The Biden Bump (with AOC!)

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Speaker 3 Hey, this is Will Arnett, host of Smartless. Smartless is a podcast with myself and Sean Hayes and Jason Bateman, where each week one of us reveals a mystery guest to the other two.

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Speaker 4 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Fabra.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Joe Biden launches a new plan to forgive student debt after the Supreme Court strikes down his first attempt.

Speaker 4 Ron DeSantis attacks Donald Trump for being too supportive of LGBTQ rights. And Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins to talk about reforming the right-wing Supreme Court and lots more.

Speaker 4 Then, in a special edition of Two Takes and a Fake, we sniff out the made-up reaction from the right over the revelation that lines were crossed and possibly bumped when someone left their nose candy in the White Husk.

Speaker 5 Did you write that yourself?

Speaker 4 I got a lot more where those come from, Dan. Yeah, of course.
Of course I read it myself. Good, good.

Speaker 2 That's impressive. Good.

Speaker 4 But first, over the long weekend, you may have seen an episode of our subscription show, Terminally Online, pop up in your Pod Save America feed. Check it out.

Speaker 4 If you haven't listened yet, you'll hear me, Dan, Elijah, and What A Days, Priyanka Arabindi talk about everything from Ron DeSantis and Roseanne to

Speaker 4 Barbenheimer.

Speaker 4 It's still a hard one to say.

Speaker 5 I don't think think that's all we talked about what else did we talk about we talked what was oh we talked about elijah going to the uh north carolina remote no i think we talked about you not so subtly floating your campaign for governor of california

Speaker 5 is that what happened so not subtle that you demanded i'm told demanded the marketing department label that episode to title it

Speaker 4 governor john fambreau you know what it's a little behind the scenes for everyone this is a whole bit that's a whole bit they're all doing they've all ganged up on me.

Speaker 4 No one told me what the title was going to be. It just popped up in my feed.
It was a question about when we were all going to run for office and what office it was going to be.

Speaker 4 We started with Dan in Delaware, which now he has to wait in line because he's just waiting around for Chris Coons to retire. But anyway.
And then I attacked Sacramento.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I actually wanted to talk to you about that because I spent my 4th of July weekend in a cabin at a lake with

Speaker 5 families who live in Sacramento, including our friends who own a great wine bar called Good News Wine in Sacramento. None of them thought you were being helpful.

Speaker 5 They did appreciate me defending Sacramento, but they're trying to build a small business with a delicious wine bar, and you're just attacking the entire city.

Speaker 4 Well, you know what? Go to Sacramento for that wine bar.

Speaker 2 I'll go for that wine bar. Okay, perfect.

Speaker 5 I'll tell you what, it's not going to be on the house for you. I'll tell you that right now.
Because

Speaker 4 for some reason,

Speaker 4 I did not have a tour of Sacramento from someone who lives there, so I don't know the city. That's what I need.

Speaker 4 I need, you know, especially if I'm going to ultimately live there someday when I am governor.

Speaker 5 Yes, your future home, Gov.

Speaker 4 Anyway, if you want to listen to the nonsense we do on Terminally Online every week, which you should, and get regular access to a truly great subscription community on Discord, which is just like, it's like a public Slack channel.

Speaker 4 We're trying all kinds of social media apps these days. You know what it is?

Speaker 5 It is Twitter pre-Elon for Friends of the Pod.

Speaker 4 That's what it is. That's what it is.
Put me in the marketing department. I know.
I know. Join friends of the pod at crooked.com/slash friends.

Speaker 4 All right, let's get to the news.

Speaker 4 The Supreme Court's right-wing majority celebrated America's birthday with a trio of six to three rulings that banned affirmative action in higher education, allowed a business to deny wedding services to LGBTQ couples, and struck down President Biden's plan to forgive $10,000 worth of student debt for people earning less than $125,000 a year and $20,000 worth of debt for low-income families, relief that nearly 26 million borrowers have already applied for.

Speaker 4 Chief Justice Roberts invoked the so-called major questions doctrine, which was just made up by this court.

Speaker 4 And it basically says that the president can't take executive actions regarding major political and economic questions that aren't explicitly spelled out by Congress and the legislation they've passed.

Speaker 4 The Biden administration was clearly prepared for this outcome, which is why the President made this announcement shortly after the ruling.

Speaker 6 I believe the court's decision to strike down my student debt relief program was a mistake, was wrong.

Speaker 6 I'm not going to stop fighting to deliver borrowers what they need.

Speaker 6 I'm announcing today a new path consistent with today's ruling to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible.

Speaker 6 We will ground this new approach in a different law than my original plan, the so-called Higher Education Act.

Speaker 6 That will allow Secretary Cardona, who is with me today, to compromise, waive, or release loans under certain circumstances. This new path is legally sound.

Speaker 6 It's going to take longer, but in my view, it's the best path that remains to providing for as many borrowers as possible. Second, We know what many borrowers will need to make their hard choices,

Speaker 6 which their budgets are being strained now when they start to repay their monthly loan payments this fall.

Speaker 6 That's why we're creating a temporary 12-month, what we're calling, on-ramp repayment program. Monthly payments will be due.
Bills will not go out and interest will be accruing.

Speaker 6 And during this period, if you can pay your monthly bills, you should.

Speaker 6 But if you cannot, if you miss payments, this on-ramp will temporarily remove the threat of default or having your credit harm, which can hurt borrowers for years to come.

Speaker 4 So it seems to me that the challenge with this new plan is that it's going to run up against the same Supreme Court. But what do you think? What's your strict scrutiny of legal degree tell you?

Speaker 5 Well, like any aspiring lawyer, I've been in the stacks today. I've been on LexisNexis, just reading breaths.

Speaker 4 LexisNexis. Well, there's a callback.

Speaker 5 Do you think that still exists?

Speaker 4 I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 5 Either way, I have been asking challenges.

Speaker 4 I'm wondering what percentage of our audience knows what LexisNexis is.

Speaker 5 I assume all the lawyers who are over 40. I have no idea.

Speaker 5 In other words, I listened to all the back episodes of scrutiny that came out at the end of last week before the holiday weekend.

Speaker 5 Based on what little I know, and I really want to emphasize little, is it does seem like there are many people who believe that the Higher Education Act would be a slightly stronger ground on which to offer loan forgiveness.

Speaker 5 There is a provision in the Higher Education Act that has been used for loan forgiveness before.

Speaker 5 It's the foundation for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which allows people who do public service to get some of their debt forgiven.

Speaker 5 It was also used when the Biden administration settled a class action lawsuit involving from people who thought who had been misled by for-profit universities. So there's precedent there.

Speaker 5 But as you point out, the major questions doctrine is this incredibly vague and intentionally vague weapon to be used to strike down the executive actions of Democratic presidents.

Speaker 5 So it's very likely you would end up right back where you are because they can do the exact same thing all over again.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 4 as you heard Biden say there, the Higher Education Act gives the Secretary of Education the authority to, quote, compromise, waive, or release any right, title, claim, lien, or demand.

Speaker 4 Roberts, in the student loan decision that they just handed down, said that waive or modify could not be interpreted as giving the Secretary the power to cancel debt at a massive scale.

Speaker 4 So I'm not sure exactly what the difference is. White House aides, though, as you mentioned, have pointed out that

Speaker 4 Biden's taken other executive actions around student loans that have not been challenged in court, like increasing Pell Grants and reducing monthly payments. So,

Speaker 4 even though this one was challenged successfully in court, they point out that other student loan action, executive actions from the president have not been challenged in court.

Speaker 4 So, that's, I think that's what they're hoping for here. It will take a long time.

Speaker 4 It'll take maybe a year because the Department of Education has to undertake a rulemaking process around this that involves policy negotiations and a public comment period.

Speaker 4 Though some economists have argued that the administration should skip the rulemaking process and see what the court does. I think we all know what the court will do.

Speaker 4 Some folks on the left directed their very understandable frustration with the decision towards President Biden and Democrats in Congress.

Speaker 4 Can you think of anything they could have done differently to achieve a better outcome here? I cannot, but I don't know if I'm missing anything.

Speaker 2 I don't think you are.

Speaker 5 Had Congress passed a law forgiving student loan debt, the court cannot have used the major questions doctrine to strike it down.

Speaker 5 There's one giant flaw in that argument, which is in the two years in which Democrats have control of the White House, House, and the Senate, the filibuster was in place,

Speaker 5 which would allow 10 Republicans to easily block any attempt to... to forgive student debt.
There was not a majority of Democrats to eliminate the filibuster.

Speaker 5 And there was not a majority of Democrats supporting broad-based student loan debt forgiveness. There is nothing in the past that I can see.

Speaker 5 There was no different way in which the Biden administration could have written the rule.

Speaker 5 There is no strategy that I can see whether they could have passed a law that would have been immune from this specific court challenge.

Speaker 5 This is the reality we have of the Congress we had with this court.

Speaker 5 And I don't think I understand why people are angry, that anger should be directed at Republicans, at the court, and channeled into trying to regain the House and expand our Senate majority so that we can eliminate the filibuster and ensure that we have 50 Senate Democrats who are willing to publicly, who are willing to support forgiving student debt.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I realize we sound like a broken record and have been for the past several years about the filibuster. And it's not exactly like a new and exciting explanation for things.
And it is frustrating.

Speaker 4 But again,

Speaker 4 that's where we're at, right? Like unless we have 50 senators, plus Kamal Harris as the tiebreaker, who are willing to get rid of the filibuster, we can't do anything.

Speaker 4 And Joe Biden yelling about whatever and other Democrats yelling about whatever are not going to change Joe Manchin's mind on this or Kirsten Sinema's mind on this.

Speaker 4 And that's been pretty clear since, you know, Joe Biden became president, since long before Joe Biden became president. Like

Speaker 4 they are immune to pressure on this issue. So that's what we have to do is focus on, like you said, electing a Senate majority that is willing to get rid of the filibuster for a host of reasons.

Speaker 4 There's also been a lot of pressure on Biden and Democrats to support more aggressive judicial reforms, particularly around expanding the court.

Speaker 4 Here's what the president had to say about that during an interview on Friday with MSNBC's Nicole Wallace.

Speaker 7 Do you worry that without court reform,

Speaker 7 this conservative majority is too young and too conservative, that they might do too much harm?

Speaker 6 Well, I think they may do too much harm

Speaker 6 but

Speaker 6 I think if we start the process of trying to expand the court

Speaker 6 we're gonna politicize it maybe forever in a way that is not healthy.

Speaker 4 So Biden also put together a bipartisan commission on court reform a few years ago that issued fairly moderate recommendations around transparency and ethics.

Speaker 4 They did not suggest expanding the court, but they did suggest some ethics reform, a code of conduct.

Speaker 4 But we heard from White House Communications Director Ben Laboltz on last week's episode that Biden has not yet endorsed any specific ethics reforms either. What do you think is going on there?

Speaker 5 Let's take these in reverse order. Let's start with ethics reform.
Great. When we were listening to Ben give that answer, I had two thoughts.
The first is Joe Biden is naturally more reticent on

Speaker 5 sort of aggressive political reforms than you and I are. Probably a lot of people who listen to this podcast are.
He was, it took him a long time on the filibuster.

Speaker 5 He was the, you know, he's in the Senate for decades. He was the chair of the judiciary committee.
He has real concerns, they're not ones I necessarily agree with, but about delegitimizing the court.

Speaker 5 And so that may be one reason why he's hesitant. I think the, and I think there's only that's why he's hesitant or opposed on bigger issues like expansion and term limits.

Speaker 5 On ethics reform, I have a suspicion that

Speaker 5 the White House did not want to come out with a position on ethics reform while the court, this right-wing court, was making decisions on these huge cases that mattered a lot to them.

Speaker 5 The one about discrimination against the LGBTQ community, the one about student loans, and the one about the independent state legislature theory.

Speaker 5 I remember, you remember this, that when the Supreme Court was making a decision on Obamacare in Obama's first term, it was seen that Judge Anthony Kennedy was the deciding vote.

Speaker 5 And Obama, because he likes being funny, was on the stump in interviews making a joke about how he would mow Anthony Kennedy's lawn and offer to do his laundry.

Speaker 5 And one day the White House counsel came down and told us that they had heard from people who know Kennedy that Kennedy probably doesn't like that joke.

Speaker 5 So you should stop making it while access to affordable health care for millions of people is at stake. And we immediately shut up.
So I can definitely see the White House counseling.

Speaker 4 And to apologize and to apologize, Obama did send him a giant fruit basket, which he actually did not like.

Speaker 5 You mean an edible arrangement?

Speaker 4 Yes, that's correct.

Speaker 5 And so I can definitely see whatever policy process is in place to make a decision about this ethics reform, that would definitely take place after the Supreme Court term was over.

Speaker 5 So we'll see what happens, but I think that may be what's happening there.

Speaker 4 Also, maybe they wanted to save it for the heat of the campaign.

Speaker 2 Yeah, maybe. It's also a good thing.

Speaker 4 And also the Senate is now starting a process where they're coming up with ethics reform legislation.

Speaker 4 So I'm guessing that the White House might want to let that play out for a little bit and help shape it as well so that they can be on the same page as the Senate Democrats in whatever they propose.

Speaker 4 Or, you know, there's an off chance that it could be bipartisan as well because you have people like, you know, Susan Collins and Murkowski that might be interested in the ethics reform side of it as well.

Speaker 4 So on that, I think it is definitely a wait and see. On the adding justices to the court, you're right.
Like I don't.

Speaker 4 It's Biden, right? And it took him a long time in the filibuster. The flip side of that is he did change his mind on the filibuster.

Speaker 4 And I think this White House has shown that they do care about public opinion, that their minds can be changed, that President Biden's mind can be changed on issues like the filibuster.

Speaker 4 The guy is a creature of the Senate for decades and an institutionalist. And so, of course, he was going to support the filibuster for a long time.
And the fact that, you know,

Speaker 4 at this age as president, he changed his mind is, I think, a good sign. And it tells you to keep up the pressure on him for that.

Speaker 4 But I will also say, if Biden came out tomorrow in favor of adding justices to the Supreme Court, do you think it would change the political dynamic in any way?

Speaker 5 Not in the short term. We're not going to automatically get justices on the court.
He doesn't say it, and then all of a sudden we get two new justices.

Speaker 2 That's not how that happens.

Speaker 5 And it's not.

Speaker 4 You should tell people the rate. Well, the way it happens is there's a law that has to be passed by Congress, which, again, could be blocked by a filibuster.
So again, we do not have the votes.

Speaker 4 Even if every Senate Democrat was on board with adding justices to to the court, which they are not, we would not be able to pass legislation adding justices to the court while the filibuster is in place.

Speaker 5 And we don't have the House.

Speaker 2 And we don't have the House. Forgot about that.

Speaker 4 Forgot about the fact that we don't have the House.

Speaker 5 Now, I still think,

Speaker 5 I understand politically, and we'll talk about the polling in a second, why Joe Biden... I think he sincerely does not believe in the idea.

Speaker 5 I do not think this is, he secretly is a big court expansionist and is just keeping back because the pollsters have told him not to do it. I don't think that's the case.

Speaker 5 But just because it's not going to happen now is not an argument for not supporting

Speaker 5 aggressive policies are going to take time. If you want to build support for it, you got to come out for it.

Speaker 2 And so they're like, nothing is going to change in the short term.

Speaker 5 Yeah, nothing is going to happen in the short term. I wish Biden was for expansion because I don't think expansion is going to happen in his first term, certainly.
Maybe not in his second term.

Speaker 5 If we actually want to solve this problem and I believe pass real court reform, it's going to require prominent Democrats to support it. But that's not where Joe Biden is now.

Speaker 5 And as you say, if he were to change his mind tomorrow, it's not going to expand the court.

Speaker 5 We still don't have the power to do it. And it's not going to forgive anyone's student debt.
Like simply saying it, it does not change where we are in the short term.

Speaker 5 In the long term, it could have an impact.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I saw a quote from Brian Fallon, who works with Demand Justice, which is they support court reform and expanding the court.

Speaker 4 And he acknowledged in an interview that, you know, Joe Biden is probably the last domino to fall among Democrats on this issue.

Speaker 4 Now, you know, if he came out tomorrow and supported court reform, you might get a few Senate Democrats who were already supportive of court reform privately to come out publicly and, you know, start building momentum.

Speaker 4 So yeah, I think that could help.

Speaker 4 But it's also possible that you build support by, you know, starting to ask Senate Democrats how they feel about it, starting to ask people who are running for the Senate, like, you know, Ruben Gallego is trying to, you know, run against Kirsten Sinema and whoever the Republican is in Arizona.

Speaker 4 And,

Speaker 4 you know, so people like you start, you start building support that way. And I do think that's, that's good to do.

Speaker 4 But I don't think that Joe Biden coming out for court reform tomorrow or had he come out for court reform a year ago, two years ago, would have led to a different outcome.

Speaker 5 Correct.

Speaker 4 Well, what do we know about how voters feel about court reform?

Speaker 5 When we generally talk about court reform, we are talking about three things. A code of conduct and a process for accountability for the Supreme Court.

Speaker 5 term limits of some shape or form, and expansion. The first two are quite popular.

Speaker 5 There's a poll that was conducted by N Citizens United, which is a pro-court reform group, that found that two-thirds of voters, including significant majority of independents, support a code of conduct for the Supreme Court.

Speaker 5 That seems pretty obvious, particularly given everything that's been happening with Alito and

Speaker 5 Thomas and everyone else.

Speaker 5 Term limits

Speaker 5 while constitutionally and legally complicated, is also quite popular. We've seen polls that show north of 60% of voters supporting that, which makes complete sense.

Speaker 5 It would probably be, in fact, be the most important, if you could get it to be constitutionally acceptable, which is tough because the Supreme Court is the one who would make that choice,

Speaker 5 would be a complete game changer, both in terms of the balance of the court.

Speaker 5 I think it would mean that each and every one of these appointments would not be this cataclysmic, apocalyptic battle where you have to find the youngest, like...

Speaker 5 person possible, youngest, healthiest person possible to can serve the longest. It would, I think it would just be better across the board for the court.
Expansion is much less popular.

Speaker 5 It is in the polls,

Speaker 5 how you word the question matters a lot, but in general, it is

Speaker 5 sub far below 50% right now in support for it. When you package them all together, I've seen it do better, but expansion is by far the least popular part.

Speaker 5 Only 60% of Democrats support it in a bunch of polls.

Speaker 5 Now, you can, if Biden, this is to the Biden point, if Biden were to come out for it, that number would go up, not to 100% of Democrats, but would go up, but it would not get it to majority support in its country.

Speaker 5 Independents, Republicans obviously don't like it. Independents are particularly skeptical of it thus far.
But also, no one is making the case for it either.

Speaker 4 I think that the polls I've seen, expansion has become more popular over the last several years, particularly since Dobbs. You're right, though, it's still under 50.

Speaker 4 Data for Progress had a poll in April of 2023. That's the latest poll that I've seen on this.

Speaker 4 47% support expansion, 42% oppose. This would be expanding the court to 13 justices, which is legislation that some Democrats have introduced.

Speaker 4 And you're right, it's underwater with independents, 42.46. And then Republicans, it's 28.62.
No surprise there. So it's getting more popular, but you're right.

Speaker 4 It has not, it's not majority support yet. It's plurality in some polls.
In some polls, it's different.

Speaker 4 You're right that the ethics reform is by far the most popular. I also would argue that it will be the least effective of the options.

Speaker 5 It solves a different problem.

Speaker 4 Solves a different problem. I think it's a connected problem, but I think that if you had a very stringent code of conduct and

Speaker 4 really significant ethics reforms, you would still have a bunch of ideological zealots on the court who, even if they weren't flying on private planes with Harlan Crowe and

Speaker 4 getting their mom's house paid for like Clarence Thomas, would still make horrible decisions just because they like to make horrible decisions based on their right-wing ideology.

Speaker 4 But I think it's still important. We should still do it.
I do think term limits is probably the

Speaker 4 one that is both popular and would be effective that Democrats should feel more confident running on, including Joe Biden.

Speaker 4 Because I think that you're right. Like you actually start limiting the

Speaker 4 amount of time the justices sit on the bench, then that's going to have a real effect. And it is quite popular.

Speaker 4 And then I think

Speaker 4 in the meantime, you try to get court reform and expansion more popular by actually advocating for it. So that's what I would do.

Speaker 4 All right, let's talk about the knuckleheads trying to replace Joe Biden. Most of the Republican candidates spent the weekend on the trail at Fourth of July parades and barbecues.

Speaker 4 Donald Trump held a rally in South Carolina where he was introduced by Lindsey Graham, who was loudly and repeatedly booed throughout the event. That's fun.

Speaker 4 Mike Pence marched in an Iowa parade where the crowd started chanting Trump, Trump, Trump, which I guess is an improvement over hang Mike Pence.

Speaker 4 Just, you know, you take the wins where you can get them.

Speaker 4 And Ron DeSantis' campaign released a video to mark the end of Pride Month that begins by attacking Donald Trump for pledging to protect LGBTQ Americans during his 2016 convention speech, then shows a series of headlines that say DeSantis signed the most, quote, extreme anti-trans law ever and is, quote, evil.

Speaker 4 All while flashing pictures of shirtless dudes and Patrick Bateman, the serial killer from American Psycho. The video managed to be both

Speaker 4 homophobic and homoerotic.

Speaker 4 It was widely condemned by Democrats and Republicans, including some DeSantis Curious pundits. But the best response was from Transportation Secretary Pete Budigesh.

Speaker 5 What's your reaction to that video?

Speaker 10 You know, I'm going to choose my words carefully, partly because I'm appearing as secretary, so I can't talk about campaigns.

Speaker 10 And I'm going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders, and just get to the bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space, which is, again,

Speaker 10 who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off? And what public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve?

Speaker 4 So first question, obviously there is a constituency for homophobia in the Republican Party, but do you really think there's a bunch of Republican voters who will vote for Ron DeSantis because they've somehow been persuaded that he's a bigger homophobe than Donald Trump?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 5 And I have come to the conclusion now that Ron DeSantis' campaign team was in a coma from the period of 2015 to 2017 when Donald Trump is running for election for the first time because they are running the exact same ass-backward, doomed-to-fail, stupid strategy that these other candidates ran in 2016.

Speaker 5 Remember all the ads with footage of Donald Trump saying he was pro-choice or at a wedding with the Clintons or playing golf with Clinton?

Speaker 5 Republican voters understand that Donald Trump is full of shit. They don't care.

Speaker 5 They're not in it for the sincerity. They're in it for the strength.
And they're not, it's not going to work. It has never worked in the past.
It's not going to work now.

Speaker 5 They, you're not going to convince people that Donald Trump is insufficiently MAGA.

Speaker 5 You can convince, you might be able to convince people that he is ineffective at the MAGA agenda, but you're not, it's not like everyone's running around thinking Donald Trump is a true, as an honest, sincere human being.

Speaker 5 And if you only were to show this footage to show that he is not as bigoted and homophobic as his speeches would suggest, they're all going to suddenly leave him.

Speaker 5 It's just, there is no evidence for that to work, and it's particularly stupid. Like much of what Ron Desanta's campaign does.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 4 point taken about the way he campaigned in 2015 and 2016. But even beyond that, voters just lived through, Republican voters just lived through four years of his presidency.

Speaker 4 And judging by his approval ratings among those same Republican voters and even evangelical voters, they don't think he governed in a way that was too supportive of LGBTQ rights.

Speaker 4 Or if they do, they don't care. Right? Like they just got four years of it and they were like all in.

Speaker 4 So now instead of hitting, right, instead of hitting him for like what he did or didn't do during his presidency, you're going to go back before the presidency to when he was like running Miss Universe pageants and complaining that he let

Speaker 4 transgender Americans compete in the blue beauty pageants or that he said that Caitlin, he didn't care where Caitlin Jenner went the bathroom, which was those two bits were also in the DeSantis video.

Speaker 4 I mean, it is so nuts. And so stupid.
And it wasn't, I had to check, by the way, because I think in the outline, you said it was from the Never Back Down pack. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 4 The video was made by someone else. They posted it by some other group.

Speaker 5 They posted it.

Speaker 4 They also posted it. But DeSantis' campaign posted it.

Speaker 4 Not the pack. The campaign also posted it.

Speaker 4 Like, this is, and then, and then, Ron DeSantis was asked in an interview about the video, and he defended it.

Speaker 4 He said, I think identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream, where he was having men compete against women, I think that's totally fair game.

Speaker 4 It's so stupid. It's so stupid.
So I guess that brings us to the second question. Why is Ron DeSantis' campaign so fucking weird?

Speaker 5 Because the fish rots from the head, John.

Speaker 4 No campaign in history has needed to go touch grass more than Ron DeSantis' campaign.

Speaker 4 They are the most online campaign I think I have ever seen. Like, you have to have a fucking degree in 4chan to understand what was going on in that video.
The music, the images, like,

Speaker 4 you know, you've seen people have like dissected it who know this stuff, but it is wild that they would put that up.

Speaker 5 I mean, that's, you, it all comes back to the fact that Ron DeSantis announced his campaign in a Twitter spaces conversation moderated by Elon Musk and the former HR director at PayPal.

Speaker 4 I also think, by the way, that the way that Trump is is handling these issues is with like a bit of a wink and a nod to

Speaker 4 how

Speaker 4 ridiculous and concocted these culture war issues are.

Speaker 4 So, like, we didn't talk about this, but there was a couple of weeks ago, he had an event where he did his, like, I'll keep men out of women's sports.

Speaker 4 I'll cut federal funding for any school pushing transgender insanity was his quotes. The crowd went wild.

Speaker 4 And then, after the crowd goes wild, Trump stops and he says, it's amazing how strong people feel about that. I talk about cutting taxes and you all go like this.

Speaker 4 And then he did like a, you know, and he goes, I talk about transgender. Everyone goes crazy.

Speaker 4 Five years ago, you didn't even know what the hell it was, which is just a completely true statement from Donald Trump and a very sharp bit of political analysis. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And an honest bit of political analysis.

Speaker 5 He winks and he nods at the people who want to see the wink and the nod. And the other people know that even though he's winking and nodding, he's still going to do what they want.

Speaker 4 Yes. That's right.
It's not. Same thing on abortion.

Speaker 5 Trump is a vibe for these people. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So DeSantis is attacking Trump for supposedly being too far left on issues like gay rights and abortion.

Speaker 4 Trump is attacking DeSantis for being too far right on issues like wanting to privatize and cut Medicare and Social Security. How much does it worry you?

Speaker 4 that this may make Trump seem more moderate and thus electable to a general electorate if he's the nominee?

Speaker 5 I don't want to overstate the case because in times of high polarization like the one we live in,

Speaker 5 very little changed people's opinion. And that's particularly true of Trump, whose approval rating other than a couple of moments stayed basically the same for eight years.

Speaker 5 It's in a narrow band, whether he is getting indicted, getting impeached, committing crimes, talking about Nazis, about the same. So there's not a lot that's moving people.

Speaker 5 But the presidential electorate is much larger than the general election. You're going to have a lot of people in there who are paying zero attention to this primary.

Speaker 5 They're just kind of like surfing the news. They're seeing the headlines.

Speaker 5 And there is a chance that some of them watching this coverage will get the impression from how Ron, particularly how Ron DeSantis is running his campaign, that Donald Trump is more economically populist than the rest of his party and

Speaker 5 slightly more moderate on some cultural issues than the furthest extremes of his party. And that could be decisive on the margins.

Speaker 5 And as we know, this presidential election is likely to be a sided on the margins.

Speaker 5 The way I've been trying to explain how close this is going to be is that if it's anything like 16 and 20, the election will be decided by fewer people than attended the most recent Taylor Swift concert.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 5 So it does take a lot of people to get that impression to do it.

Speaker 5 Because it's not like going to people who are like lifelong Democrats are going to all of a sudden change their mind or Republicans are going to, it's there are going to be people who voted for Trump in 16, Biden in 20, and might possibly be available to Trump again in 24.

Speaker 5 And those are the sort of people who could get that impression, right?

Speaker 5 People who voted, maybe people who voted Trump in 20, but then voted for a Democrat for Congress in 2022 because they thought these other Republicans were such MAGA lunatic extremists that they might see Trump as slightly different if he's out there protecting Social Security and Medicare and getting hammered by a bunch of his opponents for being not insufficiently extreme on abortion and LGBTQ rights.

Speaker 4 And like you said, the challenge is a lot of voters go on vibes, especially when it comes to Trump, especially low-information voters who are not paying close attention to politics.

Speaker 4 We have Trump's record for the last, you know, when he was president for four years, he put out budgets that would have decimated Social Security and Medicare.

Speaker 4 He put the justices on the court that have given us all of these rulings that are horrible on abortion and gay rights.

Speaker 4 So, you know, I do think that it's probably smart of Democrats to start reminding people of that to kind of counter what DeSantis is doing here.

Speaker 4 But you could see DeSantis running, if DeSantis' campaign actually picks up, if DeSantis is still around in the fall and the winter.

Speaker 2 Open question.

Speaker 4 Open question, right? And it becomes like Ron DeSantis culture warrior who also has a little Paul Ryan in him, too,

Speaker 4 which is electorally the worst possible fucking position to be in.

Speaker 4 But if it's him versus Donald Trump, then yeah, it could have an effect. You could see it have an effect on people's perceptions of Trump

Speaker 4 in the general. And it would be the wrong perception, but it's something that Democrats should think about now.

Speaker 5 There was a sense in 2020 among some people that because Donald Trump, he doesn't go to church, he's a thrice divorced New York City playboy, that he is not really

Speaker 5 an even

Speaker 5 a culture, a natural culture warrior like a bun, like a bunch of these other Republicans. And that helped him.
And now people were, many people were.

Speaker 5 quite surprised, we turned out to govern like that, but that you could get some element of that dynamic could happen again in 2024. Thank you, Ron DeSantis, for running a terrible campaign.

Speaker 2 It's fucking awful.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Awful.

Speaker 4 One more thing we should mention about the Republican primary.

Speaker 4 The RNC has demanded that every candidate sign a loyalty pledge where they have to promise to support the eventual nominee or else they don't get to participate in the debates.

Speaker 4 Most of the candidates, including Trump, have not signed it yet.

Speaker 4 So what happens if they don't?

Speaker 5 Well, as you know, that Ronna McDaniel, a woman of such steadfast principles that she gave up using her given name in order to become the RNC chair, will probably fight this to the end.

Speaker 5 No, I assume they're just going to quietly somehow abandon it and do whatever Trump wants to do.

Speaker 5 Trump will either sign it and say he's going to lie and then everyone's going to have to do the same thing or he's not going to sign it and they're not going to hold the debates without Trump. So

Speaker 2 there you go.

Speaker 5 I don't think it's, I think whatever it takes to get Trump on that stage, the RNC will do.

Speaker 4 And I don't know that the loyalty pledge or even getting rid of the loyalty pledge will get Trump on that. It changes.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 2 There's two things.

Speaker 5 Trump is skipping those first couple debates no matter what.

Speaker 5 The question will be on the first debate that he may feel compelled to do for whatever reason.

Speaker 5 When's it going to matter there?

Speaker 4 I really wonder if he skips the first two if he ever shows up.

Speaker 4 I know that like, you know, Chris Christie made a somewhat compelling case on his, during a scene in Town Hall about this, that like Donald Trump's ego won't let him skip all the debates.

Speaker 4 But I don't know.

Speaker 4 Like if it turns out, if it turns out that all all these jokers are still like 30 points behind him, why the fuck would you participate in those debates and just like risk getting your ass kicked?

Speaker 5 It's Chris Christie's. We thought the same thing around the presidential base in 2020, and it's Donald Trump needs the attention.
And ultimately,

Speaker 5 that's what I think will matter. But, you know, we'll see.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think the general is a little different. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 For sure. For sure.

Speaker 4 But, um, but I could, yeah, we'll see. Okay, when we come back, I talk to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

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Speaker 4 Joining us today to talk about the Supreme Court and much more, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Congresswoman, welcome back to the pod.

Speaker 16 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 4 So I want to get into a broader discussion about the court, but first on student loans, I would love nothing more than for the president's new debt relief plan to succeed.

Speaker 4 My concern is that it'll end up at the same Supreme Court.

Speaker 4 You've urged the president to also consider shortening the timeframe on when it goes into effect and suspending interest on loans, especially over the next year.

Speaker 4 Have you heard from anyone in the administration on those suggestions?

Speaker 16 You know, I think

Speaker 16 we've been, our staff and our team has been in contact with the White House. I think we are continuing our advocacy.

Speaker 16 I anticipate that there's going to be more discussions of movement when Congress reconvenes and is back in session next week.

Speaker 16 So I think right now there's kind of like a little bit of a lull period as the administration first starts to pick up what it's already committed to doing.

Speaker 16 And then I think we can, you know, follow up with conversations about how to potentially make improvements on it.

Speaker 4 It seems like a no-brainer idea to me.

Speaker 4 I know that the timeframe, like there's all kinds of rules around figuring out a process with the Department of Education, and there's the public comment period and all that.

Speaker 4 On the suspending interest, it seems like a no-brainer. Like, what would the argument against that be?

Speaker 16 You know,

Speaker 16 I really don't see a huge argument against it.

Speaker 16 You know, I think it's just the political backlash about, you know, there has been this handshake agreement with the debt limit deal about, you know, ending the suspension, ending the payment suspension in September.

Speaker 16 I don't know if people would basically say, oh, you know, this is kind of breaking your end of the bargain.

Speaker 16 I don't really think so. I think suspending interest is totally fair game.

Speaker 16 And remember, we are proceeding with an alternative plan here, which means there are millions of people out there that would potentially be paying paying interest on loans that are on loan balances that are going to get forgiven if all goes according to plan.

Speaker 16 And so I really do believe that suspending interest is, you know, the move to make right now, especially as people start to, you know, get acclimated.

Speaker 16 A lot of people don't even know who their student loan servicers are anymore because there were a lot of consolidations during the pandemic.

Speaker 4 On what to do about the court, I see a two-track approach here. There can be hearings and investigations into ethics and potentially legal violations and hopefully some kind of ethics legislation.

Speaker 4 And then there are broad structural reforms like court expansion and term limits that can help rebalance the extreme right turn the court has taken.

Speaker 4 In terms of the ethics investigations, who makes the decision on whether Senate Democrats issue subpoenas, which has only been tried under justice once in the past? Is that Durbin? Is it Schumer?

Speaker 4 Is it like a majority on the judiciary? What's the process there?

Speaker 16 I mean, I would say that it's a combination of

Speaker 16 both leader Schumer, of course, Democratic Party and any chamber's party's leadership would be part of that conversation. But of course, it would go to the chair of the judiciary.

Speaker 16 The sub-judiciary committee would have enormous sway over that decision. But a lot of that conversation does tend to be a caucus-wide decision.

Speaker 16 You know, we dealt with a lot of subpoenas during impeachment, sitting on house oversight.

Speaker 16 We took issuing of subpoenas very, very seriously. And they were often a combination of consultation within our rural caucus, conversations as a committee.
But, you know, much of that at the time was

Speaker 16 a lot of that decision weighed very heavily on then chairman of oversight, Elijah Cummings, as well as discussions with House leadership.

Speaker 16 And so I would expect that there would kind of be a mirror dynamic Senate side.

Speaker 16 So that would mean that Durban would have, Senator Durban would have an enormous amount of input on that as well as other

Speaker 16 major figures as well. Sheldon Whitehouse has been doing an enormous amount of work regarding this issue and of course Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer.

Speaker 4 So Durbin said today that they're going to move forward on ethics legislation. More broadly, what would your ideal outcome be from a series of ethics investigations and hearings?

Speaker 16 You know, I think think ethics legislation is necessary and it's important,

Speaker 16 but my concern is that this isn't quite covering the harm that has already been done to the court. I do not believe that we should leave it to ProPublica alone, God bless them,

Speaker 16 to bring all of this information to light.

Speaker 16 What we are seeing is really an unprecedented and frankly catastrophic

Speaker 16 amount of revelations of financial

Speaker 16 entanglements coming out of the Supreme Court. And it does leave open a question of, in addition to what we already know, have there been even

Speaker 16 other kind of developments out there that we don't know about that have potentially swayed or had significant impact on decisions that may have already occurred?

Speaker 16 And is there a righting of a wrong on that? I think that there, that ultimately is what this is about is that,

Speaker 16 you know, as much as these justices, of course, conveniently want to say, oh, this has nothing to do with this, they have far surpassed even what members of Congress are allowed to do.

Speaker 16 And Congress regulates itself.

Speaker 16 And people have seen what members of Congress have gotten away from, gotten away with, frankly. And

Speaker 16 what the Supreme Court has done, what certain members of the court have done has even put that to shame.

Speaker 16 And so I really do believe that what we need is not just ethics reform, which is very necessary, but we do need a thorough accounting and investigation of what the court has frankly been withholding.

Speaker 16 We cannot allow

Speaker 16 this lack of disclosure, just like a convenient, you know, people like Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito just conveniently leaving off lavish gifts and vacations from billionaires that have interests before the court and just say, oh, you know, that's a mulligan, you know.

Speaker 16 That, I think, is profoundly disturbing. And these are the kinds of conflicts of interest that even

Speaker 16 the most basic

Speaker 16 low-level entry-level judges would know that this is a no-no. Even basic government employees are not allowed to receive this kind of favoring.
And that needs to be taken seriously.

Speaker 16 And I do think that there needs to be an account

Speaker 16 on

Speaker 16 what has fully occurred.

Speaker 4 On court reform, you've supported expanding the Supreme Court. Biden's not there yet.

Speaker 4 If he came out for expansion tomorrow, we still have a Senate majority that can't eliminate the filibuster or that won't in the case of Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema.

Speaker 4 What do you see as the best strategy for achieving some kind of structural court reform?

Speaker 16 Well, I mean, I do think that it does come in with oversight and investigation.

Speaker 16 If we do not have court expansion, if we do not have a senate that is capable of eliminating filibuster, I think there's a couple of things that we need to do.

Speaker 16 We need to engage in a check on the Supreme Court's power, which means I think that we need to bring judicial review into question, which basically is saying

Speaker 16 what the Supreme Court is allowed to touch,

Speaker 16 what they aren't, the extent of their power, the extent of what they're able and capable of overturning or not. All of that falls under

Speaker 16 a category known as judicial review. And when the court begins to expand it and abuse its power far beyond what it has,

Speaker 16 That is them expanding their judicial review. As we saw even with Elena Kagan's dissent.
She is saying this court, you know, the call is coming from inside the house in her dissent.

Speaker 16 She's saying this court is getting out of control. They are assuming the power of a legislature.
This is, we are going far beyond our jurisdiction. And

Speaker 16 we are seeing members of the court themselves. really allude to this.
And so I believe that in our system of checks and balances,

Speaker 16 it is up to Congress. It is also up to the president to begin to push back on the scope of the Supreme Court's judicial review.

Speaker 16 They are calling into question laws and rights that have been established for 50 plus years in this country in their overturning of jobs,

Speaker 16 in their overturning of basic protections and equality protections for LGBTQ Americans,

Speaker 16 even in their Supreme Court decision around student loans, them just basically saying the president doesn't have the authority to do something this big, but we won't say how big.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 they're really

Speaker 16 calling in an enormous amount of

Speaker 16 power unto themselves that frankly they don't have and that the Constitution does not give them. And so, you know, I do believe that

Speaker 16 really honing in on the court's judicial review and the scope of that is important.

Speaker 16 And again, I do believe that, listen, I mean, some folks may disagree with me, but I believe that the Supreme Court is fully politicized.

Speaker 16 I think this is a group of political actors and they respond to political pressure. And maybe that's not the eye in the sky way we'd like to think of our court.

Speaker 16 Maybe that's not what the court is supposed to be, but that's the court that we're working with today.

Speaker 16 And I think that proper oversight.

Speaker 16 I do believe that investigations and subpoenas into potentially law-breaking behavior, we have a Supreme Court justice that refused to recuse himself from a case in which his wife was directly implicated.

Speaker 16 That was Clarence Thomas and his wife's involvement on January 6th. And not only that, but he was the only judge,

Speaker 16 if not one of the only to

Speaker 16 vote against allowing full disclosure of materials with respect to that.

Speaker 16 And so, you know, I do believe that investigations, subpoenas, if Chief Justice Roberts will not comply with Senate investigations, as he is not, he has refused to come before Congress around this issue.

Speaker 16 And the Supreme Court does not have that luxury. They are not above investigations.
They are human and they are just as susceptible to corruption as any other government entity.

Speaker 16 And we have a responsibility.

Speaker 16 to conduct the strongest oversight for them because at least with the legislature, the presidency, we have elections and the people can always hold us accountable by not voting for us again.

Speaker 16 And that is one of many layers. But the Supreme Court, these are life time appointments, at least they are for now.
And that means that the responsibility for oversight on them is that much greater.

Speaker 4 When you talk about judicial review, is there legislation that you envision Congress potentially passing around judicial review that actually scopes what kind of cases or decisions the Supreme Court can make?

Speaker 4 And is there historical precedent for that?

Speaker 16 You know, I do think that there is. Judicial review and the history of judicial review has kind of been this,

Speaker 16 I guess we can say it's it's been

Speaker 16 It's been like an amalgam of different factors that can shape what judicial review does. Some of it, again, it has to do with political pressure.

Speaker 16 When we go back nearly 100 years when FDR started threatening expansion of the court back then, it was the executive branch drawing a line in the sand and saying, you all are going too far.

Speaker 16 And in the past, there have been moments, even, for example, with Abraham Lincoln in the case of Dred Scott. And the Supreme Court ruled the way that it did.

Speaker 16 And Abraham and Lincoln disregarded the outcome of Dred Scott when he signed signed the Emancipation Proclamation. And they said there are certain things that are inalienable.
And

Speaker 16 citizenship for Black Americans and the formerly enslaved was one of those inalienable rights. And

Speaker 16 it, you know, I know it is a third rail in politics to discuss this, but

Speaker 16 frankly,

Speaker 16 this is where we are as a country. And it is sad and it is scary, but you know, the idea of having a panel of unelected

Speaker 16 individuals who have demonstrated financial entanglements

Speaker 16 and whose reasoning is increasingly straying from precedent

Speaker 16 there has to be a line and we have to ask ourselves and prepare ourselves we are seeing the supreme court they stripped rights, basic inalienable rights, inalienable rights from women and

Speaker 16 non-binary people last year with the overturning of jobs. They are now stripping certain inalienable rights from LGBTQ America.

Speaker 16 And we have to ask ourselves,

Speaker 16 what,

Speaker 16 if they can do this,

Speaker 16 what can't they do? What is the line in terms of that pushback?

Speaker 16 And so, you know, I think And when it comes to legislation, that is a, there's a potential, there's a possibility there that too could be challenged in court.

Speaker 16 But it can also be done through other ways as well.

Speaker 16 And,

Speaker 16 you know, I know that that makes folks uncomfortable, but there is a history and a precedent for this in American history.

Speaker 4 In general, how do you think President Biden has handled his job over the last four years?

Speaker 16 You know, I think.

Speaker 16 I think he's done quite well given the limitations that we have.

Speaker 16 I do think that there are ebbs and flows as there are

Speaker 16 in any presidency. You know, there are areas that I think were quite strong when he came right out of the gate with the American Rescue Plan.

Speaker 16 And there, and of course, the Inflation Reduction Act was a massive step in terms of our climate agenda. But, you know, there are also areas that I think could have gone better.

Speaker 16 The president and I think the Democratic Party in general continues to struggle with immigration. We don't want to own this issue.

Speaker 16 We talk a big game when we're in the minority and when we're trying to win an election, but I don't feel like we are there when it comes to what we actually pass.

Speaker 16 The DREAM Act is now over 20 years old and it's still not passed.

Speaker 16 And a lot of, you know, there's plenty of other issues as well, even with what is happening with asylees, you know the ability to get grant people basic work authorization so that they can work um while they are going through their legal processing there is an enormous amount of political resistance to that and um

Speaker 16 and we want to make sure that we are expanding that fight and working for the coalition that elects this party um so you know i i do think of course there's so much more that um we could do so much more that we should do.

Speaker 16 We have major structural issues in this country and I think it starts with the United States Senate

Speaker 16 and

Speaker 16 I think that until we have senators that are willing to stand up and stare the filibuster in the eye and stare a lot of structural issues about the Senate in the eye.

Speaker 16 the United States Senate will be what holds back this country from an enormous amount of progress.

Speaker 16 And I think that we need to have a real conversation about that, not just in the structure, but also in the culture.

Speaker 16 The culture of the United States Senate is, there is so much deference to

Speaker 16 this kind of like polite society, but oftentimes that runs up against some people's basic rights. And we need to have that conversation.

Speaker 4 So president's only primary opponents are Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Haven't been any rumors about about anyone else even thinking about jumping in.

Speaker 4 Will you be supporting Joe Biden for re-election?

Speaker 16 I believe given that field, yes.

Speaker 4 What do you make of Cornell West's campaign?

Speaker 16 You know, I think Dr. West has an incredible history in this country.
What he fights for, what he gives voice to is incredibly important.

Speaker 16 And the ability for us to talk about issues that frankly mainstream Democrats are often too afraid to touch when we talk about american oligopoly when we talk about foreign policy when we talk about um you know the united states oftentimes our foreign policy's complicit nature in human rights abuses abroad whether that's in palestine in africa or in other areas of the global south these are very important things for us to talk about When we talk about universal health care in the United States and we talk about Medicare for all, there are very real

Speaker 16 powers and forces that prevent the Democratic Party from really advancing in these issues. And I think that it's very healthy for us to

Speaker 16 have those kinds of conversations and to kind of zoom out into an overall critique of our political system that doesn't,

Speaker 16 you know,

Speaker 16 that isn't

Speaker 16 obliged in this logic of American exceptionalism.

Speaker 16 So I think, you know,

Speaker 16 I appreciate when there are people who raise those voices and have a history of that.

Speaker 4 How much do third-party candidacies, whether it's Dr. West's or no labels or anyone like that, how much does that concern you for the general election?

Speaker 16 Well, you know, I think

Speaker 16 Not all third-party candidacies are created equal. You know,

Speaker 16 there are some third-party candidacies that

Speaker 16 really exist to send a message and to really kind of discuss some of these issues in real time. And I think that there is value to us having these conversations.

Speaker 16 But

Speaker 16 when you look at, for example, what No Labels is doing with the, that is something to be concerned about. because of the sheer amount of money and bad faith actors that are involved.

Speaker 16 And again, it's not just to say no labels, but we have to be very concerned because the risk of fascism in this country is here. It is real.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 we cannot risk it, especially in critical electoral college dates that are decided by tens of thousands of votes. We need to be very, very careful, I believe.

Speaker 16 about that.

Speaker 16 This is, you know, the United States has a winner-take-all system, whether we like that or not uh we have to live with that reality and um

Speaker 16 the risk of just a fascist erosion um that is

Speaker 16 really quite there um it's real and i think every single one of us no matter where you are on the political spectrum whether you consider yourself moderate or whether you consider yourself as far left as can be, we have to contend with the very real material risk of people being harmed.

Speaker 4 As you pointed out, it's not just about re-electing Joe Biden, it's about sort of expanding the Senate majority or at least having a Senate majority willing to eliminate the filibuster and also, of course, going to take back the House.

Speaker 4 What do you think the best case is for the Democratic Party to make to voters for 2024?

Speaker 16 Well, I think the best cases are actions. And that's why I think it's so important that

Speaker 16 Joe Biden and his administration go full steam ahead. For example, on student loan relief.
I think some of his critics

Speaker 16 on this are saying, you know, they're just dragging this out, this whole 12-month process until after an election. This is just cynical.
They have no intention of seeing this through.

Speaker 16 I think it's very important for the administration to prove those critics wrong. And that's why I think it's really important to accelerate that timeline.

Speaker 16 You know, cutting interest is

Speaker 16 a material benefit that people can experience now while we figure out and work out the

Speaker 16 higher education acts path to student loan forgiveness. And so

Speaker 16 I think material changes are the best case that we can make where we can say, look at what we've done. We've brought insulin down.
We've capped the price of insulin to $35.

Speaker 16 We have

Speaker 16 invested and created 9 million dignified, high-paying jobs to work on climate with the Inflation Reduction Act alone.

Speaker 16 During COVID, we did have that child tax credit that we were able to implement. And if we get those seats back, then we can see if we can extend it or make it permanent and bring it back again.

Speaker 16 Really talking in the language of what everyday people actually felt, you know, that child tax credit, people felt that. Insulin caps, people feel that.

Speaker 16 Not having to pay rent in a student loan payment, people really feel that. And

Speaker 16 that, I think, is our best case. I do think that,

Speaker 16 yeah, and I think that that is the case that the president can make, but I also think that

Speaker 16 There are some Senate Democrats that should reflect on some of their positions on things and see, you know, are they willing to be more vocal on these issues?

Speaker 16 Are they willing to fight more on these issues so that we can actually get some of this stuff done?

Speaker 16 Because what I don't want to happen is for people to say, oh, you know, the Biden administration or certain, you know, or the Senate or the House or whatever.

Speaker 16 promise all of these things just to get elected and then they don't deliver on them. And so I think it's important to remind folks of the material changes that we've made, but also

Speaker 16 really discuss a felt reality of what people are seeing, hearing, breathing, and paying for.

Speaker 4 Makes sense.

Speaker 5 Makes sense. Okay.

Speaker 17 I'm jumping in. I'm jumping in.

Speaker 4 Jump in. We got a lightning round.
We got a lightning round from Love It.

Speaker 17 Hi. Hi.
Hi. Good to see you.
How you doing?

Speaker 5 Good, good.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 17 All right. It's time to focus on the questions that matter the least.
Are you ready? Yes. All right.
Barbie or Oppenheimer.

Speaker 16 Barbie, but I wouldn't mind doing a double double head or whatever.

Speaker 2 Double header.

Speaker 17 I think that's right because Barbie's going to be really fun, but Oppenheimer is going to make us,

Speaker 17 you know, question what it means to be a person in the incredible chaos and evil we each have within our hands, you know, and that's worth something too, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 17 Uh, two doors open: one is a billionaire's sub to the Titanic, the other is a billionaire's rocket to Mars. You must go in one.
Which one are you getting in?

Speaker 17 Uh,

Speaker 16 damn, maybe Mars.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I think that's right.

Speaker 2 I think that's right, you know?

Speaker 4 Fool me once, you know.

Speaker 17 Are you playing any video games right now at all?

Speaker 16 I'm playing Zelda.

Speaker 2 I'm playing Zelda.

Speaker 16 But I left my Switch in DC, so I've been a little Zelda-less for the last week or so.

Speaker 17 Are you aware of how addictive Diablo 4 is? And is there anything that you can do legislatively?

Speaker 16 I've heard a lot about this, so I have intentionally avoided going near that

Speaker 16 because I have a job, but

Speaker 17 let's. Is that supposed to stop you from doing it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, no.

Speaker 16 I have to stay focused.

Speaker 17 Okay, okay, all right. Someone out there went on a White House tour or visit.
They know it is their cocaine. They're scared.

Speaker 4 They're embarrassed.

Speaker 17 It's just you and that person.

Speaker 5 What do you tell them?

Speaker 16 Listen, if... If it's just me and that person, I tell them, you can tell me if you want, but don't worry about it.

Speaker 2 But,

Speaker 16 you know, listen, like, there's no shame.

Speaker 16 We need to destigmatize drug use. It's a public health issue, you know, like end the war on drugs.

Speaker 2 Okay, okay.

Speaker 17 Wouldn't it be cool if the Biden administration actually had Coke energy? Isn't like that deep down what we want, like let's cancel the debt and be legends. Let's mint the coin and be legends.

Speaker 5 100%.

Speaker 2 100%.

Speaker 4 Perfect.

Speaker 2 Perfect. Be legends.

Speaker 4 Congresswoman, thank you so much for coming back on Pod Save America. We really appreciate it.
And we'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 5 Good to see you.

Speaker 16 Thank you. Good to see you.

Speaker 8 Hey, weirdos.

Speaker 5 I'm Elena and I'm Ash.

Speaker 18 And we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 19 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 18 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 8 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 18 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 19 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 20 Yay! Woo!

Speaker 9 Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Speaker 9 As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports.

Speaker 9 Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding, and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety.

Speaker 9 Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help Help keep your team safe.
Sign up for Greenlight Infinity at greenlight.com slash podcast.

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Speaker 4 Okay, we're back. Before we go, we want to play a quick game about the discovery of cocaine in the White House called, Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Speaker 4 I was excited about that.

Speaker 4 No, we're actually going to play two takes and a fake with the skipped up reactions from Republicans to the news that a dime-sized bag of cocaine was found near the ground floor entrance to the West Wing in a place where visitors are asked to leave their cell phones before taking a tour.

Speaker 4 The cubbies can also be used by staff who can't bring their phones into a skiff

Speaker 4 or sensitive compartmented information facility where classified materials are handled. Dan, I remember those cubbies.

Speaker 4 I don't remember visitors being required to leave their cell phones there before taking a tour. Am I forgetting, or do you think that's a new policy?

Speaker 5 That seems to be a new policy.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 4 I don't know if I was just giving all the tours wrong and letting people walk around with phones with their phone.

Speaker 5 No, you used to have to, if you were going into a meeting in certain rooms, White House staff would just leave theirs in the office.

Speaker 5 But if you, even in the Roosevelt room, which is a meeting room for use for a lot of things, non-White House staff were leaving their phones by the time I left in a cubby outside.

Speaker 5 There had been a lot. By the time, after between

Speaker 5 when you left and when I left in the end of the of the Obama presidency, a lot more

Speaker 2 sort of

Speaker 5 anti-surveillance measures about where you could take your phones were like more strictly enforced. But it seems now like anyone bringing their phone in has to leave it there.

Speaker 4 Which makes sense because they all probably have fucking TikTok on their phones and the Chinese government is just spying.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 5 And there are a lot of people come through there all the time for not just tours, meetings, right?

Speaker 5 It'll be like the, a delegation of members of Congress or a bunch of union people from Michigan or teachers.

Speaker 5 They're people coming through the West Wing all the time, not just for tours, but for meetings. And so

Speaker 5 that suggests that we may never know who brought their cocaine to the White House.

Speaker 4 Well, I mean, I think those teachers, teachers are always bringing cocaine into the White House.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 5 Whoever that person is, they have poor judgment.

Speaker 2 Well, here's the thing.

Speaker 5 How did they forget it on the way out is the question.

Speaker 4 That's a good, very good point. Yeah, because point.

Speaker 5 Theoretically, it was next to their cell phone.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 4 Maybe they just took a bunch of shit out of their pocket and cocaine was part of the stuff in their pocket and they just stuffed it in the cubby. I don't know.

Speaker 2 Or they panicked.

Speaker 4 You know, they're like, go in.

Speaker 4 Yeah, they're like, I don't want to take it.

Speaker 5 It's like they took all their stuff. Because you have to empty your pockets to go through security.
So they emptied their pockets?

Speaker 4 Oh.

Speaker 4 Well, maybe they didn't. They didn't.
Probably didn't take the cocaine out of the pockets. Or out of the purse.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Because the Secret Service would have seen it go through the metal detector. Or not not the metal detector, the whatever.

Speaker 4 You put your stuff in an X-ray machine.

Speaker 2 An X-ray X-ray machine. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Thank you.

Speaker 4 They would have seen it then. So maybe they just kept it in their pocket thinking that it wouldn't set the scanner off because it was a metal ray.

Speaker 5 Imagine the feeling you would have as

Speaker 5 you're all ready for your White House meeting. You're all dressed up.
You're excited.

Speaker 5 And you realize as you're about to go through the gates that you have cocaine in your pocket and you don't know what you're going to do about it.

Speaker 4 No, what you're going to do about it then is if you realize that is do the cocaine.

Speaker 5 Washington on a toilet?

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 But so people know what's what it's like. So the, it was on the ground floor entrance.
So that's usually for staff, except at night when you give tours. That's where you start the tour often.

Speaker 4 And so, and the tours are given by staffers like us at night to people that you know. And so you're right.

Speaker 4 Like a ton of people go through that entrance and they said, you know, they're going to look at surveillance footage, but I don't know that surveillance footage is going to show like who left what and what cubby because no one is taking out the cocaine and like waving it in front of the camera and then putting it in the cubby, right?

Speaker 4 So that's going to be, it's going to be hard to look for the surveillance footage.

Speaker 4 And also they're doing like DNA testing and fingerprint stuff, but like people's fingerprints are like all over those cubbies because all the people are putting their phones in there.

Speaker 4 So I don't know how that's going to work either.

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 5 it's on the bag of cocaine is the fingerprint they're looking for.

Speaker 11 Right.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but then that person has to have fingerprints somewhere else, right? Like, I mean, unless it's, you know,

Speaker 4 if they have a clean record.

Speaker 5 There is one person in America right now who sleeps.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 they're not sleeping.

Speaker 4 Not sleeping because of the cocaine, but also because they're very nervous that they're going to get caught.

Speaker 4 Anyway, I heard that we have a clip that we're supposed to throw to that's some kind of a surprise here. I'm scared to find out what this is.

Speaker 6 John Feife Dog, it's John Biden. Look, I've got a little problem, and I could really use your help.

Speaker 6 Last week, I invited my friend Mitch over to the White House to watch the new season of Marvelous Miss Mazel.

Speaker 6 Richard Brosnahan razzes our berries.

Speaker 6 And you guys know Mitch, that prankster loves Gallagher and prop comedy, so he brings his little beatnik baggie with him for a cheap yuck because he's cocaine, Mitch.

Speaker 2 Ha ha ha.

Speaker 6 And now I got the cops on my ass. It's a bunch of applesauce, man.
So here's the deal. Dan, you need to take the fall.

Speaker 6 You look like you know your way around the booger sugar, so these Fox News folks will believe it. Mitch says he'll send some earmarks to Delaware if you do him a solid.
Made in the shade, man.

Speaker 6 We got a deal, Danny Boy.

Speaker 4 That is the closest

Speaker 4 we'll ever get to having Joe Biden on this podcast.

Speaker 5 I mean, people have not been making the cocaine Mitch joke, like, hadn't even occurred to me until now.

Speaker 4 I know, I know, I know. You know, Olivia had thought about it.

Speaker 4 She put it in the prep, but I didn't, of course, didn't.

Speaker 4 I'm glad I didn't say it because I didn't want to ruin that.

Speaker 2 Didn't want to ruin that.

Speaker 5 I just want to stimulate for the record, just legally and politically, that that is Tommy misusing artificial intelligence,

Speaker 4 which he has now done more than anyone else in politics, I think.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's like the DeSantis people did that ad with the Fauci hug, and Tommy.

Speaker 4 The two culprits, Tommy's the big culprit, yeah.

Speaker 5 Tommy deep fake V-tour.

Speaker 4 I will say, he it really nails Joe Biden's voice. The haha was pretty funny.
That was the only thing that was a little off, is Joe Biden saying hi.

Speaker 5 I'm so uncomfortable. I'm so uncomfortable right now.

Speaker 4 I knew that Booker Sugar was getting in there as soon as I heard the beginning.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Okay, now we have a game. I think Elijah's going to join us for this.
Elijah, are you there? I am. Here he is.

Speaker 5 I also don't know how I'm supposed to follow up that clip. It's so funny.
It's a bunch of applesauce.

Speaker 4 Not so sleepy Joe, you know?

Speaker 5 Yep.

Speaker 5 Welcome back to Two Takes and a Fake. It's our take on the classic game Two Truths and a Lie.
This is going to be a cocaine in the White House edition, only one round, just a little bump.

Speaker 5 Here are three Republican reactions to the cocaine story. Two of them are real.
One of them is fake. John and Dan, are you ready? So ready.

Speaker 5 Born ready.

Speaker 5 Here's take number one.

Speaker 5 I think a lot of us have believed that the Biden administration has been blowing it on a lot of fronts, but I guess this is a little bit more literal than even I had thought.

Speaker 5 That is number one.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 5 Number two.

Speaker 5 Has deranged Jack Smith, the crazy Trump-hating special prosecutor, been seen in the area of the cocaine? He looks like a crackhead to me.

Speaker 5 That is reaction number two.

Speaker 5 And here's reaction number three.

Speaker 2 Well, well, well.

Speaker 5 It looks like Joe Biden's crime wave has finally come to his doorstep, and the White House is now less secure than the southern border.

Speaker 2 So, guys. Honestly.
Which is the fake?

Speaker 4 Honestly, great job with all three of those.

Speaker 4 I will identify the fake, and I will identify the people who uttered the first two. The first one is from Ron DeSantis.
The second one is a truth from Donald Trump. And the third one

Speaker 4 is either fake or you decided to do all three that are real.

Speaker 5 That one, the last one is a conglomeration of takes submitted by the subscribers. Thank you.
Go sign up at crooking.com slash friends.

Speaker 4 But the other two, I was correct.

Speaker 5 Oh, yes. The other two, you're correct.

Speaker 2 And I have the full quotes here if you want them.

Speaker 4 Oh, please, please, please. Yeah, we got to read the whole Trump truth because it's special.

Speaker 2 Okay. It's special.

Speaker 5 I have the Ron DeSantis one also, but I mean, per usual, Trump just blows him out of the water.

Speaker 5 Here it is, and I'm going to shout when Trump uses all caps.

Speaker 5 Thank you. Does anybody really believe that the cocaine found in the West Wing of the White House, very close to the Oval Office, is for the use of anyone other than Hunter and Joe Biden?

Speaker 5 But watch, the fake news media will soon start saying that the amount found was, quote, very small and it wasn't really cocaine, but rather common ground up aspirin, and the story will vanish.

Speaker 5 Has Duranged Jack Smith, the crazy Trump-hating special prosecutor, been seen in the area of the cocaine? He looks like a crackhead to me.

Speaker 4 It certainly feels like Donald Trump has

Speaker 4 used or at least been aware of the,

Speaker 4 it's just ground-up aspirin excuse.

Speaker 2 We were all thinking it.

Speaker 11 Really, really reached for that, huh?

Speaker 5 Just strange detour to go.

Speaker 5 There are a lot of ways to go with cocaine being found in Joe Biden's White house accusing jack smith of being a crackhead was a swerve i would say yeah rent-free it was a swerve it was a swerve though an unsurprising one you know kudos to him

Speaker 4 well there it is two takes and a fake we did it blow

Speaker 5 we did it blow oh man we did it blow

Speaker 5 I'm so glad that because Tommy did that thing, you and I will never see those newly installed cell phone companies because we will never be invited back to the White House.

Speaker 2 We're not invited back.

Speaker 4 Again, again, it was all Tommy.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 4 Thank you to AOC for joining us today. Sorry that you joined on the episode where we made about 40 cocaine jokes.
Everyone have a fantastic weekend and we'll talk to you next week. Bye, everyone.

Speaker 4 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
Our producers are Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 4 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 4 Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Madeleine Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.

Speaker 4 And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Mia Kelman, Ben Hefco, and David Tolls.

Speaker 4 Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube to catch full episodes, exclusive content, and other community events. Find us at youtube.com/slash at PodSave America.

Speaker 18 Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 19 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 18 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 8 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 18 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 19 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 20 Yay! Woo! Aye!

Speaker 9 Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Speaker 9 As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports.

Speaker 9 Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding, and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety.

Speaker 9 Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your team safe.
Sign up for Greenlight Infinity at greenlight.com/slash podcast.