1066: Can Democrats Win a Shutdown Fight?

10:34Tommy Vietor:So I have a couple of thoughts on this. One, I think back to Tony Fabrizio memo in July. He's Trump's pollster. And it was mid-July. I think he came up with this memo and he said the well, the 2024 outcome for these districts, these are the most battleground districts in the House, was even the generic Republican is down three points right now among all registered voters. Among those most motivated to vote, Republicans down seven points. If the Republican candidate lets the premium tax credit expire with the ACA, the Republican trails the Democrat by 15 points in these districts. And if the Republican supports the extension of the tax credit for the ACA, they're leading by a couple points.

11:15Tommy Vietor:Now, this is mid-July. Tony Fabrizio is like working for a coalition that was like hired by the insurance companies. Obviously, the insurance companies want the tax subsidies because it helps them in addition to actually helping people not have their premiums grow up. But it made me think like, OK, what if we win? what if there is a um some kind of a deal with some kind of extension for ACA subsidies they're never going to there's never going to be a deal on reversing the Medicaid cuts right that's like a fantasy that's what they passed that was their main legislative accomplishment right so but what if there is a deal on ACA because some Republicans especially Republicans in frontline districts are nervous substantively amazing right people's premiums don't go up as much we've like probably 20 million people get some help on premiums.

12:03Tommy Vietor:Do Democrats in any way benefit politically from doing that a year before the election? Do Republicans benefit from doing that a year before the election and having that off the table? And was the shutdown fight at that point worth it for Democrats in any way?

12:19Jon Favreau:Right. In the near term, I don't want anyone's premiums to go up. I don't want anyone to get hurt. But we are bailing Trump and the Republicans out of their own political problem. And at some point, if we want his approval to go down, he needs to touch the hot stove. Zooming out a little bit, like part of the meta conversation and what activists are telling Schumer is that this government is doing illegal, unconstitutional, terrible stuff, and that we should not fund it. We should not be a party to ice raids and rescissions and all the terrible things. Where is the strategy that goes from shutdown to an end game that gets Donald Trump to change his behavior?

12:52Jon Favreau:No one can articulate one because there isn't one. Look, I sound like I'm super negative on this because I think it's better for us to debate this. I'm genuinely torn. I don't know what the right thing to do is. I know that Chuck Schumer is getting tons of incoming from activists just like us, in part because of rage we all had several months ago about the failure of a strategy the last time there was a funding fight. But I'm just like, I'm not seeing a clear end game when it comes to policy or communications, especially with the leadership we have.

13:18Tommy Vietor:So it's funny you said that because my other points that I was going to make is that I started to think about this in terms of like go big or go home. And the go big strategy that you referenced that activists are pushing on is to say that like we're not voting to fund this government. Illegal tariffs, illegal like detention of American citizens, illegal troop deployments, all kinds of ways that he's abusing his power. And until you meet with us so that, you know, you can have the policies you want, you won the election, but what you are doing is illegal. and if you don't meet with us and you don't want to help us on that, then you figure out a way to fund the government because we're not voting for it.

13:57Tommy Vietor:And guess what? You are free to change the Senate rules. You've abused power in a bunch of other ways. If you want to change the Senate rules to get rid of the filibuster, to pass the budget, you're free to do that as well, but you cannot count on our votes for this. And we're going to make sure that American people know how illegal this is and we don't want our names on it. To answer your question then, there is no way out. Right. Like their way out is the Republicans decide to reopen the government on their own. But at least Democrats then take a stand and make a big fight. Then my next most favorite option here is maybe just like not doing it at all.

14:30Tommy Vietor:Because I do think that I'm worried about what you say, Tommy, which is like you start getting in this negotiation about health care. And there's a couple outcomes I see. One is we do it for a couple of weeks. They don't give in on health care at all. And then we just fold.

14:43Jon Favreau:The most likely outcome is like a five day shutdown and then we cave and look even weaker.

14:46Tommy Vietor:Right. And then maybe we get a fig leaf, right, which is we cave, but they say, oh, we'll give a vote on ACA at some point. And then who knows, then it passes maybe. And then again, we've saved their asses. Or what? Or they negotiate an ACA thing and I guess we get a short term win, but again, we take it off the table. So I don't I think that the small ball, which is what they're doing now, I think that is the least chance of any kind of either substantive or like political victory. And again, I'm doing this for the sake of argument, too, because I've gone back and forth a million times. It's hard.

15:19Dan Pfeiffer:But yeah, I don't know. I also just like, is that right? Right. Like, let's say Democrats fight on health care. They get some kind of a concession. It reverses some chunk of the ACA clawbacks on the subsidies. They declare a victory. We're still hammering Republicans next year on health care. We can claim we force them to do this. And to the point that Fas made in your conversation, like people don't like Donald Trump. They don't know what Democrats stand for. They haven't seen Democrats stand up and fight. And here's a moment where Democrats are standing up and fighting for something. Then you say, well, that's not the real central galvanizing concern.

15:56Dan Pfeiffer:Like our democracy is under threat. So we should fight across everything. But fighting across everything, I do think all but guarantees, right, that Republicans justify getting rid of the filibuster by saying Democrats will never give us their votes. We want to reopen the government. Then we've lost any leverage we have to do some good in negotiation over health care. And you're right. But in some sense, helping Republicans out of the ACA subsidy shortfall does kind of get rid of a political disaster for them. Absolutely true. But like, man, like I just I do. That's a that's not that's like that's that's a that's a tough position for us to take that we that like we want to teach the controversy.

16:34Dan Pfeiffer:I don't know. I don't think it's teaching.

16:36Tommy Vietor:I mean, I think to to Faz's point, I think instead of just being like, this is bad, this is bad. to be like, we want to end an illegal tax on Americans that's tanking the economy. We want to make sure their premiums don't go up. We want to make sure that we can walk on our streets without being detained, even though we're citizens of the United States, or that we don't see troops in our streets and our tax dollars aren't going to. There's a couple things. I know what you're saying. It is definitely broader, but have the fight. I mean, Chris Murphy was on Colbert, and he was like, why would we fund a bill that literally destroys our democracy?

17:09Tommy Vietor:And I was like, good line. I liked it. And then I saw this guy, Con Carroll, who was like a Republican Senate communications director. And now he's like a Washington examiner opinion guy. And he said, quote, we can't vote for a spending bill that literally destroys democracy. But if you extend one existing health insurance subsidy, then everything is fine. And I was like, honestly.

17:27Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah, I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I talked to when I talked to Warren about this. I asked her version of this question and her point was just like, we have to prove we can win a fight. we can win something here. This is the one, this is the issue. There is a place where there is a path to some kind of a genuine victory for Democrats. And it would be nice to use what limited power we have before Republicans decide to take it away, to use it to prove that we can actually do something. And like, I worried the same way Faz is worried about the fact that our leaders in this feel as though they're being pushed towards it.

17:56Dan Pfeiffer:That is a problem. Like, there's all kinds of reasons this is not ideal. I don't like any of the options, but I am coming around to why if we can get a victory here, it's the one place we could. Now, then the question is, was this the right time? Because a ticking clock around these subsidies is going to fall in November, December. The subsidies end on January 1st, right? The next, this bill is just to carry you through to the bigger negotiation to come. Was this CR the right moment? I don't know.

18:19Jon Favreau:Well, it's like a seven week, you know, we'll do this again in seven weeks or something, right?

18:23Tommy Vietor:Yeah. And we should also say that to your point earlier, Tommy, that, you know, like no one knows what the fuck we're talking about. One reason that they're doing it now and not later is the insurance companies will be sending out the notices soon to people that premiums will go up. And by the way, those notices aren't just for people who use subsidies to help afford insurance on the exchanges. Everyone's premiums are going up because if there's less money for people for subsidies, then that means that insurance companies in general, that means some people will lose their healthcare coverage, which means everyone's premiums goes up because the pool of people are sicker.

18:57Tommy Vietor:Right. So it's like this is a people are going to get these notices and that's going to be a thing. So, you know, it's good to fight. But I am I am like noticing J.D. Vance there when he was like we sat down and they did have some good ideas. I'm like, oh, he's thinking the good ideas are extending the ACA.

19:12Jon Favreau:Yeah, look, this is a maximally cynical perspective. And I, again, I don't want anyone hurt, but just like in pure political terms, I think people are far more likely to notice and be angry that their premiums went up than they are ever to hear a Democratic Party argument about why we have shut down the government. A year ago. Because we suck at communicating. When the election comes to. Our side sucks at communicating and their side lies about everything. Yeah. They're saying it's about sex changes in Peru. It's like, what?

19:35Tommy Vietor:Right. And if the election was next week and we saved it, maybe, but a year from now, we'll see what happens.

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21:44Tommy Vietor:Okay, right after we finished recording on Thursday, Trump finally got the indictment of Jim Comey that he personally ordered. Though it took a former insurance lawyer who had never prosecuted a case before and couldn't find the courtroom to actually get it done, which she had to do alone because not a single lawyer in the office of 300 people that she now runs would agree to help her because of lack of evidence that a crime was actually committed. Even then, the grand jury rejected one count and only 14 of the 23 jurors approved the other two. None of that mattered to Trump, of course, who told reporters on Friday that he thinks there will be other indictments.

22:18Tommy Vietor:In addition to the investigations he's ordered of Adam Schiff, Tish James, John Brennan and others, Trump told NBC over the weekend that he, quote, would imagine the DOJ is also investigating former FBI director Chris Wray over a completely false conspiracy that the FBI staged the January 6th riots, which even Kash Patel had to partially debunk. The DOJ has also subpoenaed Georgia District Attorney Fannie Willis's travel records, and Trump is personally pressuring Microsoft to fire Biden's former deputy attorney general, our friend Lisa Monaco. So Trump said his success would be his retribution, but I guess he's ultimately decided that his retribution would be his retribution.

23:00Tommy Vietor:Three of us haven't had a chance to talk about Comey yet. What do you make of that indictment? Love it.

23:04Dan Pfeiffer:I think, you know, broken clock. No. It's so brazen, right? Like he, he, he, he.

23:13Tommy Vietor:86 Comey here. Spelled on shells, buddy.

23:18Dan Pfeiffer:I I was saying this to the guys for and but if ultimately I do end up sharing a cell with James Comey just know I did kill myself

23:29Dan Pfeiffer:But uh this like the brazenness of it right he posts over the weekend We're not going quickly enough after my enemies. He gets this guy Siebert out of there He appoints this unqualified person who's a loyalist into this job the looming deadline of the statute of limitations This person comes in, gets the indictment together, despite the fact that the declination memo from the Department of Justice said there's not enough evidence to charge. And rams this thing through, couldn't even get all the indictments done in front of a gang jury. And that anyone, anyone you can see, look, all the fucking Trump loyalists love it.

23:59Dan Pfeiffer:They think it's great. He's going after his enemy. So that anyone is trying to do any kind of defense of this is so fucking embarrassing. It is so obvious and brazen. It's the most brazen thing any of us ever seen, have ever seen at the Department of Justice. There's no even pretense that this is anything other than a political prosecution. It's happening right in front of our eyes. It's fucking nuts.

24:17Jon Favreau:Yeah, so it's just clearly about revenge. And Trump told us as much. And Comey is going first only because the statute of limitations is about to run out. But there is a long list that we're just going to tick through. And the goal is not just to punish Comey, although that's part of it. I mean, I think there's a very good chance that this case gets tossed. You could imagine a scenario where the judge scolds the prosecutor for bringing something this ridiculous. Like to only get 14 out of 23 grand jurors to support this indictment is an incredibly weak case. It's embarrassing.

24:44Dan Pfeiffer:And then Haugen is like, I object. Did I do that right?

24:47Jon Favreau:But it's about, you know, scaring the shit out of Democrats and political opponents and, you know, making sure that big Democratic donors no longer want to support Democratic organizations and, you know, putting fear in the heart of his enemies. And like the exchange with Ted Cruz that this case is ostensibly built off of is confusing at best. At best. But like in reality, I don't think any reasonable person would read that given the facts that we know and assume a crime was committed.

25:15Tommy Vietor:No. Like for it to it has to be like willful, intentional, corrupt. Right. Like those are some of the words used for to make false statements or obstruction of Congress like a real crime. And it's like Comey answering a question over Zoom in 2020 about testimony that he gave in 2017. And Cruz kind of confuses the question that Grassley had asked before him. So Cruz confuses the question. And then no one even knows if Comey was talking about Andrew McCabe or his other friend. And we could go through the details of the whole thing, but I don't even know. It's not worth it. I don't think it's worth it.

25:56Tommy Vietor:It's a very it's an incredibly weak case, which is and you know that because the 300 people in the eastern district of Virginia who declined to bring any charges until Lindsey Halligan showed up, thought the same thing.

26:11Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah, it's absurd on its face. James Comey, not a perfect person. The guy is fucking by the book and he was going to testify honestly. Maybe he's parsing his words. Maybe he's being careful, but the guy was being by the book, some would say. And then also occasionally extremely not by the book. Like announcing investigations days before an election. But the thing that I'm coming back to is, you know, Bill Pulte, the Trump housing aide, starts drumming up mortgage fraud czar. Mortgage fraud czar. He keeps drumming up mortgage fraud allegations against everyone from Adam Schiff to Lisa Cook. And then people go through and like, actually, look, see, Lisa Cook maybe didn't do this.

26:46Dan Pfeiffer:And maybe this person didn't do this. And like people should do that. They should dig into whether these allegations are fair or not. But it is beside the point. So Ruth Marcus posted an excerpt from this speech by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. It was about being a prosecutor. And I thought it was really well said. It said, we know that no local police force can strictly enforce the traffic laws or would arrest half the driving population on any given morning. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone.

27:16Dan Pfeiffer:It is in this realm in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass or select some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecutorial power lies. Like that is the threat. You can dig into anyone. You can find a technical violation on the part of anyone. That's why this is dangerous. Whether or not people want to parse and say, well, maybe Comey did lie, even though that's bullshit, is it is giving into what is so obviously dangerous about what the Trump administration is doing. They are finding the people and then looking for the crime, not the other way around.

27:49Jon Favreau:One like bitter irony or frustrating piece of context around all this is I'm pretty sure we are talking about conversations about leaks to a reporter who was writing something about investigations into the Clinton Foundation. And those investigations went nowhere because there was no illegal activity or wrongdoing. But the FBI and DOJ seem to have been working overtime to blame each other in the press because the other side didn't want to get called up to Congress. to get berated by someone like Ted Cruz to say, why aren't you prosecuting the Clinton Foundation? And I think that's why there was all this talk via intermediaries or whatnot with this reporter about these articles that led to this stupid outcome.

28:29Tommy Vietor:So that's one of the fact patterns in this. And again, it's confusion over which one they're talking about. The other is that when Comey had those meetings with Trump where Trump demanded his loyalty, and then Comey took notes. He had said before publicly that he gave those memos and notes to his friend, Daniel Richmond, who was a professor who worked for a time at the FBI. And then the question is, oh, did he authorize Richmond to leak those memos? And Richmond has previously said, no, he didn't. He just talked to me about how the press was getting on him and I decided to do it myself. And also, Richmond apparently didn't work at the FBI at the time that he got the memos.

29:11Jon Favreau:He was like a special government employee about like some random thing like surveillance technology or something. Yeah. It does seem like Daniel Richman was a bit of a carve out for Jim Comey when he wanted to work the media on a certain thing. But like that doesn't mean it's a crime.

29:25Tommy Vietor:Nothing about that is crimey. You'll be surprised to know Republican politicians and pundits are mostly all on board. Except Andrew McCarthy's written a couple of nice strongly worded pieces in the National Review saying this is preposterous. So good for him. But the rest of them are on board. Some say Comey was indicted by a jury of his peers. That's the John Thune sort of explanation. It's like, hey, you say it was political, but there was a grand jury and they gave the indictment. Others have just been more open that this is just revenge for Trump being indicted. And they don't seem all that worried that this, in the words of The New York Times, quote, risks ushering in a cycle of retaliation in which each new administration takes aim at the last one.

30:04Tommy Vietor:What do you think?

30:06Dan Pfeiffer:yeah it's the trick they all have to to pull here is that trump wasn't indicted because he's unusual trump was indicted because democrats went too far trump was indicted because he broke the law joe biden's department of justice did not behave like trump's department of justice there is no post by joe biden saying go after uh my enemies it's more akis akis akis and so you end up like like they're like they're they're trying to claim somehow that well uh you know we saw them target people like Donald Trump. But Joe Biden's DOJ also prosecuted Hunter Biden.

30:39Tommy Vietor:That was just a smokescreen. Because he was always going to pardon him. So I just also like, you know, Joe Biden isn't the state of New York and the state of Georgia. And it's like different. I mean, come on. It's just their position is Donald Trump is allowed to break the law. If you hold him accountable for breaking the law, then you're going to get prosecuted as well.

31:04Jon Favreau:Look, also, Kash Patel clearly lied to Congress in his confirmation hearings. If they want to set a precedent where people like Kash Patel are going to get prosecuted after the fact for that behavior, that's OK. That's a road you can go down, but it's not a great one for anybody.

31:21Tommy Vietor:Well, the New York Times piece, I know I was reading and Peter Baker, I think, wrote it. And at the beginning, it says there will presumably come a time when the Republican Party is no longer in control. It's like presumably, yes. The way that they're acting and the reason that they don't seem worried that it'll come back around to Kash Patel or anything else. One reason could be that they don't plan to relinquish power.

31:45Jon Favreau:yeah but also i look i think that the people working for trump view it themselves as having no choice they have to do his bidding or they get pushed out so yeah yeah that i think i think like there's a little bit of both the future you know we don't want to be like fatalistic yeah i think they're one they could also just they can try to steal they're not doing it for sure well

32:01Dan Pfeiffer:they cannot do yeah but he's the people that won't do it are now all being fired and the people that will do it are being put in place i look i think it's somewhere in between i think there are people that aren't are are open to the idea that donald trump has no choice but to stay in office and it's sad state of affairs that we have a republic, a democratic party that has become an agent of terrorists and we have no choice. I think there are people that are working their way towards that for sure. A lot of these people are just one day ahead of the news.

32:26Tommy Vietor:And might not have been there at the beginning that like Trump's going to stay in power forever, but like, well, these Democrats are now threatening us for these prosecutions. So what are we to do?

32:35Dan Pfeiffer:Yes. Well, the other part of this is, you know, the other side of, uh, uh, for my enemies, the laws for my friends, everything. And so it's also the pardons and all of us that feeds into this, but the pardon power remains. And we do not need to concede that there will never be a Democratic president again and a Democratic president will have it, nor should we. And so Democrats will be able to reverse any political prosecutions that happen under a public administration. And I don't know how open we'll have to be about that or should be about that. But as we get closer, I think like the more brazen Trump is, the more honest we have to be about the fact that part of our job is to kind of clear out the brazen politicization of these prosecutions, including people convicted for them.

33:11Tommy Vietor:The chant at Democratic rallies in fall of 2028, win this one for Comey. Yeah. Free Garland. Trump's government's also moving full speed ahead on his broader war against immigrants, Democratic voters and Americans who live in cities. On Saturday, Trump said, quote, I am directing Secretary of War Pete Higseth to provide all necessary troops to protect war ravaged portland and any of our ice facilities under siege from attack by antifa and other domestic terrorists i am also authorizing full force if necessary i mean what imagine hearing years ago that like that would be a statement from the president like how everything about that secretary of war pete hegseth war ravaged portland scary stuff the war he's referring to of course is a long-running protest outside a single ice facility that will now be protected by 200 troops for the next 60 days, though Oregon officials are already suing to stop the deployment.

34:13Tommy Vietor:There were also dozens of armed masked ice agents patrolling downtown Chicago in a show of force this weekend. And at this point, too many stories to count of ice detaining and assaulting American citizens or legal residents, including a Chicago journalist, American citizen, who is just sitting in her car outside an ice facility with her window down when a masked ice agent shot a pepper ball that burned her face and made her vomit. There were no protests in the area. There were nothing else. It wasn't like they meant the pepper ball for someone else or a crowd. She was just sitting there with a window down and got shot.

34:48Jon Favreau:And do you see the video of the ice agent? This woman was begging him to just tell her where her husband had been taken wherever. And all of a sudden he just throws her to the ground. It's like physically assaulting this woman in a hallway in front of all these reporters. Now, this man was actually

35:02Tommy Vietor:suspended which is like the first time bad news bad news uh right before we recorded the ice officers from cbs the ice officer relieved of his duties after being captured on video pushing a woman outside an immigration court in new york city has been returned to duty two u.s officials tell cbs news dhs had called his conduct unacceptable three days ago trisha mclaughlin was on the record

35:22Jon Favreau:i think the man just beat this woman up for no reason i'm sure i'm sure someone internally did

35:27Tommy Vietor:something right to suspend him. And then fucking Stephen Miller probably found out, got on the phone and was like, get that fucking person back on.

35:34Dan Pfeiffer:Well, there's blowback online about it from the right. There's blowback online saying, well, look, I thought Trump was going to go hard and they're going to they're going to use all the full force. Then all of a sudden there's one little incident of somebody finally standing up for ice and then we're off to the races.

35:46Tommy Vietor:You can't admit any any wrongdoing on Portland. This is a much smaller deployment than we saw in LA or DC. And, uh, you know, so they're suing the Oregon AG and the city of Portland think that it's different than the lawsuit in LA. Of course, you know, they have to say that either way. They think they have a better legal case here. Why do you guys think Trump's doing it? And what, what does he want to get out of it?

36:08Jon Favreau:He wants the message. I mean, there was a recent AP poll that Trump had 53 % approval on crime. It's better than immigration, the economy, other big issues. Portland's been caricatured for years on Fox is like a crazy lefty bastion of Antifa violence. and it's a liberal soft target with the Democratic governor. So I just think this one is exactly the message they want to be portraying.

36:29Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it'll feed into what we're about to talk about, which is I do think they want the conflict a little bit between Democratic governors saying, get out of our cities and Trump saying, I'm just here to protect our, you're giving your cities over to these violent Antifa protesters and we're going to stand up to it. And then these places become flashpoints where they can use the images to forward the debate about the left and the broader sort of claim that this is a mass, that smear half the country as being part of some vast violent movement.

37:02Tommy Vietor:Yeah, I think you could argue that Portland is because politically, LA and DC did not go as well for them as they thought. I don't think it was a massive loss for them. But all the polling shows that people are against the deployments in DC against the deployments in LA. um it got the pulling got worse for him over time and when you ask people now do you want it in your city would you be against in your city it's even worse for them so i think what it's a win-win for him in portland because either nothing happens and then he can say oh we did liberate portland it was wonderful or you get the the reaction that he probably hoped he got in either dc or la when there is a violent a more violent destructive reaction to ice and and the national guard and the troops being there.

37:47Tommy Vietor:Yeah. Which, you know, you probably think, Portland, come on, give it to me, Portland. This is, you almost burned down a couple summers ago.

37:53Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah. Without us even being there. The, like, the federal deployments becoming a flashpoint for protest, which then are used to justify why the federal deployments were there in the first place, this sort of vicious circle, is exactly what they want. It's what they got in LA, even as much as it may have blown back on them. That's it. Sorry, that did sound like my sentence was not continuing.

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39:56Tommy Vietor:One other thing to keep an eye on here is Trump's latest executive order on what he's calling domestic extremism. Over the weekend, Stephen Miller tweeted, quote, We are witnessing domestic terrorist sedition against the federal government. The JTTF has been dispatched by the Attorney General pursuant to NSPM-7. All necessary resources will be utilized. For those of you who don't speak fascist, the JTTF refers to the Joint Terrorism Task Forces. And NSPM-7 stands for National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. For those of you who still don't know what the fuck that means, the order calls for, quote, a comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation, including, quote, the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them.

40:48Tommy Vietor:Ken Klippenstein has been reporting on this and says that sources tell him that this will likely cause the FBI's domestic terrorism watch list, which is currently at 5 ,000, to double within weeks or months. He also reports that a number of big law firms are taking it seriously enough that they've issued guidance for left-leaning nonprofits and other organizations. Have you guys looked into this, and what's your level of concern here?

41:10Jon Favreau:I think it's a piece of a larger puzzle that will let the administration essentially designate certain liberal or leftist organizations and, frankly, policy views as terrorism. And then this will give them the pretext to use federal agencies to investigate, prosecute, otherwise harass organizations that are funding these alleged domestic terrorist groups. Because the memorandum mentions, quote, institutional and individual funders and officers and employees of organizations that are responsible for sponsor or otherwise aid and abet the principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct. So my guess is this is just another way to go after like the Soros folks or other, you know, big kind of democratic progressive funders.

41:50Yeah.

41:51Dan Pfeiffer:So first of all, the kind of branding it is NSPM 7 and declaring it. Look, I am loathe to use a Star Wars reference, but it really does feel like a reference to Order 66. And I'm sorry to be a person doing that. I don't know. I know you don't. And that's okay. I'm a big nerd. You should learn. You should learn. Maybe that new AirPods that translate can help you. but he's always situating his conduct in sort of a grand nationalist history you know you always feel that like this is NSPM 7 a great historic moment in the history of our fight against the leftists

42:30Tommy Vietor:that's what he's got to say to his wife to get her going dirty talk in the morning yeah that's what she said that's what she says yeah no right not what he said that's not our characterization he's a matador yeah

42:41Dan Pfeiffer:which is an ironic term right because it's like isn't he trying you know it's like that sounds like So it sounds like, are you welcoming that kind of culture? I can't tell. Who are we goring? Who's getting gored here? Anyway, what I was going to say is - Sounds like us. Yeah.

43:01Dan Pfeiffer:Throw me out in the clown suit. Yeah. Throw me out in the clown suit. I'll run to Stratford, you guys. All right. But part of this is that you read this order and it has this grandiose language and then you get into the specifics. Some of it is extremely vague and hard to understand what it could mean. I do think that's on purpose. Tommy pointed to the ways in which it goes after funding. You get to this moment where it just, you get to this, there's a part where it describes what they're characterizing as domestic terrorism. And it says the attorney general shall issue specific guidance that ensures domestic terrorism priorities include politically motivated terrorist acts, such as organized doxing campaigns, which by the way, they've included desiring the unmasking.

43:42Dan Pfeiffer:they've described unmasking ice agents as doxing right swatting rioting looting trespass assault destruction of property threats of violence and civil disorder trespass and civil disorder are

43:54Tommy Vietor:the two that stuck out at me there i'm like those are pretty broad and just like oop you walked on

43:59Dan Pfeiffer:to federal property i'm sorry but like look destruction of property can mean a lot of different things it can mean it can mean burning something it could be it could be burning portland to the ground. It could be whatever.

44:11Tommy Vietor:Just lighting a simple waymo on fire. Yeah.

44:14Dan Pfeiffer:Could be anything. Had it coming. Yeah. Well, all of this is meant to be vague, right? Like it's meant to be like applicable to a wide range of activities. And just the intimidation that people will feel not knowing what this will apply to, I think is part of what will make it dangerous. And then you look at this and you say like, well, this, they could go after anybody with this. It's just such clearly a, such a clear suppression of speech.

44:34Jon Favreau:And they're talking about anti-capitalist, anti-American views. Like, you can famously be anti-American in this country. It's called freedom of speech. I mean, I don't know how this is not a pretty drastic First Amendment violation.

44:44Tommy Vietor:Huge, huge First Amendment problem. I think the point is to get the investigations going and make people's lives miserable and make them lawyer up, which is probably why all those big law firms. Yeah, the point is to get a Reid Hoffman to be too scared to donate to progressive causes.

44:58Dan Pfeiffer:Yes, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And by the way, to hope that if they start digging in And based on these kind of specious reasons, again, as we talked about earlier, you get into somebody's books, you get into somebody's finances or emails, whatever. And all of a sudden you've uncovered something that you can use.

45:13Tommy Vietor:Ken Klippenstein in his piece on this, his first piece, was talking about it's like they're going after pre-crime, like in Minority Report, because it says the strategies to disrupt any individual groups, quote, that foment political violence, including, quote, before they result in violent political acts. So part of this, too, is if you they want to let people know that if you're in some organization that donates to someone else and then like months later, that person, someone in the place that you donated to commit some act or whatever, it could come back to you because you made the I mean, it's fucking insane.

45:46Dan Pfeiffer:Well, by the way, he's saying that Gavin Newsom describing something as authoritarian is is a terrorist is a terrorist threat.

45:53Tommy Vietor:Yeah, it says they can be identified by any of the following indicators of violence. Anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, extremism on migration, race, gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family. What does that mean? That's a good one. It's just so fake. Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality? What the fuck? It's nonsensical. Ah, bad. Bad people. Of course, we had another horrific shooting over the weekend where a deranged man who appears to be a Trump supporter shot up a Mormon church and set it on fire, killing four people.

46:25Tommy Vietor:J.D. Vance called the situation just awful and called for prayers. I assume they'll be getting to the bottom of who funded this domestic terrorist and calling for everyone who didn't say the right thing to lose their job about it. Is that what's going to happen now?

46:36Jon Favreau:Is that part of the anti-doxing under NPSM 7 or whatever?

46:40Tommy Vietor:notice that hasn't been a big uh the fact that the guy the guy's wearing like a trump trump 2020

46:44Jon Favreau:t-shirt and he's got a trump pence yeah flag i saw benny johnson from tposa was fast out of the gate saying this is an attack on christianity itself and then you know quickly there was an

46:55Dan Pfeiffer:inconvenient set of facts yeah we look this is like exactly what we were talking about uh when we were in the last round of the politicization of these shootings and accusing the entire left of being complicit in a murder which is so now if a person has a trump yard sign they're deranged but if they have some evidence of having left views, they are part of a vast left conspiracy. They will make the motive important and central to a collective punishment if they don't agree with the person. But if it's on their side, it's of course a deranged person when really what we see over and over is how people are getting radicalized online, whatever the underlying kind of political views that are part of the justification.

47:32Dan Pfeiffer:And like, we just, we will never figure out how to get out of a cycle like this unless we collectively view these as a shared threat around people becoming, taking these sort of violent acts based on radicalization on these

47:47Tommy Vietor:forums and wherever else. And you, of course, saw all those Democratic politicians saying, this is right wing violence. The right did this. One of yours did this. Donald Trump. You saw that, right? Oh, yeah, that's right. No one, no one did that. No one said that on the left. not one democratic politician.

48:04Dan Pfeiffer:But like, you know, Zeynep Tufetci, who you've talked to, like talks about like, there's just no, the putting this in politics means there's no talk about the contagion of it, right? We saw like people writing on bullets, right? That's clearly from one event to the next. There's a surge of these things. Like violence is contagious. We know that. Like we've learned about this on suicides, on mass shootings, on political violence like this. Like there is clearly something happening and we can't fucking figure it out because everything is polluted by this, like the way in which they're using this for political purposes.

48:35Tommy Vietor:Only somewhat related here, but you guys see the Daily Caller column last Friday, explicitly calling for violence against the left. Yeah, good stuff. The Jeffrey Ingersoll there. It was published as, quote, an editorial in the Daily Caller, longish op-ed. It says, here's some quotes from it. Quote, today I choose violence, literally. And then another quote, I know calls for violence are generally frowned upon. The issue is I simply don't care. then again just in case you weren't sure is this a call for violence yes explicitly it is and then finally quote choose violence so is someone going to now i remember jd vance gave a a big speech when he was on charlie kirk's podcast uh complaining about a nation editorial i think we talked about it that um condemned violence and simply said that uh they didn't agree with charlie kirk and didn't say nice things about him and he threatened to uh you know investigate everyone who's ever funded the nation including made it up the source foundation which didn't even fund the nation and um should we are they going to now investigate who funds the daily caller hold on i'm googling

49:37Jon Favreau:who funds it was foster freeze figure it out for you guys foster freeze did and also the cokes are connected i'm gonna send him a stern letter yeah foster freeze is dead now but there's a couple there's a whole charles coke foundation uh the bradley foundation with their crazy scafe foundation

49:52Tommy Vietor:okay yeah so everyone people lines i assume everyone's gonna look into that they should It's a good one for the NPS, NSPM7, whatever the fuck it's called.

50:01Jon Favreau:Nipsum. Nipsum. Nipsum.

50:03Tommy Vietor:Nipsum.

50:04Jon Favreau:Nipsum in the bud.

50:06Dan Pfeiffer:It's also just like all these people. Brain rot. Everyone has brain rot. They are watching things online. They're getting very angry and they're writing it up because they're seeing so much shit online. It's making them kind of crazy. And they're like, I have to try. Look at what they're doing and they're getting away with it.

50:20Tommy Vietor:The Daily Caller also just conducted a one-hour interview with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. imagine imagine an outlet that just conducted a full interview in the oval office with a democratic president and then leaves and then uh has an editorial that says i call for violence

50:38Jon Favreau:it's just yeah the hypocrisy stuff's real annoying

50:42Tommy Vietor:it's just un-fucking-believable i know i know it's un-fucking-believable it's not even the hypocrisy it's just like that it's their their bullshit is just like they should not be taken and seriously.

50:55Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah. I mean, I just, it's more to that, like, I am more, I, I, I, maybe it's too sociological, but I'm like, just looking at people, I'm watching people, I'm watching people that were once, I don't include this person who's, I never knew. I'm watching people that they were, you know, maybe Trump curious, maybe somewhere in the middle between being anti-Trump. Like, I think I'm watching people that used to be a bit more reasonable, radicalized in real time. Like you were watching that happen online. And I do think it's from people kind of exposing their brain to like the sewer of the internet and getting a warped view of their own side and a warped view of the other side and only seeing i mean like the same problems with polarization they're not just for people that are voters it's for the actual producers of content and influencers and everybody else on these platforms like they're not immune to it and you see it every day and like the fact that it's not just one guy that thought this has made it through a whole editing process and onto the website by a bunch of people who said well yeah let's get that out there

51:43Jon Favreau:the brain rot comes for content creators clicks clicks clicks i mean look the only thing we say is it's a very fringe view to sport violence. This guy is one of a tiny swath of the country that believes that this is an appropriate response. Most people don't. Everyone should condemn it. It's all we can do. Yeah.

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53:22Tommy Vietor:Okay, we had some other breaking news on Monday President of Peace Donald Trump has solved the Middle East Trump called September 29th Quote, potentially one of the great days ever in civilization Yeah As he stood next to another great product of civilization Bibi Netanyahu at the White House And rambled through the points of a peace plan That we have no idea as of this recording whether Hamas will accept. While the plan includes some promising aspects, including an end to the act of fighting and the return of all the hostages, its crown jewel is definitely this.

53:54Jon Lovett:My plan calls for the creation of a new international oversight body, the Board of Peace, we call it, the Board of Peace, sort of a beautiful name, the board. The leaders of the Arab world and Israel and everybody involved asked me to do this. So it would be headed by a gentleman known as President Donald J. Trump of the United States. That's what I want is some extra work to do, but it's so important that I'm willing to do it.

54:23Tommy Vietor:Tommy, do you think you're going to be asked to be on the Board of Peace as well? Oh, that'd be cool.

54:26Dan Pfeiffer:I'm not on any boards. I wonder if it's paid or unpaid. Do you think Trump is going to spend more time on the Board of Peace or the Kennedy Center board? I don't know. Good question. Because on both.

54:35Tommy Vietor:What do you make of this plan, this 20-point plan that they released and its prospects?

54:40Jon Favreau:It's kind of been floating around for a while. I mean, like the event today was exactly what I expected, which is Netanyahu and Trump talking about agreeing to something vague that they can call a peace deal that Netanyahu knows he will never have to implement because it's basically designed to be to look and sound maximally reasonable, but be rejected by Hamas. And that's what I expect will happen. I did like this is typically understate itself, calling it the greatest ever in civilization. This isn't a two state solution plan. It's a ceasefire plan, just to be clear. But I like, again, I think that Netanyahu, like he tried, he like tried to sound like he was on board with the big picture while reserving the right to renegotiate or delay every actual detail.

55:20Jon Favreau:I think, I think it's probably a non-starter for Hamas. Why do you think it's a, just, I have no idea. Why do you think it's a non-starter for Hamas? Because they have to trust Netanyahu generally to implement it because they don't think Trump can control him because they watched, you know, the last year. the plan calls on Hamas to release all the hostages within 72 hours, which means they give up all their leverage immediately and then have to trust that the rest of the plan gets executed. The plan basically calls on Hamas to disband as an organization and they'll have no role in Gaza going forward, which is of course a totally understandable position for the Israelis to want to take.

55:57Jon Favreau:But from the Hamas perspective, you can imagine that'd be hard to agree to. And then finally, like this is an organization, their DNA is resistance to occupation and trying to get land back and they're going to be cool with Gaza being governed by Donald Trump and Tony Blair? That's the best you guys could do? Trump and Tony Blair? Unfortunately, it's the best we could do.

56:19Dan Pfeiffer:Do you think Tony Blair knew he was on that? Tony Blair was on that list. He's like, what?

56:23Jon Favreau:Yeah, what the fuck is Tony Blair doing? And I was like, America First now means Donald Trump is going to chair an organization governing the Gaza Strip. We're giving Argentina a$20 billion bank bailout. there's trump is now talking about retaking bagram airbase in afghanistan so i guess we're going to reinvade afghanistan and we're blowing up every ship off the boat to venezuela and talking about airstrikes both within venezuela and mexico this is now america first i guess yeah i just was

56:51Dan Pfeiffer:there was a story in the times in the last couple days about uh uh the idf moving back into parts of gaza city parts that had already been in and then left back and forth like three times and now Now, as they're moving through, they're kind of raising whole parts of the city and holding territory and not letting it go. And the beleaguered people that have been there, some of whom are leaving as they're being told others have no place to go and have left and come back and are now kind of giving up on having anywhere to go or seeing any purpose and kind of leaving. And it is so ugly and evil what is happening.

57:28Dan Pfeiffer:And then you have the president and Bibi standing in the oval, kind of patting each other on the back declaring the greatest day in the history of civilization while kind of inflicting this collective punishment on Gaza, even as they say that Hamas is responsible and doesn't care what happens to the people of Gaza because they use the people of Gaza like human shield. And so like the whole thing is disgusting. And that's all I got.

57:56Tommy Vietor:Were you excited to learn though that Jared was involved?

57:59Jon Favreau:I'm so mad about this. Thank you for prompting this. Thank you. Jared Kushner is not a government employee. He has no role in this administration. He did the Abraham Accords back in the day. Those are holding on by a thread. The Abraham? Abraham. Abraham. Abraham. Because he mispronounced it in the known language. Well, apparently it's closer to the Israeli, the Hebrew pronunciation. Oh, yeah, yeah. But he just, he couldn't read it. He's a goober. But Jared Kushner, he's sitting on, I think,$5.4 billion in almost exclusively foreign money. But is he happy? Saudi-linked, Emirati-linked, Qatari-linked money in his investment fund.

58:32Jon Favreau:that they're using to buy EA Sports. It's in the game. It's like one of my favorite video game companies as a kid. Like that, it's just like insane conflict of interest that is never mentioned in any of the coverage. What is Jared Kushner doing there? He doesn't work there. He just sort of popped back into it, by the way.

58:45Dan Pfeiffer:Like a couple weeks ago. Yeah, he was not even part of it. And all of a sudden, he was thanking Jared on social media. And you're like, wait, Jared's back? Walking in with Tony Blair, slapping him on the ass saying, good job. He's probably pretty bored. He wasn't happy. I was on vacation once in Hawaii.

59:03Dan Pfeiffer:and who walks into the restaurant but Benjamin Netanyahu, Tony Blair, and a bunch of other people sitting around the table at that restaurant.

59:12Tommy Vietor:Next thing you know, you wake up.

59:14Dan Pfeiffer:That's a polycule for you.

59:17Jon Favreau:I thought one thing led to another. The Kushner part of it made me so mad. It was a preemptive attack. I fired up a thousand tweets and got no engagement. I'm so mad about Jared Kushner just two billion dollars from the saudis it's crazy at least he's doing gaza whatever the corruption is just no one cares yeah i know it's it's like but like to your point this like this war is about to have gone on for two years like most scholars think it is a genocide like thousands of kids have been killed and it's like there is no serious effort to get the israelis to stop, right? Like everyone, like all the people were like, Hamas could end this war today if they release hostages.

1:00:01Jon Favreau:I actually do not think that that would get the IDF out of the Gaza Strip. I think if Hamas released the hostages, it's not clear at all to me that given what the ministers around Netanyahu say about their desire to ethnically cleanse and occupy Gaza in perpetuity would actually get the IDF. So I think it's going to have to be a deal where both sides do some really hard things and there's just no serious effort to get there. And it's so demoralizing. All right.

1:00:27Tommy Vietor:Last thing. President United States posted his first ever AI generated video of an AI generated Fox News segment featuring his AI generated daughter in law, Larry Trump, throwing to an AI generated Donald Trump in the Oval Office, promising every American access to a non-existent medical technology known as med beds that have become an obsession in QAnon circles. I can't even believe I said that whole sentence. Let's take a listen.

1:00:53Jon Lovett:Breaking now. President Donald J. Trump has announced a historic new health care system, the launch of America's first medbed hospitals and a national medbed card for every citizen. Every American will soon receive their own MedBed card. With it, you'll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals led by the top doctors in the nation, equipped with the most advanced technology in the world. These facilities are safe, modern, and designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength. This is the beginning of a new era in American health care.

1:01:29Jon Favreau:I don't even have the lips right. Holy shit. I love AI. It's great.

1:01:36Dan Pfeiffer:the politics of the like the far right where like it's cool as long as Donald Trump is for universal fake health care. But real health care, we're going to cut dramatically. But fake health care, everybody gets it. It's going to be amazing when you get in your fake med bed and you have your fake card. It's for everybody in our beautiful new hospitals. I can't wait.

1:01:56Tommy Vietor:Let's share with our audience what a med bed is. Tell me, I know you've become an expert today, right uh yeah i did a call with the medbed ceo yeah a friend of uh you talked to a friend

1:02:09Dan Pfeiffer:yeah he's doing reporting medbedev that was good that was good medbedev huh okay that was nice i

1:02:16Jon Favreau:don't want to bring the conversation so apparently a medbed is a mythical thing made with like alien technology that will cure every ailment when when this was first pitched to us by someone whose name rhymes with belay jamone i was like what's the big deal who cares if they do like AI fanfic stupid med bed garbage on the Donald Trump Twitter feed. Now you're looking for your card. But then I listened to the QAnon anonymous podcast episode about med beds. Great show, by the way. And the reality is so much darker because what's happened is there's QAnon grifters sell people like future access to med beds and they charge them like hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

1:02:51Jon Favreau:And in some cases, it's not just that people are getting fleece for their money, but they're delaying treatments in real life because they're waiting for a med bed. So it's really bleak. There's also, there's a couple of funny versions. There's one organization that's selling, I think what they call like a 5D med bed, which is they promise to get you access to a med bed that is quantum entangled with your current bed. So you like upload a picture of your bed and you imagine it and then you're quantum entangled with this technology. So basically you pay like three grand at this company to imagine things.

1:03:25Tommy Vietor:So the promise of the med bed, and there are many promises because of course it's not real. um it reverse aging right you can wake up 30 years younger um some believe they can actually resurrect the dead some believe oh i hadn't heard that some believe that jfk jr and princess diana are alive somewhere and that the med beds have brought them back to life um and the reason this is a q anon thing is because um they believe that of course the elite have been using the med beds right to resurrect themselves oh you can um regrow amputated limbs missing organs in minutes well the The big one is reversing vax damage.

1:04:01Tommy Vietor:Of course. Oh, yeah. You can reprogram your DNA and you can cure all diseases, including cancer, obviously. So and what they do is they eliminate the need for vaccines, right? Or anything like that. So there is no need for vaccines. Of course. Well, you wait for the med bed. You don't need the vaccine. And what happened is the elite cabal has these med beds and had for a while. But once Donald Trump became they believe that once Donald Trump became president, that they that he's storing them now in an underground military base. and he will give the green light any moment, which it seems like cat's out of the bag.

1:04:33Tommy Vietor:Maybe that's a Tuesday meeting with Hegseth. Man. Some people think that Trump's already using med beds. Not long enough. Because of his youthful energy.

1:04:43Jon Favreau:And his weird hands.

1:04:44Dan Pfeiffer:Get in that med bed a little bit longer, my friend. First of all, med beds are also in the film Elysium. And I do think that - And Prometheus. Oh yeah, and Prometheus.

1:04:54Jon Favreau:And Passengers too.

1:04:55Dan Pfeiffer:I would just say there was a time when conspiracy theorists used to go to the library, pull out the microfiche, put something really interesting together. And that was a simpler and better time. Conspiracy theories took some fucking work. They piece it together. You gotta actually have the string. And now people see Elysium. They take a quote from Hunter S. Thompson. And next thing you know, we got fucking AI med bets.

1:05:13Tommy Vietor:Tough. Here's something I'm interested in learning the answer to. I hope someone does some reporting on this. How do you think this got from like QAnon conspiracy to Donald Trump to him thinking, I'm going to post this thing. He has since taken it down. He's deleted it. Someone must have been like, hey, the med beds, that's too far. I don't know how that happened either. I love that story. Like, what do you think happened?

1:05:36Jon Favreau:I bet someone sends it to him.

1:05:38Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah, or he's literally scrolling and he's seeing it online. Like, I'm sure he has a feed and he's seeing stuff and he thinks, oh, this is people saying I'm good at healthcare. Yeah, it was just a quick re-truth. Yeah, it was a quick re-truth and all of a sudden... Sorry, I said re-truth. I told myself I wouldn't say that. I don't know, I just did it. He posted it. But yeah,

1:05:56Tommy Vietor:He also posted about medical marijuana for seniors this weekend. He also posted about how his gold trim, the Oval Office just decked out in 24 karat gold. It's like every foreign leader who comes now is just telling him, this is fucking amazing. You're the best.

1:06:10Jon Favreau:Now, hadn't we determined that he, in fact, was buying most of these little accent pieces from like Home Depot and spray painting them? We don't know.

1:06:18Tommy Vietor:But then if you put them in the med bed, it becomes real.

1:06:20Jon Favreau:Oh, got it.

1:06:20Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah. Remember like that episode of Captain Kangaroo where somebody gets, remember that one? It's how everything could turn into gold. but actually they didn't seem to have, they had a silver one and then a gold one and the gold one was a different shape and it really bothered me as a little kid but that's because my mother took Tylenol. So the, but she actually didn't, I texted and asked.

1:06:38Dan Pfeiffer:She didn't and she's on vacation and won't hear this. So I just want to be clear. Double check that one. I did, I texted her. I said, are you sure you didn't take Tylenol? And she said, nothing, just prenatal vitamins for you and your sister. I was like, I don't know.

1:06:47Tommy Vietor:I'm going to ask your dad. He'll tell the truth.

1:06:49Dan Pfeiffer:Maybe he crushed it and put her in mashed potatoes because she was complaining. But the point being, What are we talking about? Oh, yeah. The fucking gold. So people did find that some of the things attached to the wall are from Home Depot. And it was assumed that they were spray painted gold. It is possible that there's someone doing gold leaf.

1:07:05Tommy Vietor:Could be leaf.

1:07:06Dan Pfeiffer:It could be leaf. It could be leaf, but it could be spray paint. We just don't know. We just don't know.

1:07:09Tommy Vietor:I think that at the next press conference, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffrey should stand up and say they have added another demand. They want med bed cards for all, like Trump promised in his Truth Social post, as part of the government financial. That's great. You know? That would be fun.

1:07:26Dan Pfeiffer:It is so sad how conspiracy. Yeah, that would be fun. I would love to get in there with the fucking med beds. It is just so, I'm just so sad. You think about the people that are falling for this, and it's so conspiratorial and so sad and so isolated. You have to be so isolated from the world to believe that this is real.

1:07:42Jon Favreau:It's like alien technology, they think.

1:07:44Tommy Vietor:Did you see that footage, though, where someone was carrying the med bed into Jeffrey Epstein's cell? No. Yeah.

1:07:53Dan Pfeiffer:is that how he died I don't understand if the med beds are real what happened to Leona Helmsley where are all the rich billionaires that were famous and who died

1:08:05Jon Favreau:they never explain why they haven't been deployed yet I mean this is stupid something to look forward to med beds there's a woman in Canada who claims to be the queen of Canada who says she's going to make them free for everybody

1:08:19Tommy Vietor:this is going to be a great segue two quick announcements before we go. First, we've got some new merch up in the store. It's MedBeds. Congratulations. No, there's some fun anti-anti-vax items. So that's good. Check them out at cricket.com slash store. It's a great way to help support what we do here. Also, Vote Save America, as you may know, running a first-of-its-kind pilot program to recruit candidates from Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas. School board, city council, state legislature, all up and down the ballot. We love that. Even if you're not from those states, if you're interested in running, they'll connect you with our incredible national partners at the National Democratic Training Committee and run for something to get you set up and ready to run anywhere in the country.

1:09:00Tommy Vietor:We've already had thousands of people sign up over the past couple months. Vote Save America is hosting a live call on Tuesday, October 7th at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern time to welcome new folks to the program. Our own Tommy will be there with Vote Save America's partners. They'll talk about what this work's all about and how we're going to support you every step of the way. If you've even thought about running, this is where to start. Sign up for the call and learn more at votesaveamerica.com slash run. Paid for by Vote Save America. Learn more at votesaveamerica.com. This ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.

1:09:29Dan Pfeiffer:Guys, breaking news. Just before that was a lot. What do we got? Breaking news. Google owned video site YouTube will pay$24.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump over the company's decision to suspend his account in the wake of January 6th. The agreement says that Trump has directed YouTube to contribute$22 million to help construct the new White House ballroom. Oh my gosh.

1:09:48Jon Favreau:Steal it twice the price.

1:09:50Dan Pfeiffer:The rest of the money will go to a handful of other plaintiffs who accuse YouTube of censoring them. I'm sure that's a sundry list of wonderful fucking people getting money from Alphabet. Terrific. Terrific stuff. They're not going to have

1:10:00Tommy Vietor:any money left for med beds. No.

1:10:03Dan Pfeiffer:Or anything else. I hope that ballroom's nice when it's ready for Trump's third term.

1:10:09Tommy Vietor:Anyway, that's our show for today. Thanks to no one for coming on. Yeah. Thanks to all the team. Thanks to all the team. and said no.

1:10:18Dan Pfeiffer:Yeah. Some really big people did not make time for this today. It was really, we want to say how grateful we are. They're so busy. We get it. Hey guys, we get it. We get it. Look, we know on the list, it goes Brian Tyler Cohen, the gals in Nebraska, a couple Midas touch guys, maybe somebody who was at the DOJ for Biden. There's a long list of people that you got to get to. There's a historian or two on the list After that, I don't know. I don't know what's happening with Atrios, but maybe they're still around. Fire Dog Lake. And then you get to us. Pod Save America. Fire Dog Lake. Remember Fire Dog Lake?

1:10:56Dan Pfeiffer:Yes, of course. Fire Dog Lake. What happened to Eschaton? Good poll. Are they doing Eschaton before they're doing us? What happened to Eschaton?

1:11:05Tommy Vietor:I feel like in 2005, Tommy probably had to yell at Fire Dog Lake on behalf of then-Senator Obama for some posting on Daily Kos.

1:11:12Jon Favreau:Obama probably posted like a 5 ,000 word rebuttal on Daily Kos.

1:11:16Dan Pfeiffer:Joy Reid has a YouTube now. We're after Joy. Put us wherever you find it. We'll be here. They know it. What about the Aussie guy? He's doing content because he's ahead of us.

1:11:28Tommy Vietor:Perhaps.

1:11:30Dan Pfeiffer:Unbelievable.

1:11:32Tommy Vietor:See you when we see, I guess. Hope you stop by Crooked Con. Perhaps all these people, all these people who are interviewing the politicians, after they interview them, they can come on and talk about their interviews with the politicians. What do they like?

1:11:44Jon Favreau:Toteships, what do they like?

1:11:47Tommy Vietor:Anyway, I'm out for the later part of this week, but Dan and Alex Wagner will be back with a new show on Friday. I will be looking for a new MadBed. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review. that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari.

1:12:20Tommy Vietor:Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Cherlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Carol Pellaviv, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.