Is Biden Quiet Quitting?

Speaker 1 Comcast Business can help turn your small business into a connected, secure, modern business. It's how restaurants become reliably up-and-running neighborhood favorites.

Speaker 1 How healthcare offices become the data-protecting caregivers that we all depend on. And how wealth management firms become cyber-securing guardians of your information.

Speaker 1 With reliable connectivity, enhanced cybersecurity, and Wi-Fi backup, your business can stay connected and get threat ready with Comcast Business. Powering possibilities.

Speaker 3 Call today to learn more about our great offers.

Speaker 4 Whenever I need to send roses that are guaranteed to make someone's day, the only place I trust is 1-800flowers.com.

Speaker 4 With 1-800 Flowers, my friends and family always receive stunning, high-quality bouquets that they absolutely love.

Speaker 4 Right now, when you buy a dozen multicolored roses, 1-800 Flowers will double your bouquet to two dozen roses. To claim this special double roses offer, go to 1-800flowers.com/slash SXM.

Speaker 4 That's 1-800-Flowers.com/slash SXM.

Speaker 2 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm John Lovett. I'm Tom Evitor.
On today's show, Joe Biden yields the spotlight to Donald Trump in the final weeks of his presidency.

Speaker 2 We'll dig into the strange dynamic and talk about what Biden has and hasn't been doing.

Speaker 2 We'll also talk about the great drone mystery that's taken the nation by storm and Trump's promise to make daylight saving time permanent, which might not be such a crazy idea according to noted circadian rhythm expert John Lovett.

Speaker 2 That's right.

Speaker 2 Then Congressman RoConna stops by to talk about collaborating with Elon Musk and Trump and how Democrats in the upcoming Congress should strike the balance between resisting and getting things done.

Speaker 2 But first, Donald Trump unexpectedly took questions from reporters Monday morning at Mar-a-Lago. As he usually does at these things, he talked about all kinds of shit without making too much news.

Speaker 2 But one thing that got a lot of attention, including ours, was his response to a question about lawsuits against media figures.

Speaker 2 We found out over the weekend that ABC News will contribute $15 million to Trump's post-presidency foundation and pay another million in legal fees to settle a defamation lawsuit the president-elect brought against them.

Speaker 2 The lawsuit came after George Stephanopoulos mistakenly said on air that Trump had, quote, been found liable

Speaker 2 A reporter at the Monday presser asked Trump whether he's considering expanding his legal strategy to include other media outlets that he believes defamed him. Let's listen.

Speaker 5 I think you have to do it because they're very dishonest. I'm going to be bringing one against

Speaker 5 the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time. And then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points.

Speaker 5 And it became the biggest story all over the world. That was the Des Moines Register.

Speaker 5 And it was their parent. And in my opinion, it was fraud.
And it was election interference. And we'll probably be filing a major lawsuit against them today or tomorrow.
We're filing one on 60 Minutes.

Speaker 5 You know about that. We're involved in one which has been going on for a while and very successfully against Bob Woodward, where he

Speaker 5 didn't quote me properly from the tapes.

Speaker 2 I just want to note that there's nothing defamatory about 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, where Donald Trump was not part of his problem in the interview.

Speaker 6 John, there's nothing defamatory in any of the things that he describes.

Speaker 2 Let's start with ABC then. What was your reaction to the news that they settled? And why do you guys think they did?

Speaker 6 I was surprised by how

Speaker 6 mad and disappointed I was when I saw it. I couldn't believe it.
I thought I must be missing something to see them. This is Disney we're talking about.

Speaker 6 Now, you might remember Disney famously tried to avoid facing consequences when someone died of an allergy at Disney World by claiming that in the Disney plus terms of service, they'd been indemnified.

Speaker 2 I do not remember that.

Speaker 6 Disney has lawyers. They are famous.
They are famously brutal lawyers. And so to see them capitulate in this way.
And by the way, if I got any of that wrong, Disney, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 I'm just a.

Speaker 6 Do not revoke his fast pass. Yeah, and don't come after me.

Speaker 6 Don't come after me. But like, Disney knows how to fight a frivolous or false law suit if it wants to, and it is choosing not to in this case.
And that is very disappointing.

Speaker 7 And especially in a defamation suit against a public figure, not just a public figure, maybe the highest public figure when it comes to sort of like the political milieu.

Speaker 7 No, obviously the highest figure, the president of the United States, the incoming president. You're supposed to have a lot more wiggle room when you're talking about that person.

Speaker 7 You have to prove there was actual malice in what you said. And George made a mistake.

Speaker 7 He said that Trump had been found liable for rape when it was actually sexual abuse.

Speaker 2 Do you offer context there? Well,

Speaker 6 that is like...

Speaker 6 Even that, I think, is being

Speaker 6 generous towards Trump interpretation of what Stephanopoulos said. Because yes, it is true technically that it was for sexual abuse and not rape.

Speaker 6 Even the judge in the case made a point of saying this is a narrow legal definition. And by the common use of the word rape, it could apply in this case.

Speaker 6 And so there's an argument to be made that this isn't, what Stephanopoulos said wasn't even incorrupt.

Speaker 6 His interpretation of the conclusion of the court is that it was liable for this, even if the technical legal wording might be different. So like it is all eminently defensible.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 And also with a public figure, this should not be a hard case.

Speaker 2 It signals, it's very chilling.

Speaker 7 It signals that there's some momentum behind all these cases. It signals that there is this, I don't know, there's this evidence.

Speaker 7 Like we're seeing all these pieces of evidence that CEOs and corporations are preemptively bowing down to Trump. It's Mark Zuckerberg cutting a million-dollar check to the inauguration.

Speaker 7 It's Tim Cook having dinner with Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 Ted Sarandos is on his way there now, too, to Mar-a-Lago to meet with him.

Speaker 7 Yeah, and look,

Speaker 7 you know, I think this is probably going to have a lot lot of news outlets worried.

Speaker 7 And this would be unthinkable outside of this context, that a news outlet would settle for $15 million, given the context we just talked about, how what Stephanopoulos said was completely defensible and how Trump is a public figure.

Speaker 7 It's very worrisome.

Speaker 2 So I dug into this just to see if I was missing something about the case.

Speaker 2 So what happened is Trump said that the damages were too much money and he shouldn't know that much because he didn't rape her.

Speaker 2 That was his contention when he filed a second suit. Judge Kaplan said, The finding that Ms.

Speaker 2 Carroll failed to prove that she was raped within the meaning of the New York penal law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr.

Speaker 2 Trump raped her, as many people commonly understand the word rape. Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr.
Trump, in fact, did exactly that.

Speaker 2 That then led to a Washington Post headline that said, judge clarifies, yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll.

Speaker 2 Then Stephanopoulos does the interview with Nancy Mace where he said, oh, he was found to have raped her. And Mace says no, and they go back and forth.

Speaker 2 And George says, oh, let's put up the Washington Post headline on the screen.

Speaker 2 So with all that in mind, the standard of actual malice is you need to, one, make a demonstrably false statement of fact, two, know that the statement was false or either know that it's false or had reckless disregard for its falsity, and three, damage his reputation.

Speaker 2 I got to tell you, two and three.

Speaker 6 That's the thing is, it's like, A, it can be interpreted as being accurate. B, he wasn't intending and purposely misleading anybody.

Speaker 2 Relying on the judge's words and the Washington Post.

Speaker 6 And see, it's not even clear that there were any damages to Donald Trump, right? Like all of this, the lawyers at Disney are well aware of.

Speaker 2 Right. The question is, why?

Speaker 7 And was it because they did their own kind of internal digging and they found something in the the discovery process in an email or in a document or somewhere that they thought, okay, we do not want this to go to a deposition and have George sit down and have this come out in a court filing?

Speaker 7 Is it because ABC or Disney is thinking, let's just patch this up and fix our relationship with Trump now and not get iced out for the next few years? We don't know. Yeah.

Speaker 2 One possibility is if there was something in all the documents where someone at ABC News, one of George's producers, was like, hey, by the way, you're not supposed to say rape.

Speaker 2 You know, like, I don't know if that's true at all, but I'm just saying like, that's one possibility where, because Trump was set to be deposed. Stephanopoulos was set to be deposed.

Speaker 2 They settled before. Also, head of ABC News was at Mar-a-Lago also a week before meeting with Susie Wiles.

Speaker 6 They said it didn't have anything to do with the settlement, but it's also like, and all of that, like, it's also there, it's a charitable donation. They're going to write some of it off.

Speaker 6 It would have cost them millions of dollars to defend the suit, right? Like the delta between the big 16 million, because you're going to pay a million dollars for the legal fees, right?

Speaker 6 The delta between the 16 million they're gonna spend versus the millions they'd spend if it went to court plus the cost to their reputation of fighting this in public the damage right like i'm sure they're thinking about all of that but there was a time when news organizations understood that they had an obligation to the public and by the way to their own journalists that they know that if even if they make a good faith mistake which can happen, that they will have lawyers behind them defending them because people make mistakes.

Speaker 6 People say the wrong thing. People are allowed to get things wrong without the threat of a lawsuit.

Speaker 6 We have really good, that's a great thing about the First Amendment and the way we do defamation in this country. You have to prove malice.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and look, I think you could make an argument that it was the best business decision for Disney because it's chump change to them.

Speaker 2 But what happens when you are a journalist or media outlet that doesn't have ABC's resources, doesn't have the backing of Disney, right?

Speaker 2 Also, you know, the New York Times reported over the weekend that Trump, Pete Hegseth, Cash Patel have threatened other journalists and pundits with defamation lawsuits, including the New Yorker for their Pete Hegseth story that ended up going to print anyway.

Speaker 2 And, you know, for Patel, it was Olivia Troy, former Trump administration official who was on TV, who said something about him that he was lying or something like that.

Speaker 2 And then, you know, and now you got Trump out there saying, I'm going to just

Speaker 2 going to sue Anne Seltzer for giving me a bad poll, which I mean, I don't think that's, I don't think that's going to fly. You want to go for the Pulitzer organization? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, that's right. What are you talking about? The Pulitzer organization for giving the Post and the Times.
Pulitzer? Pulitzer's for the Russia reporting, Russia investigation. Suing everybody.

Speaker 6 And like, look, do all of these come to, do they actually pursue any of them? Does Trump's lawyers talk him out of some of these and not others, whatever?

Speaker 6 But like the effect of that, like the chilling effect of this is real. Like they're raising the cost of investigating these people.
They're raising the cost of doing journalism.

Speaker 6 And there are going to be places that just decide it's not worth it. There are going to be people that decide it's not worth it.

Speaker 6 Somebody like Olivia Troy, there's a lot of people that could speak out. about what they saw inside the Trump administration that have it.
They're making it more costly.

Speaker 6 They're making it more dangerous.

Speaker 2 Even when I was like taking notes on this and thinking of like rereading what Judge Kaplan said, I was like, can I do this?

Speaker 2 Is this like it's it, the chilling effect is real because you start thinking, oh shit, I don't want to get,

Speaker 2 even if you can win the defamation lawsuit, you don't want to spend however much money on lawyers to go to, to go to court.

Speaker 6 And I mean, look, take a, just a pure fact. Donald Trump killed John Benet Ramsey.

Speaker 6 That is not something you're going to be free to say in the public sphere anymore because you say it and all of a sudden people are going to expensive bit.

Speaker 2 Right. Like people are going to like.
I don't know him. Parody.

Speaker 2 He's just a guest on the show.

Speaker 7 Get his emails just only.

Speaker 2 Anyway, it is chilling. It is very chilling.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't worry so much if I was Ann Teltzer because I think that's fine.

Speaker 2 Shouldn't we be suing Anne Telzer for giving us false hope?

Speaker 7 I would like to sue the New York Times Needle.

Speaker 2 I would like to sue

Speaker 2 Steve Kornaki's khakis.

Speaker 7 I'd love one of the Nates. Who's that?

Speaker 6 Who's the guy with the guy with

Speaker 6 the keys?

Speaker 2 The jangling keys.

Speaker 2 You got to get the 14th key and get the fuck out of here.

Speaker 6 I want to sue the American people. I've got to unlock the door to that plane, yeah.

Speaker 2 For the outcome, yeah, oh, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 6 I have some people that uh, I have some members of my tribe, the Gata tribe, I'd like to sue.

Speaker 2 It's coming for you, Andy.

Speaker 2 Anyway, it's bad. It's bad, guys.

Speaker 2 So, the purpose of Trump's appearance at Mar-a-Lago Monday morning was to announce a $100 billion investment from SoftBank, the hugely influential Japanese bank, in American AI projects.

Speaker 2 What an American story. It was more or less a standard presidential policy announcement.
The main difference being Trump isn't president yet.

Speaker 2 A fact that's getting easier and easier to forget as Joe Biden seems to be disappearing from the public stage as his term comes to an end.

Speaker 2 Over the weekend, Trump took his new bro squad to watch the Army-Navy game at the Commander Stadium just outside D.C., an event that the president sometimes attends, and Biden has attended himself in the past.

Speaker 2 No sign of him this year, though he did apparently appear at the DNC holiday party.

Speaker 2 The White House put out a memo on Sunday hinting that in the coming weeks, Biden will be announcing more pardons or commutations, doing more to protect federal land, and trying to forgive more student debt, rein in AI, and award more CHIPS Act and IRA money.

Speaker 6 It's funny to be like, Liz Cheney is like, no, no, no, yeah, protect the land.

Speaker 6 Got to keep those trees safe.

Speaker 2 No details on what we can expect or when. What do you guys think is going on here? Has Joe Biden stepped out of the spotlight or has the spotlight just moved away from Joe Biden?

Speaker 2 And what do you think it says that they had to put out that memo at all? Let's step right in.

Speaker 7 So the SoftBank thing is funny. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that SoftBank only has $30 billion on hand.
So it's not clear how they're going to invest $100 billion.

Speaker 7 I guess they're going to go to the Saudis hat in hand again and try to raise another round. That's not going to be easy because

Speaker 7 the SoftBank Vision Fund 2 included WeWork and a bunch of other companies that basically went bust.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 6 I watched the SoftBank.

Speaker 6 CEO speak, and it is this sort of funhouse mirror version of a presidential announcement because, yes, as you noted, he's not president. But in the past,

Speaker 6 when there's been a major announcement and it did involve

Speaker 6 a private sector figure speaking, they would speak about how great America is and how important it is to be in investing in the future of this great country.

Speaker 6 But instead, this guy gets up there and be like, God, this guy, Donald Trump, what a deal maker he is. It's all about Trump.
It's all about him. And so it is like.

Speaker 2 Sounds like it was pretty smart of that guy. Yeah, well, it's another example.

Speaker 6 Just more blending.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's more blending of like the private and the the public and making it less about the country and more about Donald Trump personally.

Speaker 6 That said, like, you know, Joe Biden believes in tradition and institutions, and we should only have one president at a time. And I think it's a surprising choice to allow it to be Donald Trump.

Speaker 6 But if that's what his plan is, I think it's about his long-term respect for our kind of our basic mores.

Speaker 7 I was shocked to Biden has never been in the Army-Navy game as president. That really surprised me because it's very fun.

Speaker 7 I went to one and it was a blast.

Speaker 2 We went to one and Joe Biden was there.

Speaker 7 Yeah, Joe Biden was there. It also was just down the road to Maryland as vice president.
Obama, yeah, he won his VP with Obama in 2011, but not as president. I mean,

Speaker 7 I think Trump generally is very good at using social events to show off this kind of pageantry and trappings of the presidency.

Speaker 7 He does it better than I think any president in our lifetime, better than Obama, better than Biden.

Speaker 7 Sports are sometimes part of it. There was the ultimate fighting thing he did recently with like Elon and the goon squad of like Speaker Johnson and those guys.
He went to college football games.

Speaker 7 But like Army, Navy, it's like football, wrapped in the military.

Speaker 7 And it just, it's like an obvious winner for him, which is why it's so odd that Biden wouldn't go for his last one when it's just down the road. But I get, like you said, they did it in a smart way.

Speaker 7 They brought Pete Hegseth, which kind of showed the world that he's still behind that nomination. He brought together congressional leaders.

Speaker 7 Like they had Speaker Johnson and Jon Thune in the same box with Trump, I think, plotting out strategy. Like everyone's having a good time.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 I feel like none of them want to be too far from Trump. Like Mike Johnson goes because

Speaker 2 they're about to to do the vote for Speaker and he feels like he's got it, but he doesn't want, he wants to make sure, you know, and Elon, he can't shake Elon no matter where he goes now.

Speaker 6 I do think it was, I think it was probably, probably not ultimately helpful when Pete Hexeth streaked towards the end of the game.

Speaker 6 Well, he got a little too loose, I think.

Speaker 2 He's only got cold out there. He's only got a couple more weeks to drink.
Yeah. That's right.
That's right.

Speaker 6 That's right. So, you know,

Speaker 2 get it while you can. I don't want to see it to seem like we are harping on the Army-Navy game attendance of Joe Biden or non-attendance of Joe Biden as like the issue here.

Speaker 2 Politico did a story about this last week.

Speaker 2 They said across nearly two weeks abroad since the election when he went abroad to Angola and other places, Biden spoke just seven words to the media traveling with him the entire foreign trip.

Speaker 2 He.

Speaker 7 Go fuck yours.

Speaker 2 He has yet to schedule a post-election press conference as both President Obama and President George W. Bush did when they were on their way out of office.

Speaker 2 He went to the Rose Garden to publicly praise a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, and he spoke to the press about Assad fleeing Syria. But otherwise, that's it.

Speaker 7 Well, it's also really funny. Remember 2016 when people were all worked up about the Logan Act and unauthorized diplomacy by American citizens? And now you got Trump.
Trump went to Paris.

Speaker 7 He went to Notre Dame. He met with Zelensky.
He's taking calls from foreign leaders. Justin Trudeau flew down to Mar-a-Lago for dinner.

Speaker 7 His emissaries are over in Israel right now meeting with Netanyahu talking about Gaza.

Speaker 6 You have people like Elon Musk, these are unelected, just billionaire donors having meetings with foreign heads of state on Trump's behalf.

Speaker 2 Remember during the Obama transition, how many times Barack Obama said the words while he was announcing cabinet appointees and staff, which was the only time he really went out?

Speaker 2 One president at a time, one president at a time. That was like the whole,

Speaker 2 that was the whole theme. And he's not the first to do that.
That's what they usually do. There was a couple of White House officials that went on background to Politico for the story.
And

Speaker 2 some Biden aides acknowledge the president's absent from the broader discussions about how to address Trump's coming presidency and the future of the party.

Speaker 2 They say it's rooted in two factors.

Speaker 2 One, Biden's own recognition that few are eager to hear from him and his own lingering personal belief that he doesn't owe much more to a party that unceremoniously pushed him aside.

Speaker 2 And then another White House official, former White House official, said he's been so cavalier and selfish about how he approaches the final weeks of the job, which is a lot for a former White House official.

Speaker 2 I mean, like, I get the recognition that maybe people aren't willing to hear from him is understandable that he might think that, right? The party thing, I hope, is not true, because I don't know.

Speaker 2 What do you guys think he could be doing? Quiet quitting.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think that's what we're getting.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 That seems like to be what he is doing. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Oh, instead. Yes.
Got it. You know, I.

Speaker 2 But instead of just complaining that he's not out there, I'm wondering what we think he could do. Right.

Speaker 6 I'm trying to, like, separate my, like, frustration with basically Joe Biden in his final year and culminating in that debate and hanging on that like how much we paid for having somebody who just wasn't an articulate and comprehensible messenger, not just on behalf of his own presidency, but on behalf of like progressivism, democracy, right?

Speaker 6 And like, I am very angry about that. And I'm a little bit mad at myself for not being more honest about how I felt or not seeing it as plainly, because I think we're obviously paying dearly for it.

Speaker 6 I guess what I'm more concerned about is less like, am I seeing Joe Biden enough? Maybe he's right that people don't want to hear from him.

Speaker 6 It's more like, do I feel confident right now that Joe Biden behind the scenes is thinking of every single way he can try to future-proof the White House, that he's thinking through all the different levers of powers, the kind of creative ways in which he can do everything to protect everyone from like undocumented DACA recipients to trans people to

Speaker 6 the benefits of the inflation reduction. I think they're very smart people thinking about that.
And I hope they succeed.

Speaker 6 And it sounds like from that memo the White House put out that they are thinking about the best ways to do that. But do I think Joe Biden himself is like...

Speaker 7 at command being thinking about this like right now like i don't i just honestly don't maybe he is i i i you can't tell we can't tell yeah yeah Yeah, I think on the staff level, like they're just shoving money out the door from the CHIPS Act and the IRA and trying to get as much of that spent as they can so Trump can't peel it back.

Speaker 7 They're also doing that with Ukraine. And they just pushed out a huge loan to the Ukrainians that's basically paid for by seized Russian assets, like the interest on those assets.

Speaker 7 So that's significant. They're pushing through a lot of judges.
I think he's about to beat Trump's record from the first term, the most judges confirmed. So those are things he is doing.

Speaker 7 Things he could be doing. Like, I'd love to see him say, cut off all military support for the war in Gaza.
Like, why not?

Speaker 7 Trump might turn it back on, but, like, let's stop the carnage for a couple of months and say, fuck you, Dabibi Nanyahu.

Speaker 7 Like, similarly in Syria, there's a huge opportunity right now to shape whatever comes next. We could decide to take off some sanctions, things that are politically risky, because

Speaker 7 the people in charge now have roots in terrorist organizations, but Joe Biden doesn't have to worry about

Speaker 7 politics going forward. Like, maybe they could move to close Gitmo.
I don't know if this is feasible given the laws that were passed by Congress, but there's 30 people left at Gitmo.

Speaker 6 Cost half a billion a year to keep it open.

Speaker 7 16 of them have been cleared for transfer because they have not been charged and they pose no risk. Get those guys out of there.
You have to figure out a country to send them to.

Speaker 7 You get that process going. But like there's some things you could do that would be really pretty historic.

Speaker 2 I said this on Friday, but I also hope that he, there's 30 or 40 inmates, federal inmates on death row. He could reduce their sentences.

Speaker 2 He could save them from the death penalty and just reduce reduce it to life in prison without parole for those federal inmates.

Speaker 2 And just more broadly, like he could be giving a series of speeches or press conferences where he talks about the importance of defending democratic institutions, which was very, I know that's not a political winner, but it was important to him for his presidency.

Speaker 2 It seems to be the, seems, you know, and also he more specifically, he could talk about, like you were saying, Lovett, actions that he's taking to do that. Now, maybe he still may do that, right?

Speaker 2 Like, and if he does, wonderful, we'll be the first to praise him.

Speaker 2 But it's just, it's, it's odd that you know he he talked about donald trump being an existential threat to democracy for so long and i wasn't necessarily critical when he like met with donald trump and smiled for the cameras because he's clearly he wants to prove and show that he believes in democracy and the transfer the peaceful transfer of power i totally agree with that but he could still sort of speak to the angst a lot of people in the country are feeling.

Speaker 2 Seems to be a good role for a president.

Speaker 6 There's a debate about what the president can do on behalf of, say, DACA recipients.

Speaker 6 And there are some legal scholars that assert the president can use the pardon power, even though immigration violations are civil, to

Speaker 6 pardon DACA recipients or undocumented immigrants more broadly. There's some people that say that that would create problems.

Speaker 6 There's a debate about whether, because it's never been used in that way, but whatever. There's lots of ways in which presidential, like someone, then you use it, you assert it, right?

Speaker 6 Like, is there a debate right now about whether President Biden can pardon DACA recipients? Is he asking about that and others are saying no? Are people coming to him with that and he's not sure?

Speaker 6 Right? Like, is that debate unfolding? I have no idea.

Speaker 2 That seems like that would be a good question for someone to ask in a press conference.

Speaker 6 Right, right. But this is, I think, like, right now, like, I don't know what we're meant to think is happening, right?

Speaker 6 And we get a memo that basically lays out the fact that Joe Biden is going to try to use his time most effectively over the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 6 But the memo exists in part because Joe Biden either is unwilling or unable to go to the the microphone and explain himself.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, you have so much space on foreign policy.

Speaker 7 Like, so much foreign policy is bound up with stupid politics, especially in Florida. Like, Obama tried to take a bunch of steps to normalize relations with Cuba.
Trump wound them all back.

Speaker 7 Biden kind of went halfway to the Obama position. Why not just get rid of

Speaker 7 the stupid sanctions on Cuba or normalize relations in some way or allow travel or remittances at the maximum level possible?

Speaker 7 There's all these things you could do that really would be historic and important. And when you're unencumbered by politics, why not? Run through the tape.

Speaker 3 What's popping, listeners? I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it.

Speaker 3 Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Want to know about the fake heirs? We got them.
What about a career con man? We've got them too.

Speaker 3 Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters.

Speaker 3 I'm joined by guests like Nicole Beyer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien, and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 8 Cashflow Crunch, OnDeck's small business line of credit, gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it.

Speaker 8 Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat.

Speaker 8 With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at on deck.com.
Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow.

Speaker 8 Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by ONDAC or Celtic Bank. Ondac does not lend in North Dakota.
All loans and amount subject to lender approval.

Speaker 9 Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo, the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 9 It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, from CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 9 And the best part, Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.
So why not you? Try Odo for free at odo.com.

Speaker 9 That's odoo.com.

Speaker 2 Speaking of the pardon power, Dan and I praised Biden on Friday's show for the single largest act of clemency in modern history.

Speaker 2 But over the last few days, we've all learned more about the big batch of commutations that the White House announced last week.

Speaker 2 Some of them aren't looking so great, including a former judge in Pennsylvania who was serving a 17 and a half year sentence for getting kickbacks from private prisons in exchange for giving more than 2,500 juveniles the harshest possible sentence, even though most of them didn't deserve it.

Speaker 2 So the private for-profit prison gives the judge money, and the judge says, I'll fill up your prison with juveniles whether they deserve it or not.

Speaker 6 It's a cartoon evil scheme.

Speaker 6 It's a cartoon evil scheme.

Speaker 2 It came to be known as the Kids for Cash scandal and some Democrats have blasted Biden for the decision, including Governor Josh Shapiro.

Speaker 2 This was in Pennsylvania, of course, who noted that some children took their lives because of this. What on earth do you think the White House was thinking?

Speaker 7 Well, I think they pardoned all the people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the pandemic under the CARES Act. Right.

Speaker 2 Which was Trump.

Speaker 7 Which was this was the remaining remaining like 1,500 or so. So they just did a blanket pardon.
I guess they didn't individually vet all the people on that list. Or commutation.
Commutation.

Speaker 6 Commutation.

Speaker 7 Yeah, sorry.

Speaker 7 And so, I don't know.

Speaker 7 I guess like to take the other side of this argument, I think stories like this, examples like this, are why pardons and clemency are really, really hard to do politically because by definition, you are releasing someone who did something illegal or untoward, and the argument is that they have changed.

Speaker 7 Now, I'm not like defending these people on the merits. The kids for cash people sound awful, as does this woman who stole like, what, $54 million

Speaker 7 from the city of Dixon, the comptroller. But I think both of them were due to be released between two to four years from now and were on home confinement anyway.

Speaker 7 So maybe they figured rather than pluck out exceptions and start that process, you just kind of do the blanket 1,500 and get it over with.

Speaker 2 I think that's probably what happened. Yeah, the CARES program under Trump sent 12,000 prisoners to home confinement, right?

Speaker 2 And the vast vast majority of them were convicted of white collar and other nonviolent crimes so for the last several years you've got all these white collar nonviolent criminals serving out home confinement and so you're right they must have just did a a blanket uh but like i don't know obviously that's the the counsel's office the lawyers you'd think a few political people would have eyes on that just to comb through just to comb through the names i don't know i mean it is i will say there was i saw this on twitter there was like a bunch of people who are prison abolitionists who were complaining about Biden releasing the kids for cash guy and some other people.

Speaker 2 And I was like, that's interesting because if you're a prison abolitionist,

Speaker 2 I mean, it does speak to their challenge that you're bringing up, Tommy, which is like part of the reason you do a pardon is because you're like, yeah, someone did something bad and we want to, we don't believe they should be in, everyone should be in jail for it.

Speaker 2 But like,

Speaker 6 yeah, it's, it was, it was it was interesting watching a bunch of people on the left being really critical of this because this was a monstrous crime that I think basically kind of, it was a kind of like a for-profit version of the cruelty and unfairness that the judicial system often meets out, right?

Speaker 6 So this is somebody receiving clemency for participating in the larger evil these people are spending their lives fighting

Speaker 6 against. So that's what made it, I think, like a little bit.
like confusing but it also does expose that like even people that advocate for

Speaker 6 whatever prison abolition, there's a part of us that demands justice and that wants someone like this thrown away for fucking ever.

Speaker 2 But I think part of the deeper thing is like, also, prison abolition is crazy. I'm just saying it's crazy.

Speaker 2 But you murder someone, you're going to keep them away from people.

Speaker 2 For sure.

Speaker 6 And then, no, no. And I just want to, I just want to second that.

Speaker 6 We're in similar t-shirts, similar view on murder.

Speaker 2 I'll take the slings and arrows. It's fine.

Speaker 6 But the pardon power is strange and like silly. And

Speaker 6 so I think what's so galling about these examples is just like who gets, who gets mercy in our system. And there are so many people that deserve mercy.
Yes.

Speaker 6 And they deserve it before these corrupt public officials. And the other part, too, is it's like Donald Trump, he cut taxes for the rich.
He vilified immigrants. He shifted the court to the right.

Speaker 6 And he basically decriminalized corruption. And we are going to pay for that.
Like corruption is a cancer. And these are corrupt officials.

Speaker 6 And it it would be nice if one of the ways in which Joe Biden kind of defended the values he cares about is to is to strongly defend laws that protect against corruption, which is what these people were punished for.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And if you listen to some of the families of those kids, especially the kids who took their own lives, it's fucking heartbreaking.

Speaker 2 So, Kamala Harris was at the DNC holiday party too, where Biden told her, quote, Mood was festive, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 Biden told her, quote, you're not going anywhere, kid, because we're not going to let you go. Okay.
We haven't really touched on this on the bottom.

Speaker 2 What are we talking about here?

Speaker 2 What do you guys think Harris's next move should be? There's a couple stories. There's one in the Washington Post.

Speaker 2 There's one on CNN about how she's thinking, she's trying to decide right now, between,

Speaker 2 according to her advisors that talked on background, whether she will run for governor of California in 2026

Speaker 2 or not run for governor in 2026 and run for president in 2028. And it is unclear right now which way she is leaning.
And I guess there could be a third option, which she doesn't either.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I'm interested in that third option.

Speaker 6 Well, no, I'm just curious what it is. Can't I just be curious about what it is? I've said my part.

Speaker 7 Tommy, I mean, if I were her and I really wanted to stay in public service, I would run for governor.

Speaker 7 I think you are almost guaranteed to win that primary.

Speaker 6 It's a huge job.

Speaker 7 You know, what's California like the fifth biggest economy in the world if it were a country on its own? I mean, it's an enormous, an enormous task.

Speaker 7 And then trying to run for president again, like nothing is guaranteed.

Speaker 2 This may sound quaint, maybe a little naive. I think you should sit down and think to yourself, and I would give this advice to her or any politician, really.
What do I really want to do?

Speaker 2 What issues do I care about? Where can I make the biggest difference?

Speaker 2 And, you know, she at one point, I think this, they said this in the Washington Post story, she was trying to decide when she was attorney general of California, whether she wanted to run for Senate or run for governor.

Speaker 2 And she made a list of pros and cons, and she decided that her skills were better suited for the U.S. Senate, right?

Speaker 2 Like, she should look at the California gubernatorial race.

Speaker 2 And if she feels like she can really make a difference, and she loves the idea of being governor of our state and wants to tackle these issues, she should do it.

Speaker 2 If she really, truly believes that she should be president again and she has a strong theory of the case on why she should and how she can contribute, then she should do that.

Speaker 2 But like, you know, I, and I know, I'm not saying she's doing this, but sometimes advisors do this and, you know, fundraisers do this and everyone else.

Speaker 2 It's like, I don't think doing like, should I be in this slot or that slot or what's better? What can I win? Like, that's obviously a consideration.

Speaker 2 But I think from the candidate themselves, you got to really think about what you want to do.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I thought that was like the dumb media prism through which it was being. I assume she's doing exactly what you're saying, which is figured out.

Speaker 7 But I think if you were to ask her, what is she most passionate about, it has been domestic issues. It has been law enforcement.
It has been criminal justice, things that she can do as governor.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and she's run statewide in California and been the top law enforcement officer.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I do think, look, I think she has paid politically for having come up as a prosecutor, then run for president at a time when that was seen as a liability.

Speaker 6 and shifting to the left on a bunch of issues and then walking away from those positions.

Speaker 6 And if you were to ask me right now, what are Kamala's views, actual personal views on a host of those issues, I sincerely would say like I think she's a consensus builder.

Speaker 6 I think she but like I don't actually know.

Speaker 6 And if she is going to want to seek whether it's California governorship or national office, I think like it's about taking the time to figure out an ideological perspective that like informs everything that she does going forward.

Speaker 6 Because I do think some of the ways in which she's had these, like whether it was tough interviews in the 2024 race or the quotes that were taken out of what she said in the 2020 race, like the lack of that, I think, worldview and ideology is going to make it very, very hard for her to get past

Speaker 6 the previous two runs. That's

Speaker 6 my concern.

Speaker 2 Can I share with you guys a quote from a Harris campaign advisor in the Washington Post story? Please. It's almost Shakespearean that Joe Biden didn't just kill his own campaign, he killed hers too.

Speaker 2 So no love loss there. What about that is Shakespearean?

Speaker 6 It's not particularly Shakespearean, honestly. It's not at all.

Speaker 2 Actually, it's more Shakespeare.

Speaker 6 Actually, it's more Shakespeare.

Speaker 6 If you want to say it's Shakespearean, you have to find the ways in which her own deeper flaws were ultimately her undoing, which would be, I think, more dramatic.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 7 It's more of a two-for-one. Right.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Anyway.

Speaker 6 I guess it's like Romeo and Juliet. They're both fucking dead.

Speaker 2 Oh, no.

Speaker 2 Maybe that's it. Just star-crossed lovers, Joe Biden, and if you're the Harris campaign advisor, please tell us what you meant.
We'll keep you anonymous.

Speaker 6 It's almost Shakespearean. Almost.

Speaker 2 Okay, two other big things people are talking about that are more politics adjacent. Drones and Daylight saving time.
Hell yeah. Let's take drones first.

Speaker 2 As you probably know, since the middle of last month, lots of people in New Jersey and some other states now have reported seeing mysterious drones-like things flying in the night sky.

Speaker 2 No one has been able to provide any definitive answers. The Pentagon says they're not U.S.
military or enemy drones. White House says they're mostly manned aircraft.

Speaker 2 A finding that incoming New Jersey Senator Andy Kim confirmed after going out drone spotting himself. Good for Andy Kim.
Love Andy Kim.

Speaker 2 But like a lot of other people, he's also expressed frustration that the federal government hasn't done more to alleviate people's concerns.

Speaker 2 Kim wrote on Twitter on Saturday, quote, I think the situation in some ways reflects this moment in our country. People have a lot of anxiety right now about the economy, health, security, etc.

Speaker 2 And too often we find that those charged with working on these issues don't engage the public with the respect and depth needed.

Speaker 2 Case in point, Donald Trump, for his part, said in the Monday morning press conference, the government knows what's happening and that something strange is going on.

Speaker 2 For some reason, they don't want to tell people and they should. Before adding that maybe he didn't want to spend the weekend in Bedminster after all.
And then when he was asked, also,

Speaker 2 have you received an intelligence briefing on this? He said, I shouldn't comment on that.

Speaker 2 Love the restraint.

Speaker 6 Yeah, finally showing some, yeah, showing some showing some discipline. Yeah, man, it is tough having a country when you're like, oh, what are the drones?

Speaker 6 Well, some of them are manned, and maybe some of them are

Speaker 6 hobbyists. And actually, we don't know what some of them are.
And then the next president of the United States grabs a microphone, saying, It might be the Jews.

Speaker 7 He also truth. Let the public know and now otherwise shoot them down.
So these are unmanned.

Speaker 7 I mean, I think, look, this phenomenon is, I think the reality is there's a lot of stuff in our airspace at all times. And if you start looking up, you're going to start seeing things.

Speaker 7 And people don't know what they're looking at from the ground because none of us are experts. But then.

Speaker 2 But you've had the highest security clearance of them, all three of us. What do you know about it? Yeah, you know, it was aliens.

Speaker 6 And so people get worried.

Speaker 7 They start talking about it. Then everyone else starts looking.
And then stuff starts going around social media. And the craziest shit gets shared the most.

Speaker 7 Like, I saw a video alleging that it was drones searching for a lost Ukrainian nuclear weapon. And I saw that too.
And I saw that because Joe Rogan retweeted it.

Speaker 2 And I believe it.

Speaker 6 And I believe it. I saw it and I believe it.

Speaker 2 This is why more of us need to go on Rogan.

Speaker 2 Shoot them down.

Speaker 6 Liberal Joe Rogan, whatever.

Speaker 7 And then that was compounded by wildly irresponsible members of Congress. Like New Jersey rep Chris Smith said, Oh my god.

Speaker 7 The elusive maneuvering of these drones suggests a major military power sophistication that begs the question whether they've been deployed to test our defense capabilities or worse, by violent dictatorships, perhaps maybe Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea.

Speaker 7 Richard Blumenthal called for the drones to be shot down.

Speaker 6 Again, we want to use live missiles over U.S.

Speaker 7 territory to blow up things in the sky. They're harming no one.
Not remembering that that metal will then fall on the ground.

Speaker 2 Wow. Also, I think maybe kill people.

Speaker 6 It might have been some fucking beta fag shit. Shoot them down.
Shoot them down.

Speaker 2 It's like they're on Chinese spy.

Speaker 6 Shoot them down.

Speaker 2 Another,

Speaker 2 it might have been the same Republican House member from New Jersey that you just mentioned, but he does a press conference with local police officers, and he's like, I want to give local police the authority to shoot down the drones.

Speaker 6 Now we're just telling police to just shoot things in the shoot.

Speaker 2 That's right. What is this country? What's going on here? You know what?

Speaker 6 If the government won't, if the federal government won't shoot some of these things down, we're going to have no choice but to give your meanest friend from high school the authority.

Speaker 6 That's what's going to happen.

Speaker 6 That's where this ends up. Look, by the way, and that's the second worst option, because what's really going to happen is randos are going to start going outside and shooting at drones.

Speaker 6 And one of them.

Speaker 2 Of course they are.

Speaker 6 And you know what? Some of these drones are planes, and those planes have people in them. So we got to just shoot one down.
Can't we just shoot one down?

Speaker 2 Let's make sure it's a drone down. That's what the Republican congressman said.
Yeah, he's like, we don't have to get them all. No, a mayor said that.
Some mayor in New Jersey.

Speaker 2 He's like, we don't have to shoot them all down, just one to see what's going on. Yeah.
So John Kirby. Seems smart to me.
John Kirby at the briefing on Monday. Yeah.

Speaker 2 What's Kirby's title? The Deep State head.

Speaker 6 Let's see what the Deep State has to say.

Speaker 7 It's like a national security spokesperson. Right.

Speaker 2 There you go.

Speaker 2 Something like that.

Speaker 2 He said, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopter helicopters, and even stars that were mistakenly reported as drones.

Speaker 2 It seems like we have a great deal. Here's the thing.

Speaker 6 Here's the good news. Here's the good news.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 6 Obviously, I think the worst case scenario would be shooting down a passenger aircraft.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Wow.
Just going out on a limb. After that.
You guys pay the big bucks for it. After that.

Speaker 2 After that. After that.

Speaker 6 If you shoot down a hobbyist drone, I don't care. Bring them down.
Those people

Speaker 6 should be sadder, frankly.

Speaker 6 Commercial drones, government drones, shoot one down. Take a look.

Speaker 2 And when you look in the air, you'll be able to tell which is which, right?

Speaker 6 I think you should be really sure.

Speaker 6 Just, let's be really sure.

Speaker 2 Someone tell Elon Musk about this guy. We got to get him in government.

Speaker 6 No, if I'm going to press the Elon button, it's going to be around daylight saving time.

Speaker 2 We're getting there.

Speaker 6 But Andy's tweets were great.

Speaker 7 He's the newly elected New Jersey senator. He's out there like doing, you know, constituent services and communicating well and clearly in this thread.
I think it's fair to say that to date, the U.S.

Speaker 7 government's communication wasn't great. They weren't necessarily answering the mail on people's anxieties.

Speaker 7 But in their defense, it's nearly impossible to comment when some some member of Congress calls the White House and is like, hey, Biden, what's floating over Menden, New Jersey right now?

Speaker 2 You know, that's not like. Yeah, they did say that like there were thousands of tips.
And out of all those tips, only like a very small percentage turned out to be anything in the sky. Right, right.

Speaker 2 Even some of it is like, yeah, right.

Speaker 7 Even like Larry Hogan was filming stars

Speaker 7 and just was completely wrong about what he was seeing.

Speaker 2 Those were just stars from Larry Hogan? I think so.

Speaker 6 Yeah, no,

Speaker 6 I believe the Larry Hogan ones turned out to be celestial bodies,

Speaker 6 which is tough.

Speaker 2 It's tough.

Speaker 2 People are losing their minds.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's it. Look, I love a good mania.
It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure.
People are losing it out there. I also do like Andy Kim being like, I think it's economic anxiety.

Speaker 2 It's like, okay.

Speaker 2 Like, I'm with you. I'm with you to a point.

Speaker 2 Speaking of mania that has you losing your mind, daylight saving time.

Speaker 2 By the way, I, I,

Speaker 2 When Reed wrote this, and then he asked me, and then I, he's like, did you know it was called daylight saving time and not savings time?

Speaker 2 And I'm like, I, I learned that just in this moment when you sent me the script.

Speaker 6 That's right. Yes, I know.
It should be daylight savings time, but it is technically daylight saving time.

Speaker 7 It's like saying attorneys general. Like, ugh.

Speaker 2 I know I hate that. Anyway, Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would try to end it, which seems like he probably means make it permanent.
You can, you can get into that.

Speaker 2 It's a move that has support in a lot of quarters. including top funkies like Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Marco Rubio, and most importantly, our own John Lovett.
Take it away.

Speaker 6 Yeah. So he does probably, almost certainly means making daylight saving time permanent.
He actually tweeted that in, I think, 2019.

Speaker 6 So currently there is a bill in Congress called the Sunshine Protection Act.

Speaker 6 It is sponsored by Rubio and Padilla in California, also Ed Markey in Massachusetts, Patty Murray, and a bunch of other senators.

Speaker 6 20 states have already passed by ballot measure or legislation, state rules that would switch to permanent daylight saving time if Congress allows it. Now,

Speaker 6 I have actually like, I used to think, yes, of course we should switch to permanent daylight saving time. That used to be my position.
I really dug into it for a while. I did a lot of interviews,

Speaker 6 did a lot of reading about it. And I have a more nuanced view on it, which is basically,

Speaker 6 it's not a surprise that it's being led by a Massachusetts senator, Florida senator, and California senators. Florida and California were further south.

Speaker 6 All that means is our winters aren't as dark and our summers aren't as bright, right? The closer you get to the equator, the less

Speaker 6 the time shifts, shifts you know not not with time zones but just with just uh longer days and shorter days in massachusetts uh in the dead of winter right now in maine or massachusetts the sun is setting around four o'clock

Speaker 6 it gets late it gets even to into the threes right but in a state like michigan which is in the same stein zone it's fully an hour later right because they're further west in the time zone so it does it makes sense that a bunch of east far like maine massachusetts florida california all these states would want to do it the problem is i was in vancouver the other weekend and it was like four o'clock and dark.

Speaker 2 Yes. So what?

Speaker 6 Like even in California, like in California at Los Angeles, the sunset in Los Angeles will be almost an hour later than it will be in Seattle or Portland. So some of this is where you're located.

Speaker 6 What needs to happen is Congress needs to amend the Uniform Time Act of 1966 to allow for a third option.

Speaker 6 And then every state can choose between permanent daylight saving time, permanent standard time, or continuing to make the switch. This is the compromise.
This is the solution.

Speaker 6 Because we did do permanent daylight saving time in the 70s during the oil crisis.

Speaker 6 And in a lot of places, people fucking hated it because there are places where if you go to permanent daylight saving time, sunrise won't be until

Speaker 6 either close to 9 or even after 9 a.m.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow.

Speaker 6 People don't like. People, if you poll them, say they don't like daylight saving time.
Really what they mean is they don't like springing forward. They hate losing the hour.
They hate the time switch.

Speaker 6 And the time switch does suck. But really what people like are longer days in the summer and shorter days in the winter.
And unfortunately, you can't legislate for that.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 I like if I had to choose between the switch and permanent daylight saving time, I would choose that.

Speaker 6 But that's because we live in California, which is a place that would benefit from being in permanent daylight saving time.

Speaker 6 But there are states like Michigan, Michigan, for example, should actually switch to permanent standard time. Because in Michigan in the summer, the sunset is so late.

Speaker 2 Is it possible? Can a possible solution be that some like... Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 6 Yes. Because in practice, right, I think a few states would continue to switch.
If you pass the Rubio, Markey, Murray bill, then everybody's going to be on permanent daylight saving time.

Speaker 6 But if you passed a law that just allowed states to choose between, just add the third option, letting them choose permanent daylight saving time, about 20 states, their laws would go into effect.

Speaker 6 And then some states would either choose to keep switching or stay on permanent standard time. Michigan is, so like if you look at the time zone map, Michigan is so far to the west.

Speaker 6 I know, I know, I know, I feel, this was the moment I went too long.

Speaker 6 This was the moment. Will you let me know when this wraps? Yeah,

Speaker 6 Michigan is so far west of Massachusetts, it doesn't really make sense that they're in the same time zone. Michigan should be in permanent standard time.

Speaker 6 Wisconsin can be on permanent daylight saving time. In practice, what that means is they're both in the central time zone.
Michigan would just shift one time zone over.

Speaker 2 One can only hope that when Mr.

Speaker 2 Trump and his lawyers are reviewing the part of this episode where you accused him of killing John Bennett Ramsey, they continue listening to this part so they can understand the best solution to daylight saving time.

Speaker 7 Could we get the drones involved with little mirrors

Speaker 7 to make more sun?

Speaker 6 Well, you know, there's going to be companies that are going to start allowing you in the night to rent light via mirrors. What?

Speaker 6 There are companies that have like plants, they want to put satellites up that have big reflectors and then you could go on your phone, literally on your phone and say, I would like it to be light out on my yard at this time.

Speaker 6 And they'll turn the mirrors and you'll have daylight on your yard.

Speaker 2 What dystopia is that?

Speaker 6 Dystopia?

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 6 What about AI permanent sunlight corrupt fucking dumbasses present? What about this screams dystopia to you?

Speaker 7 What's the thing called

Speaker 7 that you build around the sun for permanent unlimited energy?

Speaker 6 Oh, you mean like to become a type a type two civilization? Yeah. I don't know what it's called.

Speaker 2 Elon will tell us.

Speaker 2 All right. That's that's enough for that, I guess.

Speaker 2 Do you want to put a button on this?

Speaker 2 Is there a call to action?

Speaker 2 There is a call to action.

Speaker 6 The call to action would be to say we do not need to argue about whether the whole country should be on permanent standard time.

Speaker 6 Oh, by the way, the scientists and the nerds, they're all for permanent standard time. I've interviewed them.
They're fucking wrong.

Speaker 6 They're just wrong about it because they are confusing the benefits of not switching to the benefits of...

Speaker 6 standard time. We should switch to permanent daylight saving time in a lot of places.
And there's a reason 20 states have passed it. But no, this is the compromise.

Speaker 6 The whole country doesn't have to switch and the whole country doesn't have to have one policy.

Speaker 6 It won't be complicated because you go through a period of transition over a year or two, which people can choose which time zone they want.

Speaker 6 And then basically you just end up with a new time zone map and we never have to deal with this again. Most places would choose either permanent standard time or permanent daylight saving time.

Speaker 6 A few might keep it continue to switch, but we know that that's fine because Arizona doesn't switch. Right.
And we society moves on.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Society's fine, and so does Arizona.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 When we come back from the break, you'll hear my conversation with Congressman Rokana about his promises to work with Elon Musk on the Doge agenda, what worries him most about his second Trump term, and more.

Speaker 2 But one quick thing before we do that, if you've been wondering what the hell is going on in Syria and how the U.S.

Speaker 2 government is approaching it, or want to understand many of the other major international stories happening around the world, check out Pod Save the World. I got you.

Speaker 2 Hosted by this guy over here, Tommy Vitor, in a fancy title here, former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes. You got to buff him up.
Shine him up for the promo. Look at that.

Speaker 2 Pod Save the World drops every Wednesday. Find it wherever you get your podcast or on YouTube.
When we come back, Rokana.

Speaker 3 What's poppin' listeners? I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it.

Speaker 3 Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Want to know about the fake heirs? We got them.
What about a career con man? We've got them too.

Speaker 3 Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters.

Speaker 3 I'm joined by guests like Nicole Beyer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien, and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 8 Need to restock inventory, cover seasonal dips, or manage payroll? OnDeck's small business line of credit provides immediate access to funds up to $200,000 exactly when your business needs it.

Speaker 8 With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and full control over repayment, you can tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat.

Speaker 8 Apply today at on deck.com and funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by ONDEC or Celtic Bank.

Speaker 8 OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

Speaker 9 Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo, the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 9 It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier from CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 9 And the best part, Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.
So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odo.com.

Speaker 9 That's odoo.com.

Speaker 2 Rokana, welcome back to Pod Save America.

Speaker 10 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 So you've been out there a lot since the election, and I want to start by asking about your approach to politics, which seems to be more economically populist than most Democratic politicians, but also more willing to talk and work with people Democrats disagree with, whether it's Republicans, Fox News, Elon Musk.

Speaker 2 I feel like that overall approach is...

Speaker 2 popular with most voters, but a harder sell with left-leaning politicians, pundits, activists, and otherwise very engaged liberals and leftists who help drive the debate.

Speaker 2 The people who favor reaching out to the other side usually aren't that into economic populism, and the progressive populace aren't that into reaching out to the other side.

Speaker 2 How do you break through all that? And how do you arrive at this approach?

Speaker 10 I don't know if I'll be successful in breaking through. I often get criticized when I do reach across, but I'll tell you where the approach comes from.
The two, my guiding principles.

Speaker 10 One is substantive, right? So I think you need a whole of society approach to actually tackle economic inequality or the deindustrialization of places.

Speaker 10 You need, of course, people who are going to be activists and talk about the role of government. You need, in my view, community leaders.
You need labor. You need business leaders.

Speaker 10 You need venture capitalists. You need technology leaders.

Speaker 10 And that's the only way you're going to be able to build the new industry, the only way you're going to be able to have economic revitalization.

Speaker 10 And so that approach is not novel. It comes from a view that that's what FDR did

Speaker 10 in the New Deal. It's what Hamilton did.

Speaker 10 And so partly what some see as a contradiction, how is it that I'm advocating for a higher minimum wage and Medicare for all, and yet want business leaders and technologists, I see as a coalition that is going to actually help achieve the goals of economic revitalization.

Speaker 10 The second thing, in principle,

Speaker 10 is humility.

Speaker 10 I don't think that I have all the right answers.

Speaker 10 I think, again, this idea of democratic experimentalism, that you try things, but you know that there are people who may push back. Sometimes I tweet things out.

Speaker 10 People say, oh, you tweeted it out and you were wrong. I was like, okay, I'm...
thinking out loud. I probably shouldn't think out loud as much online.
But not every idea I have is the truth.

Speaker 10 And I have a humility to say, you know, when you test your ideas out, maybe they'll get better.

Speaker 2 I've heard you say that when it comes to Elon Musk, Democrats have to get back to celebrating entrepreneurship and innovation because the average American thinks it's pretty cool that someone like Elon can send rockets into space.

Speaker 2 I take that point. I think Elon is clearly smart and successful in certain areas.
And I have plenty of liberal friends who can't understand why I don't really like him.

Speaker 2 But I just wonder if like we can be a party that praises entrepreneurship and innovation and also recognize that like Elon just hasn't had some bad tweets.

Speaker 2 He said that the theory that Jewish communities push hatred against whites is the actual truth.

Speaker 2 He just recently said Democrats are the party of criminals, accused us of importing voters, accused us of wanting to take people's kids.

Speaker 2 It just feels like all of that goes beyond policy and political disagreements. I know you've known him for a long time.
Like, what do you think happened to him? Is going on with him?

Speaker 2 Like, where do you come down on all of this?

Speaker 10 Well, some of those statements are totally indefensible and atrocious. And he knows I think that.

Speaker 10 I think I've been quoted as saying sometimes his tweets were like a seventh grader. And someone said that's being charitable to seventh graders.

Speaker 10 So I have no problem with people who are criticizing Elon Musk legitimately, criticizing either the things he said,

Speaker 10 criticize the idea that he spent $200 billion

Speaker 10 on an election, and they see that as

Speaker 10 a symbol of how broken the process is. I mean, I've said we shouldn't have super PACs, and he's kind of been the symbol of that.

Speaker 10 Criticized him saying that he should have financial disclosure and transparency. I think that's legitimate.

Speaker 10 But the biggest criticism, which I've had arguments with Musk about, is my view is that the two biggest successes he had was made possible by the Obama administration.

Speaker 10 Not just because I worked there, but literally the President Obama with the Treasury gave him a loan that saved Tesla. I mean, that was a Treasury loan.

Speaker 10 And Ash Carter, working for President Obama, allowed him to bid on Lockheed and

Speaker 10 Boeing's ULA project. It was the Obama administration that disrupted all of that and that allowed it to happen.
And he never gives them credit.

Speaker 10 And I've argued with him that you really were the beneficiary of a lot of government investment. And why it matters is not for Elon

Speaker 10 to say it just for Elon, but it has this view that, oh, you can just be an entrepreneur and that's what's fueling America.

Speaker 10 No, what's fueled America is the combination of very strong, smart, effective government combined with entrepreneurship and unions and labor. And I think he misses that story of that part.

Speaker 10 So, you know, there are a lot of places I disagree with him. My only point was that I think sometimes our party doesn't realize that there is a role also for

Speaker 10 entrepreneurs and technologists to play a part in economic revitalization. Now, I don't think that's Doge.
It wouldn't be in my top five.

Speaker 10 If I was, if Kamala Harris had one, I would have said, have Elon Musk figure out how Intel can build factories here. But there is a role for business leaders.

Speaker 2 On Doge, I like your idea of trying to work with Musk and the Republicans on that commission.

Speaker 2 Have you and other Democrats thought about proposing your own list of budget cuts and government reforms that Elon and Trump and the Republicans would then have to respond to?

Speaker 10 We have. I wrote an op-ed, and we're going to convene a number of Democrats probably in January to talk about what some of those cuts could look like.
Let's start with the big buckets in government.

Speaker 10 The big bucket is Social Security, Medicare, Medicare, Medicaid, which I don't think there should be a dime cut. And Trump says there shouldn't be a dime cut.
Okay.

Speaker 10 So then you look at the domestic spending that's not mandatory. 56% of that is discretionary defense spending.

Speaker 10 It's defense that really, if you want to look at making a dent in the federal budget, it should be examined. And there are plenty of places there that we can have reasonable cuts.

Speaker 10 The F-35 with Lockheed, that's gone $200 billion billion over, the sole source contracts that lead to cost overruns by Boeing or others paying $150,000 for soap dispensers, the lack of competitive bidding.

Speaker 10 And you just have to watch 60 minutes in one of these documentaries

Speaker 10 or segments to realize what we can cut. And my hope is that we can start there.
Now, people who say, well, you're legitimizing Doge.

Speaker 10 I mean, Doge is going to exist whether Democrats participate or not. You know, what legitimized Doge was Donald Trump winning the election.

Speaker 10 And I'd rather that we focus the attention on places like defense rather than have Elon Goh try to cut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Speaker 10 And if he tries to do that, I'll be the first person to blast him for that. And, you know, that's one other thing, I guess, with Moscow and others.

Speaker 10 I mean, sometimes Just because you're working with someone doesn't mean that you can't criticize them.

Speaker 10 Just because you're going on their podcast doesn't mean you can't say, you know, that's a really dumb idea. I think we can do both.
We don't have to kiss up to someone to engage them.

Speaker 2 Do you think from your conversations that those guys are willing to play ball on Doge, like that they're going to take your ideas and compromise?

Speaker 2 Or do you think it's just kind of, you know, I know that they're sort of welcoming your ideas. They've welcomed your ideas.
Other people, Bernie, but I wonder when push comes to shove,

Speaker 2 if it's more for show or they're really interested in working together.

Speaker 10 I think they will welcome our ideas genuinely on the Department of Defense. And there, there's an opportunity to get competitive bidding.
There's an opportunity to disrupt the five primes.

Speaker 10 There's an opportunity to go after wasteful spending.

Speaker 10 What I'm not confident about is are they going to listen to me why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is actually saving Americans money on credit card fees and mortgage fees?

Speaker 10 Or are they just going to say, oh, that's something that Elizabeth Warren put up, and so we want to cut it?

Speaker 10 I mean, obviously, I'm going to push back, but I don't think I have more ability to convince Elon Musk that that's a bad idea than any other member of Congress or person in the public.

Speaker 10 The one thing, John, if I could say that I think that they're wrong about,

Speaker 10 I had breakfast with Pat Gelsinger,

Speaker 10 who just was asked to leave as Intel CEO.

Speaker 10 And without revealing anything confidential, I said to him, Pat, if you were to rank what obstacle in terms of reindustrialization in America, economic growth, overburdensome regulation had, where would you put it?

Speaker 10 And he said, of course we need to streamline it, but it wouldn't be in my top three or four. I would talk about the need for capital formation.

Speaker 10 I would talk about the need for having procurement buying of the things we make. I would talk about having a talented workforce.
I would talk about immigration.

Speaker 10 And what they have done with Doge is to somehow say that if we could just streamline permitting in America, streamline regulation, that suddenly we were going to have job growth across America.

Speaker 10 And that's just not true.

Speaker 2 I don't know if you saw that Senator Mike Lee and Elon just today both called for repealing the Congressional Impoundment Act so that Trump could unilaterally decide not to spend money that Congress appropriates by law.

Speaker 2 Does that worry you? Do you think that they could have the votes for that?

Speaker 10 Aaron Ross Powell, it does worry me because under the Congressional Impoundment Act, if you do not fill a position that Congress has authorized, then you have to give Congress notice and after 45 days, you have to basically fill that position.

Speaker 10 So repealing that would allow the executive branch to not spend money that Congress is appropriating. So let's just say, why does this matter to people?

Speaker 10 Let's say they decide not to fund Department of Education folks who are giving Title I grants.

Speaker 10 So if you live in a school district where you have low-income, middle-income, working-class kids, you're not going to get money for the schools.

Speaker 10 Or you may not get money for your IEP program if your kid has special needs or a disability. Or you may not be able to get loans like I did to go to college.

Speaker 10 So yes, it worries me. And that shouldn't be the president's power.
It should be Congress's power.

Speaker 2 Obviously, the margins are pretty close in the House. Do you think there are enough of your Republican colleagues that wouldn't want to give give up their own power to appropriate money?

Speaker 10 I say the Republicans have made the entire Federalist Papers theory not work because the whole Federalist Papers were like, yeah, the Congress is going to look out for their own power.

Speaker 10 They would never give up power to the president. Why would they do that? And they weren't counting on the modern Republican Party in alliance to Trump.
No, I can't say anything for sure.

Speaker 10 I wish I could tell you that you're going to have enough members of Congress who wouldn't do that. But this is where I do think the agency of people watching your show matters.

Speaker 10 When people mobilize, when they speak out, and when they say why this matters to their lives,

Speaker 10 then members of Congress and senators do pay attention.

Speaker 10 And we blocked a lot of overreach by Trump in the first administration when he was trying to separate kids from their families, when he was trying to have a blanket Muslim ban, when he was trying to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

Speaker 10 And so if people start to say, look, we don't want our kids to lose education or whatever the issue is, and it's not just impoundment as an abstract, then that's our best chance of stopping it.

Speaker 2 What worries you most about a second Trump term?

Speaker 10 That they would put Jamie Raskin in jail or

Speaker 10 absent that, that they would

Speaker 2 have

Speaker 10 investigations of people like Raskin, that they will...

Speaker 10 intimidate dissent in this country, that they would make people fearful of criticizing the president. Can American democracy survive that? Absolutely.
Can Democrats win in 2026 and 2028? Yes.

Speaker 10 But will we have significantly degraded American democracy if that happens? Yes. And the cost

Speaker 10 is enormous.

Speaker 2 Do you have faith that the judicial system, as conservative-leaning as the Supreme Court is, will act as a bulwark against that?

Speaker 10 I like to have faith that it would prevent the worst cases of

Speaker 10 miscarriage of justice, but you can do, as you know, John, a lot of harm to people in the process short of someone actually going to jail.

Speaker 10 You start an investigation, you make someone's life hard, you have them hired lawyers, you

Speaker 10 have them dragged in front of committees. And then it's not just destroying a person's life or reputation, the chilling effect that that has to other people to pull punches.

Speaker 10 And you start to do that to the media.

Speaker 10 And you start to, you know, now they're thinking of suing Ann Seltzer for a mistake in a poll. I mean, come on, you know, it's so, but you do that.

Speaker 10 And now are people going to say, well, maybe we shouldn't show Trump's approval ratings to be negative.

Speaker 10 If you start to sue journalists like they did with ABC, well, maybe, you know, now we've got to be cautious in the words we use. And that, to me,

Speaker 10 is the irony for a party that believes in free speech

Speaker 10 to be doing that is what's most chilling.

Speaker 10 And then on a human level, in my district, you know, when I think of the undocumented, I think of someone in my district without mentioning her name who's been there 21 years.

Speaker 10 She's got a daughter who's going to medical school in Southern California. She's a dental hygienist in Northern California.

Speaker 10 And she drives every morning, once a month, down to see her daughter and then drives back up at night because she can't afford a hotel.

Speaker 10 And the reason she can't afford this is because she's been underpaid, because we haven't been able to have a legalized status. But to me, her life is the American dream.

Speaker 10 And now you're going to come and start to raid folks and deport folks like her. That's not the America my parents came to.
That's not the America that I grew up in. And I don't think that's America.

Speaker 10 Is there a concern on the borders? Absolutely. Do we have to keep them secure? Yes.
Do we want criminals not to be in this country? Yes. But people need to understand

Speaker 10 the sweeping way they're talking about going after the most vulnerable. And I don't care what the polls say.
I believe that this country is better than that.

Speaker 2 I want to ask you about what health care looks like in the next four years. Last time Trump was in office, he tried to eliminate the Affordable Care Act.

Speaker 2 Probably doesn't have the votes to do that this time around, but he could certainly cut Medicaid, especially in a budget,

Speaker 2 and the ACA subsidies that you all expanded in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Speaker 2 He was just asked about the murder of United Health CEO Brian Thompson, which he rightly condemned, but he didn't say anything else about the need for health care reform or the anger people have towards the insurance industry.

Speaker 2 You've had some great ideas on how to prevent insurance companies from denying so many claims. You talk a lot about the need for Medicare for all.

Speaker 2 It seems like not only are we years away from any kind of reform, but we may be in a situation where millions of people are losing their health insurance and paying higher premiums over the next four years.

Speaker 2 What, if anything, do you think Democrats can do about that?

Speaker 10 Well, John, I actually saw a clip of yours on this that I thought was spot on. I mean, one can have the thought that murder is bad, that there doesn't have to be a butt after that,

Speaker 10 that

Speaker 10 you can say that there's no justification for taking the life of

Speaker 10 a father of two people. And you can also say that for 20 years,

Speaker 10 people in this country have been talking about a healthcare system that's broken and that we need to make progress on giving people real health care. And so to me, a lot of the commentary is sort of

Speaker 10 is trying to pit one against the other, and I don't understand why. Why can't you have both of those thoughts?

Speaker 10 Now, you expressed it more succinctly than I did, but that is, I feel like that can be a consensus of Democrats across the spectrum in Congress and the Senate and our governors.

Speaker 10 And my view is that ultimately, the reason I support Medicare for all is because you're going to lower the administrative costs in the system. You have 2% administrative costs instead of 18%.

Speaker 10 Today you have 1.4 million people who deny claims or accept claims and only 1 million doctors. So a lot of those those folks could be now

Speaker 10 working in other ways in healthcare to actually deliver healthcare services instead of denying or not denying claims.

Speaker 10 And you could negotiate the prices down if you had Medicare, as President Biden started to do with insulin, but you could do it on hospital fees. You could do it with drugs.
So that's the North Star.

Speaker 10 Now, how do you get there?

Speaker 10 I think you get there first by saying, in my view, that private insurance should cover what Medicare would cover if a doctor is prescribing it. Maybe we could get a consensus on that.

Speaker 10 Maybe we can get some consensus on capping out-of-pocket costs.

Speaker 10 Maybe we get some consensus on the rate of premium hikes. But I think you can have a North Store and then work incrementally for progress towards it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I wish I could say that I expressed it more succinctly or at least more compellingly, but a lot of people are mad at me for how I've talked about it. And, you know, I was talking to

Speaker 2 some of our listeners about it, and

Speaker 2 I very much understand the rage and the anger towards the insurance industry. I totally get that.

Speaker 2 What I've been trying to figure out is, you know, a lot of people said to me, here's the thing, we, you know, we vote for Democrats, we organize, we go out there every election, we volunteer, and then we put Democrats into office, and it just never seems like we make any progress on healthcare reform.

Speaker 2 And, you know, they'll say, I know that you worked on the ACA and that improved, that improved things somewhat, but it's still hell.

Speaker 2 The insurance system is still hell. And I'm losing hope that we can make any kind of progress on healthcare reform.
And that's why I don't think people who

Speaker 2 are celebrating the murder or at least excusing it shouldn't be the focus. The focus should be like,

Speaker 2 what are we going to do to change this system? And it's...

Speaker 2 To me, it's like a really hard thing to explain to folks that, no, you got to keep organizing and you got to keep voting and you got to keep working towards a better solution here because, you know, it's been many, many years and it seems like the best we could do was stop Donald Trump from repealing the ACA.

Speaker 2 You know, Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress, you guys beefed up the insurance subsidies, which is great. But clearly, there's a lot of pain and anger out there.
And

Speaker 2 I don't really, I'm sort of at a loss at this point what to tell people about the best path forward.

Speaker 10 Well, yes, there's pain and anger, but I think you can say that pain and anger has to be channeled constructively.

Speaker 10 You know, my politics come from my grandfather. He spent four years in jail as part of Gandhi's independence movement.

Speaker 10 He had this view called satyagrah, and it was basically that you organize in peaceful protest action that matters,

Speaker 10 but one that

Speaker 10 thinks the best of humanity, and that's how you make progress. And that influenced in part the civil rights movement.

Speaker 10 And I think of the civil rights, the first civil rights act that was introduced by Senator Humphrey and Paul Douglas, a great senator from Illinois, in 1950.

Speaker 10 And you know, when it passes in 1964, it took years of organizing.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 10 that fight, in my view, was a much harder fight than even getting health care for everyone. And that was a fight against vicious racism

Speaker 10 and segregation. And yet John Lewis wasn't out there saying, celebrating killings.

Speaker 10 In fact, when there would be someone who would be killed

Speaker 10 in the civil rights movement, the civil rights leaders were the first to say that is antithetical to who we are, because we just don't want to win. We want something better.

Speaker 10 We want a better civilization. And so my view, and maybe some will say it's naive, is it's fine for the left to be asymmetrically better.
We're trying to build a better civilization.

Speaker 10 We're trying to build a better society. We don't have to get in the mud.
When they curse, we don't have to curse back.

Speaker 10 When they are negative, we can say, no, we believe in a better vision for humanity. And we organize and we make progress.
And ultimately, I think we're going to get there.

Speaker 2 Yeah. One thing I always think about is, you know, we often say that Democrats, we don't want to be Republican light.
on policy because that doesn't give people a real choice.

Speaker 2 Why wouldn't they just go with Republicans instead of Republican light?

Speaker 2 And then when we talk about our approach to politics, I kind of think it's the same thing because if we're going to act just like Republicans, then it's not really giving people much of a choice because why wouldn't they just go with Republicans?

Speaker 2 Because they're going to be tougher and they're going to slash and burn and they're going to play dirtier and they're not going to follow the rules or follow the laws.

Speaker 2 So I might as well just vote for Republicans instead of if Democrats are going to do the same thing.

Speaker 2 So part of me thinks that, like you said, we're trying to build, our job is harder in a way because we are trying to restore people's faith or at least buttress people's faith in the power of collective action and a government where we take care of each other and look out for each other.

Speaker 2 And I just think that's a it's a harder, it's a harder thing to do now, partly because of the problems that you've talked about, which is, you know, we have economic inequality and people are feeling isolated and they're feeling left behind.

Speaker 2 And, you know, it does feel like these two things are connected, right?

Speaker 2 Which is the economic inequality and then sort of the cynicism people are feeling towards government and the possibility that we can actually build something better.

Speaker 2 Is that something you worry about as well?

Speaker 10 I think you're absolutely right. I mean, look, the people feel that the political class allowed jobs to be offshore.

Speaker 10 They allowed wealth to pile up in districts like mine, that $12 trillion in Silicon Valley. Their wages have stagnated.
Their kids aren't being able to buy a car or a house. Then they see politicians.

Speaker 10 They say, you know, look at this kind of guy and other ones. They're spending so much of their time fundraising.
They're part of a system where

Speaker 10 if

Speaker 10 you're a lobbyist or someone, you're going to have more access.

Speaker 10 You've got these billionaires like Elon Musk, and we've got billionaires on our side too that are flooding people's screens, and we really don't matter. The system is broken.

Speaker 10 The economy is broken. We need real change.
And then I would say

Speaker 10 there are two different ways you can go. You can either go the Donald Trump way, which is just to...
to express all of that grievance and

Speaker 10 provide what I believe are sloganeering that not only appeal to the worst of us, blame immigrants, blame the trans community,

Speaker 10 and aren't going to actually reform the political system or actually help create jobs in Galesburg or help someone get health care or help someone get a raise.

Speaker 10 And by the way, they can also appeal to the worst. You know, when has it become fashionable for politicians to curse? Like now it's like, oh, to prove our authenticity, you got to curse.

Speaker 10 You know why politicians didn't curse? It's not like

Speaker 10 previous presidents didn't curse. It's that they said that in public they wanted to represent the best, that they wanted to appeal to the highest aspirations.

Speaker 10 So they weren't going to go and talk in public like they would talk at a sports bar. And there was something to that.

Speaker 10 And I believe that that still should be the democratic vision to appeal to something better in America.

Speaker 10 And only by doing that, by this is, I think, the democratic magic that we can bring together labor and community organizers and business and technologists and actually provide real solutions.

Speaker 10 And I guess that's who I am as a person. So for me, that is authentic.
But I think that's also true of a lot of us in the Democratic Party.

Speaker 10 And we shouldn't force ourselves to be doing things that are mimicking in style the Republicans.

Speaker 2 The path back to power for Democrats. doesn't just involve winning some combination of the the seven swing states that Kamala Harris lost.
It also involves winning 51 Senate seats.

Speaker 2 We currently have 47. If you look at 2026, a majority would require flipping Maine, which is doable, but then you need North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Alaska to get to 51.
Wow. 2028, just as bad.

Speaker 2 You need Wisconsin, North Carolina, Alaska, the only real pickup opportunities.

Speaker 2 I wonder, like, what kind of Democratic candidate do you think could win in states like those, knowing that Sherrod Brown, one of the most successful, respected, progressive economic populists the Senate has ever had, just lost his seat.

Speaker 10 Sherrod was, other than losing the presidency, I was, I mean, saddest with Sherrod losing.

Speaker 10 That's you. And what the crypto packs, I mean, we had arguments with them because I've been relatively supportive of Bitcoin and crypto.

Speaker 10 But what they did in that state was awful, $40 million of spending. And I do think that that made

Speaker 10 the difference. You know,

Speaker 10 we had great candidates with Alyssa Slotkin and Tammy Bola and Ruben Giego.

Speaker 10 I don't think there's one magic formula, but I think what they would tell you is they

Speaker 10 really went into the communities,

Speaker 10 they listened, they showed up, they built trust, they

Speaker 10 built a connection in those communities, and we need to do that in a 50-state strategy for the DNC. But I think that our best bet is economic.

Speaker 10 It's to say in Ohio, okay, look, your jobs have kept going offshore. There's no manufacturing in many of these places.

Speaker 10 Wages haven't gone up. You don't have health care.

Speaker 10 We have what I would say is a new economic deal, a real economic revitalization vision that is actually going to give economic opportunity to your kids. And this is, you've tried the rest.

Speaker 10 Here's our real solution. And that to me is our best bet going forward with candidates who are going to be grounded in their communities.

Speaker 2 You mentioned 50-state strategy for DNC. Do you have a favorite candidate for DNC chair yet?

Speaker 10 I don't.

Speaker 10 I like Ken Martin. I like Ben Wickler.
There may be others that emerge.

Speaker 10 I doubt I'm going to endorse in the process. I think it should play out.
But what I'd like to see is their plans on how we're going to increase registration.

Speaker 10 I mean, the Republicans were out registering us in Pennsylvania, in North Carolina, in some of these other states, how they're going to

Speaker 10 make sure that they're discouraging super PAC money, at least in Democratic primaries, not in a general election, but in the Democratic primaries, and how we're going to get rid of corporate money coming into the DNC because I don't think we need it.

Speaker 10 I think we can build without it.

Speaker 2 Congressman Rokana, thank you as always for joining Pod Save America and come back soon.

Speaker 10 Appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker 2 That's our show for today. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Wednesday.
Bye, everyone.

Speaker 2 If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed.

Speaker 2 Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and more.

Speaker 2 And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.

Speaker 2 Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Faris Safari.
Reed Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer.

Speaker 2 The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis.
Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.

Speaker 2 Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroote is our head of production.
Andy Taft is our executive assistant.

Speaker 2 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelavieve, and David Toles.

Speaker 11 What is the secret to making great toast?

Speaker 2 Oh, you're just going to go in with the hard-hitting questions.

Speaker 11 I'm Dan Pashman from The Sporkful. We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
We use food to learn about culture, history, and science.

Speaker 11 There was the time we looked into allegations of discrimination at at bon appetite, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape.

Speaker 2 It's a complex noodle that you've put together.

Speaker 11 Every episode of the Sporkville, you're going to learn something, feel something, and laugh. The Sporkful, get it wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 12 Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families.

Speaker 12 With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids' spending with real-time notifications.

Speaker 12 Kids learn to earn, save, and spend wisely, and parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place.

Speaker 12 Sign up for Greenlight today at greenlight.com/slash podcast.