Rachel Maddow Talks Trump, Biden, and the Speaker-less House

Speaker 1 October brings it all. Halloween parties, tailgates, crisp fall nights.
At Total Wine and Moore, you'll find just what you need for them all. Mixing up something spooky?

Speaker 1 Total Wine and Moore is your cocktail central for all your Halloween concoctions.

Speaker 1 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and Moore. Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 1 See TotalWine.com for details. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.
Drink responsibly. B21.

Speaker 2 The Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a bold design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower, and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live.

Speaker 2 And with SiriusXM, every drive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, sports, talk, and podcasts you love, right in your vehicle or on the SiriusXM app.

Speaker 2 Every Sirius XM-equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three-month trial subscription to SiriusXM, so the experience begins the moment you drive.

Speaker 2 Learn more at kia.com/slash sportage-hybrid, Kia movement that inspires.

Speaker 3 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

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

Speaker 3 And joining us in studio is a special guest host, the host of the Rachel Mano Show and best-selling author whose new book is called Prequel, An American Fight Against Fascism, Rachel Maddow.

Speaker 3 Welcome back. Hey guys, it's nice to see you.
Great to see you.

Speaker 5 Last time I was here, I was on crutches, John remembered.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. That was my last book tour.
I did the whole thing on crutches.

Speaker 3 Right. It was October of 2019.

Speaker 3 Before it

Speaker 3 began. Before everything got interesting.
Yeah. All right.
We're going to talk about your book a bit later.

Speaker 3 We're also going to talk about President Biden's growing number of political challenges and Donald Trump's growing number of legal challenges.

Speaker 3 But first, we are now on week three of House Republicans' failure to agree on which of them should be Speaker.

Speaker 3 A clown show that has paralyzed the government just a few weeks before it runs out of money and just a few days after President Biden asked Congress to pass $100 billion in additional funding to defend Ukraine against Putin, Israel against Hamas, Taiwan against China, and beef up security along our southern border.

Speaker 3 So since Jim Jordan went down in flames last week, eight House Republicans have declared their candidacy for Speaker. Actually, nine did, but we lost one tonight.

Speaker 5 What do you mean?

Speaker 3 We lost one tragically?

Speaker 5 No, we just turned up.

Speaker 5 I thought he'd been in my pocket.

Speaker 3 Some guy, his name is from Pennsylvania. Dan Muser.
There you go, Tommy. Muser? Muser? Maser? He went down.

Speaker 3 Anyway, none of these people are well known to anyone outside their districts who isn't a political junkie, including the leading contender, majority whip, Tom Emmer of Minnesota, whose face I couldn't pick out of a lineup if my life depended on it.

Speaker 3 All I know is that there was rumored to be some bad blood between Donald Trump and Emmer after he voted to certify the 2020 election.

Speaker 3 Though here's what Trump said when he was asked about Emmer on Monday. Do you endorse Tom Emmer for Speaker?

Speaker 3 He hasn't historically been your biggest fan, but he is the most likely candidate right now. Well, I think he's my biggest fan now because they told me yesterday they didn't know me.

Speaker 3 I'm your biggest fan. So I don't know about that.

Speaker 3 I said there's only one person that can do it all the way. You know who that is? Jesus Christ.

Speaker 3 Jesus came down and said, I want to be Speaker, he would do it.

Speaker 3 The funny thing about that is Tom Emmer tweeted that clip of Trump's non-endorsement of Tom Emmer and said, thank you, Mr. President.

Speaker 5 Thank you for putting my name in your mouth, even that way.

Speaker 3 In a way that was not too mean. So do you think there's any reason to believe that the internal dynamics that have Republicans without a speaker will change with any of these candidates?

Speaker 3 And can you name more than two of the candidates?

Speaker 5 More than two of the eight?

Speaker 3 Of the eight.

Speaker 5 Well, Tom Emmer, thank you. There you go.

Speaker 3 Okay, go one.

Speaker 5 Pete Sessions. Yes.
Pete Sessions is actually a recognizable figure from previous eras of Republican scandal.

Speaker 6 That's right. Yes, because there was a time where you'd have to learn that it was a different Sessions

Speaker 3 than Jefferson Beauregard.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 5 So Jeff Sessions, Tom Erm.

Speaker 3 You passed.

Speaker 4 You got it.

Speaker 3 You got two. I did.
It was more than two. It was more than two.

Speaker 5 It was the one that you and I both half-named. It was called Pennsylvania Mazar.
Muser, something like that.

Speaker 3 Is it Musar or Maze?

Speaker 4 C-U-S-E-R. He was Home Care Magazine's Home Caring Award recipient in 2006.

Speaker 3 I can give you guys one more, and that's all I know is Byron Donald's.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. Yes.
Other than that, I don't have anything.

Speaker 5 He occasionally appears on The Fox.

Speaker 3 That's right. Yeah, that's how

Speaker 4 he's on the TV.

Speaker 3 Anyway, John Adams. Anyway, sorry.
My serious question. Any reason to believe that these internal dynamics changed this week?

Speaker 5 No, I mean, mean, there's nothing, there's nothing, unless there's some great reveal about an incredible set of leadership qualities among one of these candidates who we can't name, who we couldn't pick out of a lineup, who we probably couldn't name even if we had their names in front of us.

Speaker 5 Like, you know, I'm not sure we would get their names pronounced correctly. I don't think it's a personality or a personnel problem that the Republicans have.

Speaker 5 I think the problem that they have is that there's no good job in government in a party that doesn't want government.

Speaker 5 So there's being like the highest ranking job you can get is still the worst job ever because anybody with a job in government is obviously suspect.

Speaker 5 And so I think being anti-institutionalist when it comes to the federal government just means there's not, I mean, they'll have to, I guess they'll finally have to figure something out about how to get somebody in there.

Speaker 5 But I also feel like I don't know how much any of them fear any of the things that we think rationally would put pressure on them. Oh, the government will shut down.

Speaker 5 Well, that's the reason they fired McCarthy is because he stopped that from happening. We won't be able to fund our allies.
Oh, that bet, that's going to keep them up at night. Right.

Speaker 3 I just, I feel like they've been hoisted by their own anti-majoritarian patar. Yeah, there it is.

Speaker 3 Because it's like now that a couple people can stop someone from being speaker, then every incentive is for the most extreme members of the caucus to continue doing that.

Speaker 3 Because as you pointed out, most of them don't care about all those things you mentioned.

Speaker 3 Certainly Matt Gates and the eight people or seven or eight people who successfully ousted McCarthy don't give a shit about any of that.

Speaker 5 I think, I mean, for me, I see this as sort of, it's the, it's the Venn diagram of hilarious and scary, which has been a lot of our lives in politics for these past seven or eight years.

Speaker 5 But it is funny that they can't just among themselves come up with somebody to be the next person they fire, you know, even if it's just for a month. Like it is, it's ridiculous.

Speaker 5 And at the same time, I just keep thinking about all of the legislatures around the world that used to be a real thing that became rubber stamps or that got watered down or became Potempkin legislatures when those governments changed from democratic forms of government into strongman forms of government.

Speaker 5 I mean, one of the things that happens is that every other form of governmental authority has to wither or be refashioned so that it is in service of the strongman in order for the strongman to lead an authoritarian government.

Speaker 5 And obviously, you know,

Speaker 5 I don't know if you polled Republicans in public office as to whether or not they want that, but by hook or by crook, that's the project they're part of right now.

Speaker 5 And I don't know that they want to fix it.

Speaker 3 Yeah. No, it doesn't seem like that.
And I mean, the only thing I can think about is the government's going to shut down in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 3 And there's at least, you know, 12 members, Republican House members who are sitting in districts that Joe Biden won.

Speaker 3 And if this chaos is paired with a government shutdown and they start hearing from people at home that there's a government shutdown because these clowns couldn't get their act together and elect a speaker and so therefore it's actually hurting people, that maybe those Republicans in the Biden districts either say, we're going to reach out to Democrats to try to get something done, or they're going to cave and say, all right, we'll let one of the...

Speaker 3 crazy right-wingers become speaker. Yeah.

Speaker 5 They seem equally likely and equally unlikely. The Democrats have done a good job and Hakeem Jeffries has done a good job at making sure that Democratic fingerprints are off this mess.

Speaker 5 The Republicans, I think, were counting on a government shutdown, and maybe they're counting on this legislative shutdown now as somehow being blamed by the average man on the street on the Democrats because Joe Biden is president.

Speaker 5 And so, therefore, anytime something goes wrong in government and there is a president of the Democratic Party, you can blame that president.

Speaker 5 You can blame his party, even if you yourself caused the problem.

Speaker 5 In this case, I think Hakeem Jeffries, even for people who aren't paying very close attention, has created an environment in which it is obvious that this is the Republicans' own problem and not Democrats'.

Speaker 5 So that maybe creates more of a path for them to come up with some power-sharing agreement.

Speaker 3 Tommy, Joe Biden hasn't said too much about this mess. Understandably, he's got a few other things on his plate.
Do you think it's worth him getting involved in a bigger way if this keeps going?

Speaker 3 Or is this a not my circus, not my monkey sort of thing?

Speaker 4 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, I mean, I think political polarization is such that anything he does or says will probably have the opposite impact within the the Republican Party.

Speaker 4 It will not be perceived as helpful or it will be twisted to be unhelpful in some way. So, I mean, Trump keeps jumping in and endorsing people.

Speaker 3 That hasn't seemed to help.

Speaker 4 He's their dear leader.

Speaker 4 And like, yeah, I like what you were saying earlier, sort of the Victor Orbanization of government, right, where you just sort of the state withers around it, whether it's the judiciary, attacks on the freedom of the press.

Speaker 4 Ironically, though, the legislature did this. version of it to themselves, right? Matt Gates came forward with the motion to vacate and made it so any one member can take down the speaker.

Speaker 4 And now the entire institution seems to be withering on the vine and unable to fix itself. But I don't know.
Joe Biden getting in would seem to me, I don't know that he's got a lot of swat here.

Speaker 5 I worry, though, that it is the MAGA wing of the Republic. I mean, is there another wing? It's the MAGA-e-ist

Speaker 5 members of the party who did this to the Congress. And that seems to me very worrying.

Speaker 5 I mean, it was, you know, when it was the Duma withering in Moscow, right, it was United Russia that was helping that to its end. And I just think that the

Speaker 5 party that

Speaker 5 is part of a strongman authoritarian takeover project

Speaker 5 will see individual members of that party do themselves out of jobs to serve the larger purpose of installing their leader.

Speaker 5 And so that's just, I mean, again, that's like the doomsday look at it, but I don't know how this ends.

Speaker 3 Well, yeah, I don't think Biden would help anything by getting involved right now.

Speaker 3 I do think if we get close, because I also think that for most of the country, this is like inside baseball and they don't know what's going on right now.

Speaker 3 um i think most of them hate washington and they see dysfunction in washington and they don't like it and they don't really know who to point their finger at right unfortunately so i think as we head towards a government shutdown then i i think that biden could go out there and say the just what i was saying earlier which is like these clowns can't get their act together and because of their own petty grievances their own ambition people are going to be put out of work people aren't going to get government benefits that they there's going to be women and children who don't have food assistance assistance.

Speaker 3 There's going to be air travel delays. And it's all because these assholes couldn't figure out how to elect a speaker.
And I think that's probably a useful message as we get towards November.

Speaker 3 But right now, I wouldn't.

Speaker 5 How does he make sure that that lesson is sort of heard in those terms rather than what you're saying, Tommy, in terms of people hate Washington, they blame Washington,

Speaker 5 they don't differentiate between who it is?

Speaker 5 I mean, I was sort of arguing that the Democrats have done a pretty good job keeping Democratic fingerprints off this problem and making it a pure Republican problem.

Speaker 5 But it sounds like you think that people are going to blame everybody, even if only one side is not.

Speaker 4 I just think there's a Pew survey that went around recently, which showed the average voter just hates Washington.

Speaker 4 The approval of the institution of Congress is like 6%. It was really terrible.
And sort of.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 But also, I mean, we've seen, we've been through a round of this, and even if poll after poll shows that we've made this argument well, and most people don't blame Joe Biden and most people hold Republicans accountable, it still goes on the ledger of America kind of a mess, uncertain, the kind of sour mood that contributes to Joe Biden's low approval ratings, concerns about the economy, a world that is in crisis, that whether or not in any individual issue, Joe Biden may have support or may have less weakness.

Speaker 6 On the whole, people having a sense that the country is moving in a wrong direction becomes blame for him.

Speaker 3 I think you could keep Democratic hands off the problem by having Joe Biden go out there and say, look, this is, we had a deal.

Speaker 3 I had a deal with Kevin McCarthy, a bipartisan spending deal that we both agreed to. We both compromised a little bit.
He went back on his word. Then they fired him.
Then there was complete chaos.

Speaker 3 We are very willing to work with Republicans on a bipartisan deal, on a bipartisan spending deal. I got Mitch McConnell over here in the Senate.
He's willing to do it.

Speaker 3 Some Republicans senators need to do it.

Speaker 3 But this MAGA extreme wing of the House can't even agree among themselves on a speaker, and everyone's hurting because of it, because the government's going to shut down.

Speaker 3 And I think that keeps him as the like bipartisan deal maker, but still lays the blame on Republicans.

Speaker 3 And probably he'll get the chance to have a bigger audience for this as we get closer to the shutdown.

Speaker 6 I mean, there's another Venn diagram, which is the Venn diagram that Republicans have to smash together to get to the 217 votes that they need, right? That has to be an overlap of

Speaker 6 the people who want to govern or just want this problem off their plate and the people who love this fight and love this mass strike get to smash those people together and to get to 217.

Speaker 6 They couldn't do that with Jim Jordan even under incredible amounts of pressure. There were still,

Speaker 6 you know, two dozen roughly people that were willing, even in the face of all that pressure, to say no. I think that that's like a heartening sign.

Speaker 6 But it is a worry. It is really worrying that, yeah, we don't know which way this is going to go.

Speaker 6 But if you were looking back on the last six or seven years and said, hey, what are you going to bet on? Are you going to bet on squishy Republicans? Are going to be brave or going to be cowards?

Speaker 6 And being cowards means going along with whoever the last person is

Speaker 6 in front of their podium before the government closes or does something kind of slightly daring and they decide to go be legends and come over and figure out some kind of a deal.

Speaker 6 Like, it's a scary thing to

Speaker 6 bet on bravery with these people.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And I think, in general, I think in politics, trick plays do not work.
Anything that, you know, like a discharge petition never works. Like the,

Speaker 5 and the, you know, the January 6th shenanigans. Like, even if you subtract all the violence from that, like, I know, we'll pretend they're secret other electors.

Speaker 5 And then Vice President Pence will be shocked and won't know what to do.

Speaker 5 And then it'll end up in the House of like all of these stupid trick plays that you you somebody in as a 1L in law school could invent as a way through the constitution like it just never works yeah straight up stuff is always the way it ends up getting worried out yes we we didn't mint the coin uh but i'll tell you someday we will

Speaker 6 there are exceptions or the impeachment eagle uh there isn't like obamacare you know ted kennedy dies we lose the supermajority in the senate and they did come up with a trick play which is like wait if we pass the house bill even though it's got lots of typos which we'll be dealing with for a decade we can do reconciliation we can find a way through it once in a long while.

Speaker 3 Yes. Once in a long, long while.
Well, right. With legislation.

Speaker 5 Every once in a while, it can happen.

Speaker 3 Speaking of President Biden, his political challenges keep piling up.

Speaker 3 His polling isn't great, but even if you don't believe all the polls, he is an incumbent president who's asking an extremely grumpy electorate to stick with him.

Speaker 3 And now his plan to spend another $100 billion supporting foreign wars, one of which is currently dividing the Democratic Party.

Speaker 3 The Washington Post also reported that over the weekend, Biden, quote, continues to express frustration in private conversations about the state of his polling in battleground states. Yeah, no shit.

Speaker 3 And on Friday, Democratic Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota is expected to announce a primary challenge to the president in New Hampshire.

Speaker 5 I thought Dean Phillips gave it up.

Speaker 3 Oh, no. It's happening.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 Apparently, all the reporting said he hasn't made the final, final decision, but everything's prepared. They're going to New Hampshire.
There's going to be, yeah, it's like.

Speaker 3 They're printing the signs. They're printing the signs.

Speaker 5 Yeah, they don't want to let it leak out in advance because they don't want to take away from the excitement.

Speaker 3 Again, Dean Phillips, if you showed me a picture of Tom Emmer and Dean Phillips, I would not be able to tell you who's who, but they're both from Minnesota. And maybe they'll kiss.

Speaker 3 Just kiss. Wow.

Speaker 3 Let's start with

Speaker 3 Israel. Tommy, there have been quite a few stories about Arab American and Muslim American leaders saying they will not vote for Joe Biden in 2024 because of his support for Israel.

Speaker 3 How big of a problem do you think that is for the president?

Speaker 3 And is there anything he can do to fix it short of calling for a ceasefire or withholding aid to Israel, which he does not seem inclined to do at this point?

Speaker 4 I mean, I do think there's some real political risk here. I think that battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, we won by some thin margins.

Speaker 4 I mean, Michigan was like 150,000 votes, but Pennsylvania was pretty close. If a bunch of

Speaker 4 Muslims or Arab-American voters decide to stay home when in the past cycle they voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden, I think that could really matter.

Speaker 4 I also think a lot of people are talking about this like this is the first time that these communities have voiced frustration with Biden's Gaza policy. That is not true.

Speaker 4 There were protests in 2021 during a previous bombing campaign to Gaza. And so I think the first thing Biden should do is more outreach, I think, to some of these communities.

Speaker 4 Like he's incredibly empathetic. He did this meeting with the families of victims who were killed or taken hostage in Israel.
Something similar would be good for folks with family in Gaza.

Speaker 4 I also think there's a real risk of losing young voters

Speaker 4 along similar lines, like people who are just less supportive of the war effort in polls or less supportive of arming Israel.

Speaker 4 You know, the supplemental generally, like $106 billion to foreign countries, is not going to be very popular, I don't think. We've all watched the polling on Ukraine support tick down over time.

Speaker 4 So I think there's a lot of risk here politically from much different angles.

Speaker 5 Was there any parallel situation like this in the Obama administration in terms of Obama worrying about the same types of support in the same parts of the country?

Speaker 4 Aaron Powell, I'm trying to think. I mean,

Speaker 4 there was less, you know, maybe in 2014, there was a pretty intense war in Gaza, but I don't remember it being, having the same political overtones, probably because it was after the re-elect.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the re-elect was all,

Speaker 3 there wasn't a lot, well, I guess there was Benghazi. was right around the re-elect,

Speaker 3 but mostly it was a campaign waged about the size and role of government and the economy, right?

Speaker 3 And so you didn't have, except for those crucial last last couple months after Benghazi, right before the election, you didn't really have an election that was fought on foreign policy issues.

Speaker 5 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I was thinking about President Obama's statement that he put out on Israel and Gaza today and

Speaker 5 the measured tone, the length of it, the measured tone, the sequencing of it and everything. Obviously, it all very, very carefully calibrated to convey exactly what he wanted to convey.

Speaker 5 And I was just wondering if that, if there was anything to read there that is either an attempt to nudge President Biden one direction or the other, or even just to nudge his messaging around this issue in a way that's more seen as more responsive to more communities.

Speaker 4 I mean, you know, I think he wanted it to weigh in. I think he wrote this himself from everything we understand.

Speaker 4 I think he cares deeply about this, sort of wants to guide the conversation a little bit.

Speaker 4 He probably watches the discourse online being particularly toxic and it bothers him and he's trying to bring people together.

Speaker 4 I would imagine, if anything, he's trying to not piss off or nudge Biden publicly with this messaging. Anything like that, he would do privately.

Speaker 4 I think they probably ran it by the White House first before putting it out, would be my guess.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but I took it, I read it and I thought it was very thoughtful. And what I took it to be was someone who views himself as

Speaker 6 a person who understands how to narrate some of the most difficult issues that we face as a country and trying to just lay out an articulation of what

Speaker 6 a democratic position that is both supportive of Israel and concerned about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza would sound like as a reflection of what the Biden administration policy is, right?

Speaker 6 Like kind of an articulation of what a democratic vision for a pro-Israel but humanitarian American foreign policy would look like.

Speaker 3 Aaron Powell, yeah. There's also sort of two strains of his thinking that I noticed in that statement.
One, which is like he's never been a big fan of BB

Speaker 3 and been

Speaker 3 also there were shades of

Speaker 3 his 2002 speech against the Iraq war and saying, you know, obviously in that speech, he talked about going after terrorists and going after al-Qaeda, and he's not opposed to all wars, but he's opposed to dumb wars.

Speaker 3 And you really got to think about before you go and you send troops into battle and the consequences. And so I saw that a little bit in that statement as well.

Speaker 5 The other thing that I was just thinking reading that today is

Speaker 5 going back to the decision-making in the Obama administration about Syria. And that was one of these things where I just felt like the punditry in the moment was so wrong.

Speaker 5 Like the year of punditry we had around decision-making on Syria was just inane. It was just bad, bad takes left, right, and center.

Speaker 5 And I felt like he was actually, in some important ways, trying to do a very principled, very non-partisan, very 30,000 feet thing, which was Congress should be involved in decisions about the U.S.

Speaker 5 military use of force. And everybody likes to throw proverbial bombs around here, but if we're going to throw real bombs, we should commit ourselves as a country to what we're going to do here.

Speaker 5 And Congress needs to be involved. This is not something that the president should be doing on his own.
And everybody attacked him for all his Syria decisions.

Speaker 5 But I just felt like there was this moment where he was trying to say there's a way to deal with this structurally and in principled terms that ought to guide us both for this conflict and in the long run.

Speaker 5 And he didn't go back to that. idea.

Speaker 5 But I feel like that's the kind of nudge that he can give, which is look at it, look at at it from, it's not just about being really good about talking about people and talking about human suffering, which he is very good at talking about that and talking about recognizing people's false humanity.

Speaker 5 It's also, I feel like he has the capability and I feel like as president he had the capability to say there's a bigger responsibility that we have here, which is to who we are as a country and how our system of government works and how we speak on issues like this.

Speaker 5 So I'm still sort of waiting for some breakthrough like that on Israel and Gaza that makes people feel like we can have a substantive fight that's about who we are

Speaker 5 and how that can be reflected in our national response.

Speaker 4 And I think, you know, interestingly, well, there's when you look at Afghanistan and the Iraq wars, obviously the original sin of the Iraq war was invading in the first place, right?

Speaker 4 Never should have happened. But in terms of how both ended, both required some sort of political resolution to end them correctly or with finality.
And in Afghanistan, obviously that didn't work out.

Speaker 4 Similar challenges in Iraq led to an unstable government and a security situation that quickly deteriorated when our U.S. troops left.
So I think that's part of what he's thinking here.

Speaker 4 It's like, you can roll troops into Gaza, but unless there's a two-state solution or at least some sort of viable path to one, we're not going to get to a peaceful end state for anybody.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Wars are easy to start and hard to end.

Speaker 3 And usually they don't end with military might alone.

Speaker 5 And for the U.S. to have generals, you know, per today's news advising the IDF on

Speaker 5 what not to do and how not to do it right now.

Speaker 5 It's just, it's a really, this is a really precarious time

Speaker 5 in terms of what's, I mean, this time next week, who knows where we're going to be in this war.

Speaker 2 The Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a full design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower, and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live.

Speaker 2 And with Sirius XM, every drive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, sports, talk, and podcasts you love, right in your vehicle or on the Sirius XM app.

Speaker 2 Every Sirius XM-equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three-month trial subscription to SiriusXM. So the experience begins the moment you drive.

Speaker 2 Learn more at kia.com slash sportage dash hybrid, Kia movement that inspires.

Speaker 7 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here, wishing you a very happy half-off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited.

Speaker 3 To be clear, that's half price, not half the service.

Speaker 7 And Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.

Speaker 3 So that means a half day. Yeah? Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

Speaker 8 A front payment of $45 for three months plan equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offers for first three months only.
Speed slow under 35 gigabytes of networks busy.

Speaker 8 Taxes and fees extra.

Speaker 3 See Mintmobile.com.

Speaker 9 AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes.

Speaker 9 Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes.

Speaker 9 So you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation at rubrik.com.
That's r-u-b-r-i-k.com.

Speaker 3 What did you guys think of the post story, which was mainly about the Biden campaign potentially expanding its $25 million advertising campaign? Anyone have any thoughts on?

Speaker 3 So I could argue it both ways.

Speaker 4 Mm-hmm. Anyone want to pick a side?

Speaker 3 Good idea, bad idea?

Speaker 5 What's the bad idea argument?

Speaker 4 Bad idea would be like spending $25 million a year before anyone votes is burning cash. No one's paying attention.

Speaker 4 Similar efforts that were run by this super PAC in the story, future forward, haven't paid any dividends. Ultimately, the winning message is probably going to be some sort of contrast with Trump.

Speaker 4 So don't spend your hard dollars,

Speaker 4 the most challenging to raise money that gets you the best rates on advertisements down the stretch today. Now, I don't necessarily believe that, but like that would be the argument against.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I don't, I guess, you know, they started running that sort of economics ad.

Speaker 6 And we talked about it at the time wondering, so what is the value of doing that right now? That's not the kind of,

Speaker 6 like, is there something that they're seeing?

Speaker 6 And focus groups are in polling that basically says long before we get to the, to the kind of, to the fall, when there's a real contrast, there's a lot of work we have to do to kind of strengthen the general sense of what Joe Biden has done in the economy.

Speaker 6 And I just, I don't know anymore what the value, like I just, I truly don't understand how to think about the value of television advertising now when media is so fractured, when a lot of the people that are most important to reach, like young people, aren't necessarily going to see them.

Speaker 6 Like, how do we think about that? And I just think it's a campaign.

Speaker 6 facing not just a political problem, but a cultural problem of we really don't know how to reach people who don't pay attention to the news.

Speaker 6 We know how to talk about the news in this sort of noisy maelstrom of conversation. And we know how to reach those people and engage those people.

Speaker 6 We know how to engage the people listening to get them to go knock on doors. And I think that's really important.

Speaker 6 But there are millions and millions of people who are not paying attention at all who get the news in a really

Speaker 6 attenuated way. And reaching those people, changing their minds is getting harder and harder.

Speaker 3 I think they're...

Speaker 3 Part of what they're doing is testing not just different ads and different messages, but different ways of breaking through to precisely the people that you're talking about right now.

Speaker 3 So I think the benefit to it, the other side with the well, I guess you had the benefit to it. Oh no, you had why it was a bad idea.
I had a bad idea, but I don't really believe that.

Speaker 4 I mean, I think that it sounds like they're just it's a relatively small ad-buy early on to sharpen your message for your much bigger ad buy down the road.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and they're collecting all kinds of data that I don't think was even available to us in 2012 or even in 2016 to the Clinton campaign about like exactly how different demographic groups, different audiences are responding to different kinds of ads.

Speaker 3 So I think it's like more of a testing phase. I think the bigger

Speaker 3 debate here that you see in that story is how do you convince people, or should the purpose of the ads be to convince people that actually Joe Biden has, you know, accomplished a lot, that the economy is better than they think?

Speaker 3 Or is that just telling people what they don't actually feel?

Speaker 3 And on that note, I still think that it is really hard to convince people if they are grumpy about the economy, that actually the statistics say differently and we're doing great.

Speaker 3 And if I just repeat it enough, then you'll believe it. And I think you've got to set up the contrast.

Speaker 3 I think the more effective way to do it is, and I'd be interested in seeing how the audiences react to this, but setting up a contrast with Trump where you're saying, all right, if you elect me again, here's what I will do to help people who are struggling with costs.

Speaker 3 And here's how I'll do it. And by the way, here's what Trump said he'll do if he gets elected.
And not just on the economy, but on every other issue.

Speaker 5 I mean, it sort of feels like the answer is yes. Like they need to deal with sharpening their message.
It is going to come down to contrast with the Republican nominee.

Speaker 5 And they need to change the prevailing perception of Joe Biden.

Speaker 5 And I don't think that the prevailing perception of Joe Biden is impenetrable by advertising. Just because, I mean,

Speaker 5 what spaces are people going to to get their information now? It's very fractured. TV is one of those spaces.
Social media is itself actively fracturing as we speak.

Speaker 5 The other forms of information that people get are sort of evolving constantly. Like, I don't know that in that environment, there's any better choice than advertising.

Speaker 5 You know, there's nothing else that emerges in its place, and you can't create a different news environment.

Speaker 5 But because the news environment on the right has been so negative on the economy, particularly, you do need positive messaging about being constructive on the economy just to stand up against that.

Speaker 5 And why not do it through ads?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I feel like I believe two opposite things.

Speaker 5 One is that it's a sign of intelligence.

Speaker 3 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 6 Thank you for saying that.

Speaker 6 But I believe it is always a mistake if you're trying to convince people that their lived experience is in some way wrong and we should just take at face value all of this polling that says people don't believe in the economy right now.

Speaker 6 They have a lot of frustrations. They're very worried.
They're very anxious. And that if what you're trying to do is tell them they're wrong, you're making a big mistake.
And then I also think,

Speaker 6 on the other hand, we also see that, yes,

Speaker 6 there is partisan bias in polling on the economy.

Speaker 6 When Trump is president, Republicans think it's doing better. When Democratic is president, Democrats think it's doing better.
That polarization is not equal.

Speaker 6 Republicans are better team players when they're answering questions about the polling.

Speaker 6 And I do think there is, you know, we talked about, we talked about this all the time, the kind of hand-wringing and self-flagellation we did as speechwriters during the Obama years to always make sure we said things are getting better, but they're not good enough.

Speaker 6 You always have to do the first part to make sure you weren't getting ahead of where people were on the economy.

Speaker 6 But if you do that for long enough, you don't get to the part where you tell people in a way they believe that things are actually getting better.

Speaker 6 And then you see someone like Trump, when he is in charge, things are fucking gangbusters. When things are not, they're in the toilet.
It's pretty simple.

Speaker 6 And I don't know, I don't, I don't know how to put those two things together because there's a part of me that thinks, well, you know,

Speaker 6 if we don't think we're winning, people watching aren't going to think we're winning either. And you know, we have to be our own boosters sometimes.
And I just don't know how you square that circle.

Speaker 5 I think that in part, talking about jobs, just making it like, like, what do people mean when they mean the economy? They mean lots of different things.

Speaker 5 And you can personalize it or you can think in sort of fake macro terms. You can talk about it in terms of what your cousin's personal circumstances are or whatever.

Speaker 5 But being able to talk about the one metric of jobs seems to me to be something where

Speaker 5 they can create a narrative that ought to stick because it's so overwhelming in terms of the jobs numbers. And the contrast is there and the raw value absolute numbers are there.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I also think you've got to show that you are fighting to improve improve people's lives and that you have a plan to do that.
And we did that in 2011. Obama gave that job speech before Congress.

Speaker 3 And obviously, unemployment was the big problem there. Now it's inflation.
Unemployment's not an issue. And he had this refrain, which was like, here's my jobs bill.

Speaker 3 Republicans, you've been for this policy. Democrats for this policy.
Send this to my desk. I'll sign it right away.
And it was like a lot of, we intentionally made it a lot of action.

Speaker 3 And then he could take that out on the road and say, these Republicans are blocking progress. They won't have a vote on these bills that are very popular and bipartisan.

Speaker 3 These are the kind of things that will create jobs. We've created so many so far.
We're climbing back from the recession, but this is what we need to do.

Speaker 3 And this is why you need to send me back to the White House.

Speaker 3 And I do think that I'm sure he'll probably do that in the State of the Union, I would imagine, and then have the State of the Union be sort of a blueprint for the campaign this year.

Speaker 3 But I think that's the piece that's missing in the message right now.

Speaker 5 What you were describing about him saying,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 it's not that we can't get things done. Look at all these bipartisan things I've gotten done.

Speaker 5 It's just this MAGA wing of the Republican Party that they're the ones who have now shut down the legislature and then all these other things. I just feel like that's, it is,

Speaker 5 I just feel like it's almost inarguably the correct message.

Speaker 5 And it is inarguably his constant message. Like it really is all he does.
And he gets no credit for it at all. And I think the prescription is just to keep doing it.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 I don't think it works on people who are discussing politics, but I do think it works on people who don't listen very often.

Speaker 5 And every once in a while, they're going to hear some line from some speech. And if that's it, it's the best possible thing for them to hear.

Speaker 3 And it's just hard because the more he has...

Speaker 3 like all of these challenges that he hasn't ex hadn't expected, like all these foreign policy challenges and everything else, he doesn't get to do that message or deliver that message as much.

Speaker 3 Like when you have to be president and you have to go out to the podium and to the Rose Garden and talk, like you can't be as political.

Speaker 3 So I think some of this is Joe Biden gets back on the campaign trail, the ad campaign cranks up, more people are paying attention to Biden versus Trump, then he has the opportunity to deliver that message like he has been for the last four years.

Speaker 3 But right now, I think not enough people are hearing it and he doesn't get to say it as often.

Speaker 5 I'm wondering also, and this is petty, so you will forgive me in advance, but I have always felt like there is

Speaker 5 a little bit of a like boy version of a beauty contest that happens in presidential general elections, which is the person who seems physically stronger tends to win,

Speaker 5 which is gross, but it's often the case.

Speaker 5 And so I felt like that's why the, you know, define Joe Biden as old and doddering and all these things has been such a focus on the right is that they know, like with lizard brain, that that's really the most important thing they can do.

Speaker 5 But we have been in this circumstance for the last, I mean, you could say for the last eight years, but or the last seven years, but really for the last few months in which

Speaker 5 Trump physically seems like he's falling apart and in which he makes a lot of false statements, not just false statements, but like he gets things wrong and he slurs his words and he doesn't seem well and he seems unhealthy.

Speaker 4 Obama was president three times last week, I think, in 1760.

Speaker 5 And Jeb Bush was president and Victor Orban is the head of Turkey.

Speaker 3 Turkey, yeah.

Speaker 5 And I mean, and all this stuff and just not being able to pronounce things and everything.

Speaker 5 None of that is very important unless we're going to define the contest between these two men as an arm wrestling contest, as some sort of, you know, test of stamina or physical strength, which I feel like the right has really been staking out as their preferred ground.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And so I don't know what happens there with

Speaker 5 Trump himself starting to.

Speaker 4 I think the left's doing a good job clipping those and sharing them. like way better than we used to.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I but I think the message behind when we share those has to be,

Speaker 3 if it's, this is a clown and an unserious person versus Joe Biden, who is a serious person, who's trying very hard, I think we win that fight.

Speaker 3 If it's, you say Joe Biden's old, but Donald Trump's also old.

Speaker 3 Or you say Joe Biden's flubbing words, but Donald Trump's also flubbing words, because then it is that contest of like, who can seem less old. Yes.
Anyway, let's talk about Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 He's not exactly in the best political position either. He's dominating the Republican primary, but the rest of his polling is quite bad.

Speaker 3 He keeps getting bad legal news about the 91 criminal charges he's facing.

Speaker 3 Last week, two of his former lawyers and co-defendants, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Cheesebrow, great name, decided to plead guilty as part of the corrupt scheme to overturn the election in Georgia.

Speaker 3 Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts, Cheesebrow to a felony count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents, i.e. the fake electors.

Speaker 3 Both have agreed to testify in their co-defendants' trials, including Trump, who was asked about all of this on Monday. Mr.
President, you had said Sydney Powell wasn't your plan.

Speaker 3 Are you concerned that you won't be covered by a printing client or lately? No, not at all.

Speaker 3 We did nothing wrong. This is all by the self.
All of these indictments that you see. I was never indicted.
Practically never heard the word. It wasn't a word that registered.

Speaker 3 There was no such thing as indictments before this.

Speaker 5 And by the way, I wasn't indicted.

Speaker 3 Prove I was.

Speaker 5 It's fake news. Hoaxy-hoaxy.

Speaker 3 That's all Biden wasn't. I'm not indicted.
He was indicted.

Speaker 5 No puppet, no puppet.

Speaker 3 But yeah, that's where we're at right now.

Speaker 3 All right, so I've seen some people say that Powell and Cheesebrow's pleas are very bad for Trump. I've heard heard others say we don't yet know if their testimony will be all that damning.

Speaker 3 What do you think, Rachel? What was their involvement in, like, could what they know be potentially damning for Trump?

Speaker 5 You know, it remains to be seen in terms of what kind of witnesses they're going to be, because it's not only what you know and what prosecutors know you know and they can compel you to testify to because you have done it.

Speaker 5 You've agreed to testify in exchange for lenience for yourself. It's not just that.
It's also kind of how the trial's going in terms of how a witness lands.

Speaker 5 I actually think that the most important thing about Powell and Cheeseborough pleading is that it means there's not going to be a trial in Fulton County in October.

Speaker 5 And the reason that's important is because Fonnie Willis kept saying, I want to put them all in the same courtroom all at once.

Speaker 5 It's a conspiracy. It's a Rico conspiracy.
I'm happy to try them all at once. Now, I just wrote a book about the 1944 Great Sedition Trial, where they put 29 defendants in the same courtroom.

Speaker 5 And it was so stressful. Not only did it end in a mistrial, it ended in a mistrial because the judge died.

Speaker 3 It was so

Speaker 3 amazing.

Speaker 5 So I don't want 19 defendants in the same room. But the fact that Fonnie Willis wanted it and has argued for it tells you something about her case.

Speaker 5 And she did not want Cheeseborough and Powell to go first because that would mean previewing her case for the rest of the defendants.

Speaker 5 And them both pleading out means that there's not going to be some dry run where the defense counsels for all these defendants get to see what it is she's got. And that's better for her prosecution,

Speaker 5 for her prosecution strategy. I think that's just that there isn't a preliminary case.

Speaker 3 I also think that I saw someone say that for her to offer a deal to both of them that doesn't involve any jail time, you would think that they have some kind of valuable testimony, maybe not about Trump, but at least about, I mean, Cheeseboro was dealing not directly with Trump, but with Rudy and a couple others.

Speaker 3 So it seems like they must have something valuable if she didn't give them any.

Speaker 5 But again, what does the jury think of them as witnesses?

Speaker 5 What does the jury think of

Speaker 5 the seriousness of that part of the allegation? I just feel like it just, I don't think there's anything that we can say.

Speaker 5 I don't think there's any witness in any of these cases where we can say, oh, that person's going to testify. That means X is going to happen in the case.

Speaker 5 I just don't, I just, I just feel like when I've looked at big landmark cases of different kinds, it's never, it's never that simple.

Speaker 5 Surely having your co-defendants plead guilty in exchange for a promise to testify against you is not good news.

Speaker 3 I just don't know. That's good at all.

Speaker 3 It's either bad or neutral, probably.

Speaker 3 There was also a New York Times story and a 60 Minutes Australia piece about the Australian billionaire Mar-a-Lago member, who Trump allegedly spilled secrets to about America's nuclear submarines.

Speaker 3 Apparently, they got their hands on some new recordings of Anthony Pratt talking about his conversations with Trump. Let's listen.
Yeah, and Trump said,

Speaker 3 you know, that Ukraine phone call, that was nothing compared to what I usually do.

Speaker 3 He knows exactly what to say and what not to say so that he avoids jail but gets so close to it that it looks to everyone like he's breaking the law.

Speaker 3 All of these guys are like the mafia Trump, Rupert, Rudy.

Speaker 3 You want to be a customer, not a competitor. Rudy is someone that I hope will be useful one day.
Plus I just think he's cool. It's not all just sort of like sit-of-the-pant shit.

Speaker 3 I think that him and Rudy are like that and they're plotting all this out.

Speaker 3 Melania, who was sitting next to him at dinner, he said, I asked Melania to walk around the pool in a bikini so all the other guys could get a look at what they were missing.

Speaker 3 Then Melania said back to him,

Speaker 3 I'll do that when you walk around with me in your bikini.

Speaker 4 I like them, I like the music there.

Speaker 4 That guy offered Rudy Giuliani a million dollars to come to his birthday party.

Speaker 3 Why does he think Rudy Giuliani is cool?

Speaker 3 That was the most troubling thing that guy has said. I don't know that Vamarovo

Speaker 6 member is like the best judge of class, taste, character.

Speaker 6 I didn't realize they let people with that accent make a billion dollars.

Speaker 3 That's cool.

Speaker 5 So the mafia thing that he said, he says the thing there, I like the mafia. You want to be a customer, not a competitor.
Is that like a mob movie thing that I don't know?

Speaker 3 I've never heard that.

Speaker 3 I thought that was a great line right there, but I was like, I don't know.

Speaker 5 It's like, is this a mantra that people who are operating adjacent to the mafia tell themselves every morning? Customer, not competitor.

Speaker 3 Customer not competitor.

Speaker 5 I've never read that before.

Speaker 6 Subtext that they'll kill you, I guess.

Speaker 3 Pretty nice kangaroo.

Speaker 6 It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it.

Speaker 3 Jesus Christ. Like

Speaker 4 the headline news out of this report was that Trump gave this guy accidentally or wittingly, I guess, a bunch of nuclear sub secrets with the number of warheads, et cetera.

Speaker 4 It is interesting, though, that this comes out in the middle of this ongoing impeachment effort that's trying to tell a story about the Biden crime family.

Speaker 4 And you have this Australian billionaire being like, yeah, I bought into Mar-a-Lago. I paid a Rudy a million dollars coming to my birthday party.

Speaker 4 I like grifted and all these, I rented all the rooms for election night, right? Like this is a pay-to-play scheme that was this entire Trump administration all laid out in this fun little accent.

Speaker 3 And what he got for it was, well, let me tell you about how many nuclear submarines we have. And let me tell you about that Ukraine call.
Come on, I did worse than that. And it's not even like

Speaker 3 it's an exchange for like, you pay this money and I'll give you these secrets. It's more like, you pay this money and I'll brag to you about how great it is to be president.

Speaker 4 Well, Trump also like did events with him, toured his factory, would like praise him at events and stuff. So it was just sort of like a backpadding competition.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 It's really small.

Speaker 3 Lita's like, she's like, this guy over.

Speaker 5 This guy has like tens of billions of dollars. He's very, very, very wealthy.
And you just think like, okay, if I ever became a person who had $34 or $24 billion, whatever he had, would I be like,

Speaker 5 if I go to Mar-a-Lago on that day, is he going to be there that day? And can I hear the swimsuit thing?

Speaker 5 Can I, I want you to say the swimsuit thing in front of me and then I'm going to tell my friends. Yeah.
I mean, it's just like bored rich people.

Speaker 3 That's what rich. And one of them was president with access to the nuclear front.

Speaker 6 It's also, it's also, it's also how small Trump is.

Speaker 6 I mean, like, he walks in and he treats being the president like he won a silver at Nagano and he walks into the bar and he goes, this, oh, this whole thing, it was cold and windy.

Speaker 6 I'll tell you the story. It's like he like, he like, he wants, he just so desperately wanders around these weddings.
He just wants to talk to people.

Speaker 5 The submarine thing, which I didn't totally grok at first. So there's obviously we don't talk about submarines, right?

Speaker 5 So they're nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarines, talking about their stealth capabilities, talking about their weapons.

Speaker 5 But then once he told the cardboard magnate billionaire guy, that guy told 45 other people. Including journalists.

Speaker 5 Including a half dozen journalists and multiple former heads of state and other foreign government officials. So what, I mean, so what happens to the classified documents case?

Speaker 5 I mean, this stuff isn't implicated directly in the classified documents case.

Speaker 5 He is listed as a potential witness in that case, but the promulgation of that kind of information to all those people, like, wow, what do we do about that? Doesn't

Speaker 3 it? Well, it makes you think that the evidence in the case

Speaker 3 has got to be really strong if this stuff wasn't implicated. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Well, and also, and also just that, hey, no matter what we confiscate, no matter what we do, the information inside of Donald Trump's head, which he is not protecting,

Speaker 6 is at risk of being released if we don't do something to punish him.

Speaker 5 It's all for sale.

Speaker 6 And the only way to actually make sure that he hasn't shared this information is by sending him to jail.

Speaker 5 Right?

Speaker 6 Like the only way to stop the only way to the only way to

Speaker 3 make sure he doesn't get to be president again. Well, that's sure, for sure.
Yeah, but that's a good thing.

Speaker 6 But we can't do that in the courtroom.

Speaker 3 Because if we don't stop that, no jail.

Speaker 4 No bunch of men in black on one of those.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and he'll have all the secrets. He'll be able to do whatever he wants.
He's got nothing to lose. Nothing to lose in the second term.

Speaker 5 I don't know. I mean, I don't think there is a solution to it, right? I mean, if he goes to jail, he's not going to go to jail forever.
He'll then get out. Oh, so he can make phone calls from jail.

Speaker 5 Like there's, there's no, the only, the problem that we are in right now as a country is that the only solution to our problems is to go back in time and not put somebody that criminal in that big a job.

Speaker 5 And unless you can undo that,

Speaker 5 I mean, once you've done that, once you've done somebody who is implicated in this much alleged criminal behavior and they've had that kind of a job, there just isn't an easy way out that doesn't hurt the country.

Speaker 6 What if someone did that fucked up, accidentally left a gold bar in Bob Menendez's car?

Speaker 5 Good point.

Speaker 3 We saw that. We saw your segment on Menendez and your show tonight, and we were all yelling at the TV.
We're like, yeah, what's wrong with you, Democrats? It's

Speaker 3 crazy.

Speaker 3 I don't know where, like, why isn't Chuck Schumer get him off the committee?

Speaker 5 They took him, when you took him out of the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, why'd you do that? Because of his federal felony indictments? Okay.

Speaker 5 And so then when the superseding indictment came out and it turned out he was accused of by the U.S. Justice Department is being a foreign agent,

Speaker 5 did it occur to you at that point that maybe it was time for another step? How is it that he is still on the committee?

Speaker 3 I think it's wild.

Speaker 5 And it was just like

Speaker 5 an arrangement of convenience that he didn't receive the last classified briefing on what's going on with the war.

Speaker 5 It wasn't some sort of formal thing where they were like, no, Bob Menendez, no more classified briefings to you. It was just like, oh, he didn't, yeah, he didn't do that one.

Speaker 5 They just sidestepped that as an issue.

Speaker 4 Where the country that was paying him off, and as far as I can tell, running him as a spy is directly implicated in what's happening currently. The Egyptians are one of the other borders of Gaza.

Speaker 5 He's like, I'll skip this briefing.

Speaker 5 This is a problem. A lot of problems are hard, right? What do you do with the classified information in Donald Trump's head? Like, I really don't.
I don't know that there's an answer to that.

Speaker 5 This is not a hard one. If the Republicans want to take Bob Menendez off the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, here's what they do.
Bob, you're no longer on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Speaker 5 Instead, this other person is. And that's it.
That's all they have to do. It's completely within their power.

Speaker 5 Yes, the Republicans could rise up and try to stop them from installing somebody new, but they're not going to because they don't want to fight over Bob Menendez because they're not willing to say that Menendez should resign.

Speaker 3 Right. That's why I don't understand.
I don't quite understand. We were talking about why the Democrats wouldn't do it.

Speaker 3 And I don't, like, are they worried that Bob Menendez will like change parties and start caucusing with the Republicans? And like, I don't know.

Speaker 3 Even that wouldn't cost them the majority. I guess it would shave it down one more, but it's still like.

Speaker 5 But if he's holding national security hostage for that kind of a threat, we ought to know about that.

Speaker 5 They can't just handle that by like that.

Speaker 3 But that's right.

Speaker 6 But that's the fucking move. You go full Trump.
Trump pardons you. You go full Trump.
What else are you supposed to do? You go full fucking Trump.

Speaker 5 You go full Trump. You do Blogojevich.

Speaker 3 You Bilgojevich. Yeah, Blogic.
You're a fucking Drew, right?

Speaker 6 Bilgojevich looked pretty smart when he was walking out of that jail

Speaker 3 pretty early. Smart was the word?

Speaker 6 That day, he was a smart guy.

Speaker 3 Well, let's talk about Bob Menendez any other tough day.

Speaker 3 Hey, nobody. Bob, chill out.
I don't think he's a listener.

Speaker 5 But also, Democrats in the Senate, leak to us. Like,

Speaker 5 explain yourselves. Yeah, leak to Rachel.

Speaker 5 Leak to me. Call me.

Speaker 3 I asked Fetterman this when, because he's been... really forward-leaning on this.
And I was like, what's with all your colleagues? He's like, I don't speak for them. I can't speak for them.

Speaker 3 But who does?

Speaker 5 I mean, this is, I'm sorry, like, this is just unconscionable. Like, it's one, yes, you can talk about the Republicans and everything's wrong with them.
That's fine.

Speaker 5 But at the end of the day, the thing you have to answer to, to whomever you answer, is for your own actions.

Speaker 5 And in this case, the action of leaving him on the Foreign Relations Committee when you have the power to remove him is

Speaker 3 beyond the notes.

Speaker 3 Okay, before we get to break, just two quick housekeeping notes. Pods of America will be live in Louisville, Kentucky in Cleveland, Ohio on October 28th and 29th.

Speaker 3 We will be joined by journalist Perry Bacon, Kentucky Congressman Morgan McGarvey, co-host Alyssa Mastermonico, abortion rights advocate Kelly Copeland, Congresswoman Amelia Sykes, and more.

Speaker 3 Head to crooked.com slash events to get your tickets now and see where else we're headed this year.

Speaker 3 Also, quick shout out to our Friends of the Pod subscription community who are probably listening right now on our ad-free feed.

Speaker 3 I want to let you guys know that I'm stopping by the Friends of the Pod Discord on Thursday, October 26th for a round of of Ask Me Almost Anything where I'll be chatting with subscribers and answering your burning questions.

Speaker 3 If you haven't subscribed to Friends of the Pod yet, now's the time. Head to cricket.com slash friends to sign up.

Speaker 3 When we come back, we'll talk to Rachel more about her new book, prequel, An American Fight Against Fascism.

Speaker 4 The 2026 Chevy Equinox is more than an SUV.

Speaker 3 It's your Sunday tailgate and your parking lot snack bar.

Speaker 4 Your lucky jersey, your chairs, and your big cooler fit perfectly in your even bigger cargo space.

Speaker 4 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 4 Chevrolet, together let's drive.

Speaker 9 AI agents are everywhere. automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed.
But agents make mistakes.

Speaker 9 Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes.

Speaker 9 So you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation at rubric.com.
That's r-u-b-r-i-k.com.

Speaker 11 Year after year, Harry and David makes my family's holiday season feel special with treats handcrafted in Medford, Oregon.

Speaker 11 Harry and David still handpicks and packs every Royal Riviera pear, makes their iconic Moose Munch popcorn using the original recipe, and ties each bow by hand on their Tower of Treats gifts.

Speaker 11 And they all taste as good as everyone remembers. Make your own holiday magic and get 20% off site-wide at HarryandDavid.com, promo code PAIR20.
That's HarryandDavid.com, code PAIR20.

Speaker 3 All right, I want to talk about your new book called Prequel, which is based off your fantastic award-winning podcast, Ultra.

Speaker 3 Both tell the story of a homegrown fascist plot to overthrow American democracy just before we entered World War II, a conspiracy that reached the highest levels of the U.S. government.

Speaker 3 For people who haven't listened to the podcast or read the book, could you talk about how serious the threat was?

Speaker 5 Yes, thank you. First of all, thanks for asking me about it.

Speaker 5 So we had at the same time that

Speaker 5 Germany went to Hitler and Italy went to Mussolini and Spain went to Franco and the French fascists overran parliament in 1934 and ousted the democratically elected government and the British had the British Union of fascists.

Speaker 5 When this was rising everywhere in the world, we had our own problem.

Speaker 5 And we think of Americans' confrontation with the Nazis as having been the military confrontation when we were good guys and they were bad guys and we went over there and beat them.

Speaker 5 But here in the United States,

Speaker 5 it wasn't just that people didn't want to go fight World War II by very large numbers. In 1940, it was 83% of the public didn't want us to fight.

Speaker 5 It was that there was a big fascist movement here,

Speaker 5 virulently anti-Semitic, associated with right-wing paramilitary groups, and associated with the Nazi government in Berlin, to the point where there was a Nazi agent.

Speaker 5 He was the senior Nazi propaganda agent in the United States, and he was running a huge multi-million dollar propaganda campaign in the United States, like at the behest of the German Foreign Office.

Speaker 5 And he had two dozen senators and members of Congress working for him running all this mail out of their offices so that the postage would be paid by the American taxpayer.

Speaker 3 Franking privilege.

Speaker 5 The franking privilege. I'm trying to make the franking privilege high.

Speaker 5 So it was,

Speaker 5 it's been,

Speaker 5 it's always been seen as a kind of obscure chapter in American history, I think, for obvious reasons because we had World War II and we won. And

Speaker 5 that's a very comfortable tale to tell. It's more uncomfortable to think about us Americans having been on that side.

Speaker 5 But it was more well-connected and more radical and more successful than I think previously understood. And that's what I'm trying to just help us learn that.

Speaker 5 Not because it's a, I don't think there's any analogy between Nazism then and our ultra-right today, obviously. Only Nazis are Nazis.
Only Hitler is Hitler.

Speaker 5 But there is an analogy, I think, that we can learn from in terms of Americans who fought that surprisingly effective, surprisingly well-connected movement and beat them and shut it down.

Speaker 3 Aaron Powell, you draw a lot of parallels, obviously, in the book. There are sort of unsaid parallels between then and now.
I wonder, like, what is different about the threat that we face today?

Speaker 3 What feels different? Not just in like the not actual Nazis, but just in the general sort of larger context, political, social context.

Speaker 5 I think that there's basically like four things that you look for for a democracy that's at risk of becoming an authoritarian state. And lots of experts smarter than me have different lists.

Speaker 5 For me, it's four. One is that you see not just targeting of minorities, but scapegoating of minorities.

Speaker 5 So you get Baroque, evil conspiracy theories about how they're secretly to blame for all of our problems.

Speaker 5 Because then you've got a common enemy that you need a strong man to unite the country against. Then you've got, oh, we can't have democracy because those evil people would participate in it.

Speaker 5 Democracy is weak and makes us prey to these bad people. So you've got that.
You've got, don't trust information. Don't trust journalists, science experts, only believe the dear leader.

Speaker 3 Go with your gut.

Speaker 5 Trust your prejudices.

Speaker 5 And we've got

Speaker 5 the intrusion of violence into the political space so that the political space becomes a place that normal people kind of can't play.

Speaker 5 If you want to be a poll worker, but it means you're going to end up having death threats and people storming your house, then normal people aren't going to be... poll workers.
So you watch for that.

Speaker 5 But the last thing is actually the most boring and most important, which is technically is your democracy functioning.

Speaker 5 In order to hold on to your democracy, you not only need to defend it, but you need to believe in it and you need to use it to solve the problem of rising authoritarianism.

Speaker 5 And so people need to believe that the election process and that the democratic process writ large is what we use to solve our problems. And the good news in this book, in prequel, is that

Speaker 5 All these members of Congress who are all hooked up with this Nazi agent, almost to a one, they all got voted out.

Speaker 5 When the American public, through good journalism and good activism and the Justice Department exposing them, told the American people what was going on, even people who are household names, who'd been in Congress for 25 years, who were seen as presidential timber, the president's best friend, all this stuff, all voted out because the American people did not like that idea.

Speaker 5 The thing that's different now that worries me is that election denialism and don't believe in elections and your vote doesn't matter. I mean, Trump's saying today, don't worry about voting.

Speaker 5 We've got all the votes we need.

Speaker 5 Just monitor voting. Just monitor voting.
Monitor the vote count and monitor voting. That stuff is

Speaker 5 like they just didn't get far enough with it in the 30s and 40s. They were trying to, but they didn't get that.
And they are much further along with that messaging.

Speaker 5 And that's not just bad for people who believe it on its face because they like that side of politics.

Speaker 5 It's bad for Americans who might try to fix this because all of us need to believe that voting out people who are close to these sorts of plots and movements is the solution to these plots and movements.

Speaker 4 Aaron Powell, when you think about that scenario and how it played out in the past, and you think about today with

Speaker 4 Elon Musk saying, don't listen to these lying journalists, listen to these blue checks that gave me money, when you think about the withering of local news,

Speaker 4 gerrymandering of districts that would make it incredibly hard to vote out some of the individuals you're talking about, do you worry more that repeating that kind of

Speaker 4 systems and good guys and women winning would maybe not happen?

Speaker 3 Well, yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's the part of it that I'm so worried about.

Speaker 5 I mean, to the extent that you've got people who are part of an anti-democratic project who are telling you, don't believe election results, don't think that the vote is the way we're going to fix these problems, don't think that democracy is the way our country should run, that's bad.

Speaker 5 But it's really bad if it's true.

Speaker 5 It's really bad if your vote doesn't actually count because either the elections are being stolen somewhere or because you're gerrymandered out of essentially ever being able to have a legitimate say in

Speaker 5 what governance is that applies to you. And so the weakening of just the technical aspects of democracy takes away the best weapon that we have to fix this problem.

Speaker 5 And so it's just, it's not abstract. It's urgent.

Speaker 6 Are there strengths that we have or lessons from having gone through this in the 30s that we now draw on that put us at an advantage as opposed to, I mean, what you just described is what's the difference between now and the 1930s?

Speaker 6 Oh, here are four ways in which things were a little bit worse.

Speaker 6 But, like, what are the ways in which right now you look at the way Americans are responding or the way our country is reacting to a far-right threat that you say speaks to having learned from this?

Speaker 5 Very good question. And nobody asks me that question in that way talking about this.
So I'm really happy. You still got it.
Yes.

Speaker 3 Go on. We didn't get a fucking very good question.
What the fuck's happening in this? I'm out of here. It's so hot in the studio.

Speaker 3 I can't even think, let alone formula.

Speaker 6 I'm sorry. There was a good question that was asked.

Speaker 3 Sorry, sorry. Somebody had asked a question.

Speaker 3 I would say two things.

Speaker 5 One is

Speaker 5 the Justice Department knows not to put 29 people on trial in the same courtroom. Like, that's good.

Speaker 5 There's two big sedition trials that I write about in the book, one in 1940.

Speaker 5 And in that case, the FBI really thought this Christian Front militia was seven days away from a plot that was supposed to start with the murder of 12 congressmen.

Speaker 5 And they had lots of National Guardsmen and NYPD and lots of bombs and U.S. military machine guns.
And it was a serious thing.

Speaker 5 And when those guys were put on trial, the trial did not succeed in convicting any of them and they were all let go. And then in 1944, we've got the even bigger sedition trial.
There's 29 of them.

Speaker 5 It was 17 defendants in 1940. It's 29 in 1944.
That trial also. no successful convictions and those guys melted into the sauce,

Speaker 5 which is a very dangerous and bad thing. And I feel like the Justice Department has learned from some of those things.

Speaker 5 The other thing that I don't know whether or not they've learned, but I really hope they have, is that part of what went wrong with the effort to deal with this through the criminal justice system in the 30s and 40s is that

Speaker 5 implicated senators like Burton Wheeler, a Democrat from Montana, pressured the Attorney General to fire the prosecutor who was leading the investigation and leading the prosecution.

Speaker 5 And the Attorney General caved and did so.

Speaker 5 That's really bad.

Speaker 5 President Truman then in 1946 caved and fired another Justice Department official who was trying to expose this because among the people who were going to get exposed were his best friends from the Senate.

Speaker 5 So that the political pressure on the Justice Department, I hope, is something that has a red flag on it.

Speaker 5 I think people like Jeff Berman from the Justice Department, from the Trump-era Justice Department, raising a red flag about those things and having gone through that

Speaker 5 is a little bit of hope there.

Speaker 5 But that's, yeah, that's one example of something that I think we're doing better.

Speaker 3 Do you think that

Speaker 3 the pro-democracy forces in this country are doing a good enough job making the case about why democracy is a better system

Speaker 3 for

Speaker 3 most people in this country? Like people, our audience, your audience, people who pay close attention to politics, like we get all the arguments about democracy. We're passionate about it.

Speaker 3 For most people in the country who don't pay close attention to politics, who barely consume the news, who are worried about more things close to home. I wonder if we're making a good enough argument.

Speaker 5 Aaron Powell, it's hard because you don't want to scaremonger. You know, I mean, you don't want to, and I,

Speaker 5 I mean, the thing that I try to convey is like, we'll really miss this when it's gone.

Speaker 3 Oh, no.

Speaker 3 I mean, that's when you say when you get dumped.

Speaker 5 I mean, most democracies don't last. And most countries that have lost democracy never get it back.

Speaker 5 And we are a standout example of a country that has held on to a robust democracy for a long time, but there's no reason to think that it is inevitable that we will. And to create that sense of,

Speaker 5 I think, honest precarity around us being a democratic system, just listen to what Trump says about voting. Listen to what Trump says about elections.

Speaker 5 Why is he describing the election that he won in 2016 as stolen? Why is he describing the next election in which he's not yet a competitor as already stolen?

Speaker 5 He's doing this because he wants people to believe that elections are fake and so therefore we shouldn't bother having them. It's a challenge of imagination.

Speaker 5 Can you imagine what a country is like that looks like this except has a president who never leaves office? Right.

Speaker 5 I mean last week while President Biden was traveling to Israel and lowering prescription drug prices and putting the brakes on people having to stay pay back their student loans, Vladimir Putin, in his 24th year of office, went to China to go to a summit hosted by President Xi, who's president for life, so he could meet with Victor Orban, who's in his 14th year in office.

Speaker 5 So they could talk about how they want a new multipolar world where the United States doesn't lead the way anymore.

Speaker 5 That's the other way that this goes.

Speaker 3 And I think that we have to, the next step is to draw a line from that sort of system of government to the consequences it has for people in those countries and other countries.

Speaker 3 Because, also, like, look what Vladimir Putin's doing with his country right now. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Look at how many people he's sending to their deaths and how many people he's responsible for slaughtering, right? Because that's life in an authoritarian government.

Speaker 3 And by the way, life in a democracy can be wonderful. And, you know, and also frustrating, and

Speaker 3 people can struggle, and it's infuriating at times, but it's also, you know.

Speaker 5 I mean, what does it mean to be in political opposition in the United States? Frustration and agonized podcast conversations and occasionally having

Speaker 5 bad things happen in the legislature in which you are torn between whether to make fun or be seriously concerned about the other people who can't get it together.

Speaker 5 I mean, that's what political opposition means in this country. But if you are Alexei Navalny in Russia, your lawyers just got arrested.

Speaker 5 You're in a penal colony and your lawyers just got arrested for the crime of representing you while you are trying to be an opposition politician. I just feel like

Speaker 5 the more we learn about what else our situation could be and what one side of our politics is driving us toward,

Speaker 5 I think the argument makes itself, but your mileage may vary.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Well, Rachel, before we let you go, I'm going to open my laptop. Ooh, that's how you know we're getting serious.

Speaker 5 I'm getting fired.

Speaker 6 Rachel, in your new book, prequel.

Speaker 3 There we go. Woo!

Speaker 5 Thank you very much.

Speaker 6 You track the fight.

Speaker 3 I didn't, that was an audio,

Speaker 4 medium here.

Speaker 6 You track the fight of those inside and outside the government to repel a takeover by right-wing extremists who are enamored with fascism, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and an all-out assault on the left.

Speaker 6 I don't think it would have come as surprised to you that there are parallels to what we see playing out in the far right today, not that you draw an equivalence, but nevertheless.

Speaker 6 So we're going to read an actual quote. And the question is, is this a quote recounted in your book, or is it from the unwritten book called Our Present?

Speaker 6 Is this fascism original formula? Or is this fascism the new batch, which is a reference to a film called Gremlins 2 that you have not seen?

Speaker 6 I bet. You are correct.
Question one: Here is the quote.

Speaker 6 We all know for whom we're voting if we vote for blank, for the communists, the socialists, for the Mexican lovers. Was this about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt or President Joseph Robin Epid?

Speaker 5 I know that it was about Roosevelt. Was it also said about Biden?

Speaker 6 It has been, but this was about Roosevelt. Correct.

Speaker 3 The whom gave it away. The whom.
No one's used away. No one's used whom.
No one used.

Speaker 6 This was Father Charles Coughlin. And I'd note he also included Russian numbers in his list, which had given it away, because today the right

Speaker 6 wouldn't speak the same way about Russia.

Speaker 6 Next question.

Speaker 6 As a far-right figure warned that a certain group wanted to corrupt youth through subversive teaching, destroy family life, dominate people through their vices, and undermine the respect for religion.

Speaker 6 Was this about gays and they's in the 2020s or Jews and Jews in the 1930s?

Speaker 5 It was about Jews and Jews in the 1930s.

Speaker 6 And do you know who it was?

Speaker 5 Do you remember who it was? Is it Pelle?

Speaker 6 This was Pelly, who started a right-wing anti-Semitic paramilitary group. Question three.

Speaker 3 Scott Pelley did that? It was Scott Pelley. Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 Scott Pelley.

Speaker 6 You know, in Australia, the 60-minute clock goes the other way.

Speaker 6 A candidate warned that the sitting president had joined with, quote, a band of his closest thugs, misfits, and Marxists to destroy American democracy, and we must keep foreign Christian-hating communists, Marxists, and socialists out of America.

Speaker 6 Was that a candidate in the 30s or a candidate in the unfolding present?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 6 Yes, it was. It was Trump in June of this year.

Speaker 3 I was going to say, that sounded like a Trump quote. Next quote.

Speaker 6 I have an idea this is still a Christian country, but there's an objection to use the word Christian. They want to take it out of my mouth the word Christ and Christian, and they can't do it.

Speaker 6 Is that about a manufactured war on Christians or a manufactured war on Christmas?

Speaker 5 Yes. The answer is yes, but is that Smith or is that...

Speaker 6 It's Mosley.

Speaker 5 Oh, that's General George Van Horn Mosley. He's one of my favorite bad guys in the book.

Speaker 3 Why?

Speaker 5 Because so he wanted, a lot of the different fascist groups wanted George Van Horn Mosley to be the Führer. He had been deputy chief of staff of the U.S.
Army.

Speaker 5 He thought that and campaigned on the idea that all Jews in America should be forcibly sterilized. Like he was really, he was that guy.

Speaker 5 And the Army came to him after he testified in Congress in 1938, I think it was, and they said, General Mosley, We understand you are auditioning for the role of American Führer

Speaker 5 for once you and your friends overthrow democracy and install the type of Hitlerite government that you're looking for here, you have rights as an American to advocate anything you want.

Speaker 5 You have free speech.

Speaker 5 However, we are the U.S. Army, and this is awkward for us.
And so, if you want to keep doing that, we're going to stop paying your pension. So, it's your choice.

Speaker 5 You can keep trying to be the American Führer,

Speaker 5 or you can keep your pension.

Speaker 3 And he was like, I think I want the pension.

Speaker 3 What a story.

Speaker 5 What a brain.

Speaker 3 Anyway.

Speaker 3 Give Trump that choice? I was going to

Speaker 3 pay him a little more.

Speaker 6 Wasn't there some offer?

Speaker 3 Sam has been free.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Michael Lewis says SBF was going to pay him a bunch of people.

Speaker 5 $5 billion or something?

Speaker 6 Steal it twice the price.

Speaker 6 Last one.

Speaker 3 I would build a wall.

Speaker 6 about the United States so high and so secure.

Speaker 6 I say we should stop and stop now the refugees who are seeping into this country by the thousands to take the jobs which rightly belong to the native and natural born citizens of the United States.

Speaker 3 Here's a hint.

Speaker 6 Their motto was about putting America first. The person who said this was divorced twice and had children with three different women.

Speaker 3 Senator Robert Rice Reynolds

Speaker 6 in 1941.

Speaker 5 Yeah, he was a monster. Yeah.
But yeah, he wanted to, his big idea was to build a wall to keep out Jewish refugees because they were going to take all our jobs and corrupt our Christianity.

Speaker 3 Oof.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 So we've been up against worse, right? I mean, having an ultra-right movement ascendant in this country that is

Speaker 5 anti-Semitic, that is anti-democratic at its core, that is in love with foreign dictators,

Speaker 5 that is connected to very popular people, including the most powerful industrialist in the country, Henry Ford, and Father Coughlin, who was the most powerful media figure maybe in American history, people like Charles Lindbergh, who is a consensus national hero.

Speaker 5 I mean, all these people are pulling in that direction while... Hitler is steamrolling Europe.

Speaker 5 And Americans whose names we have forgotten and who are not famous stood up against them and prosecuted them and infiltrated them and did amazing exposés of them and ran against them and ousted them from office.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 they gave us a gift.

Speaker 3 Well, that is, that is a very hopeful note to end on. Yes.
Thank you so much, Rachel, for joining the pod again. The book is prequel, An American Fight Against Fascism.
It is fantastic.

Speaker 3 Everyone go buy it.

Speaker 4 Great cover art.

Speaker 3 It's great cover art. Thank you.
And also go listen to Ultra. Also, it's just a fantastic podcast.

Speaker 3 Thanks for stopping by. Next time, let's not make it four years until you come by again.

Speaker 5 Love you guys. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 3 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 3 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 3 Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroote is our head of production.
Andy Taft is our executive assistant.

Speaker 3 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelaviev, and Molly Lobel.

Speaker 3 Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube to catch full episodes and extra video content. Find us at youtube.com slash at PodSaveAmerica.

Speaker 3 Finally, you can join our Friends of the Pod subscription community for ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and a great discussion on Discord.

Speaker 3 Plus, it's a great way to get involved with Vote Save America. Sign up at crooked.com/slash friends.

Speaker 12 What is the secret to making great toast?

Speaker 5 Oh, you're just going to go in with the hard-hitting questions.

Speaker 12 I'm Dan Pashman from The Spork Folk. We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
We use food to learn about culture, history, and science.

Speaker 12 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 3 It's a complex noodle that you've put together.

Speaker 12 Every episode of the Sporkvool, you're going to learn something, feel something, and laugh. The Sporkvo, get it wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 10 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 10 It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. From CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 10 And the best part, Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.
So why not you? Try Odo for free at odoo.com.

Speaker 10 That's odoo.com.