What A Day - Trump’s Eleven

Episode Date: February 19, 2020

President Trump went on a pardoning spree on Tuesday, giving commutations or pardon to 11 individuals convicted of white-collar crime. To make his picks, he took “recommendations” from Rudy Giuliani. Employees at Kickstarter voted to unionize yesterday, making it the first large-scale union at a well-known tech company. We discuss the ‘state of the unions’ in the world of tech. And in headlines: Boy Scouts of America scores its “Chapter 11 badge,” Harvard students call for prison divestment, and a preview of tonight’s Democratic debate.

It's Wednesday, February 19th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Raznik, and this is What A Day, coming to you on our 69th ever episode. 69th episode. Know what that means, Gideon? I don't. I'm a child. 68 was yesterday. Didn't go where I was expecting. Math. On today's show, what's up with Trump's pardons?

Then employees vote to unionize at Kickstarter. And as always, some headlines. President Trump went on a pardoning spree on Tuesday for a who's who of individuals convicted of white collar crime. A total of 11 people were given commutations or pardons. And this follows, how should we say, troubling history of prior pardons from this White House, including Joe Arpaio, Scooter Libby and Dinesh D'Souza. There was no indication that he followed the typical Justice Department vetting process for these sorts of things, but rather that he heard recommendations from a cast of characters, including his personal lawyer and czar of corrupt overseas action. Talk about Rudy Giuliani. Perhaps the biggest name of the pardoned bunch was Rod Blagojevich,

the former Democratic governor of Illinois. So Gideon, WTF. Yeah, indeed. I mean, so Blagojevich is a good place to start with all this because it gives us an example, a window into the kinds of people that were pardoned on Tuesday. Blagojevich solicited bribes for political appointments, including for one Barack Obama's open Senate seat after he was elected president.

The selling of a Senate seat is not something that typically happens in America. He was impeached and removed from office. And Blagojevich had completed eight years of a 14-year term. And Trump commuted the rest of it on Tuesday. Yes, we have commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich. He served eight years in jail. It's a long time. And I watched his wife on television.

I don't know him very well. I've met him a couple of times. He was on for a short while of The Apprentice years ago. Seemed like a very nice person. Don't know him. Wow. Imagine thinking The Apprentice is like a good judge of character. It's not even a good show.

Right. Well, okay. So presumably the rest of the pardons were not all people featured at one time on The Apprentice, right? So like, who else got them? It would be incredible if they were. Unfortunately, they're not. There was Michael Milken, who was referred to as the quote, junk bond king. He was accused of taking part in an insider trading scheme and pled guilty to several counts of securities violations. Now he had served 22 months in prison,

and since he was released, he has been funding medical research into cancer more recently. Ironically, though, when Milken was getting in trouble in the 1980s, one of the people pursuing charges against him was Giuliani, who was then the top prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. How the turntables. According to the New York Times, one of the people that suggested this pardon to Trump was Nelson Peltz. He is a billionaire investor who held a $10 million fundraiser for Trump's 2020 campaign this past

weekend. Again, this is normally not how this would work. Recommendations pouring in from random personal or businesses acquaintances at events for your reelection campaign. Oh, yeah. So I'm sensing a bit of a pattern here in terms of decision making. Yeah. So the other two high profile ones here were for former New York City police commissioner Bernard B. Carrick and a former owner of the San Francisco 49ers, Edward J. DiBartolo Jr.

I'm just going to assume that these fellows, they did all the similar things. Basically, yeah. I mean, Carrick was found to have accepted a $250,000 quote-unquote loan from an Israeli billionaire while he served as interior minister of Iraq. The issue there was that he didn't disclose it. Carrick later pled guilty to eight felony tax and false statement charges. Now for DiBertolo, he actually never served a prison term, but paid a million dollar fine after pleading guilty to concealing an extortion attempt in 1998. I believe it had to do

with a casino boat type situation. I would like to read a little bit more about it as well. Interestingly as well for him, DiBertolo was among the hosts of a pre-inauguration party for Trump in 2017. So to recap just these four examples, it was a long list of people who committed pretty major financial crimes and weren't necessarily

the first people on your top of mind for pardons. Yeah. And meanwhile, Roger Stone, who is a longtime friend of Donald Trump, is set to be sentenced tomorrow for obstruction of Congress and witness tampering. Is Trump waiting to do what I think he's probably going to do? You know, it's possible. But on the issue of pardons specifically, Trump said on Tuesday he was, quote, not thinking about that. It's not entirely off the table. But that Stone had been treated, quote, very unfairly. But these pardons and the view that Trump has had on the Stone case and his attempts to take over the Justice Department in a way reflects how Trump has consistently used the presidency as a means of granting personal favors and trying to take

control over the judicial system. His view is that he is essentially one with it. He's the king. Right. And it's just that the people who want to get something from the president can either pay for it or they can influence him via his friends or appearances on Fox News. And Democrats have also held this view that the recent behavior is sort of an untethered phase for Trump after his acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial, and that him acting with this total impunity of the past week certainly does not signal that he learned any lesson again. Yeah. Looking at you, Senator Susan Collins,

thinking that that would be a thing that would happen. Yeah. Well, we'll keep track of this as the story progresses, as well as what happens in the Stone case. Employees at Kickstarter voted to unionize yesterday, Thank you. not high paid white collar tech employees. Now that is changing. And for an industry hit by sexual harassment scandals criticized for its contributions to carbon emissions and cooperation with ICE and other unpopular government surveillance programs, a pro labor movement here could inspire major changes for workers and how the industry operates as a whole. So Akilah, give us the background on Kickstarter. How did this vote go down? Yeah, so it was actually pretty close. It was 46 people in favor, 37 people opposed.

And all of this has been in the works since last year. The backstory goes like this. As you know, Kickstarter is a company that crowdsources funding for user projects. Well, a comic book project came up in March of last year, and it featured pictures of people punching Nazis. Sounds sick. Yeah, I loved it. This led to an internal debate within the company

over whether or not Kickstarter should host the project on its site. And even though the platform eventually did, good for them, you know, that's what the workers have been pushing for, it also spurred employees to think about formalizing their bargaining abilities when issues like this arise. Hence, union. I see. So what does this new union actually mean then for Kickstarter employees?

Well, in addition to Nazi punching cartoons, the union will also work to negotiate for equal pay and inclusive hiring, which if you followed any of the exposés on tech companies, you know that's a real issue. I spoke to Oriana Leckert, an employee at Kickstarter who voted in favor of the union. And here's what she had to say. We are certainly hoping to be an inspiration to the tech industry at large. You know, Kickstarter has always been a leader. Kickstarter is a very radical, progressive, ethical company. And so we feel perfectly positioned to be the ones leading the way here, too. inspires people all across the industry to know that they too can leverage their collective voices

to advocate for, you know, safer, better, more equitable, more transparent, more participatory workplaces for everyone. Right. So functionally, the point of any union is to give employees agency in their workplace and in-company decisions. So for example, what we talked about yesterday with the Amazon employees who asked the company not to take on fossil fuel clients for their cloud services, stuff like that. So yeah, if you don't like how your company behaves in the world, you gain a seat at the table to air your grievances and enact change. Unions are making a comeback. And honestly, this is only the beginning for the tech industry. Yeah, I mean, we'd have to hope so. You've already alluded to how this is something of a first for big tech. Do we actually see this continuing? Yeah, I mean,

so this is a historic milestone, so that can't be overstated. But experts are also saying it's a good sign for employees that are looking to unionize at other tech giants. White collar tech workers at Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and a lot of others have been in this moment of unprecedented labor organizing. So it signals to those other organizers that this is not just a fruitless effort. Between 2017 and 2019, the number of protest actions led by tech workers nearly tripled. In 2019 alone, tech workers led more than 100 actions, and this is according to an online database called Collective Actions in Tech. Go figure.

And to give credit where it's due, the decision to unionize at Kickstarter followed a series of victories for union campaigns led by blue-collar tech workers. Last year, Google contractors in Pittsburgh, cafeteria workers at Google in Silicon Valley, and spin e-scooter workers in San Francisco voted to form the first unions in the tech industry.

Just a couple weeks ago, 15 employees at the delivery app Instacart in Chicago successfully unionized, following a fierce anti-union campaign run by their management. Yeah. Say no to that anti-union bullshit. We'll keep following this movement as it progresses and tracking the impact of these new unions on employees and their employers. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. lawsuits over sexual abuse allegations. Right now, they're facing 275 lawsuits, with some of those suits representing up to 2,000 clients. The Chapter 11 filing would create a trust to compensate the victims while allowing scout programs to continue.

Lawyers of victims are calling the move a cop-out, claiming that under the bankruptcy declaration, new victims will only have a limited amount of time to come forward before they're completely barred from compensation. Only the national organization is filing for bankruptcy, according to the Boy Scouts. Local councils are financially independent and free from the impact for now. Guys, we love using our recycling bins. But as it turns out, sometimes the only thing that we're recycling in them is our guilty, guilty conscience. That's sad. That's according to a new report released by Greenpeace, which found that more and more quote unquote recycled plastics are ending up in American landfills. Dark. The report points to several factors, including China cracking down on US recycling exports and

brands falsely marketing mixed plastic materials as recyclables. It's always the brands. Things like bottles and jugs with the number one or two on the bottom are being sent to the right places, but all the K-cups, yogurt tubs, and clamshell takeout boxes that you toss into the holy blue bin end up in landfills. Greenpeace blames the companies making these materials for producing all that throwaway plastic without plans to buy them back after they're used. Bad news. I just learned how to recycle. I'm just finding this out. It's not right.

All right. I'm being lied to recycle. Now I'm just finding this out. It's not right. All right. I'm being lied to. All right. So six presidential candidates will take the stage in Las Vegas tonight for the last debate before the Nevada caucuses this Saturday. This is the last debate Sanders has held onto the top spot in most polls, and the token billionaire candidate has evolved. From its starting form as jolly hedge fund manager Tom Steyer and into its final form as grumpy former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg qualified for the debate after a national NPR poll showed him in second place. If the DNC had nixed a rule requiring participants to have hundreds of thousands of individual donations,

he wouldn't have made the cut, so good looking out, DNC. Sanders and Warren have been going hard on Bloomberg for what they see as buying his way into the debate. Expect to see that line of attack tonight, while Bloomberg fights back by, I don't know, hiring teens to meme his opponents into the dark ages. All in the VIP seats, just DMing the fat Jewish over and over. Harvard University made the mistake of admitting a bunch of really smart students, and now a group of them are filing a lawsuit that would force the university

to divest from companies that profit from the prison industry. The group called Harvard Prison Divestment says that Harvard is violating its fiduciary duty and falsely advertising itself as an institution that wants to do what it can to repair the deep harm of slavery while still benefiting from the prison system, which disproportionately punishes black men and women. Harvard's endowment is $40 billion and they don't disclose how much is held in prison related investments. They've previously divested from the tobacco industry and apartheid

South Africa after student protest. Students calling on the university to divest from fossil fuel and prison industries haven't been successful, but that could change soon. How about them apples? Yeah. Goodwill hunting. And those

are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, toss us the old pigskin, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading, and not just the numbers judges hold up on little signs during sports like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter.

Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And that's how you wrap up 69 episodes. Nice. 69. What a Day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis.

Sonia Tunn 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.