Pod Save America - "When you open the canister, snakes pop out."

Episode Date: April 17, 2017

The latest on North Korea, the weekend's tax marches, and how the health care town halls are working. Then Jon, Jon, and Tommy answer questions in the first Friend of the Pod Q & A.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Today on the pod, we will have you as the guest. How's that? You're the guest. We'll have our very first friend of the pod Q&A. We're going to take some Q&A.

2006. Lovett tweeted this out yesterday from the Pod Save America account and someone, their first response was, oh, who canceled? Yeah, and you know what? That was really good. Nobody canceled. I thought that was funny. I like that person. Some people didn't want to do the show. Hillary Clinton?

Yeah. No, it was not. Still in the maybe pile. Still in the maybe pile. Alright, before we begin, guys, go subscribe to all of our pods. Don't just listen. Actually hit the subscribe button, rate us, review us in the iTunes. There's a lot of pods that are out there that are new, that are competition right now. Love it, rant about them once a week on Love It or Leave It. And look, if there are funny reviews on Love It or Leave It, maybe I share them on the show. Maybe I don't. So subscribe to Love It or Leave It. Subscribe to Pods

Save America. Subscribe to Pods Save the World. Who are we talking to this week, Tommy? Former Deputy National Security Advisor, former White House Chief of Staff, Dennis McDonough, longtime friend of the pod. We do a lot of reminiscing about the bin Laden operation and other greatest hits of the Obama days. Love Dennis McDonough. So put your head in the sand with Tommy and Dennis and ignore our present reality. And with friends like these, Anna Marie Cox, subscribe there too. I went to her live show. It was great.

It was great. Okay. Let us begin with North Korea. So over the weekend, North Korea conducted a failed ballistic missile test, didn't conduct a nuclear test. They're a big parade to show off a bunch of big ass weapons. Mike Pence went to the DMZ and said, quote, the era of strategic patience is over, which has been sort of a line from that administration.

So my question is, Tommy, what the fuck is going on? What's going on? So this weekend was the 105th anniversary of Kim Il-sung's birthday. So like any great anniversary, you celebrate with a huge military parade. These things are propaganda events. They're full of like weird goose-stepping soldiers rolling through the square in Pyongyang. But we watched them very closely because they like to roll out new military hardware. That happened yesterday.

They unveiled a missile or at least a mock-up of a couple new missiles that have a portable launch pad, which means you can hide it easier. They use solid fuel versus liquid fuel, which means you can launch it more quickly and avoid a strike to destroy the missile before it gets off. So that's a big deal and significant and another escalation in terms of their missile technology. The day after the parade, they attempted a missile launch that failed almost immediately. Third, as you said, there was something that did not happen, which was another nuclear test that would have been their sixth test. And there was a lot of concern about that activity, given satellite imagery of construction and other activity at

a test site. So long story short, we're concerned about this because Kim Jong Un wants to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile, excuse me, they can reach the United States and develop a hydrogen bomb that's exponentially more powerful than what what the u.s used in world war ii and you know it feels like they're on a path to get there which is a huge threat to the united states so for those people out there who maybe did not pay as close attention or haven't paid as close attention to sort of what's been going on in north Korea the last, I don't know, 10, 20 years. Is this time, how is this time different from previous, you know, crises in North Korea where we got worried and thought something bad was going to happen? Is this much worse? Are they much closer to the nuclear

weapon? What situations have changed since last time we dealt with this? It's a good question. I mean, what is materially different from like 10 years ago, 15, is that they're way further along. I mean, this is rocket science, but it's like 50s and 60s era rocket science. So they're going to be able to figure out how to do this. They have good scientists. They're figuring out the sort of various stages you need in a missile to make it achieve orbit temporarily and then fall and hit the United States. I mean, they will likely get there. So they're further along in that capability. They're further along in the development of a nuclear weapon and the ability to shrink it down to put

it on a warhead. So, I mean, that's the significant develop in terms of what they're up to. I mean, what's also challenging is, you know, over time, there have been all these negotiations that have been ongoing that have been, that have felt like a way that we might get rid of this risk or come to an agreement. And that process has basically been in a standstill for several years because the North Koreans were just not interested and were trying to get aid and other concessions, but they wouldn't actually freeze their program. So what are the administration's options here? Or what are the world's options here? What are the various things that people are thinking about doing? So, yeah, I mean, I think the key, like, some of the reporting over the weekend was weird,

because they acted like some big success had been achieved by the Trump administration. I think it's fair to say they didn't create this problem. But the fact that the missile test failed, and that they didn't test a nuclear weapon didn't solve it, not by a long shot. I think it's fair to say they didn't create this problem, but the fact that the missile test failed and that they didn't test a nuclear weapon didn't solve it, not by a long shot. I think they managed the events over the weekend fine. It was smart to send Pence to the region to reassure our allies. I mean, the options are bad to not good. As President Trump said, after listening to Xi Jinping for 10 minutes, he realized it wasn't so easy. You'd think he would have figured that out earlier.

But the options are like work with the Chinese to put more pressure on the North because they're their economic lifeline or some sort of preemptive military action or some sort of covert action that is undermining their missile program in secret. We don't know. But it's an incredibly tough problem because we don't know what Kim Jong-un is going to do. So when you say the Chinese could put pressure on them, that means that they could stop trading with them. They could cut off financial assistance. Do you think the Chinese will do this? Are they getting closer to doing this? Yeah. I mean, look, every president has always said, well, the Chinese are the key to solving this problem. And I think the Chinese are like, you like, hey, buddy, it's actually not that hard. It's not that

easy. I mean, we are aware that you want us to solve this. It's not a simple solution. Their concern is they don't want North Korea to collapse because that would send thousands of millions of refugees over their borders. They're worried about a unified peninsula that has an American ally in all our arms closer to them. So they could cut off oil or coal purchases, but there's not as much leverage as I think we sometimes act like, or there's certainly not an easy solution here. How do you think the Obama administration would be handling this differently, or any other administration? I feel like we're in the situation now when a like international crisis happens. Everyone's a little more on edge because Donald Trump is president. president, either Obama or a normal Republican or someone else, like, would they be doing the same things? Would they be taking the same actions? Or is Trump uniquely bad in this situation? Right. And so in North Korea, it seems like they're actually doing what maybe most presidents

would do. But I don't know. Well, there was that one story that NBC ran that was then disavowed by other stories saying that, oh, they were planning some kind of a military action. And that seemed preemptive, preemptive military action. And that seemed frighteningly new. But doesn't seem like it was necessarily fully backed up. It's really hard to figure out. So one thing that's certainly different is there's chaos in terms of the rumblings of what the administration is planning to do or thinking about doing in part because I don't think they know what they're going to do. And then also there has been this small shift in the way that they talk about North Korea, which is it seems like there was like two decades of attempted conversation, occasional diplomatic talks, followed by North Korea doing some kind of a aggressive, some kind

of aggressive move. And then there was a statement by the international community denouncing it. And then we have this time Tillerson, Pence and others saying, or Mattis saying, we have nothing more to say at this time. We're not commenting on this, which does seem like a subtle change. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. You had that weird NBC story, but then you also had an aide who was traveling with Pence saying that if a nuclear test had occurred, there would have been a more significant response. So that's a little scary. And it's also different than what H.R. McMaster was telling people on the Sunday shows. I mean, the difference, I think, is you have these stupid tweets blaming Beijing or whatever.

Mostly it's the same. I think the difference that the ability Obama would have had at this point was the best sanctions are going to be multilateral. They're going to involve sanctions from a whole bunch of countries and not just U.S. sanctioning of individuals or entities. So you need to go to the international community, you know, to Russia, China and others and try to like unite the world around this problem. I think Trump has probably hurt his ability to do that. But I think whatever they did over the weekend seems like it went fine. Yeah, it was interesting.

McMaster, the national security advisor on The Sunday Show, said it was time for the U.S. to take action short of armed conflict so we can avoid the worst. And this is the issue, right? Our allies do not want us to take military action. I mean, they live on the border of this problem and they don't want to be, you know, have all this North Korean ordinance landing on Seoul. So we can't get ahead of them. And that's something Trump probably learned very quickly. Dude, what do you think about this? I read a few places that it might have been like cyber warfare from the United States that has been stopping or screwing up some of these missile launches in North Korea. I guess Obama invested in cyber

and electronic warfare attacks in 2014. And that might be one of the reasons these things keep failing. That's pretty cool. Couldn't shoot the DNC an email saying, hey, put on some fucking Norton antivirus, but yeah, sure, let's get North Korea. What a horrible take that was.

It was a horrible take. I deeply regret it. I regret my take. I just don't have much to do during the North Korea part. Just sitting here biding my time. Hillary should have campaigned in Wisconsin more. I feel like mine was much, A, the North Korea part. Just sitting here biding my time. Who should have campaigned in Wisconsin more? I feel like mine was much, A, more clearly a joke,

and B, more interesting than that. What were we talking about? We'll long remember the city of Seattle. Is that what we're talking about? Right, right. I'll just, really quick on this. I saw the David Sanger report in the New York Times. He said that maybe the United States has been using cyber weapons to blow up these missiles. Maybe we've been sending, you know, routing parts through North Korea that are designed to fail when tested like this. I don't know. I can't comment. I know what I've read. That's all I know.

what I've read. That's all I know. I would hope that these sort of covert efforts are underway in the same way they've been used in other places to stop these programs. But, you know, I would say that's likely to be a stopgap, especially when you have them become public like this. And there needs to be a long term solution that involves diplomacy. Sounds like Tommy might know some secrets from his time in the NSC. I know nothing. I just though, one last thing, though. I was watching the North Korean parade of missiles. As one does. And I got to tell you, my spidey sense was tingling. Some of those missiles are empty. Yeah, I mean, most of them are probably mock-ups.

That looked like a guy that had to finish his homework. I could tell. You could tell on Kim Jong-un's face. Which one is it? Il-un. Il-un. It is in this canister. I promise you.

Don't open the canister. Just take my word for it. I think if you open it, a bunch of spring-loaded snakes come out. We're laughing now. It's funny now, isn't it? You have to laugh. You have to laugh. We have to laugh through this.

So, as Lovett pointed out, for sure, Trump was uncharacteristically quiet over the weekend about North Korea. He let McFarland and McMaster and Mattis and Pence all talk. He was in Mar-a-Lago, as he often is. He did wake up on Sunday, tweeted everyone a happy Easter. And then he accused tens of thousands of Americans who participated in the tax day marches of being paid protesters who someone should look into. And again, his heart is not in it. He is bored out of his mind. He's like, I don't know.

They're probably paid. Well, it's like five or six tweets. None of them was like, happy Easter. Someone should look into the protesters. Why are we still caring about my tax return? The election's over. Then he started bragging about his electoral college win. Then he said, by the way, we're building a strong military.

Have to. And then he bitched about the Kansas election. When did he get to Ossoff? It was like an hour delay. He probably hit a few holes and then he went back to it. Yeah, he was on the range. Then he saw a CNN chyron about Ossoff and was like, I got to tweet about that too. But anyway, there was a very large tax march on Saturday.

Congratulations to all the friends of the pod who went. I saw a lot of t-shirts out there, a lot of tweets. Good job, everyone. That was cool. 25,000 people in D.C., 20,000 people in New York City, over 100 marches all across the country. Do we think this works? Do we think we'll ever get these tax returns?

A lot of people are asking us that. What does it take to get the tax returns? I do not believe that we will be getting the tax returns by Donald Trump succumbing to political pressure. Agreed. But I do think that, A, keeping the story out there is good. It gets under his skin clearly. And also, who knows, but

I somehow, I just believe that there's too many copies of Donald Trump's tax returns in the world to not eventually emerge. And I do think keeping the pressure on, I mean, there are members of Congress can request it. It can come through a bunch of different ways. So I think it's a good thing. One thing is I don't want to... Go ahead, Tommy. Sorry. No, no. I'm glad that this tax march happened on the same weekend or same couple of days when Trump has announced that the White House is no longer going to release records of White House visitors, including who they visited and who cleared them in. This is a major reversal from Obama's policy. And it's just a major step back in terms of transparency.

And I think highlighting the tax issue, highlighting this huge rollback of transparency on the visitor logs is important because these are things I think that if you watch some of the Sunday shows, Republicans have a very hard time explaining these decisions. And I think voters will actually be bothered by this if they learn about them, which is easier said than done. Saying that this is the most secretive administration since Nixon is like a line that some consultant would tell a Democratic politician to go say. But I think it's correct in this situation.

Between the visitor's logs, the tax returns, I mean, they are just, they do not want people to know a lot of things. Well, they can. And there has to be a reason. It just seems like there are all these stories about lobbyists coming in and out of the White House all day. The reason they're not releasing the visitor logs is that they would be damning. Yeah.

And I should say, everyone should not get their hopes up, right? The tax returns could come out, and it could be like, yeah, Trump's paid by a lot of shady international businesses, and he doesn't pay a lot of taxes because he takes advantage of a bunch of loopholes, and maybe he did business in Russia once or something like that. And it could look really shady and underhanded and sort of unethical, but maybe he didn't break any laws, and then we'd all be sitting there like, oh, now, I still think we want them.

I still think we should push for them. I just don't think this idea that the tax returns are a holy grail, I think we should pause on. I agree with that. I agree with that. I think we should, you know, I agree with that. I also think that could be who knows. But it seems hard to believe that the tax returns, I think they could provide some like, you know, whatever, some web, some context, some content. Yeah, sure. But I do think like we can fall into the same trap we did during the election, which is it's not just about the tax returns. It's about what the tax returns represent, which is Donald Trump is pursuing a set of policies that will reward business,

rich people like him that dodge their taxes while hurting regular people. I mean, one of the reasons I think the tax march was great and I think it was effective, but it would actually have been more effective if the administration was able to deliver on the timetable that they had originally promised, which was by now we were supposed to be sort of neck deep in their awful tax reform plan. And if that had been the case, it had been able to sit side by side with the fact that, you know, Donald Trump is not releasing his taxes. And at the same time, he's planning on cutting taxes for rich people with maybe with a sales tax for everybody else. Yeah, I just want to get on my hobby horse for one second. Like, this is an issue where I feel like the reporting

is just it's never up to snuffuff because there's no incentive structure created for candidates to lean forward and be more transparent and to enact these reforms because you never get any credit for it. And this stuff only gets on the front page of the paper when Trump goes and rolls it back. So I don't know how to fix that. But if I'm sitting in the Trump White House thinking, should we release these records and get no credit for it or roll it back and not really care and not have to deal with a whole bunch of stories over eight years? It's an obvious choice for a secretive administration. If you are a politician of either party and you say you're going to be more transparent, the incentive for reporters to call you a hypocrite because you weren't perfect

is so bipartisan that they love it. I mean, we spent years and years and years of reporters saying most transparent administration in history as a joke at Barack Obama for the various ways in which he wasn't transparent, which is, you know, fair criticism. We weren't 100% transparent. But you don't get credit for it. Look, you don't get credit for the steps you take. It's like, of course we weren't 100% transparent. That's what we were trying to say is we were better than most. But they don't want to judge you.

Everyone judges you as perfect. It's not trying. It's perfection. It's the standard. So you're right. I mean, it's annoying. And I saw a bunch of reporters when this happened about the visitor's logs with Trump, their first reaction was, oh, remember Obama saying the most transparent administration in history? He wasn't perfect on this either. Like immediately looking back to Obama was their first reaction. There were also some conservative pundits saying, oh,

the visitor logs were a joke. They don't really tell you anything. And then people, of course, go back and look at years and years of their tweets using the Obama administration visitor logs to attack the Obama administration over and over and over and over again. And the stated rationale is just a lie. I mean, they cited national security risks and privacy rights of the visitors. You can exempt people for national security and you can figure out ways to withhold people for privacy reasons. I mean, it's just, it's a blatant lie. Two more things in the taxes before we move off this, because a lot of people asked, how do we get his tax returns back if the march doesn't do it? There is a 1924 law that gives congressional committees that set tax policy the power to examine anyone in the United States' tax returns, including the president of the United States. This was used in 1974 when Congress looked at Richard Nixon's tax returns.

So this would be one of those ways in which it wouldn't be the political pressure on Trump that gets us the taxes. It would be Democrats winning the Congress. It would be Democrats winning the House. Or I saw that Ted Yoho, Freedom Caucus Republican member of the House from Florida, at a town hall and during this recess, a liberal activist started complaining. They're like, we just want to see these tax returns from Trump to make sure he's not up to any funny business. Why wouldn't you want to do that too? And he changed his mind. He said, I think he should give up the tax returns.

You changed my mind. So Congress can do this. Persuasion can happen. Congress can do this. So keep it up and good job to everyone who's in the tax marches. The other thing that are working, as I just mentioned, are the town halls. The town halls are working. Great politico piece that I don't get to say that are working, as I just mentioned, are the town halls. Town halls are working. Great Politico piece that

I don't get to say that a lot, guys, but it was a great Politico piece. They would say to that, you ding us when you don't like us, you ding us when you like it. I think, overall, Politico has been better. It has been better. Politico is on the move. They're on the march.

And I say this not from an ideological standpoint. They've become more substantive overall and less about day-to-day politics. Totally agree. It's been a strange thing to observe. Politico has gotten better and better. They're not the New York Times, the Washington Post. Don't get me wrong. I mean, you know.

Okay. Anyway, so Politico piece. Quote, across all factions of the divided Republican conference, lawmakers found one common way to generate applause from a hostile crowd. Criticize ACHA, a.k.a. Trumpcare, a.k.a. Ryancare. Don't do it. A.k.a. Wealthcare. You know. I wasn't going to do it, but I saw your face and so I said I was going to get there.

It's like. Get him going. I just appreciate how much you learned about messaging from the DLC. From Barack Obama. The DLC. Boo. Third way. DLC. From Barack Obama. The DLC. Third way. This is Pod Save America. Stick around.

There's more great show coming your way. So a lot of Republicans having a lot of problems over the recess. Thanks to everyone who's gone to these town halls. I just mentioned Ted Yoho. He had a couple good lines from his town hall. One was he flipped on getting Trump's tax returns. He also said he would actually prefer single-payer health care to Paul Ryan's bill. That's got to hurt Paul Ryan. And I think he immediately says, and I hate single-payer. Mike Hoffman, a centrist Republican from Colorado, he had a really rough town hall.

The only thing he could do was he called for the firing of Sean Spicer because he felt so much pressure, but he didn't know what to do on health care. Talk about punching down. Right. Totally. And then Joe Wilson. Remember our friend Joe Wilson? Why bring him up? You lie. You lie. So Joe Wilson was the one who yelled. I'm thinking of Joe Walsh.

No, not Joe Walsh. Joe Wilson was the one who yelled. I'm thinking of Joe Walsh. No, not Joe Walsh. Joe Wilson was the one who yelled, you lie, at President Obama during the health care speech to Congress. So a bunch of Joe Wilson's constituents showed up to his town hall and they all started chanting, you lie. It's great. That's a good example of someone being hoisted by his own petard. That's one of Lovett's. One of my catchphrases. So anyway, I think it's going to be hard for them to do anything.

Now, it's weird because you have these health care town halls. These Republicans are getting all kinds of feedback that they do not want Trumpcare. And yet Trump, at the same time, is continuing to say he really wants to pass health care reform before tax reform. One other thing that was really interesting in these stories about the town halls is Republican members of Congress feeling positive results for being opposed to it. Not just getting yelled at for supporting it. Which is good. But saying, wow, you know, members of my constituents are appreciating the fact that I took a stand against this bill. I mean, I don't know how you come back from that. Yeah, I don't either.

And I just don't, I mean, what do you guys think? Is there hope of passing health care reform? Like, what is Trump doing here? What's interesting is you can watch him sort of learn in real time that even though he thought he was moving on from healthcare, that he needs some of the tax changes there and the tax savings to actually cut taxes for rich people as much as he wants. So they keep flirting with going back to this, which is why the pressure from these town halls is so important. It is funny because it appears that Trump believes this because Paul Ryan has convinced him of this.

So basically, it's very complicated. There's a Wall Street Journal story about it, about healthcare reform fucking up tax reform or the failure of healthcare reform to fuck up tax reform. And it seems as if what's happening is there's a lot of taxes in Obamacare right now, taxes on wealthy people, taxes on medical devices and investment income, et cetera, to pay for the bill. So obviously Republicans want to get rid of these taxes.

They also, in their plan, want to gut Medicaid and gut the subsidies, which would save money. So the combination of saving that money plus getting rid of those taxes ends up with a revenue-neutral tax bill, meaning it doesn't add to the deficit if you reformed Obamacare. If you don't reform Obamacare, you lose all the savings that you get from cutting Medicaid, taking health insurance away from poor and middle-class people. So you lose that savings, which means that when you start cutting taxes for rich people, it's going to increase the deficit. means that when you start cutting taxes for rich people, it's going to increase the deficit. You can increase the deficit in the tax reform bill because you use this reconciliation bill, which is what you use to only get 51 votes in the Senate and not 60. And so therefore, they're a little stuck. I think that was confusing. So first of all, what's interesting about this is at every stage of it, what they're saying they have to do doesn't actually make sense.

So they say, oh, we need the revenue from Obamacare to pay for tax reform. Well, unpack that for a second. What they're really saying is they want to. So John's right, right? They want to cut. They want to get rid of the tax increases that are in Obamacare. But that actually makes their life worse. That makes it harder for them to...

This is much less confusing. The point I'm making... So getting rid of the revenue from the tax side of Obamacare, which is another tax cut for rich people, makes tax reform harder. So when they say they need the revenue from Obamacare, what they're really saying is, we want to cut taxes for rich people through healthcare, but undermine the safety net so much that it even overwhelms those tax cuts for the rich people to have a pool of money for more tax cuts for the rich people through tax reform. That's the point that I was making. Here's what you need to know, guys. That was condescending. They want to cut taxes for rich people.

It's going to blow up the deficit. And they also want to take health insurance away from poor people. That's their only plan. Right. And I think what constituents out in the states are seeing is absolute chaos. They don't know what's going on. They know they don't like it. And meanwhile, one thing Trump is showing that is very interesting, thanks to a report in the New York Times today,

is I didn't realize how lazy he was. At this point in time, Obama had held nine public appearances in nine states and gone to three overseas trips. George H.W. Bush had done or George W. Bush had done 23 states by mid-April. Trump is just going to Mar-a-Lago and back. He's not out there fighting for any of the legislative priorities he has or, you know, putting pressure on candidates in districts. So it feels like there's just a lot of, you know, we're stuck. It doesn't feel like they're doing anything.

Right. And the other thing that I don't understand is I don't, like, you know, look, there have been these weeks and weeks of just wonderful stories about White House infighting and, you know, the rise of Kushner and Cohen and Dina Powell and Ivanka and all the rest. I'm so glad to not be talking about this episode. I mean, I'm not saying you are. Go ahead. It's okay. I'm just saying I'm getting a lot of criticism. I'm agreeing with you.

I feel the awkwardness from San Francisco. No, we're fine. I'm just saying I'm getting a lot of criticism. I feel the awkwardness from San Francisco. No, we're fine. I'm glad we don't have a whole segment on that today. But the point I was going to make is just there's absolutely no result in any policy. And one of the places where there could be a result is on tax reform. Because if you just decide that your priority is not tax cuts for the rich, you could do revenue neutral tax reform, and you don't need to gut health care to pay for it. There's a lot of things you could do on taxes that are only made impossible because the prime directive comes from the Republicans in the House, which is to pass a massive rate reduction for rich people and corporations.

So one thing that's coming up right when they get back is a government funding bill, because the government will shut down on April 28th or 29th on his 100th day if they don't pass the spending bill. Now, it's sort of absurd to think that a party that controls the White House and both houses of Congress couldn't just pass a bill to keep the government running. That's the easiest thing there is to do. But they're going to have problems because of the Freedom Caucus, which is demanding all these crazy things in the bill, or may.

We don't know for sure. But now that the – so it looks like to pass a government funding bill, or may. We don't know for sure. So it looks like to pass a government funding bill, you may need Democratic votes. So what are the Democrats going to ask for? Well, if you remember, Trump thinks that the way he's going to get Democrats to the table on healthcare reform is to threaten to cut off the subsidies to insurance companies that help them do cost sharing for low-income Americans, right? Because basically it would help lower-income Americans cover out-of-pocket expenses. So there's these things that have to be paid in a lot of these called cost-sharing payments, right? So

Trump thinks he's going to get them to the table by getting rid of these to screw a bunch of people over, right? So Schumer and Pelosi are thinking, well, why don't we say we are not going to vote for a government spending bill unless the cost-sharing subsidies are in the bill? Because if they're not in the bill and Trump takes them away, not only do low-income Americans not have any help to pay out-of-pocket expenses, but then insurance companies pull out of the markets and all the markets melt down. And we have a healthcare disaster. So, what do we think about this? Yeah, I mean, you know. I just don't vote for a spending bill that will lead to the collapse of the American healthcare system. It seems pretty good to me.

Well, I think they get some Republicans on the ropes here because there are a bunch of House Republicans going on the record saying, Greg Walden, who runs a committee, Tom Cole and other Republicans are like, you know what? We don't like Obamacare either, but we think these subsidies should be paid because we don't want the insurance markets melting down because also people are going to blame us for that. Right. They're definitely going to get blamed. If the Republicans control everything and they shut down the government, they will get blamed. They saw the cost this took on them back a couple years ago when they shut down the government with Obama,

I think that every voter has seen nothing but chaos. And adding to that with a government shutdown for no clear reason, there's no way that's a political winner. I think they've lost a lot of leverage by screwing up every single day on the way to where we are. One thing that's really interesting is there have been several stories on several big issues, and the quotes from out of the White House are always saying the same thing. The president is just not looking for a fight on this. He just wants to get past this to get on to the next thing. Like, the president wants to pull out on the health care reform bill because he just wants to get past it and move on to the next thing. The president's not interested in a fight on funding.

He just wants to get past it and move to the next thing. Same on tax reform, on and on and on. They have no agenda. They have no agenda. They have no agenda. Except, I think, they keep talking about tax reform, but tax reform, it's not like simplifying the tax code, getting rid of all the crazy deductions, blah, blah, blah, making it more sensible. It's just like, they all just want a big tax cut for rich people. That's all they're looking for.

It seems to be the only thing that's, it's the only thing that drives, it's the Venn diagram of Trump and the congressional Republicans, it meets with tax cuts for rich people. Because it doesn't seem like there's a lot of other things they agree on. And so that's all they want. They want to just pass a big tax cut. So my question to you guys then is how should Democrats approach the tax reform debate? What should our message be? Should we propose anything?

Should we just yell about this? What should we do here? I mean, I think the easiest political move is to be in opposition of what they put forward and wait for that and allow that to sort of frame the debate and fight going forward. I do think, you know, there might be some sort of like clear messaging amendment you could put forward that says you can't have tax cuts for people making over a million dollars or whatever. But I think it's hard to play this smartly in abstraction. I do think what you described from Pelosi and Schumer makes a lot of sense in terms of preserving ACA and protecting healthcare. I think the one step we could take is not let

tax reform be defined as something that stands alone. Donald Trump has put forward an incredibly punishing budget that strips away all kinds of funding. You know, the one that was the most salient from a few weeks ago was Meals on Wheels. But there's a thousand Meals on Wheels we haven't talked about yet. If you go through the budget that he's proposed because it's cuts across government and you put these things together and you say it's not that different from what they proposed on the health care bill, which is they want to pay for massive tax cuts for the wealthy with either deficit spending or cuts to programs for middle class people and poor people. I would just put those things together.

Friend of the pod, Ron Klain, had a few good ideas in his Washington Post column last week. One of them that I thought was interesting is, look, Republicans always say, and Trump's been saying, we need a big corporate tax cut to make our companies more competitive and help them create jobs. So you say, OK, if we give a corporate tax cut, it has to be tied to actual job creation. And if you don't prove that you have used that money to create jobs, you have to pay the taxes back. That was an interesting message point. Love it?

Yeah. Why don't you like it? Clever. I don't know. Sounds like some Bannon-esque nationalism to me. I'm on the fence about it. I love Ron Klain. I think he's a brilliant man.

Maybe you should figure out how the tax policy works. I have to fix all tax code to have an opinion on this? Not right now, at all. You can go home. You have a whole full day ahead of you. I'll think about what I want to do. We'll come back. We'll debate tax policy on the pot.

That's what people tuned in for. It was very interesting when the White House floated that because they didn't have the Obamacare money that they might do a climate tax. And that's very interesting to me. Do you not see that? No. Yeah. A carbon tax? A carbon tax.

Two of the ideas that were coming out of the White House clearly leaked from the White House. I believe it when I see it. It came from CTC, Carbon Tax Con. I think it did come from our friend Carbon Tax Con, from globalist Gary Cohen. But the two ideas were a VAT tax, a value-added tax, which is basically just sort of a complicated sales tax, and the carbon tax. Yeah, that was a weird report. If a carbon tax passes this Congress from this president. What do you do?

I don't even know, guys. I might not show up to the pod for a couple months if that happens. Well, let's all just take a break. It's too crazy. Before we get to our Q&A, I want to remind people to go vote and help get out the vote tomorrow in the Georgia 6th. If you want to help, if you're out of state, go to electjohn.com slash volunteer, John Ossoff. You can make calls. Remember now, Trump won this district by one and a half points after Mitt Romney won it by 20-something.

So that's why it's competitive and exciting and Ossoff's doing really well. He's polling in the low to mid 40s. He has to hit 50.1 to avoid a runoff. That seems unlikely, but not outside the realm of possibility, much like Trump becoming president. But it's a hard district. Tom Price, who he's running to replace, won by 24 points in 2016, even as Trump won the district only by one and a half. But Tom Price is so great. He's just the charisma that wafts off Tom Price.

The man's a rock star. Anyway, go help Jon Ossoff win. I've been enjoying the hashtag VoteYourOssoff. That's great. It's pretty good. I didn't see that. Pretty good. Okay, when we come back, we will have a Friend of the Pod Q&A. This is Pod Save America.

Stick around. There's just great stuff coming. Lots of great stuff. And we're back. With Pod Save America's very first Friend of the Pod question and answer. First of all, thank you everyone for the questions. You all, you sent in so many questions. We did this last night. We did it on Facebook and

Twitter, and it was fun going through them all. And I'm sorry in advance that we're not going to get to answer all of your questions. Someday when we have a full staff and time to do this, we will go through and answer all the other questions on the Facebook page and Twitter feed. We were not able to

do that. We won't be able to do that today. We just don't have the pod that long. I feel like you're being a little too apologetic. People get it. We're going to do as many questions as we can and be grateful for the ones we answer. You read these questions, you feel bad. They're very well thought out questions. Be grateful for doing this at all.

Okay. I will start. We're all going to take turns asking questions that we liked. This one is from someone who calls themselves Enlightenment Liberal on Twitter. Yeah, that's right. I'm going to do the handles. How likely is impeachment if the Dems went back the house in 2018? A whole bunch of other questions about impeachment we got. Guys? Once again, I'd remind you that we don't say impeachment. We say keep them accountable. We're going to hold Trump accountable. That's the phrase. We're not going to try to spook

those moderates. We're going to get them because we're going to hold Trump accountable. That's the phrase. We're not going to try to spook those moderates. We're going to get them because we're going to hold them accountable. That's all you got? How likely? I don't know. I guess what I would say is like it's really hard to say what's likely or not likely. I don't think anybody knows. I think it becomes more likely if we win the House.

And I think rather than think about what the endgame is, I think winning the House means we can finally have some actual investigative capacity. And then we can start to dig into what this administration has been doing. And it's not just its ties with Russia, but the Trump administration, but the Trump businesses and its continued influence, you know, in the White House, the crazy connections with Manafort and Lewandowski and all these people. There's a ton of stuff that needs to be investigated properly. And I think if that leads to crimes, if that leads to impeachable offenses, then I think Democrats will have the power to do it. Also, just a background on how impeachment works, so people know in terms of likelihood.

So yeah, to vote to impeach a president in the House of Representatives, you need a simple majority. Impeachment just means you are charged, right? It does not mean you're removed. The trial happens, if you will, in the Senate. The chief justice presides over the trial. And removal from office requires two-thirds of the senators that are there. So what is that, 66, 67 votes? 67 votes.

That is quite a bit. Well, it would mean peeling off some Republicans. You don't need two-thirds of the Republicans. I think Bill Clinton was acquitted 35-55 was the vote for him. And then one charge, it was 50-50. Right. But he wasn't a crony capitalist with Russian connections. He just got a beater in the White House.

So that was a tougher case to make. But that is what happened. So I will just say it's a steep climb in the White House. So that was a tougher case to make. Right. But that is what happened. So I will just say it's a steep climb in the Senate. I mean, getting 66 or 66 senators to agree on anything in this environment is quite difficult. This also feels like wish-fulfillment, like one step at a time. We win the House. Let's just win the House. Yeah.

No, I'm with you. I'm just answering Enlightenment liberals' question, you know. Great. Okay. Who wants to go next? Tommy, why don't you go? You were quiet the last one. All right, I'm going to go to a slightly lighter one. Which member of the Trump administration is most likely to open a bag of chips with scissors?

That one made me laugh. Ben Carson, for sure. Yeah, Ben Carson's a good answer. I love it. Well, that's a surgeon's answer. Yeah, I think that's right. I'm thinking about it. Yeah, I mean,

Steve Bannon opens the bag and then pours it out. He's not in the cabinet, though. Oh, cabinet. The cabinet. Oh. That's why I went to Carson. Oh, Carson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm having trouble remembering who's in the cabinet. I was like, Carson or Betsy DeVos? I don't know.

Oh, Betsy DeVos doesn't eat chips. That's true. I like that you're thinking this oney DeVos doesn't eat chips. That's true. I like that you're thinking this one through. Tommy, what do you think? What's your answer? I think Ben Carson was where I was going to, but I think we've given this one the allotted time. I have one from someone named Null Coward.

Read the filibuster. The Constitution says 50% plus one, not 60. Why should we not embrace the original design? I don't know. I'm sort of there. Let's get rid of it. I think it's really interesting. Well, the one thing that's...

That's very controversial. I just left it there. Allow me to... No, no, no. Leave it. But it is true. It was there. I mean, the filibuster was not part of the original intent.

Well, also, and the one thing we've learned is that the filibuster was a kind of decorum instrument. Because now when we try to use it, they make it go away. So if it's only there until you use it, it was never really there at all. Yeah, all these things are based on trust and they're based on a willingness to go beyond party lines and work together and be cordial with your colleagues. And that's just completely gone. So it's almost like it was a fait accompli sort of thing. But I'll tell you, I mean, politically speaking, I was giving just a broad answer about this that was nonpolitical. Because politically speaking, as Democrats, we probably want to keep the filibuster because Wyoming will always have two senators

and California will always have two senators. And like states with these- I've got some amendment ideas I need to talk to you about after the show. States with these like small populations will always have as much say as the big states. And so because we are in this partisan environment where Democrats are winning the states with big urban areas and we are having trouble in other states, the Senate's going to be tough for us. Yeah. I mean, I guess I would say the one thing we've learned, everybody had this open question of like, will there be a political

price for abandoning the filibuster? And it was basically just who's going to jump first. And now we've jumped and we've seen that there really aren't enough consequences to it. So I think we'll be saying goodbye to the filibuster. Bye filibuster. Thanks for staying. Nice job, retarding civil rights progress for 25 years in the sixties and fifties. I think you're right. I love it. Like in the, in the Trump era, anything that is simply a rule or a tradition and not a law, uh, seems like it could be on the way out the door. Yeah. That's one lesson from these last couple years,

which is sometimes it could be good, but most of the times it's pretty scary. West Wing hasn't been on for a while. It's about power now. I got one teed up for you, too. Oh. I want tight answers. I want 30-second answers. How do we make liberalism cool?

I get made fun of in my circles relentlessly how do we get the cool factor back post obama i was gonna go go love it you're the funny one i don't i will you're not the cool one but you're the i don't know i think i kind of have like a i'm not gonna okay yeah good good good see you're learning like trump testing the fences. I don't know what it means for liberalism to be cool. I think that one thing that I take away from the election is liberals, we don't get as angry and we don't get as crazy and we don't get as terrifying as like right wing media. But we do get sanctimonious. It's good. Sanctimony is our enemy and you know i'll tell

you here's an example that i saw this week and this is like a small thing but so there's this statue of a girl of a girl uh what fearless girl didn't follow the story but i'm glad to know this here so so there's the saw it a bunch of places was very confused there's a bull in wall street there's the famous bull in Wall Street, the charging bull. And they erected this temporary statue called Fearless Girl. And it's very cool. Right. It's like it takes this bull that's charging to sort of in no direction.

Now it's charging at this girl who's standing there bravely. It's a very cool statue. And now there's this movement to kind of make it permanent. And I think that's awesome. And we should you know, that's it's a cool thing that they did. But the artist of the original bull is like, wait, hold on a second. I made a bull. Now it's a bull charging at a little girl. Like, it's a cool thing that they did. But the artist of the original bull is like, wait, hold on a second. I made a bull. Now it's a bull charging at a little girl.

Like, that's not my art project. That's not what I did. Like, that's like a violation of my copyright. And then all of these sort of sanctimonious liberals are like, this is a brave girl standing up to the men who want to silence her. And it's like, no, no, no. Can we not make everything this kind of sanctimonious nonsense? Interesting. Was that, Tommy, was that the tight 30 second answer you were listening you were looking for that was a rambling nonsense it just bothers me that like i'm sorry but like just because it agrees with your politics doesn't mean the artist's position doesn't deserve to be heard

i don't know yeah that's such a that is such a hard non sequitur i'm gonna i'm gonna say uh the answer i often give about this which is uh don't politicians do not sound like you're reading some fucking consultant script for an ad when you speak to your constituents but also don't try to be cool because when you try to be cool sometimes the results are even worse than being stiff. One day you're dabbing on Ellen, the next day Trump is president. Let us not forget the Ellen dab. Bernie Sanders is the model, right? Which is like, there is nothing about him that was on its face very cool, but it became

a cool thing to support Bernie because he was an authentic guy who was who he was and everybody appreciated that. I'm so glad you brought that up. You know what's cool, guys? It's true in high school. It's true today. Be yourself. It's trite, but it's fucking true, people.

And also, the Bernie situation, aside from just Bernie being himself, it's an example of like, we all focus so much on personalities, right? It's all the Jeff Zucker characters in a drama thing. That's how we cover politics. That's how we talk about politics. Bernie is someone who like, he was a Washington insider. He was very old. He's from Vermont. That's how we cover politics. That's how we talk about politics. Bernie is someone who, like,

he was a Washington insider. He was very old. He's from Vermont. He's a socialist, right? Like, nothing about Bernie's profile said, this is a guy who's going to lead a movement and almost, like, beat Hillary Clinton in a nomination fight. He focused on the issues. He had a bunch of positions on issues. He believed them very much.

He talked about them. That was it. He was a passionate person with a simple, clear agenda that people believed he genuinely was fighting for. He did not try to be funny. He did not try to be cool. Great question. Okay. This is from Liz. I live in Kentucky. Besides move, what the fuck am I supposed to do? What does a blue person do in a red trending state? You know, look, I don't live in Kentucky. I don't know how hard it must be in terms of finding people who agree with you or organizing. But I do think like, look at a state like North Carolina. I mean, a lot of the way they've trended politically has to do with people moving there. But it's also if you can organize on a grassroots level,

if you can figure out what issues people care about that actually unite them, whether they're economic or social justice, or, you know or better health care for individuals who have not had it in the state, I do think you can build a consensus around these discrete topics and from there try to expand out and get politicians in place that better represent those values that are more like what you would like to vote for. That's a long-term play. It is hard. It's going to be tough work, but I do think it works, and I do think it'll bear fruit. And if you look at what Republican organizations have done at the state level across the country over the last decade or two,

the proof is in the pudding there. Also, it was just two years ago or so that Kentucky had a Democratic governor who expanded Medicaid. You know, there's local politics too. And people, you know, these kind of these unbridgeable partisan divides that we have at the national level, that people kind of have their team and they're not really listening. That's obviously a huge problem, but it's not as much of a problem at the local level. Also, I'd say, look at James Thompson in in Kansas in one of the reddest districts in America. And, you know, Trump won by 20-something points. And this guy came within six points of winning a congressional district. And no one thought he had it.

A lot of people didn't think he had a chance, like the DCCC and others. Do we still have a DCCC? I didn't know if they shut it down. I believe they were selling stickers. Do they have offices? Do they have email addresses? One thing, the person that lives from Kentucky asked this question. A lot of people asked us, what can I do? What else can I do? I need an actionable item. I want to make a plug for swingleft.org. Swing Left is trying to flip a bunch of these districts that are very close, competitive House districts all over the country.

They just came out last week with something called district funds. District funds are pots of money raised in advance for the eventual Democratic nominee in each swing district. Democratic challengers to Republican-held seats will get the money the day after they win the primary. The Democratic incumbents will get the money immediately. This model, raising money for the eventual Democratic challenger in a House race, is new for the 2018 midterm elections. Hasn't been tried before.

Potential game changer here. It gets them the money earlier. It attracts more candidates who may not run because they're worried about not being able to raise money. And it also goes around the fact that PACs can only donate so much money. This doesn't donate through PACs. It's individual donations, so you can donate up to $2,700. That's cool. It's really cool. So go to go to swing left.org and you can pick your district that you want to donate to. It's close to you. Pick the district, donate some money, and that democratic challenger will have the money. They, they become the nominee.

It's interesting. There's like all these groups that are popping up that are kind of taking on the apparatus of the democratic party. Uh, and we should have, which is great, which is great. Uh, you know, look, we should talk about why we found out about how important the Kansas race was and how close it would be because Mike Pence shot a video and not because the DCCC maybe sent out an email. But my thing is, again, I'm there criticizing the DCCC on this. Stop spending our fucking time yelling about the DCCC and the DNC and all this other stuff. In the grand scheme of things,

we can overcome whatever incompetence might be there and still win these. Do not let them be an excuse for inaction. Especially when there are these new groups and this incredible amount of energy that's sort of emerging naturally because Trump is president and none of these Republicans that support him are safe.

Tommy, you got one? No, go ahead. Okay. This is a great one. This one was very well thought out. It was in a couple different tweets here from Rock Shrimp, someone named Rock Shrimp. After the idealistic enthusiasm that got Obama elected in 2008, the reality of governing slash civics probably hurt 2010 turnout. For example, the ACA was not deemed progressive enough. Progress is measured in decades, not years. How do we avoid the same fate now? How can we improve the balance between idealism and pragmatism? Do you think that Barack Obama chose that anonymous handle

so that he could write that question to us? He's like on that yacht with Michelle taking the Instagram and he's like, hold on, hold on, I got one more question. I want to hear what the boys have to say about this. As he's writing back to David Brooks about his latest column. Writing David Brooks and texting with Richard Branson. But when we go in Paris, I don't think I can get in. Who's got some thoughts on this? I mean, I think one thing people don't necessarily totally fully internalize the magnitude of was the fact that when we got

destroyed in 2010, in those midterms, it was also a census year, which locked in a lot of those gains for Republicans in districts that might otherwise have swung back to Democrats the next year as these things sort of tend to rebalance themselves. So that's a little bit of context that I think I'm not trying to excuse Obama here. I'm just showing how hard it is. And I don't know that we want to write off some of the things we fought for before 2010, because I do think those are the priorities that Americans cared a lot about and that got Obama reelected twice. Yeah. I mean, look, the truth is movements are all about idealism and activists are about idealism. And we need that. And we need people to organize and we need people to push people in government from the outside and, you know,

push them towards a better place. Politics is the art of the possible. It is about compromise. And when you are in government, you see how difficult it is to pass some of the things that you wanted to talk about more, that you talked about a lot on the campaign trail, right? And so sometimes I don't, it's hard to go out there and as a campaign message, be like, hey, trim your sails, everyone. Don't be so idealistic, you know? And like, I don't, I think you shouldn't, you should be idealistic when you're running for office. You should be idealistic when you're an outsider. And when someone that you vote for gets into office and they don't do everything that they promised and they're not

progressive enough, you should give them a hard time. But you also should realize that they're operating under a different set of constraints. Yeah. I mean, first of all, you know, look, we passed the Affordable Care Act. There's this backtracking in terms of Congress because we lose the Congress. And yet here we are almost a decade later and the law stands and they have total control of the government. They can't seem to get rid of it, in part because our government is designed to make it really hard to do big things. And, you know, look, I agree that the Affordable Care Act wasn't progressive enough. But why wasn't it progressive enough? Well, because our system makes it really hard to pass a big sweeping law, you know, and it wasn't that we were sort of held back by Republicans,

although obviously they were obstructing the bill, the bill at every every turn in the Senate. It was about bringing along Democrats who weren't elected along with Barack Obama, who had been elected decades ago, who were more moderate, who we had to drag across the finish line. And we got the most progressive bill humanly possible. Look, I I don't I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but there's a guy named Joe Lieberman you've heard me rant about. I somehow knew that we would get to Joe Lieberman with this question. But I think it's really important because the bill that passed the Senate was as progressive as humanly possible. And we know that because in the final moments, it had to be made less progressive to get the very last vote in order to pass it. And I think that speaks to just how hard it is to do this kind of legislation.

But, you know, that doesn't mean it wasn't worth doing. It doesn't mean it wasn't worth fighting for. the Civil Rights Act and then the Voting Rights Act, right? Like these things take fucking, it's what the questioner had said, progress is measured in decades, not years. And that is tougher to swallow now because we are in a culture where everything is so instant, right? And that like we expect everything to happen overnight. The news cycle needs to change. Someone needs to win. A problem needs to be fixed.

And then we got to get, we got to move on. And that's just not what politics is. I will say though, I I am I do worry that, you know, look, I think I think political consultants, politicians, I think that everybody kind of has this this gut belief that like good policy makes good politics, that that as attenuated as the sort of the the tie between how we talk about politics and how we campaign and who wins elections and then policy outcomes like that, that tether still exists. And I think one lesson of Trump winning is that you can cut that string. And I think our great fear now has to be that there isn't this cause and effect in the system anymore between political action and political repercussions. And I think the challenge for us, I think part of the reason we're doing this company is because we were sort of frustrated

with the way politics was covered. We're frustrated with the fact that so many people are getting away with politics that makes us sick. And I think as much as we can say, oh, politics takes time, progress takes time, it isn't guaranteed. And we're in a dark time. Tommy, there was a question for you this morning,

I noticed. Full and honest assessment of Obama administration relations with the Middle East with the benefit of hindsight. Thanks for winging that simple one at me for the concluding. I mean, I don't know. It's a good question. It's a really hard question. I mean, you go into, you know, he went into the presidency with the plan to pull us out of the Middle East militarily, specifically Iraq. He made a full-throated effort to get a peace process going in Israel that obviously failed. But then around 2011, the Arab Spring started and things changed in a way that was completely unpredictable. So I think that, you know, you see a lot of leaders gone or on the ropes that might have been, you know, people that didn't necessarily share our values or allow for human or civil rights or assembly. And, you know, but we're also allies of the United States.

allow for human or civil rights or assembly and you know but we're also allies of the united states so there's a there's a real politic assessment here that is kind of still unraveling uh and i don't know that we know that answer i think it's very much incomplete i mean i don't mean to duck the question but like that's a that's a big one and um until syria is figured out until iraq's got their political situation solved, we're going to be in a tough spot. Incomplete. So just for the last question, we get a lot of questions from everyone about plans for Crooked Media. Like, will you guys do more pods? Will you guys do more activism?

Will you travel more? Will you do more live shows? Will you have more merch? Will you have all this stuff? The answer to all of those questions is yes. We will tour more. We will do more activism. We will do more organizing. Up until now, the company has been

literally just the three of us. And I want you to imagine running a company where I'm one-third of the emails. We have just made some hires, which is great, and we will tell you about them at the right moment. But we are soon going to have help.

We're soon going to have an office space. And so we will start growing this thing and be able to have other people help us do all these things that we want to do. I move to L.A. tomorrow. Tommy moves to L.A. tomorrow. Tommy, I think that because you coined it, I think you should tell people what the name of our office will be. The Mar-a-Largo? It's near a place

called the Largo, which is why it's called the Mar-a-Largo. Yeah, so we'll move into the Mar-a-Largo soon. It'll be an expanding empire. But all of the questions you've been asking about, you guys should do more of this, you should have more of this, we agree with just about all of them. And we'll be doing it in the future.

New hosts, diverse voices added to the mix. Yep. Traveling. We want to do a college tour. We want to get out there and tour. I want you to imagine a world in which I don't want to go in front of crowds. Give me a break. The sun never sets

for the crooked media empire. It doesn't. But anyway, everyone, thank you so much for your questions. We will do this again. This was fun. There was one more question that you were going to ask that we didn't do, which is, are any of us going to run for office? He's unbelievable, Tommy. You gotta get down here.

Fine, we won't answer it now. No, we did get that question a lot. I already talked about this on my episode with Axelrod when it was inadvertently brought up. So why don't you two take the question? My answer is yes. No. Tommy, what about you?

No. And we did answer this at the live show, Keep It at 600. And my answer was yes then, too. Alright, Lovett's gonna run for office. So I guess we need a new host. live show, Keep It at 600. And my answer was yes then, too. All right, Lovett's going to run for office. So I guess we need a new host. I mean, not for a while. I mean, first I want to get this moguling thing out of my system. Building an empire here.

Okay, there we go. Well, he got what he came for, guys. You've created a monster. Congratulations, listeners. All right, guys. We'll talk to you later. I think this is the end of the episode. We're signing off.

Well, shouldn't we end the front of the pod segment and then do a wrap-up? And then come back and do a thing? It seems unnecessary. I think the music should be going this whole time. Tommy, how's the packing going? Has not started, so I'll hang up and do that. Okay. That's all the time we have for today.

Thanks, everyone, for joining us. And we will see you again soon. Bye guys!