The Autopen is Mightier

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Speaker 1 What's up, Los Angeles?

Speaker 1 Welcome. Do you love it or leave it line from Dynasty Typewriter? Looks like school's out for good.

Speaker 1 Who needs an education when you have all those chickens to raise anyway? Tonight on the show, Al Franken is here to discuss.

Speaker 1 Yes!

Speaker 1 We'll discuss the future of the Democratic Party and sadly, its present.

Speaker 1 Then Ozgo Okatsuka is back for the ultimate battle of brains versus brawn versus bull cut.

Speaker 1 I'm calling myself bronze.

Speaker 1 Because I do Pilates.

Speaker 1 Three times a week. Bitches.
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 1 At the end, we'll all plead for a second chance with some of our first loves. But first,

Speaker 1 let's get into it. What a week.

Speaker 1 In a Sunday Night Truth Social post, Trump wrote that he considered the pardons former President Biden granted to the House January January 6th Committee, quote, void, vacant, and of no further force or effect because they were signed using an auto pen, which was based on a Heritage Foundation report that may not be accurate.

Speaker 1 Republicans love a job-stealing robot until it's signing a pardon for Liz Cheney.

Speaker 1 Wrote Trump. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them, but more importantly, he did not know anything about them.
This is just flatly untrue. Joe Biden absolutely knew about them.

Speaker 1 Does he still know about them? That's a fair question.

Speaker 1 But not important.

Speaker 1 Trump was asked about the pardons aboard Air Force One and whether he considered other pardons and executive orders signed via Autopen to be legit.

Speaker 2 It's not my decision. That'll be up to a court.
But I would say that they're not,

Speaker 2 because I'm sure Biden didn't have any idea that it was taking place.

Speaker 1 It'll be up to the judge, who I will smear publicly every day until that judge's wife can't walk from her car to jazzer size without her head on a swivel.

Speaker 1 Oh, you think that joke is sexist?

Speaker 1 The judge is a lesbian.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 2 The doctor, also a lesbian.

Speaker 1 On Friday, Trump quietly signed a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for the first time since World War II, saying that he would use those wartime powers to quickly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without a hearing.

Speaker 1 I don't love that he's learning how to do things quietly. Trump is the potentially rabid bat that's loose in your house.
I'm not saying it's good if the bat has a little bell around its neck.

Speaker 1 I'm just saying it's better.

Speaker 1 At least you know where the bat is.

Speaker 1 It raises a lot of questions.

Speaker 2 Who put the bell there?

Speaker 1 But it's better than not knowing where the fucking bat is.

Speaker 1 On Saturday, a federal judge temporarily barred Trump from conducting these deportations and ordered the administration to return any planes that had already taken off.

Speaker 1 Really, the only situation I can think of where the pilot is announcing that you're heading back to the airport, and it's an exquisitely good news.

Speaker 1 But the administration did not do that, and instead shared footage on Sunday of immigrants being forced off of airplanes and into a Salvadoran mega-prison.

Speaker 1 But I guess we should have had a clearer message on the economy, so that's on us.

Speaker 1 Great question, Whoopee and Joy. I'd lower prices more than Joe Biden, that's for sure.

Speaker 1 Applause breaks out for 10 minutes.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 Trump's Borders Art Tom Homan on Monday claimed that the flights didn't need to be turned back because they were already above international waters when the order came through.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to flag that this opens the door, specifically the plane door, to extrajudicial murder over international waters, a practice so common in previous conflicts and under earlier fascist regimes that it has a name, and that name is death flights.

Speaker 1 And I would have put a sound effect there, but Lazarus said we were using them, quote, as a crutch.

Speaker 1 But that won't be a problem anymore because Lazarus is on a death flight.

Speaker 1 Homan also said this.

Speaker 3 We're not stopping. I don't care what the judges think.
I don't care what the left thinks. We're coming.

Speaker 1 In fairness to Tom, deporting people without a hearing is the only way he can come.

Speaker 1 Also on Monday, the White House shared a video of shaggled Venezuelan deportees being forced onto a plane accompanied by the song Closing Time by Semisonic.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Closing Time.

Speaker 4 You don't have to go home, but you can.

Speaker 1 Don't sing along with the fascist propaganda.

Speaker 1 I haven't seen a great song defiled like this since the last time I went to karaoke and sang Closing Time by Semisonic.

Speaker 1 Semisonic, in a statement, objected to the video and said they don't condone the song being used in this way, adding, the song is about joy and possibilities and hope, and they have missed the point entirely.

Speaker 1 And here I thought it was a song about getting laid after the bar closes.

Speaker 1 A learning moment for us all.

Speaker 1 So, why would the White House post such a video other than as fascist agitprop for internet poison losers sitting in front of sticky keyboards beneath ceremonial displays of strip mall katanas?

Speaker 1 Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt, no relation, explains.

Speaker 5 We are encouraging illegal immigrants to actively self-deport

Speaker 5 to maybe save themselves from being in one of these fun videos.

Speaker 1 Being in one of these fun videos, in fairness, on Caroline's letterbox, she described the movie Room as the perfect date night movie.

Speaker 1 Weird. She's just weird tasting movies.

Speaker 2 Get the popcorn.

Speaker 1 The deported Venezuelan immigrants were allegedly members of the gang Trende Aragua, but relatives of at least four of these men insist they weren't affiliated.

Speaker 1 Again, we learn the dire importance of keeping an updated LinkedIn profile.

Speaker 1 Ahead of a hearing Friday, lawyers for five of the immigrants say none of them received due process, and several of them were identified as gang members due to common tattoo designs before being sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

Speaker 1 Head writer Hallie has a huge tattoo that says, and this is real, yes and

Speaker 1 on on the side of her ass. That's right.
She has the fucking improv

Speaker 1 slogan, yes, and

Speaker 1 on her ass.

Speaker 1 She belongs in a maximum security prison. Way more than those guys.

Speaker 1 One man had a crown memorializing his late grandmother, while another had a rose tattoo with leaves made of money. We used to have due process.

Speaker 1 Now our immigration policy amounts to what a white Gen X divorced dad thinks being in a gang means based on old episodes of CSI Miami.

Speaker 1 Another man was a Venezuelan soccer player who protested against the country's authoritarian president, Nicolas Maduro, last year, and his lawyer said he was allegedly detained and tortured by the Maduro regime before legally seeking asylum in the United States.

Speaker 1 His lawyer said he was ID'd as a gang member based on a tattoo of a crown over a soccer ball and a soccer media post in which he made devil horns. He went like this.

Speaker 1 I can't believe this is how I find out that everybody on my 10th grade field trip to the Liberty Bell was in the Venezuelan gang Trende Aragua.

Speaker 1 It's fucking evil. They kidnapped these people.

Speaker 1 And yet, even as stories of the mistakes being made by the administration make the need for due process even more clear, Trump called for the district judge James Boesberg, who issued the orders putting a hold on the deportations, to be impeached.

Speaker 1 House Republicans raced to introduce articles of impeachment, making Boseberg at least the fifth federal judge to face a GOP impeachment attempt after ruling against the Trump administration.

Speaker 1 It's just an intimidation tactic because it still requires 67 votes in the Senate to remove a judge.

Speaker 1 So it's really just a terrifying waste of time, like a conjuring movie or asking a guy in a fedora what he's working on.

Speaker 1 That evidently rattled Chief Justice John Roberts, who on Tuesday issued a rare statement rebuking Trump, saying impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.

Speaker 1 First, they came for the judges, and I realized, fuck, I am a judge.

Speaker 1 Trump was asked about the statement on Laura Ingram.

Speaker 6 What's your reaction to the courts stepping in to make a statement here? They didn't make a statement when Joe Biden

Speaker 6 decided to forgive all those student loans.

Speaker 7 Well, he didn't mention my name in the statement. I just saw it quickly.
He didn't mention my name.

Speaker 1 It's true. The Chief Justice could have been talking about any sitting president calling for the impeachment of federal judges.

Speaker 1 When Ingram asked whether Trump would defy a court order, Trump did the weave.

Speaker 6 Are there circumstances where you would defy a court order?

Speaker 7 Well, I think that, number one,

Speaker 7 nobody's been through more courts than I have. I think nobody knows the courts any better than I have.
I would say the chief judge does, but nobody knows them better than I have. And

Speaker 7 what they've done to me, I've had the worst judges, I've had crooked judges.

Speaker 1 Nobody understands marriage better than I do. Why I have more ex-wives than anyone.
Some of the worst ex-wives you've ever seen.

Speaker 1 But at least one Republican is pushing back. Here's Senator Lisa Murkowski on why Republicans have gone silent.

Speaker 8 That's why you've got everybody just like ziplip, not saying a word, because they're afraid they're going to be taken down. They're going to be primaried.

Speaker 8 They're going to be given

Speaker 8 names in the media.

Speaker 9 You know what?

Speaker 8 We cannot be cowed

Speaker 8 into

Speaker 8 not speaking up.

Speaker 1 What's this wee shit? said Lindsey Graham, rubbing a Trump bobblehead with mineral oil for some reason.

Speaker 1 This week also brought us an amazing moment from a town hall in Columbus, Nebraska, where Republican Congressman Mike Flood foolishly asked how his constituents wanted to resolve the deficit.

Speaker 11 Here's a, okay, let's talk about this. Let's talk about this.
So your proposal to solve this is to tax the rich.

Speaker 1 Really opened the Mike Flood gates.

Speaker 1 This is neither here nor there. But Mike Flood looks like the kind of guy who went out of print around 1998.

Speaker 1 They stopped making that edition. Was he a floor model? Did somebody find him on eBay? What's happening? They don't make that guy anymore.

Speaker 1 If you too would like to go to a GOP town hall and shout in support of democracy, I have some great news.

Speaker 1 Vote Save America just launched a new push to hold Republicans accountable by connecting you with other voters who want to show up to these town halls or other events Republicans are too afraid to attend in their districts.

Speaker 1 So go to votesaveamerica.com today, enter your email and zip code, and get connected with state and local organizations near you who want to put these screams to good use.

Speaker 1 Also, if you are hearing this on Saturday or Sunday, I am in Wisconsin right now, and we're campaigning to elect Susan Crawford to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to

Speaker 1 stop Elon Musk from installing a right-wing judge who will then shift the court into a Republican majority that will put in place a near-total ban on abortion, will do gerrymandering, will rig elections.

Speaker 1 So go to votesaveamerica.com/slash Wisconsin. Come say hi.
I'll be in Madison on Saturday all day. We'll be in Milwaukee on Sunday.
Come say hi. All right.

Speaker 2 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, the EPA has presented the the White House with plans to eliminate its scientific research arm and potentially fire over 1,000 scientists who provide the research on air pollution, hazardous chemicals, and climate change.

Speaker 1 Looks like we're down to just one experiment.

Speaker 2 Us.

Speaker 1 Yep. Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order dismantling the Department of Education, though it will ultimately take an act of Congress to formally close the department.

Speaker 1 It's a depressing executive order, but look on the bright side. In a few years, no one will even be able to read it.

Speaker 1 Democratic Senator Tina Smith fired back at Trump, tweeting, we know you're just trying to wear us out, but for the record, I am not overwhelmed. My zone is in flooded.

Speaker 1 Mine is, said Lindsey Graham, the bobblehead nowhere to be seen.

Speaker 1 At a party convention on Sunday, a French official asked America for their stuff back.

Speaker 1 We're going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom, give us back the Statue of Liberty.

Speaker 1 First, they took Roman Polanski and the most annoying people from college, and now this?

Speaker 1 Honestly, if they also take our tired, our poor, our huddled masses yearning to be free, I think they get a deal.

Speaker 1 White House spokesperson Carolyn Leavitt, no relation,

Speaker 1 issued this response.

Speaker 5 Absolutely not.

Speaker 5 And my advice to that unnamed, low-level French politician would be to remind them that it's only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now.

Speaker 1 Ooh, sick burn, sick burn. We did save France from the Germans.

Speaker 1 For years, the United States resisted entering World War II, of course, as Hitler's armies marched across Europe and the Luftwaffe murdered tens of thousands of civilians across Britain to cow Churchill into a capitulation that thankfully never came, even as the America First Movement here in the United States, rife with anti-Semites and fascist sympathizers, fought any effort to lend support to our desperate allies, all the while knowingly scoffing at the hysterical notion that the war could ever reach our shores, not unlike how President Trump snapped Titelinsky in the Oval Office a few weeks ago.

Speaker 4 During the war, everybody has problems, even you. But you have nice ocean and don't feel now, but you will feel it in the future.

Speaker 2 God bless.

Speaker 1 God bless you.

Speaker 4 God bless. You are not here.
You are at war. Don't tell us what we're going to feel.

Speaker 1 So there's this federal judge. Trump put him on the court in 2020.
And if you look, if a judge was put on the court by Trump in 2020, he's a real fuck.

Speaker 1 And he filmed this shocking video as part of a dissent.

Speaker 2 You pull the trigger and fire a round.

Speaker 1 Right when that happens, it automatically will rack the slide back, eject the round, the spent cartridge out of the gun.

Speaker 1 It will grab a new round out of the magazine, put that round into the chamber, into the barrel, and it'll be ready to fire another round the next time you pull the trigger.

Speaker 1 So obviously ridiculous.

Speaker 1 It's a play for Trump's attention and a spot on the Supreme Court shortlist while basically making himself an expert in the case and antagonizing his fellow judges who ruled in a different way.

Speaker 1 In a long list of offenses of the last few weeks, it doesn't really rank high.

Speaker 1 But of course, it's only interesting and sensational because it's a departure from a tradition of respect and integrity in our judiciary by judges for the process and for each other. He can do this.

Speaker 1 He can film a little video

Speaker 1 with guns, a judge issuing a dissent with guns in his hand, because he lives in a system built by people who would never do that.

Speaker 1 They can threaten the Department of Education because we no longer live in a world where volunteers had to go door to door to find children with disabilities who had never seen the inside of a classroom.

Speaker 1 Why are they so willing to fire scientists at the EPA because it's been a long time since the rivers caught fire?

Speaker 1 Why are they disbanding panels that help make sure that the government releases accurate economic data, which Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick announced last week?

Speaker 1 Because whatever their designs on manipulating public perceptions of the economy, these people do not have nearly enough respect for the value of trustworthy nonpartisan data or fear of a world where people are starving while the government tells us we've never been richer.

Speaker 1 How can someone like Lutnick, who got rich in finance, take to the cameras to push a single stock from his perch at commerce like he did on Wednesday when he told Fox viewers to buy Tesla stock?

Speaker 3 If you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla. It's unbelievable that this guy's stock is this cheap.
It'll never be this cheap again.

Speaker 1 I'll note that it did go down after this.

Speaker 1 Lutnick was able to build his vast wealth in a society that, until just a few years ago, had strong laws and norms against brazen public corruption, just like that.

Speaker 1 It's the same reason Republicans can negotiate a funding bill without Democrats while trusting that Democrats are too responsible to allow the government to shut down, because their little teenage political rebellion is made possible by the responsibility and integrity of others past and present.

Speaker 1 Caroline Levitt, no relation, gets to stand at that podium and make her snide little joke because people like her lost.

Speaker 1 At the 1936 Democratic Convention, FDR gave what is to me one of the great political speeches ever given. It's known for rendezvous with destiny,

Speaker 1 but it ends when he talks about people in other lands who sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living.

Speaker 1 And here we are, 90 years later, it's happening here, and that's what Trump is selling right now. And his wife is not even a lesbian.

Speaker 1 FDR is rolling over in his grave. He also was rolling while he was alive.

Speaker 1 But that was forward and back.

Speaker 1 This is over.

Speaker 1 Speaking of Tesla, the company has been forced to recall most cybertrucks to repair a piece of trim that's prone to flying off in traffic because it's just glued on.

Speaker 1 It's not a cyber truck. It's a sports glutility vehicle.

Speaker 1 But where Elon taketh away, Elon giveth, SUNY Williams and Butch Wilmore, the two astronauts who have been on the International Space Station for nine months, returned safely to Earth on Tuesday on a SpaceX vehicle due to a paperwork error.

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Welcome home.

Speaker 1 Due to a paperwork error upon landing, they were sadly transferred to a Salvadoran mega prison.

Speaker 1 But their lawyers are hopeful to have them back in the U.S. in the next nine months.
Tops.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a good joke. The astronauts were originally supposed to be in space for an eight-day mission, but problems with their Boeing capsule left them stranded for the better part of a year.

Speaker 1 And that's why you always pack 266 extra pairs of underwear.

Speaker 1 And finally, startled researchers in New Zealand captured footage of an octopus riding on the head of a shark and nicknamed it Sharktopus.

Speaker 1 I haven't seen a romance this unnatural since season three of White Lotus.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Lazarus.

Speaker 1 Coming up. He's funny.
He's serious. He's Al-Franken.

Speaker 12 Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

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Speaker 2 And we're back.

Speaker 1 Please welcome to the stage. He's a man who knows how to get a vote and a laugh.
And God knows the Democrats need both. Please welcome back to the show.
It's Senator Al Franken.

Speaker 2 Thank you for being here.

Speaker 1 Welcome back.

Speaker 1 There he is.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 1 Good to see you. You're in this new Netflix show.
Yes. The Residence.

Speaker 2 The Residence. It's fun.
Premiered. on people's TVs today.

Speaker 1 Today, I just saw the beginning of the first episode coming here because I was like, oh,

Speaker 1 I want to see what this is about.

Speaker 2 Oh, well, then you saw that. And there you were.
There I was. In a hearing room.

Speaker 1 In a hearing room. As a senator.
As a senator. That was cool.

Speaker 1 What was that like? It must have been so exciting.

Speaker 2 Well, the sets are amazing. And

Speaker 2 the whole show is, it takes place in the

Speaker 2 sort of the residence. It's called the residence.
of the White House. And there's a murder.
And

Speaker 2 my senator is there. I'm the chairman of a committee to try to determine whether it's a suicide or a murder.

Speaker 2 And it's a murder, but my senator wants it to be a suicide to cover for the, I don't know, the White House for some reason.

Speaker 1 Interesting. Interesting.

Speaker 2 Not really, but that part.

Speaker 2 No, no.

Speaker 2 It's actually

Speaker 2 a hilarious

Speaker 2 HOs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's really fun. And Kylie Minoga's in it?

Speaker 2 She sings in it. Yes, she is in it.

Speaker 1 Did you talk to her?

Speaker 2 I did not. I was not in that.

Speaker 2 I was in the hearing room at the time.

Speaker 2 Uzzo Aduba. Do you know Uzo?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, she's been on the show.

Speaker 1 She is the star of the show.

Speaker 2 Yeah, she's. And she's absolutely amazing.

Speaker 1 She was like the detective, right?

Speaker 2 She is the detective. Cordelia Cup.
That's a fun name. Yes,

Speaker 2 there's great names in this.

Speaker 1 What's your name in it?

Speaker 2 Senator Aaron Filkins.

Speaker 1 Oh, Filkins. That's a fun name, Filkins.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Filkins. The names in this are really good.
But anyway,

Speaker 2 and so no, Uzo is a markable. There's a scene in the last episode in which she basically has a 30-minute monologue.

Speaker 1 But don't spoil it for them.

Speaker 2 Well, I wasn't going to.

Speaker 1 You're right. I don't know why I doubted you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what was I going to do? Say who the murderer was? Yeah, don't do that. Yeah, and it is a murder, not a suicide.
Right.

Speaker 1 Okay. Did he have any flashbacks having to talk to Ted Cruz?

Speaker 2 Did I have any?

Speaker 2 No, I didn't. You know, it was funny.
The first

Speaker 2 stage note for my character was avuncular.

Speaker 2 So I thought of colleagues of mine who had been a vuncular, like Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a vuncular. Let's see.
Who else did I think of? Oh, Chuck Grassley? Oh, yeah. Avuncular?

Speaker 2 You know, Orrin Hatch died. died.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I went in my email and I searched for his name for some unrelated reason. And it turns out that he had emailed me before he died because I had shown an interest in ending daylight saving time.

Speaker 1 Well, actually, going to permanent daylight saving time, which is something that he was in favor of. And he had sent me an email about it saying that he agreed.
I missed it.

Speaker 1 Dead.

Speaker 1 But he's a vuncular, is all I was getting at.

Speaker 2 He was a vuncular.

Speaker 2 Did you know him? I did, of course. Yeah.
We served.

Speaker 2 Yeah. We wrote a song together.
Oh. He used to write songs, and I had a song that

Speaker 2 we teamed up on. Wasn't great.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Who else is a buncular? Or Lindsey Graham could be a buncular.

Speaker 1 So, anyway, we're in a constitutional crisis.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 Just something we should probably get to. I was chuckling about it backstage.
But

Speaker 1 I feel like there's this sort of strange,

Speaker 1 there are these two things happening side by side. On the one hand, Trump is doing these extraordinarily dangerous things, right? And strange and

Speaker 1 kind of unprecedented things, whether it's

Speaker 1 what he's doing to our allies in Europe or what he's now doing with these sort of

Speaker 1 what he's doing to Ukraine.

Speaker 2 I mean, that is just just

Speaker 2 unbelievable he's switched sides when he said to uh

Speaker 2 to zelensky you don't have the cards

Speaker 2 the the the number one card was us right and so he's basically saying i'm taking away the card

Speaker 1 and and that that is just a uh a travesty so And so there's so I want to understand what you think we should be doing to respond to that because what I often see are Democrats in what is sort of a classic vice grip of dealing with a rising authoritarian menace, which is they believe in the institutions.

Speaker 1 They're trying to prove that those rules and institutions can work by following them. But they're dealing with someone that doesn't care about the rules.
We'll use them when they're useful.

Speaker 1 We'll break them when they're not. And I wonder if you just have an overall

Speaker 1 sense of how you think Democrats should be fighting back.

Speaker 2 I think Democrats should be fighting back by taking every chance they can to,

Speaker 2 well, they could have, for example,

Speaker 2 made them go over the cliff on the

Speaker 1 continuing resolution.

Speaker 2 On the continuing resolution.

Speaker 1 So you think that was the you think they should have stuck together and said, I mean, that's what Nancy Pelosi has said. Others have said that.

Speaker 2 Well, Pelosi said that

Speaker 2 she always got something. If you give something up, you always get something.
And Schumer didn't get anything for giving up.

Speaker 1 Aaron Powell, Jr.: So then what do you make of the argument?

Speaker 1 Look, I think this is a genuinely hard question, though I come down where you are. What do you like? The Chuck Schumer response to that is

Speaker 1 they didn't negotiate with us, but they know correctly that a shutdown would be devastating, that Democrats care more about the consequences than Republicans do, and it would accelerate what Trump and Elon want to do to dismantle the government anyway.

Speaker 1 They could turn that shutdown into a win, and there would be no off-ramp.

Speaker 2 That's one way to look at it. And

Speaker 1 well, what's the response to that? What's the response to that? Like, oh,

Speaker 1 if the, if like we live in the world, I mean, this is why I feel like I feel like Schumer's getting a ton of blowback. And I think it's rightfully so that he does.

Speaker 1 But it's in the luxury of the world where we didn't have the shutdown by a bunch of people saying he should have fought harder.

Speaker 1 But like if we were in the shutdown right now and we didn't know how to get out of it, it might not be so obvious.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I see your point, but I just think that we have to show that we can fight. And I think that by

Speaker 2 just

Speaker 2 giving them the votes, we didn't do that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 How much of it do you think is not just, obviously in the final moments, there was a binary choice. Do we give them the votes or not?

Speaker 1 How much do you think was in the expectations and strategy leading up to that?

Speaker 1 What do you think they should have been doing differently before we ever got to that vote?

Speaker 2 Well, they should have been negotiating and saying, we'll give you something

Speaker 2 for our votes.

Speaker 2 That's usually how these things work. That's what Pelosi was basically saying.

Speaker 2 You know, she doesn't give up something unless she gets something.

Speaker 1 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But they do think that's what they were doing, right? Like there was a bipartisan process that Patty Murray was running in the Senate.

Speaker 1 And I guess the hope was if a House bill couldn't pass unanimously among the Republicans, then that would have come to fruition.

Speaker 2 But once Trump kind of

Speaker 2 among they didn't think the Republicans would pass it right so they just didn't have a

Speaker 2 plan B.

Speaker 1 Well, that was a mistake then.

Speaker 1 You got to have a plan B.

Speaker 2 Got to have a plan B.

Speaker 1 So Boeing basically shows an overarching problem for Democrats that our national brand is very bad. There's just new data.
It came out.

Speaker 1 David Troore wrote about it in the Times, talked about it with Ezra Klein, that across a broad swath of issues,

Speaker 1 Democrats are less trusted than Republicans, except on a very few issues like climate change, mental health, Medicare.

Speaker 1 There were a few, very few issues, set of issues where we got, but on a host of other issues, inflation, immigration, affordability, housing, the economy, Republicans have us beat.

Speaker 1 What do you make about that? What do you make of that? How did the Democratic brand become so toxic? And what do you think about figuring out a way out of it?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 obviously, on something like inflation, the peak inflation at 9.1%,

Speaker 2 that kind of killed us for it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 We got hammered for that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we got hammered for that. And that happened for all kinds of reasons, one of which was that

Speaker 2 we probably paid out too much money

Speaker 2 during COVID.

Speaker 1 They're never going to agree with you on that. They're like, shut up.
Hey, Al Franken, shut up.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I think that, you know, Summers said that we were doing that, and I think we did. I think we got inflation because of it.

Speaker 1 How much do you think we paid for having, like, how much of a price was the fact that Joe Biden, in the final two years of his term, had become such a terrible communicator?

Speaker 2 Well, I, you know,

Speaker 2 this is an easy thing to do, but I blame Biden for not doing what he said he was going to do when he ran the first time, which he said he'd be an interim

Speaker 2 transitional

Speaker 2 figure. And he obviously was beginning to fail.

Speaker 2 And I don't know.

Speaker 2 Everybody here experienced that first debate. And why he didn't pull out after that.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I also wonder, I mean, I don't know what you think about this, but obviously Joe Biden, like we paid a price for having the bully pulpit basically empty. But I also wonder too,

Speaker 1 that a lot of the Democrats who might become presidential candidates are people that sat out and didn't challenge Joe Biden during that time because they thought it was

Speaker 1 too risky that they kind of didn't want to pick that fight. And I wonder if you think Democrats pay a price now for having

Speaker 1 been a of?

Speaker 1 Look, I think everybody was making the best choice they could, given that Joe Biden was still in the race and nobody had challenged him.

Speaker 1 But collectively, the country saw leading Democrats all get behind someone that with their own eyes they thought wasn't up to it.

Speaker 2 I don't think that they knew that he wasn't up to it. I don't think they saw that until they saw

Speaker 2 at that debate.

Speaker 2 I really thought I remember talking to someone who is

Speaker 2 a very highly thought of

Speaker 2 Democratic,

Speaker 2 someone who advises candidates and is very good at this, saying that they couldn't wait to that debate where Biden would show

Speaker 2 what he was

Speaker 2 and kick Trump's ass.

Speaker 2 But then we saw the first three seconds of that and then the rest of that debate and we just were flabbergasted.

Speaker 1 Wasn't that a wild night? Remember that watching it? You're just like, this, it was really surreal. You couldn't believe what you were seeing.

Speaker 2 My wife and I were just,

Speaker 2 you know, distraught. I mean, it was,

Speaker 2 that was, that was the election right there.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 For me, I'll tell you, it was different for me.

Speaker 1 I would say I was distraught for the first 30 minutes. Then I was a little bit numb.
Then the last 30 minutes, I was like, well, he's going to, this is not going to work.

Speaker 1 You know, we're going to get a change. It was so bad, it became something else.
It became vaguely exciting.

Speaker 2 You thought that he would drop out. Yes.

Speaker 1 Of course. Because of what we saw with our eyes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was shocking that he didn't like the next day go.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm out of here, everybody.

Speaker 1 Remember when Joe Biden had to come out after and say how great a job he did? That's how you know you have found the right person. That's a good marriage.
I do. I mean that.

Speaker 1 You know, that's what you want. You want to fuck up so bad in front of the whole country and then have your wife come out and be like, honey, way to go.
You fucking did it. You're great.

Speaker 1 Were you, you never, you're not somebody that breaks.

Speaker 2 I do break sometimes.

Speaker 2 Huh.

Speaker 1 How is that SNL 50?

Speaker 2 Oh, that was great.

Speaker 1 You think there'll be another 50?

Speaker 2 Well, it would have to. I don't think Lauren can do another 50.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if that's what you mean. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's amazing to do 50.

Speaker 2 It's amazing to do 50. I was there.
I was one of the original writers. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, I remember I... Tom Davis, I don't know if you remember Tom Davis, Franklin and Davis, or his comedy team.
And we were two of the original writers.

Speaker 2 And I remember as soon as we got there and met the other writers, met some of the cast, and I just said, Tom, this is going to be a big hit.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 he went, yeah, right.

Speaker 2 And I just knew it was going to be a big hit because

Speaker 2 our generation had never had a chance to be on TV.

Speaker 2 And so this was, and we had, you know, we had Belushi, we had Aykroyd, we had Gilda, we had Jane and Lorraine, we had Chevy, we had Garrett.

Speaker 2 That was it. We had seven cast members.
If you think about it now, think about how many cast members, do you watch the show now? Yeah, they're like, I don't know,

Speaker 2 17, 18 cast members and featured players.

Speaker 1 Not since John Belushi dined alone.

Speaker 2 Have a genius. Something like that.
Something like that.

Speaker 2 It's a Thomas Jefferson. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So Thomas Jefferson dining alone.

Speaker 2 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes. I don't like Thomas Jefferson.

Speaker 1 I'm not. I think he's overrated.

Speaker 2 He wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I think he definitely gets the credit for that, for sure.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 I just. Explain yourself.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I think he's like temperamentally very French, and he had a, there was a moodiness to him, and a kind of like, there was a like a kind kind of like hypocritical egotism to the whole thing.

Speaker 1 And obviously a slaveholder. And there was a, there was a really

Speaker 2 had a romance.

Speaker 1 Well, that's the thing. They, you know, in our, in our, in the history books written by the kind of people that wrote history books when they were writing those history books, it's a romance.

Speaker 1 Also, he operated a nailery in which children had to make nails all day. And so it's like, he wasn't just like a slave owner.

Speaker 2 Yes. I did not know that.

Speaker 1 Just not just a slave owner. He was like into it.

Speaker 1 he was into it i like i look there's no there's i think and just to be clear just because people will see this on the internet no good way to be a slave owner

Speaker 2 that's right that's right i agree

Speaker 2 i'm with you on that

Speaker 1 a nailery a nailery where they make nails sweltering hot it's hot it's like a they make the nails

Speaker 1 kids how do you make nails i do you get metal very hot

Speaker 1 and then after that it's it's it's something about the small hands i think

Speaker 2 i don't know

Speaker 2 okay okay well we're learning stuff here right

Speaker 1 do you have any other things you want to talk about

Speaker 1 well there are a few things i wanted to talk about let's see did we do uh the reconciliation bill that'll be coming up oh well so so the next fight will be reconciliation yeah uh we've now had the cr the cr takes us through september now that's a bill that required 60 votes in the senate which is why democrats had a say in it but now we're gonna have a reconciliation bill that republicans can negotiate without Democrats at all.

Speaker 2 You can do that with 50 votes.

Speaker 1 Because they can do that with 50 votes in the Senate. This will be the vehicle for them to cut Medicaid, potentially cut social media.

Speaker 2 But this is to,

Speaker 2 there's a debt ceiling. Yes.
And they have to do something about it. Yes.
And I worry about Republicans who think that,

Speaker 2 well, there's nothing wrong with going over the cliff.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 I worry about that too. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because,

Speaker 2 you know, we're the reserve currency of the world. And if we did that, I don't think we would be anymore.

Speaker 1 But that's why we bought all that crypto. Remember, we were talking about that backstage.

Speaker 1 We're big crypto guys.

Speaker 1 It's

Speaker 1 Dollar Sin Franken.

Speaker 1 Frankencoin.

Speaker 2 I actually don't get crypto and I never have. Oh.

Speaker 1 Bunch of of people missing the train applauding.

Speaker 2 I don't think so.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, the debt ceiling is a bad deal for sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So

Speaker 2 that's going to be an exciting

Speaker 2 moment when we go off the cliff on that.

Speaker 2 So you just want to warn people about it? Huh?

Speaker 1 So you're just worried about it?

Speaker 2 I'm worried about it and warning people about it. And I just want to make sure that the Republicans don't go off the cliff.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, some of the Republicans know this.

Speaker 1 Now, this is where you get back to the problem with supporting the CR, because what Republicans have relied on for as long as I've been in politics is knowing that when push comes to shove, even though they won't have to vote amongst Republicans to raise the debt ceiling, because they are Republicans that have never in their entire careers ever voted to raise the debt ceiling, they can get enough Democrats to do the responsible thing to make sure that we don't hit the debt ceiling.

Speaker 1 That's what's happened every time in the past. But right now, what they're talking about is a reconciliation bill to cut taxes by trillions of dollars for billionaires and cut a bunch of services.

Speaker 1 If they add the debt ceiling to that, they're not going to get Democratic votes for that.

Speaker 2 Well, the whole point of

Speaker 2 these cuts in Medicaid of, what is it, $885

Speaker 2 billion over 10 years, it's just so that you can do tax cuts for the richest people in the country. And it's just sick.
It's sick. It's sick.

Speaker 1 You know that the day that you started Air America, I've told you this before, but I'll tell you again, I don't care.

Speaker 1 I bought a radio to listen to Air America Radio so that I could listen to your first episode of Air America Radio.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 1 I got a piece of pizza at 43rd and 11th, and then I put the batteries in the radio and I listened.

Speaker 2 Wow, you are a nerd.

Speaker 2 It was a

Speaker 2 but that's so am I. So I'm a political nerd, too.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So there you are.

Speaker 1 Senator Al Franken, everybody. The residence is on Netflix.
Al's going to stick around. Uh, we'll be right back with Oscar Katsuka.

Speaker 12 Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

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Speaker 1 Please welcome to the stage Otsuko Katsuka.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes. Hello.
hi.

Speaker 9 Hi. Thanks for being here.
Hello, beautifuls. Hello.
Hi. Hello.
An honor. Hi, how's it going?

Speaker 2 Hey.

Speaker 9 So good to see you. Good to see you, too.
It's been so long. It's been so long.

Speaker 1 In fact,

Speaker 1 we know the last time we saw each other. Right.
Because the last time we saw each other, I left my jacket at your house.

Speaker 9 Yes, and I've been talking about it forever and I forgot it today, too. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 9 To bring it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Eight months ago, I said, oh, I'll pick it up next week.

Speaker 9 And then you were in like a survivor. Yeah.
no but yes yeah it was a long time ago yes you know time

Speaker 9 it's good to see you great to see you too and you have a Hulu special yes I do have a Hulu special coming out in June Disney plus internationally yes

Speaker 2 maybe if I say I saw your last special thank you so much for watching I saw your last special and it was terrific Thank you and I saw it with my daughter and her 11-year-old son who who loved it.

Speaker 9 Yeah, that's the thing. A lot of children, a lot of parents have their children watch my shows.

Speaker 9 And I'm like, I'm not, I think because they're like, oh, look at her haircut.

Speaker 9 She's so family-friendly.

Speaker 9 So wholesome. Like six-year-olds will be at my shows.
And I'm like, I'm not wholesome. My family is parasite, the movie.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 9 There is mental illness. There is, you know, undocumented immigrants.
You know, there's all kinds of stuff going on.

Speaker 2 Magical rocks.

Speaker 9 Magical rocks.

Speaker 9 What is magical rocks? Oh, was that in... That's in Parasite.

Speaker 2 Oh, I don't remember. That's in Magical Rock.

Speaker 9 I don't remember that part. Was that a calming part?

Speaker 9 Was that a calming part in the movie? Did you watch Parasite?

Speaker 2 I also watched Parasite and also don't remember that.

Speaker 9 I remember, yeah.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 1 there's like a stone that has properties.

Speaker 1 Am I crazy?

Speaker 9 That's the part you took away from a movie where there's murder and right people having to run away. We're talking the same parasite, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 No, for sure. Like the Korean family? Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 9 Okay. Yeah, no, we all take away from things different things, you know?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 right? Yes. Yes.

Speaker 9 Yes, we

Speaker 9 are.

Speaker 2 It's imbued with proper.

Speaker 1 It has properties.

Speaker 2 That's right. Hey.
That's right.

Speaker 1 So you filmed your special on November 9th.

Speaker 9 Yes, I did.

Speaker 1 Yes, yeah. And that was an interesting time.

Speaker 9 It was. It was.
I said, why me? You know, who's, it's like, everyone was like, well, this is, this will be good, you know, because people will need it. I said, yeah, people will.

Speaker 2 How about my feelings?

Speaker 9 Who's making the comedian laugh?

Speaker 1 You're Pagliacci.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I know exactly.

Speaker 2 Or whatever.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 9 That's right.

Speaker 2 Do you know this story?

Speaker 2 Yes, not everybody.

Speaker 1 Pagliachi. But Doctor, I'm Pagliac.
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2 What is going on tonight?

Speaker 9 Thank you. It's an education.

Speaker 1 It's very interactive.

Speaker 1 Yes, but Doctor, I'm paglio pagliach pagliachi i never know whether to say it correctly or like trash from long island because i want to say pagliachi you know what i mean like i want to say it yeah long island style

Speaker 9 yeah pagliachi pagliachi who are we talking about he's a clown it's another subplot and parasite he keeps bringing up

Speaker 9 no it's so um yeah but honestly Election week, you know, so it happened on Tuesday, right? The elections, and I was shooting my special on Saturday.

Speaker 9 But But honestly, remember that week, like every day since after the elections, it felt like four weeks had passed. Yeah.
So it actually worked to my advantage.

Speaker 9 Like people had forgotten by the time Saturday rolled around. Or like they were, they were like, we do not want to talk about it, you know?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I loved your previous special. Thank you.
Which was a lot about

Speaker 2 your.

Speaker 1 I've seen, I now don't know if I'm confusing specials, but this was special, a lot about your mother.

Speaker 9 I was going to say rocks or stones, magical stones. No, yes, it's about my mother.
Yes, it's about my mother. About an intruder that came to our house.

Speaker 2 Yes, the intruder.

Speaker 9 Three times in the same day. Yes, there was an intruder that came to my house three times in the same day.
So I made that like the three acts. And then in the end, how we ultimately fought him off.

Speaker 2 Or, yeah.

Speaker 1 This is a special. How did you figure out what to talk about in this special if you couldn't rely on somebody trying to break into your house?

Speaker 9 I know, right? Right. That's why comedians are always like, oh, I gotta go and bungee jump or I gotta go to Peru to find stories.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Some people go on reality shows. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 Right?

Speaker 9 And I don't blame you, you know, but sometimes like your family has enough secrets. Like I said, my family is like parasite the movie and that, you know, there was always more to uncover.

Speaker 9 Like I found out my grandma had technically kidnapped me. when I was a kid.

Speaker 9 My grandma is my best friend. She raised me.
And Ira Glass helped me figure out the truth this year. And so that's in my new special.

Speaker 2 He's a good person to go to for that kind of a thing.

Speaker 1 He's very soothing voice.

Speaker 9 Very soothing voice, very non-judgmental. He'll just say it to you like it is, you know, with he'll just, he just, he just was like, well, I did the research at SCO, and your grandma did technically

Speaker 9 kidnap you, and you could still press charges if you want, is what he said.

Speaker 9 Very helpful, very calm, you know.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Huh.

Speaker 9 All right. I'm not going to.
No, no.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 You like your your grandma.

Speaker 9 She's my best friend.

Speaker 1 Right, so why would you want to do that?

Speaker 9 Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
And what, for money?

Speaker 9 Her money is my money.

Speaker 9 This does pay, right? I told her.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 I mean.

Speaker 1 Now, in the time we've taken up to catch up with Otsuko, more and more news has happened.

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 1 Which is why we're going to quiz both of you about this week's news and the other headlines we maybe haven't covered yet in a segment we're calling News It or Lose It.

Speaker 2 Is that a recurring feature?

Speaker 1 If we do it a second time, it will be.

Speaker 9 So we gotta make a good.

Speaker 2 So it's really

Speaker 2 cheering for it, I thought.

Speaker 1 They're just well trained.

Speaker 1 Question number one, which famous baseball player and civil rights icon did the Trump administration delete from the Department of Defense website this week, adding the letters DEI to his page's URL.

Speaker 2 Wow. Enola Gay.

Speaker 1 That's a good guess because they did remove Enola Gay from the Department of Defense website because it had the word gay in it.

Speaker 2 Wow. It just said oopsie.

Speaker 9 It's so hard to keep up. I mean, we can just name anyone, right? Now, oh, well, we've already lost.
I see the sad face. Okay, never mind.

Speaker 1 The correct answer is Jackie Robinson.

Speaker 1 He served in the Army during World War II.

Speaker 1 The White House subsequently reinstated Robinson's page on Wednesday with a Pentagon press secretary, telling the press, everyone at the Defense Department loves Jackie Robinson.

Speaker 2 We made a mistake.

Speaker 1 No, they didn't get. They didn't wait.

Speaker 2 Let's not go crazy.

Speaker 1 Next question: Governor Gavin Newsom sent what to approximately 100 California CEOs, including tech leaders, along with a note that said, If you ever need anything, I'm a phone call away.

Speaker 9 Al, this is on you.

Speaker 2 I'm here to. Enola Gay? No.

Speaker 1 Did not send the World War II bomber, the Enola Gay,

Speaker 1 the decommissioned World War II bomber that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, it was a burner phone.

Speaker 1 It was a burner phone. Just to say, hey, call me.
You know, he's available, I guess.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 So he gave each of them a burner phone? Yeah. Okay.
I think it was like a bit.

Speaker 1 I was like,

Speaker 1 you can reach him, you know?

Speaker 2 Because he cares about business.

Speaker 9 Oh, you think you know someone.

Speaker 1 Now, Otuka, I do have a question for you, which is, where are you with phones? Are you ready to switch to

Speaker 1 a flip phone? Are you sick of the phones?

Speaker 9 I am not sick of the phones. I'm actually,

Speaker 9 yeah, I'm actually kind of pro cell phone addiction a little bit because, you know, like it's what's the alternative? Your own brain and your thoughts? You know, and so that's

Speaker 9 that's terrifying. And so, right? Because the depression commercials are always like people are like, I'm depressed in the commercials, but none of them have a phone in their hand.

Speaker 9 What are these people with depression in the commercials? What are they doing? They're always outdoors,

Speaker 9 getting lost in a park. Yes, someone give them a phone.

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 9 But flip phones, yeah, that counts. Words,

Speaker 9 it's still distraction.

Speaker 1 I like my phone too, although I think it's bad for me.

Speaker 1 Next up, during his unhinged trip to the Kennedy Center this week, Donald Trump raved about Betty Buckley's performance in what famous Broadway musical?

Speaker 2 Ooh. I'll provide a hint.

Speaker 9 Okay. All white cast, yeah?

Speaker 1 Probably.

Speaker 9 But no, I'm just thinking, but that's already a lot of musicals.

Speaker 1 It's a kind of musical where you'd make a lot of memories.

Speaker 9 A lot of memories. Memory cats.

Speaker 2 Correct.

Speaker 9 Oh, he likes cats. He likes cats.
He is unhinged.

Speaker 1 He also has previously talked about, we've talked about this on the show, that he's previously talked about Music Man.

Speaker 1 And that's a musical about a con artist

Speaker 1 who comes to a small town, inspires them with a vision of a more perfect past, and then ultimately to try to steal from them, but then has a kind of an awakening.

Speaker 1 And I don't, I don't really remember the details. Uh, but isn't that interesting? That is Donald Trump's one of his favorite musicals is a musical about a con artist.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't think he's very reflective.

Speaker 1 It is, it makes sense, but he's not really self-aware.

Speaker 2 It's a great musical, though.

Speaker 1 Sure, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 Music Man or Katz, which one? If you had to watch one for the rest of your life,

Speaker 2 Music Man, Music Man, it's got a plot, but Katz is like unexpected.

Speaker 9 Every time for me, I've watched it, and every time I'm still still like aghast, like what?

Speaker 9 What do you mean? And so

Speaker 9 I like that surprise element of cats every time, you know? Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I like that Music Man has some rap elements.

Speaker 1 They're not called that, but it's kind of what it is. Yeah.
River City.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. He's Trump specifically talked about

Speaker 1 Buckley's turn, a Tony winning turn in 1983 of Grizabella.

Speaker 1 Our Our fascist president.

Speaker 2 What a funny thing.

Speaker 9 Grizabella, is that another musical?

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 1 that's a cat.

Speaker 9 Oh, one of the cats. Is Grizabella.
See, I'm aghast. Again,

Speaker 9 I don't remember Grizzabella or Grizzella.

Speaker 9 By the way, that's the only movie, Cats, that my husband has ever walked out on. Oh, really? Yeah.
It was like a 1 p.m. showing.
And he knows what it's about.

Speaker 9 But like five minutes in, they're going, jellico, cats, so jellico. My husband stands up and goes, I can't anymore.

Speaker 2 He leaves.

Speaker 9 There's children in there. It's a matinee show.
There's children in there. There's children in there.
He goes to see that. Remember that Fox news movie, Bombshell or something? Remember?

Speaker 9 Yeah, he went to go watch that instead.

Speaker 9 Yeah, anyway.

Speaker 1 I've walked out of one musical in my life, and it's, I'm actually thinking to admit this for the first time.

Speaker 1 I do think it's damning. It was a West End production of Rent.

Speaker 2 Just walked right out.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry. It's been a long time.

Speaker 1 Do we have to pretend it's good?

Speaker 9 Someone's clapping. Someone's clapping.
Wait, why? Because

Speaker 1 we're finally ready to talk about it.

Speaker 9 Wow, look at look at what just started. Okay.

Speaker 2 Not see it.

Speaker 1 Never saw it. Never saw it.

Speaker 9 It was your first time watching it, and you were like, this plot sucks, kind of thing.

Speaker 1 I can't remember. I was 20.
I think it was 20 years old. And

Speaker 2 there was a whole world to explore. I didn't, but

Speaker 2 I could have.

Speaker 1 Next up, speaking of Broadway, New York Post critic Johnny Olensky wrote a recent column complaining about the $921 ticket price for Denzel Washington's Broadway play.

Speaker 1 The show then took away his free ticket. So he bought his own ticket and wrote the headline, blank, Denzel Washington's dull Broadway show isn't worth a $921 ticket.

Speaker 2 What is the show?

Speaker 9 I don't know, but so he had a free ticket that cost that much at at first?

Speaker 1 So he thought the ticket price was too high.

Speaker 1 He was going to go review the play.

Speaker 1 They took away his free ticket. So he bought a ticket, went to the show, and wrote a review that says, not worth the price.

Speaker 2 Wow. And a $921 ticket.
Yeah.

Speaker 9 Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't be worth the price after just $120, anything, right? Any show.
But anyway.

Speaker 9 Do you know this?

Speaker 9 It's Shakespeare. Shall we say it?

Speaker 1 It's Othello.

Speaker 2 Oh, Othello.

Speaker 1 and I think it's with Jake Gyllenhal. It's Jake Gyllenhal and Denzel Washington in Othello, and it's $921.

Speaker 1 That's right. You could either get an iPad

Speaker 2 or you can see this.

Speaker 1 From a racist backlash over casting Rachel Ziegler to Ziegler's pro-Palestinian comments to the protesters demonstrating on the Walk of Fame this week, Disney's live-action Snow White has been fraught with controversy.

Speaker 1 So, what better way to distract us than by sending what adorable woodland animal animal down the film's premiere red carpet?

Speaker 1 They sent an animal down the red carpet.

Speaker 2 What kind of animal was it?

Speaker 1 Was it A, a sheep?

Speaker 1 Was it B, a rabbit? Was it C, a deer? Or was it D,

Speaker 1 a D, a

Speaker 1 moose?

Speaker 9 You're like, or is that D, a doe?

Speaker 2 A deer?

Speaker 9 I mean, it's got to be deer because,

Speaker 9 you know, that's in the movie. A deer is in the movie.

Speaker 2 Probably.

Speaker 9 And a bunny, too, but bunny's more underwhelming.

Speaker 9 Right? Maybe, maybe.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's a bunny. Oh.
It's a bunny. Oh, okay.
A rabbit, in fact.

Speaker 9 Sorry to.

Speaker 1 It's a rabbit that has a million Instagram followers.

Speaker 2 Why? Because we live in hell. There it is.

Speaker 9 No way.

Speaker 9 Not to be like a jealous hater, but like, why her?

Speaker 9 Why a million followers? Why her?

Speaker 1 Well, if you don't get it, you don't get it.

Speaker 9 I guess so.

Speaker 1 I mean, look at that rabbit, that's why. That's a star.

Speaker 9 Oh, I didn't know she owned the sweater.

Speaker 2 Look at that. Look at that.

Speaker 9 Okay, I don't know. Look at that.

Speaker 9 That stance is nice. But a lot of rabbits, no offense, again, but kind of they look alike, right?

Speaker 9 Am I crazy?

Speaker 2 Is that a real rabbit or is it a...

Speaker 2 It's AI. It's AI.
It's AI.

Speaker 1 No, it's a real rabbit.

Speaker 2 It's a real rabbit. Okay.
Okay, yeah. All right.
Cute rabbit.

Speaker 9 It did distract you. You're right.
It did do something.

Speaker 1 Final question. Which one of these is not a medical symptom the newly returned astronauts can start recovering from after spending nine months in space?

Speaker 1 Which is not a condition they experienced upon returning to Earth? Is it A, chicken legs? legs?

Speaker 1 Is it B, puffy face?

Speaker 2 Is it C, a little too tall?

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Or is it D, all of the above?

Speaker 2 Which would mean nothing. Which is not.
Wait, hold on.

Speaker 9 Hold on. What doesn't make sense? Wait, what's chicken? Can I ask what chicken legs is? I don't know what that is.

Speaker 1 They're just delicious.

Speaker 2 They've come down. I think it means skinny.

Speaker 1 Skinny legs. Like they got skinny legs because they weren't running around up there because of the space.

Speaker 9 Okay, so okay, so skinny legs or you come back too tall or you have a puffy face or all of them are wrong?

Speaker 2 Or all of them are right. I'm not quite sure.

Speaker 9 You're not sure. Okay.

Speaker 2 Because it starts off with which one is not correct. Right.

Speaker 2 Or none of the above.

Speaker 2 Hey,

Speaker 9 are you glad you flew in for this show?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 Hey, this is going to be a recurring segment. Everybody, be cool.
It's going gonna end beautifully.

Speaker 9 No, it's good. It's good.
It's good.

Speaker 1 So, we're gonna.

Speaker 2 How about this? We're gonna need a moment to talk about this.

Speaker 1 Not, not all of the above.

Speaker 2 We got this. We got this.

Speaker 2 Okay, so you're gonna answer.

Speaker 1 Oh, D. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 Yes!

Speaker 2 T-Morph!

Speaker 1 Incredible. They got puffy faces, skinny legs, and they increased their height by 3%.

Speaker 2 Wow, that's incredible. Wow.
Yeah. That seems cool.
Yeah. What a drag, though.
You think those folks.

Speaker 1 Being stuck up there for nine months? Yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Too long.
Yeah. Too long.
I feel like about eight months too long. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. They were supposed to be up there for eight days.

Speaker 2 Eight days. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Being up there for nine months.

Speaker 2 What a delay.

Speaker 1 You know, sometimes you go to the airport and it's like they delay the flight in like 10-minute increments and all of a sudden you've been there all day.

Speaker 1 Think about how bad a mood you are at the end of that day.

Speaker 1 Now imagine you just never leave the airport for nine months.

Speaker 9 Oh, and you come back taller, but also less hot.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 9 no thanks. Yeah, and not to mention your personality, right? Like, I would be cool if I could the whole time work on my personality too, but you probably come back not as, not as nice, right?

Speaker 1 Everybody was so weird after the pandemic for like a year and a half.

Speaker 9 Oh, no way. So, yeah.

Speaker 1 They're just, they're in, they're in quarantine up there.

Speaker 9 Oh, so all you get is high.

Speaker 9 Okay, no, thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Otsuko and Al, thanks for playing News It or Lose It. The winner is Otsuko.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 2 Al, you were robbed. It was close.

Speaker 1 It was close. It was really close.
It was really close.

Speaker 2 It was a whisker. It was a whisker.

Speaker 1 A whisker on Grizabella.

Speaker 9 I am upset for you.

Speaker 1 When we come back, it's time for a blast from the past.

Speaker 12 Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming

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Speaker 14 I'm Sarah Gibson Tuttle and I started Olive and June because let's be real, we all deserve to have gorgeous nails, but who wants to spend a fortune?

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Speaker 20 That's code hellogel20 for 20% off your first mani system at oliveinjune.com slash hellogel20.

Speaker 1 Right, we're back.

Speaker 1 All right, love it or leave it, listeners. You're an audience of refined, exquisite tastes, so we're thrilled to share our newest podcast from Crooked.
It's Shadow Kingdom, God's Banker.

Speaker 1 In the summer of 1982, the Vatican's top moneyman was found dead.

Speaker 1 Roberto Calvi was at the center of a prolific money laundering scheme that put him in the crosshairs of the Sicilian mob, a secret far-right chapter of the Freemasons and the Catholic Church.

Speaker 1 His death was ruled a suicide, but 40 years later, host Niccolo Mainoni got a tip that there was more to the story.

Speaker 1 Join him as he unspools the threads of this immersive truth story to answer the question, who killed God's banker?

Speaker 1 The first two episodes of Shadow Kingdom are available right now, wherever you get your podcast, or better yet, join our Friends of the Pod community to binge all of the episodes right now at crooked.com slash friends or in the Shadow Kingdom Apple podcast feed.

Speaker 1 Also, love it or leave it, live in DC. The tickets are on sale right now.
Join me April 24th. We're back at the Lincoln Theater.

Speaker 1 Truly, some of my favorite shows we've ever done have been at the Lincoln Theater. Excited.
We're back because it's around the correspondence dinner. There's VIP tickets.

Speaker 1 We hang before the show.

Speaker 1 The tickets are actually going very fast. We haven't even shared our guest lineup yet.
So please come to the show, crooked.com/slash events.

Speaker 1 And we'll be back at Dynasty next week. So if you're here in LA, come to the show next week at Dynasty.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 1 To close out the show, in honor of the Snow Snow White reboot, we're going to share one thing we'd each like to reboot in a segment we're calling Rebootalicious.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Come on, now. Oh, come on.
Look at that. That's horrible.

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 2 Rebootalicious.

Speaker 1 Here's how it works. We're each going to share one thing we think we might want to reboot.

Speaker 1 Al, take us away. What's something you would like to reboot?

Speaker 2 MSNBC. Oh.

Speaker 1 Okay, just start it again.

Speaker 2 Well, I'd like to animate it.

Speaker 1 Oh, an animated one.

Speaker 2 That's fun. Oh, that's fun.

Speaker 2 Greenlit.

Speaker 1 Yes. That's fun.
Like in a kind of like a Pixar style or like Miyazaki? Sort of like sort of lyrical and magical or very, very like kind of just big eyes and cute little faces?

Speaker 2 Lyrical and magical.

Speaker 1 Oh, cool. So like all of a sudden Chris Hayes is like a big hippo.

Speaker 2 Something like that. Oh, that'd be fun, huh? All right.

Speaker 1 Osuko, what's something that you would like to reboot?

Speaker 9 Oh, probably the brutalist.

Speaker 2 Already.

Speaker 9 Already. Like,

Speaker 9 yes. Because why wait so long? Just do it again

Speaker 9 while it's still in conversation.

Speaker 1 You think just a new version of the Brutalist?

Speaker 9 With the acceptance speech.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Oh, and

Speaker 9 but.

Speaker 2 With what?

Speaker 9 With the acceptance speech by AGM Burlington.

Speaker 9 But animated

Speaker 2 too.

Speaker 9 Also animated.

Speaker 1 Also animated.

Speaker 1 I feel like there's actually, I was a speech writer and I learned something from that acceptance speech because I just never thought about it, which is if you ever basically either in word or if you if you say some version of I have something important to say,

Speaker 1 but you have nothing,

Speaker 1 like you've actually genuinely prepared nothing for what comes after that, you fucked up.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 That's a big fuck up. For sure.
Because you don't, because it's an unforced error.

Speaker 2 And then, and then go, but wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not done.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's awesome.

Speaker 1 It's actually awesome.

Speaker 9 See, it was an iconic moment, and I feel like, you know.

Speaker 1 We could do it again.

Speaker 2 Back to one, everybody.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 9 Well, those were our thoughts.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 you, John?

Speaker 1 Oh, I want to reboot the video store/slash blockbuster.

Speaker 1 I think, here's, but here's why. Like,

Speaker 1 this was

Speaker 1 Chris Hayes wrote that book about attention, and it was great. I listened to it at 2x speed while watching something else.
And

Speaker 1 just kidding.

Speaker 1 I did listen to it in the car, but I focused.

Speaker 1 But he talks about how you used to go to a video store, you would drive, and you would pick one thing, and you'd be like, this is exciting. We're going to watch this one thing.

Speaker 1 And then you would drive it home, and you would have a night, and it would be surrounded by the idea of watching this one thing. And it was so fun.
It was so exciting. A movie was a thing.

Speaker 1 It was a big deal. You were going to pick your movie and go home and experience your movie and then drive it back.
And now it's like,

Speaker 1 I don't know, should we watch anything from any moment ever through all of recorded time? Nah, there's nothing.

Speaker 1 I was thinking about what I wanted to watch, which is of anything ever in all of recorded time. And I can't think of anything.

Speaker 1 So I guess I'll just watch four episodes of The Real Housewives of New York before I go to bed.

Speaker 9 Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 And so, and it's, and honestly,

Speaker 1 fucking moi, incredible, incredible. I love every single, I mean, I can't believe how good it is.

Speaker 9 Oh, I'm just realizing you're not rebooting it as a movie.

Speaker 2 No, I'm removing it.

Speaker 1 I'm rebooting the concept.

Speaker 2 I just think we need to find a way to reboot the concept. Sorry, this whole time I was like, oh, I'm following the plot.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I don't think we need a physical video store that you drive to, but we do need to reboot the concept of like everyone is going to choose one special thing to experience and treat it with respect and pay attention to it and then be done with it.

Speaker 1 You know? Yeah. That was a good way of living.
Al remembers. You're older.

Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 I do remember that.

Speaker 2 Hey, hey, yeah.

Speaker 1 I remember too.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I was so young.

Speaker 9 I thought he was talking about a movie

Speaker 9 that he wanted to make.

Speaker 9 No, but also, good idea.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that's what I want to reboot.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 1 Al Franken, thank you so much for being here. Oh, thank you.

Speaker 2 So nice.

Speaker 1 Osco Costca.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 1 Check out The Residence. Check out Osco's new special on Hulu.
That is our show. We will see you next week at Dynasty Time Brender.

Speaker 1 If you're in Wisconsin or in Chicago or anywhere around it, come say hi to me over this weekend. There are 591 days until the midterm elections.
Have a great night and have a great weekend.

Speaker 1 Love or Leave It is a crooked media production. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett and Lee Eisenberg.
Kendra James is our executive producer. Bill McGrath is our producer.

Speaker 1 And Kennedy Hill is our associate producer. Hallie Keeper is our head writer.
Sarah Lazarus, Jocelyn Kaufman, Peter Miller, Alan Pierre, and Will Miles are our writers. Jordan Cantor is our editor.

Speaker 1 Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis provide audio support. Stephen Cologne is our audio engineer.
Our theme song is written and performed by Schersher.

Speaker 1 Thanks to our designer, Sammy Koderna-Rees, for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast.

Speaker 1 And thanks to our digital producers, David Tolles, Claudia Shang, Mia Kalman, Delan Villanueva, and Rachel Gaeski for filming and editing video each week.

Speaker 1 Our head of production is Matt DeGroote, our head of programming is Madeline Herringer, and our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

Speaker 14 I'm Sarah Gibson Tuttle, and I started Olive in June because let's be real, we all deserve to have gorgeous nails, but who wants to spend a fortune?

Speaker 17 That's why I created the gel mani system.

Speaker 10 So you can have that salon quality gel manicure right at home.

Speaker 17 And guess what? The best part, each mani only costs $2.

Speaker 10 And here's a little something extra: head over to oliveinjune.com and get 20% off your first gel mani system with code hellogel20.

Speaker 20 That's code HelloGel20 for 20% off your first Manny system at oliveinjune.com slash hellogel20.

Speaker 22 Being an American right now is a wild ride. The headlines come fast, but what do they actually mean for people's lives?

Speaker 22 I'm Alex Wagner and on my new crooked media podcast, Runaway Country, I'm talking to people across the nation to uncover how political chaos is shaping their everyday realities.

Speaker 22 Join me and some of the smartest thinkers in politics to ask how we take back the reins of a runaway nation.

Speaker 22 Listen to Runaway Country with Alex Wagner every Thursday, wherever you get our podcasts or watch full episodes on YouTube.