Will Elon Find the Epstein Files Before It's Too Late?
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So it's really just you hanging out with your mates then? Yeah.

Come, join me. David Tennant does a podcast with... Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Dan, nice to have you in LA. In studio. Oh, love that. Great. We're going to have a good time today.

No, we're not. The news is terrible. I know we're going to talk about it. No. We're going to talk about Republicans in Congress moving forward with the Trump economic plan, which, among other things, would take away health care and food from kids in order to fund a huge tax cut for the 1%. So that's lovely. Democrats are also going to have to decide whether to use the limited leverage they have in the government shutdown fight that's rapidly approaching. We'll get to that. We're also going to cover Jeff Bezos's decision to turn the Washington Post editorial page into the Wall Street Journal.

Then we're back with our latest installment of... Wait, did that really happen? Where we'll react to this week's most insane moments. It was a...

It was stiff competition, but I think we found the three. I'm sure everyone remembers the one time we did that segment. Well, it's back, okay? It's back. Repetition, it's key. And stick around later for a sneak preview of the excellent conversation that Dan and I just had earlier in the week with our pal Jen Psaki about White House press and communication strategy. That's on our subscriber-only show, Inside 2025. But you get a sneak preview here, so... Lucky you. Yeah. But first...

Donald Trump kicked off the first cabinet meeting of the second term with a special presentation from the most powerful member of his administration or any administration, special government employee Elon Musk, who showed up in his trademark dark MAGA hat and tech support T-shirt to reassure everyone that Doge isn't a complete clusterfuck. And I should say, also, we will make mistakes. We won't be perfect. But when we make a mistake, we'll fix it very quickly.

So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally cancelled very briefly was Ebola, Ebola prevention. I think we all want Ebola prevention. So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately and there was no interruption. So, unfortunately, for those of us who aren't keen on getting Ebola...

What Elon said there is not true. Jeremy Kanondyke, who led Ebola response at USAID under both Obama and Trump, said the U.S. government's capacity to respond has, quote, been wrecked right as there's an Ebola outbreak happening in East Africa as we speak. That's not all. Kanondyke also says Doge has crippled the CDC. Also, the FDA this week just canceled their annual meeting to discuss next year's flu vaccines with no explanation.

Catherine Wu reports in The Atlantic that the NIH is still violating court orders by refusing to restart most medical research. And the person now in charge of the nation's health, HHS Secretary RFK Jr., said during the cabinet meeting that the measles outbreak in Texas that has now killed a child is, quote, not unusual.

In fact, it is unusual. Quite unusual. It's not died of measles in the United States for quite some time. Quite some time. Is this Maha? Are we Maha now? Is this, have we, have we Mahad? I don't know how to say it.

I think the question of whether we mahad or not depends on how you define the word healthy. Yeah. Because if you define it in its traditional sense, then no, we are not headed towards healthy. We're headed in the opposite direction. And there's so much to say here, but just on the Ebola thing, just an example of what an absolute chaotic clusterfuck the Trump administration is in Uganda, where they have been dealing with this Ebola outbreak.

They were in need of more protective gear because there had been one patient who had gone to six different facilities or six different clinics. And so they needed gear there to protect the workers there.

We could not access the gear because it was in a WHO warehouse. And because you are not allowed to speak to WHO, this is according to a report in the New York Times, you're not allowed to speak to WHO within the Trump administration. So it just sat there. Then they tried to buy- Because we pulled out of the WHO, the World Health Organization. Yes, pulled out of the World Health Organization. And now we're not communicating with them at all, even though it's the World Health Organization and they could use the only superpower in the world to help them out. And they had protective gear that we had paid for. Yes.

So then they had to do a contract to get more productive years. So we're not saving money. We're not doing anything right. We're just making things worse. So much of the USAID clusterfuck has not been about saving money. And I can't emphasize this enough because people are like, well...

Voters don't like foreign aid and they want to spend money on other stuff. And some of it was wasteful and blah, blah, blah. No, there was money that was appropriated already. We're not getting it back. Spent on, you know, $500 million in food that's just like sitting in docks spoiling right now. Like malaria nets that were already purchased. Like this stuff was already, the money has already been spent already.

in a lot of these cases. And it's just now the life-saving food and medicine just isn't getting to people because they're all fucking assholes. Incompetent assholes running the country. It's truly insane. You have to be both dumb and lacking in even a single iota of empathy within your body to...

run the government like this. So are you saying that they're not showing competence and caring? That's what Elon said. He goes, competence and caring. That's what we're all about here. There is no competence and caring. And you make the point that the conventional wisdom is people don't care about foreign aid. It's always top of the list when you ask people, where should we save money in the government? They always say foreign aid.

If you ask them anything else, they want to keep the military. Many people do. Never touch Social Security, Medicare. Certainly don't touch education funding, whatever else it is. But I think, one, you can and should make the case here for what is happening because it's not about whether you should spend that money or not. Even you should. You can make a case for why you should spend it, why it's good for our security, particularly when it comes to something like Ebola prevention. We help prevent

pandemics and epidemics in other countries so they don't come here yes it's exactly what we are doing and if you don't control them at the root of the cause of the pandemic then it comes it spreads everywhere then an epidemic becomes a pandemic and we are back to right where we were before but also it's just the nih stuff is particularly notable in every funding fight in history between republicans and democrats republicans are trying to cut funding the place where they always lose the public is on food safety drug safety

Research in diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's. And that is what's happening here. And particularly if you look at the disease research, I think we talked about this a couple weeks ago, there have been major breakthroughs in Alzheimer's research. There's real momentum there. Just this week, there was an announcement about real progress with a treatment for pancreatic cancer using mRNA vaccine technology.

All there's huge momentum here and all that's going to stop in its tracks if we if we back away from this, which is exactly what Elon and Trump are doing. So the NIH has helped fund 99 percent of the drugs that are approved in the last decade. Catherine Wu's story in The Atlantic. Everyone should go read it. It will infuriate you.

Basically, they try to freeze a bunch of NIH funding and then they go to court and the court says, no, you can't freeze it. You got to restart. And people at the NIH want to start approving grants again because everything had been frozen.

And then HHS, the political appointees at HHS from the Health and Human Services, this was before RFK Jr. got there, they said to the NIH, no, you can't restart the grants. And then the lawyers at HHS and the lawyers at NIH was like, no, we have to. We are in violation of a court order. And the political appointees at HHS said, no, don't do it. And so there's been this like weeks-long thing now where

Here and there, some grants are like getting approved because people are just like sort of just doing their own thing. But everyone who works in the building is just like they are demoralized. A lot of these grants aren't going anywhere. In some cases, there are critically ill patients enrolled in drug trials or

that cannot continue because of this? I mean, again, this is just, this isn't saving money. This isn't making government more efficient. This is just fucking ruining people's lives and like denying us potential treatments and cures that we've already paid for. Our tax dollars have already paid for. It's fucking nuts, man. It's nuts.

And, you know, sadly, the Doge chaos continues apace across the entire federal government. I would refer you to this AP headline from Wednesday evening. VA pauses billions in cuts lauded by Musk as lawmakers and veterans decry loss of critical care. A lot of cuts hitting veterans, veterans health care, veterans with disabilities getting fired left and right, VA hospitals, hospitals.

At the cabinet meeting, Trump touched off a fresh panic by saying that EPA administrator Lee Zeldin is planning to cut 65% of the agency's workforce, only to have the White House clarify later in the day that he meant EPA is going to cut 65% of its spending, not 65% of its staff. Still bad. Not good if you like clean air and clean water. Right, yeah.

Then there's the fact that Elon and Doge have cut about 400 jobs from the Federal Aviation Administration only to have Elon tweet on Thursday, quote, there is a shortage of top-notch air traffic controllers. If you have retired but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so. Is that where we're recruiting now? Air traffic controllers? On Twitter? On Twitter? Yeah, that's where we are.

I don't know. Seems like there's downsides to the move fast, break things approach from Elon and the doge bags and the Silicon Valley types. Yeah, it seems that way. Let's stipulate that government can and should be made more efficient, more cost effective, that there's possible that there are places where there are too many people doing not the right things. Like that is absolutely 100% true.

But what Elon Musk and Donald Trump are trying to do here is not fix government. They're not trying to reform it, not trying to make it more efficient. They're trying to break it, to absolutely destroy the idea of a federal government whose job it is to help people, to protect people, to keep them secure and safe. They do not believe in that and they're trying to destroy it. And what that means is, and they have made a bet here, right? Because of their actions,

We are less safe, less secure. We're at greater risk of plane crashes, disease epidemics, pollution in our air and water, foodborne pathogens, dangerous drugs. All those things are there. The point here is that

Donald Trump is responsible for everything. Everything that happens from this point forward. He broke government. There will be consequences for that. Right. That could be a plane crash as serious, something as serious and dramatic as a plane crash. It could be very not unrelated to this measles epidemic that is taking place in Texas, where we now have a we've fired a lot of people in charge of managing those things. Yep. And we have as the HHS secretary, a vaccine skeptic.

There is a president, frankly, who was a vaccine skeptic to some degree. And that canceled meeting with the FDA was supposed to figure out the flu vaccine for next year. Like they don't have a lot of time before they have to start production of next year's flu vaccine. So like no one knows why it was canceled. No one knows when it's going to be rescheduled. And they're almost out of time to figure out next year's flu vaccines. And we've now had the worst year for flu that we've had in decades.

There are consequences of these actions. They have to be held accountable for these actions. And that is, like I said, that can be as serious as the things I mentioned. Also, when you try to run the Social Security Administration with half the staff, payments are going to be missed. They keep talking about how they're cracking down on fraud. You know what's one way to have there be more fraud? To cut staff at the Social Security Administration or the IRS or those other places.

And this is I just cannot obsess enough is that every single thing the Republicans held Joe Biden responsible for a million things that were nowhere near him.

Right. Remember when everyone was supposed to be mad at Joe Biden because you couldn't find a turkey on Thanksgiving because of supply chain shortages that you were going to go to Target and there'd be no Christmas presents or holiday presents for anyone. And we have to hold Trump to a same standard, but we actually have a basis in fact for that. He promised stability. He promised security. He's doing everything to create the opposite of that. And he has to be held accountable. This is.

This is also a direct result of Elon trying to run the government like he runs one of his companies. And, you know, everyone's like, oh, well, he did this at Twitter. And then he made Twitter, in some people's opinion, work better or whatever. But like if you cut a bunch of staff, fire a bunch of people at a company and it degrades some services for a while, but eventually it becomes better run, more efficient.

Whatever, right? Like if Twitter, if he took over Twitter, fired a bunch of people and Twitter went down for a while. Okay. Like that's not great. Maha. That would be Maha. That would be Maha. Right. Yes. If, uh, you know, he's at SpaceX and they have to delay the launch of a rocket because they fucked something up because they didn't have the right people, whatever. Right.

With the federal government, they are breaking everything, firing all these people, gutting all these services. And like, say they make it more efficient and better run years down the road, like millions of people's lives are at stake right now. And that is the difference between running the fucking federal government and running a business. And he also doesn't run Tesla and SpaceX like he runs Twitter. Right. Because there are stakes with nothing like federal government stakes, but there are, you know, yes, they, you may have to delay a launch, but you could also-

have an explosion, right? Yes. You can-- if there is a problem with Tesla cars and the self-driving software, that obviously is kind of . But Twitter is the example everyone keeps using. And it's like, who gives a flying fuck if Twitter goes down for a minute? Right. And you know what? It's so low stakes. It's like the sixth most important social media platform in this country.

And by the way, Dean is 10 times more, more important than, than Twitter. And it is worse. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's like spammy ads, bullshit. Like, come on. Speaking of Elon and the FAA, because this, this is one I'm following closely. He's also, I will say he's,

As Dan was flying here yesterday, I was sending a story about the near miss. You were sending a video of a near miss as I was boarding my plane. I didn't know you were on the plane, obviously. But it's somewhat comforting in this time to know that other people who have not been afraid of flying their whole lives like you are now starting to get nervous as well. Misery loves company. I can still do the math. Yeah, no, I know. So he's forcing the FAA now.

to withdraw a contract they gave to Verizon to modernize communication inside the air traffic control system and to hire Musk's own company, Starlink, to do it instead. Now, Elon tweeted on Thursday that Verizon's existing system is on the brink of a catastrophic breakdown, which is comforting.

He said, we're single digit months away from a catastrophic breakdown. It's like, oh, is someone from the fucking FAA going to tell us that? Or do we just have to take the word of the ketamine addled fucking billionaire who's running the government that, by the way, if we don't put in Starlink, air traffic control is going to have a catastrophic meltdown. It's like, is that what we're left to do to figure out whether we should fly or not?

Like, is someone at the FAA going to come give a press conference, tell us about their fucking air traffic control communication system or no? It's just Elon tweeting. I would just note that my bag is packed on the couch in your office. And the second we finish recording this, I'm going to leave the studio and go get on an airplane to fly home. Well, luckily, he said it's we're a couple months away. Well, look, right here, I'm really leaning into the definition of the word brink.

And so, and he said, you know, this now he tweeted this in response to this story about Elon trying to push them to cancel the Verizon contract so they could do Starlink. And he said, well, no, no, it's the Verizon things on the brink of catastrophic breakdown. And I'm providing Starlink units at no cost to the taxpayer for now. Then,

It's an update for you. Just before we recorded. He corrected himself and said, actually, the existing system that's on the verge of a catastrophic breakdown isn't Verizon's. It's another company. The new system that's not yet operational is Verizon. But now we're canceling that and giving Starlink the contract instead. The funny thing is, is I knew this from the beginning. And I'm not even in charge of Doge. Because you just read the words in the article. It's very clear that Verizon is the new system.

Un-fucking-believable. And this isn't the only government contract Starlink could be getting. The Biden-era Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program. God, terrible fucking name. Bede? You know what? Some of this shit, I'm like, this is why. This is why we're doing it. This is why Doge exists. Yeah, right. It passes part of the infrastructure bill. He could have just said broadband. We're doing broadband. Anyway, they set aside more than $40 billion to improve broadband in rural areas by growing the fiber optic network.

Didn't really happen that well. Again, that's another problem for Democrats to think about next time if we ever want to be in power again. But Elon, surprise, surprise, thinks that it should be satellite internet instead and that Starlink should run this show. I am shocked to find that out. So stipulating Starlink might be great to use. It might be the right solution for all of our connectivity challenges, for air traffic control. Who knows?

Still feels like a major conflict of interest at best that we're not having companies bid for these contracts. We're just going to have the guy that's running this single handedly cutting government, firing people. His companies get the contracts. It's a coincidence. It's hard to imagine how that happened. Feels like Democrats should make some noise about this. No. What do you think? Yes.

I think Elon Musk is Donald Trump's political Achilles heel. Yeah. We've seen this in polling and in focus groups that Peter Hammy wrote about in Puck News the other day. Voters, they don't trust Elon Musk. I think he's a tool. That's what one of them said. Trump voters say he was a tool. Love that Trump voter. Woo!

that Trump voter had a point. But they don't trust him. They don't like him running around unilaterally slashing government. They don't like the idea of the world's richest man rooting through government. They think he is filled with conflicts of interest. They don't think he's doing a particularly good job in that Washington Post poll. Only 34% of people approved of how Elon Musk was doing his job in government. And so we should talk about it all the time in this conflict of interest there. And I think this is really important.

Because this is something I will flesh out. I've mentioned this once before, but I will one day flesh this out as an actual written argument. But my belief is that the narrative that Democrats should tell about the Trump administration is one of chaos and corruption. And nothing embodies that more than Elon Musk and Doge.

This is incredibly chaotic. It's funny because you've talked about chaos and corruption before this election. I talked about it in the last Trump election, too. You love chaos and corruption. Well, with Trump, it's not that... But I was going to say, you were ahead of your time, really, because if you thought that was chaos and corruption before, Elon Musk is...

My problem is Donald Trump keeps becoming president. Yeah, that's true. I mean, we've done this podcast or a version of this podcast for three consecutive presidential elections and Donald Trump's been in all of them. So chaos and corruption keep coming up. I don't know why. Positive America is brought to you by Article.

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We were made to package flights, hotels, and hammocks for less. Expedia, made to travel. The Democrats are sort of figuring this out. I guess Hakeem Jeffries did a press conference today, I think, Thursday, where he mentioned that Elon Musk is making $8 million a day in government contracts. Yeah.

And the average person on Medicaid makes $65 a day because they're looking to cut Medicaid in the budget, at least if we're going to get to, at least if you believe the budget instructions. So, yeah, I do think that's relevant that Elon Musk is making $8 million a day in government contracts. And wants more. And wants more while he's trying to slash government because he says it's wasteful and inefficient. Yeah, I think that's something to look into. Maybe something to talk about.

And believe it or not, even bigger Doge cuts are coming. Just one example, the Washington Post reports that the, as you said, the Social Security Administration has been told to start getting ready to cut its staff by half. Of course, cuts like this have already happened at places like USAID that we mentioned in a court filing. The administration detailed this week that they have canceled more than 90% of USAID's foreign assistance contracts or about $16 billion in foreign aid across the government.

a federal court had ruled the government needed to pay out assistance money that was already obligated by wednesday at midnight but a few hours before the deadline the supreme court stepped in and said the deadline shouldn't be enforced meaning the foreign aid freeze can stand for now so this was a the scotus ruling was pretty temporary and narrow they basically you know there was a midnight deadline that said the government must pay and i think the court was like okay

we can skip the midnight deadline until we have a broader consideration of this case. And the parties have to respond by tomorrow with briefs to the Supreme Court on this. Right. So, you know, I would not call this a huge win for the Trump administration. But I do wonder if we're seeing the limits of what the courts

might be willing or able to do to stop these guys from just destroying whatever they want. And I think back to the NIH example that we just talked about where, you know, there's even the lawyers, even the Trump administration lawyers in the agencies that are like, yeah, I think we should follow the court orders. And then some other jackoffs are like, nah, fuck it. I mean, this is the test, right? This is the ultimate test of the system is the idea of the Supreme Court of as a, or the judicial branch is a co-equal branch of government is the

really just a theoretical concept that exists only through the acquiescence of the executive branch. Because the people who enforce court orders work for the executive branch.

And so this is the test. And there's real speculation that John Roberts is going to try as hard as he can to avoid testing this proposition in a way that would have Trump violate with impunity an order from the court, as J.D. Vance has encouraged him to do. Right. Because once that happens, the idea of judicial review, the findings in the main Supreme Court case that you learned in the first day of all con law classes, Marbury versus Madison, falls apart.

Because once you say, do this or else, and they say no, and there's no or else, the whole system collapses. And so this is like a very serious situation. You can really see John Roberts, who's tried really hard to

Well, that brings up another scenario, which could also happen here.

which is Trump doesn't openly defy the court and then the court issues a ruling and then Trump says, I'm not going to follow this. They just don't. They just don't. And they don't do it at the Trump level. Trump doesn't talk about it, but we had to wait for a piece in The Atlantic by Catherine Rudd to find out that all of these fuckers at HHS were telling the NIH to violate court orders. So how many times across how many agencies could that happen?

And then what remedies does the court have? You know, they can try to hold people in contempt. None of them have wanted to do that yet. And they haven't even wanted to word their rulings or decisions in a way that would suggest that people might face contempt charges. Right. Because I think all these courts are nervous that if they hold someone in contempt in the administration and then they don't show up, like, what are they going to do? Send the send the Marshalls cash for tell coming to get him.

Yeah, it is a real precipice of something very different in American life that we are standing on right now. Yeah. And and part of what I wonder is like how to put it back together. You know, like if we like, you know, Democrats win the midterms, which we have to. But what's to say that whatever the Democrats do in Congress?

or try to stop in Congress that Trump's not just going to plow ahead or the agencies aren't just going to plow ahead. You know, I mean, like this is a real, we're in for it. On his podcast, Ezra Klein once described American democracy as a series of norms in a trench coat, which really is being, the trench coat is open and there are only norms there.

That's rough. That's rough. All right. As much as it pains me to say this, let's talk about what the Republicans in Congress are doing, since it could end up affecting people's lives even more than Doge. Believe it or not, we got two big fights brewing over spending, and they're both important for different reasons. First, we had the House budget resolution, or as Trump calls it, the big, beautiful bill.

Mike Johnson got this thing passed on Tuesday after both the hardliners on the right and some of the more vulnerable frontline members both reneged on their pledges to oppose it. Under the urging of Trump. Under the urging of Trump. In fact, there was a couple holdouts and it looked like it might not pass and they pulled the bill. And one of them was Victoria Sparks. Did you see the puck story on this? No, no. Apparently Trump called Victoria Sparks and started screaming at her.

And said, you'll just be a fake Republican. I'm the president. Remember who I am? Started screaming and like people were hearing him scream at her. And then she hangs up and Mike Johnson's right there and he pats her on the back and he goes, you know what you have to do now? Fucking mob, just a mob family.

That's where we are right now. Yeah. I mean, related to this is there was another story about how Trump's team has told the the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, the NRCC, as it's known, that they were only going to support candidates who are who pledge their loyalty to Trump. Yes. And so this this is going to matter for because the budget resolution is like the first step in passing the bill. Right. It's just it's basically like a shell of a bill.

It's instructions to the committees, whatever, blah, blah, blah. You don't really need to know. You just need to know it's the first step in the process. It's a critical but largely meaningless step. Right. Because if you're a Republican who is thinking of not voting for the final...

You vote for the budget resolution because it's a step. It's it just moves the whole thing a step forward. We we have we dealt with the same thing with Manchin and Sinema and Joe Biden's build back better, which then became Inflation Reduction Act is they were like, yeah, we're going to vote for the budget resolution. And then we'll do we do a little explainer on this or sure. Yeah.

So just so people understand, what Trump is trying to do here is he and the Republicans want to pass this bill without fear of a Democratic filibuster. So the only way to prevent a filibuster on a piece of legislation, because the filibuster still exists for legislation. Thank you, Joe Manchin. Here's the cinema. But actually, right now, maybe. Thank you, Joe Manchin. I would be happier if we had passed a whole bunch of other bills like voting rights and other things. And the filibuster is still stupid. But

is to use the budget reconciliation process, which is a process that was set up understanding that you have to pass a budget and deal with budgetary matters. And you can't do that with a filibuster. So this is basically like a filibuster free card. Step one of that is pass a budget resolution. In many years, when you're not trying to use budget reconciliation, Congress never passes a budget because it doesn't, you don't really need it. It doesn't remember, particularly if the party is in control of Congress on the other side is different than the president.

It's a fake thing, but here it actually matters. All it is is the ticket to ride on the budget reconciliation process. The budget reconciliation process, you only need 50 votes, but everything in it must relate to taxes and spending. Right. You have to pass up the- So you can't pass laws that are just like-

You know, famously, we couldn't raise the minimum wage through budget reconciliation. Yes, because there's something called the Byrd Rule, named after Robert Byrd, which dictates what is allowed in the budget resolution process. When there is a question, the Senate parliamentarian rules on that. Now, it is worth noting that the

presiding officer of the Senate can ignore the parliamentarian. And some of us may have made a case that they should have done that back then. But lo and behold, we don't have voting rights. So but at least the parliamentarian's integrity is intact. So that's the process that has begun. And now the Republicans, both the House and the Senate, separately, theoretically, have to write

a gigantic tax bill and a giant spending cuts bill that they have to pass before the debt ceiling runs out sometime in late July or August.

And the important thing to realize here is that none of their math works and none of them have agreed on anything really because they have promised. And it's a lot of this is in the budget resolution, a couple trillion dollars worth of spending cuts, which you can only get if you really tackle Medicare, Medicaid, social security, veterans, healthcare. They've also promised over $4 trillion in tax cuts, which,

They want to make the Trump tax cuts permanent. They want new tax cuts. That's a lot. They want to raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion. None of this adds up.

Either adds up mathematically or legislatively. Exactly. And what everyone's focusing on is the House budget resolution instructs the committees to find $880 billion in savings from Medicaid. And yet all the Republicans, including Donald Trump, are out there and Mike Johnson saying, we're not going to actually touch Medicaid benefits that people are going to get. It's all waste, fraud and abuse.

So, and the Senate is basically like, eh, too much Medicaid. We don't want to touch Medicaid. But if they don't touch Medicaid, then they need to find spending cuts other places, but there's just not a lot of money other places. What do you think is going to happen here? Like, is there a version of this that works that you can see? Well, there's got to be a version to lift the debt limit before we default on the full faith of the United States. And look, Trump was able to get this through last time, fully unpaid for.

Like they did not do cuts to pay for it. Will he be able to do that again? He obviously had a much larger house majority, relatively larger house majority, not a huge house majority. It's really incredibly complicated. The Medicaid math, and just so people know, Medicaid provides healthcare and nursing home care for like 72 million Americans, including children. And they've talked about all kinds of things. One of the things that the Republicans are batting around is

One of the ways in which a lot of people have access to affordable health care is through a provision in the Affordable Care Act called Medicaid expansion, where the government covers 90% of the Medicaid match for state Medicaid funds. If they expand health care, they may try to cut that back, which would kick a whole bunch of people off health care. Work requirements would save them $100 billion. Yeah.

There's also a bunch of Medicaid reforms that we proposed that I think didn't go through that for like target waste, fraud and abuse and tax stuff. They could throw those in there. Like I could see them getting to a point where they,

cut some Medicaid that didn't necessarily get to people's benefits and they got they did some other stuff there just to say that they did they got some fraud and abuse but they didn't cut the benefits here and there and then they just add to the deficit make the tax cuts permanent somehow lie about the accounting well that's one thing they're definitely going to do and then when the hardliners on the in the house and ran Paul in the Senate and

Start yelling about it. And then Donald Trump just calls them and like threatens them. I mean, the only way this passes is a whole bunch of people have to vote for a bill that they said they would never vote for. Yes. They either have to vote for a tax cut that massively increases the deficit. Which seems like seems like no matter what they do, even even in their own math.

It increases the deficit. Yes, absolutely. But without any sort of significant spending reductions or changes to programs like Medicaid, or they have to slash Medicaid in a way in which they all said they would not do. Yes. And Donald Trump, it's worth just noting, Donald Trump in 2016 campaign said he would not touch Medicaid. And then he pushed like hell to pass a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act that drastically slashed Medicaid.

And even if they don't touch Medicaid, it's important for everyone to realize nothing in this bill is for you. Yeah. Unless you make over $750,000 a year, in which case you're in the top 1% and you will get a very substantial tax cut. It's about a trillion dollars in tax cuts just for the top 1%.

And everyone else, yeah, maybe you get like a couple hundred dollars. You're probably not going to get more than you already got. Exactly. Right. Because you've had this tax cut since 2017. And they don't even think there's going to be room in there for his no tax on tips proposal. Although maybe someone will find out a way to get in there. But like, there's nothing else for anyone. It's not going to help fix the deficit or even lower the deficit. It's going to add to the deficit, make the deficit worse. And it's going to cut a bunch of other shit that a lot of people depend on. Just, you...

it would be a hard to go into a lab to craft a policy more unpopular than cutting healthcare for Americans to pay for a tax cut for billionaires. Yep. And again, the alternative is they don't touch healthcare.

which is going to be really hard, and I don't believe that they'll be able to, but they don't. And then you go test this one, a tax cut for billionaires that just adds to the deficit. Well, we did this. We tested it, and it was very unpopular. It showed up in a shitload of 2018 House midterm ads. Yeah. And you know what? We got that one. We did pretty good. I like that election. That was a fun election night. That was a fun election. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

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The other issue the Congress has to deal with much sooner is government funding, which runs out in about two weeks. So usually only two things happen with a shutdown. First, it looms, and then it's averted. That's great fucking writing. Reed gave me that line. That's good, Reed. Anyway, so the way a shutdown's averted these days is by passing a continuing resolution, known as a CR, which just keeps the government open at current spending levels with the hope that an actual budget gets passed immediately.

somewhere down the line which is probably probably won't happen probably won't happen which never happens we've been we've been funding the government government on crs for like crs and omnibus spending agreements yeah forever it's a fucking no one's passed the fucking appropriations bill in a long time right and you know what people in both parties are mad about it they all complain about it and then it never changes so two problems for republicans this time around one

The House doesn't know if they can pass a CR with just Republican votes since they have a few loony hardliners who have basically like made a living saying, I'll never vote for a CR ever and I don't want to lift the debt ceiling and I don't want to do any of this shit because they think that they want to like eliminate all of government. So they don't know that they can get all the Republicans. Second, even if they can get all the Republicans and it passes the House, Republicans need 60 votes in the Senate.

because this is not the 51 vote budget resolution, it's the 60, which means they need the votes of at least seven Democrats. So the question becomes, what should Democrats do? Mike Johnson said on CNN this week that he wants a CR to include language that codifies the Doge cuts. He has also rejected Democratic efforts to include some guardrails in the CR around Elon and Doge. What do you think Dems should do?

We've been talking about this in many forums, personally, you and I for a few days now. I just start recording our conversations. It would be so much easier. Just turn this whole thing into a reality show. So they're doing multiple times. That's right.

I'm always like, did we talk about this on the pod or? Was it a text? Was it in person? I don't know. I do not think the Democrats can vote for a bill that does not do something to stop what Elon Musk and Trump are doing. What they're doing is dangerous and frankly unconstitutional, and they cannot allow it to happen. Now, there's some ways in which I think to go about this that would be smart. Senate Democrats should really say and insist that the House goes first.

They should not negotiate. And I think that, like, if Mitch McConnell was still there, he would make the House go first because he does not want to pass a bill that

that he sends to the House and the House then rejects. He needs the House to collapse in a heap of their own failure, which they often do. And then what he does is he gets together with Schumer, passes a bill that has some sort of bipartisan agreement, sends it to the House, sends all of his members home and says pass it or be responsible for shutting down the government. So the House goes first. That really simplifies things because Democrats aren't the ones shutting down the government. Either Mike Johnson and the House Republicans can keep it open or they can't. And so leave it on them. That's one.

Two, I think in the way in which we talk about this, it has to be about the specific things that Elon Musk and Donald Trump have done that have hurt people, right? Food safety, cancer research, the FAA, having competent air traffic controllers. It cannot be about the power of the purse or congressional prerogatives. And I've already seen some members of Congress in a political story on this today talking about that.

Cannot be about that is that we have to be protecting people from cuts that are hurting them like that. That is absolutely essential. And look, there is risk in a shutdown.

Politically. A shutdown is going to—we are not the ones shutting down the government. Republicans are shutting it down because they cannot pass a bill in the House. They are too incompetent to do it. Or if it gets to the Senate, Republicans are—I mean, the reason they couldn't get Democratic votes is because they are just blatantly destroying government illegally. Previous shutdowns have always happened—other than—previous shutdowns have happened when the government is divided.

And the part in the House, usually Republicans in the House, refuse to bring up a bill to keep it open. Right. Or they pass something they know the president won't sign. Republicans control all the levers of government. If they can't keep this thing open, that's on them. And there is political risk in this. Like shutdowns are bad. People get hurt in them. We don't we do not want this to happen. But also we do not we cannot save the Republicans from themselves here. Yeah. Because it's the one point of leverage we have. And there is political risk in it.

There absolutely always is. But I think the greater political risk in the long term for Democrats here would be to walk away from a fight.

When the party absolutely must demonstrate strength, must find a point of conflict where we can demonstrate to the American people, we can grab their attention and demonstrate to the American people what it is we stand for and who we're fighting for. And if we walk away from that, we're not going to get another opportunity. No, I was going to say, we have said now many times that Democrats don't have much leverage and much power in this Trump presidency, at least for these two years. And that is true, except for momentarily.

moments like this, right? Moments where you need 60 votes in the Senate is like the only leverage we have. And we've just talked about stories where the courts are issuing rulings that are not being followed, where Elon Musk and his people are going in, getting access to our private data and personal information. They are firing people that are providing services that are in some cases, life-saving the people to

Yeah, yeah.

in the Senate, then you need to like start following the fucking law and being responsible stewards of people's tax dollars and not cutting the services that they depend on. There has been this real dissonance at times between democratic rhetoric and democratic actions.

We talk about the existential threat of Donald Trump. We talk about the deeply damaging things he is doing or could do. And then we were then, but our response exists in the frame of normal politics. Yes. And if this is as dangerous as we believe it is, and I think Senate and House Democrats believe it is as they say it is, then you have to be willing to engage in more politically risky maneuvers to try to do something to stop it. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think like, I think they need the fight, you know? Well, we'll be talking more about this in the next couple of weeks. One more thing here on the serious topics list. It's a long list. On Wednesday, Jeff Bezos.

sent out a memo to the staff of the Washington Post, which of course he owns, saying that from here on out, the opinion page would, quote, be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. He then informed staff that David Shipley, the opinion editor, would be leaving the paper as a result of his decision, saying,

Former Washington Post journalist Gene Weingarten today also reported that a piece about Bezos' new policy by Post media reporter Eric Wemple was killed. You wrote a message box about this on Wednesday. Give us your take.

This is a very sad day for the Washington Post. The Washington Post is, while it's been struggling financially in recent years, is one of the most important media institutions in the country. It is famed as a media institution that will cover anyone and everything without fear or favor. They will stand up to incredibly powerful forces in this country. They took down a president. They published the Pentagon Papers.

And they come up with a slogan, democracy dies in darkness, which that was kind of on the, that was in the, probably the beginning of the decline. It feels a long way away, doesn't it? Yes. Um, but now the, at least the opinion section of that paper is nothing more than an organ for the billionaire with multiple interests in front of the federal government that owns the paper. Yeah. And, and,

What I think this, so this is a problem for the post. It's deeply demoralizing and unfair to the journal, the very good journalists, the post who do very good reporting. They deserve much better than this because this is, this has caused people to cancel their subscriptions. It has caused people to not trust the work they are doing. And I think it also is, and this is the broader point. It is just a, another signal about the dangers of corporate owned media, right? The 21st century was a period of media consolidation. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington post, uh,

Comcast bought NBC. The Walt Disney Corporation bought ABC News. The CNN is owned by Warner Discovery. And for a long time, even as those were good purchases because the business of journalism was so good that they were profit engines for these companies. And they were good for the brand because they also owned these valuable news brands that meant a lot.

in recent years. And because of that, these corporations abided by the traditional firewall between the business and news side. They did not get involved in interference. Over the course of time, the financial value of these journalistic organizations within these larger conglomerates came down. They're now, they still make money, but they're declining assets. In fact, in some cases, they're drags on the stock price because people know that these networks are in inexorable decline because of changes in how people consume media.

And now the firewalls are starting to come down because they know they believe that Donald Trump will hold the larger corporation and its interests hostage over the coverage of the news entity. And so we see this in the with good reason. Yes, they're not wrong for thinking that. Right. Also, remember, in the first term, Donald Trump just called it the Amazon Washington Post and threatened them all over the place and canceled a try or at least try to get rid of the full deal to try to cancel a Pentagon contract with Amazon. Yeah.

Jeff Bezos has Amazon contracts and Blue Origin, a space company, depends on federal funding. And all of them worry about regulatory scrutiny in a vengeful way from the Trump administration. And many and what they want. The new FCC chair has been carried out. And that's what they what they wanted. Many of them want to merge with other companies. They want to buy companies and they know that Trump will.

Trump's FCC or FTC or whoever else is involved in it will hold him in. So there are some examples here, right? The Disney Corporation has been in the crosshairs of Republicans for a couple of years now. They settle a pretty specious lawsuit involving George Stephanopoulos for a $15 million donation to the Trump library.

Trump has an even more specious lawsuit against 60 Minutes involving the editing of a Kamala Harris interview. The Paramount Corporation, which owns CBS News, has been bought by Skydance, a production company owned by Trump's buddy, Larry Ellison's son, David. That is going to need approval from the FCC. And so what is Sherry Redstone, the owner of Paramount, want to do? She wants to settle that lawsuit, that absurd lawsuit.

In order to stay on Trump's good side. And so the point here is that media is changing. The era of corporate media has come to an end because the firewalls are coming down. And so you mentioned the Eric Wemple thing, right? Eric Wemple actually is a, as I understand, is a columnist for the Post. He's on the opinion side. Right. But the story the Post ran about this was basically the press release of

from Jeff Bezos. It doesn't say, there's no report, there's a furor inside the Post. In a different era, the story would be about the reaction within the Post, right? We've seen this at the New York Times and there's been certain situations when- And probably, ironically, the Times or Politico or Puck or someone else will write the story about the turmoil inside and now the Post can't. And the Post did not do it. And so what do we think is going to happen when

When let's say the post were to stumble on this, the example I used in my message box where let's say the post were to stumble on a scoop akin to the access Hollywood tapes or when the New York Times got Trump's tax returns. Are they going to publish that?

Well, you know, Jeff Bezos just paid $40 million to Melania for a documentary three times more than anyone else had ever offered for a documentary that she'll be pocketing 70% of that. And $1 million to the inauguration? Yeah, $1 million to the inauguration, got to sit there. So no, I don't think they'd be publishing that. Obviously, if Jeff Bezos stopped the publication, there'd be mass resignation at the post and it'd be the end of it. We would all know that, but...

That's the future. And my argument, and I think, and this is obviously self-serving for a whole host of reasons, but it's also why we do these jobs and why we're in this business as opposed to something else, is the future of media is not corporate, it's independent. It means entities will be smaller because the economics have changed.

And they're going to be more transparent about their biases, right? Some of it will be like purely traditional objective journalism. Some of it will be, you know, what we're doing here at Crooked Media Pots in America or what I'm writing on the message box. But that is the future. And like, as I said to people, if you want a better media ecosystem, you got to build it yourself. I mean, you have to support these entities. And look, I know, and-

I don't want a media world where it's all just, you know, takes flying left and right. And that's all that we have. Like we need to make journalism a viable business. But you're right that like independent journalism, which is, you know, there's not there's not enough of it right now. Like that is the that's got to be the future at this point.

Yeah. And the economics are very hard. Some of it's nonprofit like ProPublica. Some of it is smaller stuff like what our friend Jessica Yellen's doing at News That Noise. But there's just – it's just a world and you just – there is this inherent and irreconcilable tension between a media entity who views its job as trying to hold the powerful accountable being owned by a large corporation with multiple business interests before the powerful. Yeah.

And this is all true. And it is a story about corporate media and where it's headed. It's also a story just about like, this is what happens in authoritarian governments, you know, and like, this is hungry shit. This is like Russia. I mean, Peter Baker, the New York Times was talking about the as we were going to talk about this with Jen in the Inside 2025 episode, too. But the idea that the now the Trump White House is just picking the press pool.

So they get to pick who covers them from the press and they have like, you know, Gateway Pundit and OAN there. And he was like, you know, I covered I was the Moscow bureau chief for a while for New York Times. And this is like Russia. Yeah. You know, it's not Russia yet, but it certainly looks like the beginning.

And the idea that now corporate America, corporate media owners, whatever else, are now basing their business decisions and basing their other decisions on how to make sure they either curry favor with Trump or don't piss off Trump, it's getting to a pretty scary place. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but two quick announcements before we do. Trump's given his first joint address to Congress this coming Tuesday, March 4th.

Come hang with us. We're going to be there. The whole gang, Tommy, Lovett, Dan, and I are going to live stream a preview of the speech on Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific on the Pod Save America YouTube. We'll break down what to expect, and we're going to take some questions from Friends of the Pod subscribers, so check that out. Then when the speech starts at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, head over to the Friends of the Pod Discord for a subscriber-only live chat.

where you can sort of process everything and feel just a little bit less alone. And then of course, we'll have an episode out the next day about the speech. Also,

Stay tuned at the end of this episode for a preview of our exclusive subscriber series, Inside 2025. As I mentioned earlier, Dan and I talked to Jen Psaki. We break down how modern presidents have used the press to their advantage, what it takes to control the narrative, and how Democrats are doing in the early days of Trump 2.0. To get access to shows like Inside 2025 and to ask us questions on the State of the Union livestream and get access to our Discord and all our other great subscriber-only shows, join Friends of the Pod at cricket.com slash friends or directly from the Pod Save America feed on Apple Podcasts.

You can get started with a free seven-day trial. Pod Save America is brought to you by Beam. Here's the thing about sleep. It's the foundation of whole body health, Tommy. That's true. When we sleep well, our minds and our bodies perform at their best. Good sleep is both mental and physical, and our daily performance depends on it. That's why I'm so excited to talk about Beam's Dream Powder, a science-backed healthy hot cocoa for sleep.

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We're going to make it a fucking tradition. You're going to like it. All right. New tradition around here. It's our segment, Wait, Did That Really Happen? We're going to listen to the three craziest moments from this week. And look, if we missed a crazy moment and these aren't the three craziest, please let us know because there's a lot of crazy moments this week. These are just three that really stuck out to us. This is a really just great engagement tool. Yeah, you know what? Tweet at us. So we're going to listen to the three crazy moments and then we're going to try to put the shattered pieces of our brains back together. All right. First up,

This is an AI-generated video about Gaza that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, posted to his social accounts on Tuesday nights. He's coming to set you free, bringing the light for all to see. No more tunnels, no more fear. Trump Gaza is finally here. Trump Gaza, shining bright. Old and future, a brand new life. Feast and dance, the deal is done.

Trump Gaza number one. Trump Gaza shining bright. Future a brand new light. Feast and dance the deal is

Trump Gaza, number one. Okay, for those of you who are not watching on YouTube, this is a good opportunity to just go to our YouTube channel and start watching here because you've got to see the video. And while you're there, like and subscribe. Of course, yeah, of course. Let me tell about the content. But the audio is pretty fucking nuts, but it does not do the whole thing justice. You've got to see the video, which involves...

Elon Musk, many times dancing. AI generated Elon Musk. Yeah, there's all AI generated. Elon Musk, and there's like cash showering down on him. A couple times, there's golden statues of Trump in Gaza, and everyone's very excited about the golden statues of Trump in Gaza. There's a Trump Gaza casino. There's a Trump Gaza casino. There's a shirtless Trump and a shirtless Bibi Netanyahu on the beach together. That's the last scene in Gaza. I mean...

it's like you want to laugh you want to be like I can't fucking believe this is real and also it's like just horrible and awful when you think about like what has happened in Gaza what is happening in Gaza right now and just like the the death and destruction and starvation and everything that's happening and then like the president of the fucking United States puts this video up what is going on being

Being Trump shares a lot of memes that somehow make it to him. I don't know how they get there. And sometimes I feel like we're a little like overly pedantic about it. We're like, oh, how can the president of the United States do this? And it's like, you know what? Everyone can relax a little bit. The president of the United States is already a ridiculous human being. This is low on the list of concerns. But this is one that is particularly offensive. Yeah. And just because it just shows such disregard for the people in Gaza. Yeah.

The people who have family in Gaza. Yep. You know, it's just, it is, it's so callous and so cool to think that that's funny with what is going on there. It's just...

It just shows the fact that there is no soul there. It's just a bottomless hole. Yeah, everything is just memes and fun and whatever else. And he actually, somewhere in his fucking deep addled mind, somewhere in his fucking addled mind, he probably actually thinks, I'm sure it's not going to look at the video, but yeah, I can remake Gaza as the Riviera of the Middle East, as he said in a fucking press conference. And put a casino there.

It's fucking dark, man. All right. Second, we have Trump making an announcement in the Oval Office about a new immigration policy. We're going to be selling a gold card. You have a green card. This is a gold card. We're going to be putting a price on that card of about five million dollars. And that's going to give you green card privileges plus.

It's going to be a route to citizenship and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this car. They'll be wealthy and they'll be successful and they'll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people. Would a Russian oligarch be eligible for a gold car? Yeah, possibly. Hey, I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people. It's possible. This is it. We want to be importing Russian oligarchs now.

Just let's, we're against immigration now, unless it's rich oligarchs from abroad. That we're selling American citizenship for the price of $5 million. Yeah, that's right. That's what we're doing now. We've come a long way from the principles of the Statue of Liberty right here. Yeah. Yeah, no, I would say. It's so ridiculous that it's almost hard to believe. Like, you're probably too young for this, is where our age difference comes in. But, did you ever see the...

HBO sketch comedy show Mr. Show with Bob McGurk and David Cross. Yeah. This is almost like word for word what a Mr. Show skit would be because they used to really make fun of like really bad infomercials on TV all the time. This is what it sounds like. You like green cards. Try a gold card. Also, I'd love to know what like the Steve Bannon's and the hardcore MAGA people think of this because they don't want any immigration. Should we just ask Tommy? Right.

They don't want any immigration whatsoever because they just don't like immigrants. Their problem is not necessarily what kind of immigrants are coming or how they're coming, whether it's illegal or legal immigration. They just don't like immigrants. And now Donald Trump is like, oh, for five million bucks a pop. First of all, like also and they're like, oh, they'll be they'll be carefully vetted. Like this. This is so ripe for.

abuse for sketchy people. I mean, like, Jesus Christ. I mean, for people like Andrew Tate. Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The Tate brothers accused of sexual assault. There's reporting that the Trump administration had leaned on Romania to let them leave Romania where they were under house arrest and they were free today and ended up in Florida.

And then Trump said he didn't know anything about it. Of course. Yeah. But that's what we're getting now. Real push coming to shove is when Romania wants him back for their trial. And what happens then? Well, even Ron DeSantis was like, I'm not keeping... No, I didn't ask for this. We don't want this. Nothing you can do about it. Yeah. Just send him to Alabama? Like, I don't...

All right. Here's the last one. Oh, and by the way, the gold card's not he can't do it. Trump is going to be passed by an act of Congress. You can't you can't just unilaterally do that. Or can you, John?

Well, where's the I mean, who what? Maybe. Who knows? I don't know. Yeah, you're right. Maybe. Maybe it's five million bucks. Many of the principles of Schoolhouse Rock inoperative now. Where is like Assad going to come here? Putin? Maybe that we're going to get. We're just going to get all the oligarchs and autocrats around the world just going to come pay five million dollars to come to America. Just I live at fucking Mar-a-Lago in Florida. I just can't believe people would really be into the selling of American citizenship to the highest bidder.

You know, it's Trump's America. All right. Last one. And we have saved the best for last. Yes. Let me tell you. Here's a photo of three people standing outside the White House. Again, for those of you who aren't watching on YouTube, that's Chaya Raichuk, also known as Libs of TikTok. It's someone named DC Drano. He's a real meme guy.

Jack Probosek, whatever his fucking name is. You know what? Don't even try to remember. Another right-wing influencer. Liz Wheeler, another right-wing MAGA podcaster. They're all right-wing social media influencers. They're holding up a binder. They're each holding up their own binder that says, The Epstein Files Volume 1 Declassified. But alas, there was almost no new info about the Epstein trial in those binders.

which made the MAGA internet very mad, especially when the Republican House Judiciary Account tweeted in all caps with the alarm emojis, breaking Epstein files released with a link that when you clicked it led to this. That's right, Dan. The House Judiciary Committee rickrolled America. Rickrolled America. What the

Would you like to talk? I don't even know how to get into this for people who are so confused right now. I have so many questions. Yeah. Do you want to ask me? Maybe I can. Well, let me ask you a question. Because I've gone a little deep on this. Why were the Epstein files classified? They weren't. That was just a lie. Okay. Thank you. Now, keep in mind, so these social media influencers were in the White House.

With Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, Kash Patel, the FBI Director, I think Trump stopped by to say hi? Oh, of course. You think Trump's missing that meeting? Yeah. And because Pam Bondi had promised...

many times that the Epstein files would be released, right? There's this big thing. So then they get the Epstein files and it's all stuff that has been released before. In some cases, years before. In fact, you can go on Amazon and buy like an Epstein files thing, which like has whatever evidence they had that was publicly available. And it's basically what was in the binders. Okay. So now everyone's really mad about that. So they're like, oh, fuck, what are we going to do? Liz Wheeler, one of the social media people decided to tell the whole story.

So she said,

A whistleblower contacted Bondi and revealed that the SDNY, the Southern District of New York, was hiding potentially thousands of Epstein files, defying Bondi's order to give them all to her. We're talking recordings, evidence, etc. The juicy stuff. Names. These swamp creatures at SDNY deceived Bondi, Cash, and you.

America. Be outraged that the binder is boring. You should be because the evil deep state lied to your face. And so...

Next thing that happens is that Pam Bondi sends a sternly worded letter to Kash Patel saying, hey, we have both been lied to. And that the deep state FBI and the deep state goons at the Southern District of New York, the Justice Department that is now filled with Trump people, somewhere is hiding the real Epstein files. And she's demanding that they be delivered to her tomorrow, Friday, when you're listening to this today.

Everything is so stupid. Also, it's funny. It's also about like, like...

sex trafficking of children, this whole thing. And I don't know what people are looking for. They have all, all the MAGA people have gotten themselves into this space where they think that there's some Epstein files, I guess is going to be like a list of high profile Democrats and democratic leaning celebrities and media figures who have all helped Jeffrey Epstein traffic children. I guess this is what they're looking for. That's what they think is there.

They think it's like a Pizzagate thing? It is part of the Pizzagate... Which is why the Pizzagate guy was at the White House. Pizzagate, Cubanon conspiracy narrative. This is what they think, and they think these files are there. But it is... Here's what's interesting about it. Tell me.

Well, I've been thinking about this for a while because they now have everything. They've won everything, right? They got the White House. They've got this right-wing media apparatus. They've got the FBI. They've got it all. They've won all the branches. But they still have a bunch of dumb conspiracy theories that aren't true. They're still going to fuck things up as they have been in the last month. They're not going to get their way all the time. And so they are still...

going to blame have people to blame like lest we think oh they own everything now and now who now who are they going to blame they always find people to blame there's always deep state people out there that still haven't been you know found in the agencies and they're still they're still lurking and they miss the purge miss them and so there's always some kind there's going to be democratic governors who are villains or any anywhere there's an elected democrat

anywhere there's someone in the media who is not loyal to Trump, anywhere there's some bureaucrat who isn't a loyalist to MAGA, they'll be blamed to blame to be cast. Yeah. I mean, that's the entire evil genius behind the deep state narrative is it allows Republicans to control everything and have someone within their own government to blame. Now,

That can work with a segment of people who are looking for reasons to stick with Donald Trump. You mean fucking crazy people? Yeah. Well, I mean, just Republican based voters. Right. Right. If you like Donald Trump. I was thinking about the Pizzagate. The Pizzagate is off, but just this idea that Donald Trump is failing because someone inside the government is preventing him from succeeding, which is how a lot of Republicans justified Trump's colossal failures in his first term. Yeah. But that's not going to work for everyone.

No, it's not. You're right. I totally agree with that. I just think it is wild that the Attorney General of the United States sent a letter to the FBI director saying that there's a deep state hiding files that are going to expose corruption from Jeffrey Epstein, who is dead. Let's just follow the story closely. Anyway, that's our crazy shit for this week. That's our show for today, but...

But you're about to hear a special preview of our subscription show, Inside 2025. This is Dan and Jen and I. We talked about White House communication strategy and press strategy. It's a great episode. Again, sign up for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America and all our subscriber-only shows, all kinds of other good stuff at cricket.com slash friends or through Apple Podcasts. Here's Inside 2025.

I think there is a way to be respectful and valuing the freedom of the press without being so old school wrapped up into the rules they want you to live by, because they're not effective in terms of how you communicate with the public anymore. And that is like you got it. Like if you're running for president now, you're gonna be in the White House. You've got to throw out some of how some of this is done to state the obvious.

Just one other thing on this because I can't let it go is part of the problem for the press here is they have a boy who cried wolf problem, which if you screen that the president not having a formal press conference or not doing enough rope line Q&As is an abridgment of freedom of speech.

Then people are going to take you less seriously when there is an actual threat to press freedom, which is what happened to this president. Yeah. There's been too much confusion between the First Amendment and access. Yes. And when you get mad about that, when you paint access or transparency as assault on freedom of speech, then you are sort of – you're setting yourself up for when the actual threat to freedom of speech comes to be taken less seriously. Right.

Yeah. And also the American people, I don't think, believe that the only person who can ask a president a question is somebody who has a seat in the White House briefing room. That's just because it's not. So, you know, the notion that they're the only ones, it just isn't how the world works anymore. But yes, that was better stated than what I said. I was getting at the same point. It's an interesting fight that the Trump people are picking. And I think part of the reason they're doing it is just for the sake of having the fight, because like Trump himself. Yeah. It's not like he's not

visible and not out there answering questions and doesn't like to mix it up with the press. Like he is in our faces way more than even his first term. And so he's like willing to answer questions. If he doesn't like your question, he'll yell at you. He'll lie. He'll, you know, do whatever. But he's answering those questions. So it's funny that they are kicking out press even though he is very available to the press. It's weird. Yeah.

But don't you think it's because they think it's, and I think it is effective, unfortunately, in getting some to obey in advance, right? Yes. To not do stories so that they don't piss them off, to do extra outreach, to go like so beyond the pale at the extra mile. And, you know, look at all these payouts that have happened from, and more will happen. I mean, they will sue maybe all of us. I don't know. Shh, shh, shh.

Sorry. Just because I say it doesn't mean it's... If I don't say it, it doesn't mean it's not happening. Jen works for the network that was the subject of a truth yesterday. We were... Yes. Well, congratulations to me. But, you know, I think it's...

It is that. And it doesn't mean it's like people – outlets or reporters are going to be like, oh, we're obeying in advance now. They just do it. You know what I mean? And I think they know that it can work in some capacity. Yeah. So before we go –

Jen, you started to give advice to future Democratic presidential candidates, future Democratic comms directors, press secretaries. We have talked over the years about press strategies, communication strategies, message strategies. It seems like now we need attention strategies. What are some good attention strategies for future people who are going to sit where you guys sat, hopefully Democrats someday? Oh, my God, that's such a good question.

I mean, I'm going to steal a little bit of what Dan said, which is like Democrats sometimes don't take advantage of the cultural moments. It doesn't have to just be the Super Bowl. Sometimes there is an unwillingness or discomfort in showing all sides of yourself.

You know, I mean, there's a lot of like extremely smart Democrats out there. A lot of them are elected. You don't have to always talk like you are defending your Ph.D. thesis. Right. At every moment, you can talk about your love for sports, football, art, cultural things, music, whatever it may be. There is a stiffness sometimes is one of the things I would say. Maybe there's another way of saying it. Everybody needs to let their hair down a little bit more. Yeah.

I don't know. I just used 12 analogies, but I think you know what I mean. You're right. The other thing I would say about communicators, which is less about the attention, but I do think it helps you in this regard, is...

One of the things that helped me in being the bridesmaid many times for the press secretary job and never the bride until finally is that you have to know the policy and the policy and the substance of the person you're working for. What do they believe? Why do they believe it? What's the answer to the 18th question? Sometimes people think of being a press secretary, and this is where people get confused about the attention question, as being able to craft a good tweet or X or whatever the hell we're calling it.

It's not just that. It's like you've got to understand the depth of the housing policy so you can help your boss figure out how to communicate and talk about it in a human way. And sometimes I think that part is undervalued. Yeah. No, I hear that because I had to become an expert in like 10 different – like every topic but like an inch deep, right? Like I didn't want to go too deep on it.

I'm like, I think of like, which I still don't know if I could explain now, but like credit default swaps was like a phrase that came out of my mouth a lot in 2009. No, me and you both in 2009. Larry Summers had to teach us about that. And I was a great teacher. Dan? Okay, I give a few pieces of advice. The first is when I was the, I was the communications director on the transition, which meant one of my jobs was to try to figure out how to set up the White House communications office. Hmm.

And so they handed me a binder on my first day, which had the org charts for every White House communications and press office from Jimmy Carter until George W. Bush. And the thing that is so fucking alarming is the Carter and the Bush ones are almost exactly the same. Yeah. And you know what? Frankly, it's changed some, but not that much. Not much. Not much. Yeah. And so I would tell every person, if you're about to start your presidential campaign, your Senate campaign, your Senate office job, whatever it is, take the org chart you have and light that thing on fucking fire.

Because what it is is that all we're doing is we're building on a view of communications that uses the traditional legacy media as the primary vehicle for delivering our message. So we have to get it. If you keep just...

tinker around the edges, you're always going to keep doing the same thing. It's why legacy media brands keep failing because they keep trying to become digital by just appending onto the old print infrastructure, whatever it is. So that's one. Ditch that. You got to doge that org chart. Oh, sometimes we're pro-doge. I need a dozen guys under the age of 22 who didn't go to the prom. Get big balls to get to a... Big balls will help you. There you go. The

The second thing is we have to think about communications as message delivery, right? It's both. It's all content generation or message generation in our heads. Like what's the event we do? What's the interview we do? What's the social media posts we do?

The real question is the one we should build all of our infrastructure on is how do you get the piece of information that you want to put out in front of the people that you need to see it? It used to be that you would just put it out in the press and they would organically consume it in some way, shape or form. It doesn't work that way anymore. So you have to have an actual plan to do it and you have to build up an infrastructure that allows it. That includes both like very aggressive infrastructure.

Influencer work, organic social stuff. And actually the thing that I'm most passionate about is empowering your supporters to be your messengers, right? To actually carry your message. And the next thing, and I said it, Jen's saying it, but it's so important is, and everyone says politics is downstream of culture. And that is true. But the thing that I think in terms of communications is, if you are a politician, a

Find the thing outside of politics that you are passionate about and can talk about authentically and go talk about that thing all the time. Yeah. Like I still am so struck by the Kamala Harris interview on Call Her Daddy and it was all policy. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, the Trump interview, obviously the Call Her Daddy was like 30 minutes and the Trump-Rogue interview was three hours. But the part of the Trump-Rogue interview that worked for him was when he was just talking about UFC. Yeah.

Yeah. Like a guy who can't like a UFC fan. Right. And like for some segment of his audience, that's his persuadable universe. That's a big deal. If it's sports, go talk about sports all the time. If it's pop culture, talk about pop culture. If you go talk about what was on white Lotus or which Bravo shows you like, or which music you like,

Right. Yeah. And because that is a way to connect with people outside of politics. Obama did this all the time. Yeah. Right. And he could he could do all this. He could talk about sports. He could talk about movies. But find ways to do that so that you can connect with people on something other than policy, because if you have that human connection first, then they're going to be more willing to listen to what you have to say about the other stuff.

Can I give them two more pieces of advice? Yes. Because we're rooting for these people to bring us back from the brink. Yeah, we are. One is, this is so obvious and old school, but like, why are you running for president? Please determine the answer to that question. The second thing is,

Figure out what you actually think of a range of policy issues. Right. I mean, we go through this thing where you see politicians try to bend themselves into a pretzel answering questions about any range of issues. And it's like start with the place. And this is like to comms people who are advising people who may run for president.

what do you think about what's happening in Israel? What do you actually think, right? What do you think should happen with healthcare? And I think sometimes it gets so wrapped up in like poll-tested language and words that it's confusing and it doesn't feel authentic. And if you piss some people off,

That's OK. And I think we've gotten a little bit away from that. Yeah, I think use polling and research to help you find the most effective way to talk about what you already believe and what you care about and what you want to prioritize. Right. Like that's that should be the direction, not the other way around. Yeah.

One final piece of advice, John, that's very important. This is so fun. Is that you and I have been podcasting for three presidential elections now. Oh, my God. And I would say the record of people who've been on our podcast is one and oh. And the record of people who did not go on our podcast is oh and two. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Just something to think about. Well, but that is such a good, I will say, just to go back to the New York Times editorial board thing. It's like there is still people who are of the age who might run for president who think if you have a Washington Post op-ed, I keep picking on them. It's really, I don't, it's not even Jeff Bezos related. Like that's written in the print form, you're reaching America. I'm here to tell you you're not. And so actually to Dan's point,

don't be so fragile about like what the name of the outlet is. Like who is reaching people and how is it reaching them? And is it reaching the audience you're trying to reach? That's it. It doesn't matter what their name is. It doesn't matter how long they've been around. It doesn't matter what their masthead is or no masthead. And that would serve a lot of people well too. Talk to everyone all the time and just...

be fucking human just be human talk like you're talking to people in your life and if you talk to people in your life like you talk as a politician then don't run for office yes it's true please stop yourself thanks for listening if you like what you heard we hope you'll subscribe at crooked.com slash friends or through the pod safe america feed on apple podcasts love it tommy and i will be back with a new show on tuesday talk to everybody then have a great weekend bye everyone

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