Welcome to the first episode of Pod Save America. My name, guys. I'm just imagining everyone just hearing our Nintendo music having played. It's going to be glorious.
I'm John Favreau. I'm John Lovin. I'm Tommy Vitor. Hello, everyone.
We're back. Or for some of you, this is the first episode of Pod to America you'll hear. This is a venture of our new media company, Crooked Media. Some of you might know us from our old podcast, Keep in at 1600.
Some of you may know me from just being somebody everybody knows. We're very excited. We're very excited. So let's start with why we did this whole thing.
Why we moved over from the ringer to our own little venture. Yeah, let's talk about it. Some of you might have heard us crumble into little balls and I think most of the country. We were, since I did, and trying to figure out what do we do about it?
Because I think if Hillary Clinton had won, we would have been, continued our lives in California, and watched from afar and cheered her on. But, and she just came so close. I think all of us feel Favreau, Lovin, and I were starting this new company, Crooked Media. Please visit our website, getcrookedmedia.com.
Felt like we wanted to get more engaged and get back in the fight. And part of the problem in this election is that there was a good place to talk about politics like a human being. And there wasn't a good place to try to understand not just what was happening, but what you can do about it. And we want to figure that out for ourselves and help you guys figure it out.
And it's going to be a long, difficult process, but we're excited about it. Yeah, and you can expect, for those of you who were, keeping it at 1600 fans, the three of us will be doing this podcast on Monday. Dan Fyfer will be joining me on Thursday. We're going to have the same sort of fun freewheeling conversation about politics that we always have.
They're both looking at me, guys. But we do want to focus a little bit more on, as Tommy said, what you can do on some advocacy, on how to get involved in politics. We want you to be part of this, which also means send us your ideas, send us your complaints, send us your jokes, ridicule us. We are very responsive on Twitter, maybe to a fault.
Yes. No, Lovin only checked his mentions this morning. He did not prepare for this podcast. I have a lot.
Listen, I'm starting to meet a company. I got a lot of mentions. All right, a lot going on. The one thing we want to say is we will no longer be on Kingdom 1600.
We will no longer be with the ringer. But Bill and his team were so incredible to us for giving us this opportunity for supporting us along the way and for inspiring us to step out and try to do our own thing the way he did. So thank you to those guys. They're incredible.
Take a break. We're going to talk for a talk. The whole team at the ringer. You guys are the best.
Thank you. And we'll be seeing you soon. Also, if you like this podcast, please rate us on iTunes. That's how we make a living here.
We're going to get an info, Marshall. Can we just get to the podcast? Get to the podcast. Here we go.
I think we'll pick up right where we left off last time we did this, which is the rush of hack. Still happening. So according to a declassified intelligence report that was released on Friday, the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA have concluded that Vladimir Putin himself ordered an influence campaign to undermine Clinton and had a clear preference to enhance Donald Trump's campaign prospects. The influence campaign included the hack of the DNC, the hack of Clinton Chairman John Podesta's personal email account, fake news, Russian Twitter trolls, the whole nine yards.
So Obama and Trump got the classified briefing on this on Friday. Trump released a statement afterwards that actually acknowledged. I got close to acknowledging this for the first time. Said acknowledge that Russia is constantly trying to hack our cyber infrastructure, but said there was absolutely no effect on the election.
Now, I don't want to necessarily get into the whole debate here about the effect on the election. That's a boring podcast. No. I did notice that Jesse Bernie on Twitter tweeted.
The Russian hack led to a guy driving hundreds of miles to shoot up a pizzeria. So yeah, I'm pretty sure it might have affected some folks. Fair point. Also noted the thing, progress folks, noted that Trump mentioned WikiLeaks 164 times in the last month of the election.
So clearly, he thought it was useful. But let's look forward on this. It seems like there's two things that we need to do in the future on cyber attacks. One is to do better at stopping cyber attacks before they happen, right?
And that's a lot of things that we don't know. We're not experts in this. Dean's seen in a couple of bike locks on those computers. But assuming that even with better defense, cyber attacks will happen.
I think we need to talk about how do you lessen the effects of cyber attacks, right? Yeah. I mean, I think even that's an important cultural question we didn't forget. That's like, this wasn't just a cyber security issue.
This was a broader influence campaign, a propaganda effort that was directed against the media and ever US citizen by Vladimir Putin. Part of it was done by releasing John Pess as you know, so waking leaks. Part of it was done with these trolls. Part of it was done with the Russian propaganda network RT.
And I think there's some people on the left that are sort of reflexively dismissing these findings bullshit. They're pointing to us being wrong about Iraq, WMD, and saying they want to see more detail. I think we can't be nihilistic about this and distrust the intelligence community forever. Because a few months ago, if you read these findings aloud, you would have been called the craziest conspiracy theorist alive.
And now you have it as the consensus view of the intelligence community that Vladimir Putin ordered this entire undertaking. And I think we need to recognize that they did this in Eastern Europe before. They're going to do it again. And we need to focus on ways to prevent it and sort of what John was starting to talk about as a culture.
Like, how can we stop being a part of these weaponized hacks you're seeing against individuals? Because I started with Sony in North Korea. And the media and everyone on Twitter followed right along and allowed themselves to be a part of it and it's dangerous. But also, what makes our political conversations so vulnerable to it?
But also, as individuals, what is it about the polarization of our politics that means that not only will a presidential candidate wave around a WikiLeaks report on stage, but that his supporters will just grab onto it. And by the way, if the situation were reversed, Democrats would have done the exact same thing. So we are vulnerable to this, not just because of hacking, but because our culture is just wholly unprepared for a steady drip, drip, drip of hack information in a partisan context. And I do not think anybody knows what to do to fix that.
Well, and it's hard to determine what kind of outcome it had or what effect it had, because sort of the range of information you're talking about is so wide. Like, some people would say, well, if someone hacks into an email and exposes some big, awful thing, then shouldn't the public know about it anyway. So that's one issue. You set that aside.
But then there's the fake news stuff. Then there's the more framing things in people's emails is more insidious than they actually are. And so the question is, when someone's email is hacked, whatever, how does the media, I guess, put some more context around the information that's being released so that it doesn't seem as sinister? Anything should start with the motives of these groups.
I mean, I'm going to be honest with you guys. John, John, everyone listening. I'm kind of scared to mention WikiLeaks. I don't want them to fucking go after me.
You see these WikiLeaks task force people tweeting that they're going to start listing the financial and family information of every verified Twitter user. What is the broader good of doing that, of going after individuals and their families, just because they got a little blue check from at Jack? I mean, these are, this is a dangerous path we're going down of character assassinations. Yeah, I mean, I think the important thing here is whether you supported Trump, whether you supported Hillary, these people have an agenda to destabilize democracy and destabilize Western democracies.
That's Putin's agenda, right? He's going to try to do this in Europe. He could try to do this to us again. And it's nice to talk about it in the future as opposed to rehashing the election, because obviously it's become this partisan thing, but it shouldn't be partisan.
Right? It's so crazy. The notion that the intelligence community is somehow lying about these findings, right? That John Brennan, the CIA director, is going to cook up an inaccurate dishonest report that is really damning to Donald Trump.
And then two weeks later, hand over the keys to the CIA, to Donald Trump's hand-picked CIA director, right? That doesn't make any sense. They're going to see all the evidence, John, and the CIA team who they're currently seeing. So like, I think we have to have some confidence in these results as an amazing question.
I guess the question then is, what do we do? And I think one thing is reporters are going to report on news in hacked information, and they should. And there was plenty of news in the Step Act, in the Sony HAC, in other HACs, in the DNC HAC, in the emails that came out legally from Hillary. But I think one thing that's going to have to, we're going to have to figure out how to be more mature about is the day-to-day business just isn't newsworthy.
And if every once in a while we're going to see the sum total of a person's personal correspondence, we just have to be mature about it and give people a threshold for saying the crazy thing. Yeah, I mean, listen, there's some things that are newsworthy and there's some things that are just a shitty comment you made to your friend in an email and like, that shouldn't be a political story. And stories can no longer be a rare look behind the scenes because they're not rare. And they're not going to be as rare.
Nothing is rare. And I think we just need to be cognizant that these hacks are a result of a foreign adversary trying to weaken us, right? There's a reason that Putin's doing this. And it's not because there's a reason he wanted one side to win and one side not to win, right?
And like, he's going to keep doing this. And the idea here is destabilized Western democracies. And he's targeting environments that there's a lot of political polarization and media polarization. Those are right targets for them.
The report notes that the Russian pundits thought Hillary was going to win too. Apparently they also suck the way we did. They're friends at the pond. And they were trying to weaken her as president.
So yes, I mean, you're right. This is an attack on the institution of the president. Ooh, OK. So I think we saw that.
Could you imagine if that thing had worked? Oh, boy. OK, so this week we have cabinet hearings. We have confirmation hearings for Donald Trump's cabinet members.
Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are basically trying to jam most of the cabinet conformations hearings in this week. We end in the next couple weeks. They're putting their stack in a lot altogether. This is actually before most of them have completed their ethics reports and FBI background checks.
Last week, the Office of Government Ethics complained that the current schedule is too much too soon for them. That's the first time that the Office of Government Ethics has ever actually complained about that before. Because usually most of these ethics reports are on silent type usually. Or yeah, right.
O-G-E isn't really making a lot of noise. But they've been complaining about this because they're trying to jam them all through. The reason it's taken them so long is that all of Trump's cabinet picks, or at least a good majority of them, are millionaires and billionaires with all kinds of financial possible conflicts of interest. There's a lot to sort through.
No, it's a very cumbersome process. It's an interesting process. In fairness to them having not completed these forms, it's a very onerous process. That said, the reason Trump and his team are jamming all these hearings in one week is because he knows that they're going to be some nasty stories spinning out.
It's a very difficult question. And they want them all to get squished together to just minimize the impact. And so on the day, he does a news conference. It's almost as if he's putting together an unaccountable oligarchy.
And if you were to put together such an unaccountable oligarchy, how do you get them through? Over the course of a couple months? No, no. You get them through all at once.
Yeah, very busy Wednesday. I think that they're going to have these set of hearings. The first question is, how do you spell your name? Can you please miss for identifications?
We can verify who you are. We're not really sure. We haven't seen any documents. People are just going to be handing their licenses to this.
What did you do before you came here? Good to meet you, Rex. I tried to look you up on Wikipedia. I couldn't find you.
Do you have a resume on LinkedIn that we can check out? Democrats say that the unprecedented personal wealth of Trump's enemies warrants delays. Mitch McConnell's responses grow up Democrats. I don't care about their, the fact that they're wealthy is not a reason to delay.
The fact that they are going to hold hearings all at once before these people have submitted the documentation that allows senators to ask informed questions is absurd. And obviously, and obviously wrong, Mitch McConnell knows that. Now, yeah, it's true. Mitch McConnell knows that because we can talk about Mitch McConnell wrote a letter in 2009 to Harry Reid saying, we must wait until all their documents are submitted before we hold hearings.
McConnell yesterday on the Sunday shows said, no votes, there will be no up or down final votes until all the forms are in. But it is a little weird doing the confirmation hearings without the forms. Yeah, you need to act. I worked on a number of these confirmation teams.
And they are grueling. You have to fill out forms for the ethics committee. You have to pass an FBI background check. You have to turn over all your personal financial disclosures.
And you also answer a ton of policy questions. And you have one-on-one meetings with, you try to get to every senator. And usually you have a Sherpa who's sort of like a, you know, a former senator or someone well-known on the Hill kind of rings you around. But it's an important process because I guarantee you, like people who have worked in government all their lives are not ready for how hard this is.
These random, like Rex Tillerson, who three months ago, was worried about where Exxon was going to drill next. Like that guy is not ready at all. And he's got to be able to answer not just for things in his life and his background, his financial dealings, but also Donald Trump's policies. And they're not prepared.
And what's that process like preparing a nominee for questions in front of the Senate? I know you were part of some of those for some of the national security folks that were the murder boards. Yeah, basically you try to be a mock, you do a mock hearing. And you get a bunch of, you get the nominee in the room.
I did them for a few people with my favorite with John Brennan because I was sort of like tapped to be the asshole, which is of my nature. And just asking the most obnoxious, difficult questions are very difficult. But you try to get them so that they are not going to get a question that's harder than anything they heard in prep. Now Democrats, Chuck Schumer said that they're basically targeting eight nominees of Trump's specifically.
Some of them, they're not really going to put up much of a fight on and let them through. They ate their targeting, or Rex Tillerson for state, Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, Mnuchin for Treasury, Scott Pruitt for EPA, Betsy DeVos for education, Tom Price for Health and Human Services, and Puzzer for labor. First of all, I think that's great. Why eight?
It's a lot. It's not really too many. It seems like it's a lot. It's a lot.
It's a lot. It's a bear. Let me drill down. Come on.
Listen. Are we really in a position to let's not look the perfect beginning of the good? Yeah. Well, it's a good question because I mean, it should be said, Democrats do not have the votes to stop any of these confirmation, which is our fault as Democrats.
Right, because in the past you could maybe filibuster a nomination. It wasn't very likely with 60 votes. But we blew up the filibuster for Harry Reid's not cabinet nominated for nominations, but lesser nominations. Which means that it's next to go.
Which means it's filibuster. The filibuster we could employ to stop cabinet appointments is right. There's two left for this counter appointments in their Supreme Court justices. Basically, we need two Republican votes on each of these nominees to sync them.
Which is actually not impossible. If you've got two Republicans on one of these nominees, you'd sync the nomination. We had a few nominees that were scuttled back in the day, right? Yeah, we had a hard time at Commerce.
We threw up two different people there. Someone went down. I think Tom Dachshil had some tax issues that prevented him from serving in government. Can you imagine that?
Like, Tom Dachshil has a few tax issues, and that was enough to sync his nomination. Tim Diner made a couple mistakes on TurboTax, and it was like a whole thing. Now it literally happened to you. It's ridiculous.
I mean, these people are just like sending in their forms blank. I mean, when our nominees were going up, the Senate Finance Committee had a former IRS staffer who would go to the homes of nominees. And like, if you'd written off a room in your house for a write off, they would measure the square footage to make sure you got it right. It was that level of insanity.
And it was probably way too far. But I mean, that's how far away we've gotten from traditional vetting of any kind of nominee. And it's interesting because at the time, we've all been through all kinds of vetting processes. Even for little things like when the president goes to give a speech, you heavily vet the people that are gonna be on stage on stage.
Everything is vetted within an inch of its life. And Trump has just abandoned all of that. He's standing on stage like ex-mob guys. And it turns out all you had to do was be completely shameless.
And then none of these standards were at all politically enforceable by pressure or press or anything. In terms of where Republicans have voiced some concern, you've heard McCain and Graham talk about Secretary of State nominee, Rick Tillerson's ties to Russia. And there's some of their concerns about what that might mean in terms of our policy towards Russia. You've seen the point he's opposed sanctions notably.
And the point he's opposed sanctions on Russia. And then Jeff Sessions, who is the nominee for Attorney General, was rejected in 1986 for a federal judgeship by when Reagan put him up. And that was only the second time in history that it happened. And this is a guy that we just need to keep an eye on.
Because in terms of, along with the allegations of racism, I mean his support for mandatory minimums and these just draconian drug sentencing laws is truly turning back the clock. Not unrelated to the accusations of racism. Yeah, right. I also think there's a category of nominees in here that Schumer has targeted that fall under the category, Trump promised to improve the lives of working class Americans.
But he's not going to because look at the people he has. And so I think targeting Mnuchin, who was part of a lot of foreclosures unfairly. Yeah, on the West. Thank you.
Maybe we should have prosecuted a few of those people. Right. In hindsight, now there's going to be secretaries of treasury. Yeah.
Betsy DeVos, who is a very strong voucher advocate, which takes a lot of money away from public schools, price obviously on health care because he wants to get rid of Obamacare, which we're about to talk about, and positive because he wants robots to replace workers in fast food restaurants. So I think there's a messaging. Listen to his teaching. I mean, what do you guys think strategic for Democrats?
And how much of these hearings should be about the nominees themselves and their personal qualifications and issues versus Trump's policies and holding them accountable for what he said? You're right. I imagine with Mnuchin, you'd be talking about one Western foreclosures. But I'm betting that Elizabeth Warren and all those senators will be asking, what do you think about the consumer financial protection bureau?
Do you want to get rid of that? Do you want to get rid of the rules on Wall Street that President Obama put in place? So I think they're going to try to go towards Trump's policies and get some answers out of these nominees about what Trump might actually do because Trump has said so little about what he might do on a lot of these issues. We're going to need to do bank shots because the goal here is two years from now to tie these congressional Republicans to Donald Trump and to Donald Trump be similar to popular that we can take back at least the House.
That's a good point. And I think no one really knows the best way to do that just yet. I think it's a little too early to see what really sticks. But one thing we do know is that the more unpopular Trump becomes, the more popular administration, the harder it will be for the Republicans to defend and the harder it will be for them to keep their seats.
You were right, what we said earlier, which is it is not enough to say, oh, this cabinet is stacked with millionaires and billionaires. It is, what will these cabinet secretaries do? What agenda will they carry out? And how will that affect the lives of average Americans?
Yes, it's not about their wealth is not offensive. The fact that he's putting together a team of people from business is fine. The question is, what does that experience lead them to want to do? And right now, what they want to do is turn the middle class to pieces.
Repeally affordable care act, which is our next topic. One thing I do think is an area where people can get engaged. If you guys got to go getcroakimmedia.com, we've linked to a couple of websites where it helps you figure out the best way to contact members of Congress. The voice here displays your time with the timing of rushing these hearings, with the nominees themselves and things they've done in Trump's policy.
So check it out. This is a great way to make your voice. And one last thing on this, we're playing defense. And that's good.
We can play defense is a lot easier in Congress. So a lot of these are guides and resources about a new way of thinking about the way to fight back. And it's about being defensive and being advocates for what we've already achieved. And the biggest fight that's coming up in the next few weeks is the fight to save the Affordable Care Act.
Congressional Republicans may vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act by the end of this week. They can do this with 51 votes because they're going to do this through a process called budget reconciliation, where you can repeal most of the law that way. But they can only lose support, like we said, for the nominations from two Republican senators in order to make this happen. To replace the Affordable Care Act, however, they will need 60 votes, meaning they will need some Democrats.
And just the reason this is the case is in part because that's actually also how we pass the Affordable Care Act. Right. Because you can pass something through budget reconciliation where you don't need the 60 votes. It's a lot of it's a lot of Senate.
I think it's interesting. Yeah, well, yeah, well, there'll be a bonus pod with just a lot of explaining that reconciliation act. The current plan is, in the minds of a lot of Republicans, is repeal and then do nothing. And then ideally delay.
Reveal and go fuck yourself. Reveal and go fuck yourself is what we're calling it. And then just delay, basically, the implementation of repeal until a time when I guess none of these people are in the Senate anymore. Yeah.
They think it's going to be like no one has to deal with the political consequences. It's going to be like how they figure out what to do with nuclear waste 10,000 years out. They're like, we'll put up a sign with a big X on it, big big stalactite so it looks fearful for the surviving humans. And Cory Booker had a great quote about what this is like.
Oh, love it's actually love it's quote first. Love it to us. Oh, now don't make me, but oh sure I'll do it. They are pushing our health care system off of cliff and trying to build a plan on the way down.
That's what they're doing. That's it. That would be the wind up to them. And it's been, they have had basically the better part of a decade to come up with a replacement.
And they don't have one. I mean, in fairness, they have a bunch of different plans running around. None of them would result in anyone having more coverage or lower premiums or lower deductibles, or at least, certainly sick people. So there's a lot of, so Republicans are starting to feel, this is where we really need to get involved.
Because Republican congressmen, congresswomen, senators are starting to feel the pressure on this because there's a lot of opposition to the idea of repealing the Affordable Care Act and have nothing in its place. Because you have 20 million people with health insurance right now. You have 52 million people with health insurance who have preexisting conditions that could lose their insurance if we repeal that part of it. All kinds of stuff out there that could go horribly wrong.
And just one other thing, if they were to repeal it through the budget process, it would really mean getting rid of all the subsidies and all the ways you help people throw out on the care. But you would leave in all the rules that require things of insurance companies. And I just looked this up this morning because remember the Supreme Court ruled that the mandate was tax. And so because it's a tax, you can get rid of that too.
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The mandate, but just the mandate. But they can't get rid of the rules and regulations. No, they're right. There's some stuff they can't get rid of.
But the mandate is now a tax. Remember that's what the Supreme Court said. That's how it survived. Anyway, anyway.
We're going to cut this part so we're going to start again. So most voters don't want this. 75% of Americans, this is a recent Kaiser poll from last week. 75% of Americans want Congress to either leave Obamacare alone or wait to repeal it until there's a replacement law.
Also sharing this feeling of the American Medical Association, the Association for Nurses, Business Groups, conservative outlets like the Washington Examiner, the American Enterprise Institute, have come out against repeal without replace. And now some Republicans, Senators are skittish about this. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Bob Corker in Tennessee, Tom Cotton in Arkansas, Susan Collins in Maine are all signaling a possible break from the party. Collins and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska have voice objections because Paul Ryan in this package over repealing the bill also wants to defund Planned Parenthood.
So Trump has said he wants to replace the Affordable Care with a terrific plan where no one loses their coverage and everything is affordable. Wonderful. That sounds great. Sounds really good.
Paul Ryan gave up the game here the other day. Jonathan Cohn, the Huffington Post caught this. He said, quote, we want to make sure there is an orderly transition so that the rug is not pulled out from under the families who are currently struggling under Obamacare while we bring relief. Don't pull the rug out from the people who are struggling.
Like if they're struggling, they should walk the rug. I don't understand. What's the rug? Is the rug the subsidy?
Is the rug how we're helping them? What's under the rug? Is it hardwood? So I think Barack Obama himself has said that the law is not perfect and that he would support fixes that would make it better.
I mean, I wonder in our effort to be as fair mind as possible, what do you think should be tweaked or fixed in this law to make it better than it is now? What is true is in McConnell raised this on the shows yesterday, the law does not cover anyone. It's covered 90% of the American public is covered now. It's the lowest uninsured rate in history, but still people are covered.
Part of this is because of some governors refusing Medicaid expansion in their states. And somebody's just because people still haven't bought insurance, it's still not affordable enough for them. Premiums are still too high. The growth of premiums has slowed where it wouldn't have been as much without Obamacare, but premiums have still risen.
Copay, it's a lot of plans have deductibles that are too high. So these are real problems. Now, to fix these problems, Obama said this, President Obama said this the other day during his Vox event. He said he would, you could raise taxes on the very wealthy to increase subsidies.
You could add a public option in a lot of these states where some of these insurance companies are leaving. So then everyone has an option to buy insurance. And if their subsidies are higher, that means you have more people covered, you have lower premiums, and you have lower deductibles. Now, every Republican plan out there, replacement plan out there, they've had.
And the congressional budget office will score this. So it's not just us saying this. They would actually lead to more Americans without health insurance. They would lead to higher premiums, higher deductibles.
So the problem is the Republican plans will not fix the very real problems that do exist under the Affordable Care Act. Part of the problem the Affordable Care Act was trying to solve is this inherent disconnect between the cost of health care and the people who pay for health care. We all walk around that we're not the ones who are going to end up paying for health care. But as a country, there's individuals, there's businesses, there's government, and there's hospitals, and others who will carry the costs.
We will pay for our health care. If your plan is about making sure that you can cut taxes on the wealthy to have a less generous version of Obamacare, human beings will end up paying for that. It's not that complicated. You know, these subsidies could be more generous.
The reason they're not is because this was the most we could get out of the Congress that we had when President Obama took office. We would have a public option. But for the fact that some Democrats were obstinate at the time. Joe Lieberman, not a friend of the party.
OK? One of the few people who aren't, frankly. But anyway, one of the lessons I think we should take away from this as Democrats is, man, we paid a huge price in this election. And for a lot of the criticisms being leveled against Obamacare by Donald Trump.
And none of the problems that certain Democrats thought they were addressing when they made the bill less generous, when they took out the public option, when they made it more complicated, none of those problems that they claimed to solve helped us at all. And if these were a simpler, more generous proposal, I think Hillary Clinton might be president right now. The New York Times had a really interesting piece where they had reporters shadow doctors and patients and executives in the Indiana University health system. And it was an interesting piece because, you know, in addition to the subsidies and all the things you've heard about what the Affordable Care Act did, it's also radically changed the way care is delivered.
And that's in some ways the most important part of the law. Because you had doctors talking about how they had the option to use a $300 cement versus an $84 cement in a surgery. And they never once before in their lives thought about which to use. And now they're focusing on the lower cost options.
I want the more expensive cement. It's an emphasis on this community health. But the saddest and most frustrating part of the story is there's an anecdote about a 28 year old guy who had cancer. And the only survivor is Governor Pence, expanded Medicaid, and it helped him.
And he thought ACA, he doesn't support it. And they didn't support it. And they thought it actually forced him to be dropped from his mom's health care at 26 rather than allow him to stay on. And it's one of these things where it's like, this isn't sad politically because I want this guy to support ACA.
It's sad that he's been fed so much disinformation about a law that literally saved his life, that he has this view of it. And it's part of what we want to do in the show, right? It's like, I'm a better, more honest conversation about what's going on out there. Because this is life and death stuff.
You're not going to fix the health care system easily. We all found that out. We were part of passing a law that was admittedly imperfect. In the same world with the same political system, what you would do is Donald Trump and the Republican Democrats would work together and fix Obamacare and just improve it.
And they wouldn't scrap it. And that's what most people want us to do. And if you look at the fact that Obamacare has always been like a 50-50 proposition in terms of people who support it versus not support it right now, probably slightly less than half of people want it to remain slightly less than half of people want it to repeal their scale back. And that's what we want to do.
And I think that is a mistake that we are paying for. So what to do? Call Bombard your senator's office with calls about this, particularly the ones that I mentioned who expressed reservations about this because if they're already wobbly, more calls will make a difference. In addition, I would add Senator Heller from Nevada and Senator Flake from Arizona who are both up in 2018.
The Republicans in states that will have pretty competitive races. Again, a few Republicans flake on this and we are, you know, and they can't pass it. So Democrats are also encouraging colleagues to organize rallies across the country on January 15th. I'm Bernie Sanders.
I'm Bernie Sanders. I'm at revolution.org. They're already organizing that. And there's a bunch of rallies spread up all over the place around on this on January 15th.
So participate if you would. Before we get to our guests, I want to ask you guys a little bit about Obama's final speech tomorrow. Last speech of the administration. I noticed that you guys were both Obama speech writers at some point in your careers.
I'm wondering, what do you think? I mean, I wonder what the hell it's like writing the last one of these, right? I saw him on Sam's Dafanop list that he gave us a little speech at a dinner for senior staff and got choked up and couldn't make it through. Do you think he's going to make it through this thing?
And what do you think you should say? I think he'll be a little choked up. It's going to be in Chicago. It's his last speech.
It's where it all began. I know they're still writing it. I know Cody's pretty tired. He's left it a couple days.
They're trying to get the paragraph at the end where he says he's not leaving office. You don't have to drag him from the resolute desk. He's kicking his breathing. Look, I think the media debate around this speech is going to be, you know, I've already seen it in some pieces.
Like, is he going to go too hard at Donald Trump or not? Is he going to be partisan? Like, I don't think he will be. But, you know, what he has believed since he's taken office and started his political career in many ways is antithetical to everything we're seeing in the political system right now, not just because of what Donald Trump represents, but because of sort of, you know, sort of what the political system has become.
So I do think that he'll focus most on democracy, right? And what it means to be a citizen and what it means to protect democracy. And that is both a national and an international question in the world we're in right now. I don't think he's going to talk about some of his accomplishments, but I don't think it's going to be like a long recitation of a political upside to that.
No. And I think there's a tradition in farewell addresses starting with George Washington that there's warnings on them to people, right? There's warnings to the American public. And I think his warning here will be probably based around, you know, how to save and protect a democracy going forward.
That sounds great. Dark man. You should have Cody. It's going to be, I think the president is digging in right now as we speak probably.
He's probably got that yellow, legal pad out. He's a little insider. No, John. He was just talking to Cody.
The, uh, it's going to be quite a thing to watch him finish that last speech as president because it is going to be quite some time before another president gives a speech worthy of a president. So that's depressing. That's true. Okay.
For some less depressing news, we are going to come right back with our guests, the organizers of the Women's March on Washington, Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour. You're listening to Pod Save America with John Favreau, Dan Fiffer, John Lovett and Tommy Vitor. Welcome Pod Save America to Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour. You guys are organizing the Women's March on Washington.
Thank you for being our first guest here on Pod Save America. Thank you for having us. Absolutely. So tell us what is the purpose of the march and why did you guys decide to organize it?
I think that the purpose of this march is to really allow an opportunity for many of the communities that have felt marginalized and in some ways abused by the rhetoric and the actions of people in this past election cycle and even before that, even prior to this election cycle, you know, certain communities have been feeling, you know, it's oppressed. And I think we are providing an opportunity to give people space to voice their concerns, to build power with one another, where they are able to find allies and like-minded individuals who are willing to work with them in their local communities. So we're building space for people to push back against misogyny and sexism and racism and all the isms that exist that oppress folks in this country on a daily basis. And I think that's one big part of it.
And then obviously giving folks the platform to continue to work after January 21. And that's quite clear on what we're doing out there. It's a mass mobilization of hundreds of thousands of people on the first day of this administration, letting them know that we're here, we're watching them, we're outraged, we're going to state outrage. And we want to send them a strong message that we're here to protect the most vulnerable amongst us.
That means undocumented people, Muslim communities, women and women's bodies, people with disabilities and those in our communities who count on support from the government to thrive in this country. So it's going to be quite clear when we get there. Hey, it's a love it. So I'm sitting here with a couple of bros.
I'm also a guy with a strong feminine instinct. Will they be allowed in? So you got to be okay with this. But the market's open to everybody.
Men, women, gender nonconforming folks, children, seniors, elders, anybody can come to this one. Everybody's welcome. But what you got to be okay with is that it's a woman led mark. So if you ready to follow women towards justice and freedom for all people, then you welcome, brother.
Honestly, I prefer following women. That's why we're curating. And I think what's important in this moment is that women have always been at the forefront of movement. They have not necessarily received a credit, but they've been there.
They've built movement. And we also carry the weight of the community on our back. So men should want to and gender nonconforming folks should want to be there to uplift women's voices because we have been the ones crying out or in this nation for a very, very long time since the beginning. We've been holding this nation together and we're just basically stepping into what is our rightful place in leadership.
So this is time of course for you guys. So Democrats were obviously out of power and we are not going to have a lot of tools to push back on Trump over the next four years. I'm wondering what you see the role of protest is going to be during that period of time. Will it be a critical piece of changing public opinion?
Is it something that we should use at major moments? I mean, how do you, what, how do you plan the next big movement like this? I mean, look, like you said, you know, we don't, we basically don't have any power in any level of government right now on the federal level of the Senate, the Congress, the White House does not belong to progressives. That's just the fact of the matter.
And what we want protests to do is to keep people awake. We need people in perpetual outrage over the next four years. But we also want people to focus on local elections. I mean, people have to understand that the power doesn't just lie in Washington, D.C., it lies in your capital building in your local city hall.
And one of the things that really scares the whole lot of me that people don't know because our country has kept us away from the type of knowledge and education that we need is we have, we're two governors away from calling a conference of states which allows the governors to amend the Constitution of the United States of America. Like, this is how bad it is and could be for a whole bunch of communities and a lot of the rights that we are afforded. Some of us are fighting with some of those rights, but at least to know that the Constitution can be changed and we're only two Republicans governor to wake from that is really scary. So we got to keep people awake.
We got to keep the message strong. We got to keep people, we can't afford asylum majority anymore. We, you know this, we can't be ahistorical. We know that in this country really horrible things have happened in history, slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, internment of Japanese, excluding the Chinese from coming to this country through legislation.
So all of these proposal people are hearing, they're not far-fetched because we've done something in that iteration before. So protest is just an opportunity to also allow people to take their outrage and translate it into a public sphere where they can put their voices out there because we don't want to fight injustice with injustice and protest into the way to do that. So I'm hoping people stay perpetually outraged because that's what I'm doing for the next four years. Protest is just one part of a greater thing and when you talk about the fact that, you know, we're in a time where Democrats have lost everything, but the will of the people will always prevail if it is strong, if it is powerful, if our voices are louder than any person who speaks to rollback or oppressor.
And so the will of the people is now what it will take in order to right side what, you know, some of what has been, what has been, what we see happening in this moment. And I'm very excited about, you know, I've been saying to people if there's one good thing that come out of a president like Donald Trump being elected to office, it would be the idea that folks will have to work together and fight harder than they are used to. It's going to force people out of their comfort zone and into a space where we now have to take matters back into our own hands. We have to take a page out of the Republican playbook where in 2018, we know that they're going to be plenty of feet up in the, for the mid time elections, we've got to go take them and then block every kind of no good policy that comes forward.
We've got to be prepared to block it. So we've got real work to do. And that's why this march is so important because we're bringing people to the table who actually have the power to do something that they may not have done before and be a part of a movement that they may not have been involved with. What does success look like from this march?
And what are some of the follow-up steps that you guys are planning and hoping that other people do once you guys are finished? I mean, immediately right on January 22nd, which is the day after the march, there's going to be a training in Washington, D.C., of 500 women who are interested in running for office. There are teachings that are going to be happening around different issues led by a lot of our partner organizations. And the idea is that we hope that we inspire you, we hope that we hope that you, if you're not already outraged, we're going to send you in a state of outrage that you translate that into supporting movement work in your local city, in your local neighborhood, finding organizations to support like a local planetarium with chapter, like a local organization that works on police accountability or maybe works with immigrant women or refugees.
We have those partners that are already on our website. We're hoping to give people concrete things to do. We have access to a lot of these people that are coming to the march. We have registered with us on some level, on some form, on some website.
So we are going to be in contact with these people to put out calls to action and start connecting them and giving access to some of our partners, especially those who are the most, and most need right now, like the Planned Parenthood or who are going to be potentially defunded to have access to these people that they can act immediately. Could you both talk about what led you to be involved in activism in the first place? You're both young leaders, role models to a lot of people, and there's a lot of young people out there right now who might be interested in these issues, but they say, you know, I don't know if I can do it. I don't know how I can help.
And would you just mind each telling your story of how you, how you each get involved? I think that's one of the national action networks first members, Reverend Al Sharpton's first member is over 25 years ago when the group started. They took me to rallies and protests and had me very actively engage in the movement from a youth standpoint at a very young age. And I think that when it became sort of my thing, not so much following my parents, but really owning the movement for myself was when my son's father was murdered.
My son was just two years old and his father was shot and killed. He was left in a ditch dead, but two weeks before his body was discovered. And I think in that moment, when we talk about this issue of intersectionality, it's like, you know, with gun violence that killed him. But was it really gun violence or was it poverty that we really need to be talking about?
Because he ended up in a situation that he shouldn't have been in because he was just trying to see himself and his family. And I realized in that moment that I had to find ways to stop this from being the reality of so many black women that we are dealing with, waving our children, our black sons and daughters without their fathers either due to mass incarceration or gun violence. And it is all tying back to the issue of oppression of people in this country, you know, not being able to live and thrive as they should. We're not living in an equal and just society.
And I decided that I wanted to work on those issues. And rather than sort of, you know, just be upset and feeling frustrated and hurt about losing my son's father, my job was to figure out ways to ensure that other people did not end up in that club, you know, with the same reality. So this is Linda. I mean, I'm with some American born in New York City in Brooklyn.
And I remember immediately after 911, I was someone who grew up in the lower middle class family with really sheltered from the world. My parents really sheltered me from a lot of injustice that was happening around me. And I got to watch Roman men in my community, fathers, brothers, sons, picked up in sweeps after 911 in the very community that I lived in in South Brooklyn and watched mothers cry over their sons. I watched wives crying for their husbands and children crying for their fathers.
And people were being detained sometimes weeks, months at a time. And they were put into some black hole somewhere. We couldn't even find some of them. And that really was my wake up call to understand that I live in a country that is all the same.
I live in a country that has seen my entire faith community as suspect instead of actual citizens of this country. So I was basically radicalized at that moment that someone who wanted to be part of moving work and to protect my community first and foremost. And what I've learned over the past 16 years doing this work is that the government continues to target the community that I come from under the guise of national security, so stripping of our rights under the sports premise of national security, which led me to other communities, undocumented communities, black communities who have been systematically oppressed under law enforcement agency in this country. So I'm in this because I have no choice but to be in this versus other people who may say, well, that's really interesting.
I might be passionate about this issue. But a lot of us who are involved in this woman's march on Washington, we are directly impacted by the system. So we don't we can't sit at home and think about what we care about. We know what we care about because we're walking our very family members, our communities oppressed almost on a daily basis.
Well, thank you guys for sharing that with us. One last question. I think, you know, it's that we're talking about politics, but it's easy to forget that this is also kind of an experience while having together. So I just want to close by asking you guys, how did the election of Trump hit you when it happened?
How are you feeling then? And how are you feeling right now? It hit me like I can go again. You know, I felt when Santa ran with found hanging in a cell is no different than train on Martin being killed and then having joined them and walked free.
It sort of like waking up in a nightmare every day that this country continues to commit crime against humanity. And you know, for me, it's like another day to go to work. Unfortunately, we have a president coming into office who's very powerful and very dangerous. And I know that we just got to put on like the entire armor.
And for me, it would be a guy because I am a very spiritual person. You know, we have to put the entire armor on and we're going to have to drop these issues that some folks might have. People don't want to work together. People don't want to support one another.
We have to get past that in this moment to be able to stand up for all of our reasons. And we have to do this. But each one of us, that's how I feel. So when the elections were, results were kind of unfolding, I was actually doing media commentating.
I was doing media commentating. It was going to be pretty obvious that Donald Trump was going to be the next president. I got a text message while I was about to do BBC World News on camera. And the text message was from my 17 year old son who literally is the most spoiled child that you could imagine, you know, he's my only son.
And he was writing a continuous text message saying, why? Why is this happening? This can't be happening. We still have a chance.
And this is a 17 year old kid who doesn't care about anything but himself and sports and his friends. And I was really after my BBC interview, I went home to my family and I walked in and my three children literally both looked back at the door and I walked in and burst out crying. And my daughter was 12 years old. It was like, what are they going to do to us?
So I was devastated. I'm not going to lie to you. I was in a moment of despair for maybe a couple of hours. And I woke up the next morning and I just got into this perpetual outrage.
But people have to understand that there are people who are in actual fear that Donald Trump and his administration sends true fear into the heart of a lot of people because we know what injustice looks like in this country. And we don't know what injustice looks like under American fascists. And that's how I'm afraid that I'm outraged at the same time. Well, Tamika and Linda, thank you so much for joining us and telling us about the March and we will post some links to anyone who wants to get involved and wants to sign up.
And again, thank you. Thank you. Post it to you. We're going to try to keep sharing what you guys are up to.
Yes. Thanks for being our first guests. Good luck. Alright guys, that is our very, very first show.
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