What A Day - Warren Peace

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

On Saturday, the House Judiciary Committee released their impeachment report, which is essentially the legal roadmap they’ll be following from here on out. We tell you what’s coming as we begin�� the final countdown. In 2020 updates, Warren and Buttigieg have bad blood, Bloomberg sounds off on his employee’s salaries, and more.  And in headlines: a shooting in Pensacola, protests in Hong Kong, and an insane amount of government-sponsored jewelry in San Francisco.

It's Monday, December 9th. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day, the emo property brother of Daily News Podcast. He's real. He's cool. Look him up. You're gonna stand. I'm good. On today's show, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg go toe-to-toe for Iowa and some headlines. But first, an impeachment news blast. Yeah! On Saturday, the House Judiciary Committee released a report defining what the committee believes are impeachable offenses as outlined in the Constitution. First, there's treason, which the committee defined as, quote, a deliberate betrayal of the nation and its security. Then there's bribery defined as, quote, when the president offers, solicits, or accepts something of personal value to influence his own official actions.

Now, notable in that definition is that even if a bribe isn't accepted, it still counts as impeachable if a bribe was offered or solicited. Difficult getting through that one. And lastly, high crimes and misdemeanors, which they divided into three categories, including abuse of power, foreign entanglements and corruption of office and elections. Woo. The report is not the official draft articles of impeachment, but it is the legal roadmap that the House Judiciary Committee is following. You know what that means. It's the final countdown. Yes, it's almost over.

Hit me with it, Europa. Isn't that by Europa? I mean, sure. Also, Democrats are still going after more evidence and still getting stonewalled by the White House. This past weekend, House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff wrote a letter to Vice President Pence's office requesting that they declassify supplemental evidence from Pence aide Jennifer Williams about a phone call the vice president had with Ukrainian President Zelensky back in September. In his letter, Schiff asked to declassify the portions of that call that wouldn't interfere with national security. The vice president's office predictably refused, saying that, quote, because Adam Schiff continues to operate in an underhanded manner,

the office of the vice president does not even know what he wants declassified. How can someone be underhanded when they're asking you for something directly to your face? I do not understand. I don't know. And in ancillary impeachment-y stuff, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has ordered a stay on the release of Donald Trump's financial records, which sounds shocking because it means they're not coming out yet. Trump is trying to block the records from being released to House Democrats, and he's lost every case up until now. So he's appealed to the Supreme Court. And on Friday, SCOTUS will decide if they will hear his case. And so we should finally know if we're going to finally find out where Trump makes and spends his money, or if being president does give you total immunity to hide whatever the fuck you want. Oh, and Donald Trump believes that

his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani's trip to Ukraine and budget documentary that we're just going to refer to as exit through the grift shop, has actually dug up, quote, plenty of dirt on Joe Biden. According to Trump, Giuliani is expected to make a, quote, full report to the attorney general and Congress soon, which I guess is just showing them the movie. Worst screeners ever, honestly. And SAG sent me Green Book last year. So, yeah, I would know. This week is going to be a doozy. Today, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a public hearing where lawyers from both parties will present their evidence from the impeachment

inquiry. So far tomorrow, a U.S. district judge will hear arguments in the lawsuit from former acting National Security Advisor Charles Kupperman. You'll remember Kupp was subpoenaed by Democrats in the impeachment inquiry and the White House told him not to comply. He's asking the judge to decide whether he should listen to the White House or Congress. So this judge's ruling will decide whether we'll hear from Mr. Kupp, and it could also apply to others who haven't testified, like former real national security advisor John Bolton. And basically everywhere is reporting that the articles of impeachment will be debated and voted on by the Judiciary Committee by the end of this week. This has been your impeachment news blast. And now to some 2020 news. For weeks, Senator Elizabeth Warren has been speaking out against campaigns that have been influenced by consultants

in a not-so-subtle dig on South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. In the past few days, she has begun to make that more explicit, calling the mayor out by name. I think that Mayor Pete should open up the doors so that anyone can come in and report on what's being said. Those doors shouldn't be closed and no one should be left to wonder what kind of promises are being made to the people who can pony up big bucks to be in the room. That clip you just heard was Warren on Thursday telling reporters in Boston that Buttigieg should allow reporters into his fundraising events. She also said that the mayor should release his list of updated bundlers, i.e. these are the rich guys who run

basically what are phone trees of money for various candidates and campaigns. Buttigieg had done so in the past, but that list has not been updated as of late. For a little bit of context here in terms of how the candidates are raising their money, Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders do not hold private fundraising events with big donors, while Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden do. But Biden notably has, to his credit, opened his fundraisers to reporters. So Buttigieg is a little bit of an outlier on that. Yeah. And how did the Buttigieg campaign respond? They want to start a transparency war.

That is what the battle is going to be between him and Warren right now. They started by saying that Warren should open up the doors to the decades of tax returns that she is hiding. Warren has released 11 years of tax returns, which covers the extent of her time in public office, but not from before 2008, at the time when she was a law professor at Harvard and had corporate clients too. Now, later on Sunday, Warren's campaign did in fact release a little bit more information about the people for whom she did consulting and other legal work. The basic gist of it was over the span of three decades, she was compensated for nearly

$2 million. So not crazy amounts. But yeah, that's like the latest on the transparency front. So then on Friday night, for the first time, in the midst of this sort of new pressure and scrutiny that's that's on the Buttigieg campaign, they decided to release more information about his work at McKinsey and Company. Okay. Now, people will remember, that's obviously the consulting firm that, you know, very recently has had terrible headlines for working with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency and the Trump administration on things that they described like, quote, detention saving opportunities. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm rolling my eyes. Sorry, everybody listening. It's a podcast. Video will come soon for that. Buttigieg has obviously also gotten a lot of questions about the firm for a long time, and they're increasing as he's sort of, you know, gaining in the race. He hasn't revealed the full client list that he worked for citing a nondisclosure agreement. But now he's publicly requested to be released from the NDA. Here's how Buttigieg responded to some of those questions and the general heightened scrutiny in a press conference on Friday night

earlier today you said you were open to having a conversation about opening your fundraisers and that's a question that reporters have been asking for months now so I'm wondering when do you expect to be to actually have that conversation and give like an answer on that? Again I don't have a timeline for you

as the candidate can't you just direct your campaign to open this post? What's that? as the, can't you just direct your campaign to open this post? What's that? As the candidate, can't you just direct your campaign to open this post? Yes. And why haven't you done so? What's that? Why haven't you done so yet?

There are a lot of considerations, and I'm thinking about it. Last question. Can you give us an example of those considerations? No. Thank you. Whoa. Wow. Really dodging it.

So why is this all happening now? Before the last debate, you were in Nostradamus saying about everyone going after Buttigieg because he's rising in the polls and that kind of fell flat. So are you willing to make another bad prediction that will haunt you for the rest of your life? Yeah, I mean, sure. Why not? This time it just seems more legit because I think that there's just more pressure on all the candidates, right? And like, Warren is finally calling Buttigieg out by name. And that is something that is new. And as they

get closer to Iowa, it's just going to increase, the temperatures is going to increase between the two of them. And, but broadly speaking, I think this has all happened and come to a head for a couple of reasons. One is sort of the fact that Warren has seen a bit of a slide in Iowa and Buttigieg has gone up. And that's because they may or may not be trading off of these sort of the more college educated white liberal voter that's in Iowa. And the other is that this is a function of the candidates being frustrated with Buttigieg, not just about the fundraisers themselves, but they're wondering how it came to be that this guy began marketing himself as sort of a young progressive at the start of the year. And it shifted ideologically throughout the year, all while bringing in heaps of money at these fundraisers. They're wondering pretty openly now if there's a connection between those things and if what

he's saying there behind those closed doors is different than what he's saying in public and if he's changing his mind because that money is coming in. I got it. Okay, so maybe this debate will have some actual fireworks. What else might the good people at home have missed about 2020 over the past couple of days? So it wasn't all Buttigieg and Warren Senator Cory Booker's campaign said that they had raised more than one million dollars in like a three or four day span after Senator Harris dropped out

Booker is going to most likely miss the next debate and that's been part of the conversation that he and some of the other candidates are having, where Booker has said, for instance, that the race has more, quote, billionaires than black people. Yeah, which is true. I just did the math. It's an easy number. Yeah, yeah, I can count. Which is not saying good things. And speaking of one of those billionaires, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg had this crowd-pleasing remark about the role of reporters at his news organization in a recent interview with CBS this morning.

I think people have said to me, how can you investigate yourself? And I said, I don't think you can. But if you take a look at the Bloomberg News Organization, we carry news from lots of different places like New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. There's plenty of ways for people to get news about the candidates if they look at Bloomberg News. But even your own news reporters have complained. They think it's unfair that they're not allowed to investigate other Democratic candidates because their boss is in the race.

You just have to learn to live with some things. They get a paycheck. But with your paycheck comes some restrictions and responsibilities. Wonderful. So just a reminder here that what the Bloomberg News Organization is doing now that Bloomberg is in the race is that they aren't allowed to do 2020 reporting on Bloomberg. And because they can't, they also aren't going to do it on the other Democratic candidates. So they're sitting there handcuffed and he's being like, well, you're getting paid. So like, why does it matter? Yeah, I mean, geez. Maybe pay them a little more. I

don't know. Exactly. And lastly, just to close the loop on something we talked about on our last show, former Vice President Joe Biden briefly defended an interaction he had with a voter recently in Iowa, in which he called him a quote, damn liar and challenged him to a pushup contest. Biden told NPR, quote, He was challenging me. What kind of shape? And so I kidded. I said, want to do a pushup contest. I was joking.

Yeah, you got to be careful who you make jokes about that with, you know, because someone might take you up on it. Yes. We know from all too recent history, in fact, that that's the case. A little WOD BTS for you. We all just did pushups for the show. Totally normal stuff. I totally did some too. Yes. Let the record show. We'll be keeping you updated on the 2020 storylines as they progress. And next week, we'll be coming to you live from the next Democratic presidential debate. See you there. And now for some ads. How is your holiday shopping going?

Okay, so it's all right, but I still need to get some stuff for my niece and my nephews. Are you using the Drop app though? Yeah. Okay, great. Because when you use the Drop app to shop at all the places you love, you get points that you can redeem

for gift cards from your favorite places. Here's how it works. All you have to do is link your debit or credit card to the secure app to start earning points every time you shop at one of Drop's partner brands. Oh, yeah. Drop has all the brands you know and love, like Walmart, Trader Joe's, Sephora, Glossier, and hundreds more. I could be here all night.

Wow. So you're saying that if I get my nephew a magic set, I can also grab a Starbucks gift card for myself and call it a day? I think that sounds about right. I mean, I don't know what they want, but that should work. But I mean, otherwise, you know, there's the slight problem of you having to get me a gift. I'll figure it out one day. I will. Fine. But lucky for me and What A Day listeners, guess what? You can use the code WHATADAY when you sign up for DropApp via the App Store or Google Play, and you'll receive a $5 gift card right away.

All you got to do is link a debit or credit card to the app, and when you sign up to redeem your first reward, you got to use WHATADAY. It's just called WHATADAY. $5 gift card. DropApp. Dripity drop. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. year old lieutenant in the Royal Saudi Air Force opened fire in the air station on Friday, killing three sailors. Now the FBI is determining whether or not the attack was a lone effort or part of a larger network. President Trump was unusually quick to cover for Saudi Arabia and

their King Mohammed bin Salman, passing along his condolences and avoiding any real discussion of culpability, which speaks to a pattern that the president has of looking the other way and going easy on the kingdom in spite of their record of human rights offenses. California utilities company Pacific Gas and Electric reached a multi-billion dollar settlement with the victims of the two most destructive wildfires in the state's history. Investigators blamed PG&E's faulty electrical equipment for the deadly 2018 fire in Paradise, California, and victims claim it was also the cause of the 2017 fire in Santa Rosa, California. Over 100 people were killed in those two fires alone. Around $13.5 billion will go to the tens of thousands of victims in the Northern California region who

lost their homes or their loved ones. People in Hong Kong went out in the streets on Sunday to participate in one of the biggest marches there in recent months. Organizers say around 800,000 people showed up to remind mainland China's government that the fight for pro-democracy is not over. The march was peaceful for the most part, and police stood by, which was a drastic departure from escalating violence in recent months. Protesters have been and are still calling for universal suffrage, an end to police brutality, and other basic civil liberties. As the average American's health care spending goes up, so does the amount that the people in charge of our health care spend on gyms.

That's something that came to light this weekend when reports emerged that the head of Medicare and Medicaid, Seema Verma, tried to get the federal government to reimburse her for $47,000 worth of jewelry, clothes and other possessions that were stolen from her car during a work trip in July 2018. For those following along at home, $47,000 of jewelry is essentially a treasure chest. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services ultimately reimbursed Verma for about $3,000, and a spokesperson said that filing reimbursement claims for stolen goods is not uncommon for employees.

Who is stealing this shit? Other employees? Gotta talk to your friends, Ms. Verma. During Verma's trip, she gave a talk where she attacked Medicare for All and said it would lead to Medicare for None. I'm cool with that if my Medicare for None plan covers necklace transplants. Only the essentials. The man who brought Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch to life, Carol Spinney, died Sunday at 85 years of age at his home in Woodstock, Connecticut. Spinney joined the cast in its first season in 1969, retiring just before its 50th anniversary in October 2018, and leaving a legacy of countless upbeat performances as Big Bird, hilarious work as Oscar, and millions of very entertained kids. He is survived by his wife, three children, and several grandchildren.

He also managed to turn the ABCs into a real bop. exactly what I mean. It starts out like an A-word, as anyone can see. But somewhere in the middle, it gets awfully queer to me. And those are the headlines. That was nice. And that's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe,

give us a rating, tell on us, and tell your friends to listen. By the way, if you're into reading and not just your notes to prepare for your big presentation that's in 20 minutes, what a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash newsletters.

I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And that's why I'm asking the show to reimburse me for three golden eggs that I lost just now. Where are my eggs? 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.