Pod Save America - “You can’t trust Brett Kavanaugh.”

Episode Date: September 18, 2018

Brett Kavanaugh is credibly accused of sexual assault by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, throwing his nomination into question, and Paul Manafort agrees to fully cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Then former Secretary of State John Kerry talks to Jon and Tommy about negotiating the Iran Deal, what Democrats should do if they take the Senate, and the lessons he learned from his 2004 presidential campaign.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in the pod, you'll hear an excerpt from an interview that Tommy and I did with Jon Carey that will be featured in full on Pod Save the World later this week. Jon. Tommy, you want to give our listeners a little preview? Jon.

I'm just going to ignore Jon. Would you say that he was recording for duty? Leave all that space in. Senator, sorry, Secretary Careerry has a new book out called every day is extra we talked to him about the book about his career uh his time as secretary of state the 2004 campaign which you worked on that's right uh senator secretary kerry expressed regret that one john favreau refused to work for him After the 2004 campaign It was a poignant moment That I experienced first hand

I love Jon Carrey It was actually very fun He's in studio, playful, punchy Check it out Pod Save the World, it's a great show There's a lot of you listening that don't subscribe to Pod Save the World Fix that today I was thirsty by the end

I know. Love it. That's what it takes. Did you have a great show? No way. One of your favorites? I don't have to oversell it. First time for everything, right? We had a fantastic show at the El Rey with Senator Brian Schatz.

We had a senator in the house. As opposed to? As opposed to Brian Schatz with no connection to politics. Aaron Ryan was there. Janelle James, a really funny comic, was there. We had a really great show. Oh, and we're going to be doing two back-to-back shows at the Improv this Thursday, and there are still some tickets left, which, again, is shocking.

But you can still come see one of the two shows. It'll be an 8 and a 10. And that's it. It's a great time. Best Twitter game in the senate brian shots that's true we talked about that as well uh the penultimate episode of the wilderness is out today the most ultimate episode that's right it's about the um it's about the struggle for women's equality uh unexpectedly relevant this week poignant uh as told by kelly ditmar

rebecca traster simone sanders uh and an inspiring first-time candidate who let us tag along with her this week. Poignant. As told by Kelly Dittmar, Rebecca Traister, Simone Sanders, and an inspiring first-time candidate who let us tag along with her campaign in Florida, Anna Eskamani. So, check it out. Also, guys, we launched a ton of new shit

on votesaveamerica.com. New shit. New shit. You can check your registration right on the site now. You can get specific information about your state, like registration deadlines, early voting information, competitive races to watch. You can type in your zip code, find an event, volunteer in your community. long-awaited for voting guide where you will be able to download your ballot,

understand it in plain English, and even fill it out on your phone so that you are ready to go when you actually do the real thing. Check out Vote Save America. We only made this thing because it doesn't exist anywhere else, and we want to help people vote. It's not hard, but it can feel intimidating. This will make it easier for all your friends that might not have voted before. That's right. And Tanya and Shaniqua andki and a bunch of people at cricket have been working

so hard on this for weeks and months and it's finally uh you know it's finally in the world yeah so you're insulting them if you don't visit it absolutely use it share it love. There you go. All right. We've got some very big news to talk about today. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, a California professor who grew up in the D.C. area, has come forward to say that when she was in high school, she was sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Ford, who in July wrote to both members of Congress and called the Washington Post, says that Kavanaugh and a friend once forced her into a bedroom after they'd been heavily drinking at a party, that Kavanaugh then pinned her to a bed, covered her mouth to stop her from screaming, and tried to take off her clothes while his friend watched.

Ford told the Post, quote, I thought he might inadvertently kill me, and says that she first spoke about the incident in detail in 2012 when she and her husband were in couples therapy. That therapist recorded notes that were reviewed by the Post after they were shared by Ford. They don't mention Kavanaugh by name, but describe him, and they largely track the story that Ford has shared. Her husband also recalls Ford using Kavanaugh's name during those therapy sessions. On the advice of the attorney she has hired, Deborah Katz, Ford has also taken a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent. The results concluded she was being truthful. Both she and Brett Kavanaugh said Monday they're willing to testify about the matter before

senators. And just before we started recording, we have learned that there will be a hearing on Monday and that the vote that was supposed to be held, the committee vote on Thursday and the Judiciary Committee has been postponed so that on Monday, at the very least, both Ford, Dr. Ford and Brett Kavanaugh can go before the Judiciary Committee and answer questions. Tommy, let's start with the timeline of these allegations, because some Republicans are calling this whole thing an 11th hour accusation orchestrated by Democrats. How can they even begin to say this with a straight face? I know. I mean, one thing to know, just if you worked in government, I think you get a sense for how hard and unlikely it is to orchestrate a real conspiracy. And that's what they're alleging, that Dianne Feinstein received a letter from Ms. Blasey Ford,

the accuser in this instance, and sat on it through the confirmation hearings for some reason to disclose it the Sunday before the vote itself. That is undercut by a number of data points, the first being that this woman reached out to The Washington Post in early July. She reached out to her congresswoman's office and sent them through them, sent a letter to Senator Feinstein. She didn't initially want to go public because of exactly what we're seeing happen now. People attacking her character, her credibility, accusing this of being a partisan attack. And so she reluctantly decided to go forward once her name leaked out.

And so she reluctantly decided to go forward once her name leaked out. So all these allegations are very easily coming forward when the alleged perpetrator is in the public spotlight right now and all the political bullback that comes with that. Isn't that why Senator Feinstein and Congresswoman Eshoo didn't reveal the allegations to the Judiciary Committee earlier? Yeah, that's what it looks like. And I think there are some people who have been critical of Feinstein. There's been questions about the way she handled it inside of the committee. What is hard to argue with is that the idea that we know this because of Feinstein, I think, is just not true. It seems we actually know this despite what Dianne Feinstein did out of respect for the request in the letter itself. And this is, I think, worth putting in the context of

what happens when a woman makes a credible allegation. A woman they have trouble attacking the credibility of without knowing more. It is much easier for them to say, oh, this is some kind of a Feinstein-Schumer plot because it's easy to attack their political adversaries. It is much harder to attack this woman. And so they're saying, oh, this is a an 11th hour, an 11th hour attack. It's coordinated right before the committee vote, when the only reason we know about this at all is not because of Dianne Feinstein or Anna Eshoo. We know about this because of reporting in The Washington Post. And we know that these interviews took place in July. It was a it was up to Dr. Ford to decide when her name was used. And finally, she allowed it after so many details had already come out. And now that the Post has reviewed the therapist's notes, she brought it up

in 2012, years before Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court. So that's, you know, that's quite a plot to hatch. And one other piece of this, too, is the other person involved in this is this guy, Mark Judge. Mark Judge was asked about this allegation. He is clearly under an incredible amount of pressure to say it didn't happen, to join Kavanaugh in denouncing it completely. But he has said twice now, I have no recollection, which is not a denial, especially when we know that Mark Judge wrote a book about being blacked out and drunk for much of his youth. So the fact that we now have these, we have 2012 reports of this happening. We have this woman on the record

making this allegation. We have the other person potentially involved refusing to outright deny it took place. I mean, that is a lot of credible evidence. I also I thought the most one of the most heartbreaking parts of the Washington Post story about this read by late August, Ford had decided not to come forward, calculating that doing so would upend her life and probably would not affect Kavanaugh's confirmation. And she said, quote, Why suffer through the annihilation if it's not going to matter um so she she was ready in by even as late as august and decided i don't think i'm going to do this because i'm going to get all this blowback it's going to be an extremely painful experience and these republicans probably aren't going to do anything about it um which you can completely understand her thinking you completely understand i mean it's the response has been so terrible. I mean, Orrin Hatch right out of the gate said, I believe him.

He's a person of immense integrity. I've known him for a long time. And then he pivoted to it would be hard for senators to not consider who he is today because that is the issue. Right. So he's already not only saying he doesn't believe her and believe her allegations, he's pivoting to, but even if they're true, I care about who he is today. So they're dismissing these allegations out of hand. Yeah. I mean, let's talk about Brett Kavanaugh's response, which has been to categorically deny that the incident ever took place saying, quote, this is a completely false

allegation. I've never done anything like what the accuser describes to her or to anyone. He also reportedly told Orrin Hatch that he denies being at the party in question and that Ford might have mixed him up with someone else. And then, as you said, Lovett, you know, Mike Judge, who is Mark Judge, sorry, who was the other person in the room says he has no recollection. How credible is Brett Kavanaugh's denial here? Brett Kavanaugh has repeatedly lied under oath about matters far less serious than this. He has dissembled around nominations that he is hanging his hat on the fact that he didn't officially handle but did work on. He repeatedly lied under oath about his involvement in the spying scandal

involving leaked documents from the Senate Judiciary Committee. I mean, this is somebody who again and again has decided, probably because he is a partisan Republican operative, that you say whatever it takes to get through the crisis at the moment. That's what he did when he was nominated in 2004. That's what he did when he was nominated in 2004. That's what he did in 2006. That is what he is doing right now. First words, his first words as a Supreme Court nominee. No president has ever consulted more widely or talked to more people from more backgrounds

to seek input for a Supreme Court nomination. I realize this is a silly little lie, a ridiculous exaggeration, but it's easily provable that Donald, everyone knew that Donald Trump selected Brett Kavanaugh off a list that he was given from the Federalist Society. He did not consult a lot of people. So it's like, and a bunch of people said this at the time, like, why would Brett Kavanaugh lie about something so easy, like so obviously untrue? He is a political operative. untrue. He is a political operative. You know, he came up as this overzealous Ken Starr acolyte. And now, you know, he will say and do anything he takes to get confirmed. It's interesting that he is flat denying this incident ever occurred because it seemed very knowable if you were at

a party with a big group of people. This Mark Judge character was apparently there that he's not denying it completely. He says he doesn't recall the incident. So they should call him forward and have him testify under oath. said, you know, I was at a party. I was pretty drunk. I don't remember exactly what happened. And, uh, who knows, you know, I, I don't remember it like she did. He's not even doing any of that showed no remorse, no contrition. He's saying absolutely not. I didn't do it. It didn't happen. So basically the point is not, you know, whether or not he should be forgiven for what he did years ago, which people can debate. The point is that he is either lying.

It either happened, and if it happened, he's lying about it. Right. And he's lying about it over and over again. All Ari Fleischer, a bunch of people on the right are out there saying, boy, if we're all judged by what we did in high school, no one will ever be confirmed to another job in government again. And, like, it's's so amazing that they're saying that because they're assuming he did do it. And they're then excusing him lying about it under oath. It's also like, we're not talking about a legal proceeding. We're not talking about

a statute of limitations. These are all things that exist. No one is saying you should be judged forever by what you did at 17. But what we're talking about is you deserve to be on the highest court in the land, the position that requires the most integrity of any other job you could imagine. Absolutely not. Also, by the way, we're not talking about rough housing, as some of them say. We're not talking about drug use. We're talking about attempted rape. Yeah.

Attempted rape. There's few things more serious than that. And let's also, we have a Supreme Court with many people on it. OK, this doesn't happen every time a Supreme Court justice is nominated. This doesn't happen. Didn't happen when Gorsuch was nominated. This didn't happen when Elena Kagan was nominated. A lot of Democrats are just they do this every time they're going to have these allegations every time. No, none of us wanted Gorsuch on the court.

That was a stolen Supreme Court seat. That should have been Merrick Garland's seat. There was no allegations against Neil Gorsuch. ever, that this is a youthful indiscretion. Don Jr.'s just a kid, even though he's a 40-year-old man tweeting like a fucking moron. But when a black person is gunned down, when a black kid is gunned down, they're adults. Donald Trump thinks 14, 15, and 16-year-old accused of rape, now we know are innocent, he thought they should get the death penalty. So the fact that certain people in their eyes are adults from the time they're 13-year-old, but people like Brett Kavanaugh, the people that look like their kids, that live in the enclaves that they're used to traveling in, these are kids that make mistakes and deserve a second chance.

And we see that, and that's a big deal because that affects a lot of what we see. That has to do with more than just this hearing. That has to do with what happens when that guy Brock Turner is sentenced to just a few months when he committed an incredibly disgusting crime at Stanford. So that's really galling. And the other thing, too, is it is amazing who these guys choose to identify with. This idea of like, oh, nobody will make it through committee or Bob Corker being like, man, it'd be terrifying to have something like this happen to me. It is incredible how often we see people unable to identify with a victim, much more likely to

identify with someone accused because they lack the imagination and empathy to put themselves in the shoes of someone making the accusation, but they find it much easier to understand what it might feel like to be accused themselves. And also this clubbiness in Washington that is the same kind of clubbiness that led to, you know, some Democratic lawyers and other people in Washington, established people saying, well, I've known Brett Kavanaugh for a long time and he's a nice guy. And it's like, OK, maybe there's plenty of people, you know, who could be perfectly nice people. At the PTA meeting. And could still have normal things.

Yes. could still have done horrible things. Yes. We wake up this morning, and this group, the Judicial Crisis Network, has announced that they're running $1.5 million worth of ads to support the Kavanaugh nomination. This is an organization that just mops up money from big donors that want to gut regulations or whatever, that is run by, guess who, a former clerk for Clarence Thomas.

It's cyclical, it is so gross, and it's backed by big money corporate interest as well. It's just a process disaster. So let's talk about the reaction to this news from the White House and Senate Republicans, who were a bit divided on how to handle this today. Trump, unsurprisingly, is standing behind Kavanaugh, though on Monday he was surprisingly restrained when he told reporters, quote, we want to go through a full process, hear everybody out, and if it takes a little delay, it takes a little delay.

This came, of course, after Republican Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker both said they'd be uncomfortable voting yes on Kavanaugh's nomination without hearing from Christine Ford and investigating the allegations. Now, of course, there will be a hearing next week, even though McConnell, John Cornyn, Chuck Grassley didn't want either Ford or Kavanaugh to testify publicly. They wanted to do phone calls and they didn't want to delay the committee vote. McConnell went so far as to blame Democrats for pushing this allegation and complained that Democrats aren't, quote, following standard bipartisan process and regular order. Could you hear Merrick garland screaming all the way from dc when mcconnell said that it's you see that and it just it hurts your chest because it's just you don't even want to have to do the work of explaining even to your own mind why it makes you want to fucking explode because it is so hypocritical. It is crazy. Well, this is how Republicans have come to justify this too.

So, you know, the three of us and Dan all at once all started tweeting about Mitch McConnell when he said this and how crazy it was, right? And I saw a number of Republican pundits reply to it and they're like, cocaine Mitch strikes again. Like they're all like, they love it. They think it's fun. and they're like, cocaine Mitch strikes again. They love it.

They think it's funny. They have all internalized the fact that it is great that Mitch McConnell is a power-hungry monster, and they don't care. They don't care if he lies. They don't care about the hypocrisy. They're 100% behind Mitch McConnell doing whatever the fuck he wants to hold power. And they're all more interested in the process fouls

and feeling like this arrived too late and whether they have to push the vote than the actual substance of the allegations. You would think that would be first and foremost in their minds, but it's not. And it's also just a reminder, like we've got to vote a lot of these folks out because they are terrible, hackish Republicans, but they're also just relics. They're more focused on like Senate process and procedure than giving a shit about whether we're about to approve a Supreme Court judge that did something fucking evil. Yeah. And I will say there's now a split. Right. There's like Orrin Hatch basically said what some of these Republican pundits are saying, which is, you know, if the allegations were true, we should consider who Brett Kavanaugh is today. So that's the Orrin Hatcher. Flake and I believe Collins has said this too now, that if these allegations are true,

then obviously they should vote no on the nomination because he lied. Because he lied about something that he did. He didn't express remorse. He didn't ask for forgiveness. He lied. So at least there's some Republican senators who are saying the right thing. And it's worth noting that the ideological questions haven't moved Susan Collins,

but the one place where she's left the door open again and again is on honesty. If he lied about this, that would be a concern. Were you guys surprised by Trump's somewhat measured reaction? Or are we saying this now? And by the time people listen to this pod, there will have been a rally in Las Vegas where he goes off or tweets on Tuesday morning. I don't know. I mean, when I saw what Kellyanne said this morning in her very measured language as well, I guess I was less surprised when he echoed that because someone told them you cannot come out hot and attack the victim here. But I do wonder, someone's going to slip him a Breitbart story, he's going to read something. And I have no confidence that he'll stay disciplined. Yeah, I mean, Donald Trump doesn't care what happens to Brett Kavanaugh. He could fire Brett Kavanaugh out of a cannon into the sun. He doesn't give a shit. So what Donald Trump cares about is how this reflects on him. He doesn't want to lose. He doesn't want to look like a loser. But as long as he gets someone on the court, he can call himself a winner. And he also knows that the dirty deal he's made with Republicans in Washington and the ostensibly intellectually serious Republicans is around judges. So as long as

he can get someone on the court, he'll be OK. And I imagine the people around Donald Trump are telling him that it is much more important that you win this fight to get someone on the bench than it is that you get Brett Kavanaugh on the bench. So hold your fight, hold your powder, whatever the term is. Let's see what happens because no matter what happens, we have to do the lame duck even if we lose the Senate and come hell or high water, we'll push it through. He did call Brett Kavanaugh one of the finest

people he's ever known, which is an odd statement, but I guess when you surround yourselves with idiots and criminals and Don Jr. It's all fucking relative to him. No, I mean this whole we cannot postpone the vote. We must him. No, I mean, this whole we must we cannot postpone the vote. We must do this fast. I mean, it's obvious bullshit. It's been 50 days since Kavanaugh was

nominated. They held open the Scalia vacancy for 422 days while they waited for a Republican president because Merrick Garland's big sin was that Barack Obama nominated him, even though he had exquisite credentials. But you do wonder, Lovett, if in the White House right now and in McConnell's office, they're starting to think, if this goes down, if we have to withdraw Kavanaugh's nomination or he can't make it through, how long will it take us to get Judge Amy Barrett, you know, nominated, have a hearing confirmed? And can we do this before November? Or like you said, maybe we don't get it done before the election. But if Democrats win the Senate, fuck it, we'll do it in the lame duck. And then and yeah, we have no idea what kind of conversations are going on behind the scenes

between the the Republican senators who might come out against doing it in the lame duck. We don't know what conversations are going on there. We don't know what Mitch McConnell is saying privately. Keep in mind, Mitch McConnell did not want Brett Kavanaugh nominated. He thought Brett Kavanaugh had way too much baggage. I have to be honest. I remember seeing that that Mitch McConnell was worried that Brett Kavanaugh had too much baggage because of the paper trail and thinking, that's weird. Mitch McConnell knows that he can overcome a paper trail it was bizarre how much how public it was that mitch mcconnell didn't want this guy on the court and now we see that bubbling up from all of this fucking shit are all these stories about the kind of uh young person brett kavanaugh was it still could have been a timeline

concern you know like i think mcconnell's all about the calendar you know he's thinking to himself i just no matter what it is what they delay, that could be enough to screw me. Because Mitch McConnell thinks there's a decent chance they could lose the Senate. And they're still sitting on hundreds of thousands of documents, if not more, years of his time in the White House. We know nothing about. Yeah. I mean, the one thing I would say that's happened now is before this, I remember we were talking about this at Love It or Leave It, and it was, you know, we didn't know what the story was, right? It was just rumors. And my view was, let's all be careful here. Because once we land on this as the determining

factor, we should be honest. Everything else has melted away. Now the validity of this story and how this story plays out will determine whether or not Brett Kavanaugh gets on the court or not, because every other part of this conversation has been debated. If this story hadn't come out, Brett Kavanaugh surely would have been confirmed. And so now we will see it all play out around this one issue. So I guess the question is what... Right? I mean, unless you guys disagree. No, I think you're right about that. I mean, because like, you know, for better or worse, maybe possibly for worse, because if for some reason this doesn't play out the way, you know way we think it might, then Brett Kavanaugh still lied about a bunch of other things.

He's still, you know, obviously looking to overturn Roe. Right. Obviously looking to, you know, do all the things that we thought he was going to do. But you're right that because of the way that the media is set up and the way that we're focused on this, like this will be probably the determining factor most likely. Which is probably why it's worth remembering, worth keep coming back to how dishonest he's been around these other lesser issues leading up to this ultimate debate, which will hinge on his credibility. My question is, what else are we going to learn

possibly in this hearing? Dr. Ford has given her story to the Post. She will testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Brett Kavanaugh has given his denials. He will do so again in front of the committee. Are there other facts to learn here? I mean, I keep thinking to myself, you know, she said there were a number of people at the party. So where are those other people who are at the party? Because now Brett Kavanaugh is saying, I wasn't even at the party. And if someone else places him at the party, that's another lie that he's been caught in.

There's a lot of detail. I mean, we don't know the date. We don't know the location. We don't, I guess we know the approximate time. Like they think it was one summer when she was 15 and he was 17. So yeah, there's a ton of details that they could use to either say that, oh no, he was at camp, right? Like he wasn't in the city that day.

Or yes, you all were in the same place these people remember you being there they sort of remember this incident but it's very hard yeah well again like i think like we owe it to her to believe her account because there are these notes from 2012 there's all this other evidence and he has proven himself to be someone whose word we should not trust and that's that's the bottom line for me and that's why i started with the question are brett Kavanaugh's denials credible? Because is her story credible? She's very credible.

She has proven so far she's very credible. The question is, is he credible? And so far the answer is he hasn't been so far because he hasn't been truthful in his entire confirmation hearing. There are going to be two people at the heart of this story testifying for the Senate if this hearing happens on Monday. Only one of them has repeatedly lied under oath to the Senate. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And it also just one other thing about this. The one other part that's hard to predict is what happens when this happens on television. Everything changes when a story is

told on television and we will see what it looks like and how it feels and what Kavanaugh's rebuttal looks like and whether this Mark Judge guy shows up and who else testifies and how the senators react and what the Democrats on the committee do and what the all male Republican members on the committee do. And so I think there's a lot we don't know. We don't know what it will look like. And we also just have no idea what it will feel like. Yeah, well, we will see. Let's turn to what is somehow the second biggest story of the day.

Dude. Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has agreed to tell special counsel Robert Mueller everything he knows about whether the president's campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election and the degree to which the president and those in his orbit have obstructed the investigation. Paul Manafort entered into a guilty plea on Friday, admitting to a conspiracy against the United States and a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Tommy, what does the guilty plea mean and how much does it matter? Well, we know that Paul Manafort was at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with the Russian lawyer, with Don Jr., with Jared, with all the fun gang doing the collusion in plain sight. Boris and Natasha. Yeah, moose and squirrel.

Moose and squirrel. It means Manafort joins four other Trump aides who have offered cooperation. We have Michael Cohen. We have Rick Gates. We have Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos. Rick Gates. We have Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos. So, you know, it seems likely that he has some information to offer that Bob Mueller found relevant when Bob Mueller could have effectively put him away for life, his entire life, until he died. Right. So I don't know that Mueller offers him leniency in any way without something of interest. Now, if we believe

John Dowd, Mr. Trump's former lawyer, he emailed a bunch of lawyers and said, Manafort has, quote, no info on president or campaign. I find that hard to believe when he was the campaign chairman for like six months. Also at a period of time when, for example, the RNC platform on providing lethal assistance to Ukraine was watered down to general assistance, which would be number one on a Russian wishlist. Like there's all these things that are out there that Manafort was present for or leading the campaign during that period of time. And now he has to cough up everything he knows about all of it. Yeah. I mean, we know that Mueller's deputy, Andrew Weissman, stated in court that Manafort has already provided information that was valuable enough for them to make a deal.

There's also what Mueller spent the hour and a half delay in the arraignment doing. Marcy Wheeler, who's been a friend of the pod, she was saying that it's very possible that in that hour and a half delay between the initial charges and the plea that Paul Manafort was sitting in front of a grand jury giving testimony. And then CNN reported, and of course Andrew Weissman said in court, that Manafort was giving them information. And like you said, Tom, Mueller's not making a deal like that unless it's something valuable. And who could possibly be so valuable that he would give him that deal? There aren't many people left because they've all been indicted already.

So the people left. There's not enough witches left in the fucking holding cell. We're running out of witches to hunt. The people left are dipshit Don Jr., Jared, the president of the United States. I mean, I guess Roger Stone, though. It seems unlikely that Mueller makes a deal and gives some leniency to Manafort to get Roger Stone. I feel like he probably has Roger Stone. But anyway, I guess that could be possible.

What do you think, Levitt? Why do you think Paul Manafort finally flipped after resisting for so long? It's fascinating. We don't know. So we don't know. You know, one point that has been made is that this was a pardon proof agreement that a he did this testimony before it was announced so that he had everything before before Trump could pardon him in a tweet. Meaning that meaning that if Trump does pardon him, you know, Mueller could say, OK, fine, whatever. I got the testimony I need. Right. It can't that if if Trump has been holding out a pardon for Manafort to prevent him from telling anybody anything, he now has all the information he needs. Even if Manafort feels the kind of sort of Damocles of federal charges removed because the president pardons him to obstruct justice.

But apparently he is open to state charges on a number of the crimes that Mueller is not charging him with. So at any point, a state can come in and say, well, you testify to this shit, you know, and Donald Trump can't pardon you for state crimes. So, you know, this is a I'm not a lawyer, though I did have a very good LSAT score. And I was waitlisted at some of America's finest institutions, but on the same day. But to me, what has always felt like the only way to get Manafort to turn was the fact that he couldn't be pardoned for state crimes.

And it seems like Robert Mueller figured how to do that. I want to just say too, man, we don't know how this will end up, but in terms of managing the scale of this investigation, the moving pieces of all these different potential criminals and all their various crimes, the political implications of having a president who has no qualms about obstructing justice and interfering on a whim, the Republican Party abandoning their responsibility, all of it. justice and interfering on a whim, the Republican Party abandoning their responsibility, all of it. Robert Mueller has seemed to be able to do something incredible, which is protect himself and the investigation at every turn. And I have no idea how it will turn out. But so far,

we have had no reason to doubt. You don't have to be a defender of the FBI to say Robert Mueller has understood the stakes here and has managed them very, very well. the stakes here and has managed them very, very well. They also seized $46 million in Manafort's assets, which more than pays for the investigation in case anyone was worried about the cost. That was honestly mostly

jackets. This is funny. Included in the assets is Manafort's apartment in Trump Tower. So Robert Mueller now owns an apartment in Trump Tower. That's a show. Him and his friends can move in anytime. Wait a second. Who's my landlord? Aw, geez. First the golf club dudes and now this. This is terrible. Marcy pointed out in another journalist

of this too that there is an NBC story from January that said Trump had reportedly told associates that Manafort could incriminate him. Now, I read that story. I feel like she's doing a lot of work with a background line that he might have told them. He said that he was confident that Manafort would not flip and potentially tell stories about it. It's so funny, too. It is not actually a brag to say

that someone won't flip on you no it's an admission to cell phone that someone knows yeah it is a cell phone it is um an admission that someone knows that you did crimes right that's i think that was the inference but i know what you're saying like again there was no quote where some aid was like he said manafort has the goods on him but he won't flip it was like i don't think paul flip yeah and one other reason that that Manafort might have decided to flip is he would have needed to see the testimony that Gates the deputy campaign chairman gave to Manafort and so it's very possible that after seeing how far Gates got Mueller to a conspiracy charge for Don Jr. or the president or whatever else, that Manafort looked at that and was like, okay, well, I might as well. He's already there

anyway, so I might as well jump in. Yeah, so that's another potential. So what was the White House reaction? They, of course, insisted, as you said with John Dow, that Manafort's crimes have nothing to do with the president. But there was this interesting moment where the president's legal team didn't really have its story straight. I love this. It's very unique. So at first, Rudy Giuliani, super lawyer, said, quote, Once again, an investigation has concluded with the plea having nothing to do with President Trump or the Trump campaign. The reason, the president did nothing wrong and Paul Manafort will tell the truth.

Then, after we learned that he was cooperating, the statement was quickly revised, eliminating the portion about Manafort telling the truth, and just read, once again, an investigation is concluded with the plea having nothing to do with President Trump or the Trump campaign, the reason, the president did nothing wrong. I love it, because they're like, we're good, Manafort's our guy. He's not our guy, he's not our guy, we don't have're like, we're good. Manafort's our guy. He's not our guy. He's not our guy. We don't have any guys. We're out of guys. I have to say on this topic as well, Trump has been very restrained. He has not mentioned Manafort since the cooperation agreement. I thought we'd get, I thought we'd be treated to some tweets over the weekend.

We were not. Well, that, that, that water's got to go somewhere. One thing that happened right as we were about to record is that Trump has ordered the DOJ and the FBI to declassify the entire FISA application for Carter Page. And as well as all the rest of the texts between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, as well as Bruce Ohr's texts and James Comey's texts. So they are just trying to just flood the zone with more shit that they can say. Flood the zone with unvetted allegations, hearsay, sources, methods. God knows what's in these things. I mean, it's so reckless. It shows someone who wants to do everything he can to politicize

or in any way screw up the investigation or make it look colored or tainted with giving no care at all to our ongoing ability to monitor Russian activities. It's also, you know, this isn't never on the level, but it's not as though the thought they're having is the release of this information will reveal once and for all that we're correcting our argument about the politicization of this investigation.

No, there's going to be a bunch of shit poured into the fucking river. It'll make the river foggy for a while. Trump can use that to his advantage, make up whatever he wants. He'll get because it's new stuff. There'll be a new news cycle. He can lie and put his nonsense into that news cycle and try to get him through another week of trying to make partisan the polling around this investigation, which the good news is has so far not been as successful as he needs it to be. Which is, you know, look, he's been trying this in various ways for over a year now. And at every turn that Mueller has remained popular. The desire for Trump to speak to Mueller has remained a very popular position. The allowing the investigation to proceed is popular.

It just, you know, he has successfully undermined the investigation with his base, but we already knew that. For the rest of the country, people want to see it carried through. Okay, guys, it's time for our favorite segment, Candidate of the Day. Now, last time, we did manage to incorporate endorsement music. Did we? You did. You guys never heard it.

You guys didn't hear it. I didn't like to listen to our pods after we did them. Well, I just, I was part of the music. You wanted to check for the music. I was checking for it. We were part of it. Michael and I. What song did you choose?

It's a wonderful free bit of fanfare from the library of fanfares that Michael selected. It's wonderful. It's perhaps happening right now. John, begin. Democrats have a chance to take back the House this fall and possibly to take out one of the highest-ranking Republicans in the chamber while doing it. Doesn't that sound nice? It does.

It does. In Washington State's 5th District, Democrat Lisa Brown is running against Kathy McMorris-Rogers, who's the chair of the Republican conference and the fourth ranking Republican in the House. The fifth district hasn't elected a Democrat since 1992, and the district is officially rated lean Republican. It's an R plus eight district. But there are some very encouraging signs, including the fact that McMorris-Rogers only drew 49 percent of primary votes in August. If you guys remember, much like California, Washington state has the jungle primary system

so that it's actually quite predictive what happens in the primary of the general. So all the Democratic votes together, you know, compared to all the Republican votes together, showed that Republicans were only up basically three points in that district, which is much closer than anyone thought it would be. Tommy, who is Lisa Brown? She was the chancellor of Washington State University in Spokane. She served in the Washington State House of Representatives and in the Senate. She has a PhD in economics.

She's a great candidate, knows her stuff, incredibly smart, but sent her to Washington, D.C. Well, candidate. Knows her stuff. Incredibly smart. But centered in Washington. D.C. Not so fast. Who's Kathy McMorris-Rogers? Maybe she's better. Oh, wait. Guys. Honest broker. I want to see if I like her. Listen. I did a little digging into this person.

And, uh, whew. Not a fan. Not a fan. Here's some facts. Some facts. You ready for some facts? Yes, please. here's the facts fact number one one uh she not only has long been against gay marriage she actually was against gays being able to serve in the military as recently as 2012 or how about this uh she has voted for the trump tax bill but you but you might be shocked to learn she's not running on the trump tax bill she has produced a mailer basically accusing her opponent of just opening

the floodgates for sexual predators to kidnap your children. An ad campaign so vile that sexual abuse advocates in the district in Spokane came together and put out a letter telling her to stop because it was so harmful and destructive to their work the way the bill that she claims that lisa brown voted for that releases all these sexual offenders actually it's a criminal justice reform bill it has an exception in the bill for sex offenders to make sure that they are not released so it's the it's the opposite it's a bigoted liar yeah exactly vicious and it's by the way just a reminder too that uh you don't need to that the trump playbook may tell you to go to ms-13 but you don't have to there's been a republican there's a buffet you can take a you can take a crab leg you can take oh you're she'll hand your

child over to predators there's a little bit of mac and cheese and there's a dessert bar you can do whatever the fuck you want say whatever you want in a mailer. So anyway. So I got to tell you, none of those data points make me like her more. I think I'm going to stick with my initial endorsement of Lisa Brown. She's also, by the way, just one last point. She is a high-ranking Republican. And Paul Ryan left before we had a chance to beat him. Yeah, that'd be nice. But we got some high-ranking Republicans.

Take out some leadership. Let's take out their leaders. And look, Kevin McCarthy's a tough district. This is probably the highest-ranking Republican district that we have a real shot at knocking out.

She gave a State of the Union Republican response pretty recently, I believe. Yeah. And so? Okay. I think Tommy's already voted. I voted.

Lisa Brown. I'm going to vote Lisa Brown. Lisa Brown. Lisa Brown. She's got the endorsement. She's got the Pod Save America endorsement. Go to her website.

Check out the race. There's a lot of important races in Washington State that could be part of the blue wave. Yeah. I think there's about three seats that we could flip there. Three big seats. Third, fifth, eighth, something like that. Yeah, that's right. So fertile ground in Washington State.

All right. When we come back, we will have former Secretary of State John Kerry recording for duty. On the pod today, we are very lucky to have right here in studio Senator John Kerry with a brand new book out, Every Day is Extra. Senator, welcome. I'm happy to be here. Great to see you again both of you great to see you do you go senator or secretary oh you have a lot of good titles lieutenant governor force a habit from years ago yeah right mr secretary a lot of people do that

john's fine whatever you want um well i guess the first question is uh lucky you president trump has decided to start tweeting at you. I think he knows you have a book out. That's going to help me enormously. Yeah. He really wants people to read your book. So he tweeted, uh, he's criticizing your meetings with the Iranian officials and suggesting they were illegal and saying, uh, wondering aloud if you were registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is a law we know he doesn't understand because he hired Michael Flynn and he hired Paul Manafort. What do you think about these tweets?

What's he doing here? Well, it's the great Trump distraction. I mean, we know that he isn't going to read my book. I mean, I thought today if they want to hide documents from him, they should put it in my book because he'll never read it. I mean, the guy comes from a different place. It's a distraction on the day that Paul Manafort cops a plea. And I tweeted back.

I said, Mr. President, the conversation you really ought to be worried about is the one that took place between Manafort and Mueller. Yeah, right. So we are where we are. Who you've known for what,fort and Mueller. Yeah, right. So we are where we are. Who you've known for what, since high school? Yeah, I knew Bob Mueller. Bob Mueller was captain of my hockey team. He was a terrific athlete, best athlete really in school. We played soccer, hockey, and lacrosse together for four years.

Wow. Yeah, it was fun. Donald Trump, he likes to pick the wrong fights. He used to, he was a forward, you know, he used to shred the defense. Yeah. I know that's exactly what he's doing now. There you go. So, you know, he's criticizing you for your continued efforts to talk to the Iranians. Well, no, they're not continued. The irony is they're not continued. Okay. No. From the moment the president has made his decision about what he's doing, I haven't met with anybody regarding that. People come and meet, and we meet normally. And, of course, it's a subject of conversation. It's always going to be. So I'm not defensive in the least about it. At the time that I met, it was at the United Nations General Assembly.

I mean, outside, but that was the occasion that brought him to the United States. He met with countless numbers of people. I mean, he met with... He formally delivered an address at the Council on Foreign Relations. He went to the media. He went everywhere. And I met with him in the Munich Security Conference. I met with him in Oslo, Norway at a peace conference where people were talking about how you make the world safer. I met with him in Oslo, Norway at a peace conference where people were talking about how you make the world safer. So I will always meet with people to talk about how you avoid a war in the Middle East and how you make this country of ours safer. And that's really what's going on.

But nothing unusual. I mean, Henry Kissinger has spent four decades now meeting with the Chinese, meeting with the Russians, meeting with people in various places in the world. This is the normal thing that senators, congressmen, ex-senators, congressmen who are engaged in public affairs do. We have conversations with other people. And by the way, the administration should have more of them. They should start. We have this conundrum now where Mitch McConnell and the Republicans for the last couple of years through the Obama presidency, you know, don't hold a hearing for a qualified Supreme Court judge because a Republican is not president. You know, eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations. Try to repeal Obamacare with a 50 vote threshold to reconciliation. What did Democrats do if we get back in power knowing that there's probably almost nothing we can get done with a 60 vote threshold in the Senate, knowing that you have these Republicans who for eight years of the

Obama administration said, we're not going to cooperate on anything. We're not going to do compromise. We're not going to do bipartisanship. Our job is to defeat you. Well, we have to call it out. We have to call it out, John, in ways that it wasn't called out previously. And we have to do the hard work of democracy. And when I talk about the book, when I go to various places now and I talk about my life, I go back to my experience when I came back from Vietnam. The first thing I did was not actually demonstrate against the war. The first thing I did was become involved in Earth Day. And we brought 20 million Americans out of their homes on one single day.

It was totally new and quite stunning at that moment in time. But we didn't stop with people coming out of their home to make a demonstration. We made it a political movement that was focused on Congress. And we targeted the 12 worst votes in the House, labeled them the dirty dozen, went out with a major organizational effort, and we defeated seven of the 12. As you know, in politics, there is nothing like the defeat of your friends around you for the survivors to stiffen their spines, right? That's what happened. Past Clean Air Act, safe drinking water, marine mammal protection, coastal zone management. The EPA was created and signed into existence. America didn't even have an environmental protection agency until that happened, and Richard Nixon signed it into

law. And the reason was these things became voting issues. People didn't want to live next to a toxic waste site. People didn't want to, you know, have a water that made you sick or whatever. That has to happen. I don't know any other way to do it. I really don't. You have to organize. You know what our campaigns were like, street for street, house for house. You got to bring people to the table, inspire them enough to believe they can make that difference, and then go out and make the difference. The alternative is it just kind of crumbles, falls apart. Do you think Democrats should get rid of the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominations,

keep it away for judges, try to use reconciliation, do some of the stuff that Republicans have done so that we can pass the decision? I think the first thing you ought to do, the first thing you ought to do, I would recommend, and I think you need to hold the, you know, you need to let the country see a little bit of the sausage being made. I think it would help the country to see a president competently sitting there saying, hey guys, this is what I'd like to do. Here's where it is. Can we agree at least to have a civil debate? We'll have X amount of time. Let's see

if we can make it happen. So I would first try to say to them, I'm prepared to restore that, you know, the thresholds we had before. I'm prepared to respect the rules that stood this country well for so many years. But first instance that you're not acting in good faith, I'm prepared to go do what I need to do to get done what we need for the country. So put it on them. Give them a chance to come to the table. And then when they don't, you have a rationale to go out to the country and take no prisoners. Focus on their races.

Make sure you've got people. One thing I think didn't happen enough in the last eight years, frankly, was the party building, the organizing. It should have. You mentioned Senate dysfunction, and the word dysfunction makes me think of my favorite former cabinet secretary, Rex Tillerson. Did you ever talk to Rex, try to say, hey, buddy, maybe leave the seventh floor, maybe talk to the brilliant people who work for you and stop making them feel terrible about this job. He wasn't allowed to talk to me. That's so silly. Seriously? No, I'm serious. He was sequestered in the beginning.

We had a date to have dinner before he had his hearing. So I could kind of brief him and give him a sense of where the issues were. No. No. Wow. The day before it, I got a call saying the secretary can't make it. Never an effort to make it up or make it happen. I never got a call from him on one issue that I can recall. That is so petty and small.

No wonder he wasn't good at the job. Why call someone who just did your job very well for a couple of years? That's a lot of institutional knowledge. Got some really big stuff done. Republicans often take political actions that they claim are in the name of the troops. President Trump's favorite hobby is criticizing the posture of NFL players during the National Anthem. But those voices are silent when he attacks the Khan family, a gold star family, for example. You have dealt with this yourself. You've had all kinds of

dishonest attacks about your military record. What should Democrats learn from your experience from the Trump attacks about how to fight back? You got to answer that. You got to answer it in every forum where it is. I mean, the mistake I made in 2004, and it wasn't as clear, but we had a big fight in the campaign. There were a lot of people saying, look, you've won the battle of facts. The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, every major paper in the country has carried the facts. And we've talked to your crew. They're all interviewed. We know what happened. The problem is that they kept, you could completely destroy their lie. You could shed all the truth on it. And the next day, they'd get up in the morning, go out and say the same thing. And they'd say it in a different

audience, or they'd put them up on television ads and it was the television ads that were the most damaging, I think, and our campaign, for a number of different reasons, the limits of money and so forth, didn't think that it was necessary to have those television ads. I thought it was and I lost the battle in my own campaign, which is frankly, there shouldn't have been a battle.

I should have just stopped the campaign and said, this is what we're doing. And I should have done what Obama did with Reverend Wright, which is go out and explain the war in Vietnam and the context of where we were and what happened and just put it in a different place. But you've got to answer TV with TV. You've got to do that. TV with TV. You got to do that. So I was on your 2004 campaign. I was just a kid then, 21 years old. And I was there from the beginning. Anybody listening needs to know he's just a kid. I'm still just a kid. I always feel like one. And I was there from the beginning. And I always thought that, you know, at the beginning of that campaign in the primary, you had such a good sense of who you were, why you were running, why you were

running at that moment in time. And you told the story really well. I worked for Edwards. You kicked our ass. That's right. And then, you know, as the campaign went on and we faced a lot of challenges and then you got to the general and the campaign gets bigger and there's more advisors added and suddenly it's this big race and you're going through it seemed it sometimes like you know the message got lost a little bit and that sort of core story that's a fair it's a fair I just wondered if you what you ever I never knew what you thought about that I think that you know people gave me a lot of advice before I started running and one of the things I don't Bill Clinton and different people said to me is look you

can't be your own campaign manager, you gotta trust the people you have with you. And that was the tension. Because I had friends of mine like Senator Bob Kerry, and my great pal Tom Valily, who was in the Marines, and they understood it, and they were saying, you gotta do this. And we couldn't get the lay folks, so to speak, in terms of that, to see it. And they were saying you got to do this. And we couldn't get the lay folks, so to speak,

in terms of that to see it. But I take the blame. It's my fault. I mean, I'm the candidate. I'm the guy who ought to make the cut. I should have perhaps fired somebody or done something, but I didn't. And I live with that. But it made me a very different Secretary of State, made me a very different candidate in reelection in Massachusetts. It made me a very different Secretary of State, made me a very different candidate in reelection in Massachusetts, it made me a very different senator. I have never faltered for one instance since then in doing what I think is right and doing what's in my gut. And that's the important way to do it. That's why I write this book, Every Day is Extra.

It's about how you live, how you tackle things, how you are in public life, a life of purpose, what are you doing. And you've got to be true to yourself. If you want to hear the rest of that interview, check out Pod Save the World on Wednesday. We'll have the full interview that John and I did with Senator, Secretary, and we keep doing that. John Kerry. Thanks again to

John Kerry for joining the pod today. And thank you all. We'll see you Thursday. And go to VoteSaveAmerica. VoteSaveAmerica.com Have a great week. Have just a fucking crush your weeks, guys, out there. Take that week and you just hit it out of the park.

All right? That's what I want for you. Bye.