Biden Secures Temporary Ceasefire, Trump Threatens Obamacare

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

Speaker 3 I'm Shysty Felon John Lovett.

Speaker 1 I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 1 Welcome back from Thanksgiving, guys. Great to see you both.

Speaker 3 Great to be back.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it sure is. Tommy's right here in the studio.
We love that.

Speaker 4 All healthy. Thank you.

Speaker 1 So on today's show, we got a lot to talk about. Congress fights over funding for Ukraine, Israel, and the southern border.
The battle for second place heats up between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 1 Trump threatens to make another run at repealing Obamacare. And George Santos has a very public and entertaining meltdown over his looming expulsion vote.

Speaker 1 But first, we are finally getting some good news out of Gaza.

Speaker 1 Late last week, negotiators in Qatar announced that Israel and Hamas had signed off on a temporary pause in fighting and an agreement in which Hamas would release 10 or more hostages a day for four days, and Israel, in exchange, would release Palestinian prisoners.

Speaker 1 That deal went into effect on Friday. Over the first three days of the truce, Hamas released a total of 58 hostages, primarily women and children, and Israel freed 117 Palestinian prisoners.

Speaker 1 On Monday, Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the pause in the fighting for two additional days. Here's President Biden, who helped broker the deal, speaking about the negotiations.

Speaker 5 For weeks, I've been advocating to pause in the fighting for two purposes, to increase the assistance getting into the Gaza civilians who need help and to facilitate release of hostages.

Speaker 5 And we know that innocent children in Gaza are suffering greatly as well. because this war that Hamas has unleashed

Speaker 5 has such consequences. And this deal is structured so that it can be extended, to keep building on these results.
That's my goal.

Speaker 5 That's our goal, to keep this pause going beyond tomorrow so that we can continue to see more hostages come out and surge more humanitarian relief into those in need in Gaza.

Speaker 1 Tommy, what's your take on the deal and the Biden administration's role in making it happen?

Speaker 4 I think the deal was unequivocally a good thing.

Speaker 4 And frankly, it was probably pretty clear from the beginning that some sort of negotiation was going to be the best way to get back hostages and to get humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Speaker 4 There's no doubt that President Biden Biden and his team has been working this really hard behind the scenes. There's been lots of talk of the CIA director flying all around the world.

Speaker 4 President Biden's been on the phone with Netanyahu, like almost daily, it seems, talking to the Emir of Qatar.

Speaker 4 And it sounds like Biden himself has helped unstick the negotiations at moments when it seemed like it could fall apart.

Speaker 1 So I definitely think they deserve a lot of credit.

Speaker 4 Where they lose me a little bit is when they claim that this deal happening is somehow evidence that the hug biby approach is the best and only way to conduct foreign policy with the Israeli government.

Speaker 4 But like this, this ceasefire happening, getting prisoners home, the hostages home, it's a very good thing.

Speaker 1 Love it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 3 the two stories that I think that stuck out to me is one, just stories that describe who the hostages were.

Speaker 3 And it just reminds you that this was, I mean, these are, in some cases, children returning to like a completely broken life who watched their parents murdered and then were held in captivity.

Speaker 3 It's old people who were, you know, have medical needs. And it just, in the stories of the hostages, you see the depravity of what unfolded.

Speaker 3 And then at the same time, you have stories coming out in the last day or two that report that the level of civilian destruction and death and inhumanity in Gaza is at a pace like unrivaled in this century, a level of

Speaker 3 destruction.

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 3 you have to go back to Vietnam or World War II to find an equivalent of. And so any respite respite from that, any pause in that, any way of diplomatically resolving this conflict is a good thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I guess the Biden administration's argument on the hug strategy is,

Speaker 1 you know, if they had pressed BB for a ceasefire early or even threatened to withhold aid earlier, then Beebe wouldn't have listened. He would have invaded anyway.

Speaker 1 And then Biden would have lost a chance to rein him in in the future because I guess BB would have been pissed at Biden for for scolding him, but I just don't know.

Speaker 1 First of all, it's impossible to know.

Speaker 1 It's impossible to prove the counterfactual, but

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 It's like you look, like to Levitt's point, you look at the New York Times had a report over the weekend about the civilian casualties, and they estimated 10,000 Palestinian women and children killed so far.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it just seems like there's no way that destroying Hamas and keeping Israelis safe requires killing that many kids. No.
It's just not. And

Speaker 1 even though it's true that Gaza is a densely populated area and that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, you can believe both of those things to be absolutely true and still think that 10,000, you just can't kill 10,000 people.

Speaker 4 Aaron Powell, the laws of war require proportionality in your response.

Speaker 4 And I think it's very hard to argue that 14,000 people dead in Gaza, half of the Gaza Strip being flattened is a proportional response.

Speaker 4 And which is not to say that some sort of response wasn't warranted, but

Speaker 4 there's a lot of space between we have to do something and what has happened so far.

Speaker 4 I think the other challenge for the Biden team and for the United States is that the entire world thinks that the U.S. was fully supportive of and bought in to what has happened so far.

Speaker 4 And there is still the question of what comes next after this ceasefire expires, because I assume that Hamas will hold on to a certain number of prisoners, probably

Speaker 4 military males, like the adult members of the IDF they took. Although Hamas considers

Speaker 4 every Israeli to be a military prisoner because they have mandatory military service. But so we'll see what happens next.

Speaker 4 Hopefully that Biden is better able to use that leverage to rein in any future military effort, assuming there is one.

Speaker 1 Well, one of the ways he has leverage, and we talked about this last episode, is potentially conditioning aid to Israel so that they only get help from the U.S.

Speaker 1 if they take certain steps, chief among them being reducing civilian casualties. Biden was actually asked about this over the weekend.

Speaker 1 He called it a worthwhile thought, which I had not expected him to say. I don't know if you did.

Speaker 4 I was excited when I heard him say that, but then I watched the Sunday shows and Jake Sullivan, his national security advisor, pretty firmly walked it back in several different interviews.

Speaker 4 So I don't think that they're seemingly going to entertain conditioning aid.

Speaker 4 I think they still think that this direct, high-level private diplomacy with NDI was the best way to influence Israeli behavior.

Speaker 1 I mean, I guess

Speaker 1 it's obviously up to them whether they sign a supplemental if a supplemental passes, and we'll talk about that.

Speaker 1 We already talked about how Bernie Sanders put out a statement, and then he also wrote an op-ed over the weekend saying that aid needs to be conditioned. Senator Chris Murphy was asked about this.

Speaker 1 He's open to the idea as well. I just wonder, like, I wonder how many Democrats you get on this and if it's enough to actually shape the package.
But I guess, you know, we'll see.

Speaker 1 Tommy, what kind of conditions, obviously there's been a lot of options floating around. We've talked about some of them.

Speaker 1 What would you like to see attached to the next aid package?

Speaker 4 Well, I do think that Murphy to Bernie Sanders gets you sort of the range. Like, Murphy basically said we should condition aid to ensure it's used in accordance with international human rights laws.

Speaker 4 That does seem like the absolute bare minimum that one should do. That's not a criticism of Murphy.
It just seems like that obviously we should do that.

Speaker 3 And it is also, I think, kind of an affirmation of what is already U.S. law.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I believe.
Right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 In the 2020 primary, Ben Rhodes and I worked with, we did an event with JSTREE where we tried to get all the candidates to agree to saying that U.S.

Speaker 4 aid should not be used to annex the West Bank or otherwise support settlement construction. I think that's another obvious one.

Speaker 4 I'm personally more in the Bernie Sanders camp where I'd like to see the conditions be a little more broad and focus on the underlying political problems, including settlement expansion, settler violence at the West Bank, requiring a commitment to peace talks.

Speaker 4 But the rub there is that Ned Yahoo's current coalition would never be okay with agreeing to those terms.

Speaker 3 Aaron Powell, Jr.: Yeah, there's nothing. I mean, there's nothing even in Bernie Sanders' list of things that he believes U.S.A.I.
should be conditioned on.

Speaker 3 There is nothing in that list that is not mainstream U.S. policy, right? Like there's just, it's just that making it a condition is somehow seen as sacrosanct.

Speaker 3 The point that was striking to me, I think it was that the Times made,

Speaker 3 that military experts were making, is

Speaker 3 the U.S. faced a ton of criticism for the level of civilian casualties that it inflicted in Iraq.

Speaker 3 And Israel is using U.S.-supplied weapons that are far larger than what we were willing to use in urban areas in Iraq, despite the fact that even that caused a lot of civilian death and destruction.

Speaker 3 And the idea that it would be U.S.

Speaker 3 policy to not use these bombs in urban areas when we use them directly, but that we are okay with them being used in urban areas when we are not using them directly does not make sense to me.

Speaker 1 What was the gist of Jake's walk back?

Speaker 4 Jake said, yes, President Biden acknowledged the idea of conditioning aid, but said Biden's approach will be this high-level diplomacy behind closed doors that generated results, getting hostages back, getting more aid in, et cetera.

Speaker 4 So he was repeatedly pressed on a follow-up, being like, so does that mean he's for conditioning aid?

Speaker 4 And Jake ducked it in a way that clearly signaled to me that that's not the path they're going down.

Speaker 1 The question that I would love Biden and the administration to answer is like, why not? Why wouldn't you condition aid? Like, I realize you like your diplomacy approach, but what is wrong with that?

Speaker 1 And they're going to say, well, Israel needs to defend itself. Well,

Speaker 1 if we were only providing funding for the Iron Dome, which they use for defense, that's one thing. But that's not the only aid that we're sending.

Speaker 1 If we're going to send weapons over there, then like what

Speaker 4 Yeah, the aid requests will be far more expansive. It'll include hellfire missiles and all kinds of offensives.

Speaker 1 So it's like,

Speaker 1 why would the Biden administration say, no, we're going to send them weapons and hopefully they'll do what I tell them to do. But if not, what are we going to do? Yeah, it's also

Speaker 3 what is their that is a publicly if their publicly their position is we do not want to condition aid because publicly their position is basically what Tommy was saying that they're going to hug BB, but is there value to there being conditions placed on aid that the Biden administration is reluctantly dragged to as they get to be like kind of to continue to maintain their position that they want to do this diplomatically, they want to do this through back channels while at the same time they're facing pressure from at home that's requiring them to push harder, right?

Speaker 1 Like there's so maybe there's maybe the nuance of this. Maybe there won't be a veto threat if there's conditions.

Speaker 3 Presumably if something passes, this I mean, we're going to get to all of of it, but like the idea of anything passing seems like so fucking difficult.

Speaker 3 Like, oh, let's add solving Middle East peace on top of Ukraine, on top of the border. So if something passes, Biden's going to sign it.

Speaker 4 I think it's probably a pretty sincerely held belief by Biden that that's the wrong path. And it's part, let's be honest, it's part politics.
It's part U.S. domestic politics.

Speaker 4 It's also part this weird belief that we need to treat Israel and relations with Israel as this special singular relationship where we can't criticize Bibi and Yahoo in public and we can't condition aid the way we do for every other country.

Speaker 4 And it makes absolutely no sense to me. But, you know, I'm not in government.
Did you guys see that Dean Phillips? He's running for president, by the way, Congress in Minnesota. He suggested that U.S.

Speaker 4 special forces should go into Gaza to get hostages back.

Speaker 1 I have seen him do this a couple times now.

Speaker 4 He's running against Biden from the left in a presidential primary, calling on sending U.S. special forces into Gaza.

Speaker 1 Well, I think it's...

Speaker 4 That makes sense.

Speaker 1 Well, he is on the ⁇

Speaker 1 I also heard him say he was on the ⁇ 'is foreign policy experience as being on the subcommittee for the middle of the Southern policy.

Speaker 4 Well, that explained

Speaker 1 anyway. Anyway, yeah, so as we mentioned, Congress is also going to attempt to pass the aid to Israel along with aid to Ukraine and Taiwan.

Speaker 1 And Republicans say they won't support any of it unless Democrats also agree to more border security funding and new border policies.

Speaker 1 Some of the proposals being discussed include making it more difficult for migrants to claim asylum, resuming border wall construction, and detaining asylum seekers while their cases are considered.

Speaker 1 Let's start with Ukraine. Tommy, how critical is the funding for Ukraine?

Speaker 4 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Long term, it's absolutely critical. I think it's the difference between winning and losing, or the difference between winning and Ukraine cutting a deal with the Russians.

Speaker 4 It is very, very bad for them. I think we're not the only country providing weapons systems to Ukraine.
South Korea, the UK, the EU, the European countries are providing a lot.

Speaker 4 But I think if we cut off the spigot, it will be very hard for those countries to fill the gap. The EU had made some, they pledged a million artillery shells by March of 2024.

Speaker 4 They've already said they're going to fall short of that goal. So they're already struggling to meet their commitments.
And so what that means is Ukraine runs out of weapon systems.

Speaker 4 They run out of ammunition. They have to change the way they're fighting.
They probably have to cede territory for strategic reasons. They lose the ability to counter-attack in meaningful ways.

Speaker 4 And in the long run, like Russia is just bigger, right? It's like eight time zones, 11 time zones. It's got more people.
It's got more of an industrial capacity.

Speaker 4 This has become a stalemated war of attrition where everybody's just lobbing as many shells at each other as they can per day.

Speaker 4 And Russia will be able to manufacture those or get them from North Korea, whereas Ukraine is now going to have to husband them, even if they get what they need from us. Like that's why the U.S.

Speaker 4 took this very controversial decision to give Ukraine what are called cluster munitions, which are horrible for a variety of reasons.

Speaker 4 But I think the Biden administration agreed to do that because they were running so dangerously low, the U.S. in their stockpile and also the Ukrainians.

Speaker 4 And they just literally couldn't match the Russians fire for fire.

Speaker 1 So if they can't get this done, it's pretty likely they lose the war.

Speaker 4 I mean, long term. Long term.
It won't be like an immediate

Speaker 4 deal getting cut, but I do think it puts them in a terrible position.

Speaker 1 So the question is, will Republicans agree to this? Obviously, there's Republican support in the Senate for Ukraine, though that's not uniform. In the House,

Speaker 1 Speaker Johnson was down in Florida today. They asked him about this, and he said, we can't allow Putin to march through Europe, and we understand the necessity of assisting there.

Speaker 1 And he said he feels confident that it's going to get done.

Speaker 4 But he wants to condition it on the completion of a successful No-Nut November, is what he was saying. Right.
Over the weekend.

Speaker 3 And that does. And then, of course,

Speaker 3 then his son has to verify it with a very specific process.

Speaker 4 Which takes some time.

Speaker 1 Which is, there's a.

Speaker 3 Got to get inspected.

Speaker 1 There's a black light involved.

Speaker 1 Wow. That was.
Did not expect that segue from.

Speaker 4 Look, it was getting a little dark in here. I felt like this was a Tuesday recording, not a Monday.

Speaker 1 Well, now we're going to get to talk about immigration and border policy.

Speaker 1 A lot of Democrats, including progressive Democrats like Vermont Senator Peter Welch. When does NoNut November start? Oh my gosh.
It's

Speaker 1 already over. Midnight on the 31st of September.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Guys, it's almost December. Congrats.
I guess it must be No Nut December. Well,

Speaker 4 no bad ideas.

Speaker 1 Anyway, immigration. We've got all kinds of Democrats now saying they're open a tougher border policy.
What do you guys think about that?

Speaker 3 Well, like, one thing that's been, I think, a little bit strange about this, so just so just that Republicans are basically saying, why, why, we can't, why would we send money to defend a country abroad if we're not defending America here at home, that kind of thing.

Speaker 3 And then you see Republicans.

Speaker 1 Actually, that polls off the charts.

Speaker 3 Yes. And then you see Democrats.

Speaker 1 Don't have to take a poll for that one.

Speaker 3 Then you see, like, I think like Schumer put out a statement being like, these bastards will do it.

Speaker 1 And like,

Speaker 1 he basically said, Republicans are injecting this divisive policy debate into what should be a bipartisan, you know, agreement on sending aid aid to our allies to stop Putin and Xi.

Speaker 1 And he said, but we're open. We're open to more borders.

Speaker 3 And I get it. I think probably the politics of that are about,

Speaker 3 this is ultimately going to be a, if there is some kind of a deal, it will be a deal that angers the hard right, which will not accept anything other than the kind of right-wing Republican House proposal as a victory.

Speaker 3 And this was any kind of change to asylum that involves raising the threshold for what asylum seekers have to claim is something that would anger the left and progressives and immigration activists.

Speaker 3 And so you start by signaling that you're being dragged to this. And I get that, but like, this is also, again, we've talked about this many times, but like

Speaker 3 the idea that we're in yet another debate where it's Democrats fighting tooth and nail to send money overseas while Republicans are trying to secure the border.

Speaker 3 Like if we are actually going to be in a situation where Democrats and Republicans are coming together to negotiate something for the border, it can't just be because Republicans made it.

Speaker 3 We should own that we believe in a humane but stable, whatever, set of reforms at the border, and that we are not being dragged by Republicans to solve this crisis, but actually want to address the crisis.

Speaker 4 Aaron Powell, I also think it frankly shows that Republicans have changed the politics in pretty shrewd ways by busing migrants out of states like Texas to places like New York, right?

Speaker 4 Because an automatic.

Speaker 1 I think we all thought it was a dumb stunt when it happened.

Speaker 4 Well, we thought it was a dumb stunt when it was, you know, a private jet to Martha's Vineyard, but there was a more like sustained systematic effort to spread the cost of these policies because you had Eric Adams saying in August of this year that 100,000 asylum seekers had arrived in New York City in a little over a year and that the city had spent $1.45 billion on services, which he said was just fiscally unsustainable.

Speaker 4 Let's be clear,

Speaker 1 it was still a morally abhorrent stunt, but it seems like

Speaker 1 it had the effect that it was intended for.

Speaker 3 I think it stopped being a stunt.

Speaker 3 I didn't realize, like, I talked to the mayor of Chicago about this when I was in Chicago for Love to Relieve It, and

Speaker 3 the coverage of the Nantucket flights and the kind of shenanigans around that. Put that aside, there was just a steady stream of buses going from Texas to Chicago, bus after bus after bus.

Speaker 3 And that, like, that stopped being national news. Nothing that happened in Chicago is national news.
The place could burn to the ground and would be like third story in New York.

Speaker 3 But still, like, it was a, it's something that just continued and became a sustained local, big political issue.

Speaker 1 I mean, our asylum system

Speaker 1 is not set up for the amount of migration that we're seeing right now at the southern border.

Speaker 1 And asylum system is for people with legitimate fear of being persecuted in their home, country based on race, religion, political beliefs. It wasn't set up for people fleeing from poverty.

Speaker 1 It wasn't set up for people fleeing the sort of gang violence that we're seeing in Central and South America, even though people's...

Speaker 1 you know, asylum requests have been granted for some of those issues. And we have a legal immigration system where people are supposed to apply to immigrate to this country.

Speaker 1 And then if you have an asylum claim, you have an asylum claim. And if you have a refugee claim, you have a refugee claim.

Speaker 1 But right now, we have more people trying to cross the border than I think they said in any time except like three different years in all of U.S. history.

Speaker 1 And we just don't have, we don't have the processing. We don't, the communities, even welcoming communities, right,

Speaker 1 who want to help out. immigrants and migrants who are coming just do not have the resources.

Speaker 1 And instead, these people who are coming here looking for opportunity, looking for safety, are just like sleeping on the streets. Like it's just not, we're not cut out for this.

Speaker 4 Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.: Yeah, I think the current system, I think, clearly is not serving anyone well.

Speaker 4 What's really tough to read when you dig into these negotiations is you keep seeing graphs like Democrats used to make protecting the Dreamers a part of any such negotiations and have dropped that provision.

Speaker 4 And man, that's really terrible policy and hard to swallow, you know, because I think the commitment, it used to be bipartisan.

Speaker 1 Remember Donald Trump wanted to support the Dreamers as well?

Speaker 4 I mean, obviously he's not going to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 Well, Democrats still want to support the Dreamers. I'm just saying they don't think it's going to.

Speaker 1 No, I was going to say, though, I think if you're going to, if Democrats are going to have to swallow some of these border restrictions, and again, I think there's some level of increased border funding and

Speaker 1 changing of asylum policy that's just right on the merits, but very likely they're going to have to swallow more than they want, right?

Speaker 1 Because you're going to have like Tom Cotton and all these Republicans jamming this stuff in and they're going to want to get Ukraine and and Israel done, right?

Speaker 1 I would put out like if we're going to agree to that, then let's put the Dreamers back on the table.

Speaker 4 But of course, that's what I'm saying. But what you're reading is they've dropped those provisions in the Senate, even.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Were they in the initial, what do you mean dropped?

Speaker 4 Were they initially no longer contingent as part of a negotiation to give them something else they want? That seems to have been swapped out for Ukraine funding.

Speaker 3 Right. Like it's like

Speaker 3 the thing you're getting is Ukraine funding.

Speaker 3 I mean, the thing that's like what I'm trying to understand is, okay, so there was always like stepping back, there was a broad immigration reform compromise that was always being negotiated.

Speaker 3 And it's some form of more stringent rules at the border, far greater border security, maybe funding for some kind of a wall or whatever. There's just like, there's the like stick part of it.

Speaker 3 And then there was a set of reforms that include legalizing DREAMers, path to citizenship, et cetera, et cetera. This negotiation seems to be entirely focused on border security and asylum seekers.

Speaker 3 And the question is: if you give and you and if you like supply, if you if you agree to a bunch of not just reforms to the asylum process, but a ton of funding for additional border security, funding for the wall, which Biden's already kind of relented on, funding for agents, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3 Have you given on the one place that could in the future make it possible to help the Dreamers to do a path to citizenship, to do all the kind of broader reforms that everyone recognizes that are humane and needed?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you are. And that's why you think you shouldn't give it up.

Speaker 3 It's how small this is.

Speaker 3 It it depends what this is.

Speaker 1 But I also don't like

Speaker 1 this, the way this has been framed is like carrot and stick.

Speaker 1 And, you know, everyone used to say that, oh, when Obama was president, he only did the border stuff because of pure politics so he could get the other stuff too.

Speaker 1 And it's like, no, like a sensible, humane immigration system that works would provide a path to citizenship. for the 11 million, 15 million undocumented immigrants in this country.

Speaker 1 It would legalize the Dreamers. It would have a legal immigration system where you could even increase the amount of immigration that comes to this country, but you do it through legal channels.

Speaker 1 Same thing with asylum and refugee claims. And then, yeah, make sure that other people aren't coming in illegally into this country.

Speaker 1 That would be actually just a sane immigration system. That's not just like give Republicans a little, give Democrats a little.
I'm just saying, no, I'm just saying it has been framed.

Speaker 1 The framing of it has been sort of twisted.

Speaker 3 Well, yeah,

Speaker 1 the politics, part of what happened is, I think,

Speaker 3 there was a way that democrats used to talk about immigration nation of immigrants nation of laws right and then i do think that during the 2016 primaries there was this basically kind of a shift to the left and just how we talked about it not actually

Speaker 3 in the 2020 god damn it i know i know but yes there was a shift in how we talked about it and then i think the parts the kind of the harder parts that would inevitably be part of any deal became de-emphasized and then when they come up they're seen as a capitulation but yes, of course,

Speaker 3 a draconian border policy and a set of reforms that do not recognize the humanity and needs of people trying to gain access to the United States is not just, you know, bad politics and it's bad for the world.

Speaker 3 But that doesn't mean every deal that would involve some form of border security is like a massive failure, that there can't be a successful compromise of some kind.

Speaker 4 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: The other thing they just need to rethink is the U.S.

Speaker 4 sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba and places where you're seeing a lot of migration outflows because the economies have been crushed.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And by the way, Trump's entire 2016 campaign and his presidency, his first term, also like put a lot of gas on the fire, to say the least, right?

Speaker 1 Because when people think about border policy and they think about family separation or they think about Trump telling us that caravans full of terrorists were coming, right?

Speaker 1 Then they think, yeah, why are we reinforcing and the wall, right? Why are we doing all that kind of shit?

Speaker 1 But like what they're not thinking about is that there could be another another system that actually works, that is humane, that's legal, and that like has immigration make sense.

Speaker 1 But so Trump contributed to this in a big way as well.

Speaker 3 There's also just the like, I think even like the Republican statements about this, like they don't want to support additional funding for judges, anything that would like make the process work better, unless you're also addressing what they describe as the pull, right?

Speaker 3 Which is like the draw to the United States. And I think for a long time, that was about the fact that there's no internal enforcement, that this was about people coming and seeking jobs.

Speaker 3 But on top of that, you have these huge numbers of people seeking asylum asylum or refuge or just trying to find a way out of these countries that are in crisis. And that

Speaker 3 has been a kind of like, I think the situation at the border has been overtaken by those events.

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Speaker 1 Speaking of Republicans, let's talk about the 2024 Republican primary and the fierce battle for second place.

Speaker 1 With less than 50 days until the Iowa caucuses, are Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and their respective super PACs spending all their time and money going after the guy who's winning by 40 points?

Speaker 1 No, they're not. They are going after each other.

Speaker 1 The New York Times reported that Nikki Haley's super PAC spent $3.5 million on ads attacking DeSantis over the last two months, and not a single dollar attacking Trump.

Speaker 1 Similarly, DeSantis' PAC spent 10 times more money hitting Haley than going after Trump. Tommy, it seems like the two of them are going all in on Iowa.

Speaker 1 Why do you think they're going negative on each other instead of Trump?

Speaker 4 Because they're stupid. I don't know.

Speaker 4 I mean, you keep reading these articles where various interest groups in super PACs have said that all of the testing they've done on anti-Trump ads or messaging have backfired and hurt them.

Speaker 3 So, but if that's the case, drop out.

Speaker 4 Why are you still competing?

Speaker 4 I mean, it's just like they all think that they can narrow this race down to two and then, I don't know, somehow change the game in New Hampshire and beyond, but that's a ridiculous suggestion.

Speaker 1 Did they not learn this lesson from 2016 when all of Trump's challengers started beating each other up because they thought that they could take everyone else out and that they could be the last one standing to face Trump?

Speaker 1 And then because like, you know, Jeb and Marco and Chris Christie, they all sort of attacked each other. And all I'm forgetting some, they all attacked each other.

Speaker 1 And so then Trump just benefited from it. Like, we're just going to do this again now? Well,

Speaker 3 on top of that, it's not like these attacks that they're leveling against each other are helping them either. We'll talk about it.
But like.

Speaker 3 DeSantis is having this sort of like, this like civil war inside of his super PAC because they're feeling like DeSantis is getting hurt by the fact that he's going after Haley now.

Speaker 3 Like that this guy cannot launch an attack on anybody that doesn't make people dislike him. And it's like, for some reason, this rule doesn't seem to apply to Trump, right?

Speaker 3 Trump goes go after Haley and go after DeSantis and go after whoever he wants. Everyone's like, that's our fucking guy.
But these guys go negative for one second. They're like, I don't like it.

Speaker 1 I don't care for it.

Speaker 1 That's because

Speaker 1 that's who Trump is.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And it's because of who they are.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, so the

Speaker 1 DeSantis story, which we did not get to talk about because it happened last week when we were all on break.

Speaker 1 Never Back Down, the super PAC that is essentially running his whole campaign. He's basically outsourced the whole campaign to the super PAC.

Speaker 1 And so when Never Back Down is running these ads about Haley in Iowa, they are backfiring and hurting DeSantis because the Never Back Down branding is so close to DeSantis because that's like his whole campaign.

Speaker 1 So voters in Iowa are smart enough to be like, oh, that's a DeSantis ad, right? And so DeSantis and his wife are like very upset about these ads.

Speaker 1 The CEO of his super PAC, of his Never Back Down Super PAC, resigns. This is right after, and NBC has this great

Speaker 1 report on this story where there's this big fight, and Jeff Rowe, who's the chief strategist for Never Back Down, gets in a fight with a board member who's like a longtime confidant of Ron DeSantis, this guy named Scott Wagner.

Speaker 1 And Jeff Rowe yells at him, you have a stick up your ass, Scott. And then Scott Wagner gets up and responds, why don't you come over here and get it?

Speaker 1 By the way, hey, what?

Speaker 1 What kind of thing?

Speaker 3 Anybody who's a lifelong friend of Ron DeSantis has to be a fucking just one of the the worst human beings to have a conversation with that is in that is an incredible response why 10 out of 10.

Speaker 1 that's the craziest response i've ever heard that's so

Speaker 3 why don't you come over here and get the stick out of my ass i think it's a great response you stand up why don't you come over here and get it i thought it was cool as hell i think it was a good response i didn't know some real sexual tension in that response that doesn't make it worse to me i didn't know if get it meant get the stick or just get it like get some i thought i think he's referring to the stick oh i thought yeah i thought the stick okay like oh if i have a stick back here, come, why don't you come and remove it from me?

Speaker 3 Yeah. You know? Yeah.
Let's have a fight. Let's have a physical fight.
Let's solve this by fighting.

Speaker 3 I like the other thing, too, is I hope it's not. This is a meeting about, this is a meeting of the never back down board discussing how best to back down.

Speaker 3 That's what they're arguing about. Well, should we back down like this?

Speaker 1 How do we back down over here? So what ends up happening is they decide to start... So

Speaker 1 a couple other consultants or confidants or friends of DeSantis, again.

Speaker 3 Some Tallahassee goobers.

Speaker 1 And what's hardest to believe is that he has this many friends. Yeah.
They have decided to set up a second super PAC called...

Speaker 1 Fight Hard?

Speaker 3 Fight Long. Fight Right?

Speaker 1 Fight Right. Fight Right.
Fight Right. Yeah, it's called Fight Right.

Speaker 1 Fight Right is the new super PAC that's now going to attack Haley with ads, doesn't have the Never Back Down branding, so they think that they're going to attack Haley and people aren't going to know that it's Ron DeSantis, even though it's going to be funded by the Never Back Down.

Speaker 3 It's a bit like when Garth Brooks became Chris Gaines.

Speaker 1 What? Remember? No.

Speaker 3 Remember when Garth Brooks put on a mustache? Because basically, the other thing, too, is I was like reading about it. It's like, wait, there's another, they're funding another PAC.

Speaker 3 I was like, where's the money coming from? He's transferring.

Speaker 1 It's coming from Never Back Down. And so

Speaker 1 inside the house.

Speaker 3 So they send a million dollars to this new, this new super PAC that works for the super PAC that works for Ron DeSantis because that's going to, this is your problem.

Speaker 3 Hey, there's your problem right there. The super PAC name is too out there.

Speaker 3 And then Ken Cuccinelli, who was, you know, fucking asshole from Virginia before he was now running this PAC, sends a letter like he's on the record being like, I disagree disagree with doing this.

Speaker 1 The whole thing

Speaker 1 is incredible. I want it to be on the record that I disagree with doing this.
What record? For who? For who? For history?

Speaker 1 Guess what? It's already in the NBC story. I think we figured out who leaked it.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 By the way, also, it's like, this isn't going to be an HBO movie. You people are not interesting enough.
No. This is the best sentence you've gotten.

Speaker 1 It's only, I'm the only one that likes it.

Speaker 4 Also, just again, Jeff Rowe, the chief strategist for the DeSantis Super PAC, was Ted Cruz's campaign manager in 2016. So he has watched this movie before.

Speaker 4 He should know damn well that the strategy he's running for Ron DeSantis is the one he ran for Ted Cruz and didn't work. And he's just running it back.

Speaker 1 But he is making some money.

Speaker 1 A lot of money. He also has, they have this big door knocking operation in Iowa that, again, the Super PAC is running the field organization here.

Speaker 1 And Jeff Froe has told people that he believes the group's door knocking push could be worth as much as 10 percentage points on caucus day.

Speaker 1 Tommy, do you think that you think the you think the operation is going to give him 10 points that are not showing up in the polls?

Speaker 4 That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Speaker 4 I cannot overstate how stupid that is. We had the most unbelievable field team and organization, GO TV organization in Iowa in 2008.

Speaker 4 And the difference is, by the way, is the Never Back Down field team, they're hiring them all. They're all paid staffers.

Speaker 4 These are not volunteers who love Ron DeSantis and really care about the mission. No, these are like...

Speaker 4 They're going to hire 2,600 people by Labor Day, so they said in some New York's Times story in May of 2023. They have no idea what they're doing.

Speaker 1 This is not going to work. Well,

Speaker 3 the one example of someone was caught on a ring camera, one of these guys that was hiring them back. And he was like, if you don't vote for DeSantis,

Speaker 3 what did he say? He goes,

Speaker 3 I'm going to kick your ass or something. And then he's like, sorry, I'm pretty stoned.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he said he was high. He said he was too high.
There was this Times story that quoted Jeff Rowe in May of 2023 talking about their strategy. He said, quote, he argued that Mr.

Speaker 4 Trump had shied away from key fights that motivate the Republican base and on which DeSantis had led, including on LGBTQ issues, schools, and taking on corporate America. This is the direct quote.

Speaker 3 How do you beat Trump, Mr. Rose said?

Speaker 4 Well, you beat Trump by beating Trump. And where Ron DeSantis has beaten Trump is by doing what Republican voters want him to do the most.
What does that mean? What? What does any of that mean?

Speaker 4 Yellow Disney?

Speaker 1 Is that what that meant? So

Speaker 1 this is a New York Times article about Iowa that just ran Sunday, I think. And the whole thing is about like Haley and DeSantis going after each other.

Speaker 1 Basically, the strategy is everyone's going all in on Iowa except for Chris Christie.

Speaker 1 And if Haley can get second in Iowa and beat DeSantis, then she goes to New Hampshire where DeSantis is basically like collapsed. He's polling in the single digits.

Speaker 1 And she, I guess, beats Trump in New Hampshire. Maybe she comes close enough and then she goes home to South Carolina.
And that's where she really makes her stand. So that's her strategy.

Speaker 1 DeSantis' strategy, I guess, is just to get second in Iowa. And then

Speaker 1 I don't even know what. I mean, it really is.
Well, they win Iowa, but I don't think that's happening either. And then if Susie...

Speaker 3 DeSantis, but just you glossed over it. DeSantis is now in fifth in New Hampshire.
That is fucking devastating.

Speaker 1 And so, like, if you're DeSantis and you get second in Iowa somehow, and then you go to New Hampshire and you get, like, fifth, I guess he's thinking that the momentum for getting

Speaker 1 the second-place momentum you get in Iowa just like carries you up to second in New Hampshire.

Speaker 3 People in New Hampshire love taking their cues from those Iowa rulers.

Speaker 1 No, that's right.

Speaker 1 Anyway, you go through this whole thing with Haley and DeSantis, and at the end, it says, Trump campaign officials say their operation has already amassed 50,000 signed cards committing to caucus for him and 1,800 caucus captains.

Speaker 1 And then the DeSantis campaign said it had more than 30,000 people who committed and the Haley campaign declined to provide any such data points.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so the take-home there is by their own standards, DeSantis has 20,000 fewer voters in Iowa than Donald Trump. I don't think that's a good setup.

Speaker 1 It also said he visited his 98th Iowa county a week ago after holding around 10 small public events over three days.

Speaker 1 And then Trump went to one rally in Fort Dodge, got 2,000 people, which is more than all of DeSantis' events combined.

Speaker 3 I do I read that too.

Speaker 4 I do wonder like Trump has people who travel for him who go to you know out of staters. It's like the you're falling the dead.

Speaker 1 It's like the it's like when Mark Penn accused Barack Obama of busting in people to

Speaker 4 the Iowa JJ.

Speaker 3 Well I don't think we ever fully got to the bottom of it.

Speaker 3 God damn it. I don't know that we fully know exactly what happened.

Speaker 1 I mean

Speaker 1 we're talking about these early states here, but like I feel like once we go to the rest of the states, Tommy, you were pointing out that the rules are getting a little rigged in favor of Trump here, huh?

Speaker 4 This is the thing that people have to understand. As we learned in 2008, all of us here, this is ultimately a campaign for more delegates, right? No, it's not just that Haley needs to win in Iowa.

Speaker 4 She needs to win overwhelmingly in these early states so that she can, I guess, get enough media attention and a bounce so that people in all these other future states where they're not paying any attention right now will decide that 60% of them currently are supporting Trump.

Speaker 1 They'll all flip.

Speaker 4 Because what people need to know is Trump's people have changed the the rules to make it easier for him to win. A couple examples.

Speaker 4 In Massachusetts, a candidate used to need to win 5% of the statewide vote to get delegates.

Speaker 4 In 2020, Massachusetts Republicans changed the threshold to 20% to get delegates and made it so that a candidate getting over 50% of the vote gets all the delegates.

Speaker 4 So it turns into a winner take all at this threshold. California is on March 5th, Super Tuesday.
It awards 169 delegates.

Speaker 4 California Republicans changed the rules so that a candidate who gets more than 50% of the votes gets all of the delegates.

Speaker 4 Previously, most of the delegates in California were awarded congressional district by congressional district.

Speaker 4 So basically, Trump's allies have made a huge push to create these winner-take-all triggers in all these early states, like all the primaries before March 15th.

Speaker 4 According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2016, 15 states and territories had a winner-take-all trigger, like the ones I just described.

Speaker 4 In 2024, 23 states and territories that vote early before March 15th will have a winner-take-all trigger.

Speaker 4 So long story short, it will be very hard to stage some sort of come-from-behind victory because of these rule changes. And also, Trump could have this thing sealed up on Super Tuesday

Speaker 1 pretty easily. And look

Speaker 3 before his first trials even.

Speaker 1 And like you said, like Republicans already had more winner-take-all states than Democrats just do proportional every state. Yeah.
And now it's like,

Speaker 1 now it's even, now it's supercharged, right?

Speaker 4 And that their rule had technically been you couldn't have a winner-take-all before March 15th, but they created these little thresholds and loopholes to sort of make de facto winner-take-all.

Speaker 3 I do think, though, it's over.

Speaker 1 It's over. I do think

Speaker 1 so.

Speaker 3 Whether or not it's winner-take-all, I think would matter more if we're talking about like what happened in 2016, where you have this like kind of big field that's refusing to narrow.

Speaker 3 Like, the reality is whether, you know, whether Nikki Haley is losing by eight points, 20 points, 30 points, it really doesn't matter. Trump is cruising to the nomination.

Speaker 3 And like the only question then is not, it's like if someone else is potentially going to be the nominee, it means that they have to overtake Trump faster. It has to happen quicker.

Speaker 3 The consolidation has to happen fast and it has to happen with enough time before you get to some of these big states. Right.

Speaker 4 Because you can't say, all right, we're going to take second in Iowa, do better than expected in South Carolina, then we're going to, you know, collect a lot of delegates on Super Tuesday and we're going to grind it out and win in the Connecticut primary on April 2nd, right?

Speaker 4 Because they've rigged rigged the rules so that Trump is going to get all of the delegates out of these states where he's the only Republican candidate anyone has heard of.

Speaker 1 And again, once you hit the majority of delegates, primary's over.

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Speaker 1 So, Trump is, of course, acting like he's already the nominee with good reason and laying out plans for a second term.

Speaker 1 Over the weekend, he posted on Truth Social that he's seriously looking into alternatives for Obamacare and that Republicans should, quote, never give up on their fight to, quote, terminate it.

Speaker 1 The Biden campaign pounced, and the president himself talked about this on Monday.

Speaker 5 And my predecessors, once again, God love them, call for cuts that could rip away health insurance for tens of millions of Americans in Medicaid. They just don't give up.
But guess what?

Speaker 5 We won't let these things happen.

Speaker 1 How likely do you think it is that Trump can actually pull this off after not being famously not being able to get it done in 2017 and then telling us he was going to have an alternative for Obamacare for 10 years now?

Speaker 3 I don't, before we even get to, like, where the fuck did this come from? Like, he, it seems like someone at his country club mentioned a Wall Street Journal piece or something.

Speaker 3 Like, this is such a strange bank shot to get to him talking about Obamacare.

Speaker 3 And, like, so basically, there was a Wall Street Journal piece that misrepresents something Elizabeth Warren said about Obamacare to say that Elizabeth Warren finally admits that Obamacare costs money.

Speaker 3 And Trump sees this and then uses it to basically take a swipe at John McCain because he thought about John McCain on the toilet and then puts this out there.

Speaker 3 Beyond that, and then, and then now it's a whole news cycle and Biden's taking a shot and everybody should. But it's like, where did this come from? Right?

Speaker 3 Like, Republicans have clearly recognized that this is a losing issue for them.

Speaker 1 My theory of this, this round of Trump running for president is he's got much better people around him and they're all trying to like keep him as disciplined as possible. And so far it's working.

Speaker 1 And they're like, maybe we'll just, maybe it's good that he's off Twitter. Maybe we'll get him back.
We won't do a lot of mainstream interviews. Right.
And they're trying to keep him on message.

Speaker 1 But Trump can't stay disciplined for that long. Like you cannot just keep him contained like this.
He is going to make

Speaker 1 political mistakes. He's an artist.
Like this one. And the world is his canvas.
Like someone, someone got to him and was like, you got to be careful on the abortion stuff.

Speaker 1 It's really, Republicans are losing on abortion. You got to at least pretend, moderate.
No one got to him on the ACA stuff. Well, he's on the abortion stuff.

Speaker 1 He always.

Speaker 1 He will try to walk this back. I bet he will try to walk this back, and it hopefully won't work.

Speaker 4 Very smart of Biden, I think, to come out and do a statement on this. I think Trump will absolutely try try to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Why?

Speaker 4 Because he's a dumb racist who hates Obama and wants to destroy everything Obama ever did. That's my genuine feeling for why he actually cares about this.

Speaker 4 And what it will mean in practice is 20 million people will lose their health care that they gained. because of the Affordable Care Act.

Speaker 1 And something like 150 million people who depend on health care because they have preexisting conditions and insurance companies can't discriminate against them because of preexisting conditions, they will lose that protection.

Speaker 1 Young people will lose the protection of being on their parents' health care until they're 26.

Speaker 1 All the seniors who are now paying less for prescription drugs, thanks to what Joe Biden did in the Inflation Reduction Act, will pay more for prescription drugs because of this now.

Speaker 1 There will be no more lifetime limits on how much health care you can get. So like if you're seriously, seriously ill and your insurance will only cover up to,

Speaker 1 used to only cover up to a certain amount. Obamacare got rid of that.
That will come back now. I mean, it's just, it is ridiculous.
Catastrophic. How likely is it?

Speaker 1 Well, so, you know, like you said, Trump will want to do it because he's Trump.

Speaker 1 If there's a Speaker mike johnson in the house you can bet that the the house will do it they're a bunch of crazies there they can barely elect a republican speaker they're so right-wing and then in the senate so yes collins and murkowski were no's but they could support an alternative to the affordable care act or if trump wins it seems very likely that in that world john tester and shared brown don't hang on if the if it's possible they do but unlikely and if that's the case then republicans will have the votes in the Senate to get rid of Obamacare.

Speaker 1 And again, they can do it. They can probably do it just through a budget process, through a budget reconciliation process, and not, and they won't need the 60.

Speaker 3 Yes, I mean, if they, if Republicans, right, if Republicans win the White House and they take the Senate, keep the House, they will certainly try to repeal Obamacare.

Speaker 3 It is hard to imagine they wouldn't succeed. They almost succeeded last time.

Speaker 3 The reason Trump is still mad about it is that it was only by a kind of like last-minute reprieve from John McCain that the thing survived at all.

Speaker 3 And by the way, he could have gone either way in that whole fucking thing because he was a capricious guy and it was a fit of, if not a fit of peak, but it was like a, it was a little, it was a, it was a 50-50 shot.

Speaker 1 I mean, remember, we remember what, remember we watched it.

Speaker 3 People were, we were like, we were, just the fact that we were hopeful John McCain might not repeal Obamacare, we got shit for seeming like a bunch of naive goobers and like which often we are.

Speaker 1 And often we are.

Speaker 3 But yeah, no good.

Speaker 1 Just some numbers on this. 22% of the American people supported Trump's last attempt to get rid of Obamacare in 2017.

Speaker 1 The current favorability rating for the Affordable Care Act is between 57 and 62%, according to Kaiser.

Speaker 1 And this from a Fox News poll in 2020, they asked people, would you rather keep the Affordable Care Act or replace it? 64% said keep, 32% said replace. 32% of Republicans favored keeping it.

Speaker 1 And that was in a 2020 poll. And this is the

Speaker 1 political

Speaker 1 if this continues. continues,

Speaker 3 if there's a way to keep this

Speaker 3 as central to the election, I can't think of a more damaging thing. For Trump, the least popular he ever was as president was when he was trying to repeal,

Speaker 3 or close to the least, maybe tied for second, was when he tried to repeal Obamacare. It is extremely unpopular.

Speaker 3 And in terms of what you would be able to talk about, like abortion, democracy and extremism, and Obamacare, like that would be like if it is, if it is the third story, that would be very good.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And again, I saw, I saw a bunch of people reacting to this news by saying like, this seems like a small thing.
Like he's going to end democracy. He's going to end democracy.

Speaker 1 And it's like, yeah, the people, all of us who pay close attention to politics, and maybe some of the people who are saying that. have health care that they pay for.

Speaker 1 They could say that. But like for the people who are disengaged in politics, who are not paying attention, they hear that they're going to lose their health care.
That's how they're going to vote.

Speaker 1 That's how they're going to vote. All right.
Finally, George Santos is back with a vengeance, but he could be out of Congress within the week.

Speaker 1 The Republican chair of the Ethics Committee has introduced a resolution to expel Santos after their bipartisan investigation found that the congressman used his campaign funds to pay for personal expenses like Botox, Hermes bags, and a subscription to OnlyFans.

Speaker 3 Fucking legend.

Speaker 1 Santos is taking this in stride. Here he is during a Twitter Spaces interview on Friday.

Speaker 14 They all act like they are on ivory towers with white pointy hats and they're untouchable. I mean, within the ranks of the United States Congress, there's felons galore.

Speaker 14 There's people with all sorts of shisty backgrounds. And all of a sudden, George Santos is the Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress.

Speaker 1 Can we pause real quick? Can we pause?

Speaker 1 Pause real quick.

Speaker 1 Mary Magdalene

Speaker 1 of Congress, what is he talking about?

Speaker 3 I think he's saying that he's being unfair, you you know, that Mary Magdalene was cast out.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she was cast out.

Speaker 3 But was he friends? Because she also went to the house.

Speaker 1 So he would miss the crucifixion?

Speaker 1 I still can't get past. They're on Ivory Towers wearing pointy white hats.
So yeah, I was going to tell you, hey, man,

Speaker 3 that's not what Ivory Towers are for.

Speaker 3 Ivy Towers were for people that are kind of like naive intellectuals who don't know how the world works.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 3 Pointy hats. I don't know where that came from.
And by the way,

Speaker 3 for Felon's Galore, incredible drag name.

Speaker 3 Just waiting to be taken. The other.

Speaker 1 Why don't we roll the rest of the clip? I'm sorry.

Speaker 14 We're all going to stone this motherfucker because it's just politically expedient. I want to see Michael Guest, the chairman of ethics, put his resolution.

Speaker 14 Matter of fact, I think he should be a man and stop being the pussy and call the privilege on the damn motion.

Speaker 14 This precedent sets a new era of due process, which means you are guilty until proven innocent.

Speaker 14 We will take your accusations and use it to smear, to mangle, to destroy you, and remove you from society.

Speaker 14 I don't care. You want to expel me? I'll wear it like a badge of honor.
I'll be the sixth expelled member of Congress in the history of Congress.

Speaker 14 I'm not leaving.

Speaker 14 I'm not

Speaker 14 come hell or high water. These people need to understand it's done when I say it's done.

Speaker 1 I don't know about that.

Speaker 3 First of all, goddamn it, legend.

Speaker 1 I say it again.

Speaker 4 I say it again.

Speaker 1 I think that's the first time the words pussy and a privileged resolution were used in the same sentence by someone.

Speaker 3 I also just, I also like the, it's so jarring when he says pussy, a word that's hard even for me to say, because it's like, because, because it's like, I'm sorry, but like, that, that's, you're using a gay voice.

Speaker 3 And like, I re like he does. He's like in his gay, because he's fighting.
He's being a diva. So he's in his gayer voice.
And it's like, then you're going to say that.

Speaker 3 Then you're going to go, then you're going to bro out on us.

Speaker 1 I don't like that.

Speaker 3 Also, just one, he says, when he says, uh, shysty,

Speaker 3 my spidey sense is tingling. And I realize that there's two paths before George Santos now.
There's the one I hope he takes, which is is reality show Diva. That's the path.

Speaker 3 The other is like QAnon anti-Semite. Like they're just, he's,

Speaker 1 why not both? Why not both? Why not both?

Speaker 4 I mean, there was a House Ethics Committee investigation report, but this wasn't just conjecture.

Speaker 1 So I'm interested in what happens here. An expulsion vote needs two-thirds of members to pass, assuming all the Democrats vote to expel him at this point, which I assume they will.

Speaker 1 Some of the people like Jamie Raskin, who we talked about before, who didn't didn't want to expel him before the ethics committee finished their report, are now saying, like, yeah, no, we've had due process.

Speaker 1 This is what we were asking for. Very principled position.
Very principled, and I agree with that position.

Speaker 1 And so if you get all the Democrats, you still need 70 Republicans.

Speaker 1 Now, Santos in that Twitter spaces interview said, I think they're going to vote me out because I can count votes, which seems doubtful.

Speaker 1 He said a liar.

Speaker 1 And then someone asked Mike Johnson about this today. He said on the resolution, he said it remains to be seen.

Speaker 1 I've spoken to Congressman Santos at some length over the holiday and talked to him about his options, but we'll have to see. I wonder if Johnson tried to get him to resign on his own.

Speaker 4 I'm sorry. Imagine those two trying to relate over a coffee.

Speaker 1 You know, buddy person.

Speaker 1 I love it. I fucking love it.
Wow, there's the pitch.

Speaker 3 Just a drag queen grifter and

Speaker 3 just a weird legal zealot.

Speaker 1 I love it. One of them is on OnlyFans.
One of them gets in trouble if they go to OnlyFans with this.

Speaker 3 What do you mean you don't have our Avis reservation and we have to take that train together

Speaker 3 what do you mean our phones are dead

Speaker 3 all the flights are canceled but my son is home you don't have a son

Speaker 3 i but like the the the only

Speaker 3 what do you think what do you think they're gonna vote him out you think you i think they want this i think they want him gone i mean i think like i think the you know the the only thing that they the only reason they were keeping him around in like the mccarthy era was that like they were they needed every vote they needed every single vote and it is true that they go to a special like you know it's hard to imagine.

Speaker 3 It's hard for them to, they can't count on the seat. That's for sure.

Speaker 1 It's, it's, yeah, it's a more, it's like a Biden district.

Speaker 4 They might lose it. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the, the, we only lost it the first time because everyone fucking fell asleep at the wheel who was, who was part of that race. Yeah, the fucking believable.

Speaker 3 Guys, guys wandering around be like, yeah, I'm a scientist, too.

Speaker 1 I'm getting away with it. It's unfucking believable.

Speaker 3 Just, and also, by the way, fake dot, like the thing that came out of the ethics report, which is like, it's an amazing what a scam. What a scam.
So remember when we...

Speaker 1 Can we talk about this scam?

Speaker 3 Yeah, we should talk about this for a second because like we at the time we talked about this and it was really confusing or at the time we talked about the how these reports didn't make sense.

Speaker 3 So one thing that was in some of the disclosures way back when was that he had loaned a tremendous amount of money to the campaign. I think like 85 80 some 80 some $80,000.

Speaker 1 And then another check for more. Another check for more.
He started with the 80.

Speaker 3 And everyone was like, wait.

Speaker 3 Because he's a businessman, but where's this money coming from? Because he also was like behind on rent or had been in, had been evicted from an apartment. So it was all really confusing.

Speaker 3 Turns out that was made up. There was no $85,000 or $80,000 loan.
It was $3,500 or something like that.

Speaker 3 And so then he pretends he's loaned the campaign $85,000, uses it to show strength to get donations, and then just starts paying himself from the fucking donations.

Speaker 3 Legend.

Speaker 1 Thinking that no one would check to see that his $80,000 loan to his own campaign was only $3,500, which he was right. No, he was totally right.
He was totally right.

Speaker 1 Eventually he got got.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 those wax wings could only get you so high.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 3 they did indeed melt.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I do wonder what the calculation is for these Republicans because

Speaker 1 why do they need him around, right?

Speaker 1 They're going to lose a seat in the special, probably. They'd probably also lose it in the next election.
So why not get rid of him now and saying that you're expelled?

Speaker 1 And does Mike Johnson need every vote? Sure. But what else are they passing between now and 2024? I guess all the supplemental and then a continuing resolution to fund the government in January.

Speaker 1 But beyond that, can you afford to lose one more vote?

Speaker 1 And like, versus the political consequences of having all these Republicans saying that they voted to keep the, I mean, think of the finances you could run.

Speaker 3 Well, the other piece of it, too, is it's like, actually, it just, it's a statement about how weak Kevin McCarthy was, because why did you need every single Republican vote? You don't have the Senate.

Speaker 3 So nothing's passing that's not bipartisan.

Speaker 3 So it was like, I need every vote to do my dumb messaging bills to prove to the hard right that I'm cool so that eventually when I do a deal, they don't expel me from my job, which is what they ended up doing.

Speaker 4 But then George Santos saw his Jesus Christ, Kevin McCarthy, get crucified, which is why he's Mary Magdalene. But will there be a resurrection? That's the question.

Speaker 1 Is that why he's Mary Magdalene?

Speaker 1 None of us know. We're all

Speaker 1 about pointy white hats. I don't know why.

Speaker 3 I don't know what the pointy white hats were either. I do think like the,

Speaker 3 if, if they decide, I can't imagine why. I don't know why anybody would vote to keep to Santa.

Speaker 4 These New York delegations get them out.

Speaker 1 They're New York Republic. There have been two resolutions.

Speaker 3 One of them was from fucking them. But I do think like it is, it is.
The previous expulsions were Confederates and people who were convicted, right? This is not a conviction.

Speaker 3 There's some logic to that, but I don't think they'd hang their hat on it.

Speaker 1 Anyway, good times.

Speaker 3 We'll miss you, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we really will. Well, we'll see.
We'll see. Don't worry about it.
He could say, he could say, don't smile,

Speaker 1 love it. Don't cheat it.
We don't know yet. I don't know.
Pitched for Love It or Leave it? I bet he did. Come on.

Speaker 1 Have you at least had a comedian impersonating Jorge Santos?

Speaker 3 Oscar Montoya came on and did an incredible George Santos.

Speaker 1 And we have to have him back. We have to bring him back.
It's time. It's time.

Speaker 4 John Stantos over here. He's a big fan of this guy.

Speaker 1 Hey.

Speaker 1 What? Huh? What? Huh? Huh? Huh?

Speaker 1 Do you understand him?

Speaker 4 I genuinely didn't. You're standing here.

Speaker 3 Oh, I do. I do.
I do. I'm a George Stantos.

Speaker 1 Something the kids currently say, but it's John Stanton. He's a John.
That's why I thought it was Stanton. John Stantos.

Speaker 1 You thought that you were John Elephant?

Speaker 4 That one needed some more time.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The joke of it.
Hey, come on. I'm sitting right here with you guys.

Speaker 4 John's trying to wrap it up.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to wrap it up. It's a long show.
You never back down, okay? Very long show.

Speaker 1 Is it? We have two quick housekeeping notes before we leave. Felt flew by the show.
Good show, long show. The most important event of the year is happening on Thursday night.
What?

Speaker 1 It's a live televised debate between Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis and the man he absolutely isn't running against, Governor Gavin Newsom.

Speaker 1 So we will be doing a group thread to cover this debate. Did you guys know you'd have to do a group thread Thursday night? Actually, I'm learning about it now.
I'm not going to lie.

Speaker 3 By the way, I think I'm in Phoenix, but I'll do my best to join.

Speaker 1 Yeah, three of us, plus Dan, plus the rest of the crooked crew, we'll all be on Discord to get access to this and more events like it. Make sure you're subscribed to Friends of the Pod.

Speaker 1 You can head to crooked.com slash friends to learn more. We're going to group thread this debate.

Speaker 1 We're just going to have some fun. Gonna have some fun.
Just gonna have some fun out there.

Speaker 4 First question, what channel is it on?

Speaker 1 What channel is the

Speaker 1 Fox? It's Fox. Yeah.
Sean Hannity. Sean Hannity.
Right. Bummer.
Sean Hannity. I have some moderating.

Speaker 4 I have some friends in the

Speaker 4 Newsome camp, and this has created a lot of work for them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I bet. Well, it's worth it.

Speaker 3 Let's see.

Speaker 3 I think it was the right thing to do.

Speaker 1 I mean, it just seemed like Ron DeSantis has a bit more to lose since he is a current presidential candidate.

Speaker 1 It's a total waste of time for this. The whole thing's amazing.

Speaker 3 Also. Well, the only thing is it's good that he's not at the time.
As long as he's not talking to voters, he's not hurting his campaign.

Speaker 4 I think when they both agreed to it, it made some strategic sense, but now it's just like DeSantis is plummeting. He's not in the right states doing it.

Speaker 4 It's crazy.

Speaker 1 Anyway, speaking of live events, Pad Save America's got two more. Two more.
You can catch us in El Cajon on December 7th and San Jose on December 13th.

Speaker 1 We'll be joined by co-hosts Sam Sanders and Edisu D'Messi. Get your tickets at crooked.com slash events now.

Speaker 1 And that's our show. We did it.
We'll talk to you guys on Thursday. Bye, everyone.

Speaker 1 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 1 Reed Cherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by by Andrew Chadwick.
Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 1 Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroote is our head of production.
Andy Taft is our executive assistant.

Speaker 1 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelavieve, and Molly Lobel.

Speaker 1 Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube to catch full episodes and extra video content. Find us at youtube.com slash at PodSave America.

Speaker 1 Finally, you can join our Friends of the Pod subscription community for ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and a great discussion on Discord.

Speaker 1 Plus, it's a great way to get involved with Vote Save America. Sign up at crooked.com slash friends.

Speaker 2 What's popping, listeners? I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it.

Speaker 2 Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Want to know about the fake heirs? We got them.
What about a career con man? We've got them too.

Speaker 2 Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters.

Speaker 2 I'm joined by guests like Nicole Beyer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien, and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.