Pod Save America - “Welcome to the Schiff-show.”

Episode Date: November 14, 2019

Bill Taylor drops a bombshell on the first day of the impeachment hearings while Republicans peddle conspiracies, Democratic presidential candidates prepare to be Senate jurors, and Deval Patrick enters the primary. Then former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal offers his legal and Constitutional analysis of the hearing and talks about his new book, “Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.”

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, the first day of public impeachment hearings did not go very well for the president. And we're going to talk all about it with our guest, former acting U.S. Solicitor General Neil Katyal, the author of a brand new book on impeachment. We're also going to talk about how the schedule for an impeachment trial in the Senate could affect the members who are running for president. And about the news that yet another Democrat, Deval Patrick, is making a late entry into the 2020 primary. Also, check out Pod Save the World this week, where Tommy and Ben talk about Bolivian President

Evo Morales' downfall and whether it was a popular uprising or a military coup. They also cover Turkish President Erdogan's decision to briefly pause his ethnic cleansing of the Kurds to visit his friend Donald Trump in Washington. Then they talked to former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd about China and why he believes Rupert Murdoch is a cancer on American politics. Yeah, you know, Kevin Rudd was in the office and every once in a while someone comes into Crooked Media and I'm like, what are you doing here? Like, you know, like George Mitchell was here once. Sometimes they're just people I'm like, you seem like you're like too respectable of a figure to be coming to our podcast studio.

I feel that way when I see the Instagrams of the Keep It guests. But it's like, you're too cool to be in the office. There's that too, yeah. We get some celebrities in here who I'm like, what are you doing here? And then there's Kevin Rudd and George Mitchell. It's quite a group that comes walking through this office. Okay, so one more announcement from us.

You guys were all so generous to donate to Fair Fight 2020, which is Stacey Abrams' effort to fight voter suppression all over the country. In fact, thanks to you, Fair Fight was able to stop the Republican-led government in Kentucky from moving 175,000 names to the inactive voter list. And today, Andy Beshear will be the next governor of Kentucky because he won by 5,086 votes. That is 175,000 people that could have been removed from the rolls, and they weren't because of Fair Fight, and the Democratic candidate won by 5,000 votes. So because we did such a good job

raising the first million, Stacey Abrams has asked if we could raise a second million dollars. Stacey Abrams has asked if we could raise a second million dollars. And, you know, we don't want to disappoint Stacey Abrams. You never do. So if you haven't pitched in yet or you know people who would want to help or you want to give again, let's finish out 2019 by hitting $2 million altogether. We have the first million. We would love your help with the second million. And to help, you can go to votesaveamerica.com slash fair fight to chip in what you can.

This money is needed. It is incredibly effective. Stacey Abrams has already proven that in Kentucky, and we will prove it everywhere in the country in 2020. And Dan, on that note, how are those early book sales? Are people coming through? They are. They are. They are.

I'm glad you gave me this incredible segue because another way in which you can help Fair Fight raise money is by buying a copy of my book, Untrumming America, which is out on February 18th. And as we said last week, a portion of the proceeds of every book is going to go to Fair Fight. And I really want to sell books because I really want to help Fair Fight. And I want you to read my book. But I wanted to thank everyone who bought the book. And I want to thank you even more for the people who pre-ordered it and then shared your proof of

purchase with your friends and mainly with me so I can sleep better at night. And I know many of you bought the book, and I'm so grateful for that. All of you have not yet bought it, but I'm sure you will. For those of you who follow the New York Times list, you would note that the number one... Do you know who it is, John, who's the number one bestselling author on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list this week? I sure do, Dan, because sadly, I read Twitter too much, and I saw that Yashar tweeted that it was Donald Trump Jr. and his book, Triggered, which is just one of the 30,000 things a day that makes me want to throw my phone across the room. Well, in addition to being very angering to you and many, to triggering you, if you will.

Yeah, mission accomplished. Exactly. It's the first thing Donald Trump Jr. has ever accomplished in his life. But if you look at it carefully, there is a little dagger next to Donald Trump Jr.'s name. Because what that dagger signifies is that in the course of analyzing how many books Donald Trump Jr. sold, they noticed suspicious bulk purchases of the book. Conspicuous bulk purchases of the book. And in that is a parable of the difference between conservative authors, progressive authors, conservative politics. Progressive politics is these conservative authors are often propped up by people like the RNC, buying tens of thousands of copies of Donald Trump's book. Other billionaires and Republican organizations doing that, while progressive authors have to do it on their own.

We have no – because the DNC does not buy many copies of my book, although I would appreciate it would be a terrible use of their money. They should be spending it on field organizers and things like that. So this is all to say that if you hate Donald Trump and like Stacey Abrams, buy the book. And if you don't buy the book, I will presume that you love Donald Trump Jr. and hate Stacey Abrams. So these are the sort of life decisions you need to make as you are perusing Amazon or Barnes and Noble or IndieBound or all the other places you could buy the book. End of pitch. Look, we don't have a bunch of Russian oligarchs buying bulk purchases of our books from Moscow. See, that's a conspiracy theory, Dan. That's what they do. I believe that story last night

that a Russian copper company bought 70,000 copies of Donald Trump's book and I had an entire pitch for this morning centered around that fact because it was very believable and then I did some research. Many people are saying, many people are saying.

Okay, let's get to the news. On Wednesday, two nonpartisan public servants who currently serve in Donald Trump's State Department implicated him in a bribery and extortion scheme where he'd bully the Ukrainian government into helping him rig the 2020 election. Bill Taylor, our current ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, the State Department's top Ukraine official, testified for about five hours at the first public impeachment hearing, during which Taylor offered new, very incriminating information to the House Intelligence Committee. I think we have a clip of Taylor's bombshell. Last Friday, a member of my staff told me of events that occurred on July 26th.

While Ambassador Volker and I visited the front. This member of my staff accompanied Ambassador Sondland. Ambassador Sondland met with Mr. Yermak. Following that meeting in the presence of my staff at a restaurant, Ambassador Sondland called President Trump and told him of his meetings in Kyiv. The member of my staff could hear President Trump on the phone asking Ambassador Sondland about the investigations. Ambassador Sondland told President Trump the Ukrainians were Well then. All right, so we're going to get to the bombshell. out the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for. Well then. All right. So we're going to get to the bombshell. But first, what did you think of the hearing overall? And how great is Bill Taylor's voice? Look, I think it is important that we just take a step back from the political analysis of the moment, the optics, the theater criticism, and even the specific substance of what Bill Taylor and George Kent said.

The United States Congress has convened impeachment hearings on the president of the United States for using taxpayer-funded military aid to extort an ally under threat from Russia to interfere in the U.S. election. Like that, regardless of whatever else happens, how this affects non-voters in Arizona, swing voters in Wisconsin, or whatever else, or however it ends, this is a day, like an important day in history and it's significant. And it is, you know, I think we can look back at this moment as like an important sort of crossroads for American democracy, because there was a lot at stake here, beyond just how the House votes, how this, you know,

how the Senate convenes a trial and what it means the election is that this is, I mean, this is perhaps the highest crime ever committed by a president. And it is now, an inquiry has begun, and a trial will follow. And that is more important than all of the sort of Twitter machinations of the day. Yeah. And look, Nancy Pelosi has been saying for some time now that this is a sort of a sad situation we're in. And, you know, she said she's been prayerful and she's handling this in a very somber way. And, you know, the cynical among us can say, well, you know, she's doing that because she shouldn't appear giddy over this and like it's some political boon for Democrats. But, you know, thinking about this last night when I was prepping for the pod, I kind of agree, partly because, you know, we've always had this fear and expectation,

really, that at the end of the day, Republicans will acquit this president. And what that says, what that will say about our democracy and what's allowed in this country and the precedent it sets for future presidents, that it is as long as you have the political support of your own party and you control at least some parts of the government, you can invite a foreign power to help rig a United States election. to help rig in the United States election. And that is a concern that the founders had from the very fucking beginning when they were at the Constitutional Convention. It is terribly alarming. The idea that a president can get a foreign power to interfere in the election, the idea that a president can target his political opponents using the vast powers of the presidency is very sad and also very terrifying. And, you know, I kind of thought the same thing. It wasn't like I was, I didn't find myself excited or, you know, wondering just about the politics. I was thinking about that, you know. I think it's fair, really analyze the prospect of impeachment, whether it was the right decision

to do it or not, and then how to proceed once that decision was made through a political lens, right? And that is sort of reverse engineering the almost certain outcome in the Senate. But as we sat there yesterday watching it, it's much bigger than that, right? And it's how this plays out is going to extend beyond what happens in this election. And I think it's worth just, you know, as we're saying here, take a moment and soak that in. Taylor's revelation about this call between Sondland and Trump and then the conversation with Sondland. And we now know the name of the staffer, Taylor's staffer, Dave Holmes. He's an embassy staffer, and he will now be testifying in a private deposition on Friday. So how significant do you think this is? I think in terms of advancing what we know, it is not that significant.

What is significant is that it is another person who can testify with firsthand knowledge of what the president said. And there was an AP report this morning that there was a second embassy staffer who also heard that call, who I imagine we'll be hearing from soon. So it does deliver a fatal blow to the already flawed hearsay defense that the Republicans have been using. Because ultimately, you're going to have Sondland testify next week, and Sondland has firsthand knowledge of what the president said to him and in some of these meetings. But Sondland is a credible witness in the sense that he is hard to paint as a deep state operative, right? He is someone who gave a million dollars to Trump, but he's also someone who has already once lied slash failed to recollect under oath. And so in some ways, he is a imperfect witness. career, theoretically nonpartisan foreign service officers testify to the same thing,

just buttress is the Democratic case in a strong way, I think. Yeah, I think that I mean, look, Republicans literally get out of every single argument, leave every defense behind and go on to a new one. And they will certainly do this here. But, you know, in a in a public hearing that was on television for many hours yesterday um i think republicans hung way too much on this hearsay defense no one has talked to the president um that we're hearing from directly and uh like gordon sonlin is going to testify next week and gordon sonlin is either going to uh perjure himself again basically and say that bill taylor uh dave holmes and this second embassy staffer are all lying or gordon sonlin is going to say that he had a direct conversation with the president united

states and believed that the president cared more about investigating or a sham investigation of his political opponent than he did about any Ukraine policy or corruption in Ukraine, which is the other big argument that the Republicans are making. So Republicans aren't known to be looking around quarters and planning long-term strategy here. Like they're just trying to get through the day, but I'm not sure the value of the hearsay argument or the value of the Trump really cares about corruption argument. And we'll talk about this in a bit when you now have this phone call between Sondland and Trump that we're going to hear about from Sondland and from the two people who overheard the phone call.

I mean, there's a political significance to it too, or media significance, which is the media loves something new, right? Everything else was just a video version of the written deposition transcripts we had seen. And so as we know from the Mueller report, from Mueller's testimony, in order to meet some tests set by the media, you need something new. And here you had something new. Even if it didn't advance the story significantly, it was a surprise. And a surprise is incredibly important in a media assessment of a hearing, apparently, for reasons that are somewhat bizarre, but such is life. So let's talk about how Taylor and Kent did as witnesses in general.

You know, I found them very credible. They started, both of them started by emphasizing, you know, their sort of nonpartisan credentials. They both basically said, you know, we're not here to take a side. We have served Republican and Democratic presidents. and Democratic presidents. And I think they both did a very good job of knocking down a lot of sort of the Republican nonsense arguments. You know, from Bill Taylor, you know, you heard how he believed that withholding any aid to Ukraine after it was already appropriated was crazy, not for any policy beliefs or policy reasons but because the state department wanted to give the aid the defense department wanted to give the aid every expert and non-partisan

official working in the federal government with the exception of maybe donald trump and gordon sonlin and mick mulvaney wanted the aid to be released um so he talked about that he talked about how no president has ever ever conditioned foreign aid on a personal or political favor. So this is not the normal course of business, which is, you know, what people might think. Oh, there's corruption all the time. Presidents are trying to get political favors all the time. That's what foreign policy is. That's what domestic policy is. When you're president, you try to help yourself. You know, Bill Taylor said, no, that's never been done before. president, you try to help yourself. You know, Bill Taylor said, no, that's never been done before.

And I also think Taylor made the point that, you know, Trump wanted Zelensky, President Zelensky, to do this in public. If he really cared about corruption, if he really cared about Burisma's corruption, you know, he could have asked Zelensky, it still would have been fucking wrong and probably impeachable, to conduct some private investigation. But all he wanted was for him to go on CNN and make a public statement that they were investigating Joe Biden. That's what he wanted. So I thought that Taylor was really effective. What did you think? And what did you think of George Kent? I thought they were both excellent. They were, they're the people, for all the discussion of, you know, how terrible Washington is and politics sucks. I've never met Bill Taylor or George Kent, but we have met people like them throughout the government, right? Career,

nonpartisan public servants who view it as their life's calling to serve the United States, regardless of who is president. We know those people are in the Foreign Service, they're in the military, they're in the intelligence agency, they're in domestic agencies like HHS or the Interior Department who are just trying to do the right thing. And they – that appears to be who they are. That's how they testified. They were very believable and serious and didn't give in to anyone's partisan instincts, right? one's partisan instincts, right? Whether it was the Republicans trying to get them to, you know,

sort of validate a conspiracy theory or Democrats trying to get them to make assessments about the impeachability of Donald Trump's conduct. They only testified to what they had seen and what they knew and what their experience was and didn't make proclamations beyond what they were supposed to do. And in that way, I thought they were incredible witnesses. Yeah, I don't know if people necessarily understand that, that when you work in the White House, or when you work for an administration, just how many people you work with on a daily basis, do not necessarily share your partisan politics. And it's not necessarily that they share, you know, the other side's politics, but they truly are nonpartisan, almost apolitical public servants who sometimes when those of us who were on the campaign are all shooting the shit about politics and or people who worked in other administrations like the Clinton administration,

you know, we're all talking politics. And there's a whole bunch of people who are bureaucrats in the government who are public servants who just don't participate in that. And when they work with you, you can tell how nonpartisan they are because their job is to serve in government and they don't see their job as to take sides in partisan politics. And those are all the people that we're hearing from through the course of this impeachment hearing, by and large. I also thought that George Kent was very effective. You know, George Kent in his opening statement sort of talked about preempted one of the lines of attack from Republicans, which is, you know, way back when George Kent did say something to the vice president's office like,

hey, Hunter Biden's on this board. I'm a little worried about the appearance of a conflict of interest here. So, you know, George Kent did sort of raise his concerns about that. But then in the next breath, Kent says, but what Joe Biden did in firing that prosecutor was 100% correct. It was the position of the entire United States government. It was the position of most of the world, except for corrupt people in Ukraine. And in fact, by Joe Biden, by firing that prosecutor, increased the chances that a new non-corrupt prosecutor would look into Burisma. And so, you know, I think George Kent was very effective in knocking down this conspiracy that Joe Biden did anything wrong, anything wrong with regard to Ukraine. It's not just like,

and a lot of reports say this, there's no factual evidence that Joe Biden did anything wrong. No, no, no. It is like Joe Biden did the right thing in Ukraine. You can comment on whether Hunter Biden did the right thing by joining the board, whether it was a conflict of interest, all that kind of stuff. But Joe Biden in firing that prosecutor was 100% correct. And I thought George Kent was very effective in making that point. It seems like the Republicans spent less time on Biden than I would have expected. Yeah. In part because I think maybe the way George Kent handled that at the beginning. Yes, I agree with that. All right, let's talk about how the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee handled the hearing,

starting with Chairman Adam Schiff, who gave a pretty powerful opening statement. Let's play a clip of that. The issue that we confront is the one posed by the president's acting chief of staff when he challenged Americans to get over it. If we find that the president of the United States abused his power and invited foreign interference in our elections, or if he sought to condition, coerce, extort, or bribe an ally into conducting investigations to aid his reelection campaign and did so by withholding official acts, a White House meeting, or hundreds

of millions of dollars of needed military aid, must we simply get over it? Is this what Americans should now expect from their president? If this is not impeachable conduct, what is? If this is not impeachable conduct, what is i i thought that was maybe the most powerful line from schiff um how do you think shift did overall in the hearing flawless i thought schiff and all of the democrats did everything i could have hoped that they would do yeah their the their arguments were clear the They handled it with the seriousness that the occasion deserved. They did not get drawn into Jim Jordan-style absurdities or get pulled into the mud or look like they were preening for the cameras and their questions. The division of topics among the members, everyone sort of hit a different thing.

It wasn't just everyone doing the same thing. People asked questions as opposed to give speeches. I thought they did just a truly phenomenal job. And we have been always critical of Democrats in hearings. Yeah. I couldn't have asked for – I really was incredibly impressed with that. I feel the same way. And, you know, you guys all know we've been critical of Pelosi in the past, of hearings in the past. We've been pretty honest about that the Mueller hearing was not the blockbuster that we all hoped for. I think that was more Mueller's fault than the Democrats on the committee, but so be it. But I do think that, you know, Adam Schiff and the Democrats handled yesterday with the seriousness it

deserves with the seriousness that the american people hopefully expect um it's you know and it was i don't think that was easy especially when you know you saw moments when republicans on the committee tried to turn it into a circus tried to drag adam Schiff into their bullshit so that they would say something crazy and then maybe he would get upset and they would get in a fight and they could say, oh, look, it's a partisan food fight. And he just refused. And when they wanted to enter something crazy into the record, he just said, sure, enter it into the record. And I thought that his demeanor was very effective. And I think this is important to say because as we move forward and Republicans continue to act more like Jim Jordan and start screaming and yelling and

turning this into a circus, I guarantee there will be pundits who say, Adam Schiff's got to fight back. Adam Schiff's being too passive and too calm and he's got to show some fight and stuff like that. He should not. He should not. Because this is not about winning a food fight with the Republicans on the committee. That's not what people watching want to see happen. This is about making the best case possible and making them look like they're the partisan political ones. And the Democrats are the ones who care about this violation of the president's oath of office. What did you think about the Democratic strategy overall, not just the demeanor? Do you think the Democrats made an effective case with what they had to work with? to start with two objectively unimpeachable witnesses, nonpartisan career public servants, who could speak to both the facts of what happened and the geopolitical consequences of Trump and Giuliani's shenanigans. I thought that was very important. It sets the stage of getting

into the broader hearings next week and talking to people like Sondland and others. So they were very good witnesses to start with. I thought it was was the predicate like you want to set a predicate for what is to come and i thought they did that so uh let's talk about how the republicans handled the hearing uh starting with the intel committee's ranking member, Devin Nunes, who opened with a rambling series of conspiracy theories that resembled a Sean Hannity monologue, including one. Well, we should just play the clip here. This is this is what Devin Nunes said during his opening statement. We should forget about them reading fabrications of Trump-Russia collusion from the Steele

dossier into the congressional record. We should also forget about them trying to obtain nude pictures of Trump from Russian pranksters who pretended to be Ukrainian officials. We should forget about them leaking a false story to CNN while he was still testifying to our committee claiming that Donald Trump Jr. was colluding with WikiLeaks. And forget about countless other deceptions, large and small, that make them the last people on earth with the credibility to hurl more preposterous accusations at their political opponents. accusations at their political opponents.

Dan, you and I pay pretty close attention to the news. We pay pretty close attention to the various right-wing conspiracy theories that sort of float through the ether on the internet. I have to admit, I have not heard about the one where the Democrats tried to get nude pictures of donald trump uh what was that i don't know what to say i do not know what to say i do not want to see those i do not no one does america deserves better than that i mean i thought it was so fascinating watching Devin Nunes do this routine because my first thought was, if you do not spend time watching Fox News

or trafficking in 8chan, 4chan conspiracy theories, listening to InfoWars or Ben Shapiro or whatever, you would think that they were speaking in a foreign language on that committee because the list of things that he ran through were crazy town i just i don't know how it's effective i mean i know how it's effective in keeping their base and the fox news watchers angry and uptight and you know he's playing all the hits, but doesn't seem like it's effective beyond that. But who knows? I don't know. What do you think? My takeaway from Nunez's performance and then also what we'd see from Jim Jordan and a few others later was the Republicans are much more interested in persuading Trump of their loyalty to him than persuading the American people of Trump's innocence. to him than persuading the American people of Trump's innocence. And I think that says everything about the current state of Republican politics, which is they're much more afraid of

angering Trump, getting primaried and losing their job than they are actually doing the right thing, or even thinking in some sort of strategy about how you would handle this in a way that minimize damage to the party writ large, right? There's like this massive prisoner's dilemma problem for all the Republicans. And that's a very apt term, I think, in terms of how they handle this is that they're dealing with their own politics, not what is best for the party. And every one of them is doing that. Now, Republicans made this big show of, you know, we don't have anyone on the Intel committee that can really be, you know,

the best defender of Donald Trump, which tough, tough for Devin Nunes. And so they removed a member of the Intel committee and replaced that person with Jim Jordan, who was supposed to be the, you know, the hero of the day was going to defend Donald Trump. How do you think Jim Jordan did? I think he did exactly what he was supposed to do, which was make Donald Trump feel better about himself. Yeah. Right. He, I mean,

he was basically just a obnoxious, not too bright security blanket for Donald Trump. And Donald Trump feels better if there's, you know, cause Jim Jordan is basically like low rent Hannity. Right. And so, and that like,

that's his, that's his future. Um, and so that, like that made Trump feel better. I don't know that he did anything like he did better than devin nunez sure but i mean he yelled a lot who doesn't right he yelled a lot which is what trump wants to hear right and frankly it's what some republicans want to hear it's basically how the bright cavanaugh got to be yep got on the supreme court was by screaming at everyone that was That was my first thought when I listened to Jordan.

I was like, oh, this is their Brett Kavanaugh, Lindsey Graham. If we're losing the argument, if we can just scream about how we're grieved and Donald Trump's a victim, if we can yell loud enough, then it's going to work. And of course, it did work for them in the Kavanaugh hearings. And, you know, Devin Nunes's approach was to basically like read off 13 conspiracy theories to Bill Taylor and say, have you heard of that? Have you heard of that? And I don't think that was quite effective. And, you know, then you saw like Republicans like Will Hurd, who are traditionally more moderate, but has clearly bought into a lot of the bullshit during this impeachment hearing, you know, try to sort of lay out a more constructed argument about why Trump might be innocent of this. And as I'm watching all that, and then

listening to Jim Jordan sound like a fucking auctioneer screaming as fast as he can and yelling, I was thinking like, this is, this is probably where this is going to go in the coming weeks. Like they are quickly going to lose patience, some of these Republicans. And if they feel cornered, are just going to start yelling and screaming to get through it. Yeah. I mean, you can expect a walkout. Like all kinds of absurdities to try to blow up the process for sure. Yeah.

Matt Gaetz barging into the room, riding an elephant. There was one moment with Jim Jordan yelling where I thought Peter Welsh, one of the Democratic members on the Intel Committee, had a great retort. Let's play that clip. Now, there is one witness, one witness that they won't bring in front of us. They won't bring in front of the American people. That's the guy who started it all, the whistleblower. Thank you. I say to my colleague, I'd be glad to have the person who started it all come in and testify. President Trump is welcome to take a seat right there.

What a line from Peter Walsh. He got the biggest laugh of the day. Donald Trump should come sit down and testify. But I thought it was, you know, it sort of revealed the absurdity of the Republican focus on the whistleblower, whose account has been corroborated by numerous witnesses and hasn't been challenged successfully by any witnesses or any evidence, and the idea that Donald Trump is hiding from testifying and did in the Mueller case as well. And so, and he's also preventing critical witnesses like John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney and everyone else from testifying. Or even the notes of the people who were testifying that day. You know, that was a big point about, you know, George Kent wrote that memo to file who were testifying that day. You know, that was a big point about, you know, George Kent wrote that memo to file and he turned it into the State Department

to be responsible for the subpoena and Mike Pompeo's sitting on it. But like, I also think that Peter Welch's comment, which is quite funny, and apropos and goes to the heart of it, also goes to how dumb Jim Jordan is, which is he just like walked right into that and had no idea he was doing it.

What did you think of the two staff lawyers who questioned the witnesses, Dan Goldman on the Democratic side and Steve Castor on the Republican side? I thought Dan Goldman was the Democrat was phenomenal. He knew exactly what he was doing. He asked the questions. He had a plan. He executed the plan. The Republican attorney was terrible. In a city of a million attorneys, that's the guy they got. It says a lot about how few people wanted that job. Yeah. I don't know if he was directed by the Republicans to ask all these topics, and he probably didn't know how to wade through all the conspiracies or what, but it was sort of like a rambling series of questions. He always had like a weird constipated look on his face. It was very bizarre. And during the questioning, even some of

Donald Trump's most fervent supporters, like, you know, former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was like on twitter what is this guy doing this is not effective um one republican operative told bloomberg sahil kapur quote this is a massive fucking shit show no one wants to be here so you know you'll hear a lot of uh spin from republicans today that it was wonderful and and and boring and then democrats had a rough time and all that kind of shit. But during the hearing, I don't think they were that excited. No, he did. He did a terrible job. And it, it just sort of the fact that he had 45 minutes of question of question time, but didn't have 40

really have 45 minutes of things to say, sort of bespeaks the weakness of the Republican argument. You even saw that with some of the members with their five minutes, who would ask a couple of like the non Jim Jordan types would sort of ask a couple of, like the non-Jim Jordan types would sort of ask a couple of questions and then just give up and yield their time back because there's nothing, like the conduct is indefensible, right? Like you can, there's only,

it's just a question of how much shame you're willing to bathe in during, to defend Trump, but it's not like you can, there's no substantive argument to make here yeah and the answer to that is a like a full sensory deprivation tank of shame is how much what did you think of the media reaction to the uh the theater criticism if you will, of the hearing yesterday. Well, I think we should start with the fact that the overwhelming majority of the coverage, I think, was fair and objective and as serious as the moment demanded.

I agree. I agree. And I am sympathetic to the sort of the, quote, media writ large here, which is their performance is often defined by not the work they do or the majority of the work that is done, but by the worst examples of their work, right? So there were two stories that inflamed the world,

one by Jeff Mason of Reuters and one by Jonathan Allen of NBC News, that people were very mad about. We were mad about them. Yeah, let me, I'll read the headlines just for people to know why we were so annoyed. Reuters headline was, consequential but dull. Trump impeachment hearings begin without a bang. And the lead was, Democratic lawmakers tried their hand at reality television with mixed results on wednesday that's reuters and here's the nbc piece from jonathan allen which you know in fairness nbc was one piece of analysis out of a lot of coverage from nbc that was not

this quote the first two witnesses called wednesday testified to president trump's scheme but lacked the pizzazz necessary to capture the public attention. All right, Dan, go ahead. The thing you read from Jeff Mason is one of the worst things I've ever heard in my life. And I will, but I will, the caveat I'll give to that is you and I have known Jeff Mason for over a decade. He covered Obama's White House. He is 99% of the time, a very good, very straightforward wire reporter. And so like people are very upset about this piece. They should be upset about this piece, but I do not think it is indicative of Jeff Mason's work, right? I mean, there are reporters and analysts

who often lean into these tropes and are sort of famous for them. I don't think Jeff is one of those people. And so that's the perspective I would offer of having worked with him for a long time. I thought there was a really interesting conversation on Twitter between two critics at the Times, James Ponowasiak and A.O. Scott, where they talked about the value of television criticism of big TV moments, right? And I think that that is very true. Like, it is a television moment, right? It is. Like, millions of Americans watched it, right? Just like a State of the Union or Inauguration or, you know, the Mueller testimony or whatever it is. And I often very much enjoy the pieces written by TV critics about those things. People like James Ponowaziak or Emily Nussbaum or Alan Sepinwall,

like really great writers who analyze it from the perspective of television. But that is a job for television critics, right? It would be annoying if James Ponowaziak was covering day-to-day politics, but he has an expertise in television critics, so he's doing it. And so the point of their, like what A.O. Scott was saying is, criticism is an art, right? It's something you do, and it should be left to the people who do it for a living. And so the political reporter should cover the politics and the substance and the legality and all of what is happening in the and we want to hear from trained television critics about the television aspect of it. I think that's an interesting and important component of it. Yeah. I mean, look, we cover, hopefully,

the substance of every political issue we talk about on the show. And then we also cover the politics. And we do political analysis. And we talk about optics on the show. And you and I wish that we didn't have to, and we complained about it the entire time we were in the White House. But I remember last week, before these hearings started, I was giving advice to Democrats and saying, remember, this will be judged as a show, what kind of show you put on, it should be choreographed. This is about trying to persuade the public. And so you do have to think about these things. So I don't think there's inherently a problem, or at least it's a necessity in the television age that we live in, to talk about sort of the performance of various political players, since this is about affecting public opinion. That's not necessarily my big problem with this. The problem is, but lacked the pizzazz necessary to capture the public attention.

How do you know that? There are no polls. There is no data. How do you know, Jeff Mason, the Democratic lawmakers tried their hand at reality television with mixed results? No one knows this yet, right? Like, you and I thought the Democrats did a fantastic job and that it was choreographed really well. Other people might disagree with us. In about a week, you know, we'll have some polls that say

that one way or the other. But the idea that reporters, or some reporters, a minority of all in this bubble together. Those of us who pay attention to politics a lot, reporters, political people, pundits, like we know all this information. We've heard it all before, except for, of course, the Taylor bombshell, which I thought would prevent anyone from writing this bullshit because we heard something very new at the hearing. knew at the hearing. But because we all know this a lot, you know, and reporters are covering this every day, obviously they get bored by it after a while because they're trafficking in this bullshit all the time, right? But what about the average voter, the average American who's walking around, who doesn't pay attention to the news that much, and they think, okay, there was a big impeachment hearing yesterday. I want to find out what happened because I didn't have time to watch it. So they go on, they go on their computers and they go on their phones and they see an NBC piece

and it says it lacked the pizzazz necessary to capture the public attention. Like if I were someone just watching that, I'd be like, well, I'm the public. Why did you just make that judgment about me? I didn't even get to read the facts yet. I didn't even get to watch it for myself. just make that judgment about me i didn't even get to read the facts yet i didn't even get to watch it for myself and i don't think that some reporters realize that they by writing that stuff are shaping public opinion and who were they to shape public opinion just based on their own personal opinion and not report the substance of the hearing and also maybe do political analysis based on facts data experience in politics in politics, experience in media, right? Like just give us something besides a poorly formed opinion right off the bat.

Yeah, it is both presuming a reaction and then influencing that reaction by that presumption. Yes, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy because if a bunch of people continue to read that the hearings were boring, people will think the hearings are boring. This is what happens. And when you argue with reporters about this, as we have done in the past, what they will tell you is, well, I'm just one person who's going to read my blog or who's going to read my piece or whatever. But these things add up. You write for outlets that are, you know, go far and wide. And there's a responsibility that comes with that. And again, I completely agree with your opening point here, which is, I was, until I saw those two pieces last night, and they went around on our Slack channel, I said to myself, wow, I'm really proud of the media and how they've covered this. I think they've covered this in a serious, substantive way. And I almost didn't even want to tweet about these two pieces, because one of the things that happens in this age is the uh you know this is the algorithms that you've talked about in facebook too the things that piss people off the most that enrage people the most are what gets shared the most and now i fear that so many

people will be like oh you know the impeachment hearings were covered as boring by a bunch of people so that must be a problem so i almost didn't even want to lift these pieces up. But because we have a long way to go and many weeks to go, I think, you know, it should be, it's a brushback pitch to the rest of the media. And I thought, and frankly, I would, this is something I thought that was rare about this was a lot of reporters were critical of those takes, right? It's not just those two pieces, but just anything that sort of had that sort of TV assessment from a political reporter. Which is progress. We did the thing that I warned about,

which is we took the two worst pieces and we used to define everything. I was like, most people did a really great job. I wrote the outline in the middle of the hearing yesterday and I put one of the items in there was our reaction to the media coverage of this. And my presumption was it would be largely infuriating and it actually wasn't right. Yeah. And then hopefully what we're trying to do is explain the outrage ours and on Twitter about those pieces and acknowledge that most people did the overwhelming majority of coverage.

I thought was serious., took this very seriously. I thought that's important. Yeah, and I do think, you know, one thing I worry about is, as I mentioned, I think Taylor's revelation sort of drove a lot of the coverage because if reporters can write about something new, then they don't necessarily write about

all the theater criticism stuff. And so, you know, I do have a concern that as the testimony continues into next week, if each witness doesn't have a Bill Taylor-like bombshell, then we will devolve into sort of the worst of the coverage that we were just complaining about. So I do have that fear. And look, do have that fear. And look, I have a bigger anxiety, which is, this is still seen as a test by too many in the media as, can Democrats persuade Republicans to do the right thing? And I think that, you know, Democrats would probably do themselves some good by setting expectations now that we do not see our job here. Democrats on that committee do not see their job as trying to persuade Republican members of Congress to do the right

thing and vote their conscience. That's for the Republicans to do. What the Democrats are trying to do is lay out a case to the American people about why the president has betrayed his oath of office. And if Republicans agree with that, then please join us in voting that way. If you don't, then that's telling to the American people and they should vote accordingly in 2020. That's that should be our goal. I don't I think this whole idea is like, you know, if Democrats can convince a couple Republicans to vote with them, they win. And if Republicans can maintain partisan unity, they win. Like, I just I think we have to get out of that frame. We have already convinced the Republican.

His name is Justin Amash. Right. He was forced to leave the party because of it. It's actually an impossible situation. You can't convince Republicans. If a Republican agrees with you, they are forced to leave the party. So it is going to be a partisan vote. There's just it's a question of whether there'll be other independents like Justin Amash. So the whole, it's a, it's a,

we cannot allow a test to be set up. The Democrats are destined to fail. So what, what, what comes next, next week? And what is Wednesday's testimony change, if anything? Well, I think it really puts the onus even more so on Gordon Sondland's testimony. Like that is, I think, the most interesting and compelling and be the hardest to that. I think that in terms of what people are looking for, what's new and what's different, that will be the one. We have a parade of other nonpartisan career officials who are going to come in and speak to what we already know and corroborate things that were in the call transcript, were in the depositions, were in Mick Mulvaney's national television announcement of crimes. But Gordon Sondland is the one who

spoke directly to the press and who we will hear from. Yeah. I also think that, I don't think there's going to be a moment that is, even if there are other developments, other bombshells, that is going to instantly change public opinion here. I think this is going to, this is something that's just going to build and build and build. And so, you know, I would even be wary of polls that come out in a couple of days of polls that come out in a couple days polls that come

out next week like i think what i hope will happen here is as witness after witness testifies the same thing as they corroborate each other's testimony as you see this parade of non-partisan officials then the cumulative effect of all of this testimony will be powerful and compelling, but it will take time. It will take repetition. And I don't think we should ever expect anything to change overnight and possibly at all. I mean, look, we've said this to our own polling right before the hearing started, showed 94 percent of Democratic leaning voters for impeachment and 94% of Republican-leaning voters against. And there was like 2% that hadn't made up their mind. So, you know, we live in a polarized environment and that's that. And there's nothing much we can do about that right now. But I feel, look, I would be upset and anxious if I think Democrats didn't do a great job, if we didn't have all the facts on our side, right? Like, if most of the media looked like those two pieces, I'd be upset. Like, I think the Democrats are doing everything they can

possibly do. They're taking it seriously. We have very compelling evidence, very compelling evidence and testimony from nonpartisan people. There's nothing else we can do. And I'm glad we're doing this because as we said at the top, this is that important. You know, it really does rise above partisan politics, or at least it should, because it is a very scary, serious moment for the country. And no matter what happens, I'm glad the Democrats have pursued this. Okay, when we come back, we'll talk more about impeachment with our guest, former acting solicitor general, Neal Katyal. On the pod today, the former acting solicitor general of the United States and the co-author of the upcoming book, Impeach, The Case Against Donald Trump, Neil Katyal. Neil, welcome to Pod Save America.

Thanks. I'm a huge fan of yours, and so it's really exciting for me to be here. Same here. Same here. Let's start with yesterday's hearing. What did you make of Bill Taylor's new revelations about Gordon Sondland's call with Donald Trump? How significant do you think those were? I think it's quite significant. So first of all, Taylor is not just anyone. He's Trump's guy. He's Trump's handpicked guy to serve as ambassador to Ukraine. And just within a few seconds of him standing up there and testifying, you could tell it was going to be a pretty significant event, a guy who was literally a war hero who'd worked for Republican presidents as well as Democratic ones, who was, you know,

really striving to be neutral and say, I'm not taking a position on impeachment. I'm just here as a fact witness. And then he dropped, and it came late, at page 18 of his 20-page testimony, this remarkable fact. There were several other facts, too, that we should talk about that he, you know, detailed that were new, but that on July 26th, one of his staff members was with Ambassador Sondland, who was Trump's guy to be ambassador to the European Union, but also his kind of handpicked person to run this shadow foreign policy. And Sondland had a conversation with President Trump in a restaurant on a cell phone, which is like nine degrees of awfulness from a security perspective.

But in any event, what the staffer said that he overheard President Trump saying was asking about the, quote, investigations. And then afterwards, the staffer had a conversation with Ambassador Sondland about what President Trump thought about Ukraine. And this is a quote from Ambassador Taylor's testimony yesterday, quote, Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden. And that's significant because it ties Trump directly to all of these events. That's the first thing. And the second is it lands Sondland in even further hot water. This is the guy who had a closed door interview a few weeks ago in which he basically denied having anything

to do with Trump and this whole shadow foreign plot. And then as more people testified in closed session, he then all of a sudden magically remembered a bunch of things and wrote an updated letter to the Congress saying so. And now he's going to have to do something again next week. He's testifying on Wednesday, and the choice before him is stark. Either he's going to say, oh, I now magically remember that conversation with the president that I somehow forgot, which again, very dubious for anyone who's worked, as you know, better than anyone, anyone who's worked for an administration. You remember the

conversations you have with the president of the United States, but either he's going to say that, that he now magically remembers something he had forgotten in two prior sessions, or he's going to call Ambassador Taylor a liar. And good luck with that, given this man's gravitas and credibility. Yeah, you know, that was one of my first reactions yesterday. It was, you know, what is with Gordon Sondland? He obviously has lawyers who've been advising him. Like, what would you have been advising him if you were his lawyer?

Do you think that he told them the whole truth? Like, what do you think was going on there? How did he think he was going to get away with all of this? Yeah, I mean, first of all, he is represented by one of the greatest lawyers around, Bob Luskin. So Bob is as good as they come. And so I have to believe that there is no chance that Sondland told the whole truth to his lawyer. And, you know, this is unfortunately what Trump does. He corrupts the people around him, even if they started out well-meaning, and in a real attempt to try and protect him and protect this lawlessness. And it corrodes and it corrodes massively. And I think Sondland is the first person to face it and probably will not be the last. And

this is why the investigation, I know some of your listeners may be wondering, why do you start an investigation out this way with all these closed door interviews and then these witnesses who aren't necessarily the central witnesses? And you do it because you're running this part like a law enforcement investigation. You're trying to get people to first testify behind closed doors and then to later catch them in lies, which is exactly what's happened to Sondland. And so the case building is methodical and slow. It's not absolute whiz-bang.

And so, you know, some of the pundits today were saying, oh, well, there weren't any bombshells on the first day or wasn't that exciting. It was a little boring or so on. That's how law enforcement investigation should be. We should worry about a process that was all designed for political theatrics and not for building, you know, a solid legal case. So obviously, you know, Sondland is someone who had direct contact with the president. Can you talk about from a legal standpoint, this Republican argument that all the other testimony so far is just hearsay, second and third hand information? Yeah, absolutely. So hearsay is the idea that there isn't, you don't have a firsthand witness to President Trump's state of mind. That's what the Republicans are saying. They're

saying, look, President said he cared about corruption. You don't have any first hand witnesses that say to the contrary. And hearsay is actually accepted in federal courts. There are 23 different exceptions. But here there's a much simpler answer to this. And this is why I think this Republican argument is ultimately going to blow up in their face. There's only one reason we don't have firsthand witnesses, because the firsthand witnesses are people like John Bolton, the president's national security advisor, Bolton's deputy, Kupperman, the president himself, and people like that. Those are people with firsthand knowledge, no question about it. All of those people are under orders by the president not to go and testify, not to provide any documents to Congress. He's written a memo through his White

House counsel that says all of that. And indeed, even the two gentlemen who we heard from yesterday, Kent and Taylor, were under that same order not to testify by the president. And they courageously and patriotically decided to go tell the truth. But the reason why there is some hearsay going on, it's simply a matter of the president's doing. And this is what I wrote about in the New York Times this week, which is the idea that a president can say, I can't be indicted because I'm a sitting president and presidents can't be indicted under constitution. I can't be impeached because I have the ability to stop any investigation into me and not turn over evidence and not to provide any witnesses. I mean, that's at least where King George III was, if not more powerful than that. So, I mean, there is literally no responsible constitutional scholar in this country, dead or alive, who agrees with these propositions. So Democrats have made the choice

to avoid waiting for the courts to decide whether people like Bolton and Mulvaney have to testify and have said, sort of like you were just saying, you know, that their refusal to show up is more evidence of obstruction and they're just going to sort of add it to the pile. Do you think this is the right strategy? And how strong do you think the Democrats case would be if they did fight it out in court, in terms of getting Bolton to testify? Do you think there's privilege arguments there? What do you think about that? So the one of the reasons I wrote this book with Sam Koppelman is because we think that the case is overwhelming and strong on the existing public record. And so you have the president in a transcript. It's not a direct transcript.

It's more of a memorandum of a conversation in which the president admits the whole thing. And that's an open and shut case for impeachment. It raises a offense that is really at the heart of what the founders put impeachment in the Constitution for, which is an executive that's trying to collaborate with a foreign government to try and win an election. So it is squarely what impeachment is about. Now there's other stuff. You could build more of a case for that particular offense with Bolton and Kupperman and others. And then there are other offenses too, you know, even going back to Mueller, which could be looked at. And I think if they went to court, the Democrats went to court, they would win those things, but it would risk muddying a very clear storyline. So I don't have any problem if

they want to try and go to the courts on a separate timeline and do that. But they have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. And here they have a clear, simple, easy case for impeachment, and they should be running that first. And anything else that they happen to get through the courts, that's just gravy. So can you make the case, like if you were Adam Schiff and you were giving a sort of a closing argument here at the end of this impeachment trial, like there's obviously a whole bunch of people that are sort of in the Fox News bubble and are buying sort of the various Republican conspiracies, but make a case to the person who thinks, you know, okay, maybe what Trump did was wrong, but all presidents make decisions to benefit themselves politically.

We have an election coming up soon. Maybe we should just decide all of this then. As I keep thinking about this case, I feel like for a lot of people listening, it may come down to that. And maybe if the Republicans get smarter, you know, they'll get to that argument. What's sort of the best case for why he needs to go now? It's real simple. In the book, I explain the rule that I just try and live my life by, which is what I call the yardstick rule. And it's the way I teach my law students in their first day of class, which is, I just want you to pretend that the sides were reversed. So just ask yourself, if President Obama did this, or if a President Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders did this, and went to a foreign government and said, hey, will you announce an investigation into my chief

political rival? How would that make you feel? What would that send as a signal, if you said that was okay, to future presidents? Who did this all in secret? And the only reason, after all, we find out about it is because of this brave whistleblower. If a president can do that in secret, they destroy the ability to have re-election as a check. You know, in the Philadelphia Convention, there was a big debate, should we have impeachment or not? And some folks like Gouverneur Morris said, well, the president has to run for reelection, so we don't really need to have impeachment in there. The reelection can serve as a referendum on impeachment. And Ben Franklin and others stood up and said, well, what about if the president goes and conspires with a foreign government to corrupt the election process? And then Gouverneur Morris changes his mind and said,

yeah, absolutely. That's a circumstance in which we should have impeachment. And that's where high crimes and misdemeanors, that language comes from. And so... Prescient. Look, I... I said prescient. Yeah, exactly. I mean, our founders, you know, you go back and read the Philadelphia Conventions. They were so wise in so many ways. They obviously were painfully ignorant in others.

But on something like this, they did design an architecture of government that is made for a circumstance like this, in which a president is putting his personal interests of re-election above the interests of the American people. So you recently said a few weeks ago that you believe Trump will be impeached and removed from office before 2020. I would love to believe that, but I have not seen anything from Senate Republicans in the last, I don't know, 10 years that gives me confidence we'll find 20 who are willing to convict or even one or two. What am I missing? What gives you some measure of confidence that we might be able to convince some of these Senate Republicans to vote their conscience? What gives me confidence is, frankly, the fact the country is still here with its values and that over time, Americans at critical moments have cast the right decisions,

whether it's 1776 and breaking with Britain or 1789 and developing a constitution or 1865 winning the Civil War, 1930s with the New Deal or World War II II, or the Civil Rights Revolution, or the gender equality revolution. You know, there's so many times in which people say, oh, it can't possibly be, and yet this country manages to get it done. And to me, this is that kind of critical moment. And we've never forced, the Democratic Party has never forced the Republicans to cast a vote and say, oh, this is okay. Senators are really going to have to stand up and say, and look into their hearts and say, it's fine for a president to do this, because if President Trump can do this, Bernie Sanders can do this, and Elizabeth Warren and everyone else, and what does that do to our democracy? So I do have faith in the end that those votes are cast. You know, in the book, I talk about a story about Senator Ross from

Kansas during the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. And Johnson was a terrible, racist president, but he wasn't being impeached for any of that. He was being impeached for a violation of the Tenure of Office Act, the kind of technicality. And even though Ross hated Johnson, he sat, looked into his heart, and cast the vote not to impeach because he didn't think it was the right thing to do for the country under the way that impeachment proceeding has been brought. And I'd like to think that there are future Senators, Senator Ross is out there when it comes to a critical moment like this in which the eyes of history and indeed the fate of our democracy may rest on the votes. So one last non-impeachment question, just because you have argued so many cases before

the Supreme Court. This week, the court also heard oral arguments in the DACA case. You know, some legal observers who were watching those arguments, reading about those arguments, sort of thought the way that John Roberts was talking, he said, oh, well, this has to do with benefits and work permits. And I don't think, you know, repealing this would, you know, lead to deportation. And what kind of sense did you get from those oral arguments about where the court might be leaning? And should we be cautious in general about interpreting too much from oral arguments in a case like that? Yeah, so first of all, I have the privilege of representing a lot of higher education associations in that case

and saying that President Trump's decision here is illegal. So just know that. You know, having argued 39 cases, 38 of them before John Roberts, I can tell you, I am never certain where he is when I leave the courtroom. He loves playing devil's advocate. He was himself an extraordinary legal advocate before the Supreme Court, and now carries a little bit of that onto the bench with him. So, you know, he asks tough questions on either side. And that's what you saw, I think, in the hearing on Tuesday. I am cautiously optimistic at the end of the day that the court is going to say that this is something a president can't do, in part because the Trump administration gutted their own legal case by making not policy arguments, but kind of more silly legal arguments,

and in part because the acting head of Homeland Security at the time, Ms. Duke, refused to make the policy arguments because she thought they were evidently abhorrent. Well, that is hopeful. Neil, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Everyone go check out the book, Impeach! The Case Against Donald Trump. Thanks for coming on. Come back soon. Thank you very much.

Okay, Dan, let's turn to 2020. And let's start by talking about one logistical way that impeachment may affect the Democratic primary. If the House votes to impeach Trump, Mitch McConnell has committed to holding a Senate trial, which he has reportedly told his colleagues may begin right around Thanksgiving. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr suggested the trial may take six to eight weeks, though leadership sources close to McConnell disputed that. But whenever the trial is, and however long it takes, six Democratic presidential candidates will be forced off the campaign trail to serve as jurors. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bennett.

Dan, how much of a political problem for them is this, as they are trying to run their campaigns? It is a political problem for sure. The place where you want to be in January is Iowa. You want to be spending the bulk of your time in Iowa organizing caucus goers, building up your volunteer network, and recruiting prison captains. That is the best way to win Iowa. You want to spend some time in the other three early states as well. And if you were in Washington, you were not doing any of those things. I'm sure there are ways to go Thursday night to Monday morning and be in Iowa, but you're going to be a decided disadvantage to Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, and anyone else, Andrew Yang, who have the time to just camp out

in Iowa. And so that's problematic. The challenge for the other contenders who are not senators is it is likely that the bulk of the political conversation is going to be on the impeachment trial. That is who is going to be on TV. That is who is going to be talked about on social media. That is who is going to have the opportunity for viral moments. And one of the things we've seen in this primary to date is when candidates are part of that conversation, they do quite well. And when they get relegated to being outside of that conversation, they often drop pretty quickly. You saw with Pete Buttigieg, right? He was a big part of the conversation. He moved up really quickly in the polls. Then he sort of fell out of it as he sort of plateaued and kind of went back down to being in the lower tier and then had a good debate performance and

several good media cycles. It has built his way back up to being a top tier candidate. Same thing with, you know, look at Beto. Beto gets in, raises a bunch of money, a lot of excitement, falls out of the conversation, and drops. And then once you're out of the conversation, getting back in is very, very hard. So there are upsides and downsides to this, but I think the campaign managers of any of these candidates

would prefer their candidate be in Iowa. And I'm also pretty sure McConnell is doing this just to fuck with them because he's one of those people who just wants to see the world burn. Yeah, I was thinking that too. I mean, yeah, I'm sort of torn on this one, right? Obviously, you want to be on the ground in Iowa, New Hampshire and meeting voters, right? That still matters. But I am also aware that we are in the media political environment that you just described, which is, you know, this race is much more nationalized than ever before. Even in some of these early states, people are receiving information about the candidates through the national news and social media and maybe not as much as they used to in person. And look, we're not going to get any viral moments from these senators who were jurors during the impeachment trial,

because the senators aren't supposed to say anything. But during the breaks, after the day is over of the impeachment, each day of the impeachment trial, you know, these, all of these senators will be all over Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes and, and CNN and all of these different shows. And they'll have a lot of media opportunities to talk about the trial and talk about what they just saw. Now, will they be talking about what they want to talk about, which is healthcare and wages and all the issues they would have been talking about if they were on the ground in Iowa, New Hampshire, where they're not talking about impeachment at all. Probably not. Probably in those interviews, they're going to have to be talking about impeachment,

which I'm sure they don't want to talk about a ton. So I do think it's mixed. It's mixed for these candidates. I think the candidate among the senators who has the biggest opportunity here is Kamala Harris. Right. I agree with that. I mean, even though she is a juror in this case and is not going to be prosecuted in the case, she is always at her best when she gets to highlight her prosecutorial skills. And I'm not speaking about her criminal justice reform record. I am talking about the instances where she is questioning Bill Barr or questioning Brett Kavanaugh or speaking to

that, because that has been, with obviously limited success to date, the proxy for her electability cases. She is the person who can take Trump down on the debate stage. And there is an opportunity here for her to highlight that, to take that part of her bio and make it an asset and really an opportunity to, I don't want to use the term resuscitate, but to, you know, sort of build back the momentum she has lost and get back into the top tier in time to make an impact in the campaign. Yeah. And I think to that extent, you know, Amy Klobuchar serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Same thing. Yeah. And was a prosecutor. And so, and I think especially for Klobuchar and Booker, who've had a harder time, and Bennett to an extent, who've had a harder time getting any attention from media

at all nationally, I think this will help them get some attention. I think for Warren, you know, she was out very early for impeachment and made it a big deal. So that's good for her. I would bet that of all those folks, Bernie is probably the most annoyed because Bernie doesn't love talking about impeachment. He has a message that's very different than that. And, you know, and his campaign is big on organizing and he loves doing rallies. And so I would imagine that he's probably one of the more annoyed candidates that he has to go do this. Yep, I think that's right.

So as we mentioned, one person who will not be stuck in Washington is Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who has seen some pretty good polls lately. On Tuesday, Monmouth University, a great pollster, published a poll of likely Iowa Democratic caucus goers that had Pete leading at 22%. This is the first poll that Pete has led in Iowa. He was followed by Biden at 19%, Warren at 18%, and Bernie at 13%. Buttigieg gained 14 points since monmouth's last iowa poll in august dan what do you attribute this to i mean he he's been riding a wave he

really has and we should just put some this caveat on this conversation that i just saw the new poll coming out saturday night oh boy so that will be the one, right? If he is leading that poll, that's the, uh, the starting gun goes off. But Nate Silver, um, had an interesting take on this, which is like, is it this, everyone is sort of working back like Pete's rise, which is happening in Iowa. It's happening in national polls. It's happening in other early state polls. We've seen at least New Hampshire, uh, not so much the, uh, what's happening in national polls, what's happening in other early state polls we've seen, at least New Hampshire, not so much the more diverse states in the primary calendar yet. But a lot of people are tripping that to his last debate performance,

whatever that was a few weeks ago, which I think we all believe was a very good performance. But what Nate Silver pointed out was something like, he would have gained a point maybe in the polls taken right afterwards, very good performance. But like what Nate Silver pointed out was something like people just gained a couple, like a point maybe in the polls taken right afterwards. But there he has managed to engineer a media cycle about his surging. And there's a self-perpetuating element to that, that is, you know, he has been every like every time you pick up the paper, it's like people to judge in the catbird seat in Iowa, people toigieg surging. And he is definitely drawing the crowds that suggest a surge. So it's not made up of whole cloth, but he's ridden a very favorable media wave that is happening at the same time about questions about the electability or viability of the frontrunners, none of which we fully understand how to interpret

or take seriously. But at a question when Democrats are very, he has managed to leverage a favorite motorcycle and a desire for a quote unquote, more electable alternative among some, I don't know who, to get to the top. And the question is, did he get there too soon? Yeah, I mean, look, I think Nate's point is right about the debate. I also think this is sort of the result of a slow build in Iowa that comes from having an excellent organization there and having been on television there. He spent a lot of money on television in Iowa. And, you know, I remember months ago when Tommy was in Iowa for his Iowa show that will be first episode dropping next week.

And he was texting us and he's like, you know, I'm at this Pete event at a place in Iowa where usually you don't get that many people. And there are tons and tons of people here. And so Pete's crowds have sort of predated the, in Iowa, at least, have predated some of the, that debate where he, where he did pretty well. And, you know, I think this is the case in Iowa. I think it's the same with Elizabeth Warren. It was sort of a slow rise for her in Iowa, right? Like when you have a really good organization in Iowa,

you can get on the air and you can spend a lot of time there talking to people. You know, if you have the right message, then it can pay off. If you have the right message, then it can pay off. And I think we saw this during the JJ, or now the LJ dinner, that the two people with pretty distinct messages were Elizabeth Warren, her message about the need to fight for big structural change, and Pete Buttigieg, which is much more of a um we need to fight but we also need to come together and this sort of hunger among the electorate for for unity in the end of you know perpetual political warfare which is along with Elizabeth Warren's message also a potent message but you're right like I don't know if he's he's peaked too soon either uh and I imagine that in the next debate next week he'll probably take some fire. Yeah. I mean, for some time perspective, this is Pete's rise here is about 12 years to the week

of Obama's rise in Iowa in 2007, when he surged to the front. The challenge for Pete is the Iowa caucus is one month later in 2020 than it was in 2008. It was January 3rd when Obama won it. It's February 3rd now. And I remember when we were working for Obama, we were like hanging on for dear life to find ways to sustain our momentum to just get to caucus day before you sort of have – because the narrative always turns after too long. And that was challenging. And there were some actual scary days where we thought our poll numbers were dropping right before the Christmas holiday. And so Pete has a real task in front of his campaign to keep that momentum up and survive a large number of debates.

I think we had one debate between Obama's surge and the actual Iowa caucus. Maybe two at most. He's going to have, he has at least November, at least December, and possibly, I don't know how many, but there's at least one and perhaps more in January. So he has a gauntlet to ride to get to caucus day. Yeah. And the other challenge he has is this stat from that Monmouth poll. Fewer than one third of likely caucus goers in Iowa say that they are set on their candidate. Fewer than one third. And most would not be disappointed to switch their support to another candidate before the first in the nation caucuses take place on February 3rd.

That's a lot of people who haven't definitely made up their minds yet. that's uh that's a lot of people who haven't definitely made up their minds yet and i think that is maybe one contributing factor to some of these other candidates jumping in the race which is the last thing we'll talk about here we have yet another candidate who has entered the democratic primary former two-term governor of massachusetts devol patrick jumped into the race today thursday saying that this campaign is not just about the character of the candidates, but the character of the country. In an interview, he also said, quote, we seem to be migrating to, on the one camp, sort of nostalgia. Let's just get rid of, if you will, the incumbent president and we can go back to doing what we used to do.

Or it's our way, our big idea, or no way. Neither of those, it seems to me, seizes the moment to pull the nation together and bring some humility. So, Dan, this is a reversal of his 2018 announcement that he wouldn't be running for president. Why do you think he changed his mind? I mean, I don't know. I have to be honest with you. I think, I mean, look, Deval Patrick is someone that we have worked with. He's been on this podcast. He's someone who, as a person, we really like and whose political talent we genuinely admire.

I think he's one of the most talented orators in the Democratic Party, full stop. And I have often thought that if he had run in 2016, he could have won the Democratic nomination. And if he had gotten in at the beginning, then he, I think, could have been a major factor in this race. And I'm curious about this, and I want to hear more from him and for whoever ends up working for him as to what they view their path to be. Because the one thing we know about Deval Patrick is he is not someone who has some chemical need to be president. He is not filling some need for attention or fulfillment in himself, right? That's just not who he is. And he doesn't, at least in my experience, he's very politically savvy. So it's not like he would just jump at

something without a plan. So I want to hear what the plan is. What is his plan to get on the debate stage? Because you have to get to 200,000 donors to be on the debate stage. And candidates who have been running for almost a year are just barely getting to that number. People like Booker. And I think Booker just got there in the last week or so. And so how is Deval Patrick going to get there? I see the logic in the lane he is going for. I'm just not sure how he's going to get the attention and money it takes to be in that lane. Yeah. I mean, look, I feel the same way. I love Deval Patrick. I've known him like you have for a very long time. And I think he's not just a brilliant orator.

And like you said, there's some speeches he gives that I think surpass Obama's. I really think he is that gifted. Which is why you plagiarized him. That's why I plagiarized, right. It is... You can all go look that up. But it's not just his oratory either. I mean, Duvall has this story.

He grew up poor on the south side of Chicago, in poverty with a single mom, you know, worked his way out of poverty, got great education, two-term governor of Massachusetts, a really strong record in Massachusetts. Also, you know, some things in the record that are more controversial from a management standpoint, but, you know, in terms of policy wins, he had quite a few as a two-term governor of Massachusetts. You know, and then, of course, he has a business record where he is running the social impact fund at Bain, which it's social impact, so that's good, but it's Bain. So not so good. And he has some other, you know,

business ties that'll surely come up. But he, you know, one of the reasons I've always liked Duvall is like Barack Obama, like Beto O'Rourke, there is a real disdain for the bullshit of politics and the game of politics and there is um there's a distance from like these are not people who follow every twist of every narrative or are looking at all their comments on social media right and so there

and I hope he's not which I hope he's not doing exactly so there is a what i believe is a healthy disdain for politics and like you said there is not this like driving ego and need to be affirmed by getting votes right it is it is i want to do this because i think it's the right thing to do but the downside of having that disdain for politics is you can hate the game of politics so much that you don't put enough thought into how you are going to play it and win it. I think our old boss, even though he didn't like the game of politics that much, understood he was competitive enough and he understood, I need a plan and a strategy to win.

I need to put it in place. I need to have the right people. He had all that. Beto O'Rourke did not have that right he did he did not think hard enough about how he was going to win or what his message was and my like i i'm with you i think if devol had announced early on i think he would have been a formidable contender i at this late stage watching the primary as we have i just i i wonder how are you going to get the media attention like what policy are you going to propose that we haven't heard yet what message are you going to uh deliver that we haven't heard yet uh like you said how do you get on the debate

stage right like he's already missed filing deadlines in alabama and um arkansas right and so you know i i think it's a and he acknowledged this in his interviews today that it's going to be a really tough path, but, um, uh, it's a, I'm, I'm very curious about this one. I'm very curious about why he decided to do this and, and what his plan is because, um, it's a, it's a bit of a mystery. The only thing I'd say to all the people who are mad that he's getting in the race is anyone can run, right? We're at the point where the voters will decide, right? If there is some giant appetite for Deval Patrick or Michael Bloomberg, for instance, then they will get the donors and the polling support to get on the debate stage.

And if there is not, they won't. And it's not going to come at the cost of anyone else. Someone can make an argument that Bloomberg could be spending his money on something else as they can with Steyer. And ultimately, that's the choice that Bloomberg and Steyer make. And you have to analyze that in the context of all the money they've spent on all kinds of other good things to help Democrats and progressive issues. But if he wants to run, he can run. I think that's true of Bloomberg.

It's true of DeVos. It's true of anyone else who wants to get in and then the voters will decide it doesn't affect the other people uh yeah because the voters have voters have agency here i am so over like the twitter fury every time someone jumps in the race like we who can like you said like everyone can run in the democratic primary if you are good you will win if not you won't that's how this works right like i we were upset by one person who thought that who who decided that they were going to get into the race and that was harvard schultz because he was going to run as a third party candidate run as an independent and and potentially tip the election to donald trump it was incredibly dangerous for Howard Schultz

to think about entering the race. And we said at the time, if Howard Schultz was running as a Democrat, we wouldn't be nearly as angry. And, you know, that's how I felt about Tom Steyer jumping in the race. That's how I felt about Mike Bloomberg jumping in the race. That's how I feel about Deval Patrick

jumping into the race, right? Like, I just don't see any of this as cause for alarm or, you know, incredible disdain for these people. Like, I just, let's let people run and, you know, and also, if you're one of the candidates who's in the lead, who's not one of these people, it really will make you a better candidate to hear different arguments from different kinds of people and to try to overcome those arguments and parry them. And just, it'll make you a better candidate to have more competition. And so, you know, I don't think anyone should fear this. And I think, you know, everyone should,

like, let's hear what Duvall has to say. Let's hear what Mike Bloomberg has to say. That's, you know, I will say, and I said this on Monday, there is something that does bother me about we get to hear what Mike Bloomberg has to say and we get to hear what Tom Steyer has to say because they are billionaires. And so therefore, that money has bought them speech. But that is a larger problem with the campaign finance system that we have here. That's exactly right. But beyond that, go ahead. Water's warm warm everyone jump in and to the people who say well it's unfair because all these other candidates have been

running for a year yes it is and that it'll be the voters to decide whether that is how to how to assess that unfair advantage or disadvantage however you want to look at it and just people people will decide and there's the history of people getting in late has, I think, almost never worked out. Maybe this will be different, but Wes Clark, Rick Perry, Fred Thompson, there's an array of people who jumped in late. And I think the one thing we should note is that the overwhelming number of Democrats are satisfied with the field and the general, to the extent they have a complaint is there are too many candidates. But so that's a hurdle for these candidates

who want to get in. And we'll see what happens. Yep. All right. That's all we have for today. Thanks again to Neil Katyal for joining the pod. And we will see you next week. Bye, everyone.

Bye. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Somanator, and Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmel Cohnian, Yael Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.