Pod Save America - "We Don't Chalk About Susan."

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

A Senate vote to protect abortion rights fails but the larger fight has just begun, Joe Biden’s top economic advisor Brian Deese talks about the White House strategy on inflation and more, and Donald Trump goes 1 for 2 in this week’s primaries while getting some good news about his Twitter account. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, a Senate vote to protect abortion rights fails, but the larger fight has just begun. Joe Biden's top economic advisor, Brian Deese, talks about the White House strategy on inflation and more. And Donald Trump goes one for two in this week's primaries while getting some good news about his Twitter account. But first, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is officially the second biggest movie release

since the start of the pandemic, and your favorite crooked pods are talking all about it. On X-Ray Vision, Jason and Rosie talk to writer Michael Waldron to ask how much of the film was informed by his obsession with Don Draper. And on Keep It, Iris shares thoughts on Elizabeth Olsen's buzzy performance of Wanda Maximoff. Keep up with all the latest news and culture by listening and following X-Ray Vision and keep it wherever you get your podcasts. Also, Dan, I believe you have an update for us on your soon-to-be-released book that I know all of you have already pre-purchased, Battling the Big Lie.

What do you got? have already pre-purchased Battling the Big Lie. What do you got? Well, Jen, I would say that if everyone listening or half the people listening or a quarter of the people listening had already pre-ordered the book, we would be crushing Kellyanne Conway and Bill O'Reilly, who, believe it or not, is alive

and number one on the New York Times bestseller list this week. What's the book called? Killing Something? Who are we killing this week? The Killers, ironically. We have gone full circle. He is now killing the killers. The Bill O'Reilly book empire is now eating itself. In all seriousness, if defeating, if beating Kellyanne Conway, his book is now two weeks, or Bill O'Reilly or any of these people, is not inducement enough. We have an announcement that every pre-order of Battling the Big Lie, which for those who don't know is my book out on June 7th, about the right-wing propaganda and disinformation machine, where it came from,

how it works, and perhaps I think most importantly, what Democrats can do about it. For every one of those pre-orders, I will be donating a portion of the proceeds to the Texas Library Association's battle against book bans in Texas. And I think there is this connection between why Republicans spent so much time and energy building up Fox and Breitbart and Ben Shapiro and all of that, and why they are trying to stop kids from learning about our history, structural racism, LGBTQ plus issues. I think in my view, it's all part of an effort for this shrinking conservative, mostly white minority to hold on to political power. And so for every pre-order, we'll be donating a portion of the proceeds to Texas Library Association and my

publisher, 12 Publishing, which is headed by Sean Desmond, a great guy and son of a Texas librarian, Desmond, a great guy and son of a Texas librarian, will be matching the donation for the next 1,000 books pre-ordered. Amazing. And if, but don't worry, if you were one of the amazing people who has already pre-ordered the book, I'm very grateful to you. And I will be making a retroactive donation from those proceeds for your purchase. So, Battling the Big Lie, out June 7th, pre-order it. Let's try to stop some book bans in Texas.

Thank you so much fantastic end of awkward pitch i was i thought that was very smooth by books by book seven we were gonna fucking nail this all right let's get to the news a bill to guarantee abortion rights nationwide was defeated for the second time this year on wednesday as all 50 senate republicans and joe manchin voted against the women's Health Protection Act. Of course, the outcome was never in doubt because even if Manchin had supported the bill, he and Kyrsten Sinema still refused to break any Republican filibuster on the issue. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Manchin said they'd support a narrower bill that they argue will outlaw any restriction that would put a, quote, undue burden on a woman's right to an abortion, which is the language in Planned Parenthood

versus Casey, the decision along with Roe v. Wade that a Supreme Court majority appears ready to overturn. But again, even if Democrats got those three senators on board, they'd still only have 52 votes when you need 60 to break a filibuster. Dan, why do you think Chuck Schumer held this vote? Was there any substantive or political value in doing so? Look, this was doomed to failure. It was unsatisfying. Much of the coverage focused on Democratic divisions and failure and weakness and the limits to Senate control. But I'm not sure what the other option was, right? So as annoying as that was, I think it's probably a less bad

outcome than a bunch of stories about how Democrats won't even take a vote on the issue, right? So I think in a world of bad and less bad, this was less bad. And I do understand the impulse in the wake of this opinion to do something, do anything, you know, and desire from the public, the people who worked with Democrats in charge to say, just do something, even though it doesn't work, just show us you're fighting. And I think that, you know, that's ultimately what they did. I don't think this is going to change the midterms. It's not going to change the fate of people's rights in various states, but it is, it's better than doing nothing, I think, which is probably an unfortunate, unfortunate reality of life in Joe Manchin's Washington these days. I guess it's just like, it's, I don't know. I think the, the political strategy there

is that it's a, uh, what, what is known in Washington in politics as a messaging vote, messaging bill. The purpose of a messaging vote is to generate press coverage that is favorable to you politically. A scan through the headlines shows the New York Times headline about this was bill to guarantee abortion rights fails in the Senate. Times headline about this was, bill to guarantee abortion rights fails in the Senate. Republicans used a filibuster to thwart the bill, but Democrats hoped a high profile failure of their legislation would help them at the polls in November. That doesn't seem very favorable. Washington Post, Senate blocks bill to codify right to abortion. The Women's Health Protection Act failed as expected, but Democrats say the vote is about mobilizing voters, not passing legislation. I think the concept of a messaging vote or

like stuff like that, I just think it's outdated at this point. I don't think that we live in a media environment where like you're going to take this vote, have this vote and then have and then have all the media cover it like Republicans blocked abortion access and Democrats fought hard for it. Like, I just don't know. And again, I will say, I don't think this is a big deal either way. I kind of think it was like a fairly meaningless gesture. And I also, we can get into this. It's not like Chuck Schumer and the Democrats had any other options that they just sort of left on the playing field here. Because again, they're facing the Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema problem that they have been since

Joe Biden took office. So it's not like there was anything they could do that they didn't do. I just don't know that it's much like the voting rights thing where you get everyone's expectations up that you're about to have a vote. And, of course, the vote doesn't go anywhere. I think they did a better job of expectations management. There wasn't a bunch of efforts being like, call your senator and tell them to vote for this. It was sort of like, we're going to hold this vote. We understand it. I totally agree with you on the inaccuracy nature of message votes. And that's particularly true in an election cycle where there's really only one Senate Republican incumbent

who is casting that vote, who we are running it, who is vulnerable. And so it's, I think this is much ado about nothing. It's, I think you can argue it either way. I think given those choices, having the votes slightly better, not having the vote, but none of it is affecting people's ability to actually make decisions about their own bodies. Like that's not changing because of this. So Schumer said that he didn't hold a vote on the Collins Murkowski mansion alternative because quote, we're not looking to compromise on something as vital as this. Do you think that was the right move? Once again, I think there is a very loud, very aggressive, very vituperative online debate about something of limited consequence, because at the end of the day, what are we

talking about here? We're talking about failing to protect people's rights by a vote of 49-51 or failing to protect people's rights by a vote of 49-51 or failing to protect people's rights by a vote of 52-48? What is the substantive political difference of that? There is a larger conversation to be had about whether you should be sanding down differences to try to make the broadest appeal possible on an issue that the polls show you have broad appeal. Should you not do that?

Are Washington Democrats overly sensitive to the opinions of activist groups? There's a larger competition. At the end of the day, in this particular case, I don't think once you like the decision to have a vote or not a decision on which one to vote on, I think is a very limited consequence for the much larger, much more important fight in front of us. I do think if you are going to hold a vote that is purely a messaging exercise, which, again, I just argued is of limited value. But if you're going to do it, I'm not sure why you don't hold the original vote on the Women's Health Protection Act. Get everyone on record on that. This is we want to codify Roe v. Wade into law.

We want to guarantee abortion access across the country. Then after that one goes down, have everyone vote on the Collins-Murkowski alternative to show now that you have a bipartisan majority in Congress in favor of codifying current protections for abortion that are out there, codifying Casey into law and showing that extreme Republicans are blocking a bipartisan majority. Then hold a vote on a provision that guarantees the right to contraception. Make the Republicans take a vote on that since some of them are now going after contraception. Make them take a vote that guarantees the right to contraception. Make the Republicans take a vote on that since some of them are now going after contraception. Make them take a vote that guarantees the right to an abortion in the case of rape,

incest, and the life of the mother. Again, make them take a vote on that because a whole bunch of Republicans are now saying abortion bans with absolutely no exception. So you just sort of go down the list and you don't vote only on these provisions because you don't want to have a bunch of Democrats

saying, oh yeah, we're only for abortion in those cases. But you've already had the Democrats go on the record on the Women's Health Protection Act. And now you can smoke out the Republicans in the Senate who are taking extreme positions on contraception, on exceptions in rape, incest and life of the mother, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm just, if you have the Senate majority, I just wonder why you don't make Republicans take these uncomfortable votes. Because again, you want votes that unites your caucus and splits theirs.

I agree with that. I think we may even see some of that if there was a budget resolution vote later this year, which you may need a budget resolution to do budget reconciliation to pass COVID aid, for instance. And then you have what they call the voterama where people can put anything up and you won't need 60 votes or a motion to proceed or burn 30 hours on the clock. So you can do a bunch of these things. But I think once in a normal world, like in this world,

this outdated, anachronistic world of message votes that we're somehow still talking about 10 minutes into this podcast. You're right. You're right. You're right. There you have a bunch of vulnerable incumbents you're trying to get on the record. Depending on your view of how Florida would perform in the midterm, we're talking about one person, talking about Ron Johnson, right? And so it's not the most efficient thing. A series of show votes in the House know if you were able to have such a thing in 2017 to make all those incumbent republicans vote you know against pre-existing conditions what else has value here it's like you know we're worried about one person who is

with even without a vote going to take a batshit insane stupid position on their own yeah i you're right i think this only matters for the next conversation we're going to have, which is sort of messaging this for the midterms in general, for all the candidates who are running across the country. And I do think it's important there. So let's talk about what's next. Joe Biden responded to the vote by saying, quote, to protect the right to choose, voters need to elect more pro-choice senators this November and return a pro-choice majority to the House. If they do, Congress can pass this bill in January and put it on my desk so I can sign it into law. This, of course, is an undeniably true statement. If we elect a Democratic House again and we elect two more pro-choice,

anti-filibuster Democratic senators, in addition to returning all the Democratic senators that we currently have to the Senate, Joe Biden will sign a law that guarantees abortion rights in America. That will happen. Now you might say, okay, well, will everyone be willing to get rid of the filibuster for this? It's a good question. I will say that every single Democratic senator, except Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, voted to get rid of the filibuster for voting rights legislation a couple months ago, even though that failed. So sure, maybe make sure that every Democratic senator goes on record to say that, you know, if we have two more pro-choice Democratic

senators, they will get rid of the filibuster in order to codify the Women's Health Protection Act into law after 2022. But again, that seems to be the most honest assessment of how we actually get this done on a nationwide scale. We can talk about the states in a minute. The question, of course, is how we do this, how we elect those two extra pro-choice, anti-filibuster Democratic senators. That's the real challenge. And of course, return a Democratic House, also a big challenge. Here's a headline from the Washington Post this week, quote, GOP's midterm bet voters will care more about inflation than abortion. What do you think about that bet? Mitch McConnell flunky Josh Holmes is quoted in the story saying that abortion is, quote, not registering

on any of the issue polls he's looking at. I would note that I put in the outline, I put Josh Holmes, Mitch McConnell's miniest minion, and you just like cross that out and put in something much nicer. Dan, you know why I crossed that out? Because I said that's Dan's joke that he put in the outline. I want Dan to be able to use Dan's joke. I'll call Josh Holmes whatever the fuck I want. Fair.

Okay, that's fair. Neither here nor there, Josh Holmes' stature is the least of his problems. Look, of course- Yeah, I don't know what his height is. I don't know if you want to go after his height. That's fine. I've never seen him in person.

I just see his annoying quotes and hear his annoying voice sometimes. Yes. He, so I think as a general rule, if someone works for, worked for, is a vocal supporter of, has been in Mitch McConnell's presence more than a dozen times, you should not trust them. Josh Holmes is lying here. We know he's lying because we've seen the polling.

We know that people are highly engaged with the story. We know that Republicans, a significant number of Republicans, a majority of independents oppose what Alito is suggesting the court do. There's even a report out from the Center for American Progress Action Fund today, which shows that for only the second time in a very long time, progressive engagement on Facebook is exceeding conservative engagement. And it's all because of the Roe decision. So we know people are engaged in this issue, but that doesn't mean that come election day, Republicans won't be right that inflation trumps abortion as an issue. And that gets to the idea of issue salience, which I think

one of the most important, but least understood aspects of political analysis and strategy, which is issue salience means what voters are thinking about when they vote. And that's something that we control, right? Like that is not going to happen organically. It's not going to happen on its own. It is going to be what Joe Biden and the Senate and us and everyone listening does to shape what people focus on. And if it's inflation, Republicans are going to win. If it's abortion, we have a fighting chance. Abortion, there are other issues there too, but that is one where we have seen in polling that if people are thinking about that, it is to our advantage.

And that is, I think, that is one of the things that we've said this before, but the Democrats too often ask voters what they're thinking and then go find the best message to address that. And Republicans focus on what they want voters to be thinking about and then go try to move the conversation to that. And that's going to be, if we want to make sure the conversation in October, November, when people are voting is on abortion or something else that we want, we're going to have to work really hard because inflation is going to be in the news. It's going to be at the grocery store. It's going to be on the, you know, people are going to drive past those gas price signs all the time. And so we're going to have to work really hard because inflation is going to be in the news. It's going to be at the grocery store. It's going to be on the, you know, people are going to drive past those gas price signs all the time. And so we're going to have to work really hard to drive it if that's what we want, if we want to win that bet. Yeah, I totally agree. Look,

very possible Josh Holmes is lying. Let's pretend he's not lying. The possibility here is that the polling on abortion is everything that we've said it is but issue salience is not it's it's not a salient issue yet to enough voters and that is possible but and here's some reasons why because i would also argue that that's changing as we're speaking right now um it's early the court hasn't actually overturned roe yet nor have the full consequences of that action been felt across the country um and of course, like you said, Democrats actually have to make something an issue. But FiveThirtyEight had a piece about this the other week. There isn't a ton of awareness about abortion laws, or at least there wasn't before the leaked opinion. So there was an ABC poll before the leaked opinion found that only 30 percent of residents in the 22 states that have passed abortion restrictions since 2020 were aware of the

restrictions in their state. Another poll found that only 38% of people who lived in states where abortion would become illegal if Roe is overturned were aware that that would happen. On the flip side, there's a new navigator polling out today. 73% have now heard about the leaked draft. 73% of voters. That's huge. That was almost the same. They found 78% had heard about Russia's invasion of Ukraine when that first happened, which was very, very high. So 73% have heard about the leaked draft. And since their April poll, there have been significant increases in the share of people who describe themselves as pro-choice. It's now 62-32, up seven points from April.

Those who believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases is 62-32, up seven points from April. Those who believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases is 59-37, up eight points. And that includes significant gains among independents and Republicans. And if you look at a state where abortion has been significantly restricted, Texas, the complete ban there is now underwater in polling. 54% of Texans are opposed to that ban, only 42% in favor, according to a recent poll. So this is something that we're not just the polling on the issue itself, but the salience of the issue to voters is moving as we speak. So maybe Josh Holmes is looking at some outdated polls because this is now an issue that's actually getting people going. So the other big question is, what is the most

persuasive way for candidates to talk about this issue? The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a memo last week urging its candidates to, quote, it's hard to even read this without laughing or crying. It's urging its candidates to, quote, be the compassionate consensus builders on abortion policy. And it even suggests sample ad language for Republican candidates in the memo. And the sample ad language reads, quote, I'm not in favor of putting women or doctors in jail. I would never take away anyone's contraception or health care. That's just the typical BS you get from politicians. Here's my view. I am pro-life, but in reality, forget about the political labels. All of us are in favor of life. Isn't that sweet? What does that heaping pile of horseshit tell you

about how Republicans see the politics of abortion? And how do you think that should inform Democratic messaging on the subject? Well, it's very reminiscent of how they view the politics of Obamacare heading into the 2018 elections, which is they know they want to do something. They know the voters don't want them to do it, so they're going to lie about it. All of that is a lie. Everything they're saying is a lie. You remember Josh Hawley and others running ads in 2018 staring before a camera saying that they would always protect people with pre-existing conditions, even though they had each voted only months prior to repeal the protections of people with pre-existing conditions, even though they had each voted only months prior to repeal the protections of people with pre-existing conditions. That's what they're doing here. They're going to

lie about their position. They're going to lie about our position. And so I think there are some ways in which I think Democrats have to address this. So we know Republicans are going to lie, right? Well, we can't get defensive where we're constantly just calling them liars. We have to be very aggressive and productive about our position and just assert their position and not get into the back and forth here. Like they're trying to drag us into the mud. That's one. Two, they want to get into, the Republicans know that when the issue is about access to abortion, Roe v. Wade, they had Democrats and people who support choice have the advantage. When you get into specifics around weeks and other things, the polling gets much more complicated. So they want to sort of

bring it down. And then the third thing we have to do is we have to highlight consistently the most extreme positions of the Republicans, where this is going, the impact, that they want to put women and others in jail. They want to put doctors in jail, that they want to ban IVF, that they want to ban contraception. And there are, and every time some Republican state senator candidate talks about that, we got to highlight it. The fact that in some of these major swing states, the Republican candidates running for governor are pledging to outlaw abortion with no exceptions. Not life of the mother, not rape, not incest, no exceptions. We have to make sure everyone knows that.

Data for Progress had some useful message polling about what the best messages were. I'm quoting here from the poll. They were testing pro-choice messaging against anti-rope messaging. Women and their doctors should have control over their medical decisions. The government should not interfere in personal matters like this. Families and individuals should have control over the reproductive decisions. 71% of voters, 49% of Republicans, and 78% of independents support that message compared to a Republican message which says the government should be able to make decisions about abortion,

especially when it involves protecting the sanctity of human life which is i think a very that's not even putting any spin on the ball about the republican position that is like a very generic neutral portrayal of their position so i think that that the giving this between people and their doctors and not as opposed to the government and politicians is, I think, probably the strongest point we have of contrast here. I think I agree with all of that. I think that it's so important to give specific examples because like, you know, everyone listening here, we all know Republicans lie about this shit, but I think that it's it's

worth constantly lifting up those examples. Mitch McConnell and his his, quote, compassionate consensus builders on abortion in the Senate have now floated a nationwide ban on abortion. Nationwide ban. If they are returned to if Republicans have Congress and Republicans win the presidency, they have now said that they will explore a nationwide ban. So you live in California, you live in New York, you vote for state officials that are going to protect abortion access, doesn't matter. They're going to ban it all across the country. Okay. Take the Pennsylvania's governor race, for example. All of the Republican front runners support total abortion bans. Two of them refuse to support any exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother. Three of them support putting doctors in jail. You vote for a Republican governor in Pennsylvania,

a Republican governor wins in Pennsylvania, that's what's going to happen. Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor, if he wins, abortion access is protected in Pennsylvania. That's the difference in that race. That's the difference between voting and not voting if you live in Pennsylvania. Marsha Blackburn, U.S. Senator from Tennessee, recently denounced the Supreme Court case that protected married couples' access to birth control. As did the leading Republican candidate from Arizona. And each of the Republican candidates running for attorney general in Michigan, Republicans in Idaho and Louisiana,

are considering legislation that could ban morning after pills, IUDs, and IVF. This is all fucking real. It is not theoretical. It is not they might do this. This is happening in the country right now. You're absolutely right about the polling. And just to give people an example, like when you ask people to start talking about timing on abortions and, you know, 60% of Americans support abortion in the first trimester, 28% support it in the second trimester. So like that polling gets a little mixed. But when you, again, that you cited this poll that Navigator did this today to ask the same question, which is 80% of Americans agree that the decision to have an abortion should be left to a woman and her doctor compared to just 9% who agree it should be left to politicians in the government. And I do think it's worth that messaging about the government should, you know, I mean, I think it's worth really drilling down on that messaging.

Like, every American should have the right to choose when to start a family, who to start a family with, and how many children to have. No politician or judge should ever get to impose a forced pregnancy on any American, especially a pregnancy that they any American, especially a pregnancy that they didn't choose, a pregnancy that may have been the result of rape or abuse or one that threatens a person's life. And the government should never be allowed to dictate decisions about pregnancy that should remain between a woman and her doctor. Guarantee you that is an incredibly popular message that Democrats should go out and proudly say on the

campaign trail every single day. And it puts Republicans in a very, it puts a lot of Republicans who want to win in competitive districts. A lot of them in red districts are not going to fucking care. But the ones who want to win in competitive districts, it's going to put them in a tough place. And that's why the NRSC released a memo that's filled with so much lies, because they are fucking nervous about this. That's what they like. They are nervous about it. I love that message. And it's exactly right. And it can be built into a larger narrative because it's not just the Republicans also want to want the government to decide what you can say, what you can read, what teachers can teach, what companies can believe.

Right. It is government wants to stop you. Conservative government to stop you from conservative government wants to stop you from doing the things you want to do. It's why they're coming for marriage equality next. And I think just on the point of what Mitch McConnell said about a national abortion ban, we should be crystal clear that if in January of 2025, there was a Republican House, Republican Senate,

and a Republican president, the Republicans will eliminate the filibuster to pass that bill. The political momentum behind doing that will be unassailable. And on that too, because there's a bunch of the fucking Hill reporters that Mitch McConnell and his staff have successfully spun for a long time. They all think Mitch McConnell is a fucking genius and has these principles that he doesn't. Even if Mitch McConnell was like, I don't want to get rid of the filibuster. I've said this before. It's not going to be up to Mitch McConnell. He's going to have an extreme

Republican caucus that is going to be like, hey, Mitch, you're either leader of this caucus and you let us get rid of the filibuster or we're going to nominate someone crazy. We're going to have Rick Scott be the leader in the caucus. So you're right. It's absolutely going. Whatever Mitch McConnell says. It's absolutely going. Yeah. So whatever Mitch McConnell says. Rob Portman. And under this scenario, right?

Rob Portman plays by J.D. Vance. Herschel Walker. Ted Budd. Kathy Barnett. These are the Republican senators. There is no institutionalism. The dream is they get. Yes.

Yeah, it is. I just. Oh, you know, Mitch McConnell. He says that he doesn't want to get rid of. He's a real institutionalist. People on Capitol Hill know that. Yeah, okay. Okay, we'll see. We have, we've talked a lot about the congressional races. What are the key states where races for governor and attorney general and state legislature will really matter if the court overturns Roe? You can sort of, you know, what it's important to note about this decision or even in any version of this decision is that abortion becomes a state's issue, right? Your constitutional rights will depend on what state you are in at any given moment, which is not how constitutional rights are supposed to work. And therefore, who you elect as governor, attorney general, local prosecutor, state legislator matters because they will decide whether abortion is illegal or contraception is legal or illegal.

What exceptions there are, all of that will be assigned at the state level. Now, in blue states where Democrats control all the levers of power, abortion rights will be protected. will be protected. In red states where Republicans control all levels of powers, abortion rights will be strictly restricted or gone or banned immediately with much worse things to come. The focus is therefore on the purple states where Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, et cetera, all the places where we have a chance to elect a Democratic governor, a Democratic attorney general. And that will matter, right? They have a chance to pass a law to enshrine those rights. They can veto laws to try to further restrict them. The attorney general and prosecutor one is really important because Dana Nessel, who is the, we mentioned

this in a previous pod, running for re-election in Michigan, has said she's not going to enforce Michigan's anti-abortion law that will go in effect if and when Roe is overturned. Her opponent will and will prosecute it to the full force of the law. But having said all that, I mean, those are the states we're already telling people to get involved in. It's how we're going to protect democracy. It's how we're going to protect the integrity of the next election. It's how we're going to put in place higher minimum wages, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We know that. But I think there is the tendency then with those red states to say,

But I think there is the tendency then with those red states to say the ship has sailed. And I think that's a huge mistake because every vote in the state legislator matters. Every local prosecutor matters. And we have to compete there because that could be that we're not if we can't we can't take control of the governorship and we can't take control of the legislature, we're not going to pass a law to protect people's rights. We're not going to repe a law to protect people's rights. We're not going to repeal a Republican law in the books. But having a few more people in that state legislature may prevent something worse from happening. It could be the one that prevents contraception from being banned. It could be what prevents IVF from being banned. It could be the difference between outlawing access to abortion pills or all those things. So like, that's why I think the stuff, this stuff that run for something and Emily's list and others are doing to compete in those state legislative districts in red States is important. Even if we're not going to take control of the legislature,

I think just a couple more people who don't have some sort of prehistoric mindset about people's healthcare decisions could matter a lot to a lot of people in that state. Yeah, totally agree. Before we move on, we do have one more important angle of this story to discuss. Red Hen. Civility Alert. Red Hen. Civility Alert. Paging Chuck Todd. Paging Chuck Todd. Tip O'Neill. Ronald Reagan. You're needed with a bourbon in the West Wing.

Red Hen. Red Wing. Red Hen. Red Hen. Red Hen. It just, it never, it never gets old. Oh, it's so funny. It never gets old. Thank you, Tommy. Thank you for that.

There has been a particularly dumb debate over completely peaceful protests that have sprung up at the homes of Supreme Court justices and senators. Congress moved with unusual speed to pass a bill that ramped up security for the justices by extending security protection to their families. The White House released a statement saying that the president believes in the right to protest, but that it should never include violence, threats, or vandalism. And Susan Collins actually called the cops on protesters who wrote a polite message on the sidewalk outside of her home in water-soluble chalk.

Now, Dan, that was a joke. The water-soluble chalk, that came from you, and I just took it. But I'm giving you credit for it. We are a team. I put it in the outline that it's for you to take. What's your take on all this? Also, I took the water-soluble chalk thing from Jonathan Chait and others. I want to just give everyone free. Wow, look at that. It was water- water soluble chalk thing from Jonathan Chait and others. So I want to just give everyone free.

I mean, it's like he didn't invent it. It was water soluble chalk. It's a fact, right? It doesn't own the facts. We can't trademark that shit. Anywho, like, obviously, this is the greatest threat to the Republic since Sarah Huckabee Sanders was denied a farm to table meal. We remember. We remember.

The redhead. I mean, redhead alert. We remember. The redhead. Redhead. Alert. Truck Todd, who I know, doesn't ever miss one minute of this podcast. Most wonder, like, how did he get wrapped into this? Just swerving out of our lanes to take a whack at Truck Todd today.

Anyway. All right. Anyway, look, this is obviously stupid and dumb. And beside the point, and just another example of how the political conversation always migrates to optics in civility, which prevents people from having to take a stand on real things or talk about real issues or deal with nuance or complexity. Who gives a shit?

Obviously, no one is condoning is condoning violence threats looting none of that's happening we're talking about peaceful protests they asked chuck schumer about this and he said i don't really care because i have people protesting in my house three times a week people are always protesting there like it happens the sanctity of susan collins's sidewalk aesthetics is so much less important than tens of millions of people losing a constitutional fucking right. What are we doing? Even though the polling is very clear that a huge majority of Americans disagree with what the Supreme Court is about to do, the both sides mentality of the political press and the pundits draws them to the civility

thing. You can have a bipartisan round table on a cable network talking about this, having a conversation about what it really means for millions of people. All about if Roe is overturned is a very different and more complicated discussion that you don't want to have to take a stand on. I hate these conversations. I mean, here's my view. I think peaceful protest isn't just good, it's necessary to be encouraged. I think violence and threats of violence

aren't just bad, they're ineffective. And I think that calling the cops about a drive-by chalking is one of the stupidest fucking things I've ever heard.

So that's my view. I think that we should not focus on this debate. I think we should not focus on fucking Joe Manchin. Keep tweeting about Joe Manchin. That's not going to do anything to get anyone access to an abortion. Now that you can yell all you want. We do yell about Joe Manchin. Focus on the fucking Republicans who are trying to ban abortion nationwide, trying to criminalize abortion, throw doctors and women in jail, go after contraception. And like, let's make sure that we defeat as many of them as possible in

november this is an issue now first of all it's not just a incredibly important vital issue a basic constitutional right it is an issue where we have just recited a whole bunch of polling where democrats should be on the offense and should be going after republicans so let's keep the focus there and john how how can we do that? Do you have any suggestions? If you want to get involved, you should go peacefully protest. Chalk in hand. But you should also go to votesaveamerica.com slash row where you can donate and volunteer.

The VSA community is incredible. All of you listening, all of you who've gotten involved in Votes of America from the very beginning, you are amazing. You've already raised, since the leaked opinion, you've already raised over $300,000 to support more than 80 abortion funds. That's direct support to abortion funds and patients. You've raised over $30,000 to help elect a pro-choice majority in the Senate. Again, those two pro-choice, anti-filibuster senators that we need to actually get something done. And over 3,000 of you

have signed up for midterm madness so we can elect a pro-choice majority in November. So I thank you all for that. Everyone who's gotten involved and everyone who's not gotten involved yet, please do. It's votesaveamerica.com slash ro.

When we come back, Dan talks to White House economic advisor, Brian Deese. In poll after poll, Americans say inflation is their top concern. It's also Joe Biden's top priority. Joining us now to talk about that and so much more is the director of the National Economic Council and my old friend, Brian Deese. Thank you for having me, sir. Brian, yesterday we learned that in the month of April, inflation was down slightly,

although still at a historic high. What is your analysis of those numbers? And what do they tell us about how much longer Americans are going to have to deal with elevated costs on food, gas, and other things? Well, it was heartening to see the number tick down a bit. Inflation is still too high, but it's important to put the numbers in context. We have an economy that has extraordinary strengths right now. Strongest economic growth in 40 years, strongest labor market outcomes, the unemployment rate has come down significantly, which has opened up all sorts of opportunities, particularly for lower wage workers. People of color are seeing job opportunities and opportunities

to get jobs with higher wages that they haven't seen in decades. And we have a pricing challenge. Prices are high. And as I said, it was good to see a little bit of relief on that front in last month's print. But we know what we now need need to do which is we need to build on those extraordinary strengths while focusing on doing everything we can to bring prices down and have prices normalize and uh you know that's a process that is going to take some time but we could accelerate it we could move it faster and there are practical things that we can do, in particular, to address the practical cost challenges that people are facing in their day-to-day lives. The cost of gas, the cost of food, but also the cost of health care, the cost of child care, the things that add up to your monthly budget. And so obviously a lot of what is driving inflation is outside of your control. It's even outside of these borders, right? It's what's happening in Russia. It's lockdowns in China. It's stuff happening, just the general

struggles to snap back from the pandemic all over the world. Recognizing there's limits to what you can do and not to mention sort of the challenges of getting something through Congress. What are the tools in your toolbox that the White House can do that'll give people some relief? in your toolbox that the White House can do that'll give people some relief? So the president talked about it this week as a plan that is about lowering families' costs and lowering the federal deficit. And we can make progress on both of those. Lowering families' costs, kind of obvious why you want to do that, right? You want to give people relief when they're seeing these high prices. And we have a lot of tools that we can work with. Just this week, we announced a program

to reduce the cost of high-speed internet broadband bills for 50 million Americans. People pay $100, $150 a month to have high-speed internet. As we know, particularly now in a pandemic-affected world, having access to high-speed internet is a basic necessity to working, to engaging, to engaging the educational system we're going to bring that cost down for 50 million people um by 50 60 70 a month and for a lot of them we're going to make that free we have the tools to do that in our own power yesterday the president was out at a farm and he was announcing steps to increase the amount of production that U.S. farmers and growers can yield this year. More wheat, more corn. That's good for prices because it means

there's more supply of product on the market. It's also good for farmers and rural communities because it gives them more economic opportunity. We can take steps like this, steps like working with our ports, working with our truckers to move goods more quickly and more cheaply across the economy. And we're doing that. We're moving out on that. But as you said, there's also some steps that we need Congress's help on, like lowering the cost of prescription drugs. We could, by allowing Medicare to negotiate better prescription drug prices, lower the cost of prescription drugs and also lower the deficit, as I mentioned. It would reduce the amount of money the federal government has to pay in Medicare for drugs as well. So there are some places where we're going to need some help from Congress, but there's also places we can move on our own. One idea that is,

I think, largely within your power that's being pushed by a lot of economists out there, including our old colleague, Larry Summers, is reducing or removing some tariffs on Chinese goods headed to America. I understand the political argument against that. I think it's pretty easy. What's the substantive argument against that? Larry argues, I think, that it would reduce the consumer price index, maybe a point to do that. I don't want to ask you why Larry is wrong, but what's the argument against that or why you guys haven't done that yet? Well, it's something that we're looking at. We're actively analyzing, like any idea. We're pragmatic.'re, we're pragmatic, the President said

inflation is top priority. So we'll look at any idea wherever it comes from. In practice, what you're looking at when you're looking at tariffs is what will happen when you reduce the tariff on a good and how much of that reduction in the tariff will go to the consumer that you know, if you're buying us, you know, if you're buying toys for your kid at the store, if you reduce the tariff on that, how much of that goes to you and how much of that goes to the company? And that has to do with how much demand there are for the products, where the products are made other than in the country where the tariff is applied. So you have to look at all of these and balance these things out. There are different estimates of the impact. At the end of the day, none of these steps, to be clear, none of these steps, reducing tariffs, reducing internet bills, none of them on their own is going to be sufficient to bring prices down in the immediate term. There is no magic bullet. There's no single policy tool to do this.

But we're trying to look at every sensible step that we can take and to do that, you know, consistent with the president's values. And it is important that even though inflation is top of mind for everybody and top of mind for the president, that we not lose sight of these underlying economic strengths. They did not happen just on their own. It was because Democrats and this president put in place an economic agenda that prioritized strong economic growth and strong growth and job opportunities, particularly for lower income working class people in this country. And that strength is something that we want to build on. We don't want to jettison. We don't want to lose track of that, even as we look at how we can address prices. I think that's one of the sort of broader questions and concerns a lot of people have's the traditional, it's been a very long time since we have confronted inflation. In the past, the idea was the Fed, and I'm not going to ask you to comment on the Feds, but the idea was that you slow demand, right? You slow the economy down,

which has consequences for a lot of the people that, whether it's wage growth or in some food industry or service industry, consequences for people that President Biden has talked a lot about helping. How do you find that balance between maintaining that growth, that strength, the job market, and addressing inflation? Is there a new sort of a third way approach, a different way approach than the old sort of 1980s Paul Volcker way of doing this? Yeah, I'd say two things to that. The first is the Fed has an important role to play. They're in the midst of doing that, and it is important that they have the independence to do what they need to do. One thing that we have really talked about is how can we build more space and more capacity on the supply side of the economy?

It's sort of a progressive approach to supply-side economics, which has traditionally been the coin of the realm for conservatives. And what that means is that if we can actually create more in our economy and we can have more people working, we can produce more goods and more services in the economy, we can reduce price pressures and also build on some of those economic strengths. So you take the issue of cars. I know this has been talked about a lot, but I think it's an example that illustrates where we are right now. The reason why car prices are as high as they are is because we're not building enough cars.

We have a problem on the supply side. And the reason for that is we don't have enough semiconductors, the computer chips that go into cars. If we can accelerate the production of semiconductors, particularly in places other than China, particularly in places with more secure supply chains, and that allows us to build more cars, that will reduce prices and it will put more people to work. It means there's more job opportunities as well. You can replicate that on housing. We have a real problem of affordable housing in this country right now. Rents are too

high. Housing prices are high. That's good for homeowners, but it's a problem for people who are looking for homes. What we need to do is we need to build more affordable housing. We need to operate on the supply side, more supply of housing. If we do that, that'll help bring prices down, but also put more people to work in the context as well. That is a very different approach than the sort of traditional Republican approach, which is the actual Republican approach right now of congressional Republicans, which is to say, the principal thing we need to do is to make working Americans poorer. In the current plan, their current version of that is to increase taxes, have working Americans pay higher taxes, about $1,500 more for people making less than $100,000 a year. That is kind of a

traditional view that we need to reduce the purchasing power of working class people as a way to advance the economy. I think building on operating on the supply side is one important answer and alternative to that. Speaking of supply chain issues, there is a ton of coverage and attention right now given the shortage in baby formula. You have parents rationing formula, people driving hours of stores. Could you just help explain why that's happening and what the Biden administration is trying to do to help alleviate that bottleneck? No pun intended, obviously. Absolutely. And it's right on my mind because as we're recording this, I will end this and walk downstairs and the president is going to be on the phone with major retailers, Target and Walmart and

manufacturers of baby formula to try to move the ball. The reason why this is happening is because the FDA identified that there was a plant that made baby formula, particularly specialized baby formula to try to move the ball. The reason why this is happening is because the FDA identified that there was a plant that made baby formula, particularly specialized baby formula, that was not meeting safety standards. And obviously, you know, in something as critical as baby formula, it's important that we maintain the highest standards of safety. That plant shut down to address those safety issues that created problems in terms of supply, and that has been compounded by some of the supply chain challenges we've faced. So we're working on a couple of angles.

The first is just make it easier to get formula in as many places to as many people as possible. There are a lot of restrictions about baby formula, understandably, appropriately, safety and health restrictions about what type of formula can be sold in what context. In immediate circumstances like this, relaxing some of those without sacrificing safety is an important thing to do. We're working on allowing more imports from European countries, for example, where they do have high safety standards, trying to get more product in immediately. And importantly, the president will today ask the federal regulators, the FTC, working with state attorneys general,

to really increase our focus on price gouging. We're seeing some really unfortunate and illegal circumstances where people are going buying baby formula and then selling it online at exorbitant prices, taking advantage of the shortfall in supply. And so we're going to take some action today to really try to crack down on that as well. I'm sure that there's an element of probably painful deja vu for you from your time working for President Obama. Back then, you helped President Obama during the campaign figure out what his economic policy platform would be, what he would do when he got in office. Then a crisis created and exacerbated by his predecessor caused you to rip up a lot of those plans and focus on stemming the crisis.

Similar situation with President Biden with the pandemic continuing to persist. And then you create just a parade of problems that have happened that are beyond your guys' control. What often I think gets lost in that because of the need to address crisis after crisis is like, what is the central economic vision or philosophy of the president, right? Obama spent years trying to dig out from under that from having to focus on a stimulus first as opposed to a giant tax cut for working people. Obviously, we're going to have a big discussion in the coming months and years about

President Biden's economic philosophy versus that of Republicans. He started that conversation last week. How would you define Bidenomics or Biden's approach to the economy? I do. I associate myself with that frustration. But I also think that President Biden has been remarkably consistent on this front. The way he describes it is he wants to build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out. And that's a very, I think, straightforward and colloquial way of describing in economic terms where what you're trying to do is create more power and more opportunity and more security for the bottom half of the income distribution and middle class families, based on a theory that if you can actually build that type of economic opportunity,

the entire economy is going to do better. And he contrasts that with kind of conventional trickle-down economics, that in his view, his argument is that we have run the experiment of trickle-down economics for decades, and it has consistently shown that it his view, his argument is that we have run the experiment of trickle-down economics for decades. And it has consistently shown that it's failed, that if you focus on trying to reduce restrictions for companies and those at the top, that somehow the benefits would rebound to everybody. And therefore, this bottom-up approach is central. And you can see that in the way that he approached the crisis response. So you're right, he had to pivot and he had to focus on immediate crisis measures, but always in our economic policy has been a focus on

trying to help those people who are just trying to make it make their life a little easier. As Joe Biden would say, give them a little more breathing room. And we have seen that work, that part of the strength of this economic recovery and labor market is a result of those policies. A lot of the things that we aren't and labor market is a result of those policies. A lot of the things that we aren't talking about today, we're not talking about a really slow return to employment. We're not talking about long-term unemployment. Long-term unemployment has come down the fastest in modern history. We're not talking about the kind of scarring of people who are usually at the margins of

our economy and structurally, people of color and women who are structurally often impeded from making progress. We're seeing that play out, but we have more work to do on that front. And that's what is animating. You know, that's what's animating his approach, even as we have to deal with these crises, even as we're dealing with the war in Ukraine and global supply shocks to try to stay focused on that North Star. Last question for you. The White House put out a video earlier this week that included President talking to Chris Smalls, who helped organize an Amazon warehouse. President Biden has talked a lot and sort of been very proactive in talking about the importance of

labor unions. Can you talk a little bit about what the importance of labor unions, what the Biden administration is doing to help support the labor movement, and just sort of maybe what this moment where you're seeing organizing at Amazon and Starbucks and elsewhere maybe means for sort of the economic approach the president has? Yeah, it's an extraordinary moment. And you're right, the president has been very clear and consistent with his position on this. And it connects to bottom up and middle out. A big part of that for the president,

his economic philosophy is that when workers have more power and when they have more voice, we end up with better outcomes for middle-class families. And unions and organizing is at the center of that. From an economic perspective, unionization helps to balance this, what we've seen for many years of the disproportionate share of overall company profits going to capital rather than labor, and labor having less and less power.

And unionization is the most proven effective tool to actually create better outcomes and more of a balance between labor and capital. In practice, we are seeing a real resurgence, a resurgence of excitement, enthusiasm, and organizing across the board, across America. It's happening in places that you're seeing and you really would expect, and then other places where you wouldn't as well. And what we're trying to do and what President Biden is trying to do is be very consistent, that he is a capitalist from your great state of Delaware, but that he is also intent on being the most pro-union president in history because the more opportunities there are for organizing, the more opportunities there are for collective bargaining, the more opportunity we're going to create for families to have that

economic security, and that companies do well in those circumstances that you don't actually have to uh create a zero-sum uh trade-off so we're doing that in how we implement the infrastructure law we're doing that in terms of how you know we use federal purchasing power and contracts and how we um how we implement the law last thing i'll say really important the uh the law of the land in the united states is not to be neutral. The law of the United States is that the administration is supposed to promote collective bargaining, encourage collective bargaining. to encourage that it is a affirmatively good thing if workers have more of those opportunities in this economy. And that'll continue to be a key part of his, the president's approach. Brian Deese, thanks so much for joining us and good luck out there. Thanks, Tim. Before we go, Donald Trump went one for two in this week's Republican primaries.

In West Virginia, Republican Congressman Alex Mooney, endorsed by Trump, defeated Republican Congressman David McKinley, endorsed by Joe Manchin, with 54.2% of the vote. Mooney got Trump's endorsement after McKinley voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill. got Trump's endorsement after McKinley voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill. And the reason the two of them are running against each other in a primary is because redistricting took one seat away from West Virginia. So the two of them had to run against each other. In Nebraska, Charles Herbster, endorsed by Trump and accused of sexual assault by eight different women, was defeated by Jim Pillen, who was endorsed by outgoing Republican Governor Pete Ricketts. Dan, what, if anything, and I emphasize if anything, can we learn from these results?

Nothing. We can learn. There we go. Nothing. Like the, I find the entire like race by race measurements of Donald Trump's strength based on these results to be so fucking stupid and shallow,

it's hard to take. Here's why I think they're interesting. I think it matters which Republicans win these primaries because I think the more extreme, look, it's always a tough situation. The more extreme the Republican, oftentimes in a competitive state or competitive district, the easier time a Democrat may have to beat them in the general election. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes. So it is interesting to find out which of these Republicans actually win the primary. I think that matters. Figuring out which one wins as a test of Donald Trump's strength is not as clear cut. Yeah. I mean, Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite to be the Republican nominee. He was the overwhelming favorite to be the nominee before J.D.

Vance won. He is still the overwhelming favorite to be the Republican nominee after Charles Herbster loses. Whatever happens in Pennsylvania next week, whether his candidate, Dr. Oz, comes in first or third, it's not going to change the dynamic. comes in first or third, it's not going to change the dynamic. What is true is that all of these candidates that are winning, whether Trump endorsed them or not, every candidate in this Pennsylvania primary, every candidate in that Ohio primary, are people who have the same MAGA extreme philosophy as Trump.

It's not about Trump. They all bent the knee. Yeah. But they didn't bend the knee as Trump. It's not about Trump. It's about Trumpism. They all bent the knee. Yeah. And it's like, but they didn't bend the knee to Trump. That's where I think we make this about Trump when it's they bent the knee to an extreme faction of the Republican Party that happened to be the extreme faction that picked Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee in 2016. And that's where I think this is a little bit backwards, like which one of the MAGA lunatics wins the Ohio primary may make a difference in terms of who is easier for

a Democrat to run against, but it doesn't tell you anything. All it tells you is that MAGA extremism or ultra MAGA as Biden would call it or whatever is that, that is what, that is mainstream Republicanism now, right? That's the rule, not the exception. Is there a MAGA that's not ultra? I'm now so confused. They're all just MAGA. MAGA is MAGA. It's bad. Yeah, there is no... You're like, he's just...

Who's regular MAGA? Who's regular MAGA but not ultra MAGA? Well, I mean, I don't know. Is David McCormick regular MAGA now? Heick, regular MAGA. He's original strength. He's original strength. Original strength because he was married to because he was married to Rhino Dina Powell, you know, and so he's a hedge fund guy. So he's just regular MAGA.

Even though they worked, she worked in the administration. Who knows? Yeah. Trump did get one more non-primary related big win this week. Elon Musk said that if when his deal to buy Twitter goes through, he plans to reinstate Trump's account. It's happening, Dan. And former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who is the one who made the fucking decision to ban Trump in the first place, said the ban was a mistake. That fucking guy.

What do you think? Trump's coming back. back i mean we have had like a half joking conversation both on this podcast off this podcast about it's the fact that it seems like trump's ban from twitter has not hurt him and probably helped him you know it's been it's sort of like the cone they put around the dog's neck to keep them from hurting themselves his ability to make himself look like an ass is dramatically restricted without twitter because like he's trying he's trying to scratch himself he's trying his hardest he just can't get there and like the like his crazy overly long poorly edited insane statements just get like a fraction of the coverage a tweet would the facts the fact that fact says something not particularly

um i think complimentary about american political media that because it's not in Twitter, it's not news. But I think ultimately the fact that Donald Trump used Twitter to incite a violent attack on the Capitol and he's going to return to the platform kind of maybe I think makes all of us reassess how we think about dealing with the prevalence of dealing with the prevalence of hatred, violence, MAGA messaging, extremism, racism, homophobia, misogyny, all of that on those platforms. Because basically since Donald Trump came around, the move of the progressive mainstream has been to try to pressure the platforms and the networks to move away from that speech. We're going to convince enough advertisers to take Tucker Carlson off the air. We're going to try to get pressure Facebook to take Alex Jones down or YouTube to take down other various conspiracy sites. That's not the wrong thing

to do because these companies have rules. When they violate them to appease demagogues, they should be under pressure for that. Same thing with companies. If you say you put out a statement about diversity and then you donate to Ron DeSantis' efforts to bully gay and trans kids, you should be called out for that. But in the end, that is a strategy that depends on billionaire tech moguls and corporations having good faith in doing something out of the goodness of their heart. And there's no precedent in history that that is a strategy of success. We either build the majorities and the power to regulate them or we're just yelling into the void here at this point yeah like elon it's a private company elon musk is going to fucking do what he

wants to do and it sucks but like just from it's it's more like yeah should it happen should donald trump be allowed on twitter no of course not but like it's gonna happen because it's a private company elon musk is gonna like do whatever the fuck he wants the political follow-up from that i would argue like you just did is not necessarily favorable to donald trump he's he was kicked off twitter and he currently has his highest favorability rating of all time right now absence makes the heart grow fonder maybe it's just a coincidence i mean maybe maybe it's just coincidence coincidence. Maybe it's just coincidence. But why are so many Republican strategists who are in competitive races all across the country telling reporters that they're terrified of Trump returning to Twitter? So what I think is very much agreed that there is a regulatory response to this that is, I think, focused not on how you ban individual people because- Yeah, you can't do that. That's not a realistic- We're playing whack-a-mole, right? But there's a lot, and our former boss, President Obama, talked about some of these in a speech recently where it's like transparency from the companies

on the algorithms, some reforms to the Section 230 laws, all of that. But I think the bigger thing, and that's the job for Biden's FTC and elected enough senators to pass laws and all of that. But I think from the progressive side, instead of trying to muffle the right-wing megaphone, we have to build up our megaphone. Instead of trying to moderate their content, amplify ours, create more

of ours. We have to match them pound for pound. Don't quit and run away from Twitter. Stay on Twitter and fight. Also, check check out offline this week yeah thank you i didn't even should have even spoken of speaking of offline speaking of offline you brought up a story to talk about today that you said you were sick of hearing about and i hadn't even heard a thing about it so So maybe offline is working for me. This is the Rolling Stones story, apparently, that early in Trump's presidency, he asked his national security team if China had secret technology that would allow them to create large man-made hurricanes and then launch them at the United States.

The first time I heard about this. Where was I? You were offline. I don't think I was off. I think I'm doing too many podcasts maybe. That is for sure. That's a wild story. A hurricane gun.

China? Chinese hurricane gun. Maybe if he was back on Twitter, we'd know this because he'd probably comment on the hurricane gun. We'd all hear about it. You wouldn't have to turn to America's most legendary music magazine to read about gossip about the previous president. One more development for Donald Trump that is also not a win. This happened just as we were recording. Federal prosecutors have begun a grand jury investigation into whether classified White House documents that ended up at Donald Trump's Florida home were mishandled. Breaking news.

breaking news. And, you know, my first thought was, look, if a candidate who's running for president is under federal investigation for potentially mishandling classified info, the one thing we know for sure is that reporters everywhere will be consumed with this story the entire race. I mean, there is probably

50 New York Times reporters right now working on this story. I bet the editors right now... This is all Ken Vogel is going to talk about and write about for the next two years. I mean, right now they are trying to figure out how to get that giant headline that will be exactly the same size as the headline about Jim Comey's announcement in October of 2016. Yep. Atop the New York Times front page for tomorrow.

But look, I don't want to prejudge an ongoing criminal investigation, but if classified documents ended up at Mar-a-Lago, by definition, they were mishandled. Seems mishandled. It doesn't seem like they just, just, Oh,

the classified documents got up and ran out of the white house and ended up in Mar-a-Lago. It's like, it's an honest mistake. Government regulators are looking into how samples of the Ebola vaccine got in someone's home. Were they mishandled? Yes, they were mishandled if they were in someone's home. Also, another piece of breaking news.

Apparently, the January 6th committee just handed out subpoenas to Kevin McCarthy and some of the Freedom Caucus loonies. So that's something. And as we know from... I'm sure they'll comply. As we know from impeachments one and two subpoenas are always enforceable mechanisms with very quick results so well we will be talking to the man who got uh his hands on some audio tapes of kevin mccarthy uh jonathan martin about his book his new book this will not pass on monday's pod save america

so how about that that'll be exciting Hopefully he saved some news for us. I'm sure he did. Bring the tapes, J-Mart. Bring the tapes. Bring other tapes. I want tapes that people haven't heard yet on Monday's Pod Save America, J-Mart. Let's do that.

Thank you to Brian Deese for joining us today. Thanks to all of you. Again, go to votesaveamerica.com slash row to sign up and help out. Everyone have a good weekend and we'll see you next week. Bye everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive

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And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crooked media.