Pod Save America - “You win some, you Newsom.”

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

Governor Gavin Newsom keeps his job as the Republican recall goes down in flames, Congresswoman Katie Porter joins to talk about the latest negotiations over Joe Biden’s economic plan, and two new books detail just how close Donald Trump came to pulling off a coup.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Gavin Newsom lives to fight another day as the Republican recall goes down in flames. Congresswoman Katie Porter is here to talk about the latest negotiations over Joe Biden's economic plan. And we go through the top five quotes from some new books that detail just how close Trump came to pulling off a coup. But first, check out the brand new season of This Land where Rebecca Nagel takes you inside her yearlong investigation into a series of custody battles over Native American children, which reveals a bigger story about shadowy right-wing groups and big corporations using the issue of adoption to destroy the entire legal structure that protects Native rights. This is fantastic journalism that Rebecca has done yet again. It is an outstanding listen.

Do yourself a favor, catch up on the first five episodes now, wherever you get your podcasts. You can also catch Rebecca this week on America Dissected, which turns 100 episodes old this week. Rebecca joins Abdul for discussion about how Native Americans were able to go from being one of the hardest hit communities by COVID to now one of the most vaccinated. Follow America Dissected on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We thought y'all could use some good news,

so we got you a landslide in California. Governor Gavin Newsom has defeated the recall and will keep his job thanks to very high turnout among Democratic voters. No is currently leading by 64% to 36%, with about 75 percent of the vote in, though that margin is expected to shrink a bit since some of the later mail-in ballots tend to trend Republican. Here's Newsom declaring victory on Tuesday night.

Democracy is not a football. You don't throw it around. It's more like a, I don't know, antique small like that antique base you can drop it smashing and then that would be six in that's what we're capable of doing if we don't stand up to meet the moment push back i said this many many times in the campaign

may have defeated trump the trump Trumpism is not dead in this country. Democracy is like an antique vase that you might see at fancy places like French Laundry. Just kidding. Just kidding. So, Dan, in the middle of August, the 538 polling average had Newsom avoiding a recall by just 0.2 percent. Not 2 percent, 0.2 percent was the polling average had Newsom avoiding a recall by just 0.2%, not 2%, 0.2% was the polling average. He's now ahead by 28%. For context, Newsom won the governorship in 2018 for the first time by 24%. And Biden won California in 2020 by 29%. What is your hottest, spiciest take on what happened between mid-August and yesterday? Well, the most popular take is all the polls were wrong.

Because dunking on pollsters is really in vogue these days. And I understand it. They get our hopes up. They crush them. They refuse to learn lessons from previous elections. You've never engaged in this practice yourself, of course. Of wrong, dunking up pollsters? Yeah.

There is no bad habit, like annoying Twitter habit that I haven't engaged in at least once if you look at my tweets, so that's fine. But I just want to say that polls are not predictors, right? They are a snapshot in time based on a supposition of what could happen. And so there's this just view that Newsom was always up by 28%. Why did we ever worry? Why did people care? What was all the hullabaloo about? But this was not one poll. It was a couple polls, two specific polls, SurveyUSA, which is a terrible poll. And if you go to their website,

it truly looks like an AOL chat room from 1996. It is terrible. Also, by the way, it's got an A- rating or an A rating from FiveThirtyEight, which just goes to show you, not that FiveThirtyEight's rating system is terrible or anything, but take those ratings on the pollster ratings with a grain of salt. take those ratings on the pollster ratings with a grain of salt. Because even some good pollsters can have really bad polls, which clearly surveyed USA did in this case. They literally had Gavin Newsom losing by nine points. It wasn't even like it was tied.

It was losing by nine points. I'm guaranteed he was not down by nine points. There was a wording mistake in there, which they fixed between the two polls that showed the giant change. But I think those polls actually affected the race. Whether they were accurate, whether it was what was actually going to happen or not, things changed from July to September. And one of the things that changed is those polls were a holy shit moment for California Democrats who were like, oh, we could end up with Larry Elder as our governor. And if you talk to anyone who organized phone

banks, canvases, those grassroots organized state, they will say that it was very hard to get people engaged before those polls. And afterwards, they were filling up phone bank shifts. And so they matter. I don't know whether they were right or they're wrong, but they were incredibly impactful. And maybe Gavin Newsom was always going to win, but he wasn't necessarily always going to win by 28 points. Yeah, I have a take that's not necessarily contradictory to that, but like I thought back to the problem with polls in 2020 or one of the problem with the polls in 2020 is that they found that Democrats were more likely to be home during the pandemic anyway, were really excited to vote in 2020 and answered pollsters calls much more than a lot of Republicans did. And so the polls

skewed towards Democrats, you know, wrongly by larger margins than they ended up. And I sort of wonder if at the beginning of this, the really excited people in this state were sort of the Republicans who were excited about the recall and Democrats either weren't that excited or didn't even know there was a recall going on, which was the case with a lot of people in my life here in California who like volunteered for Joe Biden, made calls for Joe Biden, are usually very politically engaged and still didn't even realize that either there was a recall or that Gavin Newsom might be in trouble because of the recall. So like either way, it was it seems pretty clear that Democrats needed to wake up in this race,

whether the polls were accurate or not. And I and I think that's, that's probably the one lesson that you can take away from the polls, right? Well, yeah, if you in a state with an overwhelming democratic advantage, you need Democrats to vote. That's if that happens, you can't lose. Right. And that's sort of what happened there. My larger take though. And I wonder what you think about this is that polarization rules, everything around us at at this point like newsom's margin looks almost preem identical is that our episode title preem that's gonna confuse him it's everything around me but yes newsom's margin looks well that would have been weird to say newsom's margin looks almost identical to his margin in 2018 it's close to biden's margin in 2020. It's close to Jerry Brown's margin in 2014. The only differences that

you're really seeing are the bluer places getting even bluer, the redder places getting even redder. For example, if you look at the map right now, Newsom looks like he's overperforming Biden in some areas around San Francisco. He's slightly underperforming Biden in some rural areas. You saw that across the country in 2020. And in an environment like this, it seems like if Democrats get their voters excited and Republicans get their voters excited, you're going to see a map and a margin that looks very similar to the last election, only a little more polarized. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think that's right. It wasn't necessarily a given that that would happen in a off-year recall election happening on a random Tuesday in the middle of a pandemic. That takes actual organizing work and it takes some strategy from the board.

And the recall is a very complicated situation where you could end up with a split vote, where you have some Democrats who – like let's take Newsom's approval rating has been in the mid-80s I think with Democrats in a lot of polling, right? You could end up where you have that Democrats who disapprove of Newsom supporting the recall but then supporting another Democrat on the ballot where it's a little bit of – this whole thing is a little bit of an apples, oranges comparison to everything that is going to come next. Right. Yes. Yeah. And look, that's another thing that the Newsom campaign did. Right. Is to make sure that no other Democrats jumped in the race.

And a lot of pundits and a lot of people are like, oh, why can't I just have another? I don't like Newsom that much. Why can't I just have another choice for a Democrat? Well, if there was another real choice for a Democrat, who knows what might have happened? Because then you might have had more people voting yes on the recall and then picking a Democrat and Newsom and the other Democrats splitting a vote and then maybe Republican anything could. I mean, he's winning by enough that maybe that wouldn't have mattered at all. But it was clearly the right strategy from the Newsom campaign to box out all the other Democrats and to make sure that it was Newsom versus a Republican alternative, in this case, a right wing crazy Republican alternative and Larry Elder. I also

think like if you're if you're thinking about what this means going forward, like you got to look at how Newsom did in two Orange County districts that flipped Republican in 2020, the 39th and the 48th. Dave Wasserman from Cook Political Report says that he may be on track to slightly lose these districts. And of course, in 2020, Democrats slightly lost those districts as well, which would suggest sort of a national political environment. If you extrapolate out California, that is perhaps unchanged or hasn't changed a ton since 2020. Yeah, I think we are, if you were looking to try to extract something, you got to dig pretty deep to extract it that tells you something about politics nationally,

is there is nothing that happened on Tuesday or in the six weeks leading up to Tuesday that suggests anything has changed dramatically. There's not some backlash to Biden. There's not some backlash to Democratic COVID policies. We are just right where we were, which is some pretty fired up Democrats, some pretty fired up Republicans, some folks in the middle who will decide elections in states much closer, most more narrowly divided than California. And that's where we are. That could change between now and November of next year. But the political environment is sort of status quo ante from election day 2020 right now. And that last point is very important because

for all my talk about polarization in a state like California, where it really matters, where candidates matter, their messages matter, their ads, the organization, everything else that we talk about in campaigns, polls are in these purple districts and purple states where they're closely divided between Democrats and Republicans and you win the race on the margins. That's where a lot of this stuff matters in deep blue states like California or deep red states. It's not going to matter as much. Now, you know, you said that you have to dig really deep to extrapolate something, but pundits did not have to dig all that deep. I know this is hard to believe, but there were some less than stellar takes about the recall on Twitter of all places. I mean, usually it's a

font of reliable information and great observation. CNN's Chris Saliza wrote that it was, quote, a very good night for Larry Elder's political future. But but the winner of the most ratioed take of the week goes to CNN's Casey Hunt, who wrote, quote, The fact that a Democratic national star in waiting faced a recall and then had to fight hard for it midway through the campaign does say a lot about the potential challenges Democrats face across the map. Does it, Dan? Does it? This is a situation where A plus B does not equal C. Yes, a Democratic star in waiting faced a recall challenge. Yes, Democrats have potential challenges in 2022.

Those two things have zero to do with each other. And that is the most important part about this, which is the reason Gavin Newsom faced a recall is California has an absurd recall process with an absurdly low threshold. What it takes is wealthy interest to pay people to gather signatures, to get it on the ballot. Gavin Newsom is quite popular in most polling. He is well north of 50%, 55, 56, 58% in approval rating. His COVID policies in a lot of polls are higher than his overall approving. So there is no backlash to Gavin Newsom. There's no backlash to mask mandates, vaccine mandates, anything having to do with COVID. There is no backlash

to Joe Biden. There is no backlash to anything that happened in Afghanistan. The fact that the recall is on the ballot has nothing to do with the national political environment at all. And to make that take, and Casey Hunt is an excellent journalist, right? We all have bad takes. I will probably have several before the end of this podcast. But that is just a misunderstanding of the California recall law and the state of politics here. Yes, he did have to fight for it because getting people to turn out in an off-year recall election in a pandemic is hard and you have to work for it. I read all these takes on Tuesday night. I read a whole bunch more last night and in this morning preparation for this pod. They're all terrible. Yeah. We're picking on Casey just because of the incredible ratio, which is a stupid reason and in this morning preparation for this pod, they're all terrible. That's what, yeah.

We, you know, we're picking on Casey just because of the incredible ratio, which is a stupid reason to pick on someone. But, but. We are algorithmically guided by Twitter. It is indicative, not only of a lot of the other takes, but of an East Coast bias among journalists as well.

It's like, just, just understand the rules of a recall here in California, the country's biggest state. You know, I know that you only think about us out there when the smoke from our wildfires blows across the country and hits the East Coast. But actually, we're a huge state out here. A lot of the population of the country right out here. You moved to california eight years ago seven years ago yeah seven years seven years ago and you have already adopted the california inferiority complex like yes we have hollywood now i totally get it no one gets us

and they eat shitty tacos over there no one one fucking thinks about Pacific Coast time at all. Everyone's just like calling you at random hours. Like, you know, we're three hours behind. Do you fucking understand? We have wildfires out here. Climate change is bad. It was bad here for a long time. If you have people in your life who still call you without texting you first, that's on you.

That's a you problem. Then you have the wrong friends. When I first moved out here, it was fucking reporters in D.C. That's also a you problem. Then you have the wrong friends. When I first moved out here, it was fucking reporters in D.C. That's also a you problem. So that was some bad takes. I mean, but yeah, look, there are more than 5 million Republicans in California. In this case, you only need a little over a million signatures to force a recall petition. Like, that doesn't say anything about Gavin Newsom's unpopularity.

That says something about the stupid fucking recall law in California. A couple other takes just to watch out for. You might also see reporters and pundits suggesting that Larry Elder beat the polls by capturing 47 percent of the vote. He did not. He only captured 47 percent among the recall candidates, which is about 20 percent of the overall vote, which is right in line with what the polls said Larry Elder would do. And then the other take that's going around there, it's a suggestion that Newsom underperformed with Latino voters based on the exit polls. Data on exit poll demographic groups is even more unreliable than the exit polls themselves. And when you look at the actual county data, there are so far no signs that Newsom did any worse in places with significant Latino populations.

I believe in Orange County so far, something like 85, 88 percent of Latinos voted against the recall in Orange County. Now, what did happen is Latinos who live in more rural areas, Newsom may have underperformed among them. And again, this is what we've been talking about before. To the extent that there may be a Democrats may have a problem or a challenge with Latino voters, it is similar to the challenge they have with all voters, which is voters who live in more exurban or rural areas, whether they are white, Latino, black, or any race, are trending towards Republicans more than they have in the past. All of these takes are reverse engineered from previously drawn conclusions. If you believe that Democrats are fucked in 2022, then you can find evidence for this, right? This is the Latino

take. This is the Larry Elder did well take. This is the fact that recall was on the ballot. That's a thing. If you were desperately looking for reasons to show that Democrats are not fucked in 2022, then you can also find that evidence here. And look, you and I have spent hours on this podcast digging into the most minute details of low turnout special elections. I think we even- You know, I consider it a fun hobby of mine. Yes. I think we once spent a lot of time back in 2017 on a state Senate race in Oklahoma. That's embarrassing for us. That's embarrassing. No, I take it as a point of pride, actually. So it's sort of disingenuous to say there are no lessons to be learned from. No. Yeah,

of course. From the biggest state in the country having a statewide election. But I think we should just there's like giant caution flag here. I think there's nothing here that tells us something we didn't know yet. No additional warning signs and nothing that suggested the problems we had in 2020 don't still exist. I was going to say, if the lesson from the recall is that nothing much has changed in the national political environment since 2020, that's an important lesson. It doesn't mean that much has changed, but it's good to know where the national political environment is right now. And I think you can learn that a little bit from what happened in California. So it's obviously clear that a lot of people, even some reporters don't get how easy it is to force a recall election here in California.

Again, you can try to recall a governor for any reason. And the number of signatures you need is just 12% of all the people who voted in the last election, which in this case was a little less than 1.5 million people. So it seems, Dan, like while Democrats still have a Democratic governor and veto-proof majorities in the California state legislature, they should change this ridiculous recall provision that cost taxpayers $276 million. That's how much this race costs. How do they go about doing that? Well, John, it's not easy because it's in the Constitution. So there are several ways to do it. The legislators can refer an amendment to

the Constitution and put it on next year's ballot. They can create an independent constitutional commission, which opens up a whole can of worms. They can offer specific changes, but everything they do is going to require the people of California to vote on it because it's in the Constitution. So this is not something where tomorrow you can go in and just fix it or make it go away. So there have been a bunch of different proposals about how to reform it that are floating around. One of them is to create a reason, sort of like you would have to have corruption or some other reason to put something like that on the ballot. Some is to raise the threshold. One idea is to make it illegal to

pay signature gatherers to do it, to make it more of a grassroots thing to do. The one that I find most compelling is a governor could be recalled, but if the recall measure passes, then the lieutenant governor becomes governor. I agree. That was the same thing. I thought the same thing. I was like, oh, just do that. That's so much better. Right, because then at least, like obviously that's better for Democrats in a state where Republicans

haven't won a statewide election in potentially this century. Or I take that back in the last decade or so. But at least then the person who becomes governor would be someone who had won a plurality of the voters in a regularly called election, as opposed to someone who gets a tiny fraction of voters in a regularly called election, as opposed to someone who gets a tiny fraction of voters in a low turnout election. That's not a partisan thing.

That's fair for Republicans, too. There's a Republican governor with a Republican lieutenant governor and Democrats get angry and just want to recall them. Then you'll think twice because then the lieutenant governor becomes governor. It's just it's a good provision. It should be in there. It's like impeachment, right? The vice president becomes president. Right. Except when Republicans try to impeach Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, all of the cabinet members and Nancy Pelosi if they win in 2022, which will probably happen, I'm sure. President, well, they wouldn't even have to. Well, that depends on whether the House or not, I guess. If Nancy Pelosi is in line of succession, then we have no impeachment problems. Okay. With all the caveats that we just laid out on learning lessons,

are there any lessons that we'll talk about both parties can take away from this recall? Let's start with the Democrats. Anything we can learn from Newsom's campaign and the way he campaigned that might help Democratic candidates win in much tougher districts in 2022? Democratic candidates win in much tougher districts in 2022? Yeah, I think like once again, imperfect laboratory to run this test, but there's a very clear math issue here that's a problem for Republicans, opportunity for Democrats, which is the majority of Americans are vaccinated. Those vaccinated Americans are quite angry at the unvaccinated people for continuing to make this pandemic a problem in their lives. And so making a direct appeal to vaccinated Americans, Republicans and Democrats,

building sort of a coalition of the vaccinated, is a way to go on offense on COVID. Because Republicans have been arguing against mostly Democratic measures to protect people from COVID from the very beginning. It is only both in this election, some in Virginia, and Joe Biden as recently as last week, beginning to make a much more forceful case for our policies, why they work, and the role Republicans have played in keeping that unvaccinated number up high, where I think there's political power. And so that worked here. We could do some of one without it, probably. But I think it does show that that is a model that could be adopted by other people in states less Democratic than California. I think the other big lesson from here is a fundamental lesson in

politics. When you are a challenger, you want to make the race about the incumbent. When you are an incumbent, you want to make the race not a referendum, but a choice, right? This is Joe Biden's line. Don't compare me to the almighty. Compare me to the alternative. And Gavin Newsom in the last several weeks did not run only or even mostly on his record. He did not just talk about all the great things he did for California. He talked about Larry Elder. He made it a choice between himself and Larry Elder and Larry Elder's crazy quotes, his crazy policies, all the harmful things he would do to California. And I think Democrats heading into 2022 have to be crystal clear about the consequences of a Republican majority in Congress and what they

would do and not just talk about Trump. Right. So that's part of it, because they're all very Trumpy these days, all these Republicans. But you have to clearly communicate to voters that the choices between Joe Biden and the Democrats and all the good stuff they've done and anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-democracy Republicans, whatever you want to, whatever the message is about them. But you have to really clearly lay out the choice in the election between the two parties and not just not just run on your record. OK, how about Republicans? Do you think a non-Trumpy candidate could have done any better than Larry Elder? Kevin Faulconer, the more moderate former mayor of San Diego, only ended up with 9% among all the recall candidates. I mean, I know I put this question in the outline originally, but it's sort of a trick question,

which is more moderate candidates, particularly more moderate Republican candidates tend to win, particularly in states where that are less Republican, But it's also impossible. It can't happen. Kevin Falconer cannot win the equivalent of a Republican primary. That's not what Republicans want. It always ends with Larry Elder, right? Just like the 2016 campaign was always going to end with Donald Trump. And that is going to, you know, with some, there might be a couple of very local exceptions in these 22 primaries, but take the most Trumpy MAGA-esque candidate. And that is a person who is almost certainly going to win the primary in 2022. And so, like, yeah, it would be great if, I'm sure for the Republicans, like, yes, we could run this moderate who had some appeal to Democrats, but that just can't happen. Like, to have that happen, you need to live in an alternative timeline with an alternative republican party you nominate larry elder or you you uh coalesce behind larry

elder like this is what you're gonna get right play play stupid games win stupid prizes this is this is their party right now um but look i don't know if like clearly kevin falconer uh who was a moderate republican couldn't have won the whole thing, right? He's only pulling nine percent among the recall candidates. But even here in California in 2020, you know, the Republicans were able to nominate some less crazy Republicans for some of these House districts that they won, right? They nominated Michelle Steele, Young Kim. They won the districts held by Harley Rota and Gil Cisneros, right? These were, they're still Republicans. They still have an awful record. We're still going to fight hard to beat them in 2022.

But they were not as Trumpy as some of the other Republicans. So it is possible that if this party, you know, if a couple more moderate Republicans sneak through these primaries, that they could win some of these tough districts. But it doesn't look like a lot of them are going to win these primaries, at least from where I'm sitting. There's an important caveat here in California, which is we have a jungle primary. Oh yeah, that's right.

That's right. I was wondering how they got through. Or in the case of Mike Garcia, they just pretend to be moderate and then they vote to overturn the election when they get to Washington. Right, which is something we should remind people in 2022.

One tradition that Republicans seem to have carried on from 2020 is casting doubt on the integrity of the election. Before Election Day in California, Larry Elder said that there may be shenanigans like there were in 2020 is what he said. And he also repeated the big lie. Donald Trump himself came out and said that the election was rigged. A bunch of right wing pundits said the same thing. It sure seems like this is going to be the Republican plan for 2022 and 2024 in races that are going to be much closer than this one. What do we do about that? And 2026 and 2028 and 2030. This is it. This is the world. This is the world we live in as long as the Republican Party continues to appeal to this shrinking radical minority and Fox and Facebook continue to pickle the brains of large portions

of the American populace. And that's where we are. I mean, the California lesson is one of those super helpful lessons like win by 28 points. That's one way to avoid the problem. Yeah, they didn't call the election rigged after they lost. 28 points is a hard one to swallow, even for the crazies. Right. And if the polls had been correct in 2020, then, yes, Donald Trump still would have said it was sold. I mean, let's not forget Donald Trump said the 2016 election was rigged and he won that one. So it's so they're going to do it. Just the salience of it and the power of it goes down if we win by a lot. That is a completely unhelpful piece of advice because everyone wants to win

every election by a lot. This is sort of just where we are. And it's really going to be incumbent on media outlets, social media platforms, other influencers and stakeholders, and even the tiny handful of Republicans like Romney and others to speak out against this and serve sort of a bulwark against this dangerous craziness. Yeah, because right now Trump is going state by state, swing state by swing state, and trying to replace election officials in those states who are not Trumpy enough and who basically who refused to or who did refuse to help him overturn the 2020 election. And so if it's a Republican that wasn't sufficiently loyal, he's trying to get rid of them. If there's a Democrat in the seat,

like in Arizona with Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, trying to get rid of that person. And so he is trying to put election officials in place in these key states that will, when the time comes, overturn the election for him. It's very, very scary. And we should speak up about it and protect those election officials at all costs. And also, you know, I know that there are some new provisions in this new compromise voting rights bill that Joe Manchin and crew put together that actually go to some of these election integrity issues to actually sort of protect election officials, nonpartisan election officials, to make sure that Republicans can't just get rid of them. But again, that only passes if the filibuster, if the filibuster goes or is reformed. So we shall see. It's so funny that they had to put

those provisions in the bill to stop the Republicans from overturning the election. But Joe Manchin's position is he needs Republicans to support the provision designed to stop them from stealing an election. It's like enlisting criminals to protect your house from being burglarized. It's an insane idea. It makes me so mad. I just, I have to take a couple of deep breaths. And I will do that during the break. When we come back, Dan and I will be joined by Congresswoman Katie Porter of California,

who will talk to us about the latest budget negotiations in Congress. All right, let's talk about the negotiations in Congress over the president's economic plan. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives finished turning Biden's Build Back Better agenda into roughly 2,600 pages of actual legislative text that includes progressive policies on health care, education, immigration, climate, taxes, and more. Here to talk to us about what's in, what's out, and what's next, one of my favorite members of Congress from right here in California, Katie Porter. Welcome back. Thank you for having me. So what in this bill are you most proud and excited about?

And what are you most annoyed and disappointed about? Well, the first question about annoyed and disappointed is always easier for someone like me who like lives for the oversight and lives for the, you know, this is what you're doing wrong moment. So let me start there. The drug pricing negotiation piece of this must come back in. And so yesterday, earlier this week in Energy and Commerce Committee, the effort to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices was voted down and was taken out of the budget reconciliation package. Without that, not only do seniors and Americans more broadly continue to get ripped off by big pharma? But we lose a big chunk of the revenue that we need to pay for other important both health care and investments. So without allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, it gets very difficult to do things, for example, like make sure that Medicare is paying for dental and vision care.

like make sure that Medicare is paying for dental and vision care. It's difficult to lower the age of Medicare from 65 to 60, which we know would literally save lives. Cancer diagnoses jump at age 65 because people have been putting off screenings and care from 60 to 64. So that is a huge change we need to make. We need to let Medicare negotiate drug prices. Democrats and Republicans ran on this. President Trump even ran on this. That has to get put back in. I'm glad that you brought that up because we are outraged by that as well. Like what's going on with your colleagues, Scott Peters, Kathleen Rice, Kurt Schrader, they all killed the provision. What are the chances that you think you can get it back in? I know that you guys only have like three votes to spare in the House and a couple of them. One of them said that, you know, one of the problems is that this

provision doesn't have full support in the Senate either. And they have some alternatives. I'm guessing the alternatives are probably garbage. Like what do you think is going to end up in the final package here? What are the chances of it getting back in? Yeah. So one of the Mr. Peters, Scott Peters from California has an alternative. It only raises about one fifth of the revenue. So it doesn't capture very much cost savings. So it might address some of the most egregious things. It does some things, but it doesn't do what we should want for our healthcare system, which is to have price negotiation because otherwise people are being ripped off. And we as taxpayers, whether we're on Medicare or not, are all being ripped off.

You know, I think in Scott Peter's case, I mean, he represents a very heavily life sciences district in San Diego. He's been sort of a champion on, you know, sort of fighting back, pushing back against anything that he thinks might weaken the profits and revenues and sort of, you know, his view of what we need in terms of that life science industry. I think there's much less of a clear explanation for Kathleen Rice or Kurt

Schrader. You know, Kurt Schrader was one of the nine people who tried, you know, who signed on to this letter and didn't want to, you know, he's been pushing back against the $3.5 trillion package for a while now. And so I'm not sure how you move him. You know, I think Kathleen is a little bit more of a question mark from New York. She's talked about drug pricing before she ran on it. And so I hope that she comes around. As a general matter, John, I don't think we can let what the Senate will do change what we in the House do. I mean, if there is a point to having bicameral body of legislature, it's that we do different things. It's that we let those, the differences in representation do their work. And so California, for example, has a much bigger voice in the House because we have 53 members and we have two senators. And that's by design. And so I think the House ought to create the package that it

thinks Americans need. The Senate can do what it thinks Americans need, and we'll come together in conference and see where we land. Dan, does voting against cheaper prescription drugs seem like smart politics to you? I know you wrote a message box on this this morning. drugs seem like smart politics to you? I know you wrote a message box on this this morning. You would have to look very hard to find a more self-defeating political decision than killing this provision, right? There's a new Data for Progress, Center for American Progress Action Fund pullout today, which shows that 73% of all voters, 6 in 10 Republicans support this. There are issues that people support. Then there are issues that cause people to rethink their political calculations to be more or less likely to vote. Of all the issues we've looked at this election cycle, this one is one of the

biggest motivators for Democrats. Even three in 10 Republicans would be more likely to vote for a Democrat who supported this provision. This is such a political slam dunk. On a broad point, Congresswoman Porter makes an incredibly important point that the option here is support seniors and all Americans over prescription drug companies. It's also getting prescription drug companies to help pay for incredibly popular initiatives like climate change and elder care and child care. And putting all of that aside to side with the industry that, in Gallup's poll, finds is one of the least popular industries in the country, only surpassed by the oil and gas industry. So it makes no sense to me politically. Congresswoman, I want to talk about taxes for a second. I know there's a lot of provisions

in there that would make the wealthiest Americans and big corporations pay their fair share. Help me understand what's going on with the state and local tax deduction, which is currently capped at $10,000. Brookings Institute says repealing that cap would give the top 1% an average tax cut of over $35,000, while the middle class would get an average tax cut of about $37. So why repeal the cap on state and local deductions? Yep. So first, let me just make sure everyone knows this is not currently in the Ways and Means tax that came out. So we're working, I'm working, I'm committed to actually pulling, like repealing this state and local tax deduction, I'm going to explain why, but it's not currently there. So this is one of the other top things that I'm working

on. I think this is the easiest way to think about this is start with first principles. The whole point of a progressive taxation system is that after you pay for the things you must have, like food, this is why we have a standard deduction, why we have an exemption per person. After you pay your taxes, your Medicare, whatever, what you have left is your taxable income, and the federal government taxes you on that. income and the federal government taxes you on that. If you are forced to pay part of your income to the state where you live, you don't have that income left over to, it's not available to you. And so the federal government ought to tax you on what you have left after you've paid your mandatory expenses. And that includes state taxes. The second principle is even easier to

understand. No American with the same income level should owe the same earning power, the same salary, should owe more federal tax just because of where they live. Can you imagine if we, that's the system we've got now, because President Trump, when he capped that state and local tax deduction, and we've got now because President Trump, when he capped that state and local tax deduction, upset, disregarded, abandoned a principle of our federal taxation system that had been part of it from the get-go, which is that what you owe to your localities and to your state, the places that you are closest to as a taxpayer and most able to control the expenses, those are considered mandatory deductions. They come out, you're taxed on whatever is left. And the state and local tax deduction upsets that.

Now, with regard to the fact there are some very, very wealthy taxpayers who have huge homes and therefore they have huge state taxes, property taxes, for example, on those homes. We could think about some kind of cap to capture that that's what I was going to be open to having that conversation what I'm not open to is anyone suggesting that the current system is fair this ten thousand dollars was not based in reality it really punishes Californians it punishes New Yorkers it punishes Massachusetts it punishes Californians. It punishes New Yorkers. It punishes Massachusetts. It punishes New Jersey. And do you know why? Because we pay for things in our state. We pay our teachers well. We pay for public health. We pay for first responders. We pay for climate programs. We do all the things that we want states to be doing as a federal government to care for their

citizens. The last thing the federal government should be doing is discouraging that through this kind of tax system. Yeah, I was sort of railing against this on another pod because I know that a lot of the benefits go to sort of the wealthiest Americans. And a lot of people tweeted at me and said, well, I'm pretty middle class and it's hitting me pretty hard too. So I do think like maybe 10,000 is too low as a cap.

But if you raise the cap just to make sure that super rich people aren't getting a huge tax cut here, that seems like it would be pretty important. Yeah, I mean, you could think about some kind of system. And I mean, part of this is, look, you're a Californian, a million dollar house in many of our communities is not a fancy house and not a very big one. And it's not to say that that isn't a million

dollar house, but guess what million dollar houses come with? Million dollar mortgages. And so people are paying a great deal of their expenses on that mortgage. So I think we can come up with something that addresses and prevents abuse. And I think that's how we should be talking about it. The principle is you should be able to deduct your state and local taxes. Then what is the appropriate curb to prevent any abuse in the tax system that we need to put on it? That's how we ought to be thinking about this. Dan, negotiations over a bill this size are always going to be messy. It does seem like we're getting even more Democrats in disarray headlines than usual lately.

How does this compare to negotiations over the Recovery Act or the Affordable Care Act? Any lessons from those fights? I went back when I saw this question, the outline, I went back and looked at some of the coverage from the health care battle in 2009, 2010, and it's actually quite similar. Everything's a little more dramatic in the Twitter age. But I think the lesson from that applied here is, one, it's always going to be messy, particularly with margins this narrow that Congressman Porter is dealing with. We could lose 35 Democrats and be fine back in those days. But the lesson is how you pass something be an incredibly important progressive popular final product. Congresswoman, you talked about making sure that you don't let what the Senate's going to do, you know, affect too much of what the House is going to do.

What do you do about a problem like Joe Manchin, who said, I can only see one one point five trillion. You guys are at three point five trillion. Like how much how much leverage do you have here over the Joe Manchin's and Kyrsten Sinema's of the world? Well, I think the important point is not how much leverage I, Katie Porter, have. It's how much leverage we, the American people, have, which is all of it. We have all of the leverage. We elected these people. And if we don't like what we're doing, we should blow them up. And I say this to you as someone who represents equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans and feels like I get blown up pretty much on a daily basis by about half of my constituents. And that's part of the job. And it's part that makes me

a better representative. So look, I think that part of the issue with Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema is they need to justify where they're getting this number. The numbers in the $3.5 trillion bill aren't random. We didn't set out to say we want to spend X. We said, what are the problems we're dealing with? What does it take to prevent wildfires, which would be so much cheaper, by the way, than letting them burn and trying to deal with a disaster? What are the dollars that we need to be able to expand Medicare? What do we need to do for childcare or paid family leave so we can fix the problem of women's workforce participation being at a 30-year low? So we built this from

what do the American people need? What can we do to meet those needs? This is the package. They seem to be saying, you know, $1 million seems big, or $1.5 trillion seems too much, right? Well, two things. One, what are you going to cut? Are you going to look at these pieces and say, you know, we're just not going to do anything about a huge chunk of our workforce being out of the workforce. We're just not going to do anything about climate. We're not going to do anything about prescription drugs. We're not going to do anything about, right? The second piece is the real question for me as someone who really cares a lot about numbers, cares a lot about paying for things, cares a lot about being fiscally smart is how are we going to raise the revenue? not about what the number of the spending is. It's about what are we doing to pay for it and how are those things in balance? So I think the real question for me is about, Joe mentioned, is the problem here that you don't want to tax corporations, that you don't want to tax your

corporate donors, that you don't want to cut profits for pharmaceutical companies, for big pharma by doing Medicare price negotiation? Is that what this really is about? Because I do think we ought to be having a discussion about how are we going to raise revenue in ways that keep our economy going while we're making these investments in economic growth. And to be clear, the stuff in the budget reconciliation bill is there because it is part of President Biden's Build Back Better agenda. And it's there to help us have a strong, stable, globally competitive economy. If it's not meeting that test, strong, stable, globally competitive economy, then I think we should listen to someone who's saying this doesn't belong here.

But that's not what Senator Manchin's saying. He can't honestly tell me that making it possible for more women to go to work and more parents of young children to go to work won't increase our economic productivity. So Speaker Pelosi promised a bunch of moderates in your caucus that she would hold a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill on September 27th. If by September 27th, there's a vote on that bill and you don't have a build back better bill that is good enough or ready are you still prepared to vote down the bipartisan infrastructure bill until you guys get the build back better bill that you want yeah first up i just want to whip out the whiteboard here yes nine nine moderates It's not a bunch. Let's make sure the American people know we've got 200 plus 815, whoever Democrats, 9, 10, not a bunch. It's a handful of people. And I hope that they're rethinking their commitment to what we need to do here.

Look, the bipartisan infrastructure package needs to pass, and it will. And the progressives have said from the very beginning, we support this package. We support infrastructure. It's creating good, high-paying jobs. It too, remember, as I said, the touchstone for me is an investment that creates a strong, stable, globally competitive economy.

Infrastructure clearly meets that test. But that doesn't mean that's the only thing we need to do yeah right and so i think you know what we've said is we're going to vote for both of these bills um but they need to move in tandem and i i don't think it is um responsible to pass an infrastructure bill and say oh this is going to create jobs. At the same time, we know that women's workforce participation is at a 30-year low and that child care is a huge reason why. Are we not creating jobs for all Americans? Yes, we should be. So that means that we need to address all of the different things that are holding back Americans from being able to take those good-paying jobs,

from being able to go back into the workforce. So I think the plan here remains, and the speaker policy has been very, very clear about this from the beginning. We're going to do these two things. We're going to do them together. They are all part of President Biden's agenda. Dan, if you're watching this unfold from the White House, what do you do to help land this plane if you're Joe Biden? I think it's follow the advice that Congressman Porter just gave, which is stop talking about the cost of the bill. It is not 3.5 trade. The cost of the bill is $0, right?

It is what is, let's talk about the things in the bill that are paid for by what happened to be incredibly popular initiatives. And so it's not, we're not spending. We are, it is $0. We should talk about that way. We are investing. Yes, there we go. Better than I am in messaging. Yes, perfect. Investing is much better. Two more questions I have for you that I thought about while reading the news recently. First, I saw that Pfizer CEOs said they expect to apply for FDA approval of a COVID vaccine for five to 11-year-olds in early October

and a vaccine for kids between six months and five years in November. You wrote a letter to the FDA last month with Congressman Khanna asking for a briefing about how fast they'd be able to review these applications. You get any answers? Well, we got a very short letter back, but I believe we are getting our briefing. Good. I have to look at my calendar, but I believe that's scheduled for next week. And look, I think everybody, I hope everybody understands that the FDA has a process.

We wanted to follow that process. We want them to look at the research and look at the science. We want to make sure this vaccine is safe and effective, but it will be more effective and we will all be safer from COVID if they are building trust in that process by communicating what the steps are. And so parents back to school comes, you know, state something that every child knows acutely, back to school comes once a year. And so it's my favorite day of the year, by the way, I mean, screw Christmas, back to school is like the best day of the year. And so we kind of blew past that window as a moment, not only to potentially vaccinate, but to communicate with parents about the steps and the process. So I think now what

we're asking the FDA to do is just to lay out a little bit more what's going to happen once Pfizer makes that submission, what the steps will be? For example, are they going to really foresee potentially? Will they be evaluating whether or not these shots can be given at pharmacies versus having to go into a pediatrician's office? That might not sound like a big deal to some people. You've never tried to get three consecutive back-to-back appointments at a pediatrician's office like I have. It's hard. And so the administration. Like I have. No, it's hard. And so the administration here, I have some questions about that. I have some questions about, you know, how this is going to fit.

I think this is going to fit right in with other childhood vaccinations. But those are the kinds of questions we want to get answered with the goal of just making sure that parents are as prepared as they can be and have the information they need to make those decisions so we can get this vaccination moving quickly and we don't have the long delay and the hesitancy. We try to reduce that as much as we can with information. Well, let us know what you hear. Dan and I both have children now that are not vaccinated yet. So that's very exciting news. Me too. I got one too.

Yeah, it's rough. news. Me too. I got one too. Yeah, it's rough. The other, I was also thinking about you when I read these Wall Street Journal stories about these internal Facebook documents that they got a hold of. The latest one, latest story quotes an internal Facebook memo that says an algorithm change they made is, quote, a liability that has, quote, had an unhealthy side effect on politics and news content by amplifying, quote, misinformation, toxicity and violent content. That's a Facebook internal memo. Any plans to haul our good pal Mark Zuckerberg before Congress for another round of questions? Oh, hell yes. The second I saw this, I texted my legislative director and I was like, blow this up. So it's really important that we get these kinds of answers. One of the things about

COVID that I think for me has been a little bit of a challenge, something I think about is the pandemic has exposed a lot of the problems that we need to solve in our society. It's opened up some new solutions to some of the problems we've had. Work from home, for example, telehealth, making people show up for appointments that they used to skip. So there are some good things coming out of it. But one of the bad things is, and I'd be curious actually to hear what, you know, I know you guys ask the questions and I answer them. I'd actually be curious to hear what Dan thinks about this, but not that I don't care what you think too, John, I do. But COVID has kind of distracted Congress, not from solving a bunch of problems, but the oversight mission. Every time we do a huge legislative package, which we've had to do several times, the oversight and the investigation tends to sort of slow down.

And so I am very eager to get Mark Zuckerberg back in. I have lots of questions for pharmaceutical companies still. I have lots of questions for pharmaceutical companies still. I have lots of questions for the IRS commissioner. I have lots. I mean, just give me more witnesses because I'm ready. Dan, what do you think about that? Should we investigate more before they start investigating us after the midterms? I mean, I would. You could sell premium tickets to a Katie Porter, Mark Zuckerberg exchange at an oversight hearing. But when I saw that story, the first thing I thought of was Philip Morris documents in the 80s and the very famous and important hearings with the tobacco CEOs. And social media is in some way, especially when it comes to addictive preying on children, that problem all over again. And so I love the idea that Congressman Porter wants to blow this up and really get into it

because it is affecting everyone and we do not know enough. Last question. In the last segment, Dan and I gave our takes on the California recall. You got any takeaways, any lessons from that? Well, I'm mostly just relieved. I mean, we have a governor who believes in science. We have a governor who believes in climate change. We have a governor who doesn't seemingly hate women like Larry Elder. I mean, this is a very, very good outcome for Californians. It's Republican activists and gave them a real sort of daily mission in life for the last year. I do think that sets us up to have to work very, very quickly in these competitive California House seats. And so, you know, personally, I'm very, very happy that for my constituents, Republican and Democrat alike, I'm very happy that Governor Newsom is going to continue to lead California. I do think it sort of puts us to a challenge in terms of creating the groundswell of engagement among Democrats and among independents and among sensible Republicans to kind of equal the groundswell of the Larry Elder supporting

Republican Party. Yeah. If we don't have if we don't have Democratic enthusiasm in 2022, we don't we don't have a chance. So that's that's one lesson that we took away as well. Congresswoman, I'm not worried because I know that I can count on Pod Save America to come to Irvine or Tustin and do a big production and knock on some doors. Hey, all of that good stuff. Our last HBO show in Irvine. That was, of course, we'll be back there again. We love Irvine. That was the first time I met you and Tommy.

And I was thinking about this the other day. It was sort of right toward the very end of the campaign and you're tired and you're worn out and you guys were like, hey, so nice to meet you. Like, how's it going? And I said something like, I can't wait for this campaign to be over so I can just start fixing shit and helping people. I remember that.

I'm like, oh my god, where did you come from? It's really how I felt and it's how I still feel. I'm looking forward to revisiting that. We were knocking on doors with Joe Biden in your district and that was before Joe Biden was ever a presidential candidate.

And look where we all ended up. We're still doing this pod. You're in Congress and Joe Biden's in the White House. Congresswoman Katie Porter, thank you so much for joining us as always. And please come back anytime.

Thank you so much. All right. So on Monday's pod, we talked about how Trump is edging closer to a second run for president. This week, we got a couple of fresh reminders as to why that's probably not such a great idea. Excerpts leaked from the new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post called Peril, part of which takes us inside the final days of the Trump administration. There's also a book out next month from Melania Trump's former chief of staff,

Stephanie Grisham, called I'll Take Your Questions Now, which I imagine is an ironic title since Grisham was the only White House press secretary in history to never actually hold a press briefing. It's just, it's so funny like it's so that was that title is just to fuck you to everyone yeah i i think i think that is being a white house press

secretary who didn't do a press briefing is just so funny because that's the job it's in the title what else are you doing what literally what else are you doing um anyway if you're like us and want to know what's in these books without actually reading them, we got you covered. Here are the top five excerpts sure to keep you up at night as you think about 2024. Number five. Donald Trump pressures Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election during a meeting in the Oval Office on January 5th, saying, quote, Wouldn't it be almost cool to have that power? Pence says, no, I've done everything I could and then some to find a way around this. It's simply not possible.

Then Trump loses it and says, no, no, no, you don't understand, Mike. You can do this. I don't want to be your friend anymore if you don't do this. Does that sound like Donald Trump to you? I don't want to be your friend. I mean, with all due respect to the legendary Bob Woodward and the very excellent Bob Costa, you people are mailing it in here. That is the least believable dialogue I've ever heard.

I am confident some known liar told them that. But come on. It's not like we haven't been listening to Donald Trump blather on for decades in this country. If you want to create Donald Trumpian dialogue, there is plenty of opportunities. It is so it's pitiful. They're like, I am. I'm embarrassed for everyone involved.

Did you listen to Pod Save the World this week when Tommy and Ben talked about all this? Yes. And I have a lot of thoughts. Have you had soup from Bob Woodward? No. Did Bob Woodward give you any soup? No. I cannot believe Ben did that.

Here, there is one. For those of you who haven't heard the episode yet, even though I know you all have already listened because you're all worldos, Tommy asked Ben if Ben has ever gotten the Woodward treatment. So talk to Bob Woodward for one of these books. And Ben did reveal that Bob Woodward invited him for lunch and then made it

like a three or four course meal that took a long time so he could get as much out of Ben as possible and served him some soup, some hot soup for lunch. Okay. Do you know what the, for a democratic communications professional, what the equivalent of going to Bob Woodward's house is? It's a democratic presidential candidate putting a helmet on and getting in a tank. It is the one thing you know you're not supposed to do because in the 90s, George Stephanopoulos famously went to dinner at Bob Webber's house. And I don't know whether he had soup or not, but because he did that, and then when Bob Webber's book, I think it was called The Agenda, came out that was very anti-Clinton, the fact that Stephanopoulos had gone to his house became a huge problem for him within the

White House. The Clintons were incredibly mad at him. He was demoted in some ways. The one thing they tell you is if Bob Woodward wants to meet with you, you meet with him in your office and you let everyone see him walk into your office so that everyone knows that it's on the level. So Ben obviously did not talk to me before he ate the soup, but that was, I heard that. And I, if I had soup in my mouth, Woodward's or otherwise I would have spit it out. Cause that was wild. I'm so glad that I'd never, I don't think I was ever asked, which is great. It was not important enough to be asked to, um, to sit down with Bob Woodward thing, but I wouldn't have done that anyway.

I would've been scared shitless to talk to Bob. Oh, I had to, I had so many meetings with Bob Woodward in my office for all to see. And then I would send a note to various people above me on the food chain indicating what he had asked me about, like paper trail the shit out of that thing. Let me tell you. All right. Number four, Trump loses his shit. That then Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who had just announced publicly that he opposed invoking the Insurrection Act in response to the Black Lives Matter protests near the White House. that he opposed invoking the Insurrection Act in response to the Black Lives Matter protests near the White House. Trump reportedly said, quote,

you took away my authority. You're not the president. I'm the goddamn president. He then turned to the rest of his team and said, you're all fucked up, everybody. You're all fucked. Every one of you is fucked up. Now that sounds more like Trump.

Yes, that I can believe, yes. That is terrifying. By the way, the fact that Trump really was that close to invoking the Insurrection Act and sending federal troops in to stop protesters, peaceful protesters, is fucking terrifying. Because there's a lot of Republicans, a lot of other people, when that was happening, be like, oh, everyone's exaggerating. Is he really going to do the Insurrection Act? Probably not.

Everyone calm down. No, it sounds like he was pretty fucking close and it's a good thing that esper went out there and said something yeah i mean mark esper brief hero for a day i guess yeah every other bar for all these heroes is fucking on the ground all right number three this one is from stephanie grisham's book who says that on january 6th she texted melania do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness and violence? Melania responded a minute later, no. Now, because Politico Playbook is apparently Melania's new press shop, they led the newsletter the other day with a few text messages from Grisham that were provided by a senior Trump aide, where she seemed sympathetic to overturning the results of the election,

at least in her home state of Arizona. Hard to know which set of miserable liars to side with here, huh? Yeah, like, yeah, they're all lying. I think Stephanie Grisham's lying. I think Melania's lying. I think the people talking about Melania, everyone, they're all liars.

They're all bad people. That's all we need to know. I would definitely skip the Grisham book. Stick with John Grisham, not Stephanie Grisham. Yes, exactly. Some people who think they're getting the firm and end up with this, that would be embarrassing. Yeah, I would pass on that one. I'd wait for the movie.

All right. Number two. wait for the movie. All right. Number two, the revelation from the Woodwork book that's getting the most attention involves Trump's handpicked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley. Apparently, this is very scary. Apparently, American intelligence showed that just before the election, the Chinese government came to believe that Trump would launch a military strike against China as an excuse to seize emergency powers and stay in office, much like Hitler's Reichstag moment. In response, Milley called his Chinese counterpart to reassure him that Trump had no plans to attack China and that the United States

government wasn't collapsing, saying, quote, things may look unsteady, but that's the nature of democracy. General Lee, we are 100 percent steady percent steady everything's fine i do like the everything's fine it's just like mark millie is the dog with the fire meme around him oh the younger more online crooked staff are gonna throw yeah i it's a very old meme that when i see it i'm like this joke has not been funny for about three years but anyway um so millie also reportedly according to the Woodward book, guaranteed Pelosi that he'd prevent any kind of, quote, illegal or crazy military action from Trump. And then convened the top military commanders to remind them that no one should launch a nuclear strike without following strict procedures. That seems like you shouldn't need to say that. Just, hey guys, as an aside, don't launch any nukes unless you follow the rules.

And I guess those strict procedures include getting an order from only the president himself and making sure that Milley is in the loop. Now, Republicans are losing their shit over the story. Trump has denied it, but also accused Milley of treason. People like Marco Rubio have called on him to resign for supposedly undermining the commander in chief. What do you think about all this? I have no idea what to believe. These books are so problematic in so many ways to know what's really happening. And it's a problem with the genre, right? And it's a genre that Woodward himself invented. It's this, you invented. He uses this omniscient narrator function where every interview, other than maybe with the president themselves, is

on deep background. And so he recounts all these moments and the reader never knows who's telling them, right? And because of that, so there are two problems with that. One is every one of these books, whether it's the one written by Woodward or the one written by Phil Rocker and Carol Lennig or Michael Bender, all of them, and they're all good, interesting books and they're following a model. But they're all written with the idea of a William Goldman screenplay at the end. They all want to be all the president's men. And here's the thing. Life in government is like consequential but kind of boring on a daily basis right like this thing we know from reading a bunch of books about meetings we were in it's like yeah that's kind of like the funhouse mirror version of what actually happened like it was an important decision but there was people weren't yelling it wasn't like there's there's usually a kernel of truth to all of these stories from just from our perspective having been in the

white house and then read about them and like like the general sense is usually correct, but there's usually a lot of details that are wrong. And because of the anonymity and this sort of over-dramatization, one of the things that's important to recognize is all these conversations, right? The ones that sound nothing like Trump, the ones that sound like Trump, they're not based on tapes. They're not based on transcripts. In most cases, they're not based on written notes because no one in Washington writes down presidential conversations for fear of getting subpoenaed. It's just people's recollection. And particularly with Trump, but with all these books, everyone has an agenda. It is very clear from this book and some of the others that came out is that Mark Milley is on a full, has a full-time job of trying to rehab his reputation for standing next to Trump in Lafayette

Square. And it is, as Tommy said on Wednesday, he definitely had the soup. Yeah, that's right. That is like and so it's it's hard to know what actually happened, what didn't. I think if if a general is doing freelance diplomacy without the president with China. That's bad. Like we do. We do not want that in our country, whether Trump is the president or someone else. But how much of it is real? How much is it? How much is over dramatization? How much is poorly communicated in the first, second, third hand retelling of these things? I just have no idea. I will say now that I've dug into this and like prepared for this pod, even if you think everything in the book is 100 percent correct, it still doesn't suggest that Milley was doing a bunch of freelance diplomacy.

Like and Milley has since put out statements or the Joint Chiefs has put out a statement. Biden has completely backed him. And basically what they're saying is like he calls his Chinese counterpart all the time. That's part of the job. There were a bunch of other people in these meetings transcripts of these calls went to all the people they were supposed to go to so this wasn't some like secret call like a lot of people knew about this and also like if there's american intelligence saying that like yeah the chinese think that we're going to launch a strike at them

yeah maybe if that's not correct then you're going to want to let me let the chinese know so that they don't launch a fucking strike against us like you're going to want to take measures after you get american intelligence the chinese thinks we're going to strike them right like that just that seems like something that you'd want to take care of and also like the idea that he would then just sit down all of his staff and say yeah follow strict procedures for launching a nuclear weapon and include me but then he also said you can only launch one if the president himself orders the strike. That doesn't necessarily seem like he's undermining the president when he says,

don't launch the strike unless the president tells you to. Yeah. That seems, that seems like one of those things. It's like, is, you know, how sort of like you have a regular fire drill at school and sort of like

they had a fire drill. They made it seem like, like maybe it's every once in a while they rebrief everyone on the rules because otherwise who was the person other than the president they were worried about launching a strike it's like right it's like like stephen miller yeah i don't know it's like it's like hey i got a call from kushner who said uh we could fire up some missiles should i should i just go ahead with it jesus very by the by the way, though, incredibly scary. The whole thing.

The fact that China was thinking that, the fact that they got to that point, the fact that Milley had to call his counterpart, say, hey, we're not going to launch a nuclear strike because he's not going to fucking repeat a Reichstag moment. Like, that is fucking terrifying. And that leads us to number one. Trump was apparently so consumed with Biden after he finally left office that he wanted to use his private plane to taunt the new president

and was considering getting it painted like Air Force One, saying, quote, that's my brand. I don't do the corporate jet thing. I'm not going to show up in a little Gulfstream

like a fucking CEO. Former Trump manager, former Caitlyn Jenner campaign manager, Brad Parscale, did a fantastic job there. I think she's sitting at one percent. Parscale also said of a possible 2024 run for Trump.

I don't think he sees it as a comeback. He sees it as vengeance. I pick this as number one because of all the hints Trump has given about 2024. This is the one that leaves no doubt in my mind that he's running again. He's angry. He's humiliated. He wants revenge. That is very Trump to me.

What do you think? Yeah, I think I'm sure I actually even find the Air Force One painting job thing to be quasi believable. Like it sounds like a stupid idea. Oh, for sure. He is a stupid man with a lot of stupid ideas. That's a very stupid idea.

So it seems very possible. And is he an angry, vengeful person? 100%, right? He hasn't been off Twitter so long. If there's anything we know about him, we know that, right? Whether that means he'll run or not, who knows? I definitely believe that he thinks he's running, and whether that will manifest itself or not, who the fuck knows?

It doesn't really matter at this point. What would we do differently, right? But, yeah, I mean, he's an angry, like that is a thing with all of that. Seve Grisham put aside a self-serving memoir from a known liar. Well, actually we don't know if she lies cause she never did a briefing. So I'm just presumed she's a presumed liar. Um, but is you take the gist, the, the, the larger arc, the gist of the book. And the gist of the book is Donald Trump is a dangerously incompetent, vengeful human being who should be nowhere near the levers of power in this country. And that thank you, Bob Woodward, for giving us that information. We would not otherwise. That's why you're the legend.

He now exists as a humiliated person. He knows that he's not going to pretend that he's humiliated, but he's humiliated. And his choices are to either die a humiliated figure or to try to run again and win again and complete his vengeance against Joe Biden and the rest of the country. Or get more humiliated again. I do think that the fear of humiliation from a second loss looms over that decision. Yeah, maybe that's the one caveat there that could save us from another Trump run. But I know we keep talking about the possibility of Trump running again. It's because it is a very scary and terrifying and, I think at this point, likely prospect.

And if he runs, he is odds-on favorite to win the nomination. I think I think it's almost probably a lock. And then we have another 2020 situation where back to our conversation about polarization, 40,000 votes go another way in a couple swing states and Donald Trump is president. Do you mean a couple of swing states where they've dramatically restricted voting in the very precincts that turned the election for Joe Biden. Do you mean those swing states? Exactly. Exactly. So everyone, so the, you know, the good news from California is, even though it's a deep blue state in California, like they knew some needed Democrats to wake up. They woke up, they got energized, they got organized. Thank you to all of you who listened, who got your friends to vote, who got people to register, who made phone calls, who organized.

We all did a bunch of phone banks before this. And it was good to see a whole bunch of volunteers really excited. We need that kind of energy in 2022 and beyond. And people need to start paying attention now because it's going to get a little rocky. It's going to get a little rocky. So thanks again to Katie Porter for joining us today. And I hope everyone has a great weekend. We'll talk to you next week. Bye, everyone. Patsy of America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas, and our associate producer

is Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, Yale Freed, and Nar Melkonian,

who film and share our episodes as videos every week.