Huge Verdict Against Trump (with Sen. Elizabeth Warren!)

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm John Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor.
This is a special President's Day weekend episode. That's what we're calling it.

Speaker 1 Elizabeth Warren stopped by the studio on Thursday.

Speaker 1 She and I had a great conversation about 2024, Biden, the mess in Congress, the State of the Union, Gaza, legal weed, and, most importantly, who she choose as part of her dream blunt rotation. Nice.

Speaker 1 Nice. How'd that go? I tried to do nightmare blunt rotation, and she was like, no.
She was not having it.

Speaker 3 No. Big structural getaway from me.

Speaker 1 Though when I said the name Jamie Diamond on the list, she actually physically winced.

Speaker 1 So that was cool.

Speaker 3 She's cool, though.

Speaker 1 Bruce was here, I believe. Bruce was here.
In studio? I missed all this. You missed everything.
Yeah, I was a lovely. I mean, Teddy and Charlie were here.
We had a whole fun

Speaker 1 late night Thursday.

Speaker 3 Running around. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, we have some big new. We're recording this on Friday, and since you're not going to hear another episode from us until Wednesday, we have to cover some of the big news that just happened today.

Speaker 1 Let's cover it. First of all, Donald Trump's been found liable for fraud, ordered to pay $350 million,

Speaker 1 and he has been barred from doing business in New York for three years, along with his two adult sons. He can appeal this, but he still has to come up with the money within the next 30 days

Speaker 1 or secure a bond. This is, of course, on top of the $83 million he owes to Eugene Carroll.
He owes $443 million

Speaker 1 altogether. Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 This is going to be a President's Day sale at Trump Tower. You know what I mean? Let's get rid of some gold toilets.

Speaker 1 This is bad for him.

Speaker 3 He's going to dip his hand right into the RC coffers, pull out some cash and keep it.

Speaker 1 Here's what

Speaker 1 Judge Ngorn said in his ruling. This is, of course, by the way, this is the New York case.

Speaker 1 Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, brought it against Trump and the Trump organization for committing business fraud for manipulating the value of their assets

Speaker 1 the english poet alexander pope first declared come on to err is human to forgive is divine defendants apparently are of a different mind is that rhyme uh after some four years of investigation and litigation the only error that they acknowledge is the tripling of the size of the trump tow penthouse which cannot be gainsaid their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.

Speaker 1 Nice. They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money.
The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin.

Speaker 1 Defendants did not commit murder or arson. They did not rob a bank at gunpoint.
Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.

Speaker 1 Instead, they adopt a see-no-evil, hear no evil, speak-no-evil posture that the evidence belies. Now,

Speaker 4 there are people out there, including some producers of this very podcast, saying that this is a bit overwritten.

Speaker 4 And I say no.

Speaker 3 It's a 92-page ruling.

Speaker 4 I say, swing for the fences, Engaran.

Speaker 4 This is your moment. You sing.
You sing beautifully.

Speaker 1 One other detail I thought was interesting here.

Speaker 4 Webster's defines fraud.

Speaker 1 The judge said there's substantial evidence that Alan Weiselberg's $2 million separation agreement was negotiated to compensate him for his continued non-cooperation with any entities with any legal interests adverse to defendants.

Speaker 1 So they paid Weisselberg off

Speaker 1 to prevent him from cooperating. They're just so, it's such a fucking mob.
Same playbook. Pay for a lawyer.

Speaker 4 I have said this is my position is that Donald Trump would rather go to jail for a year than run out of money.

Speaker 4 And that continues to be my position.

Speaker 1 People were estimating when the Eugene Carroll verdict came out that his liquid assets are in the range of $500 to $600 million.

Speaker 1 So $440 million that he's going to at least, even... even if he wins on appeal, he has to pony that up in the next 30 days.
That's not

Speaker 1 so much money. That's a lot of money.
My God. Hey, and I think

Speaker 1 that's a lot more money than he spent on his entire 2016 presidential campaign. Poof.

Speaker 4 And you know what? He has expenses.

Speaker 1 Legal fees for the other 91 felony counts that he is going to be

Speaker 1 litigating over the next

Speaker 4 monthly nut must be fucking bananas.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 3 Don Jr. and Eric each have to pay $4 million each, too.

Speaker 1 And Weiselberg a million, too. Yeah.
Man. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Brandon Law is expensive.

Speaker 4 It's going to affect the cocaine economy.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Trump's not happy about this ruling. He put out a statement calling Tish James racist.

Speaker 1 I helped New York City during its worst of times, and now, while it is overrun with violent Biden migrant crime, the radicals are doing all they can to kick me out.

Speaker 1 Not happy. Not happy.

Speaker 4 He already left. He already changed his residency to Florida.
I know.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 1 Anyway, so that's tough for Trump. And then

Speaker 1 Supreme Court saying next Wednesday they could could have some opinions.

Speaker 1 Let's go. Hurry up.
Let's go. So, yeah, we'll see.

Speaker 4 We talked to, you know,

Speaker 4 my Valentine's Day pal, Chris Christie, was saying that he did not believe the Supreme Court was going to delay

Speaker 1 the trials, if the trials would happen. I'm with Chris as I am with everything else.
And he was a prosecutor. Yeah.
Yeah. A tough one.

Speaker 1 So the New York Times also reports that Trump has been telling advisors he likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban because it's an even number.

Speaker 3 That can't be. Well, of course it's real.

Speaker 1 That's what he's been telling advisors. So he wants 16 weeks.
He wants exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

Speaker 1 We, of course, know from experience in Texas that even the exception, life of the mother, does not ensure that women who are facing a life-threatening pregnancy can get an abortion because the Texas Supreme Court ruled otherwise in that case.

Speaker 4 I think you're being unfair. I think people will take SOLIS when they're dying of sepsis in a hospital parking lot that Trump thought it was a nice even number.

Speaker 1 Trump thought it was a nice even number. And he also was and he was for that exception, right? I thought that Trump was maybe flirting with no national ban at all and that

Speaker 1 he could say like, oh, it's been left to the state and so I'm going to leave it to the states or just continue punting.

Speaker 1 And there may be some evidence that at least the campaign didn't want this story to come out because there's a it's a fake New York Times story, but they didn't say it wasn't true.

Speaker 4 So yeah,

Speaker 4 that's what my read on this was, which is they do, he is not going to be saying that in public, and he can be able to say, deny that in public, but it also sends a message to Republicans that this is the sort of the that

Speaker 4 after Trump came out against DeSantis in the six-week ban, that he views 16 weeks as what like his sort of governing position would be.

Speaker 4 Like he's basically signaling, like, I'm not going to talk about a ban on the campaign trail. I'm going to avoid this question, or at least I'll try to as long as possible.

Speaker 4 But hey, hey, you base freaks, Here's where I'm at.

Speaker 3 It seems very likely that this decision is being made with Donald Trump and his pollster and nobody else. There's no doctors in the room.
There's no healthcare professionals. There's no policy people.

Speaker 3 You don't think he's entirely.

Speaker 4 You don't think there's medical professionals when he's having a lot of people?

Speaker 1 You don't think he's been holding a series of salons?

Speaker 4 It's all insulting to the orthodontist at Mar-a-Lago. He surely brought this up with.

Speaker 3 He has no deeply held beliefs.

Speaker 3 I mean, it is notable that this leaked now that he is pretty safely out of the primaries where people like Ron DeSantis tried to make this an issue and failed miserably, but they tried.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, for Democrats' purposes, and this happens to be true, Trump wants a national abortion ban.
If he becomes president,

Speaker 1 very likely that the Republicans have the Senate, possible that the Republicans have the House. They could pass a national abortion ban.

Speaker 1 Abortion is currently outlawed in 20 states, thanks to Dobbs, which Donald Trump takes credit for. And if he becomes president, he will now outlaw it in 30 other states.

Speaker 1 Even if he doesn't have a Republican Congress, he doesn't need one to ban Mifipristone. He can take an executive action that would do that all across the country.

Speaker 1 And that's where 50% of abortions are done through the abortion pill, Miffopristone. So yeah, pretty bad.

Speaker 1 And Joe Biden, if Joe Biden wins and Ruben Gallego replaces Kirsten Sinema, Democrats keep the Senate, Democrats flip the House.

Speaker 1 Those are the votes we need to get rid of the filibuster and codify Roe v. Wade.

Speaker 4 And if Donald Trump becomes president, the House and the Senate could very well move with him. And that would mean that

Speaker 4 nothing you can do.

Speaker 4 As we've talked about before, like, you know, one thing that happened in 2022 is abortion feeling less salient in places like New York and California made those issues less salient to voters.

Speaker 4 And it meant that we didn't lose the house in Michigan or Wisconsin. We lost the house in California and we lost the house in New York.

Speaker 1 If Donald Trump wins, and that would mean that

Speaker 4 we in all likelihood did not win back the house and probably lost the Senate, they will pass a ban that will hit New York. It will hit California, it will hit every liberal place.

Speaker 4 There will be no hiding from it.

Speaker 1 And Tom Swasey made that point in his special election that he won in that district. So

Speaker 1 my home district.

Speaker 3 It does remind you that in 2016, Trump did that interview with Chris Matthews where he talked about how women who got abortions illegally needed to be punished in some way.

Speaker 3 I imagine that would be front and center in all the ads about this discussion.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, so President Biden today said there was no doubt that Putin is responsible for the death of Putin's biggest critic, Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison on Friday.

Speaker 1 So Biden went out to speak about it. Nikki Haley has been posting about it, tweeting about it.
She attacked Trump saying, quote, Putin did this, the same Putin who Donald Trump praises and defends.

Speaker 1 Nikki Haley, she's just

Speaker 1 going

Speaker 1 full bulwark.

Speaker 1 She's full move on. She's moving on to full Lincoln project.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 She's going to be sitting at that table with Tim and Sarah. JVL soon enough.

Speaker 1 Same day, this was before the tragic news that Navalny died, the Biden campaign campaign had launched a new ad hitting Donald Trump for saying he'd let Putin do whatever he wants to NATO countries if they don't spend more on their own defense.

Speaker 1 So, and a lot of Democrats were pointing out also that, again, Ukraine funding is being held up. So there's

Speaker 1 a lot of letting Putin do whatever he wants coming from the Trump MAGA establishment right now.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I was glad to see Biden come out and deliver a speech on this today.

Speaker 3 I mean, Alexi Navalny, for folks who don't know, he emerged in the Russian political scene around 2008, got famous internationally around 2011 when there were big anti-Putin protests.

Speaker 3 He tried to run for president, got barred by the Russians.

Speaker 3 They tried to poison him while he was in prison. They poisoned him again in 2020.
He nearly died. And then Alexey Navalny, he escaped.

Speaker 3 after being poisoned with this nerve agent. He was in Siberia on a trip.

Speaker 3 He went to Germany, got treatment, and then he came back to Russia, the most unbelievably brave, you know, courageous thing you could ever imagine knowing full well that when he landed he would get arrested he'd get thrown in prison I think he was serving out a 30-year prison sentence guy was living in a in a cell that was seven feet by eight feet in solitary confinement almost all the time so just an incredibly courageous individual

Speaker 3 and the biggest threat there was politically in Russia to Putin so you know I think Biden probably had deeply felt beliefs about Navalny and like his character and the courage he showed.

Speaker 3 Now, look, there's a lot of things Navalny's done or said in the past that

Speaker 3 I disagree with and that

Speaker 3 wouldn't make him a liberal Democrat by any means, but he was a Russian nationalist.

Speaker 3 But so I think it was smart of Biden to come out and sort of talk about this in a principled way, but also try to use this moment to rally support for Ukraine funding.

Speaker 3 Because just this week, there has been this weird leak out of the hill that the Russians are working on some sort of nuclear-powered weapon

Speaker 3 in space. Space nukes.

Speaker 1 In space.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we tried to do a

Speaker 3 quick Pod Save the World bonus YouTube on that if you want to learn more.

Speaker 1 Where? And what? Nukes.

Speaker 4 Nukes in space.

Speaker 3 And then, you know, the murder of Lexi Navalny. I mean, it's an odd moment for this to happen.

Speaker 1 Also, we got Tucker Carlson over in Russia being like, look, they got chandeliers in the airports.

Speaker 1 This place is amazing.

Speaker 3 No, Tucker was like, we were shocked to see that Moscow has nice train stations. And it's like, Moscow has famously beautiful train stations.

Speaker 3 You can buy like coffee table books or just photos from these fucking train stations. The subways are incredible there.

Speaker 3 But anyway, I was glad that you see Biden try to use this moment to focus attention on Ukraine funding.

Speaker 3 He went hard at Congress for going on a two-week vacation recess while this funding is just lingering and dangling out there. So we'll see if it moves anybody.

Speaker 1 Two-week recess while the Ukraine funding's out there. And also when they come back from recess, three days until the government shuts down.
And they haven't figured that out either.

Speaker 4 It's always three days from the government's shutdown,

Speaker 4 always

Speaker 4 right around the corner.

Speaker 3 And by the way, if you want to know more about Alexei Navalonina's death and the global reaction, Ben Rhodes and I just filmed a special episode of Pod Save the World that should be available now in the Pod Save the World feed.

Speaker 1 Where was Ben? World Does Never Sleep.

Speaker 3 Where was Ben for this? Ben was in the beating heart of the blob. He was at the Munich Security Summit.

Speaker 1 They let him in.

Speaker 4 I just like, I was like, Tommy, I'm coming to you from the Munich Security Conference. Words a person has never been happier to say on this pod.

Speaker 1 Speaking of courageous, brave dissidents. Oh, no.
Joe Manchin. Oh, God.

Speaker 1 I was like, I literally did not know where we were going Joe Manchin announced he won't be running for president on a third party or independent ticket.

Speaker 1 Our long national nightmare of Joe Manchin is just about over, guys.

Speaker 1 We dealt with him for the first couple years. He's retired.

Speaker 1 Hey, hey.

Speaker 4 Retired.

Speaker 4 Reduction Act, Katanji Brown Jackson. Do you forget yourself? This man saved us.

Speaker 1 He did. He loved Joe Manchin.
Now that we're in the middle of the day.

Speaker 1 We love Joe Manchin. We love Joe Manchin.
That's right. Yeah, we don't want him to change his mind.
Come on.

Speaker 4 Good work. Joe Manchin, you catch more houseboats.

Speaker 1 With what?

Speaker 4 With

Speaker 4 nice stuff.

Speaker 4 Nice stuff. I think.

Speaker 3 At the end of the day, I sort of assumed he was too lazy to really mount a run for president, and I'm glad to see that worked out for us all.

Speaker 1 No labels is running out of options here. Larry Hogan is running for Senate, former Maryland governor, who's running for Senate there.
No Mansion.

Speaker 1 Haley said no. Romney said no.
Huntsman basically closed the door, but it said,

Speaker 1 I'm not interested. Sununu said no.
Andrew Yang said no.

Speaker 1 know, I don't know how many people they have left.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 1 they're going to have, they might, so they might have ballot access in a lot of these states and no candidate, which is also

Speaker 1 troubling, but who knows? Yeah. Because who knows? Who might jump in at the end?

Speaker 4 And, you know, just a reminder that they told their donors, when their donors, who, you know, I'm sure are great, were like, hey, but what if this spoils things and re-elects Trump?

Speaker 4 And they said, if it gets to the point where we are not seeing polling that shows our candidate has any kind of chance, we are not going to put a candidate on the ballot.

Speaker 4 And they're running out of time.

Speaker 1 And they're running out of candidates.

Speaker 4 Well, they've certainly run out of candidates, but they're also running out of time

Speaker 4 to find any way of doing this that wouldn't obviously from the beginning and end be a spice.

Speaker 3 Guys, I'm making a Venn diagram.

Speaker 3 No labels, no vaccines.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. RFRK Jr.
There we go. RFK Jr.
They need a unity ticket, too. That's the thing.
I mean, who knows?

Speaker 1 Marion Williams and maybe

Speaker 1 Charles Kelsey. On RFK Jr., just update there.
There have been some rumors that he is

Speaker 1 trying to possibly get on the Libertarian ticket and be the Libertarian ticket nominee. The Libertarian Party is on the ballot in all 50 states, so that would be quite troubling.

Speaker 1 He's speaking at the Libertarian Convention out here in California at the end of the month. That's the time.

Speaker 1 But apparently there is a, I went deep on this, apparently there's a radical faction within the Libertarian Party that controls actually most of the delegates at the convention.

Speaker 1 That's how they pick their nominee. And they have decided that RFK Jr.
is not libertarian enough for them.

Speaker 1 He's just using the ticket to try to run, which he would be.

Speaker 1 This is the faction that's upset that like a Gary Johnson was on the ticket, even though Gary Johnson got more votes than any other libertarian candidate.

Speaker 1 This faction is pissed because they're like, he's not a real libertarian, so they want to go pure.

Speaker 4 John, you might find this hard to believe, but a radical libertarian doesn't necessarily have the most cogent theory of change.

Speaker 1 Who's like the, who do they want? Like a Ron Paul type? Just some know-name. There's a bunch of candidates already running that you wouldn't know any of their names.

Speaker 1 No one knows any of their names.

Speaker 3 But they don't like RFK's efforts to own the libs.

Speaker 1 Basically. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's good. Thanks.
That's good. That's okay.
So now, so far, RFK Jr. is only on the ballot in Utah, and I think they have some money troubles, not just in the campaign, but in the super PAC.

Speaker 1 Did you see the story? Yeah. RFK Jr.

Speaker 3 got like a nearly $10 million

Speaker 3 contribution to this super PAC from this guy, Gavin DeBecker, who is this sort of security consultant that lives in Silicon Valley, works for people like Jeff Bezos.

Speaker 3 Remember when Bezos was in that big fight with the Inquirer over his divorce and all things? Like he hired this guy to help.

Speaker 1 Well, to say,

Speaker 4 because there's some data leak.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's what they thought. So, and they were like blaming the Saudis for a while.
It was weird. Anyway, this guy, Gavin DeBecker, he donated like $9.something million dollars.

Speaker 4 They donated $10 million.

Speaker 4 $9.6 or so back.

Speaker 1 He got it all back.

Speaker 3 It was basically just a bridge loan. Like he loaned nearly $10 million to the super PAC and got it all back.

Speaker 1 It's the weirdest thing.

Speaker 4 And really, right. Well, so it's sort of first,

Speaker 4 it was also, was it used to signal to other people that the organization was well-funded? Like, what is the purpose of that?

Speaker 3 It's not clear. I think

Speaker 3 that's what a lot of people think was that, you know, there were a bunch of headlines who were like, oh my God, RFK Jr. got $10 million to his super PAC.
He's like a real candidate now.

Speaker 1 And the guys took it all back.

Speaker 4 And is that, but my question would also be like, look, we're not lawyers here, but you get $10 million that you know you're returning to tell a bunch of donors how well-funded you are, then you try to get other money to put behind that money, then give that money back.

Speaker 4 Doesn't sound like not a crime.

Speaker 1 Seems a little shady. So RFK Jr.
is not exactly doing well this week. A lot of good news for democracy on the third-party front this week.

Speaker 1 I would say that we still have to be pretty vigilant and worried about sure. But between the mansion thing, the no-label stuff,

Speaker 1 the RFK stuff, I think, you know, we're in a better position than we were on the third-party front. It's like good news.
Yeah. Take anything.
well then on that note when we come back.

Speaker 1 You'll hear my interview with Elizabeth Warren.

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Speaker 1 Joining us now is Massachusetts Senator and longtime friend of the pod, Elizabeth Warren. Senator Warren, welcome back.
Oh, it's good to be at the pod. It's good to have you here in the studio.

Speaker 1 So four years ago, you were running for president in a race that ended up being Biden versus Trump. That's right.
That's right. Four years later, we are somehow headed for a rematch.
Deja Vu.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh. In February of 20, the polling average had Biden beating Trump by about five points,

Speaker 1 which was pretty close to the final margin. Right now, the average has Trump leading by one.
We got a criminal defendant who tried to overturn the last election

Speaker 1 versus a president who has presided over a pretty strong economic recovery.

Speaker 1 What's going on? Yeah, well, you know. How are you feeling about things?

Speaker 1 If you're going to ask me to explain polling, you got the wrong guess in here.

Speaker 1 But I will say,

Speaker 1 look, I actually feel pretty good about. what's coming up.
And the reason I do is the contrast is so clear. Think about this.

Speaker 1 This is like the first time in almost forever, in our lifetime, certainly, that

Speaker 1 two people are running for president, both of whom have actually been president.

Speaker 1 And so you can really get a not what are your highfalute and fancy promises. It's really, what have you done? And here's where we go.
Donald Trump has done, count them, two things. Big ones, big ones.

Speaker 1 An extremist Supreme Court that overturned Roe versus Waite

Speaker 1 and a giant tax break that was mostly sucked up by millionaires, billionaires, and giant corporations. So there's his record ready to go.
Okay, that's in one corner.

Speaker 1 In the other corner, you've got Joe Biden. And what's Joe Biden got to show for his time in office? Well, he's got $35 insulin and Medicare drug price negotiations for the first time.

Speaker 1 He's got canceling a lot of student loan debt. He's got, oh, getting getting rid of junk fees.
He's got the biggest climate package in the history of the world. And it's paid for by my 15%

Speaker 1 tax on billionaire corporations.

Speaker 1 So to me, like, there it is.

Speaker 1 It's not like there's a bunch of mush and not a nickel's worth of difference. Man.

Speaker 1 The difference is huge. The contrast is huge.
And I think that's what this election is going to come down to. It's going to be that contrast.
Why do you think that people

Speaker 1 all these polls show like a lot of voters look back on the Trump years and they think they didn't like a lot about it, but they think the economy was good in the Trump years.

Speaker 1 And I know that like we weren't I know well at the end clearly and then at the end when COVID happened and you know they they figure oh well COVID happened all around the world and so of course the economy went south but you know before that Donald Trump was uh he was presiding over an okay economy.

Speaker 1 You know i again I don't know. I I can't expl I can't explain polling.
No, I mean, I can't.

Speaker 1 I can't. And I can't explain how the narratives come to be.
I also can't explain how sensitive are they. I'm going to now sound like the professor I used to be.

Speaker 1 How sensitive are they to the exact questions that get asked? Because you do get real differences in this. All I can do is do the look ahead.

Speaker 1 And the look ahead is going to be draw this contrast. We know what kind of a president Donald Trump was.
And let us be clear. he has said if he gets a chance, he will be a different president.

Speaker 1 Next time around, he will be dictator on day one, not just wait until the insurrection on January 6th after four years. He will be a dictator on day one.

Speaker 1 And we know that there's this group putting together, what's it called, Project 2025,

Speaker 1 millions of dollars.

Speaker 1 to figure out how to weaponize government against political enemies, how to make government not work, like in effect, how to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, how to take the legs out from underneath the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the stuff,

Speaker 1 the kind of parts of government that are not sexy. They're not, you know, they don't get headlines most of the time when they're doing their job.

Speaker 1 But damn, they're about being able to breathe the air and drink the water. They're about not getting cheated every time you walk into a bank or you pull out your credit cards.
So

Speaker 1 Trump has aspirations that he's making pretty clear and pretty damn scary.

Speaker 1 And the thing is, Biden has aspirations too. And I give him a lot of credit.
I like his aspirations.

Speaker 1 Well, that brings up, I mean, I think one of the big challenges on a reelection campaign, we faced this in 2012 when I was with Obama, is

Speaker 1 you have this great frustration that people, that your accomplishments haven't broken through.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 a successful reelection campaign is about telling a story of where we were and then where we're going.

Speaker 1 What do you think about where we're going in terms of a story and not just like a set of policies?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I want to be careful here because I know when I'm talking to you about this, I'm talking to the master. You know a lot more about telling a political story than I do.
But here's how I see it.

Speaker 1 If I can, I would reframe slightly.

Speaker 1 I think of the story of Joe Biden is who does he fight for?

Speaker 1 And sometimes he wins those fights, sometimes he loses those fights. But this is the motivating, this is how to understand who this human being is.

Speaker 1 And I'll give you the best example, and that is student loan debt.

Speaker 1 So, okay, so four years ago, we're running for president. He says, yeah, he does something on student loan debt.
Not as much as I wanted, but he said he was going to do something.

Speaker 1 He gets elected and he kind of looks around, well, tries to figure it out. And finally, after

Speaker 1 this important he listens talks to a lot of people talks to a lot of union folks talks to a lot of people who are getting crushed by student loan debt talks to a lot of leaders leaders of the NAACP says a big issue because African Americans borrow more money to go to school borrow more money while they're in school have a harder time paying it off when they get out so he talks to a lot of people he says okay I'm ready I'm going big.

Speaker 1 I'm going to cancel a big chunk of student loan debt for about 43 million Americans. Shazam, right?

Speaker 1 Then the Republicans say, we're not going to let you do that. Well, the law pretty clearly says he can.

Speaker 1 But the Supreme Court knocks him back and says, no, we can't. They read the word wave as not meaning you could actually cancel some debt.
I mean, I'm like, really? But okay, that's what happens.

Speaker 1 Now, you know what a lot of politicians would do at that point? They would say, I tried, done.

Speaker 1 Okay, didn't work. Let's not advertise it because it didn't win.

Speaker 1 Let's just back away as quietly as we can and hope everybody forgets. Not Joe Biden.
Literally, the afternoon that the Supreme Court opinion had come out in the morning, he said,

Speaker 1 so what else could we do? How else can we cancel debt? Because he had become convinced people needed help. So the question was, how can we get help to him?

Speaker 1 And now I'm going to tell you one of the many stories around this. So back in 2005, Georgia W.

Speaker 1 Bush is president and a bipartisan Congress passes something called the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. You could have taken advantage of this when you were in public service.

Speaker 1 So it's anybody who works for the government. It's about public school teachers.
It's about nurses and firefighters. And basically what this law says is that

Speaker 1 Pay on your student loan debt, whatever is due, and after so long a period of time, so many years, if you haven't paid it off, we're we're just going to cancel what's left.

Speaker 1 It's our way of saying, thank you for getting an education and working in public service. I love this, right?

Speaker 1 Up until the day that Joe Biden was sworn in as president, you know how many people had gotten student loan debt canceled under that program? How many?

Speaker 1 7,000.

Speaker 1 Joe Biden has been president now for three years, right? You know how many people have gotten student loan debt under that program canceled over the last three years? How many?

Speaker 1 Right around 800,000. Wow.
And I say right around because every single day it's another group of people hit the right marks and get their student loan debt canceled.

Speaker 1 And I use that as just one example of that's what the guy is doing.

Speaker 1 He's picking up here, he's picking up there, whatever tools he's got, sharpening, he's building some new tools through his Department of Education.

Speaker 1 We are now at about just a little shy of 4 million people have had their student loan debt canceled, and Joe Biden is just staying after it.

Speaker 1 So, you start out by asking me the question: where's he been? Where's he going?

Speaker 1 And I was saying, This is how I think of Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 He's committed to trying to help working families.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 when he gets focused and he finds the families who needs help,

Speaker 1 he's going to stay after it until he gets the job done. And that's what he's doing right now on student loans and a whole bunch of other stuff.
So

Speaker 1 he's got the State of the Union coming up. It's his chance to sort of lay out a potential agenda for a second term.
What do you want to hear from him in the State of the Union?

Speaker 1 Well, I want him to take credit for all the things he's done. It's a good night.
You know this. You've written that speech, right?

Speaker 1 It's a good night to be able to talk about that. Lord, I want him to talk about the things with real ambition that our country needs to do.
Can I put in a big pitch here? Sure. Universal child care.

Speaker 1 When you line up the world's richest nations, you know where we are and how much we spend per child on helping take care of our little children? We are number 33.

Speaker 1 I mean, when's the last time you heard a cheer? A big bunch of people say, we're number 33, right?

Speaker 1 is this is an embarrassment that

Speaker 1 most all the nations of the world spend more on their children. And why do they do that?

Speaker 1 Well, first of all, if you want mamas and daddies to be able to go to work, do I need to say this to the parents of young children? I always supported child care as a good Democrat.

Speaker 1 Now that I'm a parent of two young children, I'm like, oh my god. Yeah, exactly.
And that is exactly the right way to look at this. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 If we want parents to be able to go into the workforce, then we need to provide child care. But I'll give you a second reason.

Speaker 1 And that is if we want children to have good learning experiences, we've come to understand

Speaker 1 that childcare is also early childhood education.

Speaker 1 In fact, what the data show is that parents who can afford it, even if they have a stay-at-home parent, will put children in some kind of group setting

Speaker 1 for starting very, very young. Why? Because good for brain development.
All those colors and sounds and noises and pictures and all the things that are going on.

Speaker 1 So that's the second reason, but there is a third reason. And that is we have taken advantage of our child care workforce for too damn long.

Speaker 1 Mostly, these are women, mostly, these are black and brown women who do this work, and they are paid nowhere near a living wage and nowhere, nowhere near the kind of responsibilities responsibilities that they take on.

Speaker 1 So it is time as a nation for us to say that just in the same way that we invest in highways

Speaker 1 so that people can get to work and in the same ways that we invest in electricity and clean water so that all those businesses can run,

Speaker 1 We need employees to be able to get to work. And that means we need to invest in child care all across this country, available for every parent.
Available, affordable, high quality.

Speaker 1 And I'm in and I want to hear the president talk about it. Are you listening, Joe Biden?

Speaker 1 I know he's a fan. So he's a good person.
I know he is.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about Congress, which seems like it must be a hell of a good time right now. Oh, you bet.
Not that party on. You know, it's, I'm telling you.

Speaker 1 So Trump, Johnson, some Senate Republicans killed the bipartisan border national security deal. I believe you were one of five Senate Democrats who also voted against that bill.

Speaker 1 What was your thinking there on the...

Speaker 1 So look, the Republicans had already killed it, and they had said there will be no border deal.

Speaker 1 But I just want to put in my stick here that I don't want that border bill to be the basis for the next round of negotiation.

Speaker 1 We need more security and more resources at the border. We also need a path to citizenship.
And I just want to keep shoving both of those on the table at the same time.

Speaker 1 So you then supported a bill that's out there now that's just waiting for a vote in the House that's only foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, humanitarian aid for Ukrainians and Palestinians.

Speaker 1 Mike Johnson won't give that a vote either. Is there a plan? What's the next plan? Well, what's the strategy to get that done? So 218.

Speaker 1 A discharge petition. Let's get really wonky because I love your audience because we really can.
These are people who say, yeah, 218, baby.

Speaker 1 218, if we can get 218 votes in favor of this bill, you can do a discharge petition in the House, and it doesn't matter that Mike Johnson won't put it on the floor.

Speaker 1 We can go ahead and pass it, and I think Joe Biden will sign it into law. That takes a while, right? The discharge petition? Yeah.
It's like a cumbersome, long process.

Speaker 1 Yes, is it a pain? Would it be better? But it will happen. Johnson will put it on the floor.
And look, if he's getting, you know, it's a, you sign your name literally on a petition.

Speaker 1 He may start counting those.

Speaker 1 He may be struggling to learn how to count votes. We learned it.
But he may look at a lot of names on that petition and say that he's ready to go.

Speaker 1 Three other Senate Democrats voted against the foreign aid bill. Bernie Sanders said, I'll be damned if I'm going to give another nickel to the Netanyahu government.

Speaker 1 You've called for a ceasefire in Gaza. You've been very critical of Netanyahu's military operation there.
What made you feel comfortable voting for that? Comfortable over states,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 this is a hard time. So let me back it up just a tiny little bit as we think about this moment.
So

Speaker 1 there's a terrorist attack on Israel. About 1,200 people are killed.
Hostages are taken. There are still more than 100 hostages held in Gaza.

Speaker 1 And the Netanyahu government and his right-wing cronies on that government

Speaker 1 have killed

Speaker 1 probably best estimate is nearly 30,000 people, the majority of whom whom women, children, civilians.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 this has got to stop. This has got to stop.
This is a moral issue.

Speaker 1 It's also an issue of how to build a future for the people of the regions. So the way I think about this

Speaker 1 is that

Speaker 1 I had started a long time talking about conditioning aid to Israel. When I say a long time, I mean years ago.

Speaker 1 And also working on questions about

Speaker 1 protection of civilians in war zones. It was not focused on Gaza and Israel.
It was focused in other parts of the world.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I worked with Senator Van Hollen and

Speaker 1 others to put together an amendment that said any money that goes out

Speaker 1 is going to have conditions put on it.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 we built up enough Democrats. This is kind of the nuts and bolts of how you get things done.

Speaker 1 We got altogether a couple of dozen Democrats. It's not as many as I'd like, but it's a whole lot more than three of us.

Speaker 1 Democrats to say, I'm willing to co-sponsor, I will definitely vote for conditioning aid. The White House saw that.
We engaged in some negotiations. And last Thursday,

Speaker 1 President Biden put in writing

Speaker 1 that aid to all nations

Speaker 1 that use military assistance from the United States would be conditioned on two things.

Speaker 1 One is care for civilian life in the middle of conflict, and the other is not blocking access to humanitarian relief.

Speaker 1 And then he followed that up also in writing with saying that any place that is engaged in a conflict

Speaker 1 within every 90 days,

Speaker 1 that nation must certify that it meets both of those conditions, and that if it fails to report at all or fails to certify in a way that our Secretary of State certifies is credible, that nation can lose aid.

Speaker 1 This is a big deal.

Speaker 1 It's a big deal because while America has talked about for a long time that we condition AIDS, some people use that language, I have for a long time, condition it on countries that are working consistent with our values.

Speaker 1 We've never been this explicit about it and never had

Speaker 1 these pinch point moments, 90 days, and you've got to come up with it in writing, and then somebody's got to certify that what you said is right.

Speaker 1 Does that guarantee we get everywhere we need to go? No.

Speaker 1 But it is a significant shift in U.S. policy.
Now, it only matters if there's real oversight.

Speaker 1 And this is something I commit to, and there are others I know for certain in the Senate that are committed to this, to making certain that we follow through on these conditions to make sure they are met.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 with the aid to Ukraine, which I think is just critically important,

Speaker 1 I felt like that

Speaker 1 this was moving our government in the right direction, and that's what I wanted to do.

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Speaker 1 So obviously, President Biden, beyond aid, President Biden has been reportedly criticizing Netanyahu

Speaker 1 in private. We've heard a little bit of criticism in public the other week when he said that the military response is over the top.
But he hasn't been more forthcoming publicly.

Speaker 1 And clearly, Netanyahu is not listening to any of this criticism, whether it's private or public. Do you think the president, our president, needs to change tactics here?

Speaker 1 You know, I just want to underscore how truly awful Prime Minister Netanyahu has been.

Speaker 1 That

Speaker 1 for a a long time now,

Speaker 1 he has promised Israel security.

Speaker 1 And when the attacks came on October 7th,

Speaker 1 he put together

Speaker 1 a right-wing cabinet

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 has had a response that has created a humanitarian crisis

Speaker 1 unlike anything we've seen in modern times.

Speaker 1 And in doing this,

Speaker 1 he has pulled away

Speaker 1 from

Speaker 1 every opportunity,

Speaker 1 both

Speaker 1 my view on it, is to negotiate, to keep his focus on

Speaker 1 getting back the hostages. I've met with hostage families.
I've talked with Massachusetts families who have

Speaker 1 friends and relatives who are held hostage. He has moved that out of the spotlight

Speaker 1 and engaged in bombing in civilian areas,

Speaker 1 bombing that would

Speaker 1 kill tens of thousands over time, tens of thousands of civilians, women, and children.

Speaker 1 But the biggest

Speaker 1 problem

Speaker 1 now

Speaker 1 is that the way out of this,

Speaker 1 the way forward is something

Speaker 1 he has already rejected.

Speaker 1 How do we have,

Speaker 1 how do they have a Middle East that's peaceful? The answer is two states, two states for two people, where people can live with dignity and security,

Speaker 1 self-determination.

Speaker 1 And this is something the United States has supported since the 1940s. It's something Joe Biden has reiterated just in recent days.
And Netanyahu has said flatly no.

Speaker 1 And I think the real issue worth focusing on is whose interests is Netanyahu serving.

Speaker 1 I understand that if he's not prime minister,

Speaker 1 he's subject to

Speaker 1 personal legal problems,

Speaker 1 and that

Speaker 1 he

Speaker 1 the Israeli people,

Speaker 1 good people, and Palestinian people, good people,

Speaker 1 deserve a national leader

Speaker 1 who wants to help build bridges for peace for all of them.

Speaker 1 And if Benjamin Netanyahu is not there, then the Israeli people deserve a better leader.

Speaker 1 And what about President Biden?

Speaker 1 President Biden will find his own way to press that, but I know that he strongly believes in a two-state solution and is committed to finding that path and finding it as quickly as humanly possible.

Speaker 1 Would you like him to push a little harder on Netanyahu publicly?

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 1 I will push on Benjamin Netanyahu as much as I can, and I think we all should.

Speaker 1 This was part of the conversation we had about conditioning aid.

Speaker 1 Benjamin Netanyahu does not get a blank check, and the American people

Speaker 1 are not going to stand by while he bombs more

Speaker 1 Palestinian civilians, more Palestinian babies. We will not.

Speaker 1 And the sooner Netanyahu understands that,

Speaker 1 the sooner we can start building toward safety and security and self-determination and respect and dignity for both Israelis and for Palestinians.

Speaker 1 You have a bill to crack down on people who use crypto to launder money. I do.
Hamas has raised over $130 million in crypto to fund their operation. How's that going? What are the chances that passes?

Speaker 1 So let me just remind everybody how this one works. So think about it this way.
Everybody knows a little about what crypto is now works. There are kind of two areas where you could have problems.

Speaker 1 One is you can have problems because the crypto exchanges don't have enough cash to back it up and, you know, you get...

Speaker 1 cheated in a rug pull or a pump and dump, you know, the things that happened on Wall Street 100 years ago. That's what the regulators take care of.
That's the SEC, the CFTC.

Speaker 1 Over on the law enforcement side, though, there's something else, and that is money laundering, it's called, using crypto as a way to pay for bad stuff.

Speaker 1 So, China, for example, there are about 90 companies in China that export fentanyl precursor drugs to Mexico to be mixed into fentanyl. How do they get paid? Crypto.

Speaker 1 Rogue Nations, North Korea, right now, about half of its missile program is paying for using illicit crypto.

Speaker 1 Hamas

Speaker 1 gets part of its funding through crypto. So does Hezbollah.

Speaker 1 Iran and Russia are using crypto to evade sanctions. Oh, here's one for you.
You know ransomware.

Speaker 1 You know what that is. Do you know what portion of ransomware is paid for through crypto? Most of it? 100%.
Wow. Yeah, the business model doesn't work without crypto.
So here's the deal.

Speaker 1 We have a set of what are called money laundering rules. It's the Bank Secrecy Act.

Speaker 1 And it's just a set of rules about how we try to keep

Speaker 1 criminal money out of the banking system, make it hard for them to be able to use their ill-gotten gains to buy things.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 we have that those laws apply. Same laws to banks, to credit unions, to credit card companies, to gold traders, to stockbrokers, to precious metal dealers,

Speaker 1 to Venmo, to Western Union, right? Name me another, name me another, PayPal, but not to crypto.

Speaker 1 So there are all these gaps in the system when it comes to crypto. And the consequence of that is that crypto has become the place to go

Speaker 1 for the drug traffickers, the human traffickers, the rogue nations, the terrorists. And what I want to do is just go back.

Speaker 1 This is a law enforcement issue and a national security issue, and say, let's just stitch up those holes so the same rules that apply to your checking account

Speaker 1 also apply to crypto. And by the way, bipartisan bill, Democrats and Republicans, and we've got 20 senators on it right now.
That's pretty good. That is pretty good.

Speaker 1 Run into the House Roadblock again.

Speaker 1 Well, it's not just the House Roadblock. It's there are some crypto folks who have

Speaker 1 giant buckets of money to spend. And so they hire this lobbying army to go out.

Speaker 1 And here's the thing.

Speaker 1 There's no money on the not-drug trafficker side.

Speaker 1 There's not like this big lobby for not rogue nations. Anti-money laundering.
Yes, the anti,

Speaker 1 you know, there's just nothing, there's no big political action committee on this and an army of lobbyists and lawyers.

Speaker 1 And what I watch here, John, reminds me, back, you remember back in the run-up to 2008 and when the banks crashed, ultimately crashed our economy. They always kept saying two things.

Speaker 1 They said two things over and over and over. They said, well,

Speaker 1 I would explain to you these subprime mortgages and these derivatives, but it's just too complicated, too hard for you to understand, right? It's too complex.

Speaker 1 And then they would say, and it's too complex to regulate.

Speaker 1 You can't regulate, right? You've got to leave.

Speaker 1 And that's what you hear with crypto now, you know, that anyone who thinks maybe they ought to have to follow the same rules as every other

Speaker 1 money system, they say, no, it's too complicated. You clearly don't understand it, and it's too complicated to regulate.
And you know what? Not so.

Speaker 1 Well, your push to regulate it has seemingly attracted a potential challenger to you in your Senate race. I hear that there's a Republican crypto enthusiast who might jump in the race.

Speaker 1 That could mean a flood of money from crypto super PACs, like the one attacking Katie Porter here in the California Senate race. Thoughts? Well, let me start actually with Katie.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, because she gave me a chance to do this. I'm not at all surprised that corporate money comes after Katie.
It may be of one flavor or another, but look at what Katie has done. Here she is.

Speaker 1 She came in, she turned a red seat to blue, right, in Orange County. And then, by God, she went to the House of Representatives and she did her job.
She held people accountable. I love it.

Speaker 1 For anyone who doesn't remember, just

Speaker 1 Google Katie Porter Jamie Dimon,

Speaker 1 when she fried his little fanny after he had made some remark in the press a few days before the hearing about how, well, people just need to budget better.

Speaker 1 And she took him through budgeting for a J.P. Morgan Chase employee.
And,

Speaker 1 you know, that's Katie. Katie got

Speaker 1 free testing kits during COVID. You know, she just puts people on the spot.
She is so good at what she does. And that's a part

Speaker 1 of, here's the deal, John. It's what we see forever.

Speaker 1 And that is the corporate money gets together and says, we're taking out that one, we're taking out that one, and we're going to support the people, the corporatists, we're going to support the people who are going to get in there and fall into line.

Speaker 1 And yeah, they may say they are, you know,

Speaker 1 all for the people, but we know they're really going to watch out for us. It was true 12 years ago right now when I got in my Senate race.
You know, here I was, somebody who'd never been in politics.

Speaker 1 I got in that Senate race, and I still remember one of the things I read was that my opponent, there was a statement that Wall Street had said they would open their checkbooks and spend any amount of money needed to make sure that that woman, that's me,

Speaker 1 never made it to the United States Senate. But here's the thing, John.

Speaker 1 That was 12 years ago. Yeah, it still happens.
They still spend obscene amounts of money. But the world has changed.
We fight back. We do small dollar donations.

Speaker 1 I don't take, Katie and I both, we don't take corporate PAC money. We don't do any of that sort of thing.
But you can build enough to fight back, and I love it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I want to end with an issue that you've been working on lately, weed.

Speaker 1 You and other Democratic senators recently asked the Biden administration to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act entirely, which would decriminalize it on a federal level.

Speaker 1 Have you heard back from DOJ or DEA or had any conversations with the administration about this? Okay.

Speaker 1 So administration, I won't talk about private conversations,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 it was a wink for those of you listening.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 DEA,

Speaker 1 we're pushing on them now.

Speaker 1 I want them to deschedule marijuana altogether.

Speaker 1 And look, just for anybody, since we're talking to our wonky friends out there, look, if the Republicans didn't block us, we'd run this through Congress. And you just legalize it.
Hello?

Speaker 1 But the Republicans block us on this.

Speaker 1 Right now, marijuana is a Schedule I drug, which means it's scheduled right up there with heroin and cocaine.

Speaker 1 That means it has already been proven, this is what's supposed to be the case before it gets Schedule I, that it has no medicinal value, no help to anyone under any circumstances, and you can't run tests on it.

Speaker 1 You can't

Speaker 1 see how it works, and does it work better for pain relief, for you know, for anxiety, for PTSD?

Speaker 1 If we just deschedule it, look, there still could be regulations around it, like there is around alcohol.

Speaker 1 You've got to be a certain age, you've got to have certain disclosures about the potency, and so on. I'm all for that.
But I really want to say to the DEA:

Speaker 1 guys,

Speaker 1 come on.

Speaker 1 It is not 1958.

Speaker 1 And And

Speaker 1 we don't need to be terrified of this stuff. Let's just deschedulize it and go forward.
And you think that the administration or the DEA has the power to do that without an act of Congress? They do.

Speaker 1 They clearly have the power. They are the ones who are responsible for scheduling.
And it's just, it's the classic. We're doing this all the time now.

Speaker 1 In places where the Republicans are blocking us in Congress, then we're moving forward. On the other side, we're moving forward

Speaker 1 and trying to do what we can administratively.

Speaker 1 One last important question on this issue that comes from our team here at Pod Save America. I'm ready.
I'm going to give you a list of people

Speaker 1 and we'd love for you to pick four of them as your dream blunt rotation.

Speaker 1 For those who aren't familiar, a dream blunt rotation is a group of people you'd hypothetically. like to smoke weed with because they'd be really fun time.
Okay, hypothetically.

Speaker 1 So all I'm really telling you, this has nothing to do with women.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if you were someone who do you think is fun,

Speaker 1 these are people you'd go get pedicures with. This is what you're telling me.
I just want to make sure I'm following this. Okay.
Incredibles, pedicure, the rock. Okay, I'm ready.

Speaker 1 Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Janet Yellen, Ed Markey, The Rock, Nancy Pelosi. Yeah, I know you.

Speaker 1 The Rock four times?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I had Nancy Pelosi, Snoop Dogg, Chuck Schumer, and Taylor Swift.
I'm still at The Rock. Just the Rock.

Speaker 1 Just The Rock. You and The Rock.
Yeah. Okay.
Four times though. That's totally fine.
Same thing. All right.
Now, unfortunately, you have to pick your nightmare blunt rotation. Nightmare.

Speaker 1 So, of course, this is the worst group of people imaginable. Okay, nightmare for sitting there while we're doing a pedicure.
And this is going to be.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and these are just the most annoying four people that you can imagine sitting there smoking weed with. Okay, I'm ready.
Elon Musk, Ted Cruz, Jerome Powell,

Speaker 1 Mike Bloomberg, Mitch McConnell, Mark Zuckerberg, Marianne Williamson, Peter Thiel, and Jamie Dimon. I'm starting to feel a little sick.

Speaker 1 That is really awful to contemplate. I know.
You really know how to show a girl a good time.

Speaker 1 I had to put together a list just for you. Yeah, thanks a lot.

Speaker 1 No, no. Okay, okay.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 I had done it at the first one. I'm just going to go back to the rock.
Yeah. Elizabeth Warren, thank you so much.
As always, for joining, for being wonky, for being fun. We appreciate it.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's so much fun to be here with you. Take care.
Thanks.

Speaker 1 If you want to

Speaker 1 America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.
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