever. Then, I'll talk to former Bernie Sanders campaign manager and Harry Reid senior advisor Fad Shakir about how Joe Biden can get a progressive agenda through a closely divided Senate. But first, love it. How was the show? Great. Love it or leave it. Jason Concepcion joins us to break down the week's news. I made some gay jokes about sports. Went very well. Talked about Deep Blue Sea starring Samuel L. Jackson. And then Zeynep Tufekci was back to talk about social media and incitement and the vaccine rollout. It was a good episode. And we did the rant wheel.

Cool. Yeah. Love the rant wheel. Also, check out the series finale of Gaining Ground in New Georgia, where hosts Rembert Brown and Jewel Wicker will dive into how organizers pulled off one of the most incredible victories in political history last Tuesday. It's a fantastic listen and a much needed dose of good news. So check it out wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to the news. I think the more that we learn about last week's Trump inspired attack on the Capitol that left five dead, the more terrifying and enraging it becomes.

Disagree. So five. Disagree. So five, disagree. No, you think it's fine. Five days later, still haven't had a briefing from a single government agency about what happened. But we have had some outstanding reporting, including two big pieces in the Washington Post and the New York Times over the weekend. There's a lot we still don't know.

But what's clear is that the attackers planned the insurrection online in public. It worried members of Congress who were then assured by law enforcement that they'd be protected, which they weren't, because the 8000 or so Trump supporters overran the 1400 Capitol Police in about 15 minutes. They had long guns, pepper spray, fireworks, climbing gear, metal pipes, baseball bats, Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, and zip ties. We know that they intended to injure, hold hostage, or assassinate elected officials, particularly Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, in order to stop the certification of the election. And they were mere seconds away from entering a chamber full of senators, but were courageously diverted by Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who lured the mob in the other direction at great risk to his own safety. So all this came after the president of the United States told his armed supporters to go, quote, show strength at the Capitol.

And his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, urged them to engage in, quote, trial by combat. Sure enough, one of the attackers can be heard on video inside the Capitol saying, quote, our president wants us here. quote, our president wants us here. So just want to ask to start off, like, have your views of what went down changed at all since Wednesday? And how have they? Love it. I think that what is when you read the accounts of what was taking place inside the Capitol, I think you we still haven't seen enough of the footage from inside the Capitol as it was unfolding. But in these accounts, particularly the one in the Times, you realize how close we were to seeing just dead members of Congress or hostage situations or the Capitol burning to the ground. And I wonder how different this conversation would be if there were dead members of Congress right now or if a whole part of the

Senate had burned. And the fact that the only reason that didn't happen now seems to be because of luck is pretty chilling and should mean we should act as if it did happen because it very well could have happened. Tommy, what about you? Yeah, I mean, look, my instinct is to mock things that frighten me and make fun of them. And that was made easier by some of the initial photos that came out of like ridiculous looking people, right, who were dressed like they were going to Burning Man. But that that really did obscure the real risk. I mean, you mentioned some of the weapons these folks had. I mean, one guy had homemade napalm, right? I mean, these guys were minutes away from killing people. This was a a mob of fascist domestic terrorists attacking the Capitol and they wanted to take out their enemies to help Trump.

And so I think we need to be clear about that. We need to be clear about how the language used by Trump and Rudy Giuliani and like Louie Gohmert, other members of Congress incited these individuals. And what I guess, you know, I've been thinking about a lot since Wednesday is when sectarian violence starts or political violence starts, it can be very hard to stop it. It's hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube because, you know, you're already seeing a lot of these folks openly planning their next attack and they're excited about what they think they accomplished. And so I think we need some real accountability and we need it fast. We need a lot of people arrested. We need them tried, sentenced. The FBI needs to

do a lot more to focus on the threat from these white supremacist groups, move that way up the agenda. And then I think everybody, especially Republicans, need to acknowledge that the language they're using, the lies that they are telling, that's part of the problem. It's part of a bigger story. You know, since day one, Trump has created this political dynamic where if you don't agree with everything he says, no matter how wrong, no matter how absurd, you're against him. You're his enemy. And the Republican Party, by and large, has gone in lockstep with this this this construct he created. And I think you can draw a direct line from that decision and the lies they agreed to tell with in the weakness, frankly, that that shows with what happened. And like we we need to put an end to all of it so it's um it's been a scary scary week yeah i think i'm most scared about the possibility that this wasn't the end of something but the beginning um and it's not just what happened in the capital you're seeing this happen in state capitals all over the country. There's plans to sort of occupy state capitals all over the country. You know, you mentioned the FBI.

There's an FBI bulletin out this morning that said they're planning, you know, around the inauguration between the 16th and the 20th. More, they called them, the FBI called them armed protests. I think it's something a little different than that at this point, around the Capitol, around the inauguration to disrupt the inauguration. So it's really scary. And it's also, it's happening out in the open, right? Like, and the attack was planned out in the open on a lot of these platforms, like storm the Capitol, the phrase storm the Capitol was mentioned a hundred thousand times in the 30 days preceding January 6th, according to Zygna Labs, a media insights company. So I guess the other question is, like, what do we know so far about why the Capitol Police were so unprepared and why it took nearly three hours to get a National Guard

deployment approved? Love it. Yeah, I mean, look, it seems like as with all things in the past four years, there is a mix of malevolence and incompetence. We are still learning about what the Trump administration did to prevent the National Guard from being deployed, what happened in the very important minutes and hours as the attack was unfolding before they could get the Guard deployed. It does also seem like there was just a lack of preparedness writ large that was not political, but actually just incompetence and the failure to properly imagine just how bad this could be. Um, you know, there's a moment in the, uh, uh, in the, in the times look at all of this, where you have members of Congress,

Jason Crow, who's a veteran, was talking about this, that members of Congress took off their pins and were led through the hall of the Capitol through an unidentified SWAT team. And as they're moving through the halls of the Congress, they're holding back rioters, they're finding paths to get to safety. And what you realize is like in that moment, you know, the fact that they had to take off their pins was because they did not believe that they could be protected and they were trying to find, that they might have to pretend they weren't members of Congress or they didn't want to be obvious members of Congress. And to me like that, that captured like the total lawlessness of the moment that what happened once the siege was unfolding was entirely improvised, right?

You have armed members of security details holding people back with guns on the House floor. You have improvised escape routes being planned in real time. You have desperate calls from Steny Hoyer, from Slotnick of Michigan, from other members of Congress, completely outside of what the process should be just to try to get help from somewhere. So like there is a breakdown from top to bottom. It does seem like one important piece of this will be the inability of people inside the Trump administration to do things that would run counter to what Trump would want. And that I think is a big piece of this. But then you also have what looks like just a lack of preparedness from Sergeant of Arms, from the Capitol Police, the leadership,

not the members, the leadership, and from the city of D.C. It's part of it. Yeah, some of this seems, I mean, one thing to understand is the duty to protect the Capitol and to protect members of Congress is sort of a patchwork of different agencies, right? And so you've got the Capitol Police just to protect the whole Capitol building. And then you've got sort of the House Security Services, which is the House Sergeant of Arms, the Senate Security Services, which is the Senate Sergeant of Arms. The Senate Sergeant of Arms, House Sergeant of Arms, and the Capitol Police Chief have all resigned at this point. The Capitol Police Chief gave an interview to the Washington Post late last night, basically saying he asked

the House and Senate Sergeant at Arms to beef up the forces, to beef up the protection in advance of this. And they refused. And part of the reason they didn't want National Guard troops is because they didn't want the they didn't like the look of some people like the look of what the apparently DOD said this to the look of National Guard, you know, protecting the Capitol, especially after what happened this summer when security services, when security forces and police forces were deployed against peaceful protesters. I mean, it's enraging. Yeah. I mean, I think that the look that they're talking about there was when they helped clear the way for Trump to walk to a church for a photo op. I mean, I agree that was

not a great look, but we need hearings. We need hearings under oath before we know what really happened, because a lot of people are pointing fingers. But the one thing I'm a little bit sympathetic to is this, you know, idea that they missed a lot of intelligence in plain sight because people post crazy or scary stuff online every day. But, you know, in this case, there were specific clear warnings about extremist groups in their planning, and those were just ignored and they were flagged for them. So we need to figure out why those were ignored. Trump did a ton of crowd building for the event, I think helped it explode in size right before it happened. And so the Capitol Police just had nowhere near

enough manpower to deal with the crowd this big. And look, there were some Capitol Police officers you saw on video responding and fighting like incredibly bravely. But candidly, like Capitol Police aren't, they're not SWAT team members. They're not US Secret Service like cat teams that are heavily armed and are like the, you know, former, you know, college football players, right?

They're more like security guards, right? So they were outgunned and outmanned. And so the National Guard wasn't pre-positioned. And then when it was requested, seemingly, that the Pentagon was slow to deploy them. So there's a lot going on here. The failures are multi-layered and just disastrous. Like you said, there needs to be, you know, we need to get people under oath. There needs to be investigations because there's a lot of blame flying around and it's hard to sort of sort through all the bureaucratic morass here. The one piece of reporting that needs to be borne out here is the idea that Donald Trump himself delayed the National Guard, resisted deploying the National Guard and was actually enjoying the images from the White House at first. Put those sources on the record. Put those sources on the record. I'm sick of reading

multiple sources, tell CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post. Who was it? Was it like Matthew Pottinger, right? The national security guy who just resigned. Who was saying this? Who saw this? Who witnessed this? Put them on the record. And there was also some reporting as it was unfolding that like the order to send them was happening outside of the chain of command, that it might've been through Pence, that it might've been through the army directly. And like, those things are all, those are like, you know, if the deployment saves lives, but has done it against what the president wishes, because it's an emergency, like that raises a whole host of questions. The other piece of this too is like, I've seen some, there's already this push of like,

oh, what laws do we need to change? Like, where do we need to beef up? And man, like we spend decades building a national security apparatus to protect buildings and institutions around DC, but they don't work if they're not employed. They don't work if the people in charge don't recognize the threat. And the idea that like, I hope that we spend the time investigating how much went wrong because procedures were inadequate, because policies were inadequate, and how much of it was just a lack of imagination, a lack of preparedness in the moment that doesn't

require making D.C. even more of a police state than it's already become since 9-11. Someone tell me what authorities you don't think that these law enforcement has. Like what specifically are people referencing when they say they need to pass new laws? Is it to deal with like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers? Is it about DC? It's like jumping to action like that seems very dangerous. Yeah. And like it's not as though we lack the power or to clear the Capitol,

to protect the Capitol, because it showed up. It just showed up really fucking late. And again, we do protect the Capitol once a year, every year around the around the State of the Union. And it's guarded like, you know, a fortress. All right. So let's talk about holding those responsible for this attack accountable, starting with the president of the United States. On Sunday, Nancy Pelosi announced that the House will vote today on a resolution calling on Vice President Pence and the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. I believe they tried to use that unanimous pass it by unanimous consent. Obviously, a Republican objected because they're Republicans. So now they'll vote on it. So now they'll vote on it. If if they refuse, if Pence refuses and the cabinet refuses, as they most likely will.

Pelosi said that the House will vote midweek to impeach Donald Trump for the second time. The resolution, which has already been signed by 210 Democrats, would need just eight more votes to pass. And Democrats say they have those votes. The resolution reads as follows, quote, Donald John Trump engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors by willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States. So you still need at least 17 Republican senators to convict and remove Trump. And Mitch McConnell said that the earliest he'd begin a trial is January 19th, which is the day before Trump is scheduled to leave for office. He said that because in order to bring the Senate back, you need unanimous consent, which is all 100 senators, which, of course, you wouldn't get. So knowing all this, Tommy, is impeachment the right move here? I mean, I think it's the only move. You know,

the president of the United States incited an armed attack on the Capitol. If you don't impeach him, then when do you do it? And like, again, I can't get over the reporting from aides who say he was pleased with what he was watching, right? I mean, he is dangerous. And these groups, these terrorists, these domestic terrorists are planning more attacks on federal and local governments, right? I don't think we took seriously enough the kidnapping attempt on Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan.

And we're not going to get another warning. That should have been our warning to prevent this fascist attack on the Capitol. And so I don't know how the politics are going to go. If the Republican Party was smart, they would see this as a gift to them. They can impeach him. They can remove Trump and they can prevent Trump from running again for federal office. It could be the greatest thing ever happened to them to get out of jail free card, get rid of this guy for fucking ever. Just I think they have to do it. And look, I'm I understand all the downsides.

I'm worried about the Biden agenda. I'm worried about Republicans never, ever doing the right thing. But I just think what other choice do you have here? Love it. What do you think? Yeah, look, a lot has changed in the week since we last recorded. I think that the political implications are, I think, completely unclear. We don't have an election for two years.

So does this make us safer as a country to send the impeachment to the Senate? I think the answer is yes. I think one of the great tricks Trump has pulled over the last four years is convincing mostly Republicans who have told it to not just us, but to themselves that Trump doesn't respond to incentives, that he's just a kind of, you know, Trump will be Trump. But actually, time and time again, political incentives, pressure, consequences are the only things he cares about. He's a solipsist. He's a narcissist. He doesn't have any value. So the only thing that's ever mattered is pressure. And so the idea of an impeachment hanging over

Trump over the next 10 days, to me, I think does have value and does, I think, at the very least force Republicans to confront what they've participated in and doesn't allow them off the hook with easy statements. So yeah, I mean, I just like, I don't know what other choice do you have. I think the only people being honest about Donald Trump are the insurrectionists in the Capitol and Democrats who want to impeach. Those are the people being honest about Donald Trump. Those are the people taking him seriously. And I think we should be taking him seriously, as seriously as those insurrectionists. The only people who aren't taking him seriously are the Hollies and Cruces and McCarthy's and Stefanik's and Zeldin's of the world who want to foment insurrection and not be held responsible for it, who want the benefits of Trump's fascistic

movement without the cost. And I think we should not pretend that this is on the level. We should just do the honest thing. Yeah, like I don't have I don't think there's any greater chance that Republicans convict him today than they would have a week ago. I don't think you'll find the 17 senators, but I don't think we have an option to impeach. I think that is what, like you said, Tommy, that is what impeachment is for. And I think we have to try, and I think we have to throw it in their laps, and they can decide that they wanted to protect Donald Trump after he incited attack on the Capitol. And if it's the decision that they want to make, then Republicans can make that decision.

I also think like the politics, look, this is binary. Either you impeach him or you don't. If you don't impeach him, like we have like Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey, Ben Sasse, Mitt Romney are all out there saying he should resign. You got Chris Christie, who was just fucking prepping the guy for the last presidential debate, saying he'd vote to impeach him. Mick Mulvaney, what former chief of staff is saying he'd vote to impeach him. Adam Kitzinger, Republican in the House saying he'd vote to impeach him. You can't have all these Republicans

saying that they'd vote to impeach him or that he should resign. And then as a Democrat, you just fucking take a pass on it. It's just not an option. It's not an option. The counter argument, I guess, just to make it is that it will take weeks. It will delay Biden from getting his cabinet nominees confirmed. It will delay putting on the floor $2,000 checks for COVID relief and relief to states to help them deal with the vaccine distribution and just lots of other parts of the Biden agenda. It might be a thing that Republicans rally around politically, and suddenly it helps them get back on Trump's team. I mean, those are worthy,

worthwhile counter arguments to hear. I still land in the place of like, you got to impeach this guy. So I understand why McConnell, who is, you know, down to very few cards in his hand, just staring at it. They're just, he keeps losing good cards, but, but, uh, is saying, oh, if you do this, uh, I will begin impeachment after Biden takes office and that will screw Biden. But it's not actually clear if that's, that's a choice, right? That's going to be a choice, uh, in the Senate. And by the way, it's not McConnell's choice. Not, not his choice anymore. So I, I, it's not clear to me that Democrats can't move forward with nominations or with legislation around the impeachment. Because I mean, that was one of the arguments we made the last time we impeached Donald Trump. Yeah, it's just like a four time thing. I don to take both of the arguments that Tommy raised separately, because I think they both have different responses.

The first is what you were just saying, Lovett, and Jim Clyburn over the weekend said that Democrats might wait until after Biden's first hundred days to send the articles of impeachment over to the Senate, which would give Biden the time to tackle his agenda before a trial, which could take quite a long time. Sammy Hoyer, the number two Democrat today, said he wants them sent immediately. So obviously there's always fantastic coordination among the top three Democrats in the House. Just legendary message coordination with those three. But anyway, like I was looking at what you could do for a schedule like this is if this is one article of impeachment. You could bring the case extremely fast once you send the articles over. It could you could do it in a week. Right. And so now let's say some of

these appointments are really important to confirm. You could actually maybe take a week to like confirm Tony secretary of state secretary of defense, a couple of the big ones, and then do the trial that could last a week. Like, I think you could I think it's it's been over exaggerated how long and drawn out an impeachment would take. Like, I think you could do it relatively quickly on the second part, which is, you know, it could rally the Republican base. This is sort of the argument that a lot of Republicans are making. A group of House Republicans who actually did the bare minimum right thing and voted to certify Biden's win, wrote a letter to Biden urging him to persuade Pelosi to drop impeachment in the name of unity and healing. And also said so that Trump supporters don't become angrier and more violent.

Like, I don't know what you made us do. Well, look, of course, like, I don't think we can make any decisions based on what it's going to do to the Trump base. The Trump base is pretty fucking angry and a good portion of them now are pretty fucking violent. And we saw that. And if you don't impeach them, they're going to be violent. And if you do impeach them, they're going to be violent. And if you don't impeach them, they're going to be angry. And if you do, they're going to be angry. And I don't think if this were foreign terrorists, if this was after 9-11 and they said, if you strike back at us, we'll hit America even harder.

Would that stop us from striking back? Yeah, I find that an imperfect comparison, but I still think it's an imperfect. But the idea that someone's going to commit more violence and so we're not going to hold them accountable because they're going to commit more violence. I think it's weak and pathetic. And the way that Republicans could get through that concern is by telling the truth to their base, by letting them know that the election wasn't stolen, that Donald Trump lost, that votes have been counted fairly, that the steal is not occurring and nor does it need to be stopped. That is the way through that. But that requires a tiny bit of political courage and the knowledge that Don Jr. might come to your backyard

and like campaign for your primary opponent. At some point, the Republican Party has to decide that they don't give a fuck. Otherwise, they are their party of Trump through 2024. We cannot let ourselves be held hostage to domestic terrorism like this. We can't, you know, we can't, we can't not act because we're afraid we're going to live in constant fear that any political move that's made is going to enrage and inflame a base of people who've become violent. Yeah. I mean, look, I was thinking about this, right? This, these calls to unity and it's, you know, it it's a it's obviously not being made in good faith, as many have pointed out, like, was unity your goal when you voted to overturn the election? Right. Like, obviously, after the siege, after the siege. But, you know, after 9-11, unity was defined as embrace our worldview. We want unity, embrace our worldview.

And it feels like after the siege at the Capitol, unity is being defined as ignore our worldview. Just pretend what happened didn't happen. And to Tommy, yeah, oh, this base is inflamed. This base is angry. This base has violent elements that we saw on full display. It's been fomented by Trump and McCarthy and Hawley and Cruz. But what is the way out of it, right? And it's like, when people talk about unity, like, what do they mean? They mean elections aren't viewed as existential, that we argue from a shared set of facts, that we treat each other in good faith and respect each other as, you know, with intellectual

honesty, and we don't attempt to burn the Capitol to the ground, right? I think that's like a fair, fair number of things that you would want in unity. If it has any meaning in our politics, it means some version of that. How do you get there? Well, you'll never get there if you don't tell the, if you, if you basically allow a huge swath of the country to be completely outside of honest debate about, you know, on a set of facts about, you know, the reality of our situation. No, you have to be honest. You have to start. It may, it is divisive, right? Impeachment is divisive. Why is it divisive? Because right now the truth is divisive. And how do you change that? Well, you change it slowly by being honest over

time and being as honest as you can and, and hoping that over time the truth becomes less divisive. That's the only way overturning the election is divisive. Yeah, pretty divisive. Like asking Joe Biden all and they're all, you know, Joe Biden's their target because Joe Biden campaigned on unity and healing. Right. So they all run to Joe Biden to say, oh, stop Nancy Pelosi from this impeachment, you know. But like, why do they keep asking us to somehow work to forge unity? Like, what is a single Republican done to bring about unity since this attack or since this election? Because they are the party of victimhood. They are the party of grievance.

They always have to be under assault, whether it's from social media or Joe Biden or anything else. And so like this, that's kind of their, that's their safe space. That's where they end up. And so like, I think you just got to fight through that and call it out for being nonsense. And hopefully the media will help here since they witnessed what happened. But also the idea that you could punt this conversation a hundred days and say, Hey, America, remember that horrific trauma we all experienced three months ago? Time to dredge it back up like that. That to me is the worst of all worlds. I don't know what that does for you. It's yeah, this isn't Tenet. You can't delay its release, you know, and hope it finds an audience. Our like very short memories is also

one of the best arguments for impeachment and impeachment with the additional vote that Donald Trump can never hold office again, because there's a lot of people and some Republicans to like he's done. Just get him out of office. No, he'll we'll never have to think about him again. No, no. That's what we're saying now. A year from now, when he's, you know, running around campaigning again to run another race in 2024, it brings me like oh well why did he do that capital yeah whatever you know like this is what happens all the time memories are fucking imagine the bounce back profiles find it is stride in iowa donald trump today blah blah blah at an event

endorsing marjorie green for minority leader donald trump etc he needs that's what he needs to be banned from ever holding office again. That is the way. My message to all Republicans is Donald Trump said that the Iowa election results were rigged in 2016. Right. He accused Ted Cruz of cheating. He did it again about the popular vote in 2016 and then he did it again in 2020. This train is coming for you guys.

Right. Like if he doesn't win in 2024, it's going to be rigged again. This mob is coming after you, all your primary opponents, all you elected officials, like you deal with it now or you deal with it later. You know, I look, I do things to screw over future me all the time, but those aren't wise decisions. Like deal with it now. Yeah. I don't think they're, they don't, these people have not, long-term thinking has not been the hallmark of their strategy. I'm talking about, you know, dinner plans with people I don't like.

So again, an imperfect comparison, but you know, you get me. The, yeah, it's, it is a sad, it may be necessary, but it is quite a sad statement that we generally view the only way to stop Donald Trump from sucking the fucking life force out of our politics in the next Republican primary is from permanently banning him from seeking office. It is quite a sad statement of the state of politics. Yeah. He continues to be a formidable force. But even those who say that he isn't,

we are at least three years away from voters in Republican primaries proving that. So even if someone else emerges, even if there is a hope that he is no longer the leader of the Republican Party, we are years away from having that confirmed. Years away. They want to live like this for years? Just call some of the House, the Senate, and the presidency. So, you know, after Trump, the next question is what to do about his accomplices, namely the 147 Republican House members and eight Republican senators who voted to block certification of the election just hours after a violent mob tried to do the same thing by force.

This group includes Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and the number one and two House Republican leaders, Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise. So Cruz and Hawley are already facing calls to resign or to be expelled, which would require a two thirds vote of the House and the Senate, which is a steep climb to get that many Republican votes, much like impeachment and conviction in the Senate. What if like 100 senators are like, yeah, boot Ted Cruz. Yeah, we're in like unity, unity caucus. Yeah, that would be funny. Just just Ted Cruz and Josh. What are some of the other ways these assholes are being held accountable? I mean, look, these guys like in some ways,

these guys drive me the most crazy, like the cruises and the Hollies, because they know Trump lost the election. They know they're lying and they're just doing it because they want to run for president. And so I love that everyone's calling on them to be expelled. I'd love to see it happen like you, John. I'm skeptical, but I do think it helps that like big Republican political donors, mentors for each of them are calling them out. They're doing so publicly. They're, you know, editorial boards in their states are calling on them to resign. You know, Trump has seemingly been immune to some of these political forces. I don't think that's true for Ted Cruz. I don't think that's true for Josh Hawley. Like, I think you should treat them like pariahs. Maybe long term, they will be able to suck up to the

MAGA base enough and, you know, win the 2024 nomination if Trump doesn't run again. Consider me a little skeptical because at a minimum, that support is going to be split between the Pompeos, the Tom Cottons, the Don Juniors of the world. But we'll see. But I do think that this is a thing that can't be memory hold. I wouldn't be co-sponsoring a bunch of bills with Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz going forward. I would treat them like pariah. Yeah, I mean, I think it's very important. I think what's been clarifying in the last week is, I think for a long time, the prestige of elective office has been used to wash off the stink of the anti-democratic, fascistic, intellectually dishonest, right-wing shit coming out of Republican

leaders. And I think for the first time, the stink is kind of washing off the prestige. Like we see major corporations saying we won't donate to these people, even though it has been our practice to donate to both sides. I think that's really important. Coming for their money is really important. And not letting corporations off the hook who simply say, oh, we donate to leaders of both parties. Obviously, it's all a fucking, you know, nesting doll of shit like that we live in that that that's so important that like corporations just flooding with their packs and their donations to both sides is how these politicians get and stay elected is obviously very sad. But I think that that's important.

The other thing I saw, there is an effort among Democrats in the House to not work with Republicans who voted after the siege. And I think that that's really important. I remember, you know, when I worked for Hillary Clinton in the Senate, you know, she was very proud that she had sponsored bills with virtually every Republican, but the one she wouldn't do it with was with Saxby Chambliss because he ran one of the most despicable campaigns against Max Cleland that anyone had ever seen. And it was a point of moral pride to not work with somebody who would be willing to do that. And I think making sure that what these people did has consequences in every way possible is, I think, really important because I agree. I think expulsion is very, very difficult and not really possible. Well, it's difficult in any circumstance

and difficult in the Senate. In the House, it would basically get rid of most Republicans in the House. I mean, this is what's truly scary. There's a lot of attention rightly focused on Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and a few of the other senators are sort of like new member, you know, wingnuts.

Although, do you know Rick Scott was one of them? So there originally was six senators because that was who objected to the Arizona one. But then there was the late night objection by Holly to Pennsylvania, which also brought in Cynthia Loomis of Wyoming. And Rick Scott, who's the head of the National Republican Senate Campaign Committee. Yeah. They also just decided that he was going to vote objection to. Yeah. And they also just reelected Ronna Romney to head the RNC, even though she's been like the chief propagandist of the Stop the Steal lies. So yeah, they've learned no lessons.

But in the House, like Kevin McCarthy, there's a very good chance that man could become the next Speaker of the House. And he objected after the attack. After the attack just drives me insane. Like everyone who objected before the attack, awful, of course but like the idea that you could be the target of that attack go through that walk back into that

chamber after everything that just happened and basically finish the job that the mob wanted to do by force yeah tried to block the certification of the election is unconscionable i think that the problem obviously in the house is like that's where where you see the fruits of gerrymandering really flowering and growing. Like the worst, craziest people in politics are in the House, in districts that they will never, ever lose unless they cross Donald Trump. So that's why I'm especially hard on people like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and Rick Scott, because they're statewide elected officials. They're more powerful. They should know better because they're educated, relatively intelligent

people. I think some of these House members, you have to wonder how much of this stuff they genuinely believe because they're kind of not all together there. But yeah, it's ugly. I mean, Kevin McCarthy knows better. He does know better. Of course he knows better. He's a coward. He knows better. But he is in a bright red district. He wins by, you know, 66, 67 percent with 66, 67 percent of the vote. He's more worried about a primary. And he has shown himself to be a completely valueless weasel. He was, you know, Paul Ryan without the policy chops.

I would go down the list of all the House members, the Republican House members who voted in like our five, our plus five districts or less and start you know targeting that i agree 2022 for defeat like mike garcia who just beat christie smith here in california 25th like he voted to object yeah that guy's in a in a in a district that's almost democratic there's no way he can survive something like that yeah elise stefanik she decided to go full maga during impeachment and just rake in a bunch of, you know, Republican Trump donor money. And now she has decided that that's her path going forward in perpetuity in Republican politics. And it's it's very sad.

So one of the biggest consequences for Trump's actions on January 6th came Friday afternoon when the president's personal Twitter account was permanently suspended due to the risk of further incitement of violence. Got him, guys.ement of violence got him guys uh trump we got him never again will we say did you see that trump tweet i have to say though while not waking up to a dozen of them has been nice it's been nice yeah no it's i mean you know deplatforming works uh he's also been banned or restricted from nearly every other social media platform including facebook snapchat twitch instagram pinterest interest what was he what was he doing what was the thread on pinterest uh shopify and even stripe has stopped processing his campaign donations over the weekend apple and google announced they were removing parlor

from their app stores a right-wing unmoderated alternative to twitter where much of the capital attack was planned out in the open amazon dealt dealt Parler the final blow, and the company kicked it off its web hosting service altogether. So people have been calling for the company, for Twitter, to ban Trump for years. He's had much worse tweets than the two they finally banned him for. One was, you know, know my supporters voices are important blah blah blah 74 million people and then one was i'm not coming to the inauguration on the 20th um which oh by the way i haven't i haven't heard any uh republicans say that he should go to the inaugural for unity hasn't heard anyone criticize him for that anyway so why why did twitter

finally make this decision? And what did you think of the reasoning, Tommy? So, I mean, I think they suspended him because they were worried about further incitement of violence. And Facebook made a similar argument about their suspension until the end of his term. And so, personally, I think if incitement to violence was your concern, then the time to suspend him was probably when he tweeted when the looting starts, the shooting starts. That seemed pretty clear at the time. But this whole discussion, I think, gets a lot easier for these companies when Trump is the former president for sort of like, you know, First Amendment adjacent issues, but also because he's no longer going to be powerful. Deplatforming him will absolutely curtail his reach.

It had a big impact on people like Alex Jones and Milo and those creeps. But it's important to remember that Trump incited this riot at a speech, at a rally, right? Like he's going to be able to get a message out. He's going to be able to incite people again. Nor does this solve the broader problem on these platforms, right? Like they let Facebook, YouTube, others, they let QAnon fester and grow for years. And if you think about QAnon for a minute and you think about what we saw happen on Wednesday, it is a sprawling, almost impossible to understand conspiracy theory. But the gist is that the government is run by an elite

cabal of satanic pedophiles who rape, kill, and eat children. Now, to me, that's a crazy thing to believe, and I get why people mock it. That's your opinion, Tommy. Which is one man's opinion. But if you sincerely believe that's happening, of course you're willing to do extreme, even violent things to stop children from being harmed, right? So this deplatforming, it doesn't solve the problem of misinformation. It doesn't solve the problem of Facebook's refusal to fact check political ads in the last decade. There's all these problems with these platforms still. And I just I see it getting worse before it gets better, whether or not Trump is on there firing away. I just I'm not that hopeful about it. I'm not that hopeful about it. This impeachment, right, it actually doesn't, even this impeachment around Trump's incitement that we all believe is necessary, it actually doesn't reflect an escalation in Trump's tone. It reflects an escalation in Trump's consequences. And the same can be said about banning Trump from Twitter or Facebook, the decision to remove

Parler, the decision to not process payments. It is not about really an escalation in rhetoric. It is about the attack on the Capitol causing a collective recognition of consequences because Twitter has been failing to enforce its policies for years. Facebook has been failing to enforce its policies for years because Trump was the president. And, you know, cynically, you can also say it is interesting that in the days after it is clear that Democrats will control the House, the Senate, and the presidency and will have the ability to regulate these industries and may pursue changes and, you know, against anti-competitive practices, against hate speech, against incitement, what have you, that suddenly they're behaving more with more integrity.

You know, some Republicans immediately pointed out that, like, you know, there are other world leaders, authoritarians, dictators who've incited violence with Twitter that they you know, Twitter hasn't enforced their terms of service and i hope they do yeah do it like i hope i hope that i hope that after this twitter enforces their terms of service more broadly um and and does more about these problems look this is it i think it's a very tough challenge right because like do we want mark zuckerberg and and jack uh making all the decisions about who gets to use these platforms, which are private companies, but have also become, you know, you could argue public utilities, right? They're the way that people communicate. So like, do we want them making the decisions? No, but do we want like, do we want the next kind of Trump administration making the decisions either about what happens? I don't know if I want that either, right. So you clearly need a legal structure that can survive both, you know, a legal structure that is sort of different than either corporations making decisions on their own about everything that control most of the market because they're basically monopolies.

And let it be. And also like people like Trump making these decisions, if really terrible people end up in government. It's a it is a tough balance. It is. I also will say I talked about this with Zainab Tufekci, who's been thinking about this a long time. And, you know, some of this is is fundamental challenges related to the business model in that engagement is how you make money. It's how you get people to see your ads and click on your ads and share your content. And what we have found is that engagement grows with extremism, with radicalization, with with with, you know, hates with with with the most extreme version of an argument. Right. That's what causes this kind of escalation.

And so, like, these are really hard questions about how we engage with each other. Like, no, removing the president for inciting violence is not a First Amendment issues. But there are really important free speech issues that will be at stake that are really difficult. And like, you know, I celebrate, I am very happy, uh, that we have de-platformed white nationalists to pursue violence, uh, and foment, um, uh, uh, insurrection. But I do think, yeah, like the answer isn't putting who gets to speak and who doesn't into the hands of a group of like capricious billionaires. Like that is a fucking recipe for disaster too. Capricious billionaires or future authoritarians, right? Right.

Especially with how broken our political system is right now. And so it's pretty scary in either direction. I do think, you know, the few Trump aides who haven't yet resigned are spinning reporters that this ban is a political gift to Trump because it's going to rally conservatives against big tech. And, you know, sure enough, most of them have been spending the weekend treating the ban as a bigger crisis than the attack on the Capitol. Trump is apparently, who knows, sometime today giving remarks, I guess, that will be broadcast to millions of people about how he's being silenced. So that will happen, too. I don't. Do you guys think this is going to work as a political issue for Republicans? Yeah, I think it will. I think

they will rally around this. You're already seeing it again. Like they are the party of grievance. They the facts don't care about your feelings crowd constantly whines about how it makes them feel. And so it doesn't matter that they have a propaganda network called Fox News. Doesn't matter that there are Rush Limbaugh and dozens of podcasts and news outlets that will, you know, basically are political weapons and not news in any way, shape or form. They're just going to say that there's silence. And so, you know, but like at the end of the day, I'm glad they're off there. I'm glad that Trump and some of these worst actors are off platforms like Instagram or Facebook that have billions of users that can get sucked into their garbage.

Yeah, it's like it's like I am concerned about, you know, social media reveals these problems and exacerbates these problems. I am worried about the part of this where there will be festering nationalistic movements that we don't see, right? Like that is, that is alarming, right? Like we, like the sentiment won't disappear overnight, but the part in which these, these entities play an incredibly important role in fomenting and exacerbating these problems.

I think it's really important that they're gone. Yeah. I mean, Facebook's own researchers found in 2016 that 64% of all people who joined extremist Facebook groups did so because the Facebook algorithm recommended it. That is really bad, right? There's no constitutional right to Instagram. There's no law requiring Facebook to ensure that the Proud Boys are heard. And like, you know, to me, the problem that got us here as executives like Mark Zuckerberg

cared more about being called partisan than about spreading this information. And the easy answer was adopting this like absolutist policy on free speech. And in practice, what that meant was that Facebook didn't ban Holocaust denial until October of 2020. It feels like you had a lot of time to figure that one out. And so if I'm thinking about the future of Facebook's business, I would worry about the way that the algorithm rewards engagement. And I would think about ways to create a platform that's actually fun, that is safe where you want to be. And that probably means booting Nazis. It means clear rules of the road, enforcing them, more humans to help you moderate, like not diluting

yourself into AI, being able to like, you know, fix this for you. And like, yeah, I too am nervous about white nationalists being able to coordinate on like Parler and Gab. And a little while back, I created a little sock puppet account for myself on Parler, just a shit post at like assholes over there. And like, it was a blast. I'm having a lot of fun doing it. But you know, what, what, what is important to me is that there aren't billions of people on these platforms and like your aunt or your nephew aren't going to get recommended some extremist group or sucked into this stuff. And then like the law enforcement is going to have to be on some of these platforms dealing with violent elements or threats. But that was sort of always the case. Yeah, I think that a lot of these big

companies like Facebook want you to believe that it's there's this neutrality. Right. And there's just this it's just this public square where they're just connecting people and people can do what they want. But the algorithms give light to that. Right. And that's especially true with Facebook and YouTube more than a lot of these other platforms is that they actually send people to these to these bad places i do think one more point about trump too like it is interesting like trump could we didn't hear from trump all weekend right because you know and everyone's like well he's banned from twitter but trump could have gone to the briefing room at any moment this weekend he could have sat for any interview he could have you know uh kaylee mcinerney could have like live streamed him on on her twitter account talk you know like there's a million ways Trump could have communicated. He's the president. He could have been giving a farewell fucking address in the Oval Office prime time. But it also shows how lazy he's become with the way he communicates.

Right. He stopped. First, he stopped doing interviews with real news outlets. Then he was even afraid of doing interviews with places like Fox because like Chris Wallace, you know, slapped him around a bunch. he was even afraid of doing interviews with places like Fox because like Chris Wallace you know slapped him around a bunch and like he doesn't he gives that he gives those those video he does those video recordings sometimes where he sounds all like stiff and it doesn't sound like himself like the only place where he's really him it's Twitter which is why he is like step back from

communication since being banned which is why I think it actually it is going to have an impact not just in the near term to hopefully prevent more violence but i do think in the long term politically for him like if if they don't get conviction and they don't get him banned from public office i think him unable to use twitter in the lead up to 2024 could be almost as damaging yeah to his future prospects, which would be fantastic. And look, on more of an individual level, it also means he can't target specific people on Twitter and attack them and lead these little Twitter mobs to go after them.

I mean, it's gotten really dicey for a lot of journalists who have seemingly crossed him or in his mind crossed him, especially women, especially people of color. So I totally understand why people have been advocating for this decision. It's just, it hasn't been simple. It's also, I think you're right. It does. It matters more when he's not the president because as president he's had on, he's had the ability to say whatever he wants across various platforms. And it also matters that it's all of them doing it at once, because if he went left Twitter, he'd be able to spread filth on Facebook.

If he left Facebook, he'd do it on Instagram. No more MAGA macrame on Pinterest. Like that's good. The Pinterest thing is so funny. Pinterest hardest hit. All right, when we come back. He's on Etsy. I will talk.

He's lurking on Etsy. When we come back, I'll talk to former Bernie Sanders campaign manager, Fad Shakir. I'm now joined by Bernie Sanders, 2020 presidential campaign manager and former advisor to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. Friend of the pod, Fad Shakir. Thanks for coming back on the pod, Faz. Thanks for having me, John. Nice to see you. You too. I want to start with how the Georgia runoffs have completely transformed what's possible in terms of Democratic governance, which I feel like got a bit lost last week in all the chaos. What, your mind is the biggest difference between

an extremely narrow Republican Senate majority and an extremely narrow Democratic Senate majority, which we will now have? Well, the most practical impact is that with a new Senate majority leader in Chuck Schumer, you can schedule votes that you otherwise couldn't have. And that's an incredible power. I mean, the gridlock that Mitch McConnell has had on the Senate has really been effectuated through the fact that he can just schedule shit. And he schedules it all the time, right? And he doesn't schedule. So obviously, in the last two years, when Nancy Pelosi held the Speaker's gavel, they passed various things like a $15 minimum wage, like H.R.1 that had a series of democracy reforms. And you can have your differences of perspectives and opinions on

things, but at least you want things to have a vote. And with Chuck Schumer holding the majority leader, that power over the calendar and scheduling is incredible. It obviously changes the dynamic for Joe Biden and his administration as well. Hopefully, knock on wood, he can get a lot of his appointments through. He can get judicial confirmations through, all pending, keeping all those 50 votes plus Kamala Harris as vice president and the chair. Well, speaking of that, it seems like the Joe standing in the way of progressive legislation won't necessarily be Biden, but Manchin. He already criticized making $2,000 stimulus checks a priority last week. If you were in Biden's White House or if you were in Schumer's office, you've been in Reid's office

before when he was a majority leader. How would you deal with someone like Manchin, who seems relatively insulated from political pressure as a senator in a deep red state who's got four years left on his term? Right. I mean, first of all, we have to start with the assumption that maybe there aren't many things that will move Joe Manchin. And we've tried everything to change his conscience and morality and on these things. Certainly, you're talking about a senator who in many ways gets his rocks off of identifying kind of a stiff arm of the Democratic brand at times, and that helps him in West Virginia. So you have to be almost very intentional about where you're picking issues that resonate with West Virginians. And this, you know, what is baffling, John, is you and I are having a conversation about

$2,000 direct payments. Because if you were Joe Manchin, like, that's something that's got to have 80, probably 80% support in West Virginia, particularly rural West Virginia. And the fact that he started from a position of absolutely not, no makes you say, what are you talking about? The one thing we could count on, hopefully, was even if you weren't going to be a loyal Democratic soldier, you would represent West Virginia in interest. So on that one, I am baffled it doesn't start a good trend here. That said, he has suggested that he's moving off of that position a bit. For us, you know, those of us in the progressive movement trying to push these issues, it means – let me just reflect on one instance where Joe Manchin actually moved on, which was during ACA, right, ACA repeal. When Republicans come in, he had had a position of fixing it and doing whatever he wanted to it.

He moved off of that. off of that. Obviously, there was a lot of grassroots town halls, not only in West Virginia, but around the country that changed and gave him essentially the argument to say, listen, I went and talked to this person in West Virginia and I might have had a position before, but I've been compelled and moved to the right position now. I think you have to give him that permission slip by saying, here's all these people who are working people in West Virginia. What would you do with that extra $1,400? How much would it change your life? Go tell Joe Manchin and give him the permission to slips to say, I've heard from so many working people and this matters. This matters a lot. And so therefore I'm going to do the right thing.

Yeah. I mean, look, the first instinct of a lot of us who've been on the outside as activists and organizers is to put pressure on someone like this from your, you know, your old job in Harry Reid's office. You know, is there an inside game there, too? Is some of this carrots as much as it sticks like they're bringing back earmarks in this Congress? Do you think there's possibilities there? So a couple of things there. One is the traditional tools of the you know, he's not a good, loyal Democrat. That doesn't work, right? Joe mentioned the traditional call tools into his office, have all these people around Twitter saying that's not going to work. That's not how it moves them. Your point is right, that let's assess them on face

value and take them at face value. He's a politician who represents West Virginia. What works for his constituents and what doesn't work for his constituents. Well, I think being able to deliver, if you read his arguments or understood his arguments on CNN the other day about why he has concerns about direct payments, he was making an argument that, well, I want to do work. I want to do jobs programs. I want to get people to work. And obviously, we agree with that, too. You can do both. Right. The only thing that's stopping you from doing both is this austerity minded politics that says we can only spend X dollars. But if you get rid of that, we can create federal jobs programs in West Virginia and we can deliver direct payments. Joe Manchin, let's do it. And to say as we build these infrastructure programs, there's going to be carrots for West Virginia. And there should be, quite frankly. Right. There should be. And I think you're absolutely right that as you cut those deals, and there have been those deals in the past, you and I remember them well, where you make sure that certain senators are targeted and they see the benefits of it. That said, it's got to be an exchange for a damn vote, right, John? Yeah. Yeah. If Joe Manchin wants to be for

federal job guarantees now, great. Good to hear. So what legislative priorities do you think Biden should tackle in his first hundred days or even the first year? What's sort of at the top of the list for you? Well, you got these tensions here, John. I'm sure you're seeing it play out as well as I am, which is, um, these, what, what has been in the bucket of these structural changes. And many of those are, let's say, voting rights, filibuster reform, like getting judicial

confirmations done, getting his cabinet in place. In my mind, there's a lot of things there that are both accruing to democratic power, but also effectuating power and maintaining and kind of basically exhibiting competency of government and maintaining that competency of government. Those are valuable. What I worry about is I can't let those crowd out the things that are going to directly improve people's lives, right? So you could argue some of these other things that we're talking about over here, they're going to just make DC function better and help us build long-term governance. That's great. Now let's talk about people over here who are going to directly see a benefit in their lives. And I want to make sure that those are

getting done as well. So obviously a $15 minimum wage, of course, direct payments, of course, UI, of course, even healthcare expansions, some kind of course, you know, something that people can hang on to and say, without Joe Biden, without a Democratic majority in the House, my improvement in my own life would not have occurred, and they delivered it. And so I, you know, in my mind, that that's really important. And marrying those two is incredibly important. Let me just give a quick anecdote on this, John, is that we passed the $600, right, with Senator Sanders' kind of agitation and push, you get these direct payments into the COVID relief bill. Did you know, John, that despite the fact that we passed $600 in direct payments, there were millions and millions of Americans who

didn't receive those direct payments, right? Because there was a snafu from the IRS and TurboTax and all this other nonsense. And my point there is, as much as we're going to do stuff, we got to make sure that the competency of governance is strong. People got to feel it. And if their experience of the government having not delivered that UI check or not deliver that direct payment, it hurts dramatically. So I would really focus on honing in both administratively and legislatively, what is going to improve people's lives and make sure it gets done. Well, I mean, we've been there before, you know, when we passed the Recovery Act in 2009,

people got tax cuts, how they got it by like changing the withholding tables in their bi weekly paycheck, which was, you know, barely noticeable by many people that Obama ever gave them a tax cut. And we saw that in polls years later that people didn't think they got a tax cut from the Recovery Act. So it's competence and it's delivering for people in a tangible way, but it's also sort of drawing the connection. This is why you got this benefit. That's right. Everything I'm echoing 100% what you say. I would also say, John, because as you were talking, I was reminded of the other thing of 2009, 2010, which was to a degree, I will say, generally I felt was discounted was the housing crisis and the impact that it was felt because people are living in a house and you get evicted from house. And I think there was a little bit of an oversight and like just and also just like not the same empathy and care for that issue as it was to make sure, you know, large institutional financial institutions were functioning and back up on their feet so that way they could lend. Right. But like if you were thinking about it from the perspective of a person sits in a house is about to be evicted, feel that pain and make sure it's delivered.

Because, John, I say that now, we're going to revisit that. We're literally going to revisit that in a month and two months here as we hit a kind of the mortgage cliff, the rent cliff, like people are going to be compelled, enforced, evicted out of their homes. If you don't feel that pain and legislate and govern from that perspective, I worry that we're repeating the mistakes of 2009, 2010. Of course, there's political ruin attached to it. So the other reason to prioritize sort of like tangible benefits, economic legislation is because it's going to be easier to pass in this Senate. The way this works is, you know, you still need 60 votes if you can't get rid of the filibuster. And it doesn't seem like we'll be able to get rid of the filibuster because of Joe Manchin and maybe a couple other Democratic senators, but you can still pass a budget reconciliation bill once a year that only requires 51 votes in order to pass a budget reconciliation bill or pass something through budget reconciliation. Obviously, it needs to affect the budget. So what what can be done through budget reconciliation that you're hoping Joe Biden gets done in the Democrats and what

can't? A lot. I mean, a lot can get done and should get done. I mean, and just to add one point to what you just said is you could, you could in this first year probably do budget reconciliation twice because we didn't pass a budget last year under Trump. And so there's actually an opportunity to do it early on here. And then again, back, you know, later in the year, which is in fact what Trump did, he did it twice. What the first one, if you remember, was on ACA repeal lost by one vote, John McCain's vote. And then he went back to the well and did it a second time later that year to pass corporate tax cuts, right? That is what happened in the first year of Trump. So we can do it twice here. And at least he's got a unique opportunity to do it. And that means you can, there's a lot of things. This is where the kind of hyper competency

of the legislative, the 50 votes is going to be so critical because you got to move things quickly. You got to build that first package. You got to set up a vote and then you got to move to the second one too. So you can do, you know, I think the need is multi-trillions. And the reason I say that is when you look at the list, you take the housing issue I was talking about, you take education and leaving, you know, student debt issues, making college tuition free.

I mean, things that Joe Biden campaigned on. You take the climate infrastructure stuff. You take the basic COVID package of just making sure vaccines are distributed and we can set up mass vaccination sites. All these things cost money. Schools need money. There's a whole food assistance needs money, right? There's a whole bunch of things that you need to do. They can all be done through reconciliation. They can be done.

The way formally it works is that we'll pass, you know, a general budget that sets a top line number and then send these kind of, in the Senate, you send, in the House, you send these, essentially, the budget chairs of each, Bernie Sanders being in the Senate, would send an instruction to the Senate Help Committee. I need you to work on, here's your top line number, X billions of dollars, and you need to pass health care expansion that meets this target. And Senate Finance Committee, I need you to work on housing, and here's your issue, and here's your top line number, go. And then they got to bring it back. You got to put it all together, and you got to put it on the floor and it gets 50 votes and it's limited debate. So what a wonderful tool, right? Limited debate, 50 votes, you could get it done. And then, as I said,

hopefully march off to doing it again and having two bites at the apple. I've seen some conflicting reports on this. Do you think that a public option can get done through budget reconciliation? And do you think, I think this is easier, but an expansion of Medicare by changing the eligibility age could also get done through budget reconciliation? In theory, it could. I mean, now we're getting into the weeds of the Senate where you get the role of the Senate parliamentarian. And Chuck Schumer will obviously, you know, no dummy about any of this stuff. So he and his staff will certainly work with that parliamentarian to make sure that we are in a good place. But as you go through it, you know, there's this question of, you know, whether things survive the quote unquote bird

rule and are going beyond, you know, the spending powers and taxing powers of that particular budget resolution. So I think the short answer is yes, John. The limiting factor isn't, I don't think we'll end up being the parliamentarian. The limiting factor will be the desire of senators and House members to spend. And you've already seen Joe Biden say he's comfortable with deficit spending. We need to encourage economic growth. Now is the time when people are hurting. We need to address inequality by the government stepping up. If he can prevail across the caucus, I don't think there's too many limitations here on the ability to address these things. And healthcare expansion, you're honing in on the right one. You could obviously expand Medicare eligibility age. You could also just make sure Medicare is covering all the costs of people right now. So if you were

uninsured, you went to the doctor, just bill Medicare for that. Right. Or you were insured. You went to the doctor. The insurer is going to pay that half. The part that you would have paid bill Medicare for that. Right. It would be an easy way to execute health care right now. Yeah. Speaking of things that got lost last week, I did think that Biden's statement that we should be investing in deficit spending was pretty significant. Just to hear an incoming Democratic president say that, and I say that working for a president, having worked for a president who spent, you know, a lot of time on deficit reduction. That was in many ways wasted. And let me say, John, about that, because, you know, obviously, I'm part of a movement of people who had concerns about when Obama did it, the sequester, all of the things that happened as a result of both the politics and the policy,

and were upset about it. It was a lasting upset, you know, for about 10 years plus. And, you know, the goal of those of us who had concerns is to compel and move people to your perspective, right, to agree with you. And Joe Biden here is telling you, essentially, yeah, I may have been part of those deals that cut deals with Mitch McConnell, you know, may not have had the best impact in the world. However, I'm telling you, I agree with you. And I would urge all the people who are, you know, with us on these fights, with Bernie Sanders on the fights to take the yes for an answer and say, hey, that's great. You're with us now.

Well, there's some problems in the past. You're with us now. Well, there's some problems in the past. You're with us now. Let's get this done. Let's let ARMS have that multi-trillion dollar proposal, which was the other key element, John, if you heard what he said. He was saying trillions of dollars, which is exactly right. You remember when Rahm Emanuel back in 2009 famously was, don't give me anything with a T in front of it, was his view on the Recovery Act, nothing with a T. Here, Joe Biden is saying trillions. I'm telling you, I want trillions. Yeah. So how do we, I guess this is a question about sort of expectation setting that I sort of worry about. So there's a set of issues,

we talked about budget reconciliation. There's a set of priorities that will be subject to a filibuster, right? Whether it's democracy reforms, whether it's HR1, whether it's statehood for DC, $15 minimum wage, as you talked about. So, you know, Joe Biden can push for these, Chuck Schumer can put them up for a vote, Republicans can filibuster and kill them. How do you like strategically sort of keep the base of activists and organizers feeling excited and energetic and not, you know, after two years or four years thinking, what is this? We had a majority in the House and the Senate. We had Joe Biden as president. We couldn't get any of this stuff done. Like, maybe it's not worth it after all. Like, is it just about getting caught trying? Is it about really going after the Republicans on this? Like, how do you navigate that?

I do not think that there is an easy answer. Governing is hard and we now have the responsibility of governing. So there's not a simple answer. But some of the thoughts that would have come immediately to mind, John, is you want to leave some space for people to push, push healthily on you even. Right. And I think Ron Klain and the Biden White House understands this pretty well. You want that healthy pressure pushing you to the positions you want to get.

It isn't to say, oh, I land a good position. You guys should all be happy about it. Like, you know, be be nice and applaud me, you know, like welcome the pressure. I would also say that the other parts of it are couple a legislative approach with an executive approach, right? Which is to say, okay, if I'm going to push for a $15 minimum wage, why don't I also figure out what I can do executively on a $15 minimum wage for federal contractors, and then tie these campaigns together so that on the one hand, I can show executive action. I'm going to do as much as I can do. I'm going to go tell the American public I am doing everything within my power. And now I have a campaign set up to go and compel senators who are on the fence or are filibustering that I'm pushing on them. They need to take the next step.

I'm going to push on them to do the same thing. So what I'm suggesting to you, John, is coupling executive action with a campaign around your legislation that requires identifying the people who are up in 2022 and sensitive seats and going there in Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, go into their states, go on local media and push and compel. You're running a campaign. The campaign has not stopped. You're campaigning for your legislative items and you should make it difficult on them. You talked about housing. Are there other priorities that you think Biden should be pushing more aggressively on that aren't being talked about enough so far? Well, we've touched on a debate here. I just think that this health care issue is going to be a big

deal. And I'm not sure. And the reason I say that, John, is because I haven't heard a great policy solution from them yet on it. And our friends in the democratic party have said that Cobra extensions are the way to go, right? Like for those of you who've lived and had Cobra, it is awful, right? I mean, the costs go up, it is unaffordable. And if you're going to, if you're going to have the government pay Cobra, it's a huge windfall for health insurers, right? Because they were, they were going to get the $900 from you a month or whatever it was going to be, $1,000. Now the government's going to pay it. Wow, what a wonderful deal for them. And if you're going to spend that much money

as a government, why the hell weren't you thinking about a different approach that would more effectively, efficiently have public sector playing that role? So there's, I think in my mind, at least two easier solutions that even if they weren't going to go for Medicare for all, which I understand Joe Biden wasn't there in the primary. I don't expect him to be there as a president. But there's two other solutions. I was suggesting earlier having Medicare just pay for the undershore who go get a COVID test, go get COVID treatment, just have Medicare pay. Build Medicare for them.

Get it done. And that way you've got universal health insurance. Also, Pramila Jayapal has this proposal, automatic enrollment. So if you lost your job during COVID and you lost your associated health care with it, just put them in a federal program. Just, you know, in this immediate moment in time, put them on the roll so that they're going to have health insurance. We should not have millions and millions of people out there lingering. And so I think this issue of health care is going to end up becoming a big one. We've been there before. We may be there again, because it just has so much significant impact.

And we're living, John, through a healthcare crisis, which sometimes gets lost, right? It's an economic crisis, but it is a healthcare crisis. It will continue to be that if we don't address it. Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think that makes sense. Faz, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. uh come back anytime and uh take care thank you john appreciate you having me thanks to faz for joining us today we'll uh we'll talk to you guys later this week catch me on parlor see you guys there it's a terrible buy his book it's by tommy's book on parlor like most of most of parlor is people complaining about not being on cooler social media platforms and then like like dan bongino brand

building and like trying to sell you like gold coins that say trump on them or something it's it's very bad yeah i guess the tech matters you know if you own the libs in the woods but no one hears the own did it make a sound? Did Charlie Kirk poop his pants? Yeah, no. If a lib gets owned in the woods. Jordan, I didn't need the grammar correction. I didn't need a,

I wasn't looking for, I wasn't looking for notes. I hope there's music. Is this part going out? Yeah, it is. I want it out. I thought we were done five minutes ago. Leave it in.

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