Trump and CNN Together Again

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Speaker 2 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Donald Trump is making nice with CNN, snubbing Fox's debate, and throwing an NBC reporter's phone.

Speaker 2 President Biden and Democrats consider break glass options to avoid a debt default. Chastin Budigedge stops by Cricket HQ to talk to Lovett about his new book.

Speaker 2 And later, we'll talk about the racist texts that may have gotten Tucker Carlson fired. But first, the first episode of Pod Save the UK is finally out.

Speaker 2 This hilarious and insightful new podcast is your go-to source for everything UK politics. Hosted by comedian Nish Kumar and journalist Coco Khan.

Speaker 2 It's everything you love about Crooked Podcasts, but with a British twist. From strikes to scandals, they cover all the topics that matter.

Speaker 2 This is from us at Crooked and our friends at Reduce Listening. You won't want to miss a single episode of Pod Save the UK.
Listen to the first episode now, wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 2 It's fantastic. Check it out.
Go subscribe. You will not be disappointed.
All right, let's get to the news. Dan, Donald Trump is really having a week.
Really having a week.

Speaker 3 Can we say that every week?

Speaker 2 I know. This week, yeah.

Speaker 1 We'll say it a lot. We'll say it a lot.

Speaker 2 The twice-impeached criminal defendant who incited a violent insurrection is somehow once again in control of the Republican primary and the media spotlight.

Speaker 2 On Wednesday night, he'll participate in a live town hall on CNN, hosted by journalist Caitlin Collins. This is Trump's first appearance on CNN since 2016,

Speaker 2 and his first non-MAGA media appearance since he stormed out of a 60-minutes interview with Leslie Stahl in 2020. I completely forgot that happened.

Speaker 3 What, 2020? The year?

Speaker 2 Yes. Let's go with that, actually.

Speaker 1 Yeah, let's go with that.

Speaker 2 No, the storming out of the interview. I just, that was a, that was a fun one.
That was a fun one. Why do you think he's finally leaving the comfort of his MAGA media bubble? Smart move, dumb move?

Speaker 2 What do you think?

Speaker 3 Well, look, if you get the opportunity to appear on a ratings rocket ship like CNN, you don't pass it up.

Speaker 2 Thank you. That was coming.

Speaker 3 Look, was it a smart move? You know what? Ask me next week after he's gone on air, and we'll see if he said something completely insane or if he used the time well.

Speaker 2 If he says something completely insane.

Speaker 1 Well, let me put it this way.

Speaker 3 There are ways to go on CNN and say completely insane things that will further strengthen his hold on the Republican nomination. And there are ways to go on CNN and make his life worse.

Speaker 3 And so we will see how that goes.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think the downsides are he reminds most viewers why they don't ever want him to be president again,

Speaker 2 which is, you know, it's a safe bet.

Speaker 3 Most viewers of CNN.

Speaker 2 Most viewers of CNN, right? Yeah, that's most viewers of CNN. Obviously, the upside is he gets attention.
He's been a little starved for attention lately. He hasn't been tweeting.

Speaker 2 He's not on TV a lot. So he's looking for attention.
And I think this will get him attention not only from the CNN audience, but from other outlets that cover the town hall.

Speaker 2 He can show Republican voters that, you know, he's the only one tough enough to take on the fake news while Ron DeSantis is just in his MAGA media bubble. And

Speaker 2 if Caitlin Collins calls out his bullshit and he gets in a fight with her, then he knows that the MAGA media will defend him the next day and there'll be a rally round Trump effect because the mean

Speaker 2 CNN fake media attacked Donald Trump, attacked our favorite president.

Speaker 3 Look, it takes a brave man to take on the powerhouse that is CNN these days.

Speaker 3 I mean, like there is, like, there is, besides besides my previous joke, I think this is probably a win-win for him.

Speaker 3 He, if he does well, he actually gets to reach out, probably not through CNN, but through the coverage of it, to Republican voters who like Trump, but are skeptical of his ability to win.

Speaker 3 He sends a signal he's doing things differently than his disastrous 2020 campaign.

Speaker 3 And that has been, for all of the insanity that is Trump, there is the method versus madness quotient in his 2023 campaign so far has been slightly more in the method category.

Speaker 3 Like there is a plan here, and this is part of that plan. Can he execute that plan? History would say no, but you at least,

Speaker 3 I understand why he is doing this, and it makes some strategic sense given what he's trying to do, both in this immediate short term of the primary and then the longer need to unify the party and appeal to people who are pretty skeptical of him.

Speaker 2 Philip Bump of the Washington Post wrote a piece the other day arguing that there is little journalistic value in broadcasting Trump's comments live, especially in a town hall format where it won't be as easy for Caitlin to call out his bullshit as it would be in a one-on-one interview if it was just she and him for an hour.

Speaker 2 What do you think about that? Is CNN repeating their 2016 mistakes? Is this different?

Speaker 3 It depends on which 2016 mistake we are discussing. Is it the airing of the empty podium for hours at a time to try to juice viewers? They're not repeating that one.
I very much agree with Philip.

Speaker 3 It's not only is there not much journalistic value, it actually runs counter to the stated purpose of journalism, which is to provide your consumers and viewers with accurate information.

Speaker 3 And you're making a strategic decision to give them inaccurate information. And that is not Caitlin Collins' fault.
I think she will do as well as anyone in holding him to account.

Speaker 3 She is definitely, if you've seen question her questioning him at press conferences, she's not afraid of him in any way, shape, or form, but it's impossible to do it.

Speaker 3 Even in a one-on-one interview, it's impossible. Like, what are you going to do? Just keep asking him over and over and over again as a clock text about the one specific thing.
No, you move on.

Speaker 3 And so people, the people who watch this will be exposed to disinformation and probably the exact disinformation that led to a violent assault on the Capitol.

Speaker 3 And so CNN, of course, they're going to do this. They would never turn this down.
This is a chance at ratings. It's a chance to be relevant to things they've been struggling with.

Speaker 3 And but Philip is completely right about that the press still,

Speaker 3 I think they know how to cover Trump. They just don't want to make the tough decisions to do that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I do think that there are, there have been a few interviewers with Trump who've been one-on-one who have done,

Speaker 2 and this is all relative, but have done some political damage to him. Like, they have not been good news cycles following those interviews, let's say.

Speaker 2 It does not, nothing lasts with Trump or anything in politics, but Savannah, Jake, Jonathan Swan have all sort of interviewed Trump in pretty tough ways, I think.

Speaker 1 And not live.

Speaker 2 In most cases. And not live.
That's true. That's true.

Speaker 2 I mean, it is, I think it, and if you've seen other CNN town halls with candidates, they've done with Biden, with other candidates, it it is both possible and necessary that Caitlin asks tough follow-ups and fact-checks him on the spot after, because

Speaker 2 if you're just going to let voters ask him questions and broadcast it, then it's a fucking mess, right? You just can't do that.

Speaker 3 Why don't we even let these voters get involved?

Speaker 2 Well, because then he can do it. He's just going to run right over them and say whatever he wants, you know? But Caitlin could, if he lies to the voter, step in, ask him a tough follow-up.

Speaker 2 And there's so much to ask him, too. I mean, the fact that he hasn't done a media interview with a real journalist since fucking 2020 is nuts.

Speaker 2 Like, all the indictments, the insurrection stuff, there was, you know, four Proud Boys were just convicted today of seditious conspiracy, including Enrique Tario, the leader of the Proud Boys, which certainly doesn't bode well for a prosecution against Trump for helping to incite the insurrection since he is buddy buddies with the Proud Boys.

Speaker 2 Just lots and lots of stuff to ask him.

Speaker 3 We'll be watching.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we'll be watching. We'll be watching.
One place Trump now seems unlikely to appear is the second and possibly first Republican primary debate.

Speaker 2 So we talked about this possibility a little bit on Tuesday's pod.

Speaker 2 New York Times has since reported that he is telling his advisors that the second debate is a, quote, non-starter for him because it will be held at the Ronald Reagan Library, which he hates because they haven't invited him to speak over the last couple of years.

Speaker 2 They invited DeSantis and some others, and because the publisher of the Washington Post is on the board of the Reagan Library. And of course, he hates the Washington Post.

Speaker 2 And I guess he might want to skip the first debate because,

Speaker 2 quote, he doesn't want a debate in August. Who does?

Speaker 2 And because it's hosted by Fox News.

Speaker 2 So, my take on Tuesday's pod was that there is very little political downside and potentially some upside for Trump if he skips. But what do you think?

Speaker 3 I agree. I think it's not some upside, potential upside.
It is pure upside.

Speaker 3 I mean, Trump had a quote, and this is like one of the things that is notable about Trump is that he doesn't really buy into the parts of politics where you're supposed to pretend.

Speaker 3 So Trump's argument was to this is debates are for people who are behind or even, not people who are ahead, and I'm winning. So why would I debate? Which is right.
That is strategically correct.

Speaker 3 We all have to pretend otherwise about the value of public debate and, you know, exposing yourself to voters.

Speaker 3 But from a pure strategic point of view, if you were winning and you're winning by a lot, and one of the reasons you're winning by a lot is because your opponents can't get any attention, why would you invite them on stage with you to have a moment to gain traction?

Speaker 3 It makes no strategic sense for him.

Speaker 2 When people say that Trump is an honest liar, and that's why people think he's like authentic, that's the kind of shit they're talking about.

Speaker 2 Is most candidates wouldn't say that out loud, but Trump just is telling people, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm ahead. I'm not going to take a risk and then have someone attack me on stage.
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 3 yeah, it is strategically 100% correct. I don't know why you do it.
Also, I don't mind taking August off. It would make our life easier if he didn't debate in August, but

Speaker 3 from a strategic point of view, this is all upside for him, and it's really bad news for Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 2 Also, it's like once you suffer no political consequences from your own party for inciting a violent insurrection and trying to stage a coup,

Speaker 2 you probably make the calculation that there won't be any political downsides for skipping a few debates. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think most of the-like the whole like, you know, shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue thing. We're just so close to it actually being true.

Speaker 3 I mean, Trump understands the leverage and he has all the leverage here. No one knows who the rest of these Yahoos are.
So he's in charge. The people are going to tune in to see him.

Speaker 2 Well, so if he does skip, what do you think that means for the other candidates? And could you see the RNC canceling them altogether?

Speaker 3 I don't think the RNC will cancel them because that puts them in a really tough position because they have pledged, even though every single person who works there owes their job to Donald Trump, they have pledged to make this a, you know,

Speaker 3 non, you know, they're not going to put their thumb on the scale. They're going to allow everyone from Chris Chrissy and Asa Hutchinson and Nikki Haley to have a shot.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 I think for the network partners, they may pull the plug, or they're certainly going to be very unhappy with the fact that, because it costs them the exact same amount of money to put on this debate, whether Donald Trump appears or not.

Speaker 3 And the amount you can charge advertisers for commercials during that debate just drop precipitously if Trump doesn't debate. So, you know, maybe Fox says

Speaker 3 we're going to save that money and send it directly to Dominion voting systems. I don't know, but I don't think the RNC will cancel it.
But it wouldn't surprise me if

Speaker 3 maybe the other candidates pull up. Maybe it's not worth it to them or the network partner backs out.
Maybe it's just like a tree falling in the forest.

Speaker 3 Do you remember in 2016 when the Republicans had two tiers?

Speaker 3 Like the top 10 candidates were on one stage, and then like the bottom four candidates were another stage? I mean, how much do you remember the Carly Fiorina Lindsey Graham debates of 2016?

Speaker 2 Known as the undercard debate. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then for, and then didn't, for Democrats in 20, we decided to not go with an undercard debate. We just sort of pulled out of a hat to see who would go in which debate, right?

Speaker 2 When they had to split it up.

Speaker 3 We did. To ensure that we never had all of the most viable candidates off stage at the same time.

Speaker 1 That was our plan.

Speaker 2 Did you see the story this morning that Tucker Carlson wants to host his own forum, his own debate, and he's already approached Trump about it.

Speaker 3 Smart. That will probably happen.
Right?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then if you're another, if the other candidates, they probably have to go.

Speaker 3 Of course they do.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 you can't anger Tucker. Like, you have to do it.
And they need to get on stage with Trump. Every single one of them needs to get on stage with Trump.

Speaker 3 I do wonder, to go back to your question about whether they cancel it, whether Ron DeSantis also pulls out. of a debate if Trump is not there.

Speaker 3 Because what, how diminishing is it for him to be on stage being attacked?

Speaker 3 They're all going to attack him because now their new strategy is we're going to take out DeSantis so we can be one-on-one with Trump, a strategy that worked perfectly in 2016 for all the anti-Trumps.

Speaker 3 And so he's going to just be taking hits from Asa Hutchinson. I don't think that's good for him either.

Speaker 2 I will say all the things we've talked about so far are like very predictable developments that stem from the fact that Donald Trump runs the Republican Party.

Speaker 2 He is the leader of the Republican Party. He is in full control of the Republican Party.
No one has challenged him.

Speaker 2 Seriously. And when no one challenges you, this is the shit that happens.
There was a CBS poll out this week that just polled Republican voters. 61% want a candidate who says Trump won in 2020.

Speaker 2 It's a lot of people and a lot of Republican voters. 58% said that they would vote for Trump today,

Speaker 2 but 76% are either saying they'll vote for Trump today or are considering Trump. 76%

Speaker 2 of Republican voters, that is his ceiling, at least in that poll. That is quite a big ceiling for a lot of people who are like, well, there's a lot of Trump fatigue and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I thought it might be possible too. But if 76% of people are considering voting for him, whew,

Speaker 2 this could be over pretty quickly.

Speaker 3 I think, yes, 100%.

Speaker 3 And we've said this before, but once the votes start coming in, if Trump wins early, he's going to win them all and he's going to win fast because Republican primaries are winner-take-all or winner-take-most, unlike Democratic primaries.

Speaker 3 So, the ability to survive a couple and like emerge later in the process

Speaker 3 is not available to Republicans the way it is to Democrats.

Speaker 2 And all of the other candidates' strategies, which are like based on subtlety and issues and all this other bullshit, like they aren't panning out according to this poll.

Speaker 2 Trump is winning among voters who want national abortion bans

Speaker 2 and favor Christians, so much for Mike Pence. And he's winning among voters who want to challenge woke ideas.
So much for DeSantis, right?

Speaker 2 Like all the stuff that they are all, the rest of them are trying to do, it's not, that's not what voters want. They just want Trump.

Speaker 2 They want Trump or they want someone or they want to win. I mean, the only option is that they really want to win and they decide that Trump can't help them win.

Speaker 2 I continue to think that's the only way he could lose.

Speaker 3 One of the reasons why these electability arguments are challenging is it's hard to say you're more electable when you're getting your ass kicked by the person you say is not electable.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's the problem.

Speaker 2 So, Trump's not yet the Republican nominee, but the party is already trying to screw with the general election debates.

Speaker 2 Washington Post reports that the RNC has met with the heads of the broadcast networks to see if they'd still air debates if the debates were sponsored by an organization other than the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has organized every general election debate since 1988.

Speaker 2 What's their beef with the Commission, Dan?

Speaker 3 Well, everyone hates the commission, as they should.

Speaker 3 Democrats hate the commission because it, well, generally the publish hate the commission because they've had zero innovations or original thoughts since they hosted the first debate in 1988.

Speaker 3 They've been the same format ever since.

Speaker 3 There's been some technological changes in how people get their information since then, but why

Speaker 3 would we possibly think of something new?

Speaker 3 Democrats should hate the commission because in 2020, they were too feckless to enforce their own COVID require testing requirements on Donald Trump, and he came to the debate reportedly affected with COVID, putting the president, his family, and everyone who works there at risk.

Speaker 3 Republicans, for a more picky-hune reason, hate the commission because the commission selected Steve Scully of C-SPAN to be the moderator of the second debate.

Speaker 3 And in the 1970s, Steve Scully was briefly an intern for Joe Biden. This was seen as evidence.
that he was biased and this was part of some major plot to take down Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 Now, I also remember...

Speaker 2 Wasn't that debate? Was that debate canceled?

Speaker 3 You know, it's so funny. I could not remember.
I knew there was one debate. I knew there was a vice president debate because of the fly, but I could not remember.
Were there one debate?

Speaker 3 Was there two debates? The Steve Scully debate was the second debate. It was canceled because Trump had COVID and they were unable to come up with an agreement around some sort of remote

Speaker 1 thing.

Speaker 3 And Steve Scully obviously was a Biden sleeper sale based on his intern program.

Speaker 2 Liberal firebrand, Steve Scully.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the guy from Ceaseband.

Speaker 2 So how much do you think the Biden campaign should care about this? Like, how does this get resolved

Speaker 2 if they just go around the debate commission? Did the Biden and Trump campaigns just negotiate themselves over moderators and forums? And

Speaker 3 the campaigns generally do negotiate with each other with the,

Speaker 3 I don't know how this worked in 2020, given

Speaker 3 Trump, but in the past, there are meetings that are convened by the commission, or sometimes they're done by back back channel between the two campaigns around acceptable moderators.

Speaker 3 Would you be okay with this one? Would you be okay with this one?

Speaker 3 That's how that's happened in the past. So that same process could theoretically take place with the

Speaker 3 outside of the commission process where ABC could come to both campaigns and say, we want to do a town hall style debate focused on the economy and it's going to be moderated by George Stephanopoulos and Robin Roberts or whatever.

Speaker 3 And then the committee, the parties could say, we're interested, the two campaigns could say we're interested. We're not interested.
We'd be interested, but do X.

Speaker 3 So that negotiation process could happen.

Speaker 3 I think if the commission process, as annoying as it is, were to fall by the wayside, the odds that we actually have debates could go down pretty dramatically.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I could see that because you could see Trump not wanting to debate. You could see Biden.
You could see just no debates.

Speaker 2 Also, the Trump campaign is going to ask, they're going to be like, okay, yeah, you get George Stephanopoulos, and our moderators are going to be Enrique Tario from prison and Harlan Crowe.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 3 They'll be in Harlan Crowe's Nazi garden. That was where the most of the debate.

Speaker 2 That's going to happen there. Okay, so one last sign that Trump's relationship with the press hasn't changed all that much since 2016.

Speaker 2 Vanity Fair Charlotte Klein reports that back in March, March, this is now May. This is now May.

Speaker 2 Back in March, Trump got so mad when NBC's Von Hilliard asked him about the Manhattan DA's investigation that he grabbed grabbed the reporter's two phones, threw them, and said, get him out of here.

Speaker 2 A few other journalists were there for the incident, including an Axios reporter, but somehow no one reported it until Charlotte did this week. What's going on there?

Speaker 2 Do you think they not like making news?

Speaker 3 That is a great fucking question. This is one of the most bizarre things I have ever heard.
Because this happened in what appears to be some sort of on-the-record Q ⁇ A.

Speaker 3 I would also note that even even if it were not on the record QA,

Speaker 3 just the way these sort of background and off-the-code rules work is that if you throw someone's phone, that is not automatically like

Speaker 3 off-the-record is not like blanket immunity to do anything. It's not like if Trump murdered someone on an off-the-record session, they all had to keep it quiet forever.

Speaker 2 I strangled them, but it was on background. That's right.

Speaker 3 We have just sentenced a senior administration official to life in prison for.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 3 it is bizarre they didn't report it.

Speaker 3 It is the even more bizarre, although perhaps predictable, that none of the involved outlets will comment on what happened, about whether it happened, why they didn't report it, because there might be a reason.

Speaker 3 I can't for the life of me imagine what such a reason would be, but come out and say it. Instead, their silence about this reinforces all of the most negative stereotypes reporters.

Speaker 3 They're too cozy with powerful people they're trading this for access people are saying that von hilliard the reporter you have the people on twitter have you know have talked about like maybe he's saving this for a book i don't know that to be the case i don't know von hilliard he i'm sure he's a good guy and most reporters like to make news more than they like access or more than like the reason the point of access is to make news it's not to get like canopies or something right so it's like cannabis

Speaker 3 known for giving out canopies this would be like this is a huge this is a big story story, right? We know that over the years. And when Trump loses his temper, it melts down, it's a big story.

Speaker 3 And they didn't report it. They won't say anything.

Speaker 3 And that is deeply damaging because it erodes trust in the press, which is why the main reason the media is in absolute, in a state of absolute crisis right now is because people don't trust them.

Speaker 3 All the polling shows that trust in the media is at an all-time low. And that's not just Republicans.
It is a broad-based erosion in trust in the media.

Speaker 3 And their behavior in this incident and how they've handled it afterwards, it helps explain why that is.

Speaker 2 I have felt fairly good about my level of media criticism recently. I've tried to tamp it down a little bit, partly because, and you've written books about this,

Speaker 2 their interests are not the interests of the Democratic Party, right? Like, they are for-profit corporations who are looking for ratings. We cannot expect them to save democracy, right?

Speaker 2 And then there's plenty of good journalists who are doing a great job.

Speaker 2 But I think the CNN story, this story, over the past several weeks, I've been kind of thinking like we are just sort of walking in to Donald Trump is back. He's going to be the fucking nominee.

Speaker 2 We're going to be 70,000 votes away from him becoming president again. And everyone's just like, well, I guess that's where we are.
I guess he's going to throw a phone.

Speaker 2 I guess we're not going to say anything about it. We'll just put him in a town hall and CNN, see what happens.
He's going to take questions. Talked about like he's a normal candidate.

Speaker 2 analyzed like he's a normal candidate. The guy fucking incited an insurrection, tried to overturn the election.
He,

Speaker 2 it's just, it's wild. And I don't really know what to do about it, like except to go out there and fucking win and beat him.
But it's, uh, it's pretty troubling.

Speaker 2 It's pretty troubling, to say the least.

Speaker 3 You've done the first thing you should do about it, which is start a progressive media company to serve as a counterbalance to this insanity.

Speaker 1 So kudos to you.

Speaker 3 And, you know, we've talked about this before, but.

Speaker 3 All of us have agency in this, right? Now we know about the phone story. And are people going to be fucking shocked to find out that Donald Trump is not a man fully controlled as faculties?

Speaker 3 No, but it is a news story and it is relevant. And if the press doesn't tell it, we can tell it, right? We can use all of our platforms to do it, not just our podcast, but the people in our lives.

Speaker 3 But it is, you are exactly right. That I just, there's this real like fiddling while Rome burns sort of attitude here.
And I get it. Like the press is in an absolute crisis.

Speaker 3 I mean, in the last couple of weeks, Vice News, bankruptcy, BuzzV news, gone, layoffs layoffs at CNN, cable ratings down,

Speaker 3 you know, Washington Post, of all people, struggling to make money and losing subscribers, you know, the New York Times succeeding, but on the back of Wordle and recipes, right?

Speaker 3 Like that is how these things are happening. And it's just, there is, there's, we're in a crisis moment.
And

Speaker 3 this is, I think, this election has the potential to be the last best chance for the traditional political media to regain the trust of some people, not all people, that's never going to come back, but some people.

Speaker 3 And if they fail that test, that could be absolutely it for journalism as we know it, the idea of a fourth estate. And the early signs are not great.
There is some great reporting happening.

Speaker 3 There are some people who are doing this very aggressively.

Speaker 3 I mean, just the fact that Philip Bumpel, Washington Post reporter, said that other media outlets shouldn't air Trump live is like a step in the right direction.

Speaker 3 The ways that CNN handled the big lie, you know, people like Jake Tapper and Abby Phillip and Dana Bash, others after the 2020 election was a step in the right direction.

Speaker 3 But there are a lot of forces pushing in the wrong way. And

Speaker 3 the temptation,

Speaker 3 a media business that's suffering financially with Donald Trump a ratings boon on the horizon is a pretty dangerous combination for the future of the industry.

Speaker 2 Pardon this is just a basic challenge, which is

Speaker 2 news is about what's new.

Speaker 2 And so much of the worst of what Donald Trump has done, I mean, he continues to do it every day, but so much of this is reminding everyone in the country what he did in the past and what he has said.

Speaker 2 Like, you could say, oh, yeah, he threw Von Hilliard's phone, whatever.

Speaker 2 He also tried to grab the steering wheel of the Secret Service vehicle to go to the Capitol and participate in the insurrection that he helped incite.

Speaker 2 Much worse than tossing the phone. But like, that's just another incident down the memory hole because we're just, you know, news is, the news cycles are now like five minutes long.

Speaker 1 I mean, if that.

Speaker 2 And the media is breaking down and Twitter's breaking down.

Speaker 2 And so it's like no one, it's, it's the challenge I think of this election is going to be continually reminding people not just of like where we are and where we could go, but where we've been and what has happened to us over the last four years in this country, especially with Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 And I don't know, you're right. I don't know if the media is equipped to do that.
And I think one of the big challenges is just some of it's not news.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, the whole thing about, oh, don't normalize Trump. He's normalized.
It's normal. We've now all lived through the last several years.
It happened. And

Speaker 2 it's a really tough challenge, even if the media were at their best.

Speaker 3 As institutions in this country lose trust in power, the media, social media companies, business, political parties, more and more responsibility for saving our democracy gets pushed on the voters.

Speaker 3 This is not, we've said this before, it's not going to be Fannie Willis or alvin bragg or bob muller or jeff zucker or definitely not gonna be jeff zucker of the

Speaker 2 cnn the new york times who are going to stop the march of maga extremism it'll be the voters in this next election that is it that is the that is the only option to volunteer and organize and donate you know that's not necessarily fair it's not fun to hear it's tiring it's exhausting but like that's where we are and it's either go do the work or let this happen so um all right let's talk about the latest debt ceiling drama, one crisis to another.

Speaker 2 On May 9th, Joe Biden will be meeting at the White House with the four top congressional leaders, Kevin McCarthy, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell.

Speaker 2 The President and Democrats are holding strong to their principle of not negotiating with hostage takers, but they're reportedly looking at three different options for how to avoid default.

Speaker 2 One, a discharge petition. Two, declaring the debt limit unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.

Speaker 2 And three, a two-track strategy where Biden and McCarthy cut a deal on the budget that's separate from a debt ceiling increase.

Speaker 2 Let's explain each of these scenarios and then talk about the pros and cons of each and the likelihood of each.

Speaker 2 Let's start with a discharge petition. How does it work?

Speaker 3 A discharge petition is a method available to the majority of House members to force the Speaker to hold something, to hold a vote on a bill. Now, that requires a...

Speaker 3 218 members, a majority of the House, to sign the petition.

Speaker 3 And there's a lot of, and one of the reasons why people were very skeptical a discharge petition could be used to avoid default was it is a very time-consuming and logistics heavy process.

Speaker 3 The bill has to be on the calendar for 30 days. There has to be a rule.
Then there, then there's time after you get, then you have to get the signatures and there's some time after the signatures.

Speaker 3 But for all the people who say, I think often unfairly, the Democrats don't know what they're doing, they handled this brilliantly.

Speaker 3 Last month, more than a month ago, They had Marc Dessa,

Speaker 3 who is a very good but relatively anonymous congressman, introduce a bill called the Break the Gridlock Act, just filed it. No one paid attention.
It sat there for 30 days.

Speaker 3 And now we're going to be able to start getting signatures on this petition on May 16th. It will become ripe.
And that will get, and if you assume that the date is early June,

Speaker 3 this is not easy to do. There are challenges, which we'll talk about.
But the logistics, the Democrats solve the logistics problem by thinking ahead and being very smart and strategic about it.

Speaker 2 It's good that it's a shell of a bill, too. And here's why.
So you need a majority to sign on to the bill

Speaker 2 in order to discharge the petition and hold a vote, which means that Democrats would need a couple of House Republicans. Five.
Right now, five, five House Republicans.

Speaker 2 Right now, even the House Republicans most likely to say they would side with the Democrats on this, like Don Bacon of Nebraska, right?

Speaker 2 One of the more moderate Republicans, has said no clean debt ceiling increase still. Like they're still against that.

Speaker 2 But you could imagine some kind of negotiation between Democrats and some of the more moderate Republicans that if we get to the break glass moment, then the Republicans sign.

Speaker 2 Like if Kevin McCarthy and Biden talks collapse, if no one can come to an agreement and we're heading towards the disaster, you could imagine some of these Republicans signing on with Democrats for maybe some other fig leaf negotiation.

Speaker 2 And then you put that all in the shell of a bill because the actual bill hasn't been written yet. And then you're off to the races.
So it's a possible one.

Speaker 2 Again, the biggest challenge left. They have solved the logistics challenge.
The biggest challenge left is they don't have five Republicans yet on this bill.

Speaker 2 All right, what about Biden declaring the debt limit is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment? This is part of the 14th Amendment. Here's what it says.

Speaker 2 The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

Speaker 2 This is what the clause reads. The 14th Amendment, it's obviously the amendment after the Civil War that grants citizenship to everyone in the country.

Speaker 2 It's seen as a civil rights amendment, obviously, but it also included this provision about public debt because they wanted to protect the public debt held by the federal government and prohibit the payment of debt held by the Confederate states should they regain power in the Congress again.

Speaker 2 So it was done because of that, but the language is there. And so a lot of legal scholars have said, well, if

Speaker 2 the debt shall not be questioned, then the debt limit is unconstitutional. So what do you think about that play? Biden just goes out there and says the debt limit is unconstitutional.

Speaker 3 Here's the problem with this approach. I think it is at best a legal jump ball.
You can find legal scholars who say it shows the debt limit is unconstitutional.

Speaker 3 You can say that it absolutely does not. And so that means it will head to the courts.

Speaker 3 And do we really want to put the fate of the global economy in the hands of these courts in a process that ends in the Supreme Court?

Speaker 3 And even if you get the right ruling in the beginning, so let's just, let's go, let's, let's say it's that. Let's say we get to the end.
And I guess this is maybe how this could play out.

Speaker 3 If there is no solution, we cross X date. X date is the date when we have no more money to pay any more bills.
And the United States just

Speaker 3 yelling at the president, just say, we're going to keep paying the bills because of the 14th Amendment. And so therefore, that could stave off potential collapse for a few days.

Speaker 3 And people, veterans, social security recipients, others could continue to get get those chests could continue to flow. And that would prevent like real individual harm to people.

Speaker 3 But what could happen very shortly after that is someone files a suit, court stays it, says you can't do it, and now we're in crisis.

Speaker 3 Or you have competing rulings and it goes right to the Supreme Court. And how do the markets respond to that level of uncertainty?

Speaker 1 Both our markets and across the world.

Speaker 1 Yeah, is my guess.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, even while you're waiting for the Supreme Court to decide, the markets go crazy because the cost of borrowing suddenly skyrockets because you don't want to issue, issue if you're going to issue debt or buy debt and then the court later decides that that debt actually shall be questioned

Speaker 3 um then they're going to so they're going to it's going to increase the cost of borrowing and the markets will go crazy crazy yeah and not just our markets all across the entire world because u.s debt is up until recently has been seen as the safest financial instrument in the world and so if that is all of a sudden in the hands of Harlan Crowe's buddy, like, how are they going to respond to that?

Speaker 3 And so this is, it is not,

Speaker 3 this is a break glass solution that may not not really be a solution, but a lot of people are just like, do this and it's all over.

Speaker 3 Or we know we've talked about this before, you know, print the trillion dollar coin and it's all over.

Speaker 3 And that's not the case because there is a process here to keep the markets in line and the courts have a lot, will have a lot to say about it.

Speaker 2 I will say I saw one suggestion that was interesting to me, which is instead of...

Speaker 2 coming out and saying the 14th amendment means the debt limit is unconstitutional once we hit the date, you actually do it like next week week and then the court and then the case goes to the court while there is still time to exercise other options.

Speaker 2 And so the markets don't go necessarily as crazy because we have the time to wait for the court to decide before we hit X date.

Speaker 3 I am really out of my depth here, but isn't there a question of standing there? Because don't you have to show injury to get before the court?

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, you know what I mean? So you could, you could sue Janet yelling.

Speaker 3 Let's punt this up to the real specific

Speaker 3 scrutiny.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 If you can hear us,

Speaker 2 please let us know.

Speaker 2 Did we consider this in 2011 in the White House? Like, what did Geithner say about this? What did the lawyer say about this?

Speaker 3 I mean, I feel like I might be stepping on volume two of Promised Land.

Speaker 1 I think you got time.

Speaker 3 There was a, as I recall it, and if I'm struggling to remember 2020, a dark year, try to imagine remembering 2011, a quite,

Speaker 3 not as dark as 2020, but not a fun year, for say the least.

Speaker 3 There was a sense that beyond the legal arguments, that if President Obama had done either the trillion-dollar coin or the 14th Amendment, he would be opening himself up to impeachment.

Speaker 3 And there was a sense that

Speaker 3 there would be, it would not,

Speaker 3 we were operating in a world of different norms back then.

Speaker 3 And I don't know what the lawyers thought, but this was never a live option that was really being seriously considered, if I recall correctly.

Speaker 2 Yeah, impeachment would be bad. They're looking for an excuse anyway.
So what do you think about the two-track strategy idea?

Speaker 3 I don't, I heard you guys talking about this on Tuesday.

Speaker 3 The two-track strategy is really just kicking the can down the road.

Speaker 2 Because ultimately, the reason you're very, very Congress thing to do. Which is great.

Speaker 3 Like if like, let's buy more time, buy more time, buy more time. If there's a way to do that, and that could be something that comes out of this is to try to align

Speaker 3 the debt limit and the

Speaker 3 budget and the government funding bills.

Speaker 3 The problem with that for Democrats is now you're just going to have this negotiation again, but you've handed the leverage on government funding to the Republicans because you're once again doing it under the ticking clock of default.

Speaker 3 This is the the situation Obama found himself in in 2013. People forget this.
The government was actually shut down during the debt limit crisis because the two were aligned.

Speaker 3 Because they had actually, after the 2011 crisis, started to align them to make it easier to lift the debt limit. And then the Republicans found a reason not to do that again.
And so, yes,

Speaker 3 you'd have another three months to possibly come up with a solution, but it's a pretty narrow menu.

Speaker 3 And all of the options, we've been talking about it for months and all of the options suck for someone.

Speaker 3 Either Democrats swallow something they don't want, McCarthy loses his job, something goes to the courts. And so

Speaker 3 let's move the crisis further along and hope that something changes, but I don't suspect that a lot will change.

Speaker 1 Here's the thing, though.

Speaker 2 Isn't the Biden administration and Democrats going to have to negotiate? Forget about the debt. Say there was no debt ceiling crisis.

Speaker 2 They're going to have to negotiate over the budget and government funding eventually, and there could be a shutdown eventually, and they'll have to get out of the shutdown eventually.

Speaker 2 And the only way to get out of the shutdown is to make some kind of deal about the budget that enough Republicans can live with so that it passes the House. That is true.

Speaker 2 So like at some point, at some point, they're going to have to negotiate over the budget.

Speaker 3 You just, the whole point of the not negotiating stance is you do not want to have the conversation where your opponent has a button to push to blow up the economy if you don't come to agreement on their terms.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 But they will have a button to put, but they could have a button to push on the government shutdown, which is not as serious as breaching the debt limit, but still something that you're going to have to get out of.

Speaker 3 Right. Right, but that's been true every October 1 since the beginning of the appropriations process.

Speaker 3 And so that, and we have the government to shut down before we have a process for doing it. Like we know we, the federal government knows how to.

Speaker 3 manage that process to minimize disruptions as much as possible. It's still very painful for a lot of people.
There's a history of ensuring that federal workers get paid back afterwards.

Speaker 3 There's a way to prioritize the people who are most volunteer on situation. No such processes or experience exists for default.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying this because I could see a scenario where the Biden folks and the Democrats were like, look, we negotiated a deal around the budget so we could avoid a shutdown.

Speaker 2 And that was separate from this other negotiation we had where we said, all right, lift the debt ceiling for a year. And we kept it separate.
Like we said, great.

Speaker 2 Now, I guess that only works if there's an agreement.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's

Speaker 3 the, yes, that, that is, that is probably likely how this ends if it ends in something other than global financial collapse.

Speaker 3 But the timing of that is tricky and there's a lot of pitfalls to it. And if you have months, maybe you can figure it out without approaching X date.

Speaker 3 But if you end up approaching the X date, you're right back where you are right now.

Speaker 2 We are getting close, people. We are getting close.
There are not that many days on the congressional calendar between now and X date, which people think.

Speaker 2 people meaning the Treasury Secretary thinks could come in early June, as early as June 1st. So

Speaker 1 buckle up.

Speaker 2 Buckle up. When we come back, Chastin Buddigej stops by the studio to talk about his new book with Love It.

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Speaker 1 Joining us today, he is a teacher, the first gentleman of transportation, and the author of the book, I Have Something to Tell You, Chastin Budijej, welcome to the pod. Thanks.
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 All right, so I feel like we're in the middle of a re-examination right now for kids that were born in the 80s in this period of growing acceptance, but not acceptance.

Speaker 1 And I think this book is about what it means to grapple with being gay when there were, in some ways, sort of bromides of tolerance, but a deeper way in which being gay was still something to be afraid of or afraid you were.

Speaker 1 The kids today, they have no idea what it was like.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, that was one of the things that I had to keep thinking about while I was writing it.
It was like, will the youths get this? Like, will it mean anything?

Speaker 1 Will this kind of story matter? Will it resonate? Remember when Richard Hatch won Survivor, that first spoiler alert for season one of Survivor from the year 1999?

Speaker 1 Did you watch Survivor in 1999 when Richard Hatch won? I think all of my parents were big Survivor fans. I'm sure I watched it.
Do you think it was good or bad that

Speaker 1 a nudist gay man won Survivor and then didn't pay taxes?

Speaker 1 Okay, well, I don't know anything about that, so I don't know that. So he won Survivor.
He was out. He was a real snake.
He was the first person to really crack that you could kind of like, you know.

Speaker 1 You could like make alliances and stuff.

Speaker 1 He was really ahead of the curve. That's why he won the first season.
And he was gay and it was a big deal, but he was also a nudist.

Speaker 1 And then he didn't pay taxes on the money and he had to get in trouble. I think he may have gone to jail.

Speaker 3 Didn't he go to jail?

Speaker 1 We think Richard Hatch may have gone to jail for not paying taxes. I mean, you should pay your taxes.
So I wonder, it's like, you know, the level of exposure you get from Richard Hatch.

Speaker 1 Was he out on Survivor? Yes, he was out on Survivor is a huge deal. It's 1999.
Wow.

Speaker 1 And he's unapologetic, but he's also a nudist and making people a little bit uncomfortable by being naked all the time.

Speaker 3 Huh. But gay people are complicated.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, I guess those are two completely different things. And that's the most important thing.

Speaker 1 But to your point in the book about not having gay role models, when there aren't that many out-gay people, all of a sudden Richard Hatch is a representative of the gay community.

Speaker 1 There aren't a lot of other people who are out on television. Yeah, I could see.
And he's a gay nudus who doesn't pay his taxes. Yeah, I can see how people would quickly label someone like that.

Speaker 1 The same thing, like Will and Grace. Yeah.
You know, I loved Will and Grace, but Will and Grace was so problematic for me because if I laughed too much, I was afraid that my family would think

Speaker 1 I liked it a little bit too much, and there might be a reason behind that.

Speaker 1 But then, of course, you know, Will and Grace only

Speaker 1 showed gay men portrayed in certain ways, you know, or there's only certain types of gay men that you could be, or we had to be the butt of the joke

Speaker 1 to make everybody else comfortable. Right.
You know, Jack is fun and loving life. And then Will kind of is lonely and single and quite unhappy a lot of the time.
But successful. He's a professional.

Speaker 1 So he's accepted because he's this like suit-wearing, successful man who puts, you know, career above love. And, and I think that was a

Speaker 1 whatever that's a soapbox that we probably won't have time for today.

Speaker 1 Do you think that the gay community was hurt by the number of turtlenecks people were wearing on those shows? Because if you have a short neck, turtlenecks aren't for you. Turtlenecks aren't for me.

Speaker 1 Are you just upset because you can't wear a turtleneck? I am upset that I can't wear a turtle. You can't wear a turtleneck.
You can't wear a turtleneck?

Speaker 1 Are you part of the short necked community? I don't, maybe that's what they would tell me at the department store, but I feel like everyone rocks this like suit turtleneck look. I can't do it.

Speaker 1 I can't do it at all. Do you feel that your head looks too low? I just feel like I'll be funky.
Why do you think that is? Is it because you have a short neck? Should we talk about it?

Speaker 1 I think it's because I have a really short neck. I think I have a really short neck, and I think the turtlenecks on those shows really kind of hurt me.

Speaker 1 I'm really sorry about that. Thanks for saying that.
All of the things going on in the 80s and 90s. I really don't like the turtlenecks.

Speaker 1 So who were, you know, you talked about not having a lot of gay role models in the book. Who stood out to you growing up? Like, who did you look to? I started.

Speaker 1 Well, I didn't really have that many role models. You know, there was Will and Grace.
And of course, at this time, I also didn't know

Speaker 1 that some of these celebrities that I had grown up with were gay

Speaker 1 because that was also something that wasn't talked about. But then Ellen.

Speaker 1 They all were. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Or some of them, you know, still have to be.
But Ellen was huge because my mom loved Ellen.

Speaker 1 And that to me was like a little sliver of hope. Yeah.
Like maybe,

Speaker 1 you know, she's a successful person. She makes my mom laugh.
They're okay with that. And we don't really talk about the lesbian thing.
It's funny that I wrote, I brought,

Speaker 1 I was going to ask you about Ellen, too, because I didn't realize how much Ellen meant to me until Ellen was getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama.

Speaker 1 And I realized in watching her get that medal that I went through this whole cycle of finding out Ellen was going to come out, watching it, watching the whole news cycle, being incredibly riveted and invested in it and never saying it out loud.

Speaker 1 Because it wasn't for another couple of years that I ended up coming out.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't until I saw Ellen accepting that Medal of Freedom that I'd never even spoken out loud about how much that had meant to me at the time.

Speaker 1 Did you talk about it or was it just an entirely internal experience? Talk about Ellen? Ellen. Like, yeah, in watching Ellen come out,

Speaker 1 you didn't say a word about it. It was just something that you experienced completely privately.
Yeah, so I didn't, you you know, I didn't come out until I was 18.

Speaker 1 You know, these are conversations I've had with my family after the fact. And there are so many signs along the way, right? Like I definitely should have known.

Speaker 1 And it's because we didn't talk about them. Like we didn't talk about this huge moment,

Speaker 1 you know, in pop culture when Ellen came out

Speaker 1 until much later. And that was really emotional for me, too, watching her get that medal.

Speaker 1 Because I think some people may assume that we've progressed so rapidly. And then when you really take a moment and look at history, just like

Speaker 1 the last 34 years of my life, like what has happened, like being born at the tail end of the AIDS epidemic to today, where like understanding that I'm in Washington with a partner who serves, you know,

Speaker 1 and that would not have been the reality 30 years ago, like watching Ellen get that medal in 20 years and understanding that like she lost everything when she came out,

Speaker 1 when her character came out, when she came out, that so much has happened in that very short period of time, but I feel like our memories don't keep up with that timeline, understanding that that timeline is actually very, very short.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it is amazing. And I think one thing that

Speaker 1 I think about when it comes to the amount of change we've had is even as there was this

Speaker 1 conversation around shifting norms around accepting difference on sexual orientation, there wasn't a conversation about masculinity at all.

Speaker 1 And you talk about this a little bit in the book, about like not wanting to play football, but wanting to go fishing, not feeling totally like you're one of the boys.

Speaker 1 And I do wonder, like

Speaker 1 that, that does seem to be changing now. But you talk a little bit about that, like the kind of your relationship to just forget sexual orientation, just masculinity and being a you know,

Speaker 1 oh, yeah, I mean, masculinity had to look a very certain way. You know, the circles that I was growing up in in church and 4-H and,

Speaker 1 our high school was like the school where people would occasionally drive their snowmobiles to school, like their tractors, right? Or, you know,

Speaker 1 people who clung to like very certain idols of

Speaker 1 manhood or masculinity. And I just didn't see a space for me.
And

Speaker 1 sometimes I feel like I have to extend them like a

Speaker 1 a shred of pity too, because I feel like we're all just trying to blend in. And like the, I didn't really have a group to get caught up in and some of them just got caught up in

Speaker 1 that, right? Yeah, it's

Speaker 1 like performance. I wonder like,

Speaker 1 I guess like I'd be interested to hear you talk a little bit about like what you want the younger generation to take away from

Speaker 1 this experience of growing up at a time when you really were expected to conform. Like that was an you felt that pressure every day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean the

Speaker 1 I certainly wrote the book from my experience, so it was the experience of a gay person conforming and surviving, coming out and

Speaker 1 now reflecting back on that. But I think the book is for any young person who's ever felt like a fish out of water or a person who has felt like they're forced to conform.

Speaker 1 And I also think it'll be a great resource for teachers and parents to understand what young people are going through or what they could be going through.

Speaker 1 And you might be unaware of that.

Speaker 1 and also the the pain and the hurt uh that is inflicted upon young people by ignorance and the good that can come from having these conversations and making space for everyone

Speaker 1 so uh

Speaker 1 i want to have i have some um silly questions for you but before we get there those weren't the silly questions no just buckle up

Speaker 1 the turtleneck was a silly question that was it that was more of a cigarette

Speaker 1 i was just an aside that came to me in the moment uh

Speaker 1 you know you go through your first round of coming out. You know, you had a Bush bumper sticker on your car at some point.
Is that right? Yeah. And that came off.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Where you got a new different car, but you don't think that way anymore, obviously.
But you kind of go through that first round.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you kind of, I don't know. I know for me, I think it's true for a lot of people when they first come out.
They go through their kind of

Speaker 1 zealot of the convert kind of phase right at the beginning. But for me, it's taken me till

Speaker 1 40,

Speaker 1 an age that I currently am, to realize how much internalized homophobia and more than that, like internalized performance of masculinity I carry around even to this day, even in moments where I'm using a voice that isn't as effeminate as I might otherwise have used.

Speaker 1 Our podcast voices. This is my, I mean, I don't know.
This is our podcast voice, but I don't know. I don't know if, is this as gay as my voice could be? Maybe, but it could be gayer.

Speaker 1 I totally, I totally know what you're saying. Yeah.
I drop into my podcast voice sometimes. But see, but see, but even as you say it, your podcast voice is a straighter voice.
It's a more

Speaker 1 voice. And even when I'm asking a serious, I'm getting sillier now.
My voice is getting bigger and gayer. But when I ask a question about something important, my voice becomes like this.

Speaker 1 I don't know that that's natural. I think that might be a performance.

Speaker 1 I'm wondering if you feel that, that even now, you're writing this book about sort of what it means to try to figure out how to be yourself.

Speaker 1 But even now, don't you, do you feel right now that you can ever kind of be outside of the bounds you set when you were a kid, when you were living by these fears?

Speaker 1 Is that the gayest your voice can be? Oh, no.

Speaker 1 It can be gayer. You should see me on karaoke night.
See, it can be gayer. We can all be gayer.
We can use gayer voices.

Speaker 1 I'm going to use a gayer voice for the rest of this episode.

Speaker 1 I think we're constantly coming to terms with who we thought we had to be when we were younger, who we thought we could be when we came out, and then the space in between where you're like,

Speaker 1 still policing yourself. Yeah.
Are you still doing that? You're still policing all the time.

Speaker 1 Well, also because of, you know, where I'm at in life, and I know that so many people are watching everything that I do and everything that my family does. And

Speaker 1 I'm, you know,

Speaker 1 pairing that with the absolute destruction of morality on the other side of the aisle right now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 understanding that how they will weaponize my family, my children, and my performance of masculinity or identity. And I'm conscious of that more than I would like to admit, because that's a

Speaker 1 big deal.

Speaker 1 I certainly never thought that

Speaker 1 I would be in this chair one day.

Speaker 1 I never thought that my family would be... who we are today.

Speaker 1 Just this weekend,

Speaker 1 Pete and I were pushing the stroller and there was like these corner preachers in our neighborhood.

Speaker 2 And we walked by

Speaker 1 and like we had just gone to a little indie bookstore celebrating like indie bookstore Saturday. And we like sat down with the kids and like picked out some books and like did

Speaker 1 some coloring sheets. No drag brunch.

Speaker 1 Tara wasn't performing on Saturday.

Speaker 1 But you know, you're having a great morning. like

Speaker 1 celebrating our neighborhood and going to this little store and and then we're just like pushing the stroller. We're going to go to another indie bookstore.
And these corner preachers are like,

Speaker 1 Look at these homosexuals. Like, those aren't their kids.
And they're just like yelling in their microphones at us. And then I'm in my head, like, what do I want to say as a parent?

Speaker 1 What do I want to say as a human? And what do I want to say as a gay man? You know?

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 and then, of course, you know, I'm like,

Speaker 1 I don't want to say anything because I don't want to give this person a platform and I don't want to, I don't want this person to know that I care about what they have to think, you know, but

Speaker 1 it just sometimes it just comes not creeping in but crashing in but so that's when it's crashing in but what about the times when it's not so clear like you you were hinting at it a little bit I'm actually genuinely curious about like moments when you feel this sort of creeping heteronormativity, this desire to make sure that you're

Speaker 1 being a, not just being good parents, not just being

Speaker 1 a good spouse, but doing it in a way that is good for the movement, that helps the cause amongst people that might not be totally comfortable yet. What does that look like?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that one's really confusing to me because I remember,

Speaker 1 like, I remember being on the cover of Time magazine, which was like a

Speaker 1 life shock. And then, like, the conversation around it was like, oh, they're just performing

Speaker 1 heteronormativity.

Speaker 1 And, like, to me, I was like,

Speaker 1 I just have my armor on my partner, you know, posing for this photo. Like, I'm not trying to perform anything.
It's just who I am.

Speaker 1 Same thing with the kids. I've always wanted kids.
I've always wanted to be a dad. In fact, I sort of knew I wanted to be a dad more than I knew I wanted to be a teacher or a writer.

Speaker 1 It's just something I've always wanted. And now I have this great family.
and a loving spouse and two really cool kids.

Speaker 1 And I never get around to sending the Christmas cards, but if I did, they'd probably be cute. But it's not like

Speaker 1 some that's not something I feel like I'm performing, but I understand why people assume that, but also like, can't

Speaker 1 queer people just be families too? Like, what's heteronormative about it? Can't we just also just want to raise a family and be a family? Right, right.

Speaker 1 But it is, there's, um, I do sometimes think, you talked about this a pet, that, like, I sometimes you

Speaker 1 and Pete, you especially Pete, gets,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 certainly gay enough to be despised on Fox News and to be held out an example and to be made, like, you know, to be used as a cudgel during a natural disaster or a train derailment in a way that no previous Secretary of Transportation would ever be used.

Speaker 1 You're having kids being held up, paternity leave or parental leave being treated as

Speaker 1 some horrible thing to take, even though everybody takes it.

Speaker 1 So draws

Speaker 1 that acrimony. And yet, because there's on the other side this sense that what you're doing is criticized as being not gay enough, right?

Speaker 1 That he's not Met Gala gay, he's McKinsey gay, and that that's something that means there's no, there's not the same level of, well, it's not as fun or it's not as exciting to us anymore.

Speaker 1 It doesn't get the same level of kind of love. from the left either.
Do you find that?

Speaker 1 Does that ring true to you?

Speaker 1 I certainly am on social media. So, oh, that's a mistake.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I also get it. Like,

Speaker 1 I get wanting to see progress happen faster. And I especially understand from when I'm talking to young people who get really frustrated

Speaker 1 about the slowness of progress in our country, where they might see someone like me come in and sit across from them and be like, you don't know what my life is like. You don't know what it's like.

Speaker 1 That's just why I try to do as much listening as I can and growing.

Speaker 1 I think think it's important that we all commit to constantly growing and listening, which I don't think the other side of the aisle gets.

Speaker 1 Like with this stuff, like with masculinity, the culture wars, especially trans Americans, rather than like pause and listen to the wider American medical community, advocacy groups, they've just like built up a wall around them, right?

Speaker 1 Like we're clinging to like what we know. We don't want to do anything different.

Speaker 1 And I see it differently. All right.
Before we let you go, we're doing rapid fire. Okay.
All right, let's get into it. Are you going to the Eris tour? The what? The Aeros Tour.

Speaker 3 Taylor Swift.

Speaker 1 No, I couldn't get tickets.

Speaker 1 Favorite Taylor Swift song. Oh.

Speaker 1 And you can get tickets. Come on.
He can get tickets.

Speaker 1 Pull some strings, huh? I saw a video this morning. It was like a dad dancing with his daughter at a Taylor Swift concert, and there are all these empty chairs next to them.
It's like, excuse me.

Speaker 1 Scalpers. Where was this and when was this? Okay, favorite Taylor Swift song.
Mine's Exile. I love that song, Exile.
Really? Yeah, I like the moody stuff. I like poignancy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I like Mean All Too Well, All Too Well, so great. That was a good breakup song for me, too.
What's the worst gift Pete has ever given you?

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 He actually didn't, I dropped so many hints that I thought it would be really cute to give each other a gift on our wedding day.

Speaker 1 So many hints. Like, I really like this tradition that I've heard from people.

Speaker 1 And so I got him cufflinks, and I had a friend, like, sneak into his, you know, room the day of the wedding and like leave the card in the cufflinks.

Speaker 1 That's awful. Yeah.
And nothing. Nothing.

Speaker 1 And I will never ever let them forget it. What is the gayest thing?

Speaker 1 You won't let them forget it. What is the gayest thing you and Pete watch on TV?

Speaker 1 Well, we don't watch a lot of TV, but I guess the White Lotus, I'm a big Jennifer Coolidge fam. I don't know.
Okay, we'll count it. That's gay enough.
We'll count it.

Speaker 1 You both watch White Lotus together? Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 I mean, busy guy, we don't watch a lot of TV.

Speaker 1 Mostly books, huh?

Speaker 1 We don't watch books on the TV. We usually watch it.

Speaker 1 All right. What's one gay value you you hope to impart to your children? A gay value? Yeah, a gay value.

Speaker 1 Don't wear white after Labor Day. Don't mix blue and navy.

Speaker 1 Love each other. I don't know.
You tell me. It could mean anything you want it to me.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 I was trying to raise them to be like kind, inclusive people, but I guess they do like their fair share of show tunes right now. Okay.
We do show tunes at breakfast. So, like, no, Andrew Lloyd-Weber.

Speaker 1 That could be like a rule.

Speaker 1 Why are gay guys such bad drivers? Are they? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're not aware of that? Is this a stigma I don't know about? You know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about.
Okay. Well,

Speaker 1 why don't you answer the question? I don't know. I actually don't know why I'm such a bad driver.
If I knew, I'd be a little bit better at it. Huh? I think I'm a great driver.

Speaker 1 But everyone thinks they're a great driver. That's the whole problem.
I got two kids in the back of my minivan. I know I'm a good driver.
It's a minivan. Oh, it's a minivan.

Speaker 1 It's a plug-in hybrid minivan. A plug-in hybrid minivan.
You know it is. I don't know.
I think that's a hate crime.

Speaker 1 What as a kid did you see on TV that you completely loved, but knew on some level you shouldn't because it wasn't what boys loved?

Speaker 1 Mine is when Miss Piggy and Joan Rivers go crazy with the makeup in Muppets Take Manhattan. Remember that? Do you remember that? I feel like you got way too much time to prepare for this.

Speaker 1 I thought of this five seconds before this interview. Olivia can attest.
Muppets take Manhattan. Miss Piggy, she's disappointed in her Kermie.
She comes back all despondent.

Speaker 1 Joan Rivers gives her a makeover. They lose it.
They get fired from the department store. Do you remember that?

Speaker 1 No. Are you gay or not? I know.
Well, you tell all these great stories.

Speaker 1 Like, do you understand how, like, closeted and dramatic my childhood was like i was probably mucking a barn and like and you were cleaning the fish you were doing the fish things

Speaker 1 and goats with a goats clean

Speaker 1 were you cleaning the i'm not from look michigan i know where it is yeah you got to watch joan rivers and miss piggy and they're just on television like turn it off and go outside and clean the barn and and so that's what you did you cleaned the barn yeah But God,

Speaker 1 what was the question? The gayest thing I want to say. What's the gayest thing you saw as a kid on TV, but you knew you weren't supposed to like? Spice World? Okay, that's good.
Spice World counts.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's camp.
That's

Speaker 1 distressed.

Speaker 1 When I was at summer camp, I didn't like playing all the sports and I wanted to come home.

Speaker 1 And the owner of the camp called my mother and said, for boys like Jonathan, that's why we do the musicals.

Speaker 1 Care to comment?

Speaker 1 No, but

Speaker 1 I just want to go back to the conversation about, are you gay or are you not gay enough? And then you just asked me if I'm gay because I didn't see Miss Piggy and Joan Rivers on television.

Speaker 1 Hey, I want you to know something. I just feel like like the bus came out of nowhere.
I got thrown right underneath it.

Speaker 1 Well, if there's a bus coming out of nowhere, talk to your husband. That sounds like a transportation problem to me.
I have never said that I wasn't a hypocrite.

Speaker 2 I'm a proud hypocrite.

Speaker 1 I don't always make sense and I'm not coherent. And I stand by that.

Speaker 1 That's good of you. Do you think this went okay? How do you feel about this?

Speaker 1 This was certainly an experience that we all shared together.

Speaker 1 In this room.

Speaker 1 How do you feel like it went? I just want to know that you felt good about it. Oh, yeah.
So you didn't get to go on.

Speaker 1 This is stuff I could talk about all day, though. I think these are really important conversations.
So I appreciate having it. And you couldn't go on Kelly Clarkson because of the writer's strike.

Speaker 1 Yes. So now this is like

Speaker 1 supporting and we're supporting unions, but this is, so this became like you flew out here and now you're just basically doing this.

Speaker 1 Come on, John.

Speaker 1 Don't be mean to yourself like that.

Speaker 1 Anything else we should talk about? The book is I Have Something to Tell You.

Speaker 1 Thanks for having the conversation because I also think it's really important that you have this platform and it's great that you get to talk about whatever I want.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, but I'm sure that it's important to you too to reflect on some of these things.

Speaker 1 I'm glad people listening finally found out that I'm gay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think this is going to be a bombshell for a lot of your listeners. And my parents, oh my God, my parents listen to this.

Speaker 1 Mom?

Speaker 1 Dad? I have something to tell you. I'm still

Speaker 1 gay. Oh, yeah, you did the book title.
Thank you. All right, let's leave it there.
I think we should stop now. Chast and Buddha Jed, everybody.
Thanks.

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Speaker 2 All right, before we go, a little coda on the saga behind Tucker Carlson's firing last month.

Speaker 2 The New York Times just reported that during Discovery and Dominion's lawsuit against Fox, they found a text that Tucker sent his producer just hours after the January 6th insurrection, where he talks about watching a video online where a group of white men attacked a so-called Antifa kid.

Speaker 2 Here's what the text says. It was three against one, at least.
Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable, obviously. It's not how white men fight.

Speaker 2 Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they'd hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid.
I could taste it.

Speaker 2 Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off. This isn't good for me.
I'm becoming something I don't want to be.

Speaker 1 Becoming.

Speaker 2 Becoming, yeah. So what do you think? Is this believable as the final straw that caused Fox to fire Tucker?

Speaker 3 Absolutely fucking not.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Why do you think not?

Speaker 3 Because the entire

Speaker 3 sentiment behind that text has been the plot line of Fox News for 20 years.

Speaker 3 It is a corporation who has been sowing racial division for profit and political gain since it showed up on the air. That is what they do.

Speaker 3 Now, maybe they have a rule that says when it comes to racism, show, don't tell. And if you speak the words out loud, you'll get fired.

Speaker 3 But this idea that somehow the, you know, the thoughtful people at Fox News were shocked by this revelation. They're not watching the fucking show.
That's what the show is about.

Speaker 3 I mean, there is a long-term.

Speaker 2 Well, it's funny you should say that because, you know, we, we're no New York Times here, but we can report that our crack team at Crooked has discovered more explosive audio of Tucker that somehow slipped right past Fox's executives.

Speaker 2 Let's take a listen.

Speaker 3 White supremacy, that's the problem.

Speaker 8 This is a There's no evidence that white supremacists were responsible for what happened on January 6th. That's a lie.

Speaker 3 We have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided.

Speaker 8 So it might be time for Joe Biden to let us know what Kentaji Brown Jackson's LSAT score was. What the hell is he doing the LSATs? I mean, everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it.

Speaker 10 Ooh, the white replacement theory. No, no, no.
This is a voting rights question. I have less political power because they're importing a brand new electorate.

Speaker 8 Why should I sit back and take that?

Speaker 9 And the truth is, unregulated mass immigration has badly hurt this country's natural landscape.

Speaker 8 We're still not precisely sure how George Floyd died.

Speaker 7 Very few unarmed black men are killed by white cops these days.

Speaker 3 Where's George Floyd when you need him?

Speaker 7 The only job training program this administration has gotten behind in two and a half years is getting black people to sow more weed in the cities.

Speaker 2 Lovely. Just lovely.

Speaker 1 Just

Speaker 2 I will say,

Speaker 2 Zach Bochamp at Vox had a good piece about this.

Speaker 2 And basically, his argument is both the texts and the show are racist, racist intent.

Speaker 2 But the difference is what he says on the show is intended to make white people think that they're the victims of reverse racism, liberal elitism, Democrats.

Speaker 2 importing a new electorate just to win an election. And what he said in the text is just

Speaker 2 white people are better than black people, essentially, is what he said in the text. And there's a,

Speaker 2 again, there's racist intent to both. One on the show is a strategy to make white people think, oh, you're not the racists.
They're being racist against you.

Speaker 2 And in the text, it's just, oh, no, no, no, white people wouldn't act like that. That's just the behavior of non-white people.

Speaker 2 And so I do wonder if for the Fox executives, they were like, well, that's, if that comes out in court, that's too, it's too honest.

Speaker 2 It's too much of a pulling back the veil for Tucker.

Speaker 3 Well, it's also the rooting for the guy to be killed.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's the other thing that's sort of gotten lost in this whole thing. Like, I realized at the end he said, but then I realized this is, I shouldn't be becoming this person.

Speaker 2 But he's sitting there with fucking wanting this kid to be killed and saying he could taste it. So, like, yeah, someone who's that fucking violent as your most popular primetime cable host, come on.

Speaker 3 I just, at the end of the day, believe that the only reason that they fired Tucker Carlson was because they believed that he was going to hurt them financially.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Oh, I think that.
Oh, I think that even if this text was the one that did it, they would think that this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that that's what it is. It's not moral.
Yes, it's not moral outrage.

Speaker 2 Oh, no, no, it's not moral. Yeah, you think like Paul, your buddy Paul Ryan was on the board there and he was like, this is it.
I must take a stand.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no,

Speaker 2 obviously it's all financial, but I do wonder if it's just like there was a number of things around Tucker and this was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back. I could see that.

Speaker 3 If you remember back in 2018, they fired one of the executives in charge of news and editorial because he was so upset at the diversity of the U.S.

Speaker 3 Winter Olympic team that he wrote an op-ed about it and it was just so bigoted and homophobic in every way, shape, or form that they had to fire him.

Speaker 3 But even though all of the underpinning themes of that op-ed ran through the coverage every single day, but it's when you, if you just say the words out loud in a way that gets you caught, if you lose the subtlety to your racism and your grievance politics, et cetera, then you can get fired.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 it's not the grievance politics and the racism that upsets them.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 2 we'll see Tucker when he hosts the first Republican presidential debate.

Speaker 2 Part of that story also, by the way, said he wants to do this because he wants to be, quote, more than a podcaster.

Speaker 1 Tough, tough hit.

Speaker 2 Anyway, thank you, Chastin Budigej, for stopping by the studio. Everyone, have a great weekend, and we will talk to you next week.

Speaker 3 Bye, everyone.

Speaker 2 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 2 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 2 Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Madeline Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.

Speaker 2 And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Mia Kelman, Ben Hefco, and David Toles.

Speaker 2 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.

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