“The 2024 Dry Ron.”

Speaker 1 A massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, especially these days. Eight different settings, adjustable intensity, plus it's heated, and it just feels so good.

Speaker 1 Yes, a massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, but when it can come with a car,

Speaker 1 suddenly it seems quite practical.

Speaker 4 The all-new 2025 Volkswagen Tiguan, packed with premium features like available massaging front seats, it only feels extravagant.

Speaker 5 Welcome to Pod Save America.

Speaker 6 I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 7 I'm John Lovitt. I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 9 On today's show, Ron DeSantis kicks off his presidential campaign in waiting with a nationwide book tour.

Speaker 14 We quickly run through the week's top stories in a new segment we're calling One Line with Cocaine Bear.

Speaker 2 Jesus. Oh, we're doing it.
Okay, we're doing it there.

Speaker 18 I love it.

Speaker 21 MSNBC's Mehdi Hassan stops by to talk about how Democrats can win more arguments, and we decide who gets what in Marjorie Taylor Greene's national divorce.

Speaker 15 But first, We are relaunching Votes Ave America's no off-years program for 2023, and it's starting with that must-win Supreme Court seat that we've been talking about in Wisconsin.

Speaker 31 The election is April 4th and you can help right now wherever you live by going to votesaveamerica.com.

Speaker 23 Sign up for no off years.

Speaker 16 You can donate, make phone calls, volunteer, get involved.

Speaker 12 Votesaveamerica.com.

Speaker 28 Get to it.

Speaker 33 Get to it.

Speaker 34 Hey,

Speaker 7 get to it. Before we get to the show, guys, I ran into

Speaker 7 a very important friend over the weekend who wanted to check in,

Speaker 7 see how everyone's doing and just deliver a message to you guys.

Speaker 2 So here we go.

Speaker 34 Oh, boy.

Speaker 35 Hey, friends of the pod. It's Joe Biden.
Look, I know you haven't heard from me in a while, and there's rumblings that it's because of some lingering hard feelings from the primary. Here's the deal.

Speaker 2 This is good.

Speaker 35 Did Joe Biden like it when Lovett said he had a better chance of winning Powerball than I did of becoming president?

Speaker 34 Didn't say that.

Speaker 35 No, Joe did not.

Speaker 36 Joe didn't like it.

Speaker 35 Did Joe Biden find it funny when Favreau said my South Carolina event looked like a party at a discount funeral home? No, Joe did not.

Speaker 35 Did Joe Biden chuckle in Nevada when Tommy said the last time he saw a socialist deliver a beating like that, it was a Sandinista?

Speaker 35 Today I'm here to say that's all malarkey under the bridge. Yes.
We've got to get serious, folks. 24 is coming quick.
The soul of our nation is at stake, and I literally mean that literally.

Speaker 35 If we want to build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out,

Speaker 35 from the nethermost to the tippy top, from the center along an orthogonal radii to the periphery of the Euclidean space we call the middle class.

Speaker 36 That's good.

Speaker 35 And we have to work together. Really good.
So I'm here today to say Biden will be back on Pod Save America this year. That's not hyperbole, folks.
Biden out.

Speaker 25 Good news.

Speaker 40 Great news.

Speaker 37 That was coming up. That's pretty cool.

Speaker 41 Thanks for getting that note.

Speaker 42 I just saw him at Starbucks.

Speaker 3 He recorded right into your phone.

Speaker 18 Wow.

Speaker 22 That was obviously fake.

Speaker 7 That was artificial intelligence before anyone gets

Speaker 2 a game away.

Speaker 23 People will be clipping that and sending it around.

Speaker 22 No time. Great.

Speaker 7 From a site called 11 Labs, I I paid $5

Speaker 7 to make it, actually $22, because I blew through my limit before I got to the final text. But

Speaker 46 yeah, those jokes aren't real either.

Speaker 7 We made those up, I think. He's not agreed to come on the show, but boy, will this be dangerous in elections going forward.

Speaker 48 Apparently, there's, I think, someone on Twitter made an account and then a clip of one of the candidates in the Chicago mayoral race

Speaker 47 saying something completely wrong, and then it got sent around, and then they had to take down the tweet, and they took down the account eventually.

Speaker 22 So it's already starting.

Speaker 2 It's really going to be bad.

Speaker 50 Before we move on, I think we can handle it.

Speaker 7 Before we move on to the actual show, I actually did run into one other friend.

Speaker 38 Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Speaker 51 Tom, real quick.

Speaker 52 Hey, fellas, it's Barack.

Speaker 36 Oh, no, Christ.

Speaker 53 I just heard the great news about landing the Biden interview later this year.

Speaker 25 Congrats.

Speaker 53 Look, I was talking to Michelle about this, and she agrees. But we wanted to let you know that we too found the jokes Joe mentioned to be lacking.

Speaker 53 The arc of the moral universe is long, and it's got to bend towards better material than that.

Speaker 12 Yep.

Speaker 53 What I have said said is that it would serve you well to be funnier and to reject the notion that this is the best you can do.

Speaker 53 Fortunately, I am a much better speechwriter, podcaster, and joke writer than any of you.

Speaker 12 But unfortunately,

Speaker 29 I will be unavailable to help out going forward.

Speaker 53 Regardless, congrats on all the success at Crooked Media. Vote Save America is the shit.

Speaker 23 Obama, out.

Speaker 19 Tell me, were you an Obama speechwriter?

Speaker 40 I don't know.

Speaker 56 That sounded a lot like him.

Speaker 41 I got to say, it turns out, actually, just once he puts a a spin on it, really anybody can do it.

Speaker 17 It's tough.

Speaker 55 Telling us our material is lacking is really

Speaker 41 pretty close. I felt pretty, my stomach hurts.

Speaker 38 I got a little nut.

Speaker 50 Flashback to that immigration speech, huh?

Speaker 38 Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

Speaker 36 Hey, now.

Speaker 57 Hey, hey, come on. We're just having fun here.

Speaker 46 Should we do the show?

Speaker 7 Yeah, if I played with that website any longer over the weekend, I was getting divorced. Yeah, there was

Speaker 57 quite a few other ones going on.

Speaker 2 Anyway,

Speaker 38 all right.

Speaker 32 Let's start with the latest developments in the 2024 Mess America pageant.

Speaker 55 Ronda Sanctimonius never surrender to the local.

Speaker 3 That was so loud.

Speaker 2 A lot of clips today, guys.

Speaker 18 So literally. A lot of clips.

Speaker 59 All right.

Speaker 20 DeSantis is kicking off what appears to be a pre-presidential announcement MAGA Mediator for his new book, The Courage to Be Free, which the New York Times is calling culture war mad libs with a dull coldness at its core that reads like a politician's memoir turned out by chat GPT.

Speaker 59 DeSantis is scheduled to visit dozens of cities in the coming weeks after his political committee hosted a retreat last weekend at a Palm Beach Four Seasons just four miles from Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 18 Wow.

Speaker 20 That included everyone from Tom Cotton and former Trump Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to the libs of TikTok lady and Laura Ingram.

Speaker 20 But the other Florida man still presents a formidable challenge for DeSantis.

Speaker 20 Trump is still leading in most of the current polling, including a new one from Fox News that has the former president at 43%, DeSantis at 28%, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence of Hang Mike Pence fame at 7%,

Speaker 32 and everyone else at 2% or below, including your boy, Mike Pompeo.

Speaker 38 I know. I love it.

Speaker 59 I love that he's on there.

Speaker 32 Let's start with what's sure to become the greatest political memoir of our generation.

Speaker 48 What jumped out at you guys from DeSantis' book reviews or interviews about his book in terms of his message or strategy for for this primary.

Speaker 32 Love it?

Speaker 36 Well, first of all,

Speaker 41 these books aren't real books. I think people, these aren't, the book doesn't, the book tour doesn't exist to promote the book.
The book exists to promote the tour.

Speaker 41 Like, the reason Mike Pompeo wrote a book

Speaker 41 wasn't really to sell books, and good for him, because he didn't.

Speaker 45 Well, he bought them all.

Speaker 7 His pack bought like 40 grand worth.

Speaker 41 It's to create a reason to have press people reach out to book you on shows and talk about the content of the book, the content of the book being Mike Pompeo rules.

Speaker 41 yeah yeah it's a cynical enterprise a little book called audacity of hope that did pretty well well he's the exception he's the exception famously famously the exception uh i don't know that there was anything actually based on the reviews i do think this book is like right in the fucking center of the target of exactly the kind of shit ron de santis would would produce i suppose maybe there's a little bit of like he doesn't really engage in the fight with trump he goes out of his way to say something kind of vaguely pleasant about him in the book but i don't know that you would expect him to do anything else i didn't find, I just, so far, there's nothing particularly surprising.

Speaker 41 He's taken on the woke mob.

Speaker 41 He's done a really good job in Florida. That's his message.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I have not and will not read the book.

Speaker 41 Absolutely not.

Speaker 34 Absolutely not.

Speaker 7 Be clear about that.

Speaker 54 Are you going to read it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm going to have a book report. You're going to read all of that.

Speaker 7 Yeah, but I mean, what I've read about the book, Woke Ideology is Bad, Florida Good, generic biography. It was interesting that he didn't pick a fight with Trump.

Speaker 7 Obviously, like a book's not the place you do that. He is doing this press tour.
He recently went to New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois to do law and order message events with cops.

Speaker 7 He's not going to see back. I thought that was interesting.
So I think it's all building in anticipation to when he decides to go to an early state. That's the book tour.

Speaker 18 I, from the reviews and the excerpts and everything, you really get why Donald Trump has nicknamed him Ron DeSanctimonious.

Speaker 24 Like, the guy really does think of himself as, well, did you guys remember the video

Speaker 12 that was put out around Washington?

Speaker 41 He created Ron DeSantis on the seventh day.

Speaker 8 We have a clip of this.

Speaker 57 And on the eighth day,

Speaker 7 God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a protector.

Speaker 64 So God made a fighter.

Speaker 64 God said, I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, kiss his family goodbye, travel thousands of miles for no other reason than to serve the people, to save their jobs, their livelihoods, their liberty, their happiness.

Speaker 41 I think that there's something important in the existence of this and in the sanctimoniousness you're describing, which is, I believe Ron DeSantis was married at Disney World. This is true.
And

Speaker 41 there is

Speaker 41 Disney adult energy inside of that,

Speaker 41 inside of that sanctimonious horseshoe.

Speaker 30 I couldn't believe like that,

Speaker 30 that was their video that his wife tweeted.

Speaker 66 And

Speaker 58 it's like, I just can't believe he's that obvious about it.

Speaker 41 And on the ninth day, God sent a puker, me,

Speaker 41 to puke all over the place

Speaker 12 i mean i think about that video yeah yeah or disney world or disney world here's the thing he is it's clear he wants to lean in hard to like to take on institutions and not just government and academia and the media which like all republicans do but also corporations right that was his fight with disney and his rationale here he was trying to invent a rationale for it which is well it's okay i know that i'm supposed to be libertarian but and and limited government and all that but because all these institutions now are controlled by the left it's okay for government to get involved.

Speaker 24 I think the danger for him in doing that, especially in a general election, is he seems like a person who thinks he knows better than everyone else.

Speaker 67 So instead of all these institutions having the power, now Ron DeSantis has the power, right?

Speaker 56 So it's like, don't trust these institutions.

Speaker 15 Trust me, Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 32 I want to control what books you read, what your kids learn, how your company gets involved in politics.

Speaker 57 And I think that's a it's a it's a bit of a weakness.

Speaker 54 Not libertarian.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's a

Speaker 41 he he does this dodge, right, right, where he says, well, once these corporations start acting very political, they kind of usurp the power of the democracy by doing things that they weren't elected to do, which is, I suppose, have opinions.

Speaker 41 It's all very, very murky. It's not very like, it's not, it's not cogent or anything.

Speaker 8 Not very wealthy.

Speaker 41 But he starts to say things like, well, if banks decide to not loan money to

Speaker 41 gun manufacturers, that's a way of the banks anti-democratically trying to restrict gun rights. Right.

Speaker 41 And basically what it amounts to is, if you disagree with me, you're doing something anti-democratic.

Speaker 28 Right, yeah, but I imagine he wouldn't say that if the insurance company refuses to cover a serious illness, that they're infringing on your right to live.

Speaker 38 Well, sure.

Speaker 7 Rights are also at the same time, the other side of their mouth, they're trying to ban ESG investing, which is when companies invest in companies that have environmentally sustainable portfolios, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 7 So they're just using it as a vehicle to attack the left. There's no consistency.

Speaker 41 Well, there's no consistency. And I actually do think underneath all of it is all the right-wingers who want to get behind Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 41 They basically just assume, yeah, yeah, he's going to say this kind of shit, but he's not going to come after the money.

Speaker 41 You know, he's going to attack Disney, which is one company, and he's going to go after the schools, the trans kids, and the gay kids and the teachers, but he's not coming after the money.

Speaker 67 Well, we're here for the money.

Speaker 29 And that's another big part of the book, which is there's a lot about the Florida economy and the Florida miracle and all that stuff like that, because he does want to reassure it's partly a general election strategy and partly for the people you're talking about, all of the like Elon Musks of the world.

Speaker 49 Well,

Speaker 41 not even Elon Musk.

Speaker 30 Sort of like the

Speaker 15 finance bros.

Speaker 41 It runs from the finance bros to the conservatives who have tolerated the evangelicals for 40 years because of the tax rates to the Jeb Bushes who all want to tell themselves that the stuff that Ron DeSantis does when he goes in front of a school and says, we're going to stop the wokeness and we're going to attack critical race theory and all that, that they kind of see that as a little song and dance he does to make the other stuff possible.

Speaker 41 And as long as that's that's how it feels, it's like Trump. I mean, it's like every, it's the Republican playbook for the last 50 years.

Speaker 12 And if he gets through the primary, I imagine he will pivot hard to being that guy over the cultural world.

Speaker 41 Yeah, it'll be fewer schools, more gas stations. Yeah.

Speaker 46 That's what it'll be.

Speaker 24 What did you guys make of the collection of MAGA goons at the Ron Curious confab or some of the early support DeSantis has been getting from donors, activists, and most importantly, Jeb.

Speaker 72 He's been a really effective governor. He's young.
I think we're on the verge of a generational change in our politics.

Speaker 28 I kind of hope so.

Speaker 72 I think it's time for a more forward-leaning, future-oriented

Speaker 72 conversation in our politics as well.

Speaker 7 I liked how some of the reporting made it like this head-to-head battle. I was like, can you believe DeSantis had a meeting in Florida? I was like, well, he's the governor.

Speaker 7 I mean, it's like, oh, four miles from Mar-a-Lago. I'm sorry.
I didn't realize that Trump owned the state.

Speaker 46 I thought it was an impressive group, right?

Speaker 7 He had the governor of Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kim Reynolds. Loosely defined.

Speaker 2 Loosely for him.

Speaker 7 Context, yeah. The governor of Iowa.
He met with this guy, Bob Vanderplatz, who's this Iowa conservative group leader.

Speaker 7 Like, you don't carve out an hour for that dude unless you're running for president, right? There were some less impressive people, Ron Johnson, Tom Cotton, Chip Roy, Mick Mulvaney, Laura Ingram.

Speaker 7 It wasn't like some historic massive event for a governor, but I think it did communicate: like, I got a network. I can raise some money.
Jeb probably has, you know, can unlock some

Speaker 7 of that big donor cash that helped him raise $100 million for his super PAC. Look, I think he lit on fire.

Speaker 71 I think the Jeb endorsement is the kiss of death.

Speaker 5 I don't think Ron DeSantis will ever mention that again, but you know who's going to mention that every day from now until the primary?

Speaker 18 Right, well, Donald Trump.

Speaker 7 Look, the topics of this thing were election integrity, border security, and medical authoritarianism. He's right the Trump sort of message territory.

Speaker 71 What's interesting to me is that all of these people, it's not like 16 where there was a bunch of Republicans who didn't like Trump, and then they fell in line when Trump won the nomination.

Speaker 49 These are all people who have loved Donald Trump and maybe still do love Donald Trump.

Speaker 70 And now they're all sitting there at a, not afraid of Donald Trump at all, by the way.

Speaker 67 Like now Donald Trump knows all these people who were at this Ron DeSantis thing and they don't give a shit.

Speaker 42 They just win anyway.

Speaker 36 They win anyway.

Speaker 10 And Laura Ingram, Benny Johnson, like a lot of the MAGA media stars are there.

Speaker 41 I think they can all claim to be Ron Curious.

Speaker 41 And that they love Donald Trump and they love Ron DeSantis and it's a great big party with wonderful people and we're going to figure it out.

Speaker 57 It's not how they've acted for the last several years.

Speaker 41 Sure.

Speaker 62 Trump, obviously.

Speaker 7 How about Donald Trump? Trump likes nothing more than when you come crawling back.

Speaker 41 The thing about also doing it by Mar-a-Lago, you know, in Elden Ring, sometimes the way you take on the biggest of adversaries is you have to get right up next to them. Sure.

Speaker 41 You can pull away. No, you got to get real close.

Speaker 42 And people don't know that.

Speaker 7 Did you guys know the Trump Super PAC is called MAGA Inc.?

Speaker 68 That is literally true.

Speaker 7 It's just a...

Speaker 63 I thought it was called Save America.

Speaker 7 Well, there's one called MAGA Inc. that was talked about

Speaker 7 in these stories, in the Washington Post in particular, as sort of the competing event that happened the same weekend as this big DeSantis thing.

Speaker 50 Interesting.

Speaker 30 So the Post story also has anonymous Republicans who've met with DeSantis saying that he, quote, remains stilted in one-on-one conversations and struggles to make small talk or appear enthusiastic.

Speaker 32 Who among us?

Speaker 10 How much do you think that matters?

Speaker 7 I mean, listen, this might come as a surprise to some listeners, but I don't have a ton of connections in the DeSantis orbit. You know, I'm not spending a lot of FaceTime with the guy.

Speaker 7 He does seem like a brooding, kind of stilted weirdo at times.

Speaker 7 He clearly seems to get his rocks out by being very mean to people, especially kids. But he also

Speaker 7 won a lot of elections. He's raised a lot of money.
Like, yes, I think in the early states, you're going to have to glad hand and, you know, kiss ass and win over people in small settings.

Speaker 7 But I'm a little skeptical of this narrative given his success. I don't know.
We'll see. Trump is uniquely good at this element of politics, though, right? He calls people all day long, every day.

Speaker 7 His events are just pure entertainment for a lot of people. So someone found a narrative about Ron DeSantis, and they're driving at it because it highlights something that Trump thinks he's good at.

Speaker 41 Yeah, I think it's a reminder that Ron DeSantis is really untested as a national figure. He hasn't done a lot of the kind of more

Speaker 41 social things that you're going to do when you become a presidential candidate.

Speaker 41 And he is going to ultimately have to become the Republican nominee by standing side by side with Donald Trump on a debate stage. He has not been a,

Speaker 41 he has not won because he's a great debater. There's some pretty weird clips going around from when Ron DeSantis went up against Charlie Chris, for example.

Speaker 41 It didn't end up ultimately mattering, but it doesn't mean he won those debates. So I do think it's like, you know, we'll see.

Speaker 28 I mean, on the one hand, you know, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, all really great retail politicians, shaking hands, one-on-one kind of thing.

Speaker 28 So it is a quality that a lot of the previous presidents have had. On the other, I wonder, and I know you talked about this a lot in 2020 in Iowa.

Speaker 56 Like, there's a lot, I feel like there's a lot less retail politicking these days.

Speaker 7 It happens, it just mattered less in 2020. It matters less.
The national narrative mattered more for these Democratic primary candidates. So who knows if that'll be the case.

Speaker 29 And

Speaker 75 that's what I wonder if that papers over some of DeSantis' weaknesses in this, because a lot more of the primary happens online with tweets, video clips, speeches, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 49 Like, I don't know if

Speaker 5 being a little aloof in person matters as much.

Speaker 41 Yeah, I mean, one point DeSantis makes, which is

Speaker 41 that the reason he has been so relentless in doing these press conferences, of kind of changing the story and kind of coming up with somebody to go up and go in front of a, you know, to do a

Speaker 41 COVID press conference, to do a schools press conference, whatever, is that

Speaker 41 it keeps the story where he wants it. And he's been very, very, that's like, that is his medium.

Speaker 41 His medium is as governor, standing up, making some fucking hellish announcement, getting progressives all spun up about it, it, getting national coverage about it, and when that coverage dies down, figuring out the next one.

Speaker 41 Like, is that a recipe to run for president, or is that a recipe to be a successful governor who looks like a great presidential candidate? I don't know.

Speaker 41 So, what happens when he doesn't have that as a national figure?

Speaker 41 And there's a lot of, you know, maybe retail doesn't matter as much day to day, but now there's a video of him being a schmuck at a deli, and that's everywhere. I don't know.

Speaker 26 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 14 So, Trump has been previewing his argument against DeSantis on Truth Social, saying,

Speaker 57 here's one truth as an example.

Speaker 63 Ron DeSanctimonius wants to cut your Social Security and Medicare and is an establishment globalist who loves rhinos, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, and Karl Rove.

Speaker 15 What do you think of that hit, and what do you do about it if you're DeSantis, Tommy?

Speaker 7 So Trump's 2020 budget cut Medicaid or proposed cutting Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare.

Speaker 7 So he can make this attack on DeSantis if he wants, but there's a pretty easy rejoinder there, just sort of sitting. The Rhino stuff is fine.
I'm sure Trump will try it out.

Speaker 41 He'll see what sticks.

Speaker 7 But I think the threshold question is, do these voters think DeSantis is a rhino? I kind of doubt that. He seems like their second favorite culture warrior.

Speaker 7 And DeSantis can also say, was I a rhino when you endorsed me? Or he could say, maybe we shouldn't attack other Republicans because that's how we lose like we did in Georgia. So I think, I don't know.

Speaker 7 I think he's flailing a little bit.

Speaker 41 I think the establishment cuck piece of that is going to be a bit stronger than the rhino piece of that.

Speaker 41 I think that like you're the, you're going to be the candidate of your Jebs and your Paul Ryan's is going to be the place where he can, where there's a bit of a softer, softer belly there.

Speaker 49 Well, so Sarah Longwell, who's been on the pod before, she has this excellent podcast called The Focus Group, and she's been interviewing Trump voters who are like open to alternatives, but still like Trump.

Speaker 63 And for a while, it's just like, oh, we love DeSantis, we love DeSantis. And then she said recently, she's heard in these focus groups, a lot of these voters being like,

Speaker 24 DeSantis' record, it's a little establishment.

Speaker 15 I'm not sure.

Speaker 28 Like some of the establishment cocked,

Speaker 67 I think that's his.

Speaker 75 She also asked about the Trump groomer attack.

Speaker 71 And they were like, I mean, that's just ridiculous.

Speaker 63 That sounds like something that Trump always says about everyone.

Speaker 11 Like, no one took it seriously, and they were just like, that's Trump being Trump.

Speaker 10 But the establishment thing is I think it's a real danger.

Speaker 48 And I think if Trump can connect for DeSantis, I think if Trump can connect him to McConnell, he's going to use all of his votes in the House.

Speaker 29 He's going to, you know, I think it's a, I think that is the danger.

Speaker 41 And then it turns the endorsements that the DeSantis will ultimately get from a lot of figures as a kind of turns it positive into a negative.

Speaker 28 And I think Trump wants the race to be like populist outsider versus establishment.

Speaker 67 He wants DeSantis to be the establishment.

Speaker 12 DeSantis will try to prove his populist outsider credentials by doing the like, I'm attacking the woke mob and Disney and the corporations and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 23 But I think he wants to make the race all about electability and generational change.

Speaker 15 So he doesn't want to be in the frame of, oh, no, no, no, Trump's the establishment.

Speaker 67 I'm the outsider.

Speaker 29 Because I don't think you're going to win that against Donald Trump.

Speaker 12 I think you are going to be able to to win an electability generational change argument against Donald Trump. So he's going to want to make that.

Speaker 7 I think you just do the classic, like, I was a governor who was actually in charge of things and had to run a state. And here's my record.
We grew this. We did that.

Speaker 7 Like, you can call me names if you want, but here's my record.

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 51 And you're, and you're a loser.

Speaker 7 And you lost to Joe Biden.

Speaker 67 That's the, that's, that's to him, that's, I think, his best attack.

Speaker 41 So, you know, Trump is, as always, a raptor testing the fences. He's seeing what works.
He threw out the groomer thing, took it for a spin.

Speaker 50 Did it work right away?

Speaker 41 No. Does that mean he's going to abandon it? Does that mean he's going to hit it again and again for a while until it's in the back of people's minds? I don't know.

Speaker 41 There was the, you know, there was the report that he started using meatball run.

Speaker 41 Is he trying to see if there's just a little anti-Italian prejudice just left right under the surface for some of those Jews?

Speaker 41 You know, just like some of those South Florida guys get just enough to make a difference. He's trying it out.
He wants to test it out. We'll see.

Speaker 28 Well, none of Trump's most effective or famous attacks are like purely about policy.

Speaker 14 There's always some kind of a character thing to this.

Speaker 4 By the end, we were all like, did Ted Cruz's dad kill Kennedy?

Speaker 17 I thought he he did.

Speaker 40 And so I do think that

Speaker 12 he wants us to think of Ron DeSantis as sort of like an aloof weirdo establishment.

Speaker 44 He's going to put all that together.

Speaker 32 What are you doing with this guy?

Speaker 41 And nothing will be able to stop Donald Trump from bringing up the teacher. Weird things happened.
I don't know. I don't know.
During a debate, that's coming.

Speaker 41 We'll see.

Speaker 6 So one reason DeSantis hasn't formally announced yet is that he wants to leave his mark on the current Florida legislative session, which now now includes, thanks to DeSantis, a bill to put state colleges under full control of DeSantis' political appointees.

Speaker 22 And the bill would also ban all gender studies, as well as all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in state colleges and universities.

Speaker 48 This will obviously endear him to the base in the primary.

Speaker 29 How do you think it plays with most people?

Speaker 66 Like, should Democrats be calling this out?

Speaker 41 Yes, I do think this is... a similar dynamic to what played out in the midterms.
This is something that plays for the base, but it is part of the kind of radicalism, extremism.

Speaker 41 You know, there was that story out of Michigan about that focus group laughing when this question of bathrooms came up. It's not a concern people have.

Speaker 41 It's attacking something that people don't actually view as a real and serious problem in their lives. It just seems like right-wing, weird behavior, and it seems extreme.
It seems draconian.

Speaker 41 It seems anti-democratic. And I think it will be a part of the case we make.

Speaker 23 Yeah, like congratulations, DeSantis.

Speaker 71 You got all the gender studies majors.

Speaker 29 You got them.

Speaker 38 them

Speaker 30 like it's a weird it's

Speaker 7 just very tryhard I mean I you know it's funny John I was thinking about this question I had this sort of a similar take that you had at the top which is DeSantis tries to define what he's doing here in the most sort of like unarguable way possible.

Speaker 7 So he says that state colleges and universities have to, quote, promote the values necessary to preserve the constitutional republic. No one's going to fight with that.

Speaker 7 And they cannot define American history as, quote, contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.

Speaker 7 I don't don't even know what that means. I don't even know what that means either.

Speaker 7 But like rather than sort of like engage on the specifics there, I would like to see someone test the message that is a little more libertarian, which is to say like Ron DeSantis is trying to

Speaker 7 put politicians fully in control of your kids' education. He is trying to handpick who gets to be a teacher and who doesn't.

Speaker 7 And you might like that when Ron DeSantis is in charge, but what happens when it's AOC? Right. Like that's kind of like the

Speaker 42 universal way to shoot at this.

Speaker 10 You don't like the gender studies classes?

Speaker 5 Don't take them.

Speaker 40 Yeah.

Speaker 20 You know, you don't like what this professor's doing or that professor thinks?

Speaker 10 Don't take that professor, right?

Speaker 19 Like that, that should be, and Ron DeSantis, he only wants his political appointees in charge of education.

Speaker 41 You don't want to pull teachers decide what to teach, not politicians. Doctors decide how to do medicine, not politicians.

Speaker 41 Let the schools decide. Let parents decide.
Like that is the place where we will, I think, appeal to the most people.

Speaker 41 And I do also think, too, like DeSantis has played this game over the past couple of years where he does one of these press conferences. He speaks about it in the most general terms possible.

Speaker 41 People look at the bill. They find out it's pretty heinous.
Progressive activists and people engaged on social media

Speaker 41 go ballistic correctly.

Speaker 41 Either they outright lie about the bill or they amend the bill and then they claim, oh my God, Ron DeSantis is once again being unfairly maligned. Look what he's done to his critics.

Speaker 41 He's made his critics go wild. I do think we have to watch out for that too.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 63 So there are quite a few other stories out there this week.

Speaker 28 We figured we'd run through quickly with a short take for each.

Speaker 29 And in honor of last weekend's box office Smash, we're calling this segment One Line with Cocaine Bear.

Speaker 55 Jesus.

Speaker 41 Every time it is so loud.

Speaker 23 All right, so here's each story is written down on a slip of paper that we will take turns pulling out of this trusty bear head that Tommy brought to me.

Speaker 7 My friend from college, Carl, made this, so thanks, Carl.

Speaker 12 Yeah, for those of you who are watching on YouTube, and if you're just listening to the pod, you might want to get on YouTube and watch this because there's a big bearhead on the table.

Speaker 7 Mike used to sell these to people going to like Coachella and stuff.

Speaker 34 Oh, that's cool. Yeah.

Speaker 6 All right. So we're all going to take one, and then we're going to give a quick take.

Speaker 66 Each of us, who wants to start?

Speaker 14 Who wants to start? Tommy, kick it off.

Speaker 2 Kick it off, buddy.

Speaker 7 You know which one I want.

Speaker 44 I got

Speaker 7 the Nevada Democratic Party. Okay.

Speaker 41 So I don't have...

Speaker 12 I didn't prepare for that one. Where's the prompt?

Speaker 2 That story was too long.

Speaker 55 Too long.

Speaker 43 We're going to edit this.

Speaker 41 The Nevada Democratic Party is in turmoil two years after supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders took over the machine built by Senator Harry Reid, with both factions fighting each other, and even Sanders himself reportedly expressing disappointment with the new leadership.

Speaker 7 That's a good summary. Thank you, John.

Speaker 7 My take on this is this is worrisome. We had Jackie Rosen up in 2024, U.S.
Senator from Nevada. It's a tough state.
She needs an organization backing her.

Speaker 7 We don't know all the context, but it did make me worry if Bernie Sanders is frustrated with the current party chair.

Speaker 7 This is especially a big deal in Nevada, where the Harry Reid political machine has been critical to winning elections for decades and manages to deliver years after his death somehow. So yeah,

Speaker 46 this sucks.

Speaker 41 He delivers years after his death and some of the voters he delivers are years after their deaths.

Speaker 7 Coming to a conspiracy near you, John.

Speaker 46 All right, I'll go.

Speaker 34 Go for it. Let's see what we got.
See what we got. Cocaine Bear.

Speaker 7 They're not a sponsor. I don't know how that's possible.

Speaker 41 Fox News, Dominion, and the Move On ad.

Speaker 41 Fox News host Howard Kurtz told his audience on Sunday that the network is not allowing him to cover Dominion's $1.8 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox.

Speaker 41 The network is also refusing to run a moveon.org ad that highlights text messages that prove Foxhost lied to their audience about the 2020 election. Here's my take: that's just good business sense.

Speaker 3 You can't have people going on.

Speaker 41 They're being sued for a billion dollars. The whole business is at stake.
You can't have people spouting off about this. Everybody, shut the fuck up.
Haven't we? Look at what talking did to us.

Speaker 41 Everybody on this network, we are not talking about this until the suit is done. That just makes sense to me.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Is that a wrong take?

Speaker 58 But no, that's a great take.

Speaker 56 Rupert Murdoch, by the way,

Speaker 63 this was news broke right before we started recording, said in his deposition that he basically admitted that all the hosts were lying.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 38 And then

Speaker 58 he should have prevented it.

Speaker 7 Yeah, seems not great. I just want to add that Howard Kurtz is full of shit, and it didn't take a lawsuit to know that there were a bunch of liars on their air.

Speaker 7 And as a media critic, you could have chimed in any time, but sure how. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 68 Like

Speaker 41 the people's ombudsman from fucking hell.

Speaker 62 Give me a break.

Speaker 41 I'm trying to bring the truth to the people at Fox News this time.

Speaker 63 But also, Tommy and I talked about this on our bonus episode about the Dominion lawsuit.

Speaker 42 Like, this just goes to show how fucking petrified Fox News is about their audience finding out the truth of what happened.

Speaker 5 They know that if a bunch, and some of you be like, oh, their audience isn't going to care about what...

Speaker 20 Then Fox would not be going to such great lengths to prevent them from knowing anything about this case.

Speaker 46 I feel like stifling Howie Kurtz is great length. You can tell that paid hack shut up for $50,000.

Speaker 24 Yeah, the Ramonad, the Howie Kurtz thing,

Speaker 41 what was the name of that person

Speaker 41 who worked for the NRA and lit the New York Times on fire? Dana Losch. Yeah.

Speaker 41 If you called Dana Losch the most heinous right-wing figure, fascist, all that stuff,

Speaker 41 loved it, ate it up. But if you said you were a grifter, out for the money,

Speaker 41 that was what weird.

Speaker 42 She got so mad at me. Yep.

Speaker 34 Yeah. It would always work.
Yeah. Good for you.

Speaker 57 Got her. That's because.

Speaker 56 Yeah.

Speaker 42 Where is she now?

Speaker 54 I don't hear from her.

Speaker 75 Yeah.

Speaker 41 All right. Light and papers on fire at home.

Speaker 48 Anyway, again, if you're going on Fox News and you're not some Trump supporter, talk about

Speaker 2 the lawsuit.

Speaker 3 Bring up the lawsuit.

Speaker 15 Whoever's the new Juan Williams.

Speaker 41 Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what's going on over there.

Speaker 60 All right.

Speaker 70 Oh, God. I got Marion Williamson.

Speaker 31 All right.

Speaker 5 Self-help author Marion Williamson announced this weekend that she will run for president in 2024.

Speaker 69 Williamson is the first Democratic candidate to challenge President Biden.

Speaker 47 Hey, everyone, let's just ignore this story.

Speaker 22 Marion Williamson dropped out before the first votes were cast in 2020 and,

Speaker 71 you know, just made it to the debate stage, had a few very memeable quotes.

Speaker 28 I had to do a lot of prep to actually interview her during the project.

Speaker 38 Did that happen?

Speaker 42 Yeah, I interviewed her. Yeah, no, I interviewed her.
I forgot.

Speaker 75 And she sent me one of her books.

Speaker 42 Cool. Signed.

Speaker 49 A couple signed copies of her books.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 6 yeah, I don't think anyone should be worrying about this.

Speaker 7 There will be no debates this time.

Speaker 49 There will be no.

Speaker 7 Yeah, no, everyone hacked the system and figured out, oh, you just run for president. You got a lot of press.
She's going to try to do it twice. We don't have to let her.
It's like, well, yeah,

Speaker 14 you did it last time.

Speaker 6 You didn't even make it to the...

Speaker 49 Taiwan.

Speaker 71 You didn't get out of single digits in any of the polls, and you didn't make it to any of the votes.

Speaker 66 So why should you do it this time?

Speaker 41 Well, Saturn's in a different part of the sky.

Speaker 57 All right, Tommy.

Speaker 7 DJ Donald Trump.

Speaker 42 Okay.

Speaker 44 That's a good one.

Speaker 7 So, page six reported that Donald Trump is officially DJing every Thursday night at Mar-a-Lago. And I just wanted to say that my take on this is that it is fake news.

Speaker 7 Donald Trump is not on the ones and twos. He's not scratching records.
This man is playing with his iPad and queuing up Celine Dion while he eats dinner.

Speaker 7 This is just an old guy ruining dinner, and this is not DJing fake news. Ruin dinner wrong.

Speaker 56 He also likes Broadway tunes, it says.

Speaker 67 It's not just Celine Dion.

Speaker 42 And it's not just any Celine Dion. It's specifically...

Speaker 31 My Heart Will Go On.

Speaker 74 Yeah, that Titanic banger.

Speaker 43 He just keeps...

Speaker 27 Imagine he's just sitting at the table and everyone's just like having having a nice time and he's just

Speaker 59 dinner from hell.

Speaker 67 It sounds very, very Trump to me because it's like he's too lazy to get up on stage.

Speaker 41 The only part, yeah, he's got to be telling somebody else to just play somebody.

Speaker 38 He knows he knows how to work in that.

Speaker 46 He's not touching an iPad.

Speaker 34 He doesn't. He's not touching an iPad.

Speaker 41 Greg Craig electing the VP.

Speaker 2 Oh, boy.

Speaker 38 Okay.

Speaker 43 Okay. Okay, love it.
Let's poke the bear.

Speaker 41 In a new essay in the New York Times, former Obama White House counsel, Greg Craig says, because of President Biden's age and the greater chance he could pass away in office, he should let Democratic delegates pick his VP if he runs for re-election.

Speaker 42 I'm going to be honest. All right, K-Hive.

Speaker 74 Listen up. It says Love It's Tick.

Speaker 41 Yeah, I can

Speaker 41 hear the buzzing of the K-Hive even as I get close to this op-ed.

Speaker 41 I approached this op-ed with such incredible skepticism. It reminds me, I thought it was going to be in the category of America needs a purple party or like,

Speaker 41 why won't Joe Biden choose John McCain and his running mate? I thought it was going to be that kind of a thing.

Speaker 41 But as I read it, what I found to be interesting about it is it does try to solve this unsolvable problem, which on the one hand, the only argument that really people feel is the strongest argument against Joe Biden is one of age while kind of recognizing that he's been so successful as a president and done as well with the hand he was dealt as any person could,

Speaker 41 while at the same time being worried that he's not going to fulfill the promise that he made, which is passing the torch to a new generation of leaders.

Speaker 41 And this is an idea that says, let's have an exciting campaign for who his VP will be. Obviously, that is tough for the person who is currently the VP to read.
I assume.

Speaker 41 I assume it wasn't great to have that next to the morning coffee.

Speaker 50 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But the article says, I wonder if Greg could get a call.

Speaker 41 I will say, but people are being unfair because the article says it's not a bad thing for Kamala Harris.

Speaker 67 That's the article says. Well, the article also argues that Biden, because basically the article says that this has happened once.

Speaker 29 Franklin Roosevelt did this in 1944. Never heard of him.

Speaker 5 Apparently, Adlai Stevenson did something like this.

Speaker 43 Not familiar.

Speaker 74 Yeah, well, that turned out great.

Speaker 58 But

Speaker 32 Biden could say, I prefer Kamala Harris.

Speaker 57 I want you to pick my current vice president.

Speaker 67 And he could endorse her.

Speaker 41 Is the difference between giving someone a Kamala Harris gift card and giving somebody $100 and say, check out Vice President Kamala Harris?

Speaker 7 I just want to note that Pundit sprinted to me for comfort as soon as you said the word K-Hive.

Speaker 7 Now, I want to give Greg credit for drafting an op-ed that managed to infuriate both the president's office and the vice president's office equally.

Speaker 46 That's a rare thing.

Speaker 61 It's a hard to do. Good for you.

Speaker 7 It's also the first original idea I've heard in a while. So again, credit to him.

Speaker 7 The more I thought about it, though, the more I thought, at the end of the day, I don't know that this solves the problem that it's claiming to solve, which is assuaging concerns about Biden's age, because you sort of just highlight the concern about the age for months and months and months and months.

Speaker 7 No, it is a problem.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying I'm persuaded.

Speaker 42 Can I highlight one other problem? Sure, please.

Speaker 24 Let the people decide.

Speaker 71 The people or the DNC delegates?

Speaker 38 Right, Joe Biden makes a primary.

Speaker 41 I have something like a primary.

Speaker 19 Do you want to entrust the future of the president with the DNC delegates?

Speaker 7 Joe Biden could just Twitter poll this thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right.

Speaker 41 I think the key thing, if you're worried about Joe Biden's age, is we keep sending him on more and more scary international trips and hope God is not paying attention until like 2029.

Speaker 42 He crushed that international trip.

Speaker 36 He absolutely did.

Speaker 7 It's a long train ride.

Speaker 34 Just want to say that. Just want to say that.
All right.

Speaker 32 Here I go. What am I going to get? Getting down there.

Speaker 15 Joe Manchin on Maria Bartaromo.

Speaker 46 Okay, here we go.

Speaker 32 On Sunday, Senator Joe Manchin appeared on Fox News with Maria Bartaromo and and declined to describe himself as a Democrat.

Speaker 66 Manchin said, I identify as an American.

Speaker 32 I'm an American through and through.

Speaker 42 His transitions.

Speaker 47 Manchin also refused to say whether he'll run for re-election in 2024.

Speaker 34 Okay, here's my take on this.

Speaker 2 Let's hear it. I want to get up.
Okay.

Speaker 49 I'm with Joe Manchin on this one.

Speaker 41 I actually, honestly, that was what I thought I was going to say.

Speaker 2 Okay, because here's why.

Speaker 56 So first of all, I was worried.

Speaker 32 So Manchin has ruled out running for governor in West Virginia again, and he's ruled out running for president.

Speaker 57 Remember, we thought he was flirting with that.

Speaker 6 So it's basically either he's going to run for re-election as senator or he's going to retire, right?

Speaker 10 If Joe Manchin runs for reelection in West Virginia and he thinks calling himself an independent and leaving the party is the best way for him to get elected, and he is the guy who, you know, voted for Katanji Brown Jackson, all of Joe Biden's judges, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Joe Manchin Inflation Reduction Act, that's the biggest investment in climate, the guy who voted for all those things, if it's either him or some fucking Republican, which is basically every other scenario here, a Republican is going to win in West Virginia.

Speaker 11 A right-wing one.

Speaker 23 A right-wing one.

Speaker 20 If Joe Manchin doesn't run, I don't see any other Democrat winning that race.

Speaker 24 And so therefore we lose a seat.

Speaker 10 So if Joe Manchin thinks the best chance he has at winning is calling himself an independent, I don't care what the fuck he calls himself.

Speaker 31 I really don't.

Speaker 41 I agree with that. Do we think Greg Craig is still upset that Kamala Harris hit his dog?

Speaker 17 with her car.

Speaker 41 I mean, just think about all the work that went into that office.

Speaker 30 That doesn't make him so really detailed and worked.

Speaker 41 It's so thoughtful and specific about an idea that

Speaker 62 I got

Speaker 41 in a thousand hours.

Speaker 56 How did Kamala Harris wrong Greg Craig?

Speaker 65 Yeah, what did she do?

Speaker 7 I will say, it was annoying that, look, Joe Manchin's annoying.

Speaker 7 It was annoying to go on Maria Bartaromo's show right after we learned that she was, you know, just platforming Sidney Powell and all these election liars.

Speaker 23 But no one has to like Joe Manchin.

Speaker 7 All that matters for him are his politics.

Speaker 7 His polling numbers go up in West Virginia when he attacks the Democratic Party and Joe Biden.

Speaker 7 That's why he is currently picking a fight with the Biden administration about implementing the electric vehicle tax credit that his staff wrote into law, right?

Speaker 7 He's manufacturing fights wherever he can to create some space. Have at it, bud.

Speaker 22 Again, just want your vote, man.

Speaker 2 Look. Just want your vote.

Speaker 74 Joe Mengin. Don't care about your lifestyle.

Speaker 44 Don't care about the crazy shit you say.

Speaker 50 Don't lifestyle.

Speaker 46 Houseboat Wheelie.

Speaker 5 Don't care about the weird shows you go on with the liars.

Speaker 41 Some of America's most progressive champions are Houseboat Americans.

Speaker 14 Just come into the Senate and cast your vote.

Speaker 41 He passed the Inflation Reduction Act. He voted for the judges.

Speaker 34 That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 41 A lot of people said that couldn't happen.

Speaker 67 And it did.

Speaker 67 Maybe some people on this program.

Speaker 41 Not familiar. This one's for you.

Speaker 4 We're just going to do this.

Speaker 45 We're going to flip you over.

Speaker 40 Oh, yeah. I got.

Speaker 45 Oh, wait, we could probably.

Speaker 41 I'm just stopping because it's only.

Speaker 7 I got the lab leak, and I want to do the lab leak.

Speaker 55 He's been waiting for a lab leak. I got the lab leak.

Speaker 2 Do the lab leak.

Speaker 38 Here's the deal.

Speaker 7 You guys remember COVID, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Unresolved debate about its origins. One theory is it jumped from infected animals to humans naturally, most likely at a market in Wuhan.

Speaker 7 Two is that COVID spread because of mistake at a laboratory that was doing coronavirus research.

Speaker 7 So over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal ran a story with the headline, quote, lab leak, most likely origin of COVID-19 pandemic, energy department says,

Speaker 65 wow.

Speaker 75 Explosion on squid.

Speaker 57 Re tweets. Fabes, Libs.

Speaker 55 Go arrest.

Speaker 19 Arrest Fauci.

Speaker 41 I told you the vaccine doesn't work.

Speaker 76 How did you get there?

Speaker 38 So

Speaker 7 here's some context I want everyone to know. First, I'm sure people are wondering, what does the Department of Energy have to do with any of this?

Speaker 46 Great question. I had that question.

Speaker 7 The Energy Department oversees the national laboratories. They do biological research.

Speaker 7 And the Department of Energy updated their assessment based on some new information that came to them in these labs. It's part of this classified assessment.
But here's the key context.

Speaker 7 Energy, the Department of Energy was undecided on the origin of COVID before. Now they believe with low confidence that it came from a lab leak.

Speaker 7 Now, the low confidence, those words are very important because after Iraq and the WMD fiasco, the intelligence community started saying how strongly they feel about an assessment.

Speaker 7 So low confidence, shocker, is the lowest you can get. So while the lab leak proponents think, aha, case closed, libs have been owned, here's what you need to know.

Speaker 7 Two agencies now believe COVID came from a lab leak, the Department of Energy with low confidence, the FBI with moderate confidence. The National Intelligence Council and four agencies disagree.

Speaker 7 They assess with low confidence that COVID came from natural transmission from an infected animal.

Speaker 7 Two agencies, including the CIA, so the people charged with spying on the Chinese government, they're undecided.

Speaker 7 And no one believes that this was some sort of Chinese biological weapons research run amok. I mean, that is actually a very popular take on the right.
So the bottom line is we don't really know.

Speaker 7 It's still undecided. The government is split.
In fact, they still lean in favor of natural transmission. So I think hopefully the DNI is going to release some sort of unclassified assessment of this.

Speaker 7 One question for you.

Speaker 75 Why?

Speaker 71 Are you going to such great length to defend the Chinese government?

Speaker 34 I don't know. Yeah, what's going on?

Speaker 23 What's going on with Tommy? That's true.

Speaker 42 Did you send the balloon?

Speaker 51 Yeah, did you?

Speaker 41 Hey, Tommy,

Speaker 41 where were you when that balloon was in the air?

Speaker 32 Were you on the floor with a kind of remote, some kind of a

Speaker 14 one of those things called?

Speaker 60 Do you guys know that tonight, Tuesday night, the Republicans are holding their first oversight hearing on China in prime time?

Speaker 7 And what a coincidence that this leaked the weekend before.

Speaker 57 I was going to say, I'm sure this will come up.

Speaker 41 I don't understand.

Speaker 41 It's like, let's say it did come from the lab. That doesn't prove a lot of people wrong.
It proves like five Twitter people wrong.

Speaker 45 I don't like

Speaker 41 no one, no one except like, I guess certain people got over their skis a little bit and were like, Well, if you say it's from a lab, your

Speaker 7 platforms were shutting down allegations that it was a lab leak as disinformation. And I think that was clearly enough.
They probably should have done that.

Speaker 41 Yeah, they shouldn't have done that. I don't know why I'm, why am I, why am I in trouble? I don't know.
I was always like,

Speaker 41 seems like it could be random bats. Seems like that lab is pretty close to where this started, raises some questions.
I never stopped thinking that. We don't know.

Speaker 9 Time for the Fauci perp walk.

Speaker 56 Arrest Fauci.

Speaker 67 When we come back, Lovett talks to Meddy Hassan about his brand new book, Win Every Argument.

Speaker 2 I co-wrote it.

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Speaker 41 Joining us now, he is the host of the Medi Hassan Show and author of the new book, Win Every Argument, The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking.

Speaker 41 Medi, our first debate topic, is it great to have you?

Speaker 81 It is great to have me. Why would it not be great to have me?

Speaker 41 You've put me on my heels. You start the book with a kind of platonic ideal.
A ship is standing by in the harbor with a letter. If the ship is dispatched, people live.
If not, people die.

Speaker 41 Two interlocutors face off in Athens before an audience. The audience votes and decides who will live and who will die.
But we're not in Athens anymore.

Speaker 41 And a lot of debates that play out on television, they're less about persuading the audience and more about entertainment or the acuity of the debater or performing for the side that's already persuaded.

Speaker 41 How do you find value in the art of debate in that kind of media environment?

Speaker 81 It's a great question. I think there is a lot of entertainment.
There's a lot of performance that that goes on in a lot of what passes for debates on television.

Speaker 81 I can't speak for other shows or other hosts. I can only speak for my show.

Speaker 81 And we try and do really interesting debates on our show in which I either moderate them as a neutral, as neutral as I can be, or debates in which I'm pushing a position.

Speaker 81 I try and get someone else on who disagrees with me. I hate soggy consensus.
It's funny, John. We're speaking on a day in which I have been absolutely trolled all day online.

Speaker 81 by right-wingers obsessed over the media suppression of the lab leak theory.

Speaker 81 And I had to point out to some some of these gentle folks that I actually hosted a debate on the lab leak theory between two scientists with different views back in 2021, because I was actually interested.

Speaker 81 I happen not to believe in the lab leak theory, but I hosted a debate about it. So, you know, this whole idea of, oh, we were suppressed.
No, a lot of us have been having debates in good faith.

Speaker 81 The problem we have, John, that you identify there implicitly is there's a lot of bad faith debating going on right now in America on TV, in our media.

Speaker 81 And I'm interested in good faith debates, but I don't deny the fact that there are a lot of bad faith folks out there. I interview many of them on my show.

Speaker 41 Well, it's interesting, right? I feel like there's two big problems. There's bad faith debating.

Speaker 41 And then there's,

Speaker 41 I think when you talk about the lab leak, I think that there's a certain kind of, it's a good example because people really talk past one another and they really want to feel right and they want to seem right.

Speaker 41 And so this is a, so what you see is a lot of people saying,

Speaker 41 look, it's now been proven. It was a lab leak.
Everyone lied except for me. Everyone was dishonest except except for me.
Anyone who said anything in the year 2020 is a liar except for me.

Speaker 41 And then you have to step back and say, well, hold on a second.

Speaker 41 You're cherry-picking three or four dumb tweets from people who went too far or got just as far, just got too far with the data in the same way you did in the other direction.

Speaker 41 How do you enter a debate? Not necessarily people acting in pure bad faith, but people who are so desperate to prove their rightness, they kind of talk past one another.

Speaker 81 It's a great question. Again, so I deal with that in the book in two ways.
Number one, it depends what the goal of your debate is.

Speaker 81 I go into different arguments, debates, discussions, whether it's with my spouse, my kids, my employers, my colleagues, people on TV that I'm debating, people I'm ideologically disagreeing with at a public forum.

Speaker 81 There's different goals. Not everything is the same.
I would say two things in relation to your specific question. One is, are you trying to convince the other person?

Speaker 81 or are you trying to convince a third person? I think sometimes we get too lost in trying to debate and convince the other person. I'm often not trying to convince the other person.
I'm a TV host.

Speaker 81 I have my own audience at home. I want to persuade the neutral, independent-minded audience at home, the third party who is weighing the evidence.

Speaker 81 And when I interviewed John Bolton on my show on the Iraq war, I wasn't trying to persuade John Bolton that the Iraq war was wrong. That would be madness.

Speaker 81 I was trying to point out to my viewers, years later, here's a person who still doesn't regret that he was wrong about the Iraq war.

Speaker 81 So sometimes we gear all our arguments in one direction when we really should be focused on the audience.

Speaker 81 And the opening chapter of my book is about winning an audience over because that is the number one goal. They are the judge and jury.

Speaker 81 But in terms of your point about, let's say there is no audience, you're sitting down with someone in private or at a doorstep.

Speaker 81 If you're, you know, I know a lot of politicians listen to your show, John, if you're canvassing at a doorstep, how do you get that one recalcitrant person who's not a bad person, but, you know, has maybe overloaded on Sean Hannity every night and doesn't quite get what needs to be gotten.

Speaker 81 And there's another chapter I talk about in the book, which is the importance of listening and empathy.

Speaker 81 And I think think that is where if you really are trying to persuade someone, not just trying to rhetorically beat them down or dunk on them.

Speaker 81 Not that there's anything wrong with that in certain scenarios.

Speaker 81 But if it's in the case that you're really trying to win someone over who could be one over, if it wasn't for the fact that you're talking past each other, just throwing facts and figures and stats is not going to work.

Speaker 81 You're going to have to find a way to identify with that person. You're going to have to find a common ground in terms of your feelings, emotions, thoughts.

Speaker 81 And, you know, the scientists have a word for this, which is perspective taking.

Speaker 81 The social science is strong on this, that if you can put yourself in the shoes of another, if you can get them to walk in your shoes, much more likely to find agreement.

Speaker 81 And I talk about that in the chapter on listening and empathetic listening. People think debating is all about speaking.
I wish that were true. It's also about listening, something I'm really bad at.

Speaker 81 But I try and talk about in the book, the importance of listening. And I give the example of Bill Clinton.

Speaker 81 The most famous example in American presidential history is at the 1992 town hall, where a woman in the audience in Richmond, Virginia, asked the three candidates, because Ross Perot, yes, decided to force his way onto that stage, and says, how does the person, how does the national debt affect you personally?

Speaker 81 And George Bush Sr. first looks at his watch because he wants to go home.

Speaker 81 And then when he answers the question, starts rambling on about interest rates and about his visit to a black church because the question was black, but doesn't actually answer the question or even hear the question.

Speaker 81 What does Bill Clinton do? Gets off his stool, walks towards the questioner, looks her in the eye. He says, how does the debt affect you?

Speaker 81 Immediately, bond amateur. We have no idea whether that questioner was a Democrat, Republican before, and who she'd been planning to vote for.

Speaker 41 But Clinton makes that immediate, instant instant emotional connection so there are ways when people are talking past each other there are methods that i try and outline in the book that can work now are they silver bullets no we live in a very polarized very heated environment yeah you get at something too about whether you're speak trying to convince someone or trying to convince someone who's listening and i do think thank thankfully we live in a world where most people aren't cable news hosts uh what what a what a world that would be uh present company accepted you're supposed to be of course please obviously it goes without saying but uh i think a lot of people have, I think, we've all been trained by social media to be a host,

Speaker 41 to act like we are kind of,

Speaker 41 you know, using our platform to convince the people who aren't in the debate, but are maybe watching the debate.

Speaker 41 What are some tips you might have for people who they're not trying to reach an audience? They are at that Thanksgiving dinner and they don't want to get into an argument with a loved one.

Speaker 41 They want to plant a seed, right?

Speaker 41 They just want to kind of get, just open the door a little bit.

Speaker 41 What have you learned about the best ways to do that?

Speaker 81 So I mentioned, I talk about empathetic listening in the book and I mentioned that a moment ago. Very important to people want to be heard.

Speaker 81 That's very important.

Speaker 41 Did you mention listening? I wasn't paying attention.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 33 I mean,

Speaker 41 you're about to joke about listening.

Speaker 81 That's hilarious. And we're sitting around the table at Thanksgiving table and I talk about that in the book.
And look, the number one issue, and it might sound obvious to some people, but.

Speaker 81 you'll be amazed how many people don't do it, including members of the Democratic Political Party at a national and state level, which is appeal to people's hearts, not their heads.

Speaker 81 We think that if we turn up at the Thanksgiving table with 700 different statistics about the border crossings, that will get Uncle Jack or whoever Uncle is at the table saying, kick them all out, build the wall.

Speaker 81 That will win them over to the pro-immigration argument. That's not what will work.
In fact, you've got to find other ways of appealing people.

Speaker 81 And the number, you know, Dale Carnegie said it years ago, decades before I wrote a book on the subject, that we're not dealing with rational creatures when we're dealing with human beings, we're dealing with emotional creatures.

Speaker 81 So if you want to get through to people, especially family members, especially on contentious issues, you've got to find that emotional bond.

Speaker 81 You've got to tell a story, a personal story, make it personal, something that identifies to you and them. You've got to also be able to kind of show, not tell.
You've got to also have some passion.

Speaker 81 The number of people who present arguments in a kind of dispassionate, robotic way, because we're kind of all rational animals, we think that's the way to convince people. It's not.

Speaker 81 You've got to have some passion. You've got to have some emotion.

Speaker 81 You got to have some energy in order to connect with people, because people make decisions instinctively with their gut, with their heart, not just with their heads. And I've said this for a while.

Speaker 81 The reason why Democrats often get beaten up.

Speaker 81 when it comes to the messaging game is because Republicans, like it or not, have found a way to rouse the emotions of their base, not in a way I approve of, in a kind of demagoguic way, you know, anger, paranoia, resentment, victimhood, fear of the other, but it works.

Speaker 81 It gets people worked up. Against that, you can't turn up with a 16-point policy paper.
We saw that in 2016.

Speaker 81 Donald Trump very memorably build the wall, ban Muslims, lock her up, stuff that resonated, memorable, emotive, provocative.

Speaker 81 And Hillary Clinton, bless her, great childcare plans, but not stuff that people were going to turn up in their droves in the crucial places where she needed them to turn up and vote for her.

Speaker 81 So I do think that's been a problem for a long time on the left.

Speaker 81 And I'm from the UK, as you know, the Labour Party in the UK has had the same problem, often seen as technocratic, bureaucratic, managerial, not enough heart.

Speaker 41 What do you think are the, like, I think there's a challenge that we face that's it's not it's not just a matter of tactics or strategy.

Speaker 41 Republicans compete on hate, they compete on fear, they compete on these very powerful emotions.

Speaker 41 What what do you what are some examples or who are some politicians that you think are finding an emotional resonance from the left that isn't playing that kind of a game?

Speaker 81 I mean, the obvious answer would be Bernie Sanders.

Speaker 81 Bernie Sanders is out with a book now on capitalism. He's a person who understands that people are angry.
And you have to respond to that anger.

Speaker 81 You have to channel that anger, whatever word you want to use. Populism is a very loaded phrase, but he has a left populism to push back against the right populism.

Speaker 81 Yes, be angry, but don't be angry at the transgender kid. Don't be angry at the Mexican migrant.
Don't be angry at the Muslim under the bed who's going to blow you up, you think.

Speaker 81 Be angry at the 0.1 percenters who have screwed you over and screwed over your 401ks and screwed over your healthcare system. And I think that is important.

Speaker 81 I think showing, identifying that anger, you can't pretend that people aren't angry in this this country. It's what you do about it.

Speaker 81 I would also say it's also not just about what you're saying, it's how you're saying it. I mean, I look at, I look, I've said this point many times.
I'm going to say it again.

Speaker 81 There have been six presidential elections in the 21st century. Democrats have lost three and won three.
And the three they lost were Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry.

Speaker 81 Smart people, many people would say good people, decent human beings who wanted to improve the country, would have done had they won.

Speaker 81 but not exactly the greatest emotional speakers, orators, and, you know, great great respect to you, John.

Speaker 81 I know you worked on a couple of those campaigns, but those are people who did not rouse people to get out to the polls.

Speaker 81 And you look at the people who won, again, someone you did work for Barack Obama twice, Joe Biden, people who don't sound like they're just throwing talking points at you, don't just sound despite all the Republican attacks on Obama, don't just sound like they're reading from a teleprompter.

Speaker 81 Joe Biden is not a great orator, but when he speaks, it's authentic, or at least it's perceived as authentic.

Speaker 41 Yeah, it's interesting, though.

Speaker 41 I've thought about this, and, you know, I had a a feeling you would go to Bernie Sanders, and I hear you on this kind of whatever, a version of populism, but aimed at the right enemies, the right kind of anger aimed in the right places.

Speaker 41 But if you talk about Bill Clinton, you talk about Barack Obama, you talk about Joe Biden, I think one thing that all three have in common is their campaigns very much

Speaker 41 were not rooted in anger. They tend to be optimistic figures, right? They tend to appeal to people with a more kind of hopeful,

Speaker 41 less combative tenor, right? That's been, I think, a big big part of the way which Democrats have won. And so I'm just, I'm actually, I'm generally unsure.

Speaker 2 Like, what do you think?

Speaker 38 I'm going to push back.

Speaker 81 I'm going to push back against you. On Barack Obama, for example, you know, Obama better than I do, obviously, but I would say if you go back to 2008, he didn't beat Hillary Clinton just with hope.

Speaker 81 I think that's slightly rewritten. He was pretty vicious in some of his campaigns.
You're likable enough. He went after rallies.
He went after a with name.

Speaker 81 And I write a chapter in the book on ad hominem attacks. I don't think there's any wrong with ad hominem attacks.
You can go after the credibility of your opponent and call them out.

Speaker 81 Barack Obama did that when he went after uh mitt romney he was vicious in his bane attacks he was so vicious in his bane attacks that corey booker came out and tried to disown him uh because he didn't we were being too mean to bane so i'm not quite sure i get your point but i'm not sure that's quite the summary of barack obama i would take look let's move away from bernie sanders my point is not even about left or right i don't care what you're selling it's about a style a tune of voice, an approach to rhetoric.

Speaker 81 So let me give you another example. Ruben Gallego is someone running for office now in Arizona.

Speaker 81 I thought his campaign ad where he launched his campaign was a fantastic ad in terms of again channeling some of that anger implicitly both at Republicans and against Kisten cinema.

Speaker 81 There's a lot of Eric Swolwell. No one would say Eric Swalwell.

Speaker 81 I don't think Eric Swalwell described himself as a bernie lefty socialist, but he's someone I often see just swinging punches, rhetorical punches at the Republicans, both on social media and in some of his very nifty ads.

Speaker 81 I would like to see more of that.

Speaker 41 Yeah, no, and I agree. I'm actually not, I don't mean it in an ideological sense.

Speaker 41 I actually just am trying to parse out there are times where it looks like, hey, the way you take on Trumpism or this kind of right-wing populism is we need to have a kind of populism and ang

Speaker 41 we have a need to have a righteous fury of our own but then there are also I think I think I think generally speaking I hear you on the points about the various kinds of I think tough attacks that people like President Biden and President Obama and even President Clinton have made but for the most part viewing it as their job to create a kind of a hopeful yes alternative

Speaker 81 i'm not disagreeing with you i'm saying that first of all we're living in different times right bill clinton was not facing the same political environment that a democrat today is is facing or a media environment.

Speaker 81 So the anger is very different.

Speaker 81 But yeah, you're right. Of course, you need a hopeful, optimistic message.

Speaker 81 And I talk about that in the very final chapter of the book when I talk about how you bring your argument to a close, the grand finale. And I give...

Speaker 81 the examples i give other examples for example winston churchill who was seen as someone who inspired people uh despite having been a very poor orator himself as a younger man he used to sit in the bathtub and practice out loud speaking we remember him as the great world war ii uh rhetorician he was very poor orator in his 20s and 30s he had a stutter that he had to fight with he had a hopeful message it wasn't just his delivery it was very unique but of course it was an optimistic message one that we will defy the odds one that we will be victorious one that we will uh you know see the post-war promised land and i agree with you you need some of that too you do need to as a comeback to what we said earlier you need to rouse people emotionally liberals and progressives have to decide which emotions they want to rouse um so for example when i mentioned immigration you're arguing with your uncle at the immigration table uh he's his the emotions that have been activated in him are fear and loathing, paranoia.

Speaker 81 They're coming to replace us, to borrow a Fox and Nazi phrase.

Speaker 81 And you need to push back with, actually, we're America. We're so much better than this.
This is what this country was built on.

Speaker 81 This is what many of our own forefathers, maybe members of our family around the table, who are immigrants or children of immigrants. This is about building a common future through new.

Speaker 81 blood and new energy and a common purpose. And I think, you know, that is a message that actually works.

Speaker 81 And we've seen that in the polling, actually, in terms of some of the immigration numbers have turned around.

Speaker 41 So you mentioned the media environment, and that, of course, would be

Speaker 41 no place better than Fox to deliver that kind of paranoia directly to people's brains.

Speaker 41 President Biden, there was a bit of a kerfuffle around the Super Bowl as to whether or not he would go on a Fox-affiliated outfit.

Speaker 41 Putting that specific example aside, where do you fall on this question as to whether or not progressives and Democratic politicians should engage with Fox News? On the one hand,

Speaker 41 it legitimizes a propaganda apparatus. On the other, if you don't go, nobody's speaking.
And Pete Boudige, he kicks ass when he goes on Fox.

Speaker 81 So I am of the Elizabeth Warren school that you shouldn't go on Fox.

Speaker 81 I'm not a fan of that. Bernie Saunders does it.
Pete Budiger does it. They both do it very well.
No denying that. But I do believe it is a propaganda organization.
I refuse to call it Fox News.

Speaker 81 We're speaking on a day where, you know, the latest Rupert Murdoch deposition in the Dominion trial has just been released and gotten out.

Speaker 81 And we're seeing what he said in private versus what he said in public.

Speaker 81 And it's exactly the same as Sean Hannity, Tucker Carls, and Laura Ingram with their text, which is they say completely the opposite in private. They're not interested in news.

Speaker 81 I think there's a line from Murdoch that we're not red or blue, we're about green, which I thought was brutally honest in a private email.

Speaker 81 And I just think, what are you doing going on Fox, legitimizing an organization which pushes white supremacy? evening after evening on shows like Tucker Carlson.

Speaker 81 As someone who is a brown immigrant with brown Muslim kids, I find it personally offensive for anyone who thinks that that is a news operation. And people say, well, there's a big audience.

Speaker 81 We've got to get the eyeballs. Well, Alex Jones has a big audience.
Why not go on Infowars? Where do you draw the line? Alex Jones has a huge audience, whether we like it or not. Why not go on there?

Speaker 81 If you want to get to new audiences, why not do the Stormfront website? That's an audience that others can't reach.

Speaker 81 I mean, I think it's a very slippery slope to go down to say, well, that's where the eyeballs are.

Speaker 81 I think if you want to win those arguments, you want to win over those voters, do it on the ground, do it the old-fashioned way.

Speaker 81 Try and build up a political machine that can still canvas in left-behind areas. Look at the East Palestine debacle.

Speaker 81 As cynical as the right-wing attacks were, as dishonest as Donald Trump visit was, the reality is he did show up and people did say, hey,

Speaker 81 I saw the quotes from people in Ohio in that place saying, you came, you didn't forget us. Now, we know that's bullshit.
You and I know that's bullshit. It's a vacuum that's filled on the ground.

Speaker 81 So there are other ways of reaching conservative voters. I don't believe that helping to prop up.

Speaker 81 uh this figment of imagination that fox is a news organization helps and people say well even if you don't go on, that doesn't affect them. Actually, it does.

Speaker 81 Fox is obsessed with trying to get legitimacy and mainstream credibility. And I think you see that in the White House briefing room.
I think you see that in their advertising.

Speaker 81 I think you see that in their guest selection.

Speaker 41 So

Speaker 41 you've recently had a bit of a revelation. You were very critical of President Biden when he was a candidate,

Speaker 41 but you've apparently seen the Neolib light. All right.
You gave an interview where you said,

Speaker 41 and this is the exact quote: the most impressive president in your lifetime. He is virile and extremely charismatic in a sexual way.

Speaker 41 Now.

Speaker 55 Exact quote was that?

Speaker 40 Wow.

Speaker 41 Most of that's exact quote.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 81 I have a chapter on receipts in my book and you didn't read any receipts just now.

Speaker 41 You did. You did say most impressive president in your lifetime.

Speaker 41 Now, you have this, you have a president who has exceeded expectations in virtually every way except one, which is that he has continued to get older.

Speaker 41 If the debate over Biden and whether or not he should run again, whether or not he should win win again, redounds to this question of age,

Speaker 41 as our debate expert, what is the best way for Democrats to win that argument?

Speaker 81 It's a great question. Let me just say, if we were in a debate and I was trying to beat you up, which I'm not, of course, I would say that you only read part of the quote.

Speaker 81 Even your made-up quote ended too early because I did go on to say he is the most impressive president of my lifetime. It's a very low bar, given George W.
Bush, Donald Trump, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 81 But even compared to the Democratic gods, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, I think Joe Biden has definitely achieved more legislatively.

Speaker 81 And even what you just mentioned a moment ago, refusing to go on Fox. Joe Biden did that.
So look, I give him plaudits. That doesn't mean I'm a kind of fanboy.

Speaker 81 I think his immigration stuff has been awful. I think he's dropped the ball on COVID in recent months.
There's many Israel and Palestine. He's as horrific as every previous president.

Speaker 81 So I've got a lot of criticism still. But, you know, he's clearly made the case to be the Democratic candidate again.
Yes, you're right. There's no doubt that age is the biggest problem with him.

Speaker 81 What do you do about age? What is the argument you make for age?

Speaker 81 I think the argument, if I was him, and I'm not saying I support this argument, but if you had to make the argument for age, I would just plaster my visit to Ukraine over every campaign ad and every answer.

Speaker 81 I would say, all right, yes, I'm old. But Mr.

Speaker 81 Interviewer, would you like to get on a 10-hour train journey in a secret flight and wander around a war zone as the first president in modern American history to do so without American military support in that war zone?

Speaker 81 I would play the Ukraine card, which was a pretty effective card that he played recently. Seems to be working.
Some of his poll numbers look better. But look, age is a real problem.

Speaker 81 I would also point out Donald Trump will be close to 80 or in his 80s if he were to run, win, and serve a second term.

Speaker 81 Nikki Haley's been playing the age card against Trump and Biden. Not sure how that's working out for her, given Ronda Sanders is younger than her.
So I think the age argument only goes so far.

Speaker 81 Because don't forget, some of us, including myself, and I'll hold my hands up here and concede this. I have a chapter on concessions in the book.
I'm going to concede.

Speaker 81 I was wrong about Biden's age in 2020. I thought he was too old in 2020.
I was like, is he all there? Is he sunsetting?

Speaker 81 Like, when he made some of the gaffes and debates about record players, I was one of those people going, oh, is this really the guy you want going up?

Speaker 81 And like I said, he proved me wrong on many issues. So I think if I was him, I would push Ukraine.
I would push his successful record and I would push, well, Donald Trump will be equally old.

Speaker 81 I'd do, and I do everything in threes, as I point out in the book.

Speaker 41 I'm glad you,

Speaker 41 and that's, and it works.

Speaker 41 I'm glad you referenced how we might have felt a little bit in 2020, because I'm of two minds of this too, because it's like, listen, this would be the oldest person to ever be sworn in as president.

Speaker 41 But at the same time, I felt like there was a certain kind of engaged progressive who was really paying attention, who was put off by stumbles, worried about his age.

Speaker 41 And then the critics would have such a much lower evaluation of Joe Biden's as a debater than the typical person watching.

Speaker 41 So I actually think of like, how do we,

Speaker 41 it's like, how do you, how do you put yourselves in the shoes of the kind of person that maybe isn't paying as close enough attention or close, as close attention as we would?

Speaker 81 I actually think we're over focused on it. I think it actually matters who the Republican opponent is.
If he's up against Trump, I think he has a good chance of winning again. Why not?

Speaker 81 If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If he's up against DeSantis, I do think it'll be tougher.
I think if you're up against DeSantis, DeSantis, he's a different type of candidate.

Speaker 81 Not that I'm one of these people who thinks DeSantis is some great threat.

Speaker 81 I think he's a deeply overrated politician with a glass drawer, but DeSantis can will have advantages that Trump doesn't have and will be able to play the youth against kind of old age card.

Speaker 81 And don't forget, I talk about this in the book. You've always got the Ronald Reagan card.
I mean, Reagan was the person who dealt with this the most successful, memorable way in American history.

Speaker 81 In a debate, when it was a question was thrown at him about his age, he made fun of Walter Mondel and said, I won't use his youth and inexperience against him. It was a great zinger.

Speaker 81 I include it in the book in the chapter on zingers as much as I loathe Reagan. I love that line.
And I think people have done it before.

Speaker 81 So I don't necessarily think that Biden's age is going to be the deal breaker. I think it will be a a problem.
I think it will be a big problem against the Ron DeSantis, not against Donald Trump.

Speaker 81 But I don't think that's what's going to decide 2024.

Speaker 81 My worry about 2024 is how strong the fascists are going to be at a local and state level in terms of corrupting our election process and then starting an insurrection after the next election.

Speaker 41 Let's talk about the fascists for a second. So

Speaker 41 we're in the midst of this anti-trans backlash. that's being fomented by a bunch of right-wing politicians who are trying to pass anti-trans laws.
But one step away from them, you have the J.K.

Speaker 36 Rowlings of the world

Speaker 41 who are offended by the term of transphobe while kind of pushing misinformation and kind of otherizing trans people.

Speaker 41 You have right-wing comedians who have, like, even people that wouldn't consider themselves conservatives, embracing a kind of conservative aesthetic, your Dave Chappelles.

Speaker 41 You have journalistic figures who consider themselves objective, teaching the controversy,

Speaker 41 wondering if this whole gender thing has gone too far.

Speaker 41 You have all these different factions making noise, and you have progressives, you have doctors, you have experts, you have trans people trying to take on all these factions at once.

Speaker 41 When do you try to debate to win these arguments on points?

Speaker 41 Or when do you feel like you have to accept that you're loosey with the chocolates and the only way to win is not to play, to kind of stop trying to win these point-by-point arguments with people who don't care about the truth and go for the millions of people who are maybe just starting to understand this issue at all?

Speaker 81 It's a great question. And it's something I've struggled with for a long time.
I am not transgender, but I am Muslim.

Speaker 81 So I know what it's like to be a minority that's feared and loathed and becomes a political cudgel because for 20 years, that has been the Muslim community since 9-11.

Speaker 81 Certainly, you saw Donald Trump get elected on the back of a Muslim ban. And the same question was persisting then.
Do you debate this stuff?

Speaker 81 Or do you say my identity, my existence is not up for debate? And I think I would, you know, who am I?

Speaker 81 I'm not going to speak on behalf of transgender communities, but what I would say, as a Muslim person who feels very worried about the hateful attacks on a a certain community in our midst, to the way that they've been turned into political football, my advice would be is again to go back to the start of our conversation, separate this out.

Speaker 81 Are you going to go and debate Matt Walsh on the Daily Wire on transgender kids? No.

Speaker 81 No, there's just no point to that.

Speaker 81 And I keep telling interviewers this as I talk about my book, if I wrote the book again, if I wrote a sequel, I would add a chapter that I feel I missed, which is when to walk away from an argument, right?

Speaker 81 There's certain people you don't argue with because it's not a good faith argument because they're just trolls or they're just bigots so yeah i won't have marjorie taylor green on my show even if she wanted to come on and said i'll give you great viral moments no what would be achieved from that nothing she's not a good faith actor she's a fantasist and a grifter so

Speaker 81 who's your what's your goal you want to go debate matt wolf no don't debate that lucy and the football as you said But are there millions of Americans out there who want to understand more about gender affirming care, who want to understand more about whether their kids are going to be disadvantaged in school because of the rules on which gender can play which sports.

Speaker 81 Yeah, there are millions of Americans who have those concerns, including millions of Democrats, liberals, and self-proclaimed progressives. That's just a fact.
This is new stuff for a lot of people.

Speaker 81 So, should you be going out there and persuading those people? Should you be engaged in good faith debates if you can identify good faith people to debate with? Yes.

Speaker 81 And again, to use the Muslim analogy,

Speaker 81 would I go on a show on Fox to debate the Muslim ban? No.

Speaker 81 But would I have a good faith discussion with someone on NPR about the terrorist threat from Muslim groups? And do Muslims, are Muslims doing enough to tackle terrorism in their midst?

Speaker 81 Was a question I was asked 7,000 times post 9-11. Yeah, I did that.
I went and did those discussions on the BBC, on CNN, et cetera. So you've got to separate it out.

Speaker 81 What is the good faith part of the argument? Who are the convincibles and the persuadables? And who are the bigots and the grifters and the attention seekers? Don't debate with them.

Speaker 81 Do debate with the others.

Speaker 41 That's as simply as I can put it from my own perspective as a a minority journalist yeah it uh there's just a you know the old expression don't don't mud wrestle a pig you'll get dirty and they'll like it they'll enjoy it indeed you've you've given us a lot of your time but i i would be remiss if i didn't end with with a debate uh can we please put on the screen okay how a dog would wear pants

Speaker 37 uh

Speaker 41 There are two ways here representing how a dog would wear pants.

Speaker 41 For those, because it's an audio medium, I'll say one of them is the pants are halfway up the body covering all four legs, or the pants are the back half of the body just covering

Speaker 41 the back legs. Can you choose a side and make an argument and defeat me when I argue the alternative?

Speaker 81 Well, you pick your side first, and I'll argue the other. You go first.

Speaker 37 Because I say it in the book.

Speaker 81 I say in the book, sometimes you want to go first, sometimes you want to go last. I want to go last.

Speaker 76 Okay, I am going to argue

Speaker 41 that a dog would wear pants as on the left, as in

Speaker 3 the legs.

Speaker 62 I know, I know. I chose the hardest.

Speaker 41 okay uh so would you like me to go first or would you like would i should i no you go you go mate here's my point i understand that we live in a world where people confuse aesthetics and morals i understand why aesthetically someone like metty would assume that a dog would wear pants just on their hind legs i agree it looks more like the way pants should be worn but that's not how i approach this problem all right i see a dog with four legs and i believe for a dog to wear pants all four legs should be in pants if i was only wearing pants on half my legs I would look ridiculous.

Speaker 41 But it is because you think it is more important that a dog look like a person than a dog wear pants the way a dog would wear pants inside of a dog culture that you've adopted this ridiculous position.

Speaker 81 I think it's,

Speaker 81 I would just say one thing. This is a show.
I mean, you've had more time to think about this argument, but let me just say in the few seconds that I have.

Speaker 81 that this is a show with liberal listeners and i think liberals understand that it's deeply offensive to push an argument that is based on a separate but equal approach to life.

Speaker 38 Wow. I think separate but equal is something we put behind us.

Speaker 81 I think the dog wants to be equal with man. Dog is man's best friend.

Speaker 81 The idea that you would put dog, you would put a dog in pants with his owner, but you would not allow the dog to wear pants in the style of his owner.

Speaker 81 And to say that that apartheid situation is something that I could endorse.

Speaker 38 No,

Speaker 81 I believe in equality. Look, values matter here.

Speaker 50 It's all about values.

Speaker 38 I want equality.

Speaker 81 I want equality. I don't want separate but equal, John.
If that's what you want to push, if that's what the audience wants to go for, you take separate but equal.

Speaker 41 I'm going to take. The next time I see you, I'm going to make two points, one with my left and one with my right.

Speaker 81 And you'll fail because I say in the book, you have to have three points always.

Speaker 62 I also held up the hands in the wrong order.

Speaker 8 I held up the hands in the wrong order.

Speaker 41 Mehdi Hassan, thank you so much for your time. The book is Win Every Argument, The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking.

Speaker 41 Mehdi, I would say that, you know, for our first topic, was it great to have you? I think the answer was yes. I think it was.
I think you won that argument too.

Speaker 81 I appreciate it, John. It's been a pleasure.
And

Speaker 81 I won't say that your co-host told me to rhetorically beat you up because that would be true.

Speaker 37 Wow.

Speaker 41 Wow. Well, you know what? I made it.
I survived the debate.

Speaker 81 You were fantastic.

Speaker 38 I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Speaker 81 And it was very clear to me that you read the entire book and ran circles around me.

Speaker 62 Thanks so much. I almost, yeah, sure.

Speaker 41 I could almost ask you the unprepared Charlie Rose question, which is your book, Why Now?

Speaker 81 Oh,

Speaker 81 I do book interviews for a living. Trust me, John, I've been on the other side of this the number of times I'm wondering, are they going to ask me, have I read page 172 of the book?

Speaker 81 And I'm petrified of that moment.

Speaker 41 The rudest question you can ask a person is, have you read my book?

Speaker 41 It's an unacceptable question.

Speaker 37 I read every word. I'm not asking you.
I read every goddamn word.

Speaker 81 You were so damn good today.

Speaker 41 It's a dog-eared copy by my bed.

Speaker 41 It got wet in the rain, you know.

Speaker 81 If it's by your bed, it puts you to sleep every night.

Speaker 41 Matty, thank you so much. This is great.

Speaker 36 Thanks, John.

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Speaker 84 hey welcome into walgreens hi there

Speaker 83 all right hon i'll grab the gift wrap uh cards and oh those stuffed animals the girls want great and i'll grab the string lights and some

Speaker 52 how about i grab some cough drops This is not just a quick trip to Walgreens.

Speaker 83 I'm fine, honey.

Speaker 86 Well, just in case, you know what they say.

Speaker 65 Tis the season.

Speaker 52 This is help staying healthy through the holidays.

Speaker 3 Walgreens.

Speaker 11 Okay, before we go, we've got some important legal wrangling to attend to.

Speaker 14 Love it?

Speaker 5 Since you have the best legal credentials here with your impressive LSAT score, did you write this, Tom?

Speaker 38 Didn't. Fuck, why am I reading this?

Speaker 59 We're going to let you take us through it.

Speaker 56 Go ahead.

Speaker 41 Last week, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted: We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government.

Speaker 41 Everyone I talk to says this: from the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrats' traitorous America-last policies, we are done.

Speaker 41 We can all agree that the left will gladly keep discussing woke culture and the divorce, but what about everything else?

Speaker 41 John Tommy and I have decided we are going to take the amicable route and fairly split things up with Marjorie Taylor Greene. There's no need to get a judge or submarine involved.

Speaker 41 We can settle this ourselves. I'll run through a list of items, and our job will be to find a way to amicably split them so that

Speaker 41 we can settle this without going without a kind of long and acrimonious

Speaker 46 customer.

Speaker 41 Sure, sure. All right.
So I think we're going to use that whiteboard. Okay.

Speaker 23 Oh, my gosh. There's a whiteboard involved?

Speaker 7 Katie Porter

Speaker 7 here in spirit.

Speaker 41 Here's how it works.

Speaker 41 We are trying to amicably split. So I'm going to give us things to split up.
And obviously, we want to do well for ourselves as blue Americans, but we also are trying to be fair.

Speaker 38 Okay.

Speaker 5 So are we playing as blue Americans or are we playing as sort of our like

Speaker 74 our fair people? Yeah, like judges.

Speaker 41 i think we're um we're like the mainstream media we're from the cities but we're trying to pretend we're fair

Speaker 55 you know good yes that's good

Speaker 57 answer keep that answer

Speaker 41 all right here we go perfect uh first up we have the chrises chris pine chris evans chris hemsworth chris pratt uh-huh um i think we obviously give them chris pratt yeah they get pratt they get prattled

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 39 uh

Speaker 41 i want evans i just i it's important to me that we get Evans.

Speaker 41 So now we've got Chris Pine, and we've got Chris Hemsworth.

Speaker 14 I don't have a strong opinion between this one.

Speaker 7 We want Hemsworth.

Speaker 70 You think we want Hemsworth?

Speaker 41 Okay. I think that's right.
I think that's giving them a great Chris, too.

Speaker 33 Yeah.

Speaker 41 Hemsworth. And they're going to get Pine.

Speaker 7 Can we give them Army Hammer? He just feels like he goes in this bucket and sitting over there.

Speaker 41 Oh, I spelled Army wrong.

Speaker 36 Yeah, he's okay.

Speaker 54 I don't know how. He can't afford a lot of it.

Speaker 41 Army Hammer.

Speaker 33 Good.

Speaker 41 Thank you.

Speaker 43 Okay.

Speaker 37 Now,

Speaker 41 Chilis, Fridays, Buka de Beppo, and Cheesecake Factory.

Speaker 36 Okay, okay.

Speaker 62 I have a pitch,

Speaker 41 which is, I will do anything to keep Cheesecake Factory.

Speaker 36 I'm with you. Okay, so I would like to.

Speaker 2 I would not

Speaker 7 chilies.

Speaker 5 How is the Outback steakhouse not in that list?

Speaker 36 Okay, we can

Speaker 36 give it a little bit. How about this?

Speaker 41 I think we should give them Chilis, Fridays, and Buka de Beppo. Because in a lot of these red states, that'll be the best Italian food they can get.

Speaker 41 And then we get Outback and we get cheesecake.

Speaker 74 Yeah, the only problem is that

Speaker 29 Chili's and TJI Fridays both have the best honey mustard of any chain restaurant.

Speaker 7 You're the most basic motherfucker I've ever seen.

Speaker 11 I know.

Speaker 75 I'm a purple American, Tommy.

Speaker 2 Oh, Jesus.

Speaker 42 I want an innovation for you.

Speaker 41 He worships an awesome god in the Blue Saints.

Speaker 51 All right, you know what?

Speaker 41 Fine. They get Fridays.

Speaker 43 Oh, yeah. Okay, chilies.
We'll get chilies. Yes.

Speaker 25 I'm happy. I don't know you.
I don't want chilies.

Speaker 57 They can have buca.

Speaker 36 They can have bucca.

Speaker 41 Take it.

Speaker 41 I do think, and we're going to get out back.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 41 But I do think because we're getting Cheesecake Factory, I'm just going to throw in Panera bread.

Speaker 7 I think that's fair.

Speaker 7 And that's right.

Speaker 41 Because it fucking sucks.

Speaker 3 So we're going to get the Olive Garden? Sure.

Speaker 2 That's our Italian. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 37 We'll get Olive Garden. There we go.

Speaker 32 Unlimited bread.

Speaker 41 Because they don't want anywhere where you're family.

Speaker 33 All right.

Speaker 41 White Lotus and Yellowstone. I feel like this is a bit of a gimmick.

Speaker 11 Yeah, what was that?

Speaker 51 Come on.

Speaker 49 Well, I just wanted an easy one.

Speaker 41 And

Speaker 41 white everyone went on that one yeah that's great they don't they don't watch white lotus um mcdonald's and taco bell mcdonald's and taco bell um

Speaker 54 i think

Speaker 66 i think they should probably

Speaker 7 they're gonna they're gonna demand mcdonald's yeah they don't want taco bell it was fed at state dinners it's a yeah it's a win for them but i'm gonna i'm gonna agree yeah i'm not happy about it um i'm gonna say we get taco bell if they got taco bell they would make race can we get like the yum brand tremendous Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.

Speaker 41 We can get the pizza hot and we can get, ah, you know what, though?

Speaker 41 They got to get the KFC.

Speaker 41 They got to get the KFC.

Speaker 75 They get the KFC.

Speaker 49 Well, we're going to get Popeyes.

Speaker 34 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2 We're going to get Popeyes. We're going to get Popeyes.

Speaker 41 We're going to get Popeyes. You know, that's.
What else we got? That's Louisiana done right. That's an old white guy with a mustache.
All right.

Speaker 41 So it checks out.

Speaker 41 The feeling of having no emails in your inbox versus the feeling of having a fully charged cell phone and a dog that has peed and pooped.

Speaker 33 Oh,

Speaker 67 that's interesting. Okay.

Speaker 41 We'll never get to feel one of those again.

Speaker 7 I will never again have a fully out inbox. Yeah.
I will never delete all my emails or read them all.

Speaker 12 So they get in the inbox?

Speaker 74 We need the dog.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you're going to get inboxed.

Speaker 55 Also, my phone. I'm not going to charge my phone through the phone.

Speaker 41 Have you ever read this podcast offline?

Speaker 37 Poop,

Speaker 7 charged, etc.

Speaker 41 That didn't make sense, but you get the gist.

Speaker 41 All right, this is going to be a tough one, and I deputize you as being able to discuss this.

Speaker 57 Uh-oh, this seems to get us into trouble.

Speaker 41 Well, LGBT.

Speaker 41 We're just going to try to figure out.

Speaker 41 That's a divorce. It sucks.
Nobody went. That's why divorce is so horrible.
People end up in places they don't want to be. And I have a.

Speaker 3 Did you display it evenly?

Speaker 58 No. Oh, there's too many letters.

Speaker 57 There's no letters.

Speaker 36 No. They're not.

Speaker 41 No.

Speaker 41 Here's my proposal. Okay.

Speaker 62 They're just going to argue with this.

Speaker 41 They're getting the lesbians, and we're getting everything

Speaker 41 else, Q, I, A, 2, spirits, et cetera.

Speaker 41 This is because of trucks

Speaker 8 and living

Speaker 41 in South.

Speaker 41 So don't, that's the choice they made. Pass.
That's the choice they made.

Speaker 36 I'm getting a thumbs down from an L on the couch.

Speaker 62 I'm getting an L from, I'm getting getting a big thumbs down.

Speaker 41 Please direct all comments.

Speaker 41 All right.

Speaker 41 That was a tough one. All right.
Message box, playbook, and Punch Bowl.

Speaker 5 We obviously get Message Box.

Speaker 15 Dan would not want to know what to do there.

Speaker 41 We got to get Message Box.

Speaker 7 Playbox.

Speaker 57 Did you imagine them reading Message Box? Red State's got a Playboy Box.

Speaker 41 They're going to have Playbook.

Speaker 38 They already have it.

Speaker 41 They're going to have Playbook.

Speaker 7 We get Punch Bowl.

Speaker 41 We're taking Punch Bowl.

Speaker 58 Substantive.

Speaker 41 We're taking Punch Bowl.

Speaker 63 I mean, Punch Bowl is like the Kevin McCarthy mouthpiece of choice, so I don't know if...

Speaker 58 Yeah, Billy State.

Speaker 36 Yeah, but I like that. That's what he's thinking.

Speaker 2 Yeah, okay. All right.

Speaker 41 The Great Lakes and the Grand Canyon.

Speaker 54 I mean,

Speaker 24 I feel like there's more value to having the Great Lakes.

Speaker 33 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 43 Water shortages than just like a Colorado and stuff.

Speaker 69 Big thing that people staring.

Speaker 41 All right, so we're going to take the Great Lakes.

Speaker 7 Is that what that is?

Speaker 58 There's five of them, right? Sure. Yeah.

Speaker 55 Is that right? That's not bad.

Speaker 38 Which Which ones are there on?

Speaker 47 Huron, Superior, Ontario, Erie.

Speaker 18 That's vaguely what they look like. Wow.

Speaker 37 Yeah, right?

Speaker 46 And then they're going to be the Grand Canyon.

Speaker 34 Draw that.

Speaker 2 Very well done. Wow.

Speaker 65 All right.

Speaker 36 I feel pretty good about what we have. Yeah, I think we did a good job.

Speaker 41 I think let's see. Let's see.
How do we do? The Red States got Chris Pratt, Chris Pine, Army Hammer.

Speaker 57 Who gets the awesome God?

Speaker 41 Well, we do worship an awesome God in the Blue States.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, so I think that that we'll get one.

Speaker 7 We need to throw this over to the Ben Shapiro show and see if he thinks it's fair.

Speaker 36 Yeah, that's fair.

Speaker 41 Buka de Beppo, they get Panera bread, they get Yellowstone, they love that. They do get McDonald's, that's a huge win.
That's a big, that's a great

Speaker 57 fries.

Speaker 41 Let's see, KF say, they get inbox zero, and they get lesbians, so their furniture is gonna all work,

Speaker 41 you know, everything's gonna be nice, and all the wood's gonna be well sanded, you know. I'm like on our side, we're fucked

Speaker 41 gays crashing into each other,

Speaker 38 okay,

Speaker 30 you.

Speaker 11 Crashing into a Taco Bell.

Speaker 19 Thanks to Medi. Thanks to the Cocaine Bear

Speaker 41 Xbox on our phones.

Speaker 11 Thanks to Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

Speaker 3 Thanks to Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

Speaker 20 And thanks to the thanks to lesbians for taking one for the team.

Speaker 14 Yep.

Speaker 8 Have a great one, everybody.

Speaker 38 Bye-bye.

Speaker 5 Pod Save America is a crooked media production.

Speaker 13 The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Speaker 6 Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein.

Speaker 13 Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez.

Speaker 5 It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 71 Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show.

Speaker 22 Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Girard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.

Speaker 9 And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montouth.

Speaker 13 Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com/slash podsaveamerica.

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Speaker 73 Download on the Apple App Store or Google Play and enjoy the soundtrack to your life.

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