Shutdown for What? (Schumer's Version)

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favre.

Speaker 3 I'm John Lovett. Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I lost my voice at CrookedCon chanting for Robert Mueller and the rule of law.

Speaker 3 Well, you know, I remember we all noticed it right before Terminally Online. We're like, John, are you listening to voice? You're like, they think so.
Yeah, sure enough.

Speaker 3 Six more hours of hanging out. There it goes.

Speaker 1 On today's show, Democrats had exactly five days of feeling good between last week's elections and the news on Sunday that That eight senators cut a deal with Republicans to reopen the federal government.

Speaker 1 We'll get into all the reactions and talk about what's next.

Speaker 1 We'll also talk about Trump's attempt to deal with the affordability issue that sunk his party last week, and another flurry of pardons for all his favorite co-conspirators and possibly Ghelane Maxwell.

Speaker 1 The president was also booed at the Commander's game, which may throw a wrench in his plans to name the new stadium after himself.

Speaker 3 Dickhead Park.

Speaker 1 Dickhead Park, gasping.

Speaker 2 Little tiny penis, Serena.

Speaker 1 Little tiny penis. Little tiny, tiny penis.

Speaker 1 But let's start with the capitulation that should lead to the government reopening this week.

Speaker 1 On Sunday, the following eight senators cut a deal with Republicans to end the longest shutdown in history.

Speaker 1 Gene Shaheen and Dick Durbin, both of whom are retiring, as well as Maggie Hassen, Tim Kaine, Jackie Rosen, Catherine Cortez-Masto, John Fetterman, and Independent Angus King, all of whom aren't up for re-election until 2028 or 2030.

Speaker 1 The deal will fund the government through January 30th. So just a couple of months and we can do this all again.

Speaker 1 It will also reinstate all the furloughed and fired federal workers with back pay, prevent Trump from firing federal workers in the event of future shutdowns, and fully fund SNAP benefits through the end of 2026.

Speaker 1 But on the issue the Democrats made the shutdown about, extending Obamacare subsidies to prevent premium hikes on 20 million Americans, the deal only gives Democrats a vote in the Senate on a bill of their choosing sometime in December.

Speaker 1 The Senate took the first vote to approve the deal Sunday night, and the House will vote on it as soon as they're all back in town this week for the first time since the middle of September.

Speaker 1 The reaction to the deal from Democrats has been mixed, if you define mixed as just about everyone hating it, but the senators who cut the deal.

Speaker 1 Here's Senator Angus King of Maine, one of the defectors, offering his take on Morning Joe.

Speaker 4 There were two goals, both of which I support. One was standing up to Donald Trump.
The other was getting some resolution on the ACA premium tax credit issue.

Speaker 4 The problem was the shutdown wasn't accomplishing either goals, and there was practically, well, there was zero likelihood that it was going to.

Speaker 4 In terms of standing up to Donald Trump, the shutdown actually gave him more power, Exhibit A being what he's done with

Speaker 4 SNAP under special law, under that big, awful bill that they passed last summer. The ICE agents are being paid.
Nobody else is.

Speaker 4 So standing up to Donald Trump didn't work.

Speaker 1 It actually gave him more power.

Speaker 1 Better things aren't possible. That's

Speaker 1 really just doing the meme.

Speaker 3 Bizarro John Bolton did not make me like him more there.

Speaker 1 He does look a little like John Bolton. I didn't think about that.

Speaker 1 As for the people taking the other side of the argument, there's too many to play. But here's just a quick sample from Bernie Sanders, Adam Schiff, and Chris Murphy.

Speaker 5 So I just voted no on the Republican funding bill. I'm outside the Capitol.
It's dark and raining, and that seems all too appropriate for this moment. We owe our constituents better than this.

Speaker 5 We owe a resolution that makes it possible for them to afford their health care.

Speaker 6 What the election showed is that the American people want us to stand up to Trumpism, to his war against working class people, to his authoritarianism.

Speaker 6 That is what the American people wanted, but tonight that is not what happened.

Speaker 7 See how tired I am. I've been here all weekend.
I've been working throughout the past few weeks to try to prevent this moment.

Speaker 7 After the elections on Tuesday, it just became absolutely clear that the American people do not want Democrats to be bullied into submission. They want Democrats to fight for their health care.

Speaker 7 They want Democrats to fight Trump's illegality.

Speaker 1 Ed Markey actually did one from the toilet.

Speaker 3 When you're mad, you hit him with a walk and talk. When you're happy, you go on with the Joes.

Speaker 2 I love the new Bernie in-house style. Whatever it is,

Speaker 2 the video that Bernie and AOC shot together, I like the walk-and-talk. I like the style.

Speaker 3 It's like the portrait mode kind of focuses.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 it's not on a phone. It's on a camera screen.

Speaker 2 It's really nice.

Speaker 1 Anyway, we got to get to some big things to talk about here, guys. I like the camera angles.

Speaker 1 Anyway, anything, but before we have to delve in, I guess the first question on a lot of people's minds who've been following this story is: why did they do this? And why now?

Speaker 1 Tommy, you want to kick us off?

Speaker 3 I mean, I think the fatal flaw in this whole shutdown was the lack of a realistic endgame, and that was always been the case.

Speaker 3 And I think government shutdowns, historically speaking, have never been great ways to get legislative victories and that proved to be the case here.

Speaker 3 And the Senate Democrats, it seemed like their only hope was to get Trump to do an end run around congressional leaders on the Republican side, talk to them directly, maybe negotiate something because he doesn't like to get blamed for shit and he likes to be the hero who comes in at the end.

Speaker 3 And that didn't happen. There was a sliver of hope, but remember Speaker John, back in October, it seemed like Trump might go sit down with Democrats, but then Johnson and Thune shut it down.

Speaker 3 And I think then Trump started blaming Republicans for getting rid of the filibuster and calling to to get rid of the filibuster. And the bunch of moderates were like, this is over.

Speaker 3 You know, it's just never going to happen. So I think there are probably some people in the caucus and the Democratic side who never wanted the shutdown fight in the first place.

Speaker 3 They also wanted to prevent more harm from happening. They knew Republicans were willing to continue to hurt the country and hurt voters in an effort to squeeze them.

Speaker 3 That included firing people, federal workers in particular, starving snap recipients, freezing people who need heating assistance, and then terrifying anyone who goes on an airplane.

Speaker 3 We're also 10 days into ACA open enrollment, so there was a kind of a ticking clock there, so they just caved.

Speaker 1 Lovin, how do you feel?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 2 no one has done a better job of explaining their votes than the group of people who voted yes. That's been my great frustration over the last 24 hours.
You saw Angus King there.

Speaker 2 I don't actually even understand.

Speaker 2 I understand

Speaker 2 what he's saying on some level, but

Speaker 2 the goal of standing up to Donald Trump failed. That's why we're no longer standing up to Donald Trump.
I really genuinely can't make sense of the logic of what they've been saying, in part because

Speaker 2 I actually take them at their word. The pain of the shutdown is ramping up, and they don't see any kind of

Speaker 2 a concession on exchanges, that that is vanishingly small and

Speaker 2 on the ACA subsidies. And so let's cut our losses.

Speaker 2 But the argument they're making around this is not just an argument for caving now. It's an argument for never having pursued a shutdown in the first place.

Speaker 2 Because a lot of what they're describing, the pain of the shutdown,

Speaker 2 you voted for a shutdown.

Speaker 2 That's what you did. You decided to pursue a shutdown in the hopes that it would create leverage.
Now, I agree, Tommy, that

Speaker 2 there were moments where it seemed like Trump might concede. But I would say, like,

Speaker 2 when he was railing against them about the filibuster, when in the White House he talked about being open to some kind of a deal that I'm sure made like Thune and Mike Johnson hit their heads.

Speaker 2 Like to me, I didn't take that as, oh, this is never going to happen.

Speaker 2 It might still be unlikely, but I don't understand why this deal happened so quickly and right now, especially when Chuck Schumer on Friday and Saturday laid out a last-ditch compromise, which is a one-year extension of ACA subsidies plus the CR, which seems to me is a final argument you could make to the country about the choice, even if you ultimately cave a few days later.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 How did you feel about it, Tony?

Speaker 3 Like on one level, it is frustrating, but on another level, I get it. Like we have no leverage.
We have no power. I guess like, again, I do think this is sort of the problem with the strategy.

Speaker 3 Trump wasn't willing to give on ACA subsidies. And, you know, in some ways, like, the one-year extension is the worst version of this because

Speaker 3 you give a political reprieve to all the Republican members of Congress who are up in 2026, and then you fuck them after that. Like, who does that really help? It doesn't help us politically.

Speaker 3 It doesn't help people in the long run. And so, but you put it forward, right?

Speaker 2 Of course, but you put it forward to let it fail, right? Because then you've made your final elections.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm saying if you get the deal you put on the table,

Speaker 3 you're saving your political adversaries from the kind of worst political outcome.

Speaker 1 Right. That's my point.
So look, I'm with you.

Speaker 3 I'm not sure this bodes well for future funding fights either or the hopes that we will use our leverage.

Speaker 3 I'm confused about what happens in January and what that fight will look like. I get why people are mad.
It did seem like we had some wind in our sails after the election.

Speaker 3 I think that the shutdown had to end eventually.

Speaker 3 And I think that, I don't know, that seemed like a bunch of moderates, a bunch of establishment Democrats were like, just kind of wanted this over and they figured it's now or it's later.

Speaker 3 So let's do it now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think my biggest beef here is with the timing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because, I mean, to your point about pain, Lovett, like the real pain actually hadn't started yet, which is why why I think some of these institutionalists who ended up caving, I'm not calling the moderates, because it really wasn't, there's plenty of moderates who voted against this thing.

Speaker 1 It really was more like sort of older institutionalists that ended up going with this thing.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I think the reason they accepted this so far is, so federal employees have missed

Speaker 1 one paycheck. Some have already missed two.

Speaker 1 They're all about to miss two. Some are going to soon miss three, right? The SNAP benefits, they're monthly.

Speaker 1 So as of November 1st, you know, there was a risk that they wouldn't get the snap benefits, but even that hadn't really kicked in. Air travels has started to become a mess, but

Speaker 1 it's about to become, it would have about, it would have become really bad come Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 So the pain was just about to start ratcheting up, which is, I think, why, but no, now, of course, the argument is.

Speaker 1 The point of getting the point of the pain is that that's supposed to give you, that's supposed to put the pressure on the Republicans.

Speaker 1 And so they didn't really get into the period where the pain really would put pressure on the Republicans. So

Speaker 1 my thing is,

Speaker 1 why not tell people that

Speaker 1 Trump and Republicans feel so strongly that people's premiums should go up that they are willing to ruin Thanksgiving for people, strand all kinds of travelers,

Speaker 1 make children go hungry, make federal workers miss now two, three paychecks in like all this week and next week, and then like let people see and think over Thanksgiving how fucked up travel is.

Speaker 1 And then if Republicans, maybe then they'll get Republicans to cave or to make some concessions on healthcare, or we haven't talked about this yet, to just simply change the Senate rules and get rid of the filibuster and open the government that way.

Speaker 1 Or even, by the way, they could have said, we're going to make an exception on the filibuster for opening the government, because they've already made an exception on the filibuster for judicial nominations and a whole host of other bullshit thing.

Speaker 1 The filibuster has so many exceptions in it now. It's like, I don't get this whole thing about like, oh, they must preserve the filibuster.
They could have said, like, just for shutdowns, right?

Speaker 1 So you could have done that for a couple of weeks in November, and then early December, if they're still not moving, you know, then you cave.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think this is the problem, right? Because

Speaker 2 everything about what they're saying is we did not want people to experience the pain of of a shutdown. And I take them at their word, right? Tim Kaine represents a lot of federal workers.

Speaker 2 One thing he said to a reporter was, this is the first time I can sleep at night because I can look Capitol Police officers in the eyes and I don't have to worry about snap.

Speaker 2 But to me, that was a very revealing because A, you've just sent a message to Republicans about January, which is you may vote for a shutdown, but once the pain starts, you're out.

Speaker 2 Well, then you're not for a shutdown. Like then it's semantics, right? Like whether the government is open or closed, you're trying to stave off the pain of it.

Speaker 2 The second part of it is, well, I presume you can make an argument to those people and everybody hurt by the shutdown, which is the argument Democrats have been making for more than 30 days, which is why I come back to the way they're talking about this as not just

Speaker 2 an argument that I think empowers Trump, but argues against the decision they made over the last, and for taking this deal, but argues against what they've done for the last 30 days, because we've been making an argument to people who may be hurt by this, which is we don't want people to be hurt by this.

Speaker 2 We hate that the government is shut down, but we're doing it for the long-term benefit of improving our healthcare system and getting people help with the one piece of leverage that we have.

Speaker 2 The second part about this is King makes the argument there, and a bunch of them have, which is

Speaker 2 that, you know, they wanted to stop the layoffs and they wanted to make sure people got paid. They wanted SNAP to go out.

Speaker 2 Some of this is conceding something, I think, pretty like big to Trump in a way that is dangerous.

Speaker 2 The layoffs Trump has done during the shutdown are on hold because they are lawless. Trump signed a law that said people get back pay after a shutdown.

Speaker 2 The OMB put out a bullshit memo to call that into question. So some of what they're describing as concessions they won are just reaffirming what is already federal law.

Speaker 2 And if you suggest that Republicans gave you something, you're saying Trump's lawlessness makes Republicans more powerful in Congress, which is what is dangerous about every way in which Democrats have said Trump breaking the law during a shutdown makes a shutdown less likely to be something Democrats would pursue.

Speaker 1 I will say it became pretty clear to me at least over the last couple of weeks that Republicans are never going to give on the subsidies. Never.
It's just not going to happen.

Speaker 3 I think that was a foregone conclusion.

Speaker 3 At least not in the context of a shutdown. Maybe they'll have a negotiation now, but they were not going to do it in the context of a shutdown.

Speaker 1 I don't even think now. I mean, Mike Johnson just said, like,

Speaker 1 This isn't talking points for us. We don't like these subsidies.

Speaker 1 And Jake Tapper asked him, well, well, what if there's a bipartisan vote in the Senate and they pass an extension of the subsidies and both parties somehow agree, which is, you know,

Speaker 1 leave that being pie in the sky aside for a second. Let's just imagine.

Speaker 1 And Mike Johnson's like, no, I'm not committing to a vote on that, even if it's bipartisan. I'm not not committing to a vote on that, but I am.

Speaker 1 I don't think it ever would have passed the House. Trump could have gone one of two ways after the election results.

Speaker 1 He could have gone towards like, okay, let's find some kind of a healthcare compromise here to fix it. But instead, he went towards the filibuster thing.

Speaker 1 And so now Democrats could have held out and said, okay, at some point, Republicans are going to cave on the filibuster. That, I think, was a possibility.

Speaker 1 I don't think they ever would have caved on the healthcare subsidy. I don't need that.

Speaker 3 I don't think there's any chance they're going to cave on the ACA subsidies. I don't think it was a wrong fight to pick because it was good messaging.

Speaker 3 It's an important thing that we care about deeply as a party, but I don't think they're ever going to cave.

Speaker 3 I think there is a chance when this is all resolved that you see a bipartisan vote in the Senate on something that is a fix that gets thrown over to the House, and that puts a really challenging political hot potato in Speaker Johnson's lap.

Speaker 3 And then we'll see what he does. I don't have a lot of faith in these guys doing the right thing, but we'll see.

Speaker 3 In the interim, what happened here reminds me a lot of Trump's China trade war, which is he resolves lots of problems created by his trade war, but he doesn't fix any of the underlying problems.

Speaker 3 I think what Democrats would tell you is their goal was never to create pain in the form of starving people on SNAP.

Speaker 3 And that's what Trump did, because he is fucking Vlad the Impaler and a sadist and was willing to do the cruelest possible thing.

Speaker 3 Like, yes, government shutdowns cause pain in the broadest sense of the word, but it's not starving, you know, people who need food assistance or freezing people in the Northeast who need LIHEAP funding to turn the heat on.

Speaker 3 And I think that's where they got squishy because they were like, no, this is actually not what we wanted to do as a part of this shutdown.

Speaker 3 But the Trump administration was like, all right, I'm going to fire everybody. We're going to make this as brutal as possible.
And they out-cruled us.

Speaker 1 And I will, yes, they did out-cruel us.

Speaker 1 And I will say, like, I had some Democrats in Congress talk to me who, like, not people who voted for the deal, but people who voted against the deal and said that, like, look, constituents were saying to them, not keep fighting in the last couple of weeks, but like, hey, totally was with you on this fight, but like.

Speaker 1 I'm having, I'm struggling to make rent right now. I'm not getting another paycheck.
I don't know when I'm going to get paid again. It's really hard.

Speaker 1 Like, worried about the fact that people are going to go hungry without snap benefits. Like, they, you can definitely fault them for what they did.

Speaker 1 And like I said, I think there's a whole bunch bunch of different things they could have done differently and done this a different way.

Speaker 1 But I don't think it was politics that led them to this because the politics were on their side. I think it was like genuine concern for their constituents and the pain.

Speaker 1 And you can say that that's, that's weak. And like, if you're going to go into a shutdown, maybe steal yourselves a little bit.
But I do think that's the reason why.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And on the snap front, right? Snap payments should be going out, but eventually that emergency funding would run out.
Snap runs out in a shutdown if you go on long enough.

Speaker 2 And they all went into this with a goal and they like committed to a goal that they didn't reach. Now, we all talked to, I think like everybody was

Speaker 2 understood like this was a long shot.

Speaker 2 I think if you went back and listened to us talking about this, we were conflicted in every direction and opened our it was a diff Democrats were in a very difficult position.

Speaker 2 I also, by the way, like part of this is I think the way these eight senators, just a few of them actually have talked about this, has made matters worse because I do think there's an argument you can make, which is to say the shutdown drew a ton of attention to doubling of health care premiums to the to the republican cuts in the big beautiful built democrats played their hand far better than anyone anticipated they defied political gravity on what a shutdown can achieve and right as the pain is about to become far worse they are it would better to uh end the shutdown while having won the political argument before people blame Democrats or the blame could potentially shift to Democrats, whether or not that would happen.

Speaker 2 The other part of it, too, is, and this to me I think is like the best politics of it, is this allows 39 Democrats in the Senate and every Democrat save one in the House to oppose the deal and fight the Republicans while doing so in a world where the government is open and basically eight Democrats plus Schumer get to be the villains in the intra-party fight while everyone else can say, I was fighting, I was fighting, I was fighting.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I do think like the way this played out, which is the news breaks, they take the vote.
They send out the defectors to make the case Sunday night.

Speaker 1 Like the choreography of all that was just so, that is what I maybe felt the most.

Speaker 1 Like if they're going to do this, go out and talk about, look, Republicans just, there's no bottom to the cruelty that they're willing to inflict on people.

Speaker 1 And there's zero, like none of them ever want to extend the health care subsidies. They want,

Speaker 1 they're in court right now trying to fight to take away food from hungry children right now. Like they're, they, they don't care that air travel is going to be screwed up for everyone.

Speaker 3 And so their big accomplishment is slashing Medicaid funding for the, for poor people.

Speaker 1 And that's, that's just the way it is. And so we're not going to do that.
We're just not going to go follow them down that path.

Speaker 3 It's always been the balance.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 to go back to like what you could have done is like once we got into a shutdown that was about negotiating over a policy issue, like it was inevitable that we might get to this point, I thought.

Speaker 1 Like you, they could have started, and this is more of like a Chris Murphy position. This is like JVL made this point today in his newsletter.

Speaker 1 Like you could have started the whole thing being like, you control Washington. You have enough votes to fund the government.
It's a lawless regime, so we're not going to do it.

Speaker 1 If you can't fund the government and you need our votes, here's our price. If you don't want to pay it, best of luck.
That's the final offer. This is not a negotiation.

Speaker 2 But that's like, that's

Speaker 3 an even more expansive goal. I don't understand that argument because it's an even more expansive goal with a less clear outcome that we're never going to get.
Like, what are they going to say?

Speaker 1 No, no, the price would have been the healthcare thing. But it's like, no, that's it.

Speaker 1 Like, if you want to, if you want our votes, then here's the you extend the subsidies and if not that's it you've you found the government but we're like we're not this is your this is your government you control it you have the votes so i i the i think the the argument for this is where that leads is republicans have to break the filibuster and once republicans have broken the filibuster look

Speaker 2 They could have opened the government anytime they wanted. They didn't.
Why? Because of the filibuster. That is not because they have some great reverence for the operations of the Senate.

Speaker 2 And I don't even think it goes so far as to them worrying about what happens if Democrats ever become empowered again.

Speaker 2 I think there's a bunch of Senate Republicans who understand that without the filibuster,

Speaker 2 they are holding the line and they do not want that.

Speaker 2 And then all of a sudden, they have to break the filibuster in order to reopen the government, which is why I do think you would end up with some sort of like fake breaking of it

Speaker 2 so they could avoid the responsibility for it. But then Democrats do not own any of this.
But at the same time, it means Democrats have kind of given up some power in all these negotiations because

Speaker 1 power we didn't have is the problem.

Speaker 2 Right. Well, then you get back to what they would call the concessions they got and whether or not those were worth it.
And I probably agree with you that you come down on.

Speaker 2 It's hard to describe what they like, even, you know, oh, we're going to get a vote on healthcare. It's like, okay, we just had a vote on healthcare.
It's called the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Speaker 1 They're on record.

Speaker 2 We already have them on record.

Speaker 1 I will say back to like the Tom, I think you made this point at the beginning. Like there is a case for we are where we are right now.
Here's why it's not the end of the world. Like

Speaker 1 there's a good argument to be made that we have made in previous pods on this, that taking healthcare off the table by extending the ACA subsidies would have been a political gift to Donald Trump and the Republicans.

Speaker 1 It wouldn't be an issue in the 26 midterms, and voters would either forget Democrats won that fight for them, or Republicans could have run ads saying they worked with Democrats to help lower health care costs.

Speaker 1 And now, Republicans will have to vote against ACA subsidies in a couple of months, and it'll be one of the most salient issues in 2026 in an election that will be about affordability, and voters will very clearly know who's on which side.

Speaker 1 And the anger at Trump, which has been fueled by affordability concerns that brought down his approval rating, that's not going away.

Speaker 1 The anger at Republicans, which cost them the off-year elections, that's not going to go away either.

Speaker 1 And so, like, it sucks that we're here, but I think looking forward, it's not the end of the world here.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, it's I get why people are pissed. I'm not happy about it either.
I personally just felt like this was a foregone conclusion since this thing started, and we'd end up at this place anyway.

Speaker 3 And I think what we'll be talking about in a year from now in the 2026 midterms is impossible to predict.

Speaker 3 And we should not think for one second, though, that what we were talking about today will be what we were talking about then. We just probably won't.

Speaker 2 I just worry now that we have set ourselves up for

Speaker 2 like January's coming. Yeah.
We're going to vote on funding the government. Again,

Speaker 2 we have said that we were doing this to get the health care funded. We're going to have a vote that will all but surely fail.

Speaker 2 Then we will have the vote in January where we've just, where a group of senators, Democrats have said we can't abide the pain of a shutdown, removing any leverage we would have had into that fight.

Speaker 2 So I think, I guess, where I land now is we won this debate.

Speaker 2 In a way, that's really impressive. And I think we should not be turning a win into a loss in how we talk about this, though we will.
Though, Democrats, that's our favorite thing to do.

Speaker 2 What I worry about is have we, in the way that this came about and in the way that it was put forward, put ourselves in a worse position for the next fight.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, I think that, I mean, again,

Speaker 1 having a vote in January on ACA subsidies and having it fail and then saying, okay, well, this is why we should vote Republicans out of office is the same as like, imagine we got a vote in January on raising the minimum wage or anything else that Republicans are going to knock down, you know?

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Speaker 1 So, aside from all the rage directed towards the senators who cut the deal, many Democrats are also quite angry with Chuck Schumer, even though he voted against it.

Speaker 1 The argument being that as leader, he should have been able to hold the caucus together. He clearly knew about the deal.

Speaker 1 Right before we recorded, there was some piece in Axios saying that actually Schumer convinced these senators back in October to hold off on reopening the government at least until November, until open enrollment in the elections.

Speaker 1 And so he didn't, you know, trying to show that Schumer really was against this.

Speaker 1 Already, though, a growing number of House Democrats have called on Schumer to go, including Rokana, Mike Levin, Seth Moulton, and Mark Pocan.

Speaker 1 Hakeem Jeffries said he still supports Schumer, and there haven't been any calls for him to step down coming from his fellow senators, at least not yet.

Speaker 1 What do you guys both think about how Schumer handled this and whether he survives?

Speaker 3 I mean, I think Chuck Schumer is Tim Robinson in the hot dog costumes and like we're all trying to figure out who did, who did this, me.

Speaker 3 You know, it's like he voted against the bill, sure, but I think he orchestrated it with senators he knew were going to retire who weren't up. And I just, I don't believe this spin for a second.

Speaker 1 I, I like

Speaker 3 big picture, I think Schumer, I think he's lost his fastball. He's not a good communicator.

Speaker 3 He still doesn't do a good enough job, I think, of passing the torch to senators who are good at communicating and putting them out front. I don't know if he's good at internal politics anymore.

Speaker 3 Like, I think they honked up for a shutdown. They didn't do a bad job here, but I don't know.
It hasn't. gotten us much.

Speaker 3 I think Democrats have a gerontocracy problem. It was most acutely felt with Joe Biden, but Biden was far from the only reason for that opinion of us as a party.

Speaker 3 I don't think Chuck Schumer is helping.

Speaker 3 And I think we need some generational change. And we need at a time when we have no power and no party leader, people look to congressional leaders more so than normal.

Speaker 3 And they're not getting great party leadership.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I'm trying to separate out.
how Schumer managed this specific episode versus the weakened position he was going into it and how that made his job much harder.

Speaker 2 But obviously, that's a big problem too. So what would you want a leader to do in a moment like this? So he's voting no, but eight of his members did this negotiation.
So

Speaker 2 did you give them tacit permission, but you're afraid to tell the public that? Or do you genuinely have no control over what the members of your caucus do?

Speaker 2 Now, I think it is likely the former, which means

Speaker 2 why not just tell the truth?

Speaker 2 And there's this way in which when Schumer is defensive and under siege and feeling weakened and like he doesn't have his sort of flanks covered, that he hides a bit, right?

Speaker 2 That's why he doesn't tell us how he voted in the New York mayoral election. And I like I'm sick of bringing it up.
I'm sorry. That is the last time I will bring it up probably for at least a day.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 then he pulls this move where this deal is done. It is all older or retiring or members who are not up.

Speaker 2 The rest of the caucus can shit on it. The House can shit on it.
He gets to shit on it. But wouldn't we want a Senate leader who can kind of stand behind the decision that they made?

Speaker 2 And so then you think, well, why is he in this weekend position? Well, you know, there's a whole bunch of calls for Schumer to step aside when they didn't pursue a shutdown fight a few months ago.

Speaker 2 He doesn't have a lot of like enthusiastic support on the left. There's a lot of people who feel like, as to Tommy's point, he's not a great communicator.

Speaker 2 He hasn't kind of empowered anybody to be the party spokesperson despite him. And so this is, I think, the consequence of having a weak leader.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't know that a different person would have gotten to a different outcome.

Speaker 2 But maybe if we had a leader who could go out there and just simply just defend this and just speak honestly about it and treat everybody like adults without being so worried about his own position, like collectively we'd be in a kind of better political spot.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like I have no idea if he blessed the deal, if he orchestrated it or not, but like you don't really need to know that to know that if you're the leader, like you're supposed to be able to keep the caucus together on something like this.

Speaker 1 That's sort of a test of leadership. And,

Speaker 1 you know, I don't think he has that kind of support right now. I do think he's lost his fastball.
And

Speaker 1 now,

Speaker 1 like, calling on him to go, right? You'd need 24 votes and a candidate for a leader, for a new leader right now. You know, we're heading into a midterm cycle.

Speaker 1 Like, how much does it matter in the next year whether it's Chuck Schumer? First of all, the likelihood that Schumer, that someone out Schumer in 26 before the midterms seems extremely low.

Speaker 1 It doesn't seem like you're going to get 24 votes in that caucus or that you have someone else who is willing to challenge him.

Speaker 1 I do think this becomes more of an issue after 26, especially if for somehow we should take this, especially if we somehow take the Senate back and

Speaker 1 need a, and then it's the majority leader and not a minority leader, then I definitely don't think we should have Chuck Schumer.

Speaker 1 And if 27 rolls around and we somehow have the Senate, because I do think like there could, there probably was a time when you could be just a really good tactician, good at internal coalition politics, and not as great a communicator and still be fine.

Speaker 1 But I think in 2025, like being a great communicator is a prerequisite for every job in politics, particularly leadership jobs, like the president of the United States, the Senate leader, the House leader, right?

Speaker 1 Like, I just, I kind of think that's table stakes at this point.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I remember there's like an old adage from when like we were all working in the Senate, which was

Speaker 2 the Senate makes the majority leader look like an idiot and always makes the minority leader look like a genius. That's like an old saying about just the way the Senate works.

Speaker 2 I would like, I hear that, like, oh, like he's, you know, he's maybe not the best spokesperson, but, but we don't see what's going on behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 I'm not like.

Speaker 1 It doesn't seem like much is going on.

Speaker 2 Well, right, but like with Pelosi, right?

Speaker 2 Like Pelosi, like, I don't think Pelosi was the best communicator to the public, but clearly behind the scenes, she had an extraordinary respect from Democrats across like a bunch of political divides, like including Republicans, Democrats, left, right?

Speaker 2 Like she is was just people understood that she had like a genuine talent for keeping the caucus together and thinking about strategy and getting everybody moving in the same direction.

Speaker 2 I've never heard of that.

Speaker 1 She did have an amazing appearance on Morning Joe in the summer of 24. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Beautiful.

Speaker 1 Talk about Kakey. An iron grip on that caucus.

Speaker 2 But even that, like, even that moment is like a perfect example of someone who understands like kind of a certain kind of politics where she said Joe Biden hasn't made up his mind yet.

Speaker 2 So I think he has. Nope, he has not.
Right. Like there's, there was just that she had that thing.
And

Speaker 2 tell me if I'm wrong. Like, have you seen any kind of behind the scenes, in front of the cameras, off the record?

Speaker 1 Anybody? Like, I don't think Hakeem Jeffries is the most effective communicator, but he, through this process, held the House Democrats together.

Speaker 3 And also, look, I would just say, if you compare Chuck Schumer to Harry Reid, who is not seen as the greatest communicator, in fact, he was quite bad, but he was seen as having an iron grip on the Democrats in the Senate, did a better job of it.

Speaker 3 So, look, Chuck Schumer, what I've heard from people is that he's up in 2028. He's not going to run again, but he wants to resign as minority leader.

Speaker 3 And I just think like that's, no, that's how we got into this place. I don't think I no longer give a shit what

Speaker 3 if someone wants to be in a certain position until the end of their career. Like, are you effective or not? At this moment, I would argue that he is not particularly effective.

Speaker 3 And I'd love to see a younger generation of people move into leadership and take over leadership roles. And I want to see it in the House and I want to see it in the Senate because that's all we got.

Speaker 1 And it's not that there aren't great communicators in the Senate Democratic caucus who are like, you know, moving up through the leadership ranks.

Speaker 2 And by the way, like just on top of that, you think it's so great to hang on. You're about to have a bunch of Democratic candidates run against you across the country.

Speaker 2 You already have Platinum doing that. You're going to see more.
It is because

Speaker 1 McMorrow and Abdul in Michigan both said that they wouldn't support him.

Speaker 3 There's a lot of people who think that the reason the DSCC is coming down in support of certain candidates is because those are the candidates who have said that they'll support Chuck Schumer for leader.

Speaker 3 Now, I don't know that to be sure, but that is something there's a lot of cheering out there.

Speaker 1 Mark Kelly was asked today if he would support Schumer as leader again and was non-committal.

Speaker 2 And by the way, like just to take the other side of this too, if there are a bunch of Senate Democrats who thought they never should have done the shutdown in the first place, fine.

Speaker 2 If you had a leader that had a little more confidence at the caucus, maybe they wouldn't have done this at all.

Speaker 2 Right now, I don't think that's right, but like, there's just no sense in which you feel like Chuck Schumer has, you just, he's like, where are my people going? So I may lead them.

Speaker 1 That's just evidence for that.

Speaker 1 All right. Let's talk about Trump.

Speaker 1 Trump's reaction to the shutdown deal was an angry post on Monday morning where he attacked overworked, exhausted air traffic controllers who took time off during the shutdown, threatened to dock their pay, and told them to retire.

Speaker 1 That should make us all feel safe and sleep well at night.

Speaker 1 This is because he's the kind of president who feels people's pain, you know, which he also demonstrated when asked about his plans to tackle the number one issue on voters' minds right now.

Speaker 1 Let's listen.

Speaker 11 Our energy costs are way down. Our groceries are way down.
Everything is way down.

Speaker 11 And the press doesn't report it. So I don't want to hear about the affordability because right now we're much less.
If you look at energy, we're getting a lot of money.

Speaker 1 Don't want to hear about the affordability.

Speaker 1 Don't want to hear about it.

Speaker 2 Man, every once in a while he just gives you a little bit of a gift.

Speaker 1 Amazing. Trump then pivoted from dismissing dismissing people's concerns to promising things he probably can't deliver.

Speaker 1 He's now saying that he'll be using tariff revenue to send a $2,000 check to every middle and lower income American.

Speaker 1 This appeared to be news to soybean farmer Scott Besant, who told George Stephanopoulos on Sunday morning that he hadn't talked to the president about this and said the tariff revenue could just end up paying for, quote, the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president's agenda, which would not in any way be a rebate check.

Speaker 1 He's basically saying that

Speaker 1 in the big, beautiful bill, the tax cuts, you could say, oh, well, they're being paid for by the tariff revenue.

Speaker 2 He specifically said the taxes, the no tax on tips,

Speaker 1 yeah, from the bill.

Speaker 1 It's very weird. Trump said again on Monday in the Oval that he's considering these checks, but he also said in a post that the money left over would be used to pay down the deficit.

Speaker 1 It's going to do it all.

Speaker 1 Do you guys think they'll find a way to make these dividend payments happen? They would have to be passed through Congress,

Speaker 1 we should say. So

Speaker 2 you just, there's a lot of Americans. There's a lot of us.

Speaker 2 You're going to mail $2,000 checks to half the country. It's a lot of money.

Speaker 1 $600 billion.

Speaker 2 And the revenue from tariffs does not cover that nowhere closely.

Speaker 1 Projected to raise about $300 billion. So far, they're going to be $220,000.

Speaker 1 So far, they've raised $100. They're projected $300.
It would be $600 billion to do the checks. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so whatever the number they end up, even Besson admitted this, that the goal of tariffs,

Speaker 2 by their own logic, tariffs are not meant to raise increasing money. The point is to raise less money as it causes a change in where products are made.

Speaker 2 So there's no money to do this and pay down the deficit. So that's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 Now, does that mean they're not going to come up with some cockamime way to describe some policy in the future as a rebate?

Speaker 2 Who knows? I will say, like,

Speaker 2 He is

Speaker 2 he's like, he's keying into something here, which is that people view the tariffs as being very bad, and he's trying to make the tariffs something that is politically positive.

Speaker 2 And the way he's thinking about it is, what if we gave the money out?

Speaker 2 He's trying to come up with some way out of the mess he's created.

Speaker 3 I just think he's thinking back to COVID, and people love the stimmy checks they got.

Speaker 3 It was wildly popular, and he put his signature on those, so he'll probably put his fucking face on this one if he does it again. I mean, it's probably not going to happen.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Congress needs to pass a law. There's not enough money, certainly not enough money to not means test it and then pay down the debt afterwards.
Like, what are we even talking about?

Speaker 3 Also, the Supreme Court could strike down the use of emergency powers to collect tariffs, which would be another hundred billion or so gone.

Speaker 3 But who knows? We'll find out.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I wonder how that would work because if the, I mean, who

Speaker 1 I think Amy Coney Barrett during oral arguments was like, the whole rebate process here would be quite a mess because if they strike them down and they have to rebate a bunch.

Speaker 3 Oh, God, can you imagine?

Speaker 1 Well, they have to give, they'd have to give back to the businesses. Importers, I guess.
Right. Yeah.
So unless Trump thinks he's going to that.

Speaker 1 So there would be no money for this or very much, much less money for this if Supreme Court strikes it down. Also, a bill like this was introduced last year, I think, by Josh Hawley.

Speaker 1 It went nowhere because Republicans had no appetite to hand out a bunch of checks during a time of inflation.

Speaker 3 Well, there's still inflation, right? It could lead to more inflation for sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah, to Tommy's point, too, he is trying to find ways to put his name on.

Speaker 2 They've just cut a trillion dollars in healthcare, but he does this deal with the GLP1 people. So you have to go to trumprx.com to get your discounted Manjaro and Zetbound.

Speaker 2 So he's trying to find ways to get his name all over these little, little, these moves.

Speaker 1 And your fertility drugs so you can make more Trump babies.

Speaker 2 I swear, over my, I will, as much as I love Manjaro, and I would love a discount over my dead body, will I go to trumprx.com? Over my skinny dead body,

Speaker 2 will I go to trumprx.com?

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Speaker 1 So checks or no checks, we do know that after last Tuesday, Trump's facing growing criticism from people in his own party over his lack of focus.

Speaker 1 Welcome. Where have you been?

Speaker 1 On Sunday, Sean Davis, the co-founder of the Federalist, posted quite a Twitter rant. It's too long to read in full here, and why would we?

Speaker 1 But the gist was that Trump should focus less on foreign policy and more on the economy. Quote, Republicans right now have no accomplishments, no plans, and no vision.

Speaker 1 Why on earth would anyone be excited to go vote for them 12 months from now?

Speaker 1 Davis echoed the concerns being expressed in a flood of press appearances by potential 2028 presidential candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Speaker 1 And sure enough, just before we recorded this, she tweeted that the president is spending too much time on foreign policy instead of health care.

Speaker 1 As Trump welcomed to the White House a former al-Qaeda leader who is now the president of Syria, Trump responded by saying in the Oval on Monday that MTG is a, quote, nice woman who's, quote, lost her way and has, quote, some kind of an act going.

Speaker 1 Interesting. Do you guys think this backlash could become a real thing? I didn't see that one.
Or do you think it's just a momentary flicker?

Speaker 3 It feels like a flicker to me. Look, I would just note that Sean Davis is like one of those people whose tweets are so mean, you think, that man seems genuinely unwell.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 I blocked him a long time ago, so I was not aware of this.

Speaker 3 I would also note that Marjorie Taylor Greene is not wrong.

Speaker 1 Like, politically speaking, she's absolutely right.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump is spending too much time flitting around the world, thinking he's doing world peace and just, you know, making it up.

Speaker 3 Look, I do think we all remember

Speaker 3 the growing backlash around the Epstein files. It went away eventually.
These guys all tend to find something to be mad at Democrats about and not Republicans.

Speaker 3 I think what Sean Davis is saying there is basically a repeat of what we heard around the election, which is Trump has failed to do enough on inflation and affordability to the point where even his own political director was like, yeah, now we're going to focus on affordability.

Speaker 3 The problem is always going to be, though, that Trump doesn't give a shit about any of this.

Speaker 3 I mean, he goes to Mar-a-Lago where millionaires or billionaires tell him that he's great because the stock market is up or the crypto market is up or whatever.

Speaker 1 At the Great Gatsby party.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and then they go eat lobster and stone crab with some flappers. Well, do you see the people doing

Speaker 3 synchronized swimming in the Mar-a-Lago pool?

Speaker 1 Very nice. So that's the new thing.

Speaker 3 I haven't seen that. So like they're all just divorced from the reality of normal voters.

Speaker 1 So he's loving the foreign policy stuff.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the foreign policy stuff gets in headlines, right? Foreign policy.

Speaker 1 Al Qaeda guy. Money to the bank.
Did you see him talk about the Al-Qaeda guy when they were like, what about his background as Al-Qaeda? And he's like, he's had a rough background. Rough background.

Speaker 1 Who among us hasn't had a rough background? He basically, we've all had rough backgrounds.

Speaker 3 Look, I should say, I support trying to remove sanctions on Syria and trying to bring Al-Shara into the fold.

Speaker 3 I don't think it's a bad policy, but certainly it's not what your average swing voter gives a shit about. I would also say that.

Speaker 1 Also, not to go all hypocrisy, but just imagine.

Speaker 1 what the right would be saying if Joe Biden or Barack Obama did that.

Speaker 2 That's not even the hypocrisy that you were talking about. Like the

Speaker 2 short list of people for whom Donald Trump has grace, we'll get to the pardons later, but those Argentinian beef farmers and fucking former al-Qaeda.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, they're shipping Uber Eats drivers to a prison in El Salvador.

Speaker 2 No grace for undocumented people who've committed no crime.

Speaker 1 Zelensky's in the Oval Office and J.D. Vance is like, have you said thank you yet?

Speaker 1 By the way, it is.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I remember they pulled it out and put it on Fox News because whenever we would talk about Biden negatively, it would make it out.

Speaker 2 But it was amazing how at the end of his time, Biden started acting more and more like Trump.

Speaker 2 And now here we are in the Trump administration, and he is, he is bitching about how the media isn't covering how good the economy is.

Speaker 2 And he's one step away from screaming, I'm the guy that did AUKUS. It's unbelievable.
And so, yeah, like, by the way, like, is this back, like, is could the backlash become real?

Speaker 2 Like, I think we are in a very real backlash. Yes, like, to Tommy's point, like, there's an Epstein cycle and the news moves on.
And there's an affordability cycle and the news moves moves on.

Speaker 2 But each time he's coming out of these fights a little bit weaker and his approval is a little bit lower. Like he is in a much worse position at the end of this shutdown.
Like

Speaker 2 this Republican infighting is real.

Speaker 2 And I actually think it like that as we head into the midterms, there's an even bigger and deeper existential problem, which is this is going to put together two things.

Speaker 2 One, the fact that Donald Trump isn't doing enough to address the core reason he was elected. But at the same time, it's how do Republicans run in a world without Trump?

Speaker 2 And both of those problems are going to be like industry. They're going to be impossible to tease out from each other, which are going to make both of them worse.

Speaker 2 And so they are headed towards a cataclysm, which they lose, ideally, which they could lose a bunch of seats in the midterms while having no sense of an agenda or kind of defining a vision outside of just defending Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 I also think like the Epstein files is an attentional issue, which if you hold out long enough, hopefully it goes away and it fades from the headlines.

Speaker 1 And affordability as the big watchword that everyone's talking about could fade, will do the same at some point, but people will still feel that everything is very expensive and be pissed.

Speaker 1 So you may get back like the Sean Davises and the I was talking about the MAGA for sure who are like licked off and they'll move on and realize that they should still attack Democrats, but people and even MAGA voters are going to be like, what the fuck?

Speaker 3 Normal people are like, hey, my groceries are so really expensive and you're hanging out with Al-Qaeda guy.

Speaker 1 I'm the guy that brought the stands into the Abraham Accord.

Speaker 2 Have you seen the new presidential walk of fame?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's now gilded. Affordability isn't the only thing the right is fighting about right now.

Speaker 1 We talked briefly last week about how Tucker Carlson's friendly interview with avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes caused an uproar among mega media types like Ben Shapiro and touched off a big internal fight at the Heritage Foundation.

Speaker 1 Just in case anyone needs a refresher on Nick Fuentes' views, here's what he said in a March episode of his own podcast, quote, Jews are running society. Women need to shut the fuck up.

Speaker 1 Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part. And we would live in paradise.
It's that simple.

Speaker 1 Well, just a week after Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, defended Carlson and hedged about Fuentes, he told staff in all hands that he made a mistake, quote, period, full stop.

Speaker 1 He then threw his chief of staff under the bus for good measure.

Speaker 1 That didn't stop the National Task Force to combat anti-Semitism, some members of which had already resigned, from severing ties with Heritage.

Speaker 1 The disagreement went full bravo on Thursday when Ben Shapiro made an appearance at Megan Kelly's live show in Jacksonville, just after Tucker Carlson appeared at Kelly's show in White Plains, and Shapiro didn't hold back.

Speaker 13 What I saw Tucker do was not whitewash his ideas, but try to put bumpers up on the guy. I know Tucker well, and I think that was his approach.

Speaker 13 And the way, the way, if you want to put a bumper up on Nick Fuentes, is it helpful to say you're fucking vile, you're an anti-Semite, you hate. No, it isn't.
Yes, it is.

Speaker 1 That doesn't put a bumper up. Yes, it is.
No, it isn't.

Speaker 14 If I see somebody breach basic moral values by having on a Nazi, and in my own view, you can take your own view.

Speaker 14 In my own view, gloss the Nazi, then I'm going to speak out about that, and I'm going to point out that there is a long pattern of him ideologically laundering terrible ideas over the course of the last two years, saying last week that the Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro

Speaker 14 is actually not that bad because they're being attacked by, in his words, Globo Homo.

Speaker 13 Tucker's made the point, I'm not going to hear to be Tucker's defender, but he's made the point that Maduro is culturally conservative.

Speaker 2 Who gives a shit?

Speaker 1 That's a great conversation.

Speaker 1 It was great.

Speaker 1 It was great.

Speaker 3 Shout out Megan Kelly booking that back-to-back.

Speaker 1 We all watched the Ben one.

Speaker 1 We were all watching the Tucker one. Yeah, because

Speaker 2 we're fiends.

Speaker 1 We deserve that today.

Speaker 3 This controversy is a grower and a shower at the moment, but it will continue to grow.

Speaker 2 The only question is, is it circumcised?

Speaker 1 I think we know that.

Speaker 2 That's the battle.

Speaker 3 And I would say, like, another one's like, okay, again, MAGA elites could stop talking about this. Like, maybe Tucker will move on because Gaza's not in the news.

Speaker 3 Maybe Ben Shapiro will be focused on something else. But Nick Fuentes is not going anywhere.
His standing is growing. He's getting more followers.

Speaker 3 Tucker said to Meggers, yes, his political standing is growing by the day. Nothing is plunding that rise.
And like,

Speaker 3 Megan Kelly was like, I think Tucker's goal was to put bumpers around Fuentes and constrain him. That is not what happened in practice.
Like, Nick Fuentes has an audience, but Tucker has a bigger one.

Speaker 3 And Tucker introduced them to the most sanitized, sane-washed version of Nick Fuentes as you could find.

Speaker 3 And like, I see a lot of Fuentes clips, and it is not just like dudes chanting Sig Heil on their way to the Unite the Right rally listening to this dude.

Speaker 3 He gets questions from his audience and these kids will be like, me and all the dudes at my frat house at like name some SEC school, listen to you, right?

Speaker 3 Like that, that is the audience, like men under 30. And I think the thing, like people talk a lot about Fuentes being a racist and an anti-Semite and a misogynist, he's also violent.

Speaker 3 He's a violent person. Here's another quote from his show.
There's an occult element at the high levels of society and specifically among Jews.

Speaker 3 And more than anything else, those people, when we take power, they need to be given the death penalty straight up. They must be absolutely annihilated when we take power.
This is God's country.

Speaker 3 This is Jesus' country. This is not the domain of atheists or devil worshipers or perfidious Jews.
This is Christ's country. End quote.
Like that, and this was not said with a smile.

Speaker 3 He was not kidding. This was dead serious.
It's like a violent Nazi.

Speaker 1 And I finally listened to the whole Tucker Fuentes interview, and it's like Tucker Tucker did there, and then he tried to do it again with Megan, which he keeps trying to make it all about Israel.

Speaker 1 And his whole thing is like, it's just about like views on Israel and separating, you know, anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism. Like, it's this whole thing.

Speaker 1 And he doesn't even, in two hours with Nick Fuentes, doesn't touch any of the stuff you mentioned, Tommy, just then, the stuff that I quoted from March, any of his other views on any of the other subjects.

Speaker 1 And it's like, why would you not, if, if, if you're taking Tucker at his word here, why would you not interrogate him on all the other fucking bullshit that he said?

Speaker 2 Yeah, you think because you can't take Tucker on his word here.

Speaker 2 I was really glad I watched the full Ben Shapiro conversation with Megan Kelly because Ben is like excellent in this conversation at kind of taking down Nick Fuentes and making a very logical and methodical argument about why you don't like...

Speaker 2 teach the controversy with someone like Nick Fuentes and attack the danger that this idea poses.

Speaker 2 And the point that he makes is it's not only kind of dangerous to society, that he think it undermines the conservative movement, which is I'm glad he's making that argument.

Speaker 2 And Megan tries her best to defend her friend, Tucker Carlson, with this idea of bumpers. I don't really understand what the bumpers are.

Speaker 1 Did she meant guardrails or something? I don't know.

Speaker 1 I mean, you can see from the clip, but like, I think she was trying to make the point that Tucker Carlson, if he just had Nick Fontes on and was like, you're an anti-Semite, awful, this, that, the other thing, and just started yelling at him, that's not going to convince anyone.

Speaker 1 But it's like that, there's a space between that and what Tucker did, which was just a pretty friendly interview where he gently pushed on, well, you don't believe in collective punishment of people, right?

Speaker 1 Like that was a very.

Speaker 2 But the other, the other part of it is that Tucker has had

Speaker 2 revisionist historians on about the Holocaust and World War II on his show. The point that Ben makes and when he talks to Megan Kelly is about Tucker Carlson's evolution over the last two years.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 2 he spoke at the Republican convention, and it was much less than two years ago.

Speaker 2 Like, Tucker's transformation has been ongoing, and he has been a big part of MAGA, which is why I think it's very good that Ben's doing this.

Speaker 2 But he also is not, I think, grappling enough with the ways in which this is already inside of the Republican Party. Donald Trump had a meal.
with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, right?

Speaker 2 Like this is somebody that has already gotten inside of the gates. And that, like, to me is what is a harder thing, I think, for someone like Ben Shapiro to reckon with.

Speaker 2 But I think at least this is, I think, making a clear line that this person should not be included.

Speaker 2 And by the way, like, there is no justification even for doing the harder version of the kind of debate with someone like Nick Fuentes.

Speaker 2 You either describe it as vile and anti-Semitic and Nazism and all the rest, or you are treating it as if it is legitimate.

Speaker 2 Like Kevin Roberts can, some days came that's cancellation, some days not, whatever he says now, I don't know.

Speaker 2 But you cordon that shit off because these people do not believe in,

Speaker 2 he's not in it for a debate to try to win an argument.

Speaker 2 To Tommy's point, he'll go off and say, look what I did. I got on Tucker Carlson and got in front of all these people.
This is something you must excise like a cancer.

Speaker 2 This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey, it's autumn and it's not everyone's favorite season.

Speaker 3 No.

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Speaker 1 All right. We had a few quick legal updates for you on Monday and some good news.
The Supreme Court,

Speaker 1 you don't hear that in the same sentence often, declined the chance to overturn O'Bergefell v. Hodges, its landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

Speaker 1 The case was brought by a former county clerk in Kentucky, turned conservative micro-celeb, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court's original decision 10 years ago.

Speaker 1 The potentially worst news from the court, they will hear a challenge to the Mississippi law that allows counting of mail-in ballots received up to five days after Election Day.

Speaker 1 The court has already taken up a challenge to mail-in voting rules in Illinois in a case that could open the door for Trump allies to change all kinds of voting statues they don't like.

Speaker 1 Thoughts on either of these cases?

Speaker 2 I'm glad the court didn't take up O'Bergefell. I think like, on the one hand, I do think people were like drumming up this fear of this Kim Davis thing

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 it was always a long shot and like she's nuts. But there was a coverage that was very like Supreme Court on the verge of kind of missing.

Speaker 1 And every time you looked at the coverage though, there were no real hints that the court wanted to take it up.

Speaker 2 But at the same time, I do think it like that doesn't mean there aren't several justices who would be willing to overturn O'Bergefell.

Speaker 2 And I do think sometimes people don't, people try to sort Amy Coney Barrett into the like, she's right-wing, and she is. And I think she has a lot of really

Speaker 2 bad views.

Speaker 2 But I do think she's more intellectually honest than the rest. And she said, like,

Speaker 2 I don't, I worry that if she were to take a case like this, she would overturn it. But one point she made when she was being confirmed is there are a lot of cases we won't take, right?

Speaker 2 Like, like, and I do think like it's this strange thing where, like, I'm sure that there are people, I'm sure, like, there are members like Alito and Thomas who are like itching for this because they want to overturn it.

Speaker 2 I think she's someone who's not itching for this because she would have to overturn it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if we had a court full of Alito and Thomas's, I think this, this would go, but we don't so far.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I'm with you. I'm like, I'm glad they didn't try to reopen this case, but

Speaker 3 man, I mean, I don't think the right-wing groups that are attacking a Berkeley are done, you know, and especially if the court changes its makeup at all,

Speaker 3 they'll be back, I'm sure.

Speaker 3 I mean, I do think that this, one of the mail-in ballot cases that they took up is pretty worrisome because it could be ruled in a way that leads to just a flood of lawsuits that make it harder for people, especially Democrats, to vote,

Speaker 3 especially

Speaker 3 people in, let's say, Philly, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Atlanta, if mail service is slowed and a bunch of mail-in ballots get in late and all of a sudden all those people are disenfranchised.

Speaker 1 That's kind of the goal here.

Speaker 1 And the hope is that it's not just those people. rural areas especially would be disenfranchised because mail can be slow there.

Speaker 1 And the people who would probably be most disadvantaged are members of the military who

Speaker 1 are overseas often and their ballots are often counted after election day.

Speaker 1 I mean, the whole thing is going to turn on the meaning of the word election day and the idea that voting before election day, but it getting there after election day is something like election day now is before election day.

Speaker 1 That's what the court's going to say. Like it just doesn't, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but this is one that the right has been pushing for quite some time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, also just, it goes into the category of ways in which there could be chaos chaos that bad actors take advantage of when it comes to certification, seating people, et cetera.

Speaker 1 Which, you know, maybe

Speaker 1 the optimistic case would be at least they're taking it before and going to decide it well before the next set of elections, both in 26 and 28, so that

Speaker 1 there isn't that confusion, but we shall see.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's just a methodical effort to make it harder to vote. I mean, endless.

Speaker 1 We also learned Sunday night that Trump has pardoned a number of his election subversion co-conspirators, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and the fake electors who were involved in part of the scheme.

Speaker 1 These pardons are either symbolic or preemptive because there were no federal charges against any of these people.

Speaker 1 Preemptive. Preemptive in like kind of like a rainbow unicorn hope sort of way, and like under this Department of Justice.
Right. Well, maybe, maybe the next one.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the state level action against them right now will not be affected by this because you can't, a president can't pardon you for state crimes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Though those are all kind of like, there's a bunch of those are like stuck or falling apart.

Speaker 1 Man.

Speaker 1 Ed Martin, the, you know, fuck eagle-eyed Ed there, the January 6th, former January 6th lawyer who's now the weaponization guy, he announced all this on Twitter by saying, leave no MAGA behind.

Speaker 3 Replied to himself, right? He replied to his own, leave no MAGA behind.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I think the takeaway from this set of pardons and the January 6th pardons that happened earlier on is that Trump would just remind us over and over again that he cares more about his grudges and his ego and his personal vendettas and his, you know, anger that he lost the 2020 election more than his political standing.

Speaker 3 People probably won't hear about these moves, but they wouldn't be popular. None of this makes any sense.
It's also just a classic dictator move. Like, you don't like history? Get out that pencil.

Speaker 3 Let's start to rewrite it, right? I mean, you know, hopefully by 2030, we won't be like China where you can't Google Tiananmen Square.

Speaker 1 It's about history. It's also about the future.
It's a signal, right? Because

Speaker 1 if it doesn't really have teeth because of the reasons we just talked about, it's, hey, if you commit a crime in my name for me, I will take care of you. Yes.

Speaker 3 Which is the real message to anyone considering doing a little federal election fraud that Trump has got you back. The timing is also very weird.

Speaker 1 You see this Blaze story? No.

Speaker 3 The Blaze is a Glenn Becks thing. They claim to have figured out who planted the pipe bombs on January.
Oh my God.

Speaker 3 They named a specific person who has not been named by law enforcement based on what they call gate analysis, which is video of you walking

Speaker 3 fed into some software. This is either a big scoop or the most open and shut defamation case in a long, long time.
So we're not going to say that person's name, but weird.

Speaker 2 A wild bit of reporting, the gate analysis. I have a strange game.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I could, I could be a little bit more. I could be tied to something.

Speaker 2 I could be tied to something based on my gate.

Speaker 3 If you just did like a silly walk,

Speaker 2 you got to walk backwards, like in

Speaker 2 a David Lynch show.

Speaker 1 Who's next on the pardon list? Potentially Ghelaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's confidant and co-conspirator.

Speaker 1 A whistleblower has told Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee that Maxwell is going to ask Trump to commute her sentence.

Speaker 1 The same whistleblower also revealed that Maxwell is receiving, quote, concierge-style treatment in the minimum security prison facility that she's been transferred to, including customized meals, after-hours gym time, and the permission to play with a puppy who another inmate was training to become a service dog.

Speaker 1 The whistleblower said that a top prison official complained that he was, quote, sick of having to be Maxwell's bitch.

Speaker 1 In a letter to Trump on Monday, Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on judiciary, demanded information about the commutation, including asking Deputy AG Todd Blanche to appear at a public congressional hearing and called on Trump to reject Maxwell's appeal.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, Democrat Adelita Grahalva, the Arizona representative-elect who Johnson has declined to seat during the shutdown, is finally likely to get sworn in this week, meaning she'll become the 218th signature and the last one needed on Thomas Massey's discharge petition, which would force the House to vote on making the Epstein files public.

Speaker 1 So, no health care subsidies, but maybe yes on the Epstein file.

Speaker 1 Also, do you think Democrats should make a big deal out of the concierge-style prison treatment for for Ghelene Maxwell? Yes. Yes.

Speaker 3 I read in preparation for this, I think it was in The Guardian, an excerpt of a woman named Virginia Jufre's book. She's an Epstein victim who died by suicide earlier this year.

Speaker 3 She writes about how she was recruited by Ghelene Maxwell when she worked at Mar-a-Lago when she was 16.

Speaker 3 The first massage she was forced to give Jeffrey Epstein was with Maxwell in the room, who was like massaging with her as part of the grooming process. Then they assaulted her the first of many times.

Speaker 3 Then they started trafficking her out to their friends, including Prince Andrew. Like Ghelane Maxwell

Speaker 3 is just as much a villain as Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 1 She is not a lesser person.

Speaker 3 Like she's a disgusting human being. She's vile.
And the idea that like this woman is getting

Speaker 3 sweetheart treatment and getting to play with a puppy while in prison on the way to a commutation is insane.

Speaker 1 And for what other reason than the one that we're all

Speaker 2 they've never explained it.

Speaker 2 They've never bothered to explain it they don't they're not getting questions about it anymore i presume they'll get some questions about this now she they transfer her to a nicer place uh without justification now apparently she gets a puppy elizabeth holmes is staring down at the same food every single night she looks across the fucking mess hall or whatever and there's glain maxwell with pierogies or whatever and it's like unbelievable it's shocking americans just being thrown in detention by ice for days at a time without being able to call their families who didn't do anything and completely innocent.

Speaker 1 But Glene Maxwell is taken care of.

Speaker 3 It also just like commuting her seems like the most damaging political thing you could possibly do.

Speaker 1 I know Trump.

Speaker 2 Or second most politically damaging thing that could happen.

Speaker 2 Whatever the fuck she would say if that doesn't happen.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but like, I don't know if she should have set up, I know. Who knows?

Speaker 3 I don't get it.

Speaker 1 I don't get it. I don't either.
What? Maybe, maybe when the Epstein files are finally released, when the discharge petition happens, we'll find out. One other news item you may have missed.

Speaker 1 On Sunday, Trump became the first sitting president since Jimmy Carter to attend a regular season NFL game.

Speaker 1 And he did it in high style, complete with an Air Force One flyover of the Washington Commanders Stadium and a live swearing-in of new service members during halftime.

Speaker 1 But the crowd wasn't exactly thrilled with Trump's appearance. Here's what it sounded like:

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 am saying your name.

Speaker 1 You solemnly swear.

Speaker 1 You can see in the photos that someone right below Trump's box is giving him uh double bird.

Speaker 3 Solid.

Speaker 1 So, what do you guys think?

Speaker 2 Maybe they're from Philly.

Speaker 1 I think they're saying you're what they're saying.

Speaker 3 Uh, I like that they're trying to use a military swearing-in to prevent getting booed, and everyone there was like, uh-uh.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, we see through this one. It's a stadium full of federal workers whose city has been militarized by the president.
Yeah, they absolutely hate him.

Speaker 3 I mean, like, there's a lot of this that I find very annoying. The hypocrisy makes me insane.

Speaker 3 For years, Republicans told athletes to stick to sports. Remember, LeBron James was told to shut up and dribble, stop bringing political messages into sports.

Speaker 3 Trump yelled at players for kneeling every single Sunday.

Speaker 3 By the way, players who are paid to be on the field and earn the right to be there. And now Trump just shows up at every sporting event.
He makes it about himself.

Speaker 3 And then in 2013, Obama said the Washington Redskins should change their name. Trump tweeted the following.
President should not be telling the Washington Redskins to change their name.

Speaker 3 Our country has far bigger problems. Focus on them, not nonsense.

Speaker 3 So that's

Speaker 1 the new Trump stadium.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the Commander's Stadium.

Speaker 1 What did you guys think about that story? That ESPN reported that the Trump people have approached the team's ownership about naming the stadium after him.

Speaker 1 The team didn't comment, but Caroline Levitt didn't deny it, saying it would surely be a beautiful name.

Speaker 2 We're just like so through the fucking looking glass. Like,

Speaker 2 what is there left to say?

Speaker 2 Like, we're like

Speaker 2 Trump pardoning people that tried to overthrow the election

Speaker 2 is like a 24-hour story. The president is trying to name football stadiums after himself.
And everyone's like, well, it sounds like a good idea to me.

Speaker 2 I'm sure the team, given that Trump threatened the team if they didn't change the name, I am sure

Speaker 2 everyone has to treat him with kid gloves and welcome him, be excited for him to come, humor him on whatever ridiculous cockamame-y proposals he's talking about.

Speaker 2 Like, heard this new patio is beautiful, Mr. President, that kind of thing.
And it's all just embarrassing and pathetic, but like, there's just too many of these at this point.

Speaker 1 Like, do people put his face on the flag? Is that the next thing?

Speaker 1 I can see that.

Speaker 3 I think it's a currency talk, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was going to say the currency talk, but that actually, yeah, some

Speaker 1 jackass in Congress was like, yeah, let's put him on a new $200 bill or something.

Speaker 2 This is, again,

Speaker 2 that's one thing the filibuster can stop.

Speaker 1 So that's good.

Speaker 3 I just also, I always go back to

Speaker 3 the Shane Gillis at the Espies speech. Trump does not know ball.
He has no idea what he's talking about.

Speaker 3 I was listening to the play-by-play right before he came in because he did like 10 minutes in the booth. He says it's going to be a very important couple of plays.
It was second and seven.

Speaker 3 Then he goes, we'll see what happens, which is what he always says about everything.

Speaker 3 Then he's like, this is a very important play, don't you think? The commanders were down 22 points.

Speaker 3 He said the commanders are a very good team. No, they absolutely suck.

Speaker 3 They're three and seven, and their quarterback had this disgusting elbow bent the wrong way injury last week because they left him in in garbage time of a game when they were getting destroyed.

Speaker 3 Like their half, like their receivers are out, like their cornerbacks are that commanders fucking suck.

Speaker 1 He's like, oh, it's a very important game.

Speaker 3 They're a very good team. No, absolutely not.
Also, all the Lions fans out there should be ashamed at Amon Ross St. Brown doing the stupid Trump dance, looking like a goober.

Speaker 3 Then he got punched in the face by a linebacker DN, maybe a couple plays later.

Speaker 1 He's just directly

Speaker 1 directly at Austin. His offensive

Speaker 1 Lions fan.

Speaker 3 And I like the Lions, and I'm a big Dan Campbell fan. And Amon Ross St.
Brown's an awesome receiver, but that was dorky and lame. So anyway.

Speaker 1 Stay at our sports, Don. It is so funny that it's more obvious to like sports fans when he does it here, but it is what he does with just about everything.

Speaker 1 You know, it's like literally every conversation he has, he knows how to get through it by just being like, yeah, it's unbelievable. It's great.
People are saying it's amazing. It's amazing.

Speaker 1 Running back has ball. We'll see what happens.

Speaker 3 Oh, incisive.

Speaker 1 All right. Last thing before we go.
A huge thank you to all of you who came to CrookedCon. Oh, yeah.
What a time. Attendees, speakers, sponsors, volunteers.
It

Speaker 1 a wild success.

Speaker 1 I'm still blown away by our team put it together. We just showed up and talked a lot and yapped.
But the team at Crooked just did a fucking incredible job.

Speaker 3 Yeah, come be a producer on a podcast where we sit in the studio and talk and also pull off a 2,000-person event where we change the venue 45 days out.

Speaker 1 Go.

Speaker 3 Shout out, Sophie, and everybody on the team here just did an unbelievable job.

Speaker 1 Also, like, I don't know

Speaker 1 what other big conference you could find. Andy Bashir and Hassan Piker at the same place.

Speaker 1 It was just like the mix of people that we had there, um, the diversity of views, of backgrounds. Like, in the Atlantic.
And it was,

Speaker 1 okay.

Speaker 1 Don't get me started. Don't get me started.
It was, yeah. And it was just like, it was so

Speaker 1 great to be in person with people who like we've been on each other's podcasts. We've been talking to each other online, sometimes fighting online for like the last several years.

Speaker 1 And then you meet these people in person for the first time. You're like, oh, I feel like I know you, of course.

Speaker 1 but now we get to actually hang out it was wonderful and i'm sure just guitar lob was getting shit for uh taking a picture with hasan back at uh fox news hq but i did ask her i was like how many segments do you think jesse's gonna put up that picture uh when you go back to work on jesse did like 10 minutes on our we programmed his whole show friday night it was based on our panels yeah like i we talked about doing cricket con

Speaker 2 years ago like it's something that's we've been thinking about for a really long time and i just feel really like proud of the team that we got to the place where we could put on something so big like we've all been to conferences, I'll just be honest, and like, I never really thought that much about what it takes to put them on.

Speaker 2 You show up, you get your little sandwich box, and you know, you think you badge, and you will show up, you make your little jokes, Trump bad, whatever.

Speaker 2 And then, and then, but, but, like, it was an extraordinary, like, like, Herculean task to put this together. And had it been half the size and gone less well, we would have called it a success.

Speaker 2 And, like, this was a huge undertaking that went so well. And I do think it really is like

Speaker 2 proof of concept and the need for something like CrookedCon, like a big gathering space for the big pro-democracy and progressive coalition. And we will keep doing it.

Speaker 2 We hope we can have room for more people next week.

Speaker 1 It's like an announcement.

Speaker 1 Everyone gets a day off and then Tommy Coleman. Oh, we start tomorrow.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's like it's December 26th. Elves,

Speaker 2 take your day. Get a good night's sleep, Austin.
Crooked Con 2026 planning starts tomorrow, bitches.

Speaker 1 It's in January.

Speaker 1 There was some of the covers. Sophie's crying somewhere.
Yeah, no, she definitely is.

Speaker 3 There was some of the covers that was like, did the Democrats solve their problems and actually create a big tent? Of course not. That was never like on the table.

Speaker 1 Not the goal.

Speaker 3 I can't overstate how important and valuable it is to just have people meet together and face-to-face as human beings. It really does matter.
And Republicans do it all the time. They have CPAC.

Speaker 3 They have all sorts of events and conferences. They have CPAC in other countries where they trade notes with Americans.
And I think this was really just fun and valuable.

Speaker 1 Well, if you couldn't make it and you want to hear all the conversations and all the other fun stuff that happened at CrookedCon, go to crookedcon.com. We'll be posting a lot of content there.

Speaker 1 And we're going to be posting some select conversations in this feed and on YouTube.

Speaker 1 Right now, as you're listening to this, if you're in the Pod Save America YouTube feed, there is one episode so far that has two outstanding panels.

Speaker 1 There's my conversation with Sky Perryman and Norma Eisen about taking legal action against the administration.

Speaker 1 And then if you listen to that same episode, the latter half of the episode is Tommy's conversation with the top strategists for Zoran Mamdani, Mikey Sherrill, and Abigail Spanberger.

Speaker 1 Both of those went out Sunday. There's more coming soon.
Sign up at CrooketCon.com for all the details on our next CrooketCon coming to you in 2026. That's our show for today.

Speaker 1 Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then.

Speaker 1 If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 1 Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.

Speaker 1 Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illick Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.
Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Sherlin is our executive editor.

Speaker 1 Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglu and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 1 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is is our executive assistant.

Speaker 1 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Carol Pelavieve, David Toles, and Ryan Young.

Speaker 1 Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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