Biden vs. Trump on January 6th

Speaker 1 Hey, this is Will Arnett, host of Smartless. Smartless is a podcast with myself and Sean Hayes and Jason Bateman, where each week one of us reveals a mystery guest to the other two.

Speaker 1 We dive deep with guests that you love, like Bill Hayter, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Aniston, David Beckham, Kristen Stewart, and tons more.

Speaker 1 So join us for a genuinely improvised and authentic conversation filled with laughter and newfound knowledge to feed the Smartless mind. Listen to Smartless Now on the Sirius XM app.

Speaker 1 Download it today.

Speaker 2 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 2 It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. From CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 2 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 odoo.com.

Speaker 2 That's odoo.com.

Speaker 3 Welcome to Pond Save America.

Speaker 4 I'm John Lovitt. I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 3 John Favreau is off this week. His friend friend Joe Coy asked him to help him with material for the Golden Gloves, but he'll be back.

Speaker 3 John is on parental leave, but he will be back as soon as next week

Speaker 3 because he has a sickness. Yes, he does.
And this is the cure. On today's show, it's the January 6th anniversary, and Biden and Trump got us speeches.

Speaker 3 Congress, as always, is trying to fund the government as a shutdown looms. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's mysterious hospitalization over New Year's leads to questions about the chain of command.

Speaker 3 and Republicans continue to fight the culture war on college campuses.

Speaker 3 Plus, New York Times congressional correspondent Andy Carney joins to talk about Schumer and Johnson's deal, Republican impeachment inquiries, and a least Stephonix war on Harvard.

Speaker 3 But first, late last week, President Biden marked the third anniversary of the January 6th attack on the Capitol with a speech setting up the threat posed by Trump and the choice in the 2024 election.

Speaker 6 Today, we're here to answer the most important of questions. Is democracy still America's sacred cause?

Speaker 6 Trump won't do what an American president must do. He refuses to denounce political violence.

Speaker 6 And now these MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump on January 6th have abandoned the truth and abandoned democracy.

Speaker 6 They made their choice.

Speaker 6 Now the rest of us, Democrats, Independents, mainstream Republicans, we have to make our choice. We all know who Donald Trump is.
The question we have to answer is: who are we?

Speaker 3 Saul, you did a great job taking out the applause.

Speaker 3 Tommy, what did you, what did you think of the speech?

Speaker 4 Happy January 6th anniversary, by the way.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
No, it's

Speaker 3 three years flies when you're having whatever we're having.

Speaker 4 Storm of the Capitol. Yeah.
Gotcha, some bike rack.

Speaker 3 I thought it was good. That was powerful.
I mean, I think...

Speaker 4 Speech on threat to democracy can sound a little abstract, but really he walked you through some of the worst moments of the Trump presidency.

Speaker 4 He talked about January 6th. He talked about Trump refusing to call off the violent insurrectionists in the Capitol.

Speaker 4 He talked about Trump inciting political violence and laughing about it like he does with Paul Pelosi all the time, still, even though we know the full story there.

Speaker 4 He talked about the suckers and losers comment. So, you know,

Speaker 4 it was a good

Speaker 4 compilation of all the ways that Trump is a threat to democracy. He also reminded everybody of the legal challenges that Trump lost, including in red states and with Trump judges.

Speaker 4 And so that cuts to the heart of Trump continuing to say that this election was stolen or rigged or whatever you want to call it. And so, look, I don't think it was a one-off thing either.

Speaker 4 Biden reprised a lot of the speech in South Carolina again today. And I think this will all fold into a broader argument about just how extreme Trump is on a whole host of different issues.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there's a lot of people that have been saying, draw the contrast.

Speaker 3 The campaign has to begin. The campaign has to begin.
It doesn't seem like he's trying to do that. There are a few ways he sort of frames the fight against Trump.

Speaker 3 One is that Trump is out for himself and not for you. One is that Trump is a loser.
Another is that Trump is violent and anti-democratic.

Speaker 3 Was there anyone that stood out to you, anyone that you thought was the strongest version of an attack from Biden?

Speaker 4 You know what I liked?

Speaker 4 One line, I don't know if this is the strongest version of an attack, but a line that jumped out at me was, Trump is trying to steal history in the same way he tried to steal the election.

Speaker 4 I really liked that. And it spoke to the way he's trying to rewrite history and memory hole, what we all watched happen live on TV, what, three years ago?

Speaker 3 Yeah, he's clearly very personally frustrated. I also appreciated.

Speaker 3 We've talked about this a lot, that

Speaker 3 threats to democracy can sound abstract. I'm glad that there was no reference in the speech to Schedule F government employment rules as much as it's important.
I agree that it's important. We agree.

Speaker 3 He really tried at a few places, not for the first time, but I think clearly like recognizing that like people don't totally get the connection to their daily lives.

Speaker 3 Like democracy is the place where we go to make change. Democracy is the place where we try to make sure people get opportunities.
It's where you can be yourself.

Speaker 3 Like he's trying to find a way to make it relate to people. Part of this

Speaker 3 you can really feel Biden's genuine fury. Like, yes, there's strategy in it, but I do think this comes from this place where it's like just very personal.
You mentioned the Paul Pelosi piece of it.

Speaker 3 Can we play the clip of when Biden talks about that?

Speaker 6 At his rally, he jokes about an intruder whipped up by the big Trump lie, taking a hammer to Paul Pelosi's skull. And he thinks that's funny.

Speaker 7 He laughed about it.

Speaker 4 What a sick.

Speaker 4 My God.

Speaker 7 I think it's despicable. Seriously.

Speaker 3 I just were a present for any person to say that.

Speaker 3 You really feel like he can't believe it. He just like he can't believe we're talking about this.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 that was a moment where he seemed genuinely angry and emotional.

Speaker 4 The other moment where he seemed genuinely, really angry and emotional was referencing Trump calling dead soldiers suckers and losers because he brought up Bo, his son, who passed away.

Speaker 4 Joe Biden says repeatedly because of inhaling toxic fumes from burn pits when he was deployed overseas. So yeah, those are a couple of moments where you can tell he really feels this one.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And like there's the moral indignation of it, but it's also his continued like disbelief that the country would get behind someone like that.

Speaker 3 So he makes the point, talks about all this and he says that the country rejected Trump in 2020, but also that the country has continued to reject election deniers as they did in 2022.

Speaker 3 How much of this is a message to voters? Surely it's that.

Speaker 3 But how much of it is also, this is a speech geared towards engaged Democrats have been doing a ton of hand-wringing to remind them that we have a winning message and that Joe Biden is the person who can carry it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think that it's a lot of that. It's a lot of reminding everybody what the stakes of the election are.

Speaker 4 Even if you're frustrated about something that's happening right now, he's trying to paint this bigger picture of the true threat this guy poses, Donald Trump poses.

Speaker 4 And I do, you know, for people who listen to this show, it probably seems like bizarre to suggest that you would need to do that.

Speaker 4 But Donald Trump's been relatively out of the limelight for a while and off the front pages and off Twitter. And so there's a lot of regular voters who have kind of forgotten.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and it's sort of like there was a divorce.

Speaker 3 We don't like living with mom.

Speaker 3 You know, it's not as nice as we thought it was going to be. We're not as happy, but we forget that there's nothing in dad's fridge, that he doesn't take care of us.
It's fun. You know, he's kooky.

Speaker 4 Doesn't have HBO.

Speaker 3 There's no HBO. You just don't feel safe safe when you're at death.
No. You know, you just don't feel safe.

Speaker 3 At no point in the speech does President Biden seem to acknowledge that there's a Republican primary. Based on your experience in Iowa, is he wrong to dismiss Nikki and Ron and Vivek at this point?

Speaker 4 There has not been a good poll out of Iowa in a while. That will change this week.
I'm pretty sure the register is in the field right now and the Iowa State, a bunch of outlets.

Speaker 4 But Trump does not seem at all worried about winning on Iowa. I went to see Eric Trump

Speaker 4 near Des Moines. His warm-up act was, remember Matt Whitaker?

Speaker 4 He's like a toilet salesman slash temporary attorney general.

Speaker 3 Right, right, right.

Speaker 4 Yes, yes. So normally in Iowa, you kind of like try to play the expectations game and you say, we have to do well, but you want to say we have to win, right?

Speaker 4 Matt Whitaker said, we need to set the record for the largest margin of victory in Iowa caucus history.

Speaker 3 So they want to blow out. Well, I was thinking about that because

Speaker 3 the largest margin in Iowa history, like he's on track for that right now with some room to spare, right? Like, it's not, it's not close.

Speaker 4 They're worried about complacency. They're worried about their people thinking we got this in the bag, so we're just going to stay home because it might be the coldest Iowa caucus day in history.

Speaker 4 I think it's supposed to be seven degrees.

Speaker 3 Where's that climate change?

Speaker 4 That's what I'm talking about. So they just want to make sure their folks turn out.

Speaker 4 And he's not worried now.

Speaker 3 And you were just in Iowa.

Speaker 3 I'm doing a natural segue to a plug.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 you have a two-episode special.

Speaker 4 Two-part series.

Speaker 3 This is coming. You're here.
This is Tuesday. Tomorrow, Wednesday.
The 10th. And Friday.

Speaker 4 The 12th.

Speaker 3 Nailed it. We're coming out.
Two.

Speaker 3 Right? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
And you were in Iowa. Just in Iowa.

Speaker 4 I mean, we're literally like, I was editing the second episode before I came in. I'll continue editing it after, but we're going to record the rest of it tomorrow.
And yeah, we're going to drop it.

Speaker 4 Nice. We're excited.
It was very fun. It was great.
We saw a bunch of events. We actually got on Vegue Ramaswamy's campaign bus and interviewed him.
So all that's coming up.

Speaker 3 We talked to Vivek. Yeah.
And you liked him.

Speaker 4 We had a great time. And you liked him.

Speaker 4 We swapped numbers oh really no I don't think he likes me to be totally honest well that's probably good yeah he doesn't seem like someone you want to be liked by he said um I think after I interviewed him he said that was less disappointing than I thought it was going to be oh that's like that's what my parents have said condescending

Speaker 3 anyway check it out it'll be in the pod save america feed tomorrow There were two stories this week, one about President Obama in the post suggesting that President Biden needs to empower the campaign more, and one about Jim Clyburn worried about the campaign not breaking through.

Speaker 3 Everybody's sort of grappling with the fact that we face this radical, extreme, politically unpopular movement, and yet poll after poll shows how rough a political environment it is.

Speaker 3 Let's take them one at a time. What did you make of the story about the meeting between President Obama and President Biden?

Speaker 4 So the Washington Post said that Obama's message was basically, you need some senior people on the campaign staff that you trust and that are empowered to make decisions so that you don't have to run everything through your White House staff.

Speaker 4 That to me was like a very nuts and bolts, very tactical observation about how a campaign can be run well. Obama, I think, gets that this is a 50-50 country.
It's going to be a tight race.

Speaker 4 It was pretty banal and inoffensive.

Speaker 4 Like the post tried to make it a bigger thing about their relationship and is it really a romance and seemingly talked to some people who are still mad that Obama discouraged Biden from running in 2016.

Speaker 4 But my reaction to that is, guys, he's Biden's president. Like, we got to get past this shit.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's not that big a deal.

Speaker 3 It was a strange, it was strange because like it was a such a, it's also like an incredibly mild critique about like management basically just so people know like it's a slightly unusual structure the campaign itself uh for a long time was very very small it stayed small and

Speaker 3 his closest advisors have been in the white house as opposed to say like david axerod or david ploughfo were in the campaign yeah and it's like okay maybe that's a good idea or i don't know maybe they can hop on a zoom i'm not sure yeah it's like six of one half dozen the other i have no idea but this was obama's take and it doesn't seem offensive or you know it doesn't sound like he was sounding the alarm Yeah.

Speaker 3 Very tactical and small.

Speaker 3 Then there was this Clyburn story, which came out of an interview he did with Jake Tamper on CNN.

Speaker 3 Let's roll the clip.

Speaker 5 He promised to relieve student loan debt, and he has done that. But one part of his promise he was not able to keep because six Republican

Speaker 5 attorneys general and the United States Supreme Court with six to three vote stopped him from doing so.

Speaker 5 But he sought another way, and he is forgiven $132 billion

Speaker 5 to 3.4 million people in student loan debt. But nobody writes about that.
Nobody talks about that.

Speaker 3 It was, I liked it because it was sort of like, what?

Speaker 3 That's a compliment. Yeah, that was a whole, your classic,

Speaker 4 sir, you don't have any policy problems, you have communications problems.

Speaker 3 Observation.

Speaker 3 People were sort of like spitting this up because, you know, he said that the Biden campaign is having trouble breaking through the MA wall.

Speaker 3 And fair enough, a CBS poll found that even though there's been an uptick in the share of Americans with a positive view of the economy, Biden isn't receiving any credit.

Speaker 3 Even in the interview, Jake says to Clyburn, sounds like you should

Speaker 3 go hit the trail for it. Like you're making a really good case.
How much of this is just

Speaker 3 like... Clyburn's basically saying, like, let's have a campaign, right? Like, I don't.
Yes. We're all looking at the same polls.

Speaker 4 Everyone's anxious about the same numbers. The New York Times poll of swing states that showed some softness with Biden among traditional Democrats and younger voters of color.

Speaker 4 It was concerning, and I think everyone's reacting to that still. The campaign is ramping up.

Speaker 4 I was talking to some Biden staffers who say we're going to see more travel by the president and vice president soon. They're going to speak to these anxieties you're hearing among Democrats.

Speaker 4 They're going to reconnect with supporters. They're going to send staff to key states.
You're going to see the VP doing a reproductive freedom tour. So they're getting things going.

Speaker 4 It's just, it's awkward when you don't have an opponent yet.

Speaker 4 The state of the union is a little later than usual this year. It's going to be March 7th.
So that traditionally is a big kind of moment in these campaigns in the re-elect.

Speaker 4 So I think it's all happening. It's happening a little slower than folks want on the communication side and also just on the tactical, you know, kind of getting up campaign infrastructure.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It also is like some of this is

Speaker 3 people are genuinely and I think rightly concerned about Biden's liabilities. And the question I think everybody has fairly is

Speaker 3 will those shift when the campaign begins in earnest? Now, that's when this should be happening.

Speaker 3 It's here. 2024 is here.
The 2024 campaign was always going to happen in 2024. But I do think people wanting it to happen right now is, I think, a response to Wantington.
Basically,

Speaker 3 they feel this incredible pressure. They feel

Speaker 3 the reality that these polls are fucking terrible. They're terrible.

Speaker 4 They're concerned. They want the numbers to be better.

Speaker 4 I think the challenge would be rolling out some big policy speech or announcement right now in the midst of a Republican primary is probably just not going to get covered.

Speaker 4 I think a lot of these problems, basically, Clyburn's was saying, you've done a lot of great stuff. Voters don't know about it.

Speaker 4 I really think we are just so far past the point where like a good surrogate operation is going to solve that problem. I think it's going to take billions of dollars in paid media, and that's all.

Speaker 3 And there's no. answer to it.
It's going to take everything. It is actually, it takes billions of dollars in advertising.
It's going to take surrogates.

Speaker 3 It's going to take people actually in their own lives talking to their friends and family and posting about it.

Speaker 3 You know, this like fact about how much student debt Biden was able to eliminate, despite the fact the Supreme Court stepped in to stop the whole plan, is a really good fact.

Speaker 3 It's not a fact people know. And sometimes I think it's like, okay, yeah, the Biden campaign should do everything they can to get that fact out there.

Speaker 3 But at a certain point, it's just a criticism of society. Like,

Speaker 3 we need them to do everything, but actually,

Speaker 3 it's going to be on individuals deciding they're going to be surrogates for the Biden campaign.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I'm not sort of absolving the White House of responsibility or saying they can't have done more or done better.

Speaker 4 I just think that every White House ever always says, oh, the last guy didn't sell his accomplishments well.

Speaker 3 I will do that.

Speaker 4 And I think the reality is that the swing voters, the voters that aren't paying attention, they're just not consuming the media that we need them to consume.

Speaker 4 And you're going to get them through paid advertising and surrogate operations and a field campaign and all the things. And yes, we should ramp that up sooner than later.
That's for sure.

Speaker 3 It also just depends on a,

Speaker 3 yes, we need the Biden campaign campaign to do everything they can, but also it will require the country to pay attention. And they will.
And we have to sort of be there when they're paying attention.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 To that point, I mean, you would be.

Speaker 4 I was walking around Iowa two weeks out from the caucuses talking to Republican Iowa caucus goers who are presumably some of the most politically engaged people you will ever meet.

Speaker 4 The number of people who told me they hadn't made up their minds yet is always astounding. It's like the majority of people I talked to were like, ah, I'm still undecided.

Speaker 4 Now, that could be because I wasn't at Trump events. I was at like Mike Yaley events and DeSantis events, But like people just, you know, they don't think about this stuff until they have to.

Speaker 3 In Tommy's home state of Iowa, Trump took a very different approach to marking January 6th. Let's roll that clip.

Speaker 8 What they've done, and they ought to, you know what they ought to do? They ought to release the J6 hostages. They've suffered enough.
They ought to release them.

Speaker 8 I call them hostages. Some people call them prisoners.
I call them hostages. Release the J6 hostages, Joe.
Release them, Joe. You can do it real easy, Joe.

Speaker 3 The fucking

Speaker 3 weird.

Speaker 3 Why does he do it like that? Joe,

Speaker 3 it's menacing. Is that pejorative?

Speaker 4 Was something wrong with the name Joe?

Speaker 3 I don't know. It's something like it feels vaguely violent.
I don't know why.

Speaker 4 Joe.

Speaker 3 That was unsettling. It's like a nightmare.
It feels like...

Speaker 3 I don't like it. I don't like it.

Speaker 3 Trump is not alone. in referring to the January 6th insurrectionists who've been convicted by juries of their peers as hostages.

Speaker 3 Harvard alum Elise Stefanik Stefanik said this.

Speaker 9 And I believe that we're seeing the weaponization of the federal government against not just President Trump, but we're seeing it against conservatives.

Speaker 3 Do you think she stares up at night? I just.

Speaker 4 It goes back to that biden line. Trump is trying to steal history in the same way he tried to steal the election.

Speaker 4 I mean, these guys are trying to rewrite history and memory hole what happened and treat.

Speaker 4 I mean, there was a video clip that came out late last week, shot by one of these insurrectionists through a hole in the glass door between them and I think either the House chamber or the Senate chamber, where you can see a police officer aiming a gun at them.

Speaker 4 And these insurrectionists are saying, if we have to hang a couple congressmen, we'll do it.

Speaker 4 You know, I mean, there's just no doubt that these people were incredibly violent and deserve to have been arrested.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean, that's sort of the part, again, it's like Biden's indignation coming through, but he talks about that in the speech.

Speaker 3 He says, after it happened, Republicans acknowledged that this was a humiliation, that this was dangerous, that this was terrible. But over time, they've come to this position.

Speaker 3 But the American people saw what happened on television. And I had to believe that's still true.
I mean, Republicans have slowly but surely embraced the lie.

Speaker 3 I do think what Biden's counting on, which I think is right, is that most Americans are not in this right-wing bubble and find the idea of referring to these people as hostages to be despicable.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I forget what the exact description was, but I think think the Washington Post had a poll last week that said like 55% of the country think it was a horrible moment in our history or something like that.

Speaker 4 It is definitely the case that more and more Republicans have been sold these conspiracy theories that federal agents or the FBI were in the crowd.

Speaker 4 They were inciting people, that they set up these January 6th protesters, that they're being treated unfairly in some way. But I don't think most of the country buys that.

Speaker 3 Did

Speaker 3 any of those

Speaker 3 meet any of those people on your little road tour there?

Speaker 4 Any J6 types? No, but like going to the Eric Trump event, you saw the cult-y nature of it.

Speaker 4 Like, there was a there was a family that was big enough that they you know those um you know those kind of like shuttles you take to the rental car place at the airport? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Family was big enough they needed one of those. And they all had matching sweatshirts on with little American flags and Trump 2024 and then different accomplishments on the back that were like

Speaker 4 fairer trade pack on like a seven-year-old.

Speaker 3 The um the group of people that come out for Eric Trump, those are the, those are not undecided voters.

Speaker 4 I tell you something.

Speaker 4 He was really good.

Speaker 3 Oh, come on. His speech was good.
No. It resonated.

Speaker 4 Come on.

Speaker 3 What do you mean, good?

Speaker 4 It brings me no pleasure to.

Speaker 3 Maybe you wrote for Joe Coyne.

Speaker 4 He was resonating with the audience. We talked to a woman who said he got her to switch her vote.
I mean, wow.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Eric, man.

Speaker 4 Who knew?

Speaker 3 Is Eric the one?

Speaker 3 Is he the air now?

Speaker 4 Well, SNL convinced us that he was the dumb one and that Don was the smart one based on their sketch, but I don't think that's fair.

Speaker 3 Trump also, he truths

Speaker 3 that Joe would be ripe for indictment by weaponizing DOJ against his political opponent, me.

Speaker 3 Joe has opened a giant Pandora's box. So now he's basically openly threatening to indict Joe Biden if it's while also asserting that he has immunity.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 That if he either, there's two possibilities, right? Either he has immunity. Don't question it.
Or he doesn't have immunity, which case Joe Biden should fucking die in jail.

Speaker 4 Right. Either way, it makes total logical sense.

Speaker 3 So the question of immunity is before the Supreme Court. Late last week, the Supreme Court also agreed to decide whether Trump is eligible for Colorado's Republican primary ballot.

Speaker 3 You know, I had this, we had Lawrence Tribon. And again, I'm just reminded that he's a

Speaker 3 just two smart lawyers talking about the news.

Speaker 3 I continue to believe that this is nuts and that this, like, we're all just, it's all a big cycle waiting for the Supreme Court to say that, of course, Colorado's.

Speaker 3 court can't decide Trump's not eligible. But what do you think?

Speaker 4 I mean, could I imagine some small percentage chance where a bunch of so-called originalists read the statute in the original way and decide that Donald Trump can run? I guess.

Speaker 4 But I think what they'll probably say, he wasn't convicted of anything yet. Let the voters decide is my guess.

Speaker 3 And then

Speaker 3 will I, yeah, and then we can have Lawrence Tribe back on.

Speaker 4 I'm back on. You'll just shout him down.

Speaker 3 It was so, he was, he was, he so thoroughly defeated me in that conversation. What are you going to say?

Speaker 4 I don't know. This man's like read the Constitution inside of that and he'd studied it.

Speaker 3 You know, but I prepped for like an hour.

Speaker 3 I still think it's nuts. Again, all I have is an LSAT score and a lot of confidence.
One other story that broke just as we were about to record:

Speaker 3 the threat of political violence, like it's very real. This isn't speculative.
It's not speculative to us.

Speaker 3 It's not even speculative to the people inside of Trump's orbit who view political violence as a means to them gaining and retaining power.

Speaker 3 Audio came out today as we were recording that has Roger Stone, Trump advisor, longtime longtime right-wing freak, rat fucker. Yep.

Speaker 3 Trump commuted and pardoned Roger Stone, okay?

Speaker 3 Directly, explicitly threatening Jerry Nadler, Eric Swalwell, as well as DOJ prosecutors in a conversation with Sal Greco, an off-duty NYPD comp.

Speaker 3 I think we have the transcript, but we don't have the audio. What he said about Swalwell and Nadler is, it's time, this is how explicit it is.
It's time to do it. Let's go find Swalwell.

Speaker 3 It's time to do it. Then we'll see how brave the rest of them are.
It's time to do it. It's either Nadler or Swalwell has to die before the election.
They need to get the message.

Speaker 3 Let's go find Swalwell and get this over with. I'm just not putting up with this shit anymore.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he's talking to a guy named Sal Greco.

Speaker 3 Great goon name.

Speaker 4 Great name. Former NYPD officer served as security for Stone.
They also talk about Aaron Zelensky, the deputy to Bob Mueller. Stone says he needs to be punished.
You have to abduct him and punish him.

Speaker 4 That has to be done. It will be easy to abduct him because he is a weakling.

Speaker 3 Roder Stone says they're AI.

Speaker 4 About to find out.

Speaker 3 Assuming that this is not artificial intelligence, it's pretty wild.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that seems bad. I mean, it's a good reminder that it only takes one person to commit political violence, one maybe disturbed person, and something really bad can happen.
So, yeah,

Speaker 4 I don't think anything Joe Biden said in that speech is hyperbolic.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and it also, like, a lot of times when we talk about Trump and political violence, we talk about people taking Trump at his word and the kind of random, disgruntled, aggrieved, angry, fucked up person taking Trump's rhetoric to its logical conclusion.

Speaker 3 And then, you know, Trump can stand back and say, oh, I was just giving a speech at the Capitol and these other people went too far or I was just saying that they're poisoning the blood of our country.

Speaker 3 Now I'm not responsible if someone goes and shoots up a fucking store.

Speaker 3 But this is a case where a Trump advisor, someone very close to Trump, is explicitly, directly seeking help from someone who is in law enforcement to help him go and do violence against his political opponents.

Speaker 4 Yeah, very scary person.

Speaker 3 And it just tells you, like, that's who these people are. That's their attitude towards

Speaker 3 what they should do to people that stand in their wake, right? Because these are Nadler, Swalwell, these prosecutors. These are all people that were making Roger Stone's life hell.

Speaker 4 Roger Stone was also caught on tape saying the day before January 6th, fuck the voting, let's get right to the violence, shoot to kill.

Speaker 4 That's what he's telling a bunch of proud boys and other people in the audience. So these people are inciting violence.

Speaker 10 What is the secret to making great toast?

Speaker 3 Oh, you're just gonna go in with the hard-hitting questions.

Speaker 10 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 10 There was the time we looked into allegations of discrimination at bon appetite, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape.

Speaker 11 It's a complex noodle that you've put together.

Speaker 10 Every episode of The Sporkful, you're going to learn something, feel something, and laugh.

Speaker 3 The Sporkful, get it wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 12 Dogs deserve the best, and that means fresh, healthy food. Unlike other brands, Ollie offers five flavors that are as nutritious as they are delicious, all made in U.S.

Speaker 12 kitchens without harmful fillers or preservatives. Head to Ollie.com, tell them all about your dog, and use code HappyPup to get 60% off your welcome kit with a bonus.

Speaker 12 You'll get a storage container for a mess-free experience. And it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee if your dog doesn't lick the bowl clean.

Speaker 2 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 2 It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier from CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 2 And the best part, Odoo 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 odoo.com.

Speaker 2 That's odoo.com.

Speaker 3 This is an odd story. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
He was hospitalized on January 1st for complications from an elective procedure he had on December 22nd. But there was one problem.

Speaker 3 Nobody knew about it until days later.

Speaker 3 CNN is reporting that even Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks was kept in the dark about his stay at Walter Reed, which is a problem because she would have been acting Secretary of Defense during that time.

Speaker 3 Austin has apologized, but is this a big deal? And what happens if you need the Secretary of Defense, but he's not returning your texts?

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's a good question.

Speaker 4 I mean, I think if this story was just the Department of Defense failing to notify the press corps in Congress about Austin being in the hospital, that would still not be okay, but it wouldn't necessarily be surprising.

Speaker 4 These are organizations, I think, they have different, like they value

Speaker 4 privacy. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Whatever. When you get a quick Brazilian buttlift, you don't need to fucking tell the Washington Post about it.

Speaker 4 I mean, you could imagine an embarrassing elective procedure that he just didn't want to tell anyone. Whatever, that's fine.
HIPAA or something, right? Yeah, HIPAA.

Speaker 4 What makes this story so weird is the Pentagon failing to notify the White House or even the Deputy Secretary of Defense, who had assumed some of Austin's responsibilities.

Speaker 4 That's the other part of this. She had assumed some of the responsibilities and still didn't know that he was in the hospital.

Speaker 3 I don't even understand that, by the way. Like, how do you

Speaker 3 just quick follow, why?

Speaker 4 Well, I mean, I think there are times when you're going to be busy or something where you can delegate some operational responsibilities to your deputy just because I don't know why.

Speaker 4 Maybe you're on a flight. Who knows? But although the Secretary of Defense would never be out of communications touch because of the plane he flies around.

Speaker 3 He's not on Alaska

Speaker 3 737 Max's.

Speaker 3 He's not getting flumped out the door.

Speaker 4 Or the doomsday plane, which is famously connected to everything, can launch nuclear missiles. But the Washington Post and Politico said

Speaker 4 that Lloyd Austin's chief of staff was also out very sick. Full disclosure, she's a friend of mine.
We worked together in the Obama days.

Speaker 4 Watch your feet. Names are dropping.
It seems unfair and ridiculous to suggest that only Kelly could notify people.

Speaker 4 There's a lot of people in the Pentagon. So

Speaker 4 I don't know. If any building would trip all over itself and create a problem like this because of overly rigid job descriptions and reporting structures, it would be the Pentagon.

Speaker 4 Big picture, do I think this is a political problem for Biden? Probably not, but we don't know the full story. So who knows? And also Republicans are very good at making non-issues into huge deals.

Speaker 4 Like look at Benghazi. But my guess is no one's going to talk about this in a month, but it's just, it's weird.
It is weird.

Speaker 3 The question I had, which isn't clear from, I don't know if it was clear in what you saw, but like, was he awake and just sort of like, you know what I mean? Like, or was this an anesthesia situation?

Speaker 3 If you're going in because you're having a complication, but you're still kind of copus mentis, like maybe that's why you're justifying that, like, this is my business, you know.

Speaker 3 Getting this laser hair removal went really south on me. And I don't want anybody to know.

Speaker 4 Well, I mean, there was a military strike taken in, I think, Iraq on January 4th, and there was some reporting that said he was monitoring it.

Speaker 4 So I don't know if that means he was awake the whole day or who knows? Yeah. It's all pretty opaque.

Speaker 4 I think it sucks because I think more broadly, Austin's done a good job, especially the work to cobble together this coalition to

Speaker 4 support Ukraine. And we know Biden really likes him.
So I don't think he's going anywhere. Yeah.

Speaker 3 There are people calling for his resignation, but it does seem like a pretty good case of I won't do it again. Right.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Lesson learned here, though.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was a real oopsie. And then, you know, then when he gets his brow lift or whatever else, his peck implants, he can he can make sure he texts somebody.

Speaker 4 But, I mean, if you're Jake Sullivan or Jeff Sines or someone at the White House, you're probably calling over and saying, like, you guys got to clean this up right now.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Well, he did issue, he did issue a statement.
It wasn't like a full apology. It was sort of like...

Speaker 4 It's a statement, but not an explanation. I think that Congress will demand the latter.

Speaker 3 Last story. I touched on this a bit with Andy Carney later, but the fallout from those college presidents whiffing on that anti-Semitism hearing somehow continues.

Speaker 3 Claudine Gay resigned from Harvard after facing plagiarism allegations. Republicans are also planning more hearings to go after

Speaker 3 what they describe as sort of woke policies on college campuses. Do you think Republicans are overplaying just how much people care about what happens on a few elite campuses?

Speaker 3 That's a good question.

Speaker 4 Why do we care so much about what happens at Harvard versus any of the other many campuses in this country? Look,

Speaker 4 we talked about that hearing hearing on December 5th where all these college presidents whiffed on the very easy answer is

Speaker 4 saying genocide against Jews bad or something that would get you in trouble. Obviously, anti-Semitism is bad.
It's a serious problem.

Speaker 4 It's gotten worse since the October 7th attacks, and they did not address it in a way that was at all sufficient.

Speaker 4 What happened with Claudia and Gay, I mean, I don't know, do you care about plagiarism? I can't get myself worked up about this.

Speaker 3 Here's what I like. I just don't care.

Speaker 3 I only care in so much as

Speaker 3 when it happens to kids, sometimes they get really fucked. And when it happens to the professors, everybody can kind of be a little bit more

Speaker 3 kind about it. I don't like that way in which institutions protect themselves in any kind of context.
But the issue I have with all of this is

Speaker 3 these Republicans, I mean, obviously they're hypocrites. It goes without saying, but I think it's worth noting, like, they are doing their version.

Speaker 3 of what they decry the left does, which is someone said something that they didn't like. That's why this is all happening.

Speaker 3 In institutions they already were pissed about, that they already found deplorable in various ways.

Speaker 3 Someone said something dumb or bad that got them in trouble. And so they wanted to cancel them.
So they went combing through their stuff and they found problems, right?

Speaker 3 It seems as though basically like there, there was, you know, unattributed stuff.

Speaker 3 It was very funny when Harvard called it like unattributed undersource material or something like that because they didn't want to call it plagiarism at first, which was adorable, but they couldn't get out of it.

Speaker 3 But it's like, okay, so you have a problem. You didn't think Claudian Gay was a plagiarist.
You just didn't like her.

Speaker 3 You didn't like what she represented for a variety of reasons, including the fact that she was a black woman leading this institution.

Speaker 3 And so you went and found something unrelated that you could use to get rid of this person. That's what cancel culture.
If it means anything, that's what cancel culture is. That's it.

Speaker 3 You want to get rid of someone who said something you didn't like, so you found a way to do it. So obviously, that to me is a problem.
But like,

Speaker 3 stepping back, do I think most people give a fuck about what happens at a few very fancy colleges? I don't. I just, I don't understand, like, I get the value of it to their base.

Speaker 3 Like, I see that hyper-online, right-wingers, hyper-online, anti-woke people love this topic. They are winners who want to feel like losers.

Speaker 3 Nothing makes them feel more aggrieved than saying they can't say what they want to say.

Speaker 3 I get all that, but I have to imagine...

Speaker 3 A typical person who's not paying close attention is like, I'm sorry, what is this hearing about?

Speaker 4 Yeah, unless you're sort of in the right-wing ecosystem, this will probably just completely pass you by. I do find it it unsettling the kind of.

Speaker 3 So there's this guy named Bill Ackman.

Speaker 4 He's a billionaire investor and egomaniac. And he's sort of decided to become this Twitter vigilante.
And he's leading this movement.

Speaker 4 It started with going after students at Harvard who are members of student groups that signed a letter saying that Israel was solely to blame for the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th.

Speaker 4 That is obviously an idiotic,

Speaker 4 inaccurate statement.

Speaker 3 Well, right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So the letter was terrible, but what he decided to do was if a student organization signed the letter, he then went and found students who might belong to that group, whether they had anything to do with the letter or not, and tried to make it so that they couldn't get jobs.

Speaker 4 He demanded that Harvard release a list of all members of each group so that business leaders, he said, could blackball them.

Speaker 4 Now, never mind the fact that a lot of these kids, they never saw this statement before it went out. And they were like, what are you talking about? I'm just a part of this group.

Speaker 4 I didn't see this letter. Anyway, but then Bill Ackman decided to go after Claudine Gay.

Speaker 4 And then Business Insider reported that Bill Ackman's wife also committed plagiarism in her academic writing.

Speaker 4 In response, Ackman freaked out on Twitter, said it's out of bounds to go after his family, and then said he's going to conduct a plagiarism review of all current MIT faculty members, its president, and its governing body.

Speaker 3 It's putting the system on trial.

Speaker 4 And then said that Business Insider wrote this piece because they're anti-Zionists and his wife is Israeli.

Speaker 4 And now Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider, said it's going to review the coverage of Ackman's wife, not because there are any factual errors, but just because they're gonna.

Speaker 4 So this whole thing is just weird. And

Speaker 4 I don't know what Bill Ackman's doing. If I had a billion dollars, I think I would not spend my time on Twitter writing 8,000 word statements.

Speaker 3 It's, you know, I don't care about this fucking guy.

Speaker 3 Someone sent me this man.

Speaker 3 I don't have, I logged out of Twitter and I'm very proud of myself. Pat myself on the back.
Good for you. But someone sent me this manifesto.
It's really long. I couldn't believe how long it is.

Speaker 3 I couldn't believe how long it is. And it's only three quarters of the way down that you realize that, oh,

Speaker 3 someone accused his wife of plagiarism and he's really upset about it. And,

Speaker 3 you know, this is somebody that has been going after people so hard, showing no grace, just sort of being so vindictive.

Speaker 3 But the second it affected him personally, all of a sudden he's like, there's a part in this manifesto where it says something like,

Speaker 3 Business Insider is the height of what's wrong with journalism. We were on vacation.

Speaker 3 I loved that part. Loved it.
I judge it. I loved it.
I loved it.

Speaker 3 But I actually was reminded of this, oddly enough, so at the Golden Globes over the weekend, Ricky Gervais' dumb stand-up about how you can't say anything anymore won for best, I don't know, comedy specials, a new award.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 they show a clip of Ricky Gervais saying, there was a lot of backlash to my last special for saying things you couldn't say, but guess what? I said them anyway. Round of applause.
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 3 And there is this like whole group of like successful, wealthy, powerful, connected people with a ton of opportunity, a ton of freedom. They can say whatever they want.
They can do whatever they want.

Speaker 3 And for whatever reason, the thing they want most of all is to feel like victims in some way, to feel like we can't say anything, we can't do anything. Everyone's stopping us.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump is part of it. And like, this to me is like just, it's a stupid, small, but like signal example of that whole mentality.
It's like, you're a billionaire.

Speaker 3 You can, you can say whatever you want. You've sort of like you're, you're, you're okay, man.
You won.

Speaker 4 Like, anti-Semitism is a real problem in this world. There's got to be a better way to tackle it than going after random Harvard students or the president or now every member of the faculty at MIT.

Speaker 4 And I guess, look, bigger picture, like, there was a moment when

Speaker 4 people who grew up in the social media era started getting elected.

Speaker 3 And there was, we all started to wonder, like, uh-oh.

Speaker 4 Everyone said stuff. Everyone's got bad photos out there.
Is there going to be like kind of a détente where some of this stuff is declared out of bounds?

Speaker 4 I wonder if we're reaching a similar moment with AI and everyone in academia, because it's become so easy to review everything you've ever written against everything else that's ever been written.

Speaker 3 And look, I've said this before and I'll say this again. Social science is not real.
And that's important. You know, that's an important part of this debate.

Speaker 3 Social science is fake and we all know that. But unfortunately, AI is going to make that, I think, a little bit difficult to hide.
Sure.

Speaker 3 You know, and that's, that's my official position on social science.

Speaker 4 Please send your complaints to John Lovett.

Speaker 3 Well, it is. I was a philosophy major.
Leave me alone. And you use that every day, do you? I do.
Kind of. Hey,

Speaker 3 are you a Cartesian duelist or what?

Speaker 3 Where's your head at on that? What is the soul? It doesn't weigh anything.

Speaker 4 Don't be such a cant.

Speaker 3 Look at that. Look at that.
Can I get away with that? Oh, you know what I saw speaking on philosophy? This really bothered me.

Speaker 3 What was I listening to?

Speaker 3 What was it? I can't even remember, but, oh my God, I know what it was. This is so embarrassing.
It was Bill Maher.

Speaker 3 talking to what's his name who created family guy farley sethman farley i watched the whole thing i was a it was It was really a devastating thing.

Speaker 4 Oh, I watched the part about vaccines.

Speaker 4 It was on social media.

Speaker 3 But at some point during the, yes, that's why I got into it, but then I kept watching it. But then midway through, they were like, you know, Obama made a really good point once.
And the point was that

Speaker 3 if you could wake up as a random person. in a random society at any time in history or any place, you choose America today.

Speaker 3 And both of them are like, wow, that's a really good and smart analogy from Barack Obama. And I was like, Hey, guys, it's the Veil of Ignorance.
It's from John Rawls.

Speaker 3 That's what I thought when I was listening in my car, wasting my own time.

Speaker 3 Remember the Veil of Ignorance?

Speaker 4 Not really. I mean, okay, I remember it exists.

Speaker 3 Don't worry, guys, John will be back.

Speaker 3 Don't worry. Don't worry.
Keep us in your feeds. Keep us in your feeds.

Speaker 3 All right, we come back. Andy Carney of New York Times.

Speaker 13 Hey, this is Jeff Lewis from Radio Andy. Live and uncensored, catch me talking with my friends about my latest obsessions, relationship issues, and bodily ailments.

Speaker 13 With that kind of drama that seems to follow me, you never know what's going to happen.

Speaker 14 You can listen to Jeff Lewis Live at home or anywhere you are. Download the SiriusXXTEM app for over 425 channels of ad-free music, sports, entertainment, and more.

Speaker 14 Subscribe now and get three months free. Offer details apply.

Speaker 12 Dogs deserve the best, and that means fresh, healthy food. Unlike other brands, Ollie offers five flavors that are as nutritious as they are delicious, all made in U.S.

Speaker 12 kitchens without harmful fillers or preservatives. Head to Ollie.com, tell them all about your dog, and use code Happy Pup to get 60% off your welcome kit with a bonus.

Speaker 12 You'll get a storage container for a mess-free experience. And it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee if your dog doesn't lick the bowl clean.

Speaker 3 The 2026 Chevy Equinox is more than an SUV. It's your Sunday tailgate and your parking lot snack bar.
Your lucky jersey, your chairs, and your big cooler fit perfectly in your even bigger cargo space.

Speaker 3 And when it's go time, your 11.3-inch diagonal touchscreen's got the playbook, the playlist, and the tech to stay a step ahead. It's more than an SUV.
It's your Equinox.

Speaker 3 Chevrolet, together let's drive.

Speaker 3 There's a lot happening in Congress. Republicans are threatening to impeach the Homeland Security Secretary.
Hunter Biden is about to be held in contempt.

Speaker 3 Elise Stefana continues to serve as volunteer HR coordinator for the Ivy League. And as yet, another government shutdown looms.

Speaker 3 We got news of a deal between Senator Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to fund the government. Here to walk us through it.

Speaker 3 It's New York Times congressional correspondent Annie Carney. Annie, welcome to the pod.

Speaker 15 Thank you for having me on the pod.

Speaker 3 All right, let's start with the news over the weekend, a deal between Schumer and Johnson. Can you give us a little bit of the lay of the land about what they've agreed to?

Speaker 15 Yes. So they announced yesterday that they had a deal on government spending, like top lines.
And basically,

Speaker 15 It keeps, it's basically the spending levels that were agreed to in the debt limit deal that McCarthy and Biden signed into law last year. That was the beginning of the end for McCarthy.

Speaker 15 And that is sort of where this was always going to end up because that was the law.

Speaker 15 But

Speaker 15 that's what Johnson agreed to. And of course, it should therefore come as no surprise that the ultra-conservative wing, the far-right members, say that it's totally unacceptable to them.

Speaker 15 And that's where we are. Same dynamic, new players.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's so the Freedom Caucus tweeted that the deal was even worse than we thought.

Speaker 3 I don't know. I wonder how Kevin McCarthy feels watching this unfolds from wherever he's

Speaker 3 ensconced. How long can Mike Johnson get away with making the same deals Kevin McCarthy made just by being less hated?

Speaker 15 Yeah, that is, that's the question of his speakership.

Speaker 15 I think that there's first, I think the anger is already like that any honeymoon that existed is over.

Speaker 15 I think Chip Roy, who's a far-right member from Texas, is positioning himself to be kind of the Matt Gates to Mike Johnson's Kevin McCarthy, like the guy leading the opposition here.

Speaker 15 I mean, Democrats would are giving him the benefit of the doubt saying, like, look, he was hemmed in by an agreement that Kevin McCarthy made, but that's not buying him any goodwill with the right.

Speaker 15 The only thing I think that

Speaker 15 makes it different is that I don't really sense that anyone wants to touch the hot stove again and vacate the speakership again. That was such a disaster for them.

Speaker 15 And you're right, that there's just, he's a relatively clean slate. There's not these years and years of hatred and broken promises and festering like it was with Kevin McCarthy.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it is almost as though because he, because Kevin McCarthy

Speaker 3 had so little trust, then when he said this was the best we could get, people didn't believe him.

Speaker 3 But now it seems like there are some Republicans that seem to be willing to go along with Johnson, but the Freedom Caucus is furious.

Speaker 3 Are there ways they can gum up the works? And can you just talk a little bit about the position they're in given the way their majority has already slimmed,

Speaker 3 has shrunk even more?

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 So first of all, we have a tight time crunch now because we have only like

Speaker 15 probably a single digit number of work days before Congress has to pass this before a government shutdown.

Speaker 15 And Johnson has promised them that they can get in their policy, their hard right policy things through writers, which is like an amendment. But those amendments will never pass the Senate.

Speaker 15 So we're going to see what happens with

Speaker 15 how he's going to try and thread this needle of telling them they can still get some of what they want into this bill.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so just to break that down a little, Scalise is out for medical treatments. They've had resignation.
So their majority is down to, is it two? Is it two votes from whatever it was? And obviously,

Speaker 3 Katara is gone, George Santos. So

Speaker 3 on the one hand, that means if they're going to pass something with just Republicans, they need every Republican.

Speaker 3 But because the Republicans are so fractious, basically it sounds like what Johnson is saying is, yeah, you can propose any bills you want.

Speaker 3 They'll either won't get a majority of Republicans, which went, we need Democrats, so it's dead, or it dies when it hits the Senate. Is that basically the gist of it?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean, there's no way forward without Democratic votes, which is the reality that Kevin McCarthy faced. Also, the majority is so slim that, like,

Speaker 15 I mean, I think that some Democrats are wondering if there's a moment this Congress that they actually regain the majority before 2024.

Speaker 15 I mean, some of these members have announced they're not seeking reelection in 2024, but are staying. But that could change really easily.
I mean, a good job offer comes along.

Speaker 15 They think it's a miserable existence to be in this Congress.

Speaker 15 I can see some members leaving before the term is up.

Speaker 15 It's really way too close for comfort.

Speaker 3 You've talked about why it's so miserable. And just obviously we know Congress is dysfunctional, but I think it's people don't necessarily appreciate how historically dysfunctional it is.

Speaker 3 So can you talk about just how little Republicans were able to do in the last year?

Speaker 15 Yeah. So

Speaker 15 last year, 2023, was the most unproductive year in Congress in decades, even by the lower standards of divided government, when

Speaker 15 one party controls the House and the other party controls the Senate. Compared to 2022,

Speaker 15 when Democrats controlled everything, they passed the first bipartisan gun safety bill in decades. They passed passed the Inflation Reduction Act.
They passed some really landmark stuff.

Speaker 15 Last year,

Speaker 15 they managed to do avoid catastrophic default.

Speaker 3 That's pretty good.

Speaker 15 It's not bad. I mean, it was really a year of like Congress, you had one job, and they did do it.
But other than that, not much to write home about.

Speaker 15 I mean, they passed like two bills to kind of kick the potential government shutdown into 2024 and a bunch of small boar items no one cared about like the Duck Stamp Modernization Act, my favorite one.

Speaker 15 And this is because of what really this Congress was about so far was, you know, the speakership races, deposing the speaker, censoring members of Congress, the fact that they,

Speaker 15 Republicans, it's not just divided government, but the Republican Conference and the House is just divided completely against itself.

Speaker 15 Also, can I just say one thing about, like, it's all about personalities. And even in this, sense, like, Marjorie Taylor Greed is opposing this funding agreement between Schumer and Johnson.

Speaker 15 Like, she supported the identical thing when it was McCarthy, because she and McCarthy had some sort of friendship and deal. And now she's against it.

Speaker 15 Like, it is all, it's so much of what of these positions come down to, alliances and who you like and who you don't like.

Speaker 3 They don't seem to have any concrete policy agenda. They're much more interested in, you know, they want to do their kind of anti-woke performance and they want to go after the Biden administration.

Speaker 3 Speaking of,

Speaker 3 there was a push to begin an impeachment inquiry against President Biden. That was something McCarthy had to be dragged to.
And then he held that press conference where he opened an inquiry.

Speaker 3 Johnson has now gone along with it. It seems as though they've kind of realized that that might not be as politically palatable for a lot of their members in Biden districts.

Speaker 3 So they've shifted to potentially pursuing an impeachment inquiry of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. I don't know if they,

Speaker 15 but like the Biden impeachment is not debt by any means.

Speaker 3 But yeah, well, right. That's fair enough.
Fair enough.

Speaker 3 They're more enthusiastic right now about Mayorkas. There's more conversation about it at this moment.
What is the law? Do you know the law that Mayorkis is ostensibly

Speaker 3 breaking? Like,

Speaker 3 have they said what the high crime or misdemeanor is?

Speaker 15 No, but

Speaker 15 Johnson, I think over the weekend said it's just for, it's just broadly for

Speaker 15 these policies of the border that he thinks Mayorkis, that he's claiming Mayorkis is perpetrating purposefully to

Speaker 15 ruin the country.

Speaker 15 It's coming at an incredibly awkward time, though, because Mayorkas is the in-the-room negotiator right now with bipartisan group of senators working on a immigration deal with the White House. And

Speaker 15 what I'm hearing from people on that side is like Republicans like Lankford, the the lead Republican in the room there, like they

Speaker 15 really like Mayerkis. They are glad he's in the room.

Speaker 15 So he's the lead negotiator.

Speaker 15 They're supposed to like have some deal on paper this week. The House is supposed to impeach Mayerkis on Wednesday.

Speaker 15 It's like, it's just a super awkward moment to be impeaching the lead negotiator on a border deal.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it really like kind of captures even like, you know,

Speaker 3 even as the whole Republican party has shifted to the right like the kind of what is left of the kind of normal republican party in the senate versus the kind of completely unhinged way of doing politics in the house i mean it'd be one thing there hasn't been an impeachment of a of a cabinet secretary in about 150 years it would be uh unprecedented to impeach basically over a policy difference, right?

Speaker 3 This would be impeaching someone just over a bad situation, right? Because it's not as though like they're trying to pin the whole border crisis on Maorgas, but apprehensions are up.

Speaker 3 They're saying it's failure on fentanyl, but

Speaker 3 arrests for fentanyl-related crimes way, way up.

Speaker 3 They say, oh, he's letting terrorists across the border. Arrests for people on the terrorism watch list is roughly the same as under the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 It does seem like this is just genuinely a way of making the most of a news cycle.

Speaker 3 in a way that might get moderate Republicans on board because they know how unpopular Biden administration immigration policies are.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean from what I'm hearing that it would have the vote the Mayorkas impeachment would have the votes in the House.

Speaker 15 You know, I think everyone agrees, even I think the Democrats would agree that Biden has a problem on immigration.

Speaker 15 I think that's why the White House is willing to be negotiating right now with the Senate about doing something.

Speaker 15 They think it's probably politically benefit to them too to make some to crack down a little bit on border policies.

Speaker 15 Impeaching Mayorkas, I don't think, has a real political blowback even for vulnerable Republicans.

Speaker 15 At the same time, I don't think that, I mean, there won't be the votes to convict him in the Senate, but I do think we'll see that vote happen.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, but even in just the next few days, like, how does it

Speaker 3 what happens when it's quite possible that on the same day

Speaker 3 they announce a bipartisan immigration proposal that involves Mayorkas and the Republicans in the House impeach Mayorkas for failing to have a border policy.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's really awkward. It's very strange.
It's really a split screen. I mean, the same thing is happening.

Speaker 15 Johnson is trying to negotiate directly with Biden while also pushing forward on impeaching the president. It's, it's what they have to do to fill, refill their red meat tank a little bit, I think.

Speaker 3 I hate that red meat tank. It's gross.

Speaker 3 But it is like,

Speaker 3 there's a part of me. Look, I don't like the House Freedom Caucus, but it is funny that like they really do keep getting

Speaker 3 like,

Speaker 3 you know, the deal of spending levels that Biden, Schumer, and McCarthy agreed to, that's what you get. And then what you give is a press conference at the border calling for impeachment.

Speaker 3 So it does seem as though what a lot of, in part because they don't care about policy, they care about the sound bites, they care about the red meat, the far right really is exchanging policy, not losses, but certainly not victories, policy concessions

Speaker 3 for political theater, right? Like that's what they get. They get air.
They don't get anything actually real. Like Majorkis, as you pointed out, is not going to be removed by Senate Democrats.

Speaker 15 I mean, look, they started the Congress by getting a lot. They got a lot of concessions

Speaker 15 from McCarthy to make him speaker in the first place. But those haven't panned out yet in terms of passing policy.
I mean, part of that is because it's divided government.

Speaker 15 And like, that isn't how people of that ilk want to govern. I mean, that's not what they do.
They don't compromise. That's the, they throw bombs and

Speaker 15 stake out a very far position and don't compromise on it. So, but yeah, so they don't have like legislative wins to show for it.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 one thing that you've covered recently is

Speaker 3 what happened with these hearings around anti-Semitism and college campuses. We've now had two of the participants, the college presidents, most recently Claudia and Gay,

Speaker 3 resign because of the fallout from those hearings. There's now going to be more hearings about what's going on on college campuses.

Speaker 3 What is the goal? I mean, obviously, at least Stefanik, there's PR goal. You know, they like, they enjoy the issue.
They revel in the issue.

Speaker 3 But what is their actual goal in these hearings in making all of us talk about what happens on a few elite college campuses?

Speaker 15 Well, I think they think that they have political gold here because

Speaker 15 they're doing this on behalf of anti-Semitism on campuses, which you can argue that that's totally hypocritical when they are people who did not call out Trump's rhetoric about Charlottesville or say anything about him alluding to Hitler and his rallies.

Speaker 15 But the actual issue of anti-Semitism on on campus is

Speaker 15 you can't just completely ignore it as a real issue. Like, it's a real thing.

Speaker 15 So it's like, it's complicated. It's kind of like both end.

Speaker 3 It reminds me of when there was that whole Gamergate thing and they were like sort of attacking video and they kept saying it's about ethics and video game journalism. Remember that?

Speaker 3 Sorry, it's sort of what it reminds me of. Like this is about ethics and video game.
Is it?

Speaker 3 Is that what this is about?

Speaker 15 They found a really like heady mix of things here that allows them to go after elite universities, go after DEI, which is a longtime obsession of the right. So they're not going to let go.

Speaker 15 I mean, they want to expand. They've hired new staff to expand this investigation.
They're going to expand it to other schools.

Speaker 15 Like this is going to be a big focus of what the Education Committee does this year.

Speaker 3 There was a focus group that I always think about that happened in Michigan. And

Speaker 3 somebody was asked basically about Republicans going after trans people in the bathroom they use. And And this person in the focus group just sort of laughed and was like, I don't care about that.

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 3 obviously, this is a big issue in a certain bubble

Speaker 3 of

Speaker 3 Twitter people,

Speaker 3 rich, super online types, certain parts of the right that are obsessed with college campuses, obsessed with woke, anti-woke nonsense.

Speaker 3 Who gives a shit? Who cares? I don't understand why anyone cares about who's in charge of Harvard or Yale or any of these places. Like, why do they care?

Speaker 3 I mean, obviously they care about it because it's a way to get at some of these other issues, but is there any sense from any of these people that at some point you can make an issue of the fact that they're focusing on the most ridiculous and provincial,

Speaker 3 like little right-wing sort of hot-button issues? Is there any part of them that worries about that?

Speaker 15 Yeah. Well, you know, I think that a lot of

Speaker 15 I've talked to some Democratic and Republican pollsters who say they're definitely like

Speaker 3 they're over,

Speaker 15 there's not really that much political upside in this stuff. Like, yeah, like who cares? And actually, some of these issues have broad support.

Speaker 15 Like, DEI generally has broad, most people think it's a good thing across the country.

Speaker 3 Last question.

Speaker 3 Speaker Johnson invited President Biden to give the State of the Union on March 7th. Late State of the Union.
Any nefarious purpose

Speaker 3 in there?

Speaker 15 Not that I've heard of.

Speaker 15 I think it might just be the

Speaker 15 amount of stuff they need to get done before February to avoid a government shutdown, to make sure that we're not in a shutdown when the State of the Union is supposed to happen.

Speaker 15 There was some conspiracy theories that he wasn't going to invite Biden at all last week. But I think that, again,

Speaker 15 this is a Congress full of... show horses.
I think a lot of Republicans love the State of the Union because

Speaker 15 let's be honest, like the speech is often boring.

Speaker 15 It's a moment for like,

Speaker 15 what do you remember State of the Union? I remember like Bobert and Marjorie Tilly Greene heckling the president.

Speaker 15 You know, they get kind of viral moments out of this big night when people are tuned in to watch the joint session. So I think they're happy to do it and probably

Speaker 15 happy to criticize whatever he's putting out there.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Maybe also Mark, he's a month older, you know, and every little bit helps.
Annie Carney, thank you so much for your time. It's so good to talk to you.

Speaker 3 And, you know, stay out of the red meat tank. It's a gross.

Speaker 3 Thank you to Annie Carney for joining us. Tommy, welcome back.
Thanks.

Speaker 4 Good to be here.

Speaker 3 Welcome, Teddy, to the world.

Speaker 3 And we'll be back with a regular episode on Tuesday, but.

Speaker 3 We are now going to have episodes. So starting with Tommy's Iowa special, which you're going to be able to hear on Wednesday and Friday, Podze of America is going to three days a week.

Speaker 3 It finally happened. It finally happened, Tommy.
So you'll be able to hear new Pod Save Americas Tuesday morning, as always, and then Wednesday afternoon and Friday morning. So, you know,

Speaker 3 Tuesday, Wednesday, Fridays.

Speaker 4 We got a lot to cover because the primaries are going to heat up at least through Super Tuesday. So, yeah.
Extra episode.

Speaker 16 If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends.

Speaker 16 And if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more.

Speaker 16 Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Give us your own takes.
Hey, give us a review. Give us your takes on our takes.

Speaker 16 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.
Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Writing support from Hallie Kiefer.

Speaker 16 Reed Sherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 16 Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroote is our head of production.
Andy Taft is our executive assistant.

Speaker 16 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelaviev, and Molly Lobel.

Speaker 11 Pandora makes it easy for you to find your favorite music. Discover new artists and genres by selecting any song or album and will make you a personalized station for free.

Speaker 11 Download on the Apple App Store or Google Play and enjoy the soundtrack to your life.

Speaker 2 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 2 It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. From CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 2 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 odoo.com.

Speaker 2 That's odoo.com.