Pod Save America - “What’s your plan to stop mass shootings?”

Episode Date: October 2, 2017

Las Vegas becomes the site of the worst mass shooting in American history, Trump attacks hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, and Tom Price’s flights of fancy come to an end. Then Ta-Nehisi Coates joins Jon, Jon, and Tommy to talk about his new book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, we talked to national correspondent for The Atlantic and the author of the new book, We Were Eight Years in Power, An American Tragedy, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Love it or leave it? We had a fantastic episode of Love It love or leave it with mark maron uh he and i had a i would say something like a word competition like an awkward off no i think it was more of a

i don't know there was a it was fun it was a good conversation it was sexually charged let's not call it sexually charged but anyway we had a great show and plus we had craig mazen we had tony goldwyn from scandal we had heaven to got to from another round and it was a great show. And plus, we had Craig Mazin. We had Tony Goldwyn from Scandal. We had Hebin Nogatu from Another Round. And it was a great show. So you can download that now. Check it out. And then tomorrow, Tuesday, DeRay McKesson on Pod Save the People has David Cole, who's the national director of the ACLU, and Sarah Kate, who's president and CEO of GLAAD. Yeah.

So that's what we got. All right. So let's start with something very tragic and depressing. So that's what we got. All right. So let's start with something very tragic and depressing. Last night in Las Vegas, a gunman opened fire from one of the top floors of the Mandalay Bay at an outdoor concert festival, killing at least 58 people, injuring more than 500 in what is the deadliest mass shooting in American history. There were about 10 seconds of rapid fire gunfire followed by two more bursts. Police found 10 rifles in the hotel room. It seems like it was a fully automatic weapon. What we know about the shooter so far, his name was Steven Paddock from a suburb of Las Vegas. There seems to be no significant prior criminal history.

They interviewed his brother, said he's dumbfounded, no known religious or political affiliation, doesn't seem to have any social media accounts. Obviously, officials are still investigating this to try to figure out who he was and what happened. The shooter killed himself as the police entered the hotel room. Initial thoughts on this? mass shooting. Probably the 273rd, I think, in 274 days so far in 2017, something like that. Yeah. The statistics are very obvious. If a country has more guns, there are more gun deaths. That's true for suicide, but it's also true for homicide. It's also true on a state level. We need more enforcement of gun laws. We need smarter, better gun laws. We need to listen to people like Chris Murphy from Connecticut who's been calling for this since

Newtown. It is so fucking frustrating that every time this happens, you have morons like Howie Kurtz is the one in my Twitter feed right this second. Gun control is a legitimate issue, but the Dems already raising after Las Vegas massacre. Could we just have a day before plunging in?

The people who got shot didn't have a day. Okay, so let's talk about it right now. What does Howard Kurtz need the day for? What's he doing with that day? Is he doing it? When people say we shouldn't talk about these things right away, they're saying it because they actually believe that, because it hurts them to hear it, because they think they're doing it on behalf of the victims and the victims' families.

They're advocating on behalf of people they don't know and haven't heard from and haven't spoke to, many of whom will be a part of this debate themselves, some of whom, as we've seen also with protests around the National Anthem or protests of police violence around the National Anthem, there are people on both sides that are used as cudgels like, oh, the troops don't want you to do this. The troops do want you to do this. You can't do this to the victims. The victims do want you to do this. So we go through this theater, this mass shooting theater now altogether, kind of a is replicated over and over and over again. It's nonsensical. I think if it was Islamic terrorism, the folks on Fox would not be waiting a day to jump into politics. But it's also, what is politics? Politics is all of us trying to figure out and debate together what we can do to change laws and improve people's lives. And so it is a- Protect citizens.

So in the most basic definition, it is a sensible thing that after a mass killing, we can all say it's a tragedy and we're sad by it. And, you know, we pray for the victims and we pray for their families and everyone's in our thoughts. And then we say, what can we do as a society to perhaps reduce gun violence

or prevent something like this from happening again? It seems like a very common sense question to ask after a tragedy like this. And it's, don't talk about the politics of it now while it's fresh and salient and emotional for people. Wait until it will feel less important and less impactful and people will be paying less attention. That's when we'll want you to talk about the politics. Well, that's a question of media coverage. As I was just saying, there's been a mass shooting almost every day of 2017. And those don't get a lot of coverage. And so those aren't opportune times to talk about gun violence, because we don't hear about it in the news every day. And

that's not part of the national conversation. This will be part of the national conversation for, who knows at this point, a day, day two days this used to be like a thing that we would talk about you know think about columbine back in the 90s we probably talked about that for a week two weeks three weeks how many news cycles will this be like will we still be talking about this on next a week from today probably not yeah and we just have this radicalized gun lobby led by the nra that's put out these videos that like attack DeRay by name, they attack Black Lives Matter, they seem to be fomenting violence. And then I was, again, scrolling through Twitter this morning, trying to learn what I could about this,

which is a bad idea right after these things happen, because the information is terrible. But I looked on to Alex Jones's site, and he's talking about how he predicted this. And it's a left wing false flag operation, like at the beginning of a war. You know, there, there are some really crazy things being discussed and people like fomenting and inciting violence on the far right. And I don't, I used to be sort of of a mind that we should ignore those people and leave them on the fringe. But in the president, United States is doing interviews with Alex Jones and telling him he's doing a great job. And these are people that are getting elevated and causing problems like Pizzagate. I mean, it's really unnerving. Yeah. No, I mean, the newer thing that we have to deal with now with tragedies is this sort of

very quick spread of fake news and conspiracy, right? And so, Tommy, you mentioned Alex Jones calling it a left-wing false flag operation. There's a right-wing columnist, Wayne Allard, whoever, from Vegas saying it was Islamic terror. Gateway Pundit was blaming a Rachel Maddow fan, got the wrong person. And that story also was promoted. The Gateway Pundit story was promoted to the top of the Facebook feeds. And Google News promoted a 4chan thread that was saying it was also some left-wing thing. Mark Zuckerberg must have nearly spit out his Midwestern sandwich

during his photo shoot when he saw it. Those things were ideas and content that liberals don't like. No, so I mean, I do think, Tommy, though, it's like, ignore them or not. No, our job now, what we can do to help is actually, and journalists have been doing this all morning, which is great, is just showing those stories and saying these aren't true.

Here are the facts. And I think that's incredibly important now more than ever to do that. A couple other things. The House of Representatives slated to vote this week to ease curbs on gun silencers. Very opportune time for that. So, again, you say, oh, this is not a time for politics. Well, this bill is being debated this week. And how many, was that going to get a lot of coverage? How many people were talking about that, that they were going to curb, that they were going to ease curbs on gun silencers? and hopeless. Like the politics all feel frozen because they are. And I find myself trying to divide. I just sort of think we do conflate three gigantic, pretty uniquely American problems.

One is all related to the prevalence and availability of guns. One is the fact that we have a massive gun suicide problem. And that is what takes the vast majority of lives with guns in this country. And we should always remember that, that for every mass shooting, there are many more people who will take a gun and kill themselves with it. And research shows over and over again, that your finger pulls the trigger, but the trigger pulls your finger too, that access to guns makes it more likely for people to die by suicide. And that requires mental health interventions and all kinds of other interventions that we're not doing enough of, all made worse by the availability of guns.

Then there's, for lack of a better term, you know, motivated violence, murder because of robbery or grudges or vendettas or want or drugs or all the other, or domestic violence, especially a huge cause of gun violence. And again, all made worse by the availability of guns, by people having guns in their homes, by tons and tons of guns and weapons on the street. And then we have this strange and peculiar national crisis of mass shootings.

And it is the hardest and thorniest one. It is the one where all the proposals feel neutered and ineffective. You know, we need to get big magazines off the streets. where all the proposals feel neutered and ineffective. We need to get big magazines off the streets. We need to get, this guy, it seems like he may have used an automatic rifle. We need to figure out how to get that off the street. But we also need to face up to the fact that there is a toxic idea that has spread.

An idea that you don't need to be sad and lonely when you die, that you can take people with you, that you can go out in a blaze of glory, that you can be famous for a day, that you can be special in this moment. And it is poisonous. And it's the hardest part about it. And I think it has to do with mental health. It has to do with something deeper. And the truth of it is, we don't know what to do. We hear about this idea, this idea of a lone wolf. You know, what is a lone wolf? It's a person who got this idea from somewhere. It's a spreading virus and it just keeps happening. All made worse by the fact that somebody, basically we tell, you know, somebody gets this idea in their head and

there's nothing to stop them. There's nothing to stop them from being armed to the teeth, from having incredible firepower that really belongs on a battlefield. There's no interventions. There's nothing. And we're just vulnerable to it. And so what's so frustrating about this is this will happen again. Oh, this is the worst one ever? It won't be for long. It won't be for long. More people will die. And then you'll see the politicians say, there's just no words. And then you'll see the politicians say, there's just no words. Why don't you have words? Why? Are you surprised? You shouldn't be. Shouldn't be surprised at all.

It's going to happen again. It's going to happen in a month. This is giving somebody else an idea. Somebody is going to watch this and they're going to have the idea and nothing's going to stand in their way. And we're going to realize after the fact that we couldn't stop that person. And then that's going to give somebody an idea. And it's going to happen again and again and again. And we should face that because that's what's happening. There's no, right now, there is

no hope to stop this because there's no, there's no interest on the part of Congress. There are too many powerful lobbyists and there aren't enough people in Congress who want to do something. I don't know. So here's the hope to stop it. So there's a good chart in the New York Times that everyone should go take a look at that looks at what measures experts say are most effective at reducing gun violence. And it overlays it with which measures are most supported by the public, topping the list, universal checks for gun buyers, barring sales to all violent criminals, barring sales to the mentally ill, which, you know, Obama tried to put in place. And then I think Trump revoked it back in February, and requiring gun licenses. So we have elections in 2017.

We have a bunch of, especially in Virginia, in the legislature there, and the governor's race where the NRA is backing a bunch of candidates. There's going to be a whole bunch of elections in 18, obviously. As we're campaigning, as we're talking about the candidates we're supporting, make sure you know what their position is, and make sure they take a position on reducing gun violence and ask them what measures that they're going to push for. And all we can do is to make this an issue just as much as we make health care an issue, just as much as we make the economy an issue, just as much as we make national security an issue. Like, go out there and make this a political issue during these campaigns. Get your candidates on the record and push for this. That's the way we do it. We do it one race at a time.

I think it's a simple question that people should have to have an answer to is, which is, what is your plan to stop mass shootings? You know, what is your plan? Don't talk about how tragic it is, how senseless it is. What is your plan to stop this? tragic it is, how senseless it is. What is your plan to stop this? Yeah. Okay, let's talk about another crisis that is still unfolding right now. And that's the crisis in Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria has caused such catastrophic damage to Puerto Rico. There's now a humanitarian crisis involving 3.4 million American citizens who live on the island. As of Saturday, only 5% of people have electricity since the entire grid collapsed, and it could be months until the power comes back.

55% of residents lack potable water, a number that's actually gone up in recent days. 86% are without cell service, so people on the mainland can't get in touch with relatives. And perhaps the most alarming thing, only 16 of 69 hospitals are open and connected to the electric grid. There's a horrible report yesterday that in one medical center, everyone in the ICU died. And the airports are a mess, so the people are having trouble evacuating the island. There's a waiting list of like 20,000 people. Because my first question is, we can get to Trump and Trump's response here. We can get to Trump and Trump's response here.

Before Trump went nuts this weekend, I have to be honest that I knew that there was an unfolding crisis in Puerto Rico. I didn't know how bad it was. Did you guys? Had you guys been following this and know like just how dire it was? I think it was knowable by Monday of last week for sure. Yeah. Monday of last week for sure. I think that it's knowable that when essentially a tornado hits an island, that it's going to destroy nearly everything. Yeah.

You know, it's predictable and you can pre-position things to be more ready to manage it. So yes, they should have known this. Well, that's what I was going to ask you. It was hard to sift through. Obviously, I mean, again, we'll get to it. All of Trump's comments this weekend were, the pale per usual. It's hard to sift through where the government actually fell down on this, where they delayed, what they did wrong. I mean, obviously, there's 4,500 troops in guard on the ground, 800 FEMA. The Navy deployed the Comfort, which is a combat surgical hospital ship on Friday. But clearly, things have not been done fast enough or just enough. No. It reminded me of Katrina in that I remember over the course of, there was this five-day

period where every day the lack of action became more and more outrageous, but there was no exact moment where it became clear that somebody had failed. Yeah. So my first reaction when it started happening was the government is doing more than trump is letting on ironically that trump tweeting at the nfl trump not being paying attention to it even up to trump presenting a fucking golf trophy instead of actually doing things like that is as bad as it gets but the government response was better than that the question was is the government's response good enough and what has become clear in the full week is that it isn't

that they haven't done enough, that it pales into comparison to say what the Obama administration did in response in the immediate in the immediate aftermath of Haiti, for example. Yeah, the Washington Post did a great story about the Haiti response versus the Puerto Rico response. And remember, Puerto Rico is predictable in that you can predict the path of a hurricane, you cannot predict an earthquake. Obama viewed the response to Haiti as a chance to demonstrate to the world that we cared. And so the army was en route for the next day. Within two days, 8,000 troops were en route. Within two weeks, there were 33 military ships and 22,000 troops had arrived, 300 helicopters. Clinton and Bush were doing an event at the White

House to do earthquake relief. We are now eight or nine days later, 4,400 service members on the island, 1,000 Coast Guard are there. Trump keeps blaming it on the fact that Puerto Rico is an island. Haiti is also an island. So that's not really, I mean, the issue is they didn't move quickly enough, fast enough. And I can tell you from experience, having been a part of these efforts that you need a president riding herd on the response effort morning and night, because it's one thing to say, go do this. It's another thing to get the government to actually execute. So I want to talk more about this.

Tommy, we were in the White House, obviously, when the earthquake in Haiti happened. And you went down there with Alyssa and some other folks to help with the relief efforts right after the earthquake. What was that like? Yeah, I mean, and just to clarify, I was sort of like trying to coordinate the way we talked about the response to ensure there was support for it back home. Dennis McDonough was down there within two days. He was like sleeping in the tent off the airport as they tried to reopen it to get supplies in. I went down a few days after that with Alyssa Mastromonaco and a guy named John Kirby, who was Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs spokesman at the time. The idea was, you know, just to try to help coordinate and communicate

back home what was happening. And what I saw was, you know, US service members doing the most extraordinary work as quickly as you could ever imagine. I saw devastation, like beyond belief, dead bodies in the streets, 250,000 people were killed. It was like it was a disaster of a magnitude that I think is unimaginable. But what you saw was like a government that moved very quickly and put the full weight of the military behind that response effort. And I don't know that the full weight has gotten put behind this effort. Now, they're dealing with Houston. They're dealing with other challenges in the exact same region from hurricanes. I understand that. But here we are. It's their job. And Trump's calling them ingrates for not being pleased with the

response. Well, that. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about the response. So on Friday, the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, told CNN, President Trump, thank you for calling San Juan, listening for our May Day call, but sir, there's 77 other towns that are waiting anxiously, and we'll be very grateful to you and to the American people if you continue to step up to the moral imperative that you've taken on all over the world to help those in need. So help us, save us from dying, she said. People are dying in this country.

I'm begging anyone that can hear us to save us from dying you're killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy plea from the mayor she did not attack donald trump there was no personal attacks to donald trump there so trump she was responding to someone on tv who was part of his administration saying this is a good news story the acting secretary of homeland security Yes. It was not from her perspective. So he starts tweeting this weekend, Donald Trump, the mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump. Of course, there is no affiliation with the Democrats.

They don't have those political parties in Puerto Rico. Their political parties are totally different. So who cares about that? And it's all like Nancy Pelosi got her on the blower. And it's like, you're being too nice to Trump. They don't have a Democratic or Republican party. Such poor leadership by the mayor and others who are not able to get their workers to help. They want everything to be done for them,

which was the most repulsive line of the weekend, I thought. And then, as you guys pointed out later, called them politically motivated ingrates and then accused the fake news of disparaging our first responders and tweets to the people of Puerto Rico. Do not believe the fake news. You had a tweet that went very far related to this matter. I saw that and I was like, it so perfectly describes Trump's worldview, his tweet there. Like, to the people of Puerto Rico rico because he thinks everyone he thinks that

everyone in the world is watching cable like he is he thinks that's how we all operate in this world and he doesn't even stop to think that no one in puerto rico is watching fucking cable news because they don't have television they don't have cell service so they're not reading twitter there's no power it's like water it's like for trump the news is peekaboo. And when he turns off the news, the world disappears. I think that's literally true because he spent four days at Bedminster and nothing got done. He had no meetings about this. He talked about the travel ban. Well, and that's in the Washington Post story reference.

That's sort of how this all unfolded. He issues a federal disaster declaration for Puerto Rico. He issues a federal disaster declaration for Puerto Rico. Then the weekend comes and he spends the weekend, not last weekend, but the weekend before, attacking black athletes in the NFL and the NBA. So that's his whole last weekend and that's all the news that he's seeing. So he doesn't think much about Puerto Rico. And then the week after, he starts to see news reports that his response is slow. And suddenly he's like, what?

I thought everything was fine because I didn't see it on TV that it wasn't fine. He also views every issue through the prism of how he is being treated. And it is just, it's so disgusting in this context. And then you have like the right-wing loonies of the world pushing around opposition research on this mayor and San Juan and Eric Trump or Donald Jr. is retweeting it. Dan Scavino.

Yeah, and all these morons. He blocked me, so i have no idea what he's doing these morons like you know they're attacking these people you know yes this mayor in san juan is criticizing your dad because she likes hillary not because you guys are allowing people to die in a very slow recovery effort it's so insane and because he's lying at a near constant clip about how well the recovery is. We've inspected every place where everything is good. It's a good news story.

It's all not true. You know, and by the way, even the best response in the world would still have gaps. It is hard to respond to a massive hurricane that obliterated, you know, homes for millions, you know, for a huge portion of an island where millions of people live. So, yeah, it's going to be hard. But, of course, he's being dishonest and not doing enough and making it about himself. No, and it is hard. And I think back to like we went through the oil spill in the Obama administration. And even though we had every smart person in the fucking world working on this problem,

every scientist, every engineer from every company and no one could figure out how to plug the hole for a while right imagine if imagine if in the middle of that when they're still oil spewing out from the bottom and one of the whatever i can't remember what they were called the top hat or the the cap hat has failed the thing that oh the president obama tweeted b BP hates me, voted Republican. That's why they won't cap the well. No, but I was saying like we ate so much shit for not capping the well fast enough, right? And we were all in the White House frustrated because we knew that we were doing everything possible and we were getting every expert possible to look at the problem.

But when you're president of the United States, you don't respond to all that criticism, even if it may be unfair, by lashing out. You eat shit. That's your job. I'm aware that Puerto Rico is an island. I realize these are logistical challenges and they're bureaucratic challenges. Your job is to fight through that

and deal with it. Just take the criticism. Suck it up, buddy. But then the New York Times has this piece today that's like, well, he thinks he's winning all these wars. That why he picks them sort of that's the genius here the head of fema saying this is the greatest logistical challenge we've ever faced oh my god no it isn't buddy not even close all the d-day veterans like what yeah

it's also it's not the moon has our fucking flag on it you moron and also i do also, it's not. The moon has our fucking flag on it, you moron. And also, I do hate that it's become like, you know, Trump versus the mayor because it wasn't just, it's not just the mayor who's complaining about this. You've got a three-star general down there who's saying we don't have enough troops. You've got a whole bunch of experts saying we don't have enough. You know, it's not like it's the mayor v. Donald Trump here, which is what he wants and what the White House wants. So what could be done? We could have a bigger relief package from Congress that's passed immediately,

double the number of troops, which is what Lieutenant General Russell Honore, who led during Katrina, said on NPR. So there's things that can be done here. And there's ways that the federal government can, you know, get help there.

And there's also ways that you can help. Globalgiving.org, you can go give money there. Hispanicfederation.org slash Unidos, two great organizations that are sending money and supplies there. But yeah, it is just, it was such a sad thing to watch Trump deal with this. It was so awful over the weekend. It was one of those times where it really is sort of in stark relief that this person has no business being in the job, that he

is racist. I mean, just in the middle of all of this, your, your little adult 1980s New York Post mind is like Puerto Ricans, bunch of lazy people. Not sure. I'm going to try. Not sure they're American. It was so heartbreaking. And, and also again, like he's lying. He's what I'm going to tweet about. Not sure they're American. Not sure they're American. It was so heartbreaking, and also, again, he's lying. He has lied about every disaster, every crisis, every shooting. He will lie about this stuff over and over again, and it's all a proving

ground for some kind of future Islamic inspired attack of some kind that he is going to exploit in some way, because he doesn't tell the truth about natural disasters He's not gonna tell the truth when he wants to exploit something for his own purposes The facts are they waited to appoint a three-star to up the sort of military presence on the ground They waited to waive the Jones Act which made him more expensive and more difficult to get stuff there

What they didn't wait to do was get the former governor Puerto Rico on the phone who's now a lobbyist so that he could put out a readout saying this random guy who's not even in New Orleans, who's a federal lobbyist in D.C., thinks everything's going great. They were working on spinning it more than they were working on coordinating the response. And I just, I think this time it's the fight with the fake news this time is not going to work out for him because there's images. People can see this on TV. And it's the same thing about that tweet to the people of Puerto Rico.

Like, even if the people of Puerto Rico were watching television, they can look out their fucking windows and see the devastation on the island, and so can all of we because there are reporters and cameras down there. So it's not going to work for him this time. I just think that I hope that, as it should, this shooting in Vegas is going to get a lot of coverage over the next couple of days. We should not forget what's going on in Puerto Rico because,

you know, we finished that episode of the Trump show on Monday and now there's a Vegas shooting and now we're going to move on to another thing in three days. And meanwhile, Puerto Rico is still going to get need help. So again, I was saying like, we should all be angry with Trump about this.

We can all be enraged, but direct all that energy and outrage to giving money, giving help to Puerto Rico. We can all play a role here. So globalgiving.org and hispanicfederation.org slash Unidos. Forgot Friday, which seems like, you know, 30 years ago uh tom price resigned who who's that yeah tom tom price he's a he's a one of those jet setters right he health and human services secretary tom price resigned on friday after racking up at least four hundred thousand dollars in travel bills for private jets. First reactions, guys?

Cool. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Also, they're just like, I am resigning because I spent upwards of $400,000 on private planes, and I am sorry, and so I will repay $50,000. $0.13 on the dollar. I will repay for my seat on private planes and i am sorry and so i will repay fifty thousand thirteen cents on the dollar i will pay i will pay for my seat on the plane because otherwise if i my i wasn't there the planes would have flown those distances anyway they would have flown my staff yeah my my scheduler and my wife probably would have gone to that conference you know the atlantic did a big piece of like all the ways donald trump is has not drained swamp. And I will not tick through all of them because it's a very long piece.

But a couple of fun ones. Trump said he put his kids in charge of his businesses and then check in eight years later and see how it all went. Eric Trump said on the record he's been giving his dad quarterly updates on how things are going. A Chinese government-owned construction company is working on Trump's club in Dubai despite his pledge not to take foreign money. That's a big one, by the way. It's a big fucking one. It's unconstitutional. Remember that stupid fucking lawyer at the press conference and put all the...

The blank paper. The blank paper. Don't look at that paper. And was like, there will be no transactions with foreign governments while he is president. We are laying down that marker. Here's another fun one, guys. A lawyer lying? Now I've seen everything.

74 lobbyists are working the administration including 49 at the agencies they used to lobby in addition to tom price's private jets the va secretary went to wimbledon while on a work trip in the uk i mean it goes on and on and on here's a reason for hope that this is actually an effective political attack if you look at you know because the question is why how trump is not the trump administration has not cared about optics for almost anything so far and yet this story this story finally got trump to fire tom price and to to respond to this and then i started looking and it looked like he he sort of lost the right on this too like laura ingram was attacking tom

price some other folks on the right, and that's because they recognize, the Steve Bannons of the world recognize that the drain the swamp promise was very effective, and that if he is seen as breaking that promise, that is politically damaging to Donald Trump. Which means that all those things that Tommy just mentioned

and all the other people in the fucking cabinet who are riding around in private jets, we should make hay out of it. Absolutely. I think that's right. I also think that there's a larger force going on here, which is the system can't process a scandal as big as Donald Trump. It's too big.

That's right. It just overwhelms. You need bite-sized examples. Right. But a cabinet secretary flying on a private jet, that feels like a scandal from a simpler time. That's something we know how to process. You expose it.

The political follows up. They find more examples. He says he's not going to resign. Then they're going to go meet with the president. The president's very angry and scolded Tom Price, but he's standing by him for now. Like all these things, like we kind of can get into that down that water slide. And at the bottom of it, people have to go. Well, and filling out the story is the fact that it was the cabinet secretary in charge of the Health and Human Services Department

who's running around telling everyone for the last couple months, we just don't have enough money to insure poor people on Medicaid. We have to cut. We don't have enough money to fund open enrollment for Obamacare so we can help people sign up for health insurance. We have to cut the ad budget. We have to do all this stuff because I want to save money because I'm Tom Price.

I'll see you later. I'm just about to get on my private jet now. Yeah, meanwhile, Tom Price is going through a licit jet fuel faster than Kim Jong-un. Did you guys see Tom Price's travel blog that he would send to staff? No.

Oh, Sylvia Burwell used to do this too, apparently, but every week he would send a note. It'd be like, greetings from Geneva switzerland and like photos of himself i mean it's completely egregious uh so there's a few other cabinet secretaries that are uh zinky interior secretary chartered plane for several flights including a twelve thousand dollar flight to vegas to celebrate the new hockey team uh pruitt more than fifty eight thousand dollars in private jet flight. Mnuchin, of course, asked about using a $25,000 per hour plane

for his honeymoon in Europe. He got rejected for that. So there's a few other ones there. Pruitt is spending money on such crazy shit over there at EPA. It's not just the private jet money. His actual bigger expenses are on his crazy 24-7 security detail and the privacy cube he had installed, even though he's not a national security official. So I think part of the reason also the price had

to go and that Kelly's going to have to crack down is we do not know just how bad this is. Like, this is a broken culture of venal creeps in this administration. You know, just the dregs of our of serious society that are all kind of running around thinking like they own the place. And Trump is obviously giving them license to do things that people didn't do before. So I think we're just now scratching the surface as to the way these people are spending money. So one consequence of Tom Price departing the scene is that there's going to be a new health and human services secretary and there will be a fight over the confirmation of that Health and Human Services Secretary.

One Trump advisor told the New York Times that Trump was serious about compromising with Democrats on health care and would pick a secretary who would help make that happen. Schumer, call your boy. Call your boy. Get that New York stuff. Let's get some egg rolls. Let's get a slice of Famous Ray's. And let's get Sylvia Burlough back in slice up let's get a slice of famous rays and let's get

sylvia burlap back in the job back in there well bad two of the top candidates are sema verma who's the current cms administrator um she does not like obamacare but is seen as someone who may at least enforce the law on the books which is what any normal public servant would do seems like that's the role also uh scott gottlieb who's the FDA commissioner, who's seen as a more moderate choice. So Democrats do not have the votes to stop confirmation, but they can drag out the process and they could make the confirmation fight all about making sure this person funds Obamacare, helps with open enrollment, all that kind of stuff. Doesn't shut down healthcare.gov for 15 hours a day.

All that kind of stuff. Sign up for healthcare from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. on Wednesdays. Now, I'm imagining the Democrats will do this and make hay of this, but the other issue there is Trump might wait a couple months to nominate someone and just leave it open because as we know, John Kelly, who was the Homeland

Security Secretary, is now Chief of Staff, and there has not been a new Homeland Security picked. It's just that the acting Homeland Security Director who says that Puerto Rico is a good news story. You and Dan took through a lot of the stuff they're doing to sabotage Obamacare on Thursday show. Everyone should listen to that. But it is astounding. I mean, like coincidental website outages for hours and hours at a time.

It's so blatant. It's so disgusting. And we all know what's going to happen if open enrollment season passes and there's not as many signups because they did this. They'll say, see, people don't want Obamacare. It's failing. It's just a self-fulfilling thing. So, again, we're going to try to have an outside effort to help people figure out how to enroll to the Affordable Care Act. And we'll be talking more about that in the days to come.

Talk to Ta-Nehisi Coates. Tommy, I just wanted to also cover briefly Trump's tweets on North Korea this weekend because as he was feuding with the mayor of Puerto Rico and ignoring millions of Americans in crisis, he also tweeted, I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man. Save your energy, Rex. We'll do what has to be done. You know, I don't know that has to be done you know i don't

know that i'm prepared to comment because i don't know the rules of three-dimensional chess it's like diplomacy is not a gift that we'd bestow on other nations it's something that's in our interest so to just undercut your secretary to say it about something this important is it they're trying to sell that it's a good cop bad cop routine no one believes them no one believes trump is smart or strategic. And then they leak to Axios like, oh, he told his staff to tell everyone that he's crazy. Well, that doesn't work very well if you're going to background everybody on it right after. Also, no need to tell everyone.

We got it. We are well aware. That seems to come through somehow in the statements and the tweets. It's good cop, bad cop. Oh, no not this is not good like there's two options here if we're going to try to prevent them from getting a icbm that can strike us uh we're going to either going to do that through negotiations of diplomacy or going to do it through a military strike and he seemingly just took negotiations off the table which doesn't make me feel safer and meanwhile, what is the value of having this shitty little nickname for Kim Jong-un? I don't think it's going to do anything.

Belittling him on the national stage probably isn't going to help us get what we want out of the situation. What do we think the North Koreans think about whatever direct diplomacy they're engaged in with Tillerson versus what Trump is tweeting? What could they possibly be thinking about that? They're like, this guy is no juice. Yeah. That's what I would think. Right.

And why are we even bothering? What's the point? Yeah. So the Axios story is interesting and worth reading because I think it sort of captures like what's broken inside the administration and in the way that what happens inside the administration is covered. You know, the idea that like – so they recount this story about how trump said here's what you do all right here's how you sell them here's how you get a good deal on marble countertops tell him i'm going to pull out of the deal any second right he has 30 days but he doesn't know that because then he'll come down his price and then we're getting more marble for our money we're not talking about

marble countertops we're talking about nuclear annihilation. And you can't just walk away. But even putting that aside, like, you know, you say, oh, he's doing the Mad Men thing. He's doing the Nixon thing. Okay, what's the goal? What do they want to have happen from this? What are they trying to accomplish? Like, you're going to act like, oh, Trump could do anything. Trump can say anything.

You can't trust him. That's why you have to what? Give up your nuclear weapons? What's the game? Evan Osnos had a good piece in The New York yorker about this like this isn't a bad police procedural the good cop bad cop is not a thing that really plays out the way they're trying here it is stupid it is frightening that's also like somebody said this too about like this is not how good cop broke back up i'm the bad cop and i'm gonna get you i'm the good cop, and I'm going to get you. I'm the good cop. He's playing bad cop.

It's not how that works. Best of luck, Rex Tillerson. I'd resign. Yeah. I'd hire Rex. Okay, when we come back, we will talk to Ta-Nehisi Coates. On the pod today, we are very lucky to have national correspondent for The Atlantic and the author of the new book, We Were Eight Years in Power, An American Tragedy, Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Ta-Nehisi, it's Tommy Vitor. You spent four and a half hours with President Obama near the end of the administration when you were working on a big piece. And there was sort of a fundamental tension there that I will try to quickly summarize as more of a, I guess, an optimistic view of an American from him and a tendency to explain away attacks on him as something about something other than race and that everything will be OK. And your perspective that's rooted in history that you believe just doesn't show things always work out. Would you mind talking about those conversations and those disagreements? And then sort of relatedly, when you look at where we are today with a blatant racist as a president, do you think things might have ended up differently if we had called him out more directly and said, you know, instead of talking about birtherism, someone said, stop making these accusations,

you're lying. You are a racist. So I think like to give, I guess the answer that is, you know, most sympathetic to, I think what the president's argument would have been, it would be not so much that race was no factor in the critique and not even that it wasn't a significant factor, but that there were other things happening also. So obviously, you know, there was the weight of, you know, being the first black president. But in his mind, there was also the rise, the change in the media landscape. So the rise of the talk radio, sort of Fox News universe. He strongly felt that that was the filter through which he was presented

to, if not all of America, large swaths of America. And because of that, they actually thought that, they saw him in a completely different way. He had a kind of sympathy, I think, for ordinary Americans who may not have been, not only may not have been big fans of his presidency, but actually hated him. You know, he had a great degree of sympathy for folks. And I think it's rooted in, you know, a kind of belief on the left, you know, from, you know, I would say from neoliberals to center left all the way over to straight, you know, Bernie Sanders leftists. The notion of people being divorced from their own interests.

And that is that big, powerful institutions, in this case, the nexus of the universe of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and talk radio, fool people. And in some ways, lead them to believe that certain things are responsible for problems in their lives that are in fact not responsible. responsible for problems in their lives that are in fact not responsible. I had a slightly different view. I would call it a more democratic view. And by which I mean, it's not so much that I don't think that, you know, that lens had some effect, but I was much more interested in the fact that people, at least in my mind, would go to Fox News, would go to, you know, Rush Limbaugh, and not so much be reprogrammed, but would have their own prejudices confirmed. that people, at least in my mind, would go to Fox News, would go to Rush Limbaugh, and not so much be reprogrammed, but would have their own prejudices confirmed.

So it wasn't so much that they got the explanation as they were looking for an explanation. And in my mind, and I think, you know, I believe we had this exchange. This is a period in history where there is more information about how the world works and how politics works than at any other time in human history with the advent of the internet. If you want to know, for instance, whether there were actually death panels in the AC, you could find that out. That was actually knowable information. And from my perspective, it was the case that some people simply, some amount of citizenry, not the majority, but some amount simply did not want to know. Now, again, what he would tell you trying to give the most sympathetic rendition was, yeah, but average Americans don't have time to sift through every little detail of a particular bill. In terms of the latter question, what I think would have been more effective

would have been to take seriously the force of racism and white supremacy in American history. And I can't really stand it in prosecution of this because I didn't think it was going to end with Donald Trump. I really believed in white self-interest too much or white identifiable self-interest too much to believe that Donald Trump would actually be president. But I think it's not out of the realm of possibility. It makes sense when it's when the result is attached to the history. It makes sense. I don't think this will be particularly difficult for people to solve, given the force of birtherism in the Republican. But I mean, you had whole majorities through

much of Obama's term that did not believe he was a legitimate president. That's a statement. That's a statement. And I don't think, like, I think the initial response from the White House, and maybe this wouldn't have changed anything, but the initial response was to sort of wave it away until it clearly became the case that, you know, okay, we got to say something about it and do something about it. But I think it was a much, much deeper statement. When you have Newt Gingrich, you know, standing up and calling the president of the United States a food stamp president. When you have John Boehner, this is the leadership. It's the leadership. These are smart people. This is not, you know, sort of on the ground, you know, base people. I mean, maybe they represent the base, but John

Boehner, for instance, saying the president has never worked a real job in his life. You're talking about some deep-seated stuff at that point. Folks standing up, screaming, you lie. Something's going on there. And I think that maybe that wasn't taken as seriously as it should have been. Hey, it's Jon Favreau. So back to the question of Obama and the Fox News thing, because I remember reading that transcript of your conversation again last night with him, which is so fascinating, by the way, all the conversations you had with him. Wait, did you read it with Obama last night?

You said with him. It felt like I was back there. I didn't know if y'all were having dinner and going over to train. We were not. We prepped very intensively for this interview. Okay. I think what he would say also about the Fox News thing is we all have the capacity and the potential for bias and prejudice. But it sort of depends upon our environment and what we're seeing and what we're hearing every day. And it's not just that folks don't have time to go find the facts about death panels or the facts about, you know, whether Obama's, you know, really born in this country and all that kind of stuff.

But they're just surrounded by all these forms of communication that are telling them otherwise. And that, you know, good leaders can sort of call to the better angels of our nature and can push things in one direction or the other. Do you believe in that capacity? Do you believe that people can go one way or the other on these things? I think good leaders can establish norms. I think they can establish guardrails. I think they can be examples. But I think that the president wasn't so much against up against, you know, any sort of good or bad tendency among Americans as much as he was up against the force of history. You know, we rehearse this over and over again and we say, well, listen, we had 250 years of enslavement in this country, a period in time in which, you know, like by 1860, our main export was cotton, you know, result of, you know, enslaved black folks, you know, an indispensable part of our economy in, shouldn't say just in this country, but, you know, in pre-colonial America and, you know,

the country itself. After that, we had a hundred years of Jim Crow. The latter portion of Jim Crow is within the biography of Barack Obama. It's within the living memory of people in Congress. And so there's a tendency to believe that when those policies disappeared, all of the stories that undergirded those policies, all the myths, all the ideas that made those policies possible somehow evaporated with them. And I would argue that they didn't, that if you spend the majority of a country's history and a majority of a society's history saying that a group of people who live within that society are not citizens, are inferior, that folks are free to lynch them, folks are free to terrorize them, folks are free to rape them, enslave them, etc.

lynch them, folks are free to terrorize them, folks are free to rape them, enslave them, etc. That, you know, there's an entire school of biology that you create that justifies this, that you angle your history in such a way to justify that, that you can't expect all of that to disappear in 50 years. That has a weight upon people. It bears on people. It bears on how they think about the world. And so the expectation, and maybe this was not, I don't think this was the president's expectation, but certainly expectation of some of us, that the election of a black president will somehow absolve folks of that weight, of those ideas, of that mythology, of that iconograph. I think it's just too much. History matters. And it's not just the facts of history that matters. It's the stories that we've told in the past and still be hopeful that we have agency to right those wrongs in the future. I think it's the only way to be legitimately hopeful. I think it's the only way to be legitimately hopeful. If anything makes me, you know, I got this rap for being pessimistic and despairing. And it's not the odds. It's not the history I just laid out that, you know, to the extent that makes me, you know, pessimistic or despairing. It is the active avoidance. Let me just give you an example of this. I picked up the New York Times today.

And there's a column by David Leonhardt, who I have tremendous, tremendous respect for and enjoyed reading. disrespectful and enjoyed reading. This is why this was so heartbreaking. And the column begins with the history of the civil rights movement, roughly, or an assumed history, a presumed history of the civil rights movement. And it points out Martin Luther King, John Lewis, March on Washington, boycotts, et cetera, and how the civil rights movement presumably successfully appealed to America by pointing out the things that bring us together. And this is contrasted with NFL players who are, you know, kneeling today in the movement inaugurated by Kaepernick. And it says, while, you know, David says, well, I'm in sympathy with these players. They, you know, need to look at the past and learn that, you know, it's possible to appeal to the masses of Americans, that you can get Americans on your side if you can find something that bridges the gap, that brings us all together.

And Neal doesn't do that, and he shows some polling data to show that. I read that and I almost threw my computer across the room. Because, in fact, there is polling data on what Americans thought of Martin Luther King and the Freedom Riders and the March on Washington. It wasn't a high opinion at all. I mean, I think I was looking at this article in 538. 60% of Americans had a negative opinion of Martin Luther King in 1966. That's kind of how he got shot. You know, it wasn't by accident.

It wasn't just some crazed madman. He was not popular in his lifetime. His government bugged him and harassed him to the end of his days. These folks were never popular. It's a myth. They become popular in memory afterwards. But at the time they were deeply, deeply unpopular. Here's what's depressing about that. That's a journalist at the New York Times at the highest level who has inhaled a kind of mythology instead of a really serious understanding of what the

history actually was. When I see that, when I see that the actual journalists are doing that, what hope is there for the people? At the same time, though, it does feel like there is some kind of reevaluation going on, whether or not it's spurred by the fact that Trump won, or just simply a younger generation looking at things with fresh eyes, whether it's the protest at football games or protest around Confederate monuments. I mean, do you see these myths starting to come down at all? Do you think that there is something afoot right now as we're having this conversation?

I don't know. I don't know. There have been things afoot before. And, you know, the thing I always go back to, and I guess the book goes back to this to some extent, is in the wake of a historically lethal war in this country between North and South, there was a period of reexamination. And it became clear that, you know, the country could not live with slavery, that it needed to, the South had to be reconstructed. The South had to be reconstructed. And the speed with which the price that slavery ultimately cost us, the speed with which we forgot that is shocking. I think right now Trump might, to some extent, make the cost, the ultimate cost of white supremacy, of racism, he might lay them bare in the moment. Will that last? Will that endure? I don't know. We'll see. I hope so. I hope so. But we'll see. I can't help but think of what's happening in Las Vegas today, another mass shooting,

and then as frustratingly, what's likely to come, which is a conversation that will devolve along the same lines with people saying now is not the time to talk about gun reforms, new gun laws, et cetera. And then I think about the fact that when you look at the NRA today, it is not an organization that advocates on behalf of dads and kids going sport hunting. It is they're cranking out vehemently racist web videos on a daily basis. They're attacking DeRay McKesson and Black Lives Matter by name. Do you know when did the NRA become this overtly racial? Is this something you've studied or worked on or something that you think is getting addressed when we talk about these issues? No, no, no. I don't know. I don't know when this happened and I haven't looked into it. So I'd be hesitant to comment on it. But

obviously at some point it became an appendage, you know, of this kind of white revanchist, you know, sort of far right conservatism. When that happened, I'm not sure. I wonder, you know, from you guys, maybe you saw this, you know, in the White House, because I wonder, you know, how much, you know, of that was accelerated by the fact of a black president. I'm not sure. You know what I mean?

So I couldn't give you any firm theories on that. Yeah, I mean, I think it certainly was accelerated on Fast and Furious and the attacks you saw, you know, Eric Holder and other members of the administration as well. It's just shocking when you see the stuff they're putting out. And the very specific charge that it was Obama who wanted to like personally take your guns away. Right. And there's no gun control being floated right now. That's the crazy thing about it. Like, you know, even with Trump in the White House,

there's still somehow even the winners are losers. You know, he's on the edge. You know, you wouldn't have won him. So my favorite essay of yours, my president was black. And then my favorite line in that essay, for eight years, Barack Obama walked on ice and never fell. Could you shout out to Run DMC? Well, I got that. Shout out to Run DMC.

Could you talk about what you meant by that and why it is that you think Obama was able to, as you say, defy gravity? Yeah. I know, for all of my voluminous critique, it's always tough writing about people you admire when you're a journalist. When I first got invited over to the White House for one of those off-the-record briefings, I had this whole debate with the editors at The Atlantic about whether I should go. Because I think half the reason people invite you to things like that is to um charm is not the word i'm looking for but there's a kind of weight that comes from with the presidency and actually that weight is much heavier if you you know you're a fan of the presidency already and so you know i i

kind of worked hard to keep as much distance as i possibly could you know at some point i you know that didn't quite work out but um it's difficult, you know, because even even with that criticism, I was very much aware of the difficulty of the job he was undertaking. Again, you know, I think you guys probably saw this more directly, but at least from my perspective on the outside. I understand what it's like to be black in this country. I have some sort of idea of that. I get right now, my own share of racist stuff, email, Twitter, mostly Twitter or whatever, that has to be multiplied by 500 or 1,000 when you're the first black president. I don't know that my response would have been a productive response if I was giving a speech and a dude stood up and yelled, you lie.

My response would not have been the right response. It wouldn't have been the needed response. I don't know how I would have responded to someone repeatedly claiming that I was not American. It probably would not. And I don't think the average African American would have given a very productive response to that. Because we carry certain things you know what i mean we we carry that that weight that i was just outlining earlier today we you know we carry the flip side

of that weight too you know and so it's kind of you know galling to see that stuff and somehow um he was able to sort of take in all of those insults which i don't even know if he perceived as insults. You know what I mean? Because to him, like when I interviewed him, it's not personal. These folks, it's like he had reasons for why he could, you know, sort of let it go or why he was in sympathy for folks, even folks who were insulting him. That is not normal for African-Americans that it just requires a certain construction. And so, you know, I knew in addition addition to that in addition to all the sort of racism he had he couldn't have scandal like he just couldn't he couldn't have a clinton white

house i mean i don't even have to say bush i mean i'll just go with the next you know the democrat before he could not repeat bill clinton in terms of the amount of investigations resignated he couldn't have anything close to that now some of that was not up to clinton but having said that he just couldn't have a um same sort of attitude. They had to be super clean. I was talking to somebody on the campaign just recently, just a couple of weeks ago, and she was making a comparison between the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign when Obama ran. And she said, we ran scared. They didn't run scared. And what I mean by that, like you have to run scared when you're black. You understand you're going to be the first black president. You got to run scared. You have to.

You can't have the slightest, you know, mark. There can't be a black Trump. It's to say nothing of a black Bill Clinton. You know, you just you just have to conduct. And he did it. And he did it in such a way without, you know, being ashamed of being black, without being ashamed of his people. He did it. It's a remarkable achievement from that perspective, just a remarkable personal achievement. And, you know, you've talked a lot about sort of comic books and what they meant to you as a kid. It seems sort of we're in this moment as a culture where there's this dark cloud over our politics. But people are sort of flocking to these larger than life superhero figures in movies over and over again to the point where it's almost a joke. Why do you think that's going on? Like, what do you think appeals about these characters right now? Escape. Escape. And the notion that some singularly empowered person can save us all, which is something I actually try to avoid in the comic book.

But I think that in terms of the movies, I think that the Justice League is going to save us. The Avengers are going to save us. It's escape. And I say that as somebody that's a fan of the movies. They're incredibly well done, most of them. I won't reveal my anti-DC bias here. No, that's not an anti. You can't call that an anti-DC bias anymore. That is just an anti-garbage bias.

Just facts. All facts. But I think that, you know, there's a level of escapism that Hollywood brings that people are embracing. Ta-Nehisi Coates,

thank you so much for joining us. Everyone, please go by We Were Eight Years in Power An American Tragedy, an outstanding collection of essays.

Thank you for joining us and please come back sometime. All right. Thanks, guys. Take care. Thanks. Bye-bye. Thanks again to Ta-Nehisi Coates for joining us and please come back sometime. Alright, thanks guys. Take care. Thanks. Bye-bye. Thanks again to Ta-Nehisi Coates for joining us today and

we're heading out on tour. We're on tour. So the next time you'll hear us, we will not have our regular Thursday pod. You will hear the show that we do Thursday night in Madison, Wisconsin. You'll hear that first thing Friday morning. We will release it as a live pod. Okay,

so that pod will be out on Friday, and you'll be able to hear us on tour for the next couple days after that. We'll release some of these shows in this episode. Pod Tours America! Bye, guys!