Pod Save America - “Witch hunt!”

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

Trump begins publicly attacking Robert Mueller, only a few Republicans in Congress speak out, and Trump data firm Cambridge Analytica harvests data from 50 million Facebook profiles. Then Stoneman Douglas High School students David Hogg and Jackie Corin talk to Tommy and Jon about the upcoming March for Our Lives and their efforts to prevent gun violence. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, we'll be talking to Stoneman Douglas High School students David Hogg and Jackie Corrin, two of the founders of the Never Again Movement to Stop Gun Violence and organizers of the March for Our Lives, which will take place this Saturday in Washington, D.C., in cities across the country. We will be in D.C. We will be in D.C.

We'll be in D.C. Excited to be there and hopefully link up with these guys in some way. And everyone who's listening, this is an important march. We hope you can participate wherever you are. Yes. How was Love It or Leave It on Friday? What a blast, John. Was it?

It was a great Love It or Leave It. We had LeVar Burton. He came to the White House once. It was one of the only times I sort of freaked out when a celebrity was there because i watched reading rainbow every day every day i watched reading and we had comedians uh jamie lee and marcella are gray on and jamie lee said the funniest thing one of my favorite things anyone's ever said which was her yelling at lavar burton read this fucking rainbow lavar which made me laugh so hard and then shannon

woodward from westworld came on and uh she played betsy devos as a glitching robot and it was uh one of the funniest things we've done it was a great love to leave it and also you can go to crooked.com slash portrait and choose from the finalists from the portrait contest for the trump portrait and the winner will be put on merch and then the proceeds will go to public schools for our programs in California. Woo! Pod Save the World. Do you guys remember

like six months ago when Rex Tillerson got fired as he was on the bathroom toilet? Six years ago, right? That's what I talked about for Pod Save the World that was released last week. This week, look, it's a grab bag. There's so much in the news. I'm trying to figure out if i should talk about the russian elections the king of the heard it was a real mail butter i mean so yeah there's a whole lot going on so i'll let you know where i land tommy i have a foreign policy question three possibilities

for uh tillerson one that kelly called him and he said i can't believe you're calling me while i'm on the shitter two kelly heard a plop of some kind. What? Or three, Kelly made it up. So early for that. I've speculated that Tillerson said, I'm having a shitty day. Oh, I think maybe Tillerson said offhand to Kelly, yeah, I saw the tweet. I actually was on the toilet, you know, and that's how Kelly took it. Because otherwise, what is it?

Listen, you don't tell people when you're in the bathroom. They're not buds. They don't communicate on that level, I assume. Anyway. Who knows? Tickets. Our next swing is in Florida in Aprilil and we announced a bunch of new cities last week check it all out at crooked.com slash events all right so i hate being alarmist here but um it seems like we are closer than ever to a genuine constitutional crisis where the president of the united states tries to shut down an investigation of which he himself

is a target. An investigation into a potential criminal conspiracy between Donald Trump, his associates, and foreign agents that has already led to 19 indictments, 5 guilty pleas, including the President's former National Security Advisor, his former campaign manager, and two other campaign aides. And the crisis part comes if and when the Republicans who run Congress do absolutely nothing about this. So, let's start from the beginning. The events unfolded over the weekend that began Friday night. Paint us a picture, John.

On Friday night, Jeff Sessions fired Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe a few days before McCabe was scheduled to retire, which would deny him his pension and other benefits. Sessions said that an internal report found that McCabe wasn't honest about a conversation he authorized between FBI officials and a journalist. In an interview with the New York Times, McCabe responded, the idea that I was dishonest is just wrong. This is part of an effort to discredit me as a witness. How big of a deal is this? Which part? The fact that he was fired. It's incredibly vindictive and cruel and was clearly a setup from the very beginning. I mean, so let's just, we should stipulate that we don't know what McCabe did wrong exactly, or if he did anything wrong,

because this inspector general report has not been released yet. We know that he was allowed to authorize communications with reporters. The allegation is that when he was asked about it as part of a broader investigation into the way the Clinton foundation issue was investigated, he misled them, which is really weird to think that he would mislead them about something so easy to verify and important, but we don't have this report yet. But like the standard he's being held to is not,

did he leak or not? That's not the question. The question is whether he was honest about whether he authorized this communication with journalists. And so if Trump or anyone in the White House was held to that same ethical standard, they would all be fired. They would be gone.

Yeah. So we don't know what's in the report, but it doesn't really matter because of the way Trump conducts himself. It will not be possible for anyone to actually believe that this report was conducted fairly. Absolutely not. No matter what is in that. I saw some sort of conservatives on Twitter being like, huh, a lot of people confident that this is some kind of a political act

when they haven't read the IG report. Okay, guys. First of all, what do you think? It's a coincidence that this happened Friday night, two days before his pension? Exactly. He was going to get his pension when Donald Trump has been hankering for this guy to be fired without a pension for months.

His son, his idiot son, was tweeting about it. And Donald Trump Jr. doesn't pick things up. He doesn't have his own ideas. He gets them from his dad or from the same idiot sources that his dad gets his information from. Can I throw some facts at you and ask you to react? Okay. Here's some facts for you, John. December 19th, McCabe testifies behind doors, close doors of the House Intel Committee

and corroborates Comey's account of his meeting with Trump. That leaked immediately. And then shortly after, the DOJ inspector general decided to expedite the portion of this investigation that directly related to McCabe. A couple days later, Trump tweeted, FBI Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go. Do you think it was a coincidence?

Well, this is then fired. I mean, I was going to say McCabe's statement there where he said this is a part of an effort to discredit me as a witness let's remember mccabe is one of the few people whom comey told about all the times that trump tried to obstruct justice the loyalty pledge all the other bullshit nice to flynn yeah and so mccabe becomes a pretty powerful witness in an obstruction case. And so if they can say, well, McCabe's actually a liar. He was fired because he didn't tell the truth. James Comey, also a liar.

He was fired because he didn't tell the truth. Now they can start discrediting all the witnesses that can prove that Trump obstructed justice. I know, by the way, now he's got a vendetta because we fired him for cause. And he's actually suing me. How do you trust this guy, this guy that's not suing i mean he's just he's just a crazy disgruntled guy that's exactly right uh the other thing we know is mccabe took notes uh he's got memos just like jim comey's got memos the fake memos trump wants to call them the fake memos now can we call them the fake memos you can do whatever you want go ahead i believe devin nunes has already taken that term but go ahead mccabe has lawyered up, so this is interesting. So then, over the weekend, Trump goes on Twitter to celebrate McCabe's firing,

attacks James Comey as a corrupt liar, and says for the first time that the Mueller probe should never have been started, a sentiment that was echoed by his lawyer, John Dowd, who emailed the Daily Beast to say that he hoped that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would shut down Mueller's investigation. And didn't he quote from like Finnegan's Wake or something? Do we think John Dowd was just wasted on St. Patrick's Day and firing off emails to Daily Beast reporters? I have to say, this fucking cast of characters that he's got on his legal team is, between Ty Cobb and John Dowd and all of them, they're all pretty weird. They're not very good at lawyering. It's almost as if the smartest and most sophisticated lawyers are not interested.

They took a pass on this one. Let this one go by. So here's the question. Why now? What has finally pushed Trump over the edge? I guess the only advice that his lawyers have all given him, or one of the most important pieces of advice they've given him is, whatever you do, don't say Mueller's name,

don't call for the firing, and somehow, in all this time, Trump has taken their advice until this weekend. Yeah, I mean, the one thing we know is that in recent weeks, Mueller has begun seeking Trump Organization financial information. He subpoenaed Trump Organization for documents related to its efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, specifically. That seems interesting.

But the way the leaks have been happening, they don't seem to be coming from the Mueller side. They seem to come from other people being asked about it or from the Trump side or from elsewhere, from witnesses. So we're always a bit behind. We find out about things weeks after the fact. So it's not clear what happened this weekend, but it's very clear that Trump has been agitating because of these subpoenas. So there's a couple other things. I think you mentioned, Lovett, the subpoenas for the Trump Organization documents. It was also reported that Mueller sent the White House a list of questions for Trump for when he interviews Trump. That has got them

a little nervous. Those questions are reportedly focused on not just the campaign, but during the White House on obstruction, specifically with Trump's relationship with James Comey and Trump's relationship with Michael Flynn. So that's gotten them all nervous. And then there's the other

Washington parlor game, like Trump is freed to do whatever he wants now. He feels loose because now he has no one controlling him because hope's gone and Gary Cohn's gone he doesn't give a shit about John Kelly anymore and so it's Trump unleashed you know because he was really reserved up until now he's a reserved guy oh my god he's gonna he's unbutton his top collar finally I don't know it's hard to get inside that addled brain. It is amazing, though, that he is now actively attacking Mueller by name via tweet. And The Washington Post did a great piece where they did a quick scrub of the tweet where he said the Mueller probe should never have been started.

Blah, blah, blah. Ends with calling it a witch hunt. And they detailed five major inaccuracies in just one tweet, which is just remarkable because the guy is like he's flailing in such an incredibly embarrassing way because I think of the questions we're talking about. Yeah. Like their their argument, their defense that Trump shouldn't sit down with Mueller's team is that they're setting, quote, a perjury trap. So they're saying, no, no, no. We'll give you the questions in advance.

We'll tell you the things we're going to ask. They're substantive. They're fact based. We're not trying to trap you into lying to us. And that has scared him more than almost anything else so far. I mean, the whole idea of a perjury trap is so funny. I know. Don't lie.

Right. My client tends to lie a lot. And by sitting down with you, you might get him to do so by asking him a question. It's like calling a bank a robbery trap. That's so funny. I want to talk about the reaction to all this. There's a lot of people very incensed on Twitter over this over the weekend. What are you talking about?

Twitter. Usually the picture of calm. Oh, man. A lot of people crossing the Delaware on Twitter this weekend. Just standing at the front of that ship paddling across the Delaware for the country. Jim Comey selling some books. All of these guys. Unbelievable.

The sanctimonious tweets. Unbelievable. But I want to talk about one tweet from someone who is not sanctimoniously, in our experience, former CIA director John Brennan. Here's the tweet. And this was about Trump's tweet celebrating McCabe's firing.

Quote, when the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue and a dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America. America will triumph your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue and a dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McKay, but you will not destroy America. America will triumph over you. Now, you guys have to know John

Brennan and to have worked with John Brennan to understand how unusual that seems. I mean, Tommy, you worked with him closely. Yeah, I know John really well. The funny thing about John is those are words he actually uses in conversations like i think a lot of people were like oh you know thesaurus.com over

there no he is very he loves that kind of language but yeah john's an institutionalist non-partisan guy yeah i think he is rightly incredibly upset at the incessant attacks on law enforcement and people like annie mccabe and and just the immorality and lack of care about, you know, the people trying to keep us safe. But also he's seen underlying intelligence. He's seen some of it. Yeah.

But I also think that he's seen underlying intelligence. I also think to myself, think of the shit that John Brennan has seen as the former director of the CIA. And he always, he's like a picture of calm when you see him in the white house, you know, he's good.

Like he's running the bin Laden operation. There's a million things going on. And now he's like a picture of calm when you see him in the White House. You know, he's good. Like he's running the Bin Laden operation. There's a million things going on. And now he's Thomas Paine on Twitter. Yeah. John is as seasoned as you get. That sort of worried me a little bit. Watch it. What's the exercise?

So let's talk about the Republican reaction, which was a little different. So here's the good. We had Lindsey Graham saying that firing Mueller would be the beginning of the end of Trump's presidency. We had Jeff Flake saying it's a massive red line that can't be crossed. We got Trey Gowdy, Trey Gowdy, welcome to the resistance, saying Trump should leave Mueller alone. I don't want to move past Trey Gowdy for one second because what a fucking parallel universe we are living in. Trey Gowdy, who politic the benghazi investigation uh like his life depended on it who made it his mission to bring down hillary clinton with misleading

bullshit endless investigations for him newness has gone too far and the republican failure to stand up to trump's attacks on muller have gone too far that we have crossed trey gowdy's line tells you something that tells you just how broken the Republican response has been. I'm so sick of these guys finding a conscience when they retire, though. Can you please have a conscience while you're still in office, while you're running for re-election? Yeah. Not possible.

Well, from Paul Ryan, we just got a spokesperson. Ashley Strong went on the record and said Mueller should be able to do his job as Paul Ryan has always believed. No, no, no, John. You're not saying it properly. It's Paul Ryan believes that Mueller should be allowed to complete his job as Paul Ryan has always believed. No, no, no, John, you're not saying it properly. Paul Ryan believes that Mueller should be allowed to complete his work. He's long believed that it's important that the investigation be allowed to continue. All of them have the power, literally, to protect Mueller's job.

They could put forward legislation that makes this a moot point. Trump is the one out there politicizing it. He's saying this is a bunch of Democrats. This is a partisanot point. Trump is the one out there politicizing it. He's saying this is a bunch of Democrats. This is a partisan witch hunt. Never mind that Bob Mueller's Republican Rod Rosenstein was appointed by Donald Trump. He's making this thing about party, which is ludicrous. Sorry, I need the table. And, well, and he's testing

them, right? Trump is testing the Republicans by doing this. And I think, I mean, Sam Stein made this point over the weekend, but the bigger story here is not Trump's reactions and his tweets and stuff like that. We're all used to that. That's all crazy. Like but the bigger story here is not Trump's reactions and his tweets and stuff like that. We're all used to that. That's all crazy. Like, the bigger story here is the fact that he's coming close to this line and the Republicans

are just doing nothing. Like, and then Paul Ryan, at least Paul Ryan in this instance, had a spokesperson come out and say something. Fucking nothing for Mitch McConnell. Not a word. Not a word for Mitch McConnell. And no one expects it from him because he's the most craven, sad little coward in Congress. But why would Trump expect anything less from them?

These are the people who watched the Access Hollywood tape and came out and made statements like, how could I look my daughter in the eye again if I supported this man, Japheth Chaffetz, you failed Fox News lackey now. And then they supported him. Or Ted Cruz, who had his wife insulted and then went and phone banked for the guy the next day. He knows they are moral midgets and they're not going to do anything. So, yeah, I agree with all of that. It is interesting, though, that Trump felt compelled to put out a statement. I don't know if it was Saturday or Sunday from the lawyer saying Trump has not discussed, is not considering.

Yeah, Ty Cobb yesterday said trump is not considering firing muller not considering or discussing firing muller right so they did feel somehow that which is a lie well obviously it's a lie he's considering it on fucking twitter but it's interesting that what it's always fascinating to me when the rules somehow apply like what was happening in the white house that they felt the pressure to say that this is a personality difference between tycob and john doubt remember tycbb has always been the one who's telling trump the whole thing's going to end by thanksgiving the whole thing's going to end by christmas don't worry about it ty cobb keeps keeping things from trump to make sure that

trump doesn't go crazy and fire muller so ty cobb's strategy is to not is to let muller do his job but that is not john dowd's strategy that is not the rest of them the rest of the rest of john's strategy is to go get a stake at blt and just hash it all out tycob is the real uh hero here but no these republicans they're all they're all on board with this because there was a story in politico this morning that was like in the midterms all of these senators that are up or that want to flip states in the midterms they all want trump campaigning with them they want trump coming to all their states dean heller's gonna want it you know all the other people they all they want they're gonna be with trump in 2018 so like they're not gonna stand up to him also he has there was a great story in the new york times i think saturday or sunday about

how trump immediately killed off this vaunted steve Bannon insurrection with primary candidates running in places like Nevada and everywhere else. Like they're all gone. Trump has just taken them out. He's still a potent force in a Republican primary. He's an incredibly popular Republican who espouses positions and ideas that the base really likes. And the idea that he is not, there's a, oh, he's not a Republican, he's Trump. He is now the leader of the republican party that is fundamentally why paul ryan mitch mcconnell dean heller all these guys are scared of him because he is the base loves him the base loves him he's toxic to us and we forget that he's not he's not succeeding despite what the republican party stands for he is what the republican party stands for yeah so how would this happen how'd this go down if Trump wants to? So Trump can't fire Mueller directly. What Trump can do is he can order Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, to fire Mueller.

As of a couple of weeks ago, Rosenstein said, I see no reason to fire him. He should do his job. Which is important because even Trump needs a cause. He needs an explanation. He can't just order a fight. He has to be fired for cause. So he could try to order Rod to do this. Rosenstein could resign. And then if he resigned, it would fall to the Solicitor General, Noel Francisco, who was a former Bush DOJ lawyer,

to then have to do it. It basically is like what happened in Watergate with the Saturday Night Massacre, where Nixon ended up firing a few people who decided not to do it until finally, I think Robert Bork did it. Yeah, he did. Jeopardy clues, everybody.

So the question is, what can we do? Tommy, you mentioned there's already bipartisan legislation out there to protect Mueller. There's a couple different bills in the Senate. It seems like, A, we should push for that. Adam Schiff over the weekend called for, if Mueller does get fired, immediately passing an independent counsel law to reinstate Mueller if it happens.

There has also been some talk. The government is going to run out of money again at the end of this week. We're back to a possible shutdown. And once again, Paul Ryan needs Democratic votes in the House to pass a funding bill because the Freedom Caucus doesn't like to keep the government running and pass anything. And so the question is, should Democrats demand that some kind of legislation to protect Mueller be attached to this government funding bill? I think it's a good idea. What is the downside?

Right. You guys say push for it. Paul Ryan thinks this is important investigation that should continue. Trey Gowdy says this is not about Donald Trump. This is about Russian interference. Like there is all the political cover in the world to put forward something that is bipartisan and should be supported by every single person in Congress. We know they won't because they're partisan hacks. And that's what this is really about. But yes. Yeah. I mean, there's no argument against it, Right. It's like we don't need to be protected because Mueller hasn't been fired. Oh, yeah. But so then but it doesn't do anything until

Mueller is fired, has no consequences or costs, doesn't do anything harmful. And by the way, Republicans used to be defenders of the independent council back when it was trying to bring Bill Clinton down for years on end. So and it's funny because we're in this new position, right, because it was Democrats who felt as though the independent counsel had gone too far and had too much power. But now we're in this position where we're looking at how much power the president has over this investigation, how much damage he can do just with Twitter.

And it's just so obvious that we need this guy to be protected. And the arguments against it, there aren't really any. I mean, we don't need it. Well, how would you know? You don't need it until he's fired. And once he's fired, it's too late. And there have been multiple people who've pleaded guilty. That's what I was just going to say. Again, this isn't like he's on some fishing expedition here.

We have 19 indictments and five guilty pleas, including the national security advisor and the campaign manager. That's a big deal. Every day there's a new Flynn story, too. Halfway through the Salem witch trials, one of the 16-year-old girls on trial ripped off her mask was bright fucking green lit somebody on fire with their eyes and flew away on a broomstick exactly which hunt honestly i've been thinking that too i just want to crush in the analogy i love that one i just want to know what muller knows so so i know i saw you tweet

this so i've been thinking about this a lot because, you know, part of our problem is we just have such an unhealthy relationship with time and the way we talk about politics, right? Because it's like what matters is not what we know today. What matters is what we will know by the time this is all over. And I think the question is, is it possible that at some point we won't know everything that Robert Mueller knows? And the truth is that's an open question. But the further along we get, the harder it is for Donald Trump to find a way to make it so we don't find out the total sum of whatever has been investigated so far. Now, the constitutional crisis doesn't come because of what we learn. It comes because of what we learn and then fail to

do about it. Right. I think everything is probably overly expansive because a lot of this can be highly classified in law enforcement matter, right? So we're not going to have every access to every document, but the major conclusions, I think they will figure out a way to have a public report on it. And I've been thinking about this too, because if Mueller got canned, okay, what could he do today to prepare for that eventuality? He could take home some copies of stuff and leak it and go out like a, you know, a margaret hero, or he could walk a whole bunch over to Congress in real time and

be briefing them and providing them documents. Like I know McCabe said he was briefing the gang of eight on a whole bunch of stuff constantly as sort of a hedge against this eventuality, but I don't know what Mueller's doing. Remember that Mueller also has several sealed indictments that have not been unsealed yet too. So those don't go away if he gets fired. So we find out what's in those. And fundamentally, Mueller has been incredibly sophisticated in how he has managed the public release of information and the order of his indictments and the step-by-step process by which he has been rolling out this case and this investigation to make himself unassailable every step of the way. And I don't know if Mueller is the kind of guy that would leak. It seems to me that his whole mindset is, I will conduct myself faithfully according to

the institution, but with a kind of political sophisticated strategy to make sure that I'm protected, that the investigation is protected, and that I am always a step ahead of whatever Trump is going to try to do to me. Would like some indictments soon. Yeah, hustle. Let's go. Let's move on to a lighter topic, psychological warfare. Friend requests.

There were two pretty big stories over the weekend in the New York Times and The Guardian about Cambridge Analytica, the data analysis firm founded by Trump Cruz mega-donor Robert Mercer and former racist blogger Steve Bannon, that worked on the Trump campaign and the Brexit campaign. Apparently, Cambridge Analytica was able to harvest personal data from 50 million Facebook profiles and use them to build a program that could predict and influence your voting patterns with personalized political advertisements. use them to build a program that could predict and influence your voting patterns with personalized political advertisements. Christopher Wiley, who was one of the brains behind this operation, has decided to become a whistleblower. That's why we have these stories. And he said, quote, we exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles and built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the whole purpose of the company. What do we think about this? Is this a big deal? That was the whole purpose of the company.

What do we think about this? This is a big deal. Yes, it's a complicated set of questions. I think what these guys did was they had this academic build an app. And then it's like when you download an app and it's like, do you want to log in with Facebook? And they got paid to do it. So a couple hundred thousand people took a quiz. And then what the app did, though, was it went to your Facebook friends and it scraped data based on all their likes and stuff.

So you gave them permission to get data from you, but your friends sure as hell didn't. So it's sort of that was an unethical thing to do. On top of that, academics are not supposed to take that kind of data and give it to people for commercial purposes. So that was a huge violation of the rules. So they really did some shit that was not ethical in any way. violation of the rules. So they really did some shit that was not ethical in any way. It's also really confusing that Facebook knew about this in late 2015 and seemingly did nothing about it. Like they didn't alert users. They only took limited steps to recover and secure the data. So it's a big deal. They asked them to destroy the data. Yeah. But the way that Wiley said is like they basically sent a form and were like, check here if you've destroyed the data.

So, yeah. One, there's a semantic argument as to whether or not it was technically a breach, right? A breach or leak, yeah. Because that fake academic study was a violation of Facebook policy. It was a violation of Facebook policy for them to then use that data for commercial purposes, what Cambridge Analytica then did with the data. I think that semantic argument doesn't really matter because what's clear, this is something that Zeynep Tufekci talked to us about, which is basically the way in which Facebook is unsafe at any speed. I don't care if Facebook considers it a breach or not. It is simply not possible for people to have consented to this kind of use of data.

Alex Hearn at The Guardian said this, which I thought was a pretty funny way of thinking about it. Here's what he said. said, if I walk into a hospital and tell them I'm the butt inspector and they should give me pictures of all their patients' butts, and they do, that's a data breach, regardless of whether the hospital obtained the butt pics with patient consent. Interesting. Got it. Interesting. That helped me understand. No, that helped me understand. Don't you think? That's true and right. So then there's a whole other subset of questions of, is what Cambridge Analytica did with this data impactful? Did it influence the election? And I think I reached out to a bunch of like teddy goff and michael simon like some of the best data and online organizing people from the obama campaigns

and read a bunch on this and like i think most people including pre-election folks in the trump campaign thought cambridge analytica was bullshit that it was pseudoscience and that it was ineffective nonsense and like victory has a thousand fathers. And these guys very smartly marketed the shit out of their company after they won and acted like it was the path forward for Republicans. The bigger picture is Cambridge Analytica was funded by the Mercer family. If you wanted Mercer bucks, as Ken Vogel pointed out on Twitter today, you needed to hire Cambridge Analytica to get in the door with them and to be part of their ecosystem. Cambridge Analytica worked for Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz didn't win the nomination, nor did he win the presidency.

Right. I'm confused about this part because like whether Cambridge Analytica is sort of a bullshit company that oversold itself. Who knows? Right. That could very well be true. But it does seem like harvesting all that personal profile data is useful to campaigns who want to create political advertisements to influence the way you vote, et cetera, right? It's not not useful. It's just I think there's a tendency when we read these stories for us to flip out and rip our hair out and be like, oh, my God, they stole data. And that's why they won the election.

But I think most people think that psychometrics or psychographics, which is the pseudoscience these guys built their tools off of, are total bullshit. I would say two things. One, in terms of the influence on the election, I don't think it's actually even possible to parse out the damage that this did. But what is true is this was part of a larger, in some ways concerted, in some way accidentally sort of collaborative effort to confuse, muddy the waters, fuck with people in the 2016 election that added up to a huge, huge numbers of American voters being fed bullshit constantly every single day for months and months on end through Facebook, through Breitbart, through Fox News, through

Trump himself. Cumulative. Cumulative. Some a little bit from Cambridge, a little bit from. Yes, that's true. But that's not the specific thing we're talking about. They use this tool mostly to fundraise and they didn't do that well fundraising online. Like they can throw anti-immigrant crap at you all day long.

It doesn't take scraping a bunch of Facebook profiles to do that. Yes, but this is just part of a larger story about what happened in 2016, whether it was big, massive propaganda efforts or more targeted propaganda, whether it's through, you know, Russian disinformation campaign that targeted people on Twitter with bullshit ads, what Cambridge Analytica was doing. It all adds up to the fact that we like to pretend until this election. We like to pretend that, yeah, yeah, there's lying ads out there. And yeah, yeah, people, there's misleading shit. And yeah, there's propaganda. But at the end of the day, people are able to get the information they need and make an educated decision between two candidates. And I just think at a certain point, you have to admit that that is simply just not what happened in 2016.

Well, we've talked about this before, like advertising works. Right. I mean, that's the fundamental thing here. And like, that's why Facebook is an ad company, really. But that's the second point, right? So then you put aside whatever happened in 2016. Facebook over and over again fails to cop to the shit that they did.

They try to make it small. Even this, they didn't really let out till Friday night. That's when they suspended it after the story was about to come out. They are never honest with us. They never give you all the information at once. They let it dribble out. They slowly but surely cop to just how many people were influences.

You know, when they started, the numbers on how many people got the fake Russian ads, the number of people that were affected by that, that number climbed week by week by week until we finally found out how many millions of people saw them. They just, they are so deceptive. They are so closed off. They are just not honest.

And it always seems like they're trying to protect themselves rather than accept the fact that they've built this incredible public square that's really fucking important. And they never act like they take that responsibility seriously.

Never. They never behave like they understand the place that they have taken in our public debate that they wanted, that they fought for. They never act like

they give a shit about it. End of thought. Well, now they're asking Mark Zuckerberg to come testify. Great. Yeah. See you there, Mark. I think that's absolutely true. And I think ultimately it's hurt them more than it's helped them being completely recalcitrant and not copying to anything like they not only did they were they dismissive of their role in the election from the top down right after the election with Mark Zuckerberg being like, oh, I think it's insulting to voters to say that somehow Facebook ads influence them. But, you know, even coming up to this recent disclosure, like they posted a blog on a Friday night about something they knew about in 2015, because they knew these

stories were coming. What they've done is back themselves into getting regulated probably, and good, more power to them. I'm just trying to help people understand this specific work that Cambridge Analytica did. Because I think there was a sense after the election that we got smoked in terms of online organizing by the Republicans, that we were way behind them all of a sudden. And this was some groundbreaking new stuff. And I don't think that's really the case. I think in 2012, the Obama campaign had supporters install a Facebook app.

And that gave you an option to share your friends list with the campaign. And then when you did, they would run those names against a voter file and make targeted suggestions about who to share stuff with. And it was useful because you could be like, okay, John Lovett is a millennial. So we don't have his phone number because he doesn't have a landline. So it's a great way to reach out to your acquaintance and say, hey, you're undecided. You should consider voting or you should register. It's useful. But then in 2014, Facebook cracked down on how much information those third-party apps

could pull. So they changed the way their rules work. So we couldn't do that stuff anymore after 2015. These guys and ran around the system by using this academic who built this bullshit app to scrape a bunch of data in a way that totally violated everybody's privacy but like i don't know that it was a massive impact on the election results themselves that's all i'm trying to say yeah and we should say that over the weekend facebook did suspend cambridge analytica from their platform for improperly sharing the data.

But why? Why this weekend? Because the public found out. Because the public found out. They knew all of this for two years. We agree. We agree. One more small thing in all these stories that I found interesting.

The New York Times reported that in 2014 and 2015, executives from a Russian oil giant with ties to Putin approached Cambridge Analytica to find out how data was used to target American voters, which is a pretty odd request for a company with only two gas stations in the United States. Maybe they're trying to figure out where to put that third location. I mean, I do think is where, and now look. Where is people use gas? Is it gas in the Midwest? Where should we put third gas station? We need to harvest very specific political data.

Is it swing state? It's swing state. Where is future soccer moms? Where is NASCAR dads? Is NASCAR dads in Texas? Where do we put third gas station? Well, look, we go back to the question that you asked Mark Warner all those months ago, which is like, how do the Russians know where to target and who to target?

And was the Trump campaign involved? Was someone else involved? This is yet another data point in the evidence that perhaps the Russians were reaching out to data firms in the United States. This one happens to be founded by Mercer and Bannon to figure out exactly how they would go about influencing an election with psychological warfare. election with psychological warfare. And just a reminder, it's unusual for there to be this many coincidental Russian connections to an American political campaign. They just don't need to exist. They've never existed before. It's incredible how often Russia pops into these stories.

And witch hunt, witch hunt. Witch hunt. Witch hunt. Another thing to remember is that the head of Cambridge Analytica, Brad Parscale, is now going to run the Trump 2020 campaign. So everybody that is exposed for some sort of wrongdoing is actually elevated. Hey, Facebook, button it up. All right? We're all getting back together. Brad Parscale, Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski.

Yeah. You know what?. Gang's getting back together. That gambler that they got moving over to the campaign. I don't know who that is. The body guy. Oh, the body guy that was frogmarsh out of the White House? Yeah. Wow. How about the NDAs? Did you guys see that too this week? Unbelievable. It's not on the list, but I just came up. That Trump has been making all of

the White House employees sign non-disclosure agreements, which you can't do because those are public jobs. You are not working for Donald Trump. You are working for the United States government, which means you are working for people. There's something called the Presidential Records Act, which means all of your emails and documents and papers and notes are archived and then ultimately released. It goes through a process, but you can't say you can't disclose these things.

Once again, it's just so odd how secretive they are about everything all the time it's almost like they have something huge i love that there was a lot the the draft had a 10 million dollar penalty that was going to go to the federal government so it's like they just took the trump org nda crossed out trump org wrote federal government they're like yeah yeah we're gonna sue a fucking staff assistant for talking to a reporter and they're gonna pay the government 10 million. Where is this going to happen? And yet again, another another scandal that's been hiding in plain sight because he previewed this before he took office with the Washington Post in an interview. Oh, yeah, that's right. He did. He told Bob Woodward. It's like Bob's not keeping a lot of secrets. Things are going great, guys. Things are going great. When we come back,

we'll be talking to Stoneman Douglas High School students, David Hogg and Jackie Korn. On the pod today, we have two of the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who were founders of the Never Again Movement to Stop Gun Violence and organizers of the upcoming March for Our Lives, David Hogg and Jackie Corrin. David and Jackie, thank you for being here. Thanks, guys. Thanks. So I was hoping we could just start with the march. Tell us about why you're doing it. I've

heard you guys say that part of this is about telling our employees, the politicians, that they suck at their jobs. I love that messaging. Why should folks listening today go to the march? What should they expect when they get there? And why do you think it's important? Basically, this could happen anywhere. It happened in Parkland, which is long labeled the safest community in Florida, which if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. And we're showing that gun violence is everywhere, even if it's not covered by the media and inner cities. And we're fighting for all the people that have never had a voice as well. And the people that we don't want to have to fight for themselves and their communities

and to prevent something like this from ever happening again. And we're basically just showing our dissatisfaction with current gun legislation. And essentially what's really going on here, other than trying to prove the point that there is massive support for this gun legislation that's just sensible, allows people to still own their guns, but enables us to have our own lives, is we're trying to make sure that these politicians know that their actions can and will have consequences if they don't listen to their constituents and their future constituents, which are us, because right now they're doing a great job of keeping us alive.

Jackie, I know you organized a lobby day at the state capitol a couple of weeks ago. What did you take out of the experience of talking to all of these politicians in the statehouse and watching how they went about acting on the issues you care about? To be brutally honest, I learned that a lot of politicians are honestly heartless because we just poured our hearts out to them. are honestly heartless because we just poured our hearts out to them. I know that I got very upset multiple times because we just told them our stories and they acted like they didn't care. And it was kind of the honesty that made me even angrier and that has pushed me even more forward because like David said, they're going to get voted out because I can vote in November.

And if they're not going to listen to us and what we've been through, then it's time for them to get removed. Again, we've seen this massive support on social media. But what we haven't seen thus far is really anything that's showing how this is going to translate to the real world. And I think that's what this march is. It's showing that there are real world implications to our social media presence. And it's not just random people that are following us and don't care. These are people that are cared, that are passionate about America

and they're passionate about their lives. I mean, I'm so glad to hear you guys stay so optimistic in the wake of an experience that frustrating. John and I both worked at the White House for four years. We worked in the Senate before that. It was an upfront and personal lesson in how infuriating lawmaking can be, how infuriating Washington can be. Things slow down. People can be awful. How do you guys stay so optimistic? How do you stay focused on the task at hand?

I'm hoping we can inspire people listening who see a problem this big and wonder how they can possibly solve it. But you guys seem to have figured out a way to stay focused. You know, there are obviously days where it gets really hard and I'm just exhausted, as everyone has those days. But the thing that keeps me going is when I'm reminded why we're doing it. When I'm reminded of the 17 people we lost, when I see pictures of them, when I drive past their memorials, when I go to an art exhibit commemorating them, that kind of triggers me all over again as if it was the day of the shooting. And it just drives me all over again. It's the same thing with me.

It's really the people that were left behind and no longer have a voice that we're speaking up for. It's interesting because our movement, the people that go to our school that are part of our movement, they're 17. And that's just a coincidence, but it also shows me and everybody else how big that number truly is, because you don't really see how big that is until you actually see each individual person, and it's insane. And the other thing is, we have been speaking to lawmakers, making sure that they feel the raw emotion and implications of this. Like Tyra Hemans, she's an activist with our movement. She spoke to Governor Rick Scott and explained how, essentially, it's not fair that she no longer can have one of

her friends, Meadow Pollock. She can't be graduating with her. Tyra has the same birthday as Meadow. And every single accomplishment that Tyra will have for the rest of her life, she's going to be comparing it to where Meadow would be at that time. Because she no longer can be and that's absolutely unacceptable. She should be out there right now, just having fun at school with us and being a teen. But sadly, we're having to get up and speak up and fight for our own lives because nobody else will. How much of what happens next after the march is about politics and organizing for you guys? I know, you know, you got a bill out of Florida finally that, you know, has some modest improvements, but it's certainly not everything we all want. It doesn't seem like much is going to happen in the United States Congress. We have elections in November. Are you guys planning on organizing other students in other parts of the country in advance of the November midterm elections? Yeah. So basically what after the march encompasses is community outreach. We're going to be traveling to universities and high

schools and other community events and telling them our stories and our values and we're going to be setting up voter registration booths because we want everyone to know that their voice and their check mark on a box matters and we don't want people to continue thinking that oh they're just one person they're not going to make a difference in the election i'm not going to go vote we don't want people to think that because right now only one in five people from the ages of 18 to 29 actually go vote and we want to change that to four-fifths and we don't care the way they vote we're just pushing voter education so that people are aware of what the politicians stand for and we want people to understand what they're voting for when they vote

along the party line, and they might not agree with that. So we want people to know who they're voting for, know what they stand for, and be smart about their decision. And in the same way that Jackie just said that, I don't think people should be voting along party lines, because every party has their own just messed up part. But what we want to make sure people do is focus on a candidate basis rather than along party lines. Because if they don't do that, then we're just going to allow just messed up part. But what we want to make sure people do is focus on a candidate basis rather than along party lines. Because if they don't do that, then we're just going to allow this corruption to keep reaching into Washington and proliferating our democracy and our country. So we both worked in communications for a long time. And we know how infuriating it would be

for us when we were trying to talk about a really important issue and then the press would spin out over something silly. But you guys have figured out a way to like hack the typical media system in some ways. I think it's because everyone is used to bullshit talking points and an emphasis on politeness over honesty and caution. Did you guys make a calculated decision to say, no, we're going to talk differently or just how you all are? Really, what I think is going on here is we are the media. We're Twitter. We're speaking out for ourselves. We aren't allowing, like in previous years, the media is the forecheck of government. And what they do a lot of the time is they try spinning it their own way. For example, the first night that I was on Fox News, you can tell they try spinning it as a mental health issue, but I

immediately stopped them essentially. And we were live. And I said, this is not just a mental health issue. This is also basically a gun problem. And that's how we're making sure that people stay relevant to this. It doesn't matter whether or not the media cares. If their audience does, which they do, they're going to continue covering us. And that's why they haven't moved on from this. It's not because they care that much. It's because the people of America do now. And I think when it comes to using social media, we already have such a large platform and especially so many kids are supporting us and they're organizing their own movements, their own clubs and school. So it's not just Parkland at this point. It's every single high school. It's every single middle school. It's every single college. It's spread like wildfire.

And that's why it's not dying, because now every single kid is mad. So you guys have had some people say some truly awful things about you since this thing started. And I think, you know, all of you have handled it in a very savvy way. You mock them on Twitter, you know, you punch right back. What's your message to other young people who are potential activists, but might be afraid to sort of get into the public arena and deal with these assholes who are saying all kinds of horrible things? What have you learned that you can share with other people who might want to get involved? Honestly, you just can't let it get to you. There's always going to be people that are assholes out there. Inevitably, there's just going to be.

It's politics. People get afraid and they misunderstand people. And that's where I think a lot of this comes from, is people not understanding what we're trying to say here. Like, we're not trying to take your guns. We're trying to save lives and we're trying to save the future of America. And again, it's really USA over NRA is what we have to push here. Because this is not an issue that's Democrat or Republican.

This is solely an American issue that we have to work on. But to those people, what I would say, a boat is safe in a harbor, but that's not what boats are made to do. And to add to that, there's always going to be more positive comments than negative. I know I've realized that. I know David has realized that. All of us have. To every 10 positives, there's a negative. So the love always outweighs the hate, no matter what. You guys have tweeted this week, you know, you guys have been talking about how your generation is on the right side of history. And you've used the hashtag good trouble, which I love,

because it's something John Lewis likes to say a lot. Are there movements in history and people in history that you guys have looked to for inspiration, for tactics that folks listening should study up on? A hundred percent. We're kind of following the students during the Vietnam War era, and especially Martin Luther King Jr., his peace principles. We've learned them from kids from Chicago. They taught us them. We're basically just doing the same thing. We're peacefully protesting. That's what the school walkout encompassed. That's what the march is going to be like.

And we're just not fighting fire with fire. We're fighting the NRA with the hopeful voices of the generation that's going to soon be the core power of America. And the thing that I love most about this is that these people can't stop us because you know the second that they do they're gonna have a pr shit storm i can guarantee you that we'll help with that yeah if this happened in the 90s or if this happened before the invention of the cell phones and like video cameras that were so portable that every single person had without twitter and all these different forms of communication people would try shutting us down the nra would spend a lot on billboards and money and sharing our thing

but here's the deal we don't need billions of dollars we don't need a super pack we need the voice of the american public and we have that through twitter that's how it's shared that's why these people are so screwed because they're so old they don't know how to use technology in reality they don't not only are we going to outlive them because they're so old, they don't know how to use technology. In reality, they don't. Not only are we going to outlive them because they're so damn old, but we're going to change history with or without them. And if they choose to be on the wrong side of that, that's fine because we're going to write the books. Love that. Well, you guys are so inspiring. You know, we did a show in Dallas, Texas last week. And before the show, we met with a bunch of students who are organizing a chapter this March in Dallas. And we talked to them. We are going to be in D.C. next Saturday for the March, but what can people

around the country who can't make it to D.C. do to help people listening right now? What would you tell them? I mean, there are over 700 marches at this point on six different continents. So if they can't make it in D. dc there is a highly likely chance that there is a march within an hour or two radius of them and even if they can't go to a march in general if they're busy that day there's always the voting the voting is what we're pushing here the march is kind of a a statement saying hey we're to be voting in November. Watch out. All these people are voting against you. So the voting is kind of the main event. Just the marches pushing that. And the way people can find out about the marches around them is they can go to

marchforourlives.com. And there's a map of marches that are around them. We have at least one in every single state. And everybody can get involved in their own way. If they want to donate money, they can do that through our website. If they just want to get out there and march with us, they can do that by finding out through MarchForOurLives.com. And really just getting out there and making sure you get out there in November and making sure that you become politically active. I think it was two nights ago, there was a person running unopposed in Maine that called my friend Emma Gonzalez a skinhead lesbian.

And basically immediately after I found that out, I found his name, found out where he was running, and I got on Twitter and tweeted out, hey, friends in Maine, this hate-loving politician is running unopposed. Let's get somebody to run against him, basically. And within three hours, we got an opponent. Yes so great and we not to mention the fact that um i believe in the pennsylvania race that where we just had the special election i believe the republican candidate was heavily supported by the nra and trump was trying to support him to even showed up out there yep but a democrat that wasn't supported by the nra i don't care if they're democrats or republicans i just care whether

or not that who they're supported by in terms of special interests. This person wasn't supported by the NRA and they got elected by the skin of their teeth, basically, but they did. That district swung back 20% in midterms, basically. And I think that's what we're going to start to see this year with a combination of basically a revolt from whatever part of the executive branch is and the combination of the young people across America getting out there and becoming politically active, we're going to see a massive change on an unbelievable scale. And I can't wait to see the look on these

politicians' faces when they're kicked out of their office. We'll be right there with you, man. Yeah, man. We're excited, too. Thank you guys for everything you're doing. We really, really appreciate it. And hopefully we'll see you in D.C. next week. Yeah. Thank you.

Thanks again to David Hogg and Jackie Corrin for joining us today. Everyone go find a march in your city. And if you're going to be in D.C., we will see you there on Saturday. We're going to see you on Saturday. That's right. See you soon. Thanks for watching! you