What A Day - The Real World: Ukraine

Episode Date: November 11, 2019

Public impeachment hearings begin this week. We tell you who’s taking the stand and how to tell them apart using some high-art, elevated cultural touchstones. A public defender supported by the co-founders of Black Lives Matter was elected as San Francisco’s new DA. We talk to former public defender and politician Tiffany Cabán about what it means to be a prosecutor who runs on ending mass incarceration. And in headlines: the women who inspired “Hidden Figures” are honored by Congress, Dion Waiters got too high, and Sesame Street celebrates 50 years of puppets and letters.

It's Veterans Day, Monday, November 11th. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day, the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 of daily news podcasts. I'll be doing this whole show as Bam Margera. On today's show, the impeachment inquiry enters a new phase. Progressive lawyer Chase Abudin wins his race to become San Francisco's district attorney. And then some headlines.

Okay, so public hearings for the impeachment investigation begin on Wednesday. Finally, we get to hear from people involved in this whole Ukraine bribery quid pro quo debacle, and not just from news pundits reading from leaked transcripts. It's been hard to keep up. It's going to continue to be hard to keep up. There's a lot of people involved. You said it. Quid pro quo debacle and not just from news pundits reading from leaked transcripts. It's been hard to keep up. It's going to continue to be hard to keep up. There's a lot of people involved. You said it.

So with this next segment, we're going to introduce you to the three people who will be testifying first. And we're going to put them in some smart, very intellectual context so they all stick in your brain. This is the true story. True story. Of three estranged diplomats to the EU and Ukraine. An absolutely perfect phone call. Picked to sit in the House of Representatives.

Be interrogated. And have their lies and truths taped. Uh-oh. Find out what happens. When people stop being polite. He told me it was perfect. And start getting real. The Real World, Kiev.

Impeachment edition, presidential season 45. My dreams of having a real world segment have come true. Please indulge me. I'm just imagining Johnny Bananas talking to a house panel about something. If only. First up, testifying on Wednesday is former ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor. Now, you may remember him from being on that text chain where he red flagged the whole quid pro quo thing. Taylor is kind of a star. Yeah, but Donald Trump is not a fan, though. In a tweet, he called him, quote,

never Trump or diplomat Bill Taylor, parentheses, who I don't know. He does know him. But also, let me tell you who Bill Taylor really is. In his private testimony so far, which we're just going to call confessionals, he's claimed that he had a, quote, clear understanding that foreign aid to Ukraine was conditioned upon Ukraine investigating Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. He even identified Rudy Giuliani

as the main instigator behind this whole plan. So he's definitely not afraid of drama, and he's definitely not here to make friends. Just like Nia from The Real World Portland, which originally aired in 2013. I've done a tremendous job on being the bigger person, but now it's game over, and I'm f***ing him up. I'm the last person you ever want to f*** with, and he's going to find out why. Intense.

Truly menacing. Yeah. Okay. So Nia, who we just heard, was actually talking about how she was about to beat her housemate Johnny over the head with a hairdryer. So it's like a little bit different. But Bill is expected to throw Rudy Giuliani under the bus again because this whole impeachment thing could have been avoided if anyone ever listened to Bill's advice. BT's special skill is that he's apparently type A, and Dems think he'll make a great witness because of his excellent memory and detailed note-taking. Also, he's a war veteran. He graduated from West Point. So when Trump inevitably calls him terrible and stinky and un-American, some Republicans might lightly scold him. They might. Our second housemate is this Kent guy. So next up and also on Wednesday is the testimony of George Kent, who's been the Deputy Assistant

Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs since September 2018. He's a somewhat obscure diplomat. He's been working on stopping Russia from taking over parts of the Ukraine. So far in the impeachment inquiry, Kent's role has been to corroborate things that have already been said by Bill Taylor and by Marie Yovanovitch, who is the ambassador to Ukraine. We're going to get to her in a second. So George is kind of like Jacquees in the real world, San Diego circa 2004, who, intrigued by Randy and Robin's unexpected hookup, decided to do what anyone would do. He stood near the door and he listened. So after that, he reported back to the rest of the housemates that the duo did hook up, and in fact, Randy was overheard saying, boom, bazooka Joe.

Boom, bazooka Joe. That's a bazooka Joe. You were drunk and you were just like, boom, bazooka Joe. I said that? Yes, man. What the hell does that mean? I don't know. I don't know.

We had a good laugh about it, though. Yeah, we did. We sure did. I don't ever want to hear that phrase again. Oh, man. Boombazooka Joe. So this is a weird thing to say during an orgasm, but it's just as bizarre as, say, telling Ukraine they can expect the direct deposit when they provide gossip on baby Biden. So for your own understanding at home, Boombazooka Joe equals quid pro quo.

And on Friday, we'll finally get the testimony of Marie Yovanovitch, our third housemate and former ambassador to Ukraine. Conservatives are not huge fans. And we also now know that the current United States ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, has bad mouthed the president of the United States to Ukrainian officials. Yeah, that's not true. It's actually part of a smear campaign launched earlier this year against Yovanovitch to remove her from office. Unlike Bill Taylor and George Kent, Marie was personally victimized by the president and removed from her post in a sudden and extremely reality TV-worthy twist, similar to Svetlana, a housemate in 2006's The Real World, Key West, because she was obviously similarly victimized and ostracized.

You guys are acting like I'm this horrible person. You're not a horrible person. No, no, please take criticism the right way. I have been. I've been doing nothing but listening to everybody. I'm not saying you're a bad person, Svetlana. Okay? I have to go. Oh, touching.

Very emotional music, Yus. Wow. Well, you didn't ask, but Svetlana believed that she could manage the tanning salon, even as the youngest person that season, and instead of letting her try to do her job, the other castmates pushed her out. Well, in her private confessional, Yovanovitch stated that she believed she was being targeted by, quote, people with clearly questionable motives like Trump and Giuliani who sought to get rid of her because she was obstructing their plans in Ukraine.

She's an immigrant whose family is from the Soviet Union. She's a career diplomat rather than an appointee. And according to one Ukrainian journalist, she's very reserved and extremely cautious. Not the life of the party, but we respect and stand a diligent introvert. Yeah, so we're following those were snaps from Gideon, but we're following all the drama and reveals of this real world impeachment. And hopefully this helps you remember the testimonies and who they're coming from this week. So if not, just remember Bill Taylor Swiftly called out the quid pro quo in a text. See, Taylor Swift.

George can't stand Rudy Giuliani at all. Can't, can't, you get it. And how do you solve a problem like Marie Y? You know, because they thought she was a problem and they ousted her. Anyway, it's going to be a long season. That was an impressive real-world knowledge and wordplay at use. That's right, you know, TV raised me. Chesa Boudin, a 39-year-old public defender supported by the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, was elected as San Francisco's next district attorney on Saturday after ballots

were tallied from election night on November 5th. He ran on a campaign to reduce mass incarceration and will now serve one of the largest cities in the United States. Boudin has a fascinating life story. He's a Yale grad and Rhodes scholar, and he's also been personally impacted by the criminal justice system. His parents were in jail for his entire childhood. Gideon, talk a bit more about the specifics of his campaign. Yeah, Boudin has said that having to have visited his parents who were incarcerated sort of fueled him to want to take on mass incarceration in the country. This notion that seeing them, you know, literally through bars is something that had the light bulb go off for him that something was deeply,

deeply wrong. He was a former deputy public defender. And the story of his parents is actually pretty remarkable, as he tells that he was dropped off at a babysitter when he was 14 months old and his parents who were members of the weather underground took part in a deadly car robbery in upstate New York that left two police officers and a security guard dead and that's the backdrop of of his life as a child his mother was in jail for 22 years and his father might end up spending the rest of his life incarcerated B Boudin's campaign, because of this life influence, was sort of shaped on the issues of eliminating cash bail, expanding mental health diversion programs, and eradicating racial bias in the criminal justice

system. This past Saturday, like we said, was when he declared victory, at which point he was leading his opponent by over 8,000 votes. And the person who was the closest to him that he was in front of was interim DA Susie Loftus. She was formerly the head of the San Francisco Police Commission and was the favorite of basically all of California's Democratic establishment. Okay, well, yeah, he's obviously not establishment. He's more in line with criminal justice reform activists. And it seems like people like Boudin,

they make typical party leaders uncomfortable with sort of revolutionary ideas about the way the world could work instead of playing within the bounds of what already exists. Right, right. And basically, throughout this entire campaign, there were various police unions like the San Francisco Police Officers Association that really wanted to make Boudin into a boogeyman. They called him, quote, the number one choice of criminals and gang members and spent $600,000 worth of attack ads against him. But Boudin is not an anomaly. He is part of a broader group of reformers that are specifically seeking this office around the country. And it's a trend that

sort of increased over the last couple of years with the rise and greater prominence of a broader left movement in the United States. And the thing that all these people have in common is they are seeking these jobs of DA to reduce mass incarceration. The idea is basically like they can get into office and they can start to rewrite the rules of what this person even does. The role no longer should be to over police in jail, but to provide these holistic community approaches that they can look at mental health, housing, health care, substance abuse, all of those things and figure out how to deal with it in a way that is not just throwing people in jail. And so Boudin was backed by this growing movement from people that have been elected before him that were running on similar platforms.

Philly's district attorney, Larry Krasner, Rachel Rollins in Boston, Kim Fox in Chicago. And he's just the latest one, obviously, to win. And it's adding fuel for all of these people who are looking to this office as a way to change things, to actually keep running and keep going. Yeah. I mean, it is really cool that there's this club of reformers that, you know, they're trying to be DAs across the country. They're all sort of sharing in these victories and, you know, they get to look forward to the changes they get to make.

Yeah, there's momentum to it. Tiffany Caban is another one. She was a young first- time candidate and former public defender, really, really narrowly lost a race earlier this year for Queens D.A. by just 60 votes. But, you know, she looks back at it and says she pushed the primary way to the left. She pushed the ultimate victor, Melinda Katz, to the left. And since then, she's campaigned for Boudin and she's tried to also look for other candidates like this to keep running for these races. I spoke with Caban about Boudin's race and the movement that is developing at large. We see that crime is down in most places, that's not the source of public safety.

Really, stability and treating public health issues, that's how we achieve public safety. Caban also emphasized that it's crucial for people to start paying attention and keep being involved in these races because of just how swiftly and drastically district attorneys can make changes. When you think about it, it's an executive power, right? There aren't really that many checks. A district attorney on day one can go in and say, hey, I am no longer asking for cash bail. And when that happens, literally hundreds and thousands of people will no longer be sitting behind bars legally innocent just because they're too poor to buy their constitutional right to the presumption of innocence. You will have hundreds and thousands of people who won't be sitting in a cage because they're struggling with substance use disorder, a public health issue, right? And will have opportunities to engage in harm reduction services.

These are very, very quickly tangible things that happen immediately. People like Caban and Boudin are re-envisioning the role of the DA. And with that in mind, it's going to be exciting to see how many more of these candidates continue to run and actually win their races in the future. And now to some ads. There are over 2 million burglaries reported every year. That's one every 13 seconds. And what's crazy is that only one in five homes have home security. That's why SimpliSafe is transforming home security

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Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. attempts to do away with term limits, and reports of alleged election fraud. On Sunday, the police, the military, and the country's main labor union called for his resignation. As Bolivia's head of state for almost 14 years, he was the country's first indigenous president and the longest-serving president in Latin America, who ran on a platform of reducing income inequality. Morales has described his ousting as a military coup. The four black women who helped America win the space race and also inspired the film Hidden Figures are set to finally get the recognition they deserved a long time ago. Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, Mary Jackson and Dr. Christine Darden will receive congressional gold medals for their work with NASA. Johnson and Darden are the only two still living to receive the honor.

The award states that their work, quote, exemplifies the experiences of hundreds of women who worked as computers, mathematicians and engineers. Hell yeah. And maybe this is controversial, but if NASA had more women like them, they wouldn't have had to fake the moon landing. Not controversial at all. We need more people speaking truth. The Miami Heat has suspended guard Dion Waiters after he suffered a panic attack on edibles during a team flight. Very 2013 of him. They put the doses right on the package now. The team announced that Waiters is suspended for 10 games without pay for, quote, conduct detrimental to the team,

a.k.a. promoting stony vibes and blazy harmony. Sesame Street celebrated its 50th birthday on Sunday. Festivities included the Empire State Building, honoring Big Bird with yellow and green lights, and a video promoting its 50th season, its final season before it switches to HBO Max. Aside from creating an iconic cast of colorful Muppets, the show has always aimed to educate, but I still have no idea how to actually get to Sesame Street. If anybody could help me. Call us. You tell me how to get there. Where is it?

And those are the headlines. That's all for today. I'm baby. So if you like the show, make sure you subscribe, give us a rating, leave a review, find me on fave star and tell your friends to listen. By the way, if you are into reading and not just websites that teach you how to brew your own kombucha like me, what a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at cricket.com slash newsletters. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And that's how you win the Road Rules Challenge.

What A Day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.