1083: Shutdown for What? (Schumer's Version)

25:38And I think what we'll be talking about in a year from now in the 2026 midterms is impossible to predict. And we should not think for one second, though, that what we were talking about today will be what we were talking about then. We just probably won't. I just worry now that we have set ourselves up for, January is coming. We're going to vote on funding the government again. We have said that we were We're doing this to get the health care funded. We're going to have a vote that will all but surely fail. And we will have the vote in January where we've just where a group of senators, Democrats have said we can't abide the pain of a shutdown, removing any leverage we would have had into that fight.

26:18So I think I guess where I land now is we won this debate in a way that's really impressive. And I think we should not be turning a win into a loss in how we talk about this, though we will. Democrats, that's our favorite thing to do. What I worry about is have we in the way that this came about and in the the way that it was put forward Put ourselves in a worse position for the next fight Yeah, well, I think that I mean again Having a having a vote in january on aca subsidies and having it fail and then saying okay Well, this is why we should vote republicans out of office is the same as like Imagine we got a vote in january on raising the minimum wage or anything else that republicans are gonna knock down, you know

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28:24so aside from all the rage directed towards the senators who cut the deal many democrats are also quite angry with chuck schumer even though he voted against it the argument being that as leader he should have been able to hold the caucus together he clearly knew about the deal right before we recorded there was some piece in axios saying that actually schumer convinced these senators back in October to hold off on reopening the government at least until November, until open enrollment in the elections. And so he didn't, you know, trying to show that Schumer really was against this. Already, though, a growing number of House Democrats have called on Schumer to go, including Ro Khanna, Mike Levin, Seth Moulton, and Mark Pocan.

29:04Hakeem Jeffries said he still supports Schumer, and there haven't been any calls for him to step down coming from his fellow senators, at least not yet. What do you guys both think about how Schumer handled this? and whether he survives. I mean, I think Chuck Schumer is Tim Robinson in the hot dog costume saying, like, we're all trying to figure out who did this meme. You know, it's like, he voted against the bill, sure, but I think he orchestrated it with senators he knew were going to retire who weren't up. And I just, I don't believe this spin for a second. I like, big picture, I think Schumer, I think he's lost his fastball.

29:35He's not a good communicator. He still doesn't do a good enough job, I think, of passing the torch to senators who are good at communicating and putting them out front. And I don't know if he's good at internal politics anymore. Like, I think they hung tough for a shutdown. They didn't do a bad job here. But I don't know. It hasn't gotten us much. I think Democrats have a gerontocracy problem. It was most acutely felt with Joe Biden, but Biden was far from the only reason for that opinion of us as a party. I don't think Chuck Schumer is helping. and I think we need some generational change and we need, at a time when we have no power and no party leader, people look to congressional leaders more so than normal and they're not getting great party leadership.

30:18Yeah, so I'm trying to separate out how Schumer managed this specific episode versus the weakened position he was going into it and how that made his job much harder. But obviously that's a big problem too. So what would you want a leader to do in a moment like this? So he's voting no, but eight of his members did this negotiation. So did you give them tacit permission, but you're afraid to tell the public that? Or do you genuinely have no control over what the members of your caucus do? Now, I think it is likely the former, which means why not just tell the truth? And there's this way in which when Schumer is defensive and under siege and feeling weakened and like he doesn't have his sort of flanks covered that he hides a bit.

31:08Right. That's why he doesn't tell us how he voted in the New York mayoral election. And I like I'm sick of bringing it up. I'm sorry. That is the last time I will bring it up probably for at least a day. but then he pulls this move where this deal is done it is all older or retiring or members who are not up the rest of the caucus can can shit on it the house can shit on it he gets to to shit on it but what do we want a senate leader who can kind of stand behind the decision that they made and so then you think well why is he in this weekend position well you know there's a whole of calls for Schumer to step aside when they didn't pursue a shutdown fight a few months ago.

31:49He doesn't have a lot of like enthusiastic support on the left. There's a lot of people who feel like as to Tommy's point, he's not a great communicator. He hasn't kind of empowered anybody to be the party spokesperson despite him. And so this is, I think, the consequence of having a weak leader. Like, I don't know that a different person would have gotten to a different outcome, but maybe if we had a leader who could go out there and just simply just defend this and just speak honestly about it and treat everybody like adults without being so worried about his own position, like collectively we'd be in a kind of better political spot.

32:21Yeah. Like I have no idea if he blessed the deal, if he orchestrated it or not, but like, you don't really need to know that to know that if you're the leader, like you're supposed to be able to keep the caucus together on something like this. That's sort of a test of leadership. And, you know, I don't think he has that kind of support right now. I do think he's lost his fastball. And now, like calling on him to go, right? You'd need 24 votes and a candidate for a leader, for a new leader right now. You know, we're heading into a midterm cycle. Like how much does it matter in the next year? whether it's Chuck Schumer, first of all, the likelihood that Schumer, that someone out Schumer in 26 before the midterms seems extremely low.

33:10It doesn't seem like you're going to get 24 votes in that caucus or that you have someone else who is like willing to challenge him. I do think this becomes more of an issue after 26, especially if for somehow we should take this, especially if we somehow take the Senate back and need a, and then it's the majority leader and not a minority leader, then I definitely don't think we should have Chuck Schumer. And if 27 rolls around and we somehow have the Senate, because I do think like there could there probably was a time when you could be just a really good tactician, good at internal coalition politics and not as great a communicator and still be fine.

33:49But I think in 2025, like being a great communicator is a prerequisite for every job in politics, particularly leadership jobs like the president of the United States, the Senate leader, the House leader, right? Like, I just, I kind of think that's table stakes at this point. Yeah. I remember there's like an old adage from when like we were all working in the Senate, which was, um, the Senate makes the majority leader look like an idiot and always makes the minority leader look like a genius. That was like an old saying about just the way the Senate works. I would like, I hear that like, Oh, like he's, you know, he's maybe not the best spokesperson, but, but we don't see what's going on behind the scenes.

34:27I'm not like, It doesn't seem like much is going on. Well, like with Pelosi, right? Like Pelosi, like I don't think Pelosi was the best communicator like to the public. But clearly behind the scenes, she had extraordinary respect from Democrats across like a bunch of political divides, including Republicans, Democrats left. Right. Like she is was just people understood that she had like a genuine talent for keeping the caucus together and thinking about strategy and getting everybody moving in the same direction. I've never heard. She did have an amazing appearance on Morning Joe in the summer of 24.

34:57Absolutely. beautiful beautiful like but talk about an iron grip on that caucus but even that like even that moment is like a perfect example of someone who understands like kind of a certain kind of politics where she said joe biden hasn't made up his mind yet so i think he has nope he has not right like there's there was just that she had that thing and tell me if i'm wrong like have you seen any kind of behind the scenes in front of the cameras off the record anybody like i don't think hakeem jeffries is the most effective communicator but no he through this process held the House Democrats together.

35:27And look, I would just say if you compare Chuck Schumer to Harry Reid, who is not seen as the greatest communicator, in fact, he was quite bad, but he was seen as having an iron grip on the Democrats in the Senate, did a better job of it. So look, Chuck Schumer, what I've heard from people is that he's up in 2028, he's not gonna run again, but he wants to resign as minority leader. I just think like that's, no, that's how we got into this place. I don't think, I no longer give a shit what if someone wants to be in a certain position until the end of their career. Like, are you effective or not?

35:56In this moment, I would argue that he is not particularly effective. And I'd love to see a younger generation of people move into leadership and take over leadership roles. I want to see it in the House and I want to see it in the Senate because that's all we got. And it's not that there aren't great communicators in the Senate Democratic Caucus who are like, you know, moving up through the leadership ranks. And by the way, like just on top of that, you think it's so great to hang on. You're about to have a bunch of Democratic candidates run against you across the country. You already have Plattner doing that.

36:25You're going to see more. It is because - A bunch of them. Mick Morrow and Abdul in Michigan both said that they wouldn't support him. There's a lot of people who think that the reason the DSCC is coming down in support of certain candidates is because those are the candidates who have said that they'll support Chuck Schumer for leader. Now, I don't know that to be sure, but that is something there's a lot of churn out there. Mark Kelly was asked today if he would support Schumer as leader again and was noncommittal. And by the way, just to take the other side of this too, If there are a bunch of Senate Democrats who thought they never should have done the shutdown in the first place, fine.

36:58If you had a leader that had a little more confidence at the caucus, maybe they wouldn't have done this at all. Right now, I don't think that's right. But like, there's just no sense in which you feel like Chuck Schumer has you just he's like, where are my people going? So I may leave them. Yeah, it's just that. All right. Let's talk about Trump. Trump's reaction to the shutdown deal was an angry post on Monday morning where he attacked overworked, exhausted air traffic controllers who took time off during the shutdown, threatened to dock their pay and told them to retire. That should make us all feel safe and sleep well at night.

37:29This is because he's the kind of president who feels people's pain, you know, which he also demonstrated when asked about his plans to tackle the number one issue on voters' minds right now. Let's listen. Our energy costs are way down. Our groceries are way down. Everything is weighed down and the press doesn't report it. So I don't want to hear about the affordability because right now we're much less. If you look at energy, we're getting... Don't want to hear about the affordability. I don't want to hear about it. That's, man, every once in a while he just gives you a little bit of a gift. Amazing.

37:58Trump then pivoted from dismissing people's concerns to promising things he probably can't deliver. He's now saying that he'll be using tariff revenue to send a$2 ,000 check to every middle and lower income American. This appeared to be news to soybean farmer Scott Besant, who told George Stephanopoulos on Sunday morning that he hadn't talked to the president about this and said the tariff revenue could just end up paying for, quote, the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president's agenda, which would not in any way be a rebate check. He's basically saying that in the big, beautiful bill, the tax cuts, you could say, oh, well, they're being paid for by the tariff revenue.

38:35He specifically said the taxes, the no tax on. tips yeah from the yeah from the bill it's it's very weird uh trump said again on monday in the oval that he's considering these checks but he also said um in a post that the money left over would be used to pay down the deficit can do it all he's you guys think they'll find a way to make these uh dividend payments happen they would have to be passed through congress we should like we should say so uh you just two there's a lot of americans there's a lot of us uh you you're gonna mail$2 ,000 checks to half the country. It's a lot of money. $600 billion.

39:11And the revenue from tariffs does not cover that nowhere. Projected to raise about$300 billion. So far, there's only $220. So far, they've raised$100. They're projected$300. It would be$600 billion to do the checks. Yeah. And so whatever the number they end up, even Besson admitted this, that the goal of tariffs, by their own logic, tariffs are not meant to raise increasing money. The point is to raise less money as it causes a change in where products are made. So there's no money to do this and pay down the deficit. So that's ridiculous. Now, does that mean they're not going to come up with some cockamamie way to describe some policy in the future as a rebate?

39:51Who knows? I will say he's keying into something here, which is that people view the tariffs as being very bad, and he's trying to make the tariffs something that is politically positive. And the way he's thinking about it as a what if he gave the money out right like he's he's he's trying to come up with some way out of the mess he's created i just think he's thinking back to covid and people love the stimmy checks they got it was wildly popular and he put his signature on those he'll probably put his fucking face on this one if he does it again i mean it's probably not going to happen yeah congress need to pass a law there's not enough money certainly not enough money to to not means test it and then pay down the debt afterwards like what are we talking about um also the supreme court could strike down the use of emergency powers to collect tariffs which would be another$100 billion or so gone.

40:34But who knows? We'll find out. Yeah, I wonder how that would work because if the, I mean, I think Amy Coney Barrett during oral arguments was like, the whole rebate process here would be quite a mess because if they strike them down and they have to rebate a bunch. Oh God, can you imagine? Well, they'd have to give back to the businesses. The importers, I guess. Right, yeah. So unless Trump thinks he's going to, so there would be no money for this or much less money for this if Supreme Court strikes it down. Also, a bill like this was introduced last year, I think by Josh Hawley. It went nowhere because Republicans had no appetite to hand out a bunch of checks during a time of inflation.

41:10Well, there's still inflation, right? It could lead to more inflation for sure. Yeah, to Tommy's point too, he is trying to find ways to put his name on, like, you know, they've just cut a trillion dollars in healthcare, but he does this deal with the GLP-1 people to have, so you have to go to trumprx.com to get your discounted Manjaro and Zepbound. So he's trying to find ways to get his name all over these little, these moves. And your fertility drugs so you can make more Trump babies before the mission. Make more Trump babies. I swear, over my, I will, as much as I love Manjaro, and I would love a discount, over my dead body will I go to TrumpRx.com.

41:40Over my skinny dead body will I go to TrumpRx.com.

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43:33So checks or no checks. We do know that after last Tuesday, Trump's facing growing criticism from people in his own party over his lack of focus. Welcome. Where have you been? On Sunday, Sean Davis, the co-founder of The Federalist, posted in quite a Twitter rant. That's too long to read in full here. And why would we? But the gist was that Trump should focus less on foreign policy and more on the economy. Quote, Republicans right now have no accomplishments, no plans and no vision. Why on earth would anyone be excited to go vote for them 12 months from now? Davis echoed the concerns being expressed in a flood of press appearances by potential 2028 presidential candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene.

44:13And sure enough, just before we recorded this, she tweeted that the president is spending too much time on foreign policy instead of health care. is Trump welcomed to the White House a former Al-Qaeda leader who is now the president of Syria. Trump responded by saying in the Oval on Monday that MTG is a, quote, nice woman who's, quote, lost her way and has, quote, some kind of an act going. Interesting. Do you guys think this backlash could become a real thing? I didn't see that one. Or do you think it's just a momentary flicker? It feels like a flicker to me. Look, we just know that Sean Davis is like one of those people whose tweets are so mean, you think, that man seems genuinely unwell.

44:47Oh, yeah. I've liked him a long time ago, so I was not aware of this. I'd also note that Marjorie Taylor Greene is not wrong. Like, politically speaking, she's absolutely right. Donald Trump is spending too much time flitting around the world thinking he's doing world peace and just, you know, making it up. Look, I do think we all remember the growing backlash around the Epstein files. It went away eventually. These guys all tend to find something to be mad at Democrats about and not Republicans. I think what Sean Davis is saying there is basically a repeat of what we heard around the election, which is Trump has failed to do enough on inflation and affordability to the point where even his own political director was like, yeah, now we're going to focus on affordability.

45:24The problem is always going to be, though, that Trump doesn't give a shit about any of this. I mean, he goes to Mar-a-Lago where millionaires or billionaires tell him that he's great because the stock market is up or the crypto market is up or whatever. At the Great Gatsby party. And then they go eat lobster and stone crab with some flappers. Well, do you see the people doing synchronized swimming in the Mar-a-Lago pool? Oh, very nice. So that's a new thing. I hadn't seen that. So they're all just divorced from the reality of normal voters. He's loving the foreign policy stuff. Yeah, the foreign policy stuff gets in headlines, right?

45:55Former Al-Qaeda guy. Did you hear him talk about the Al-Qaeda guy when they were like, what about his background as Al-Qaeda? And he's like, he's had a rough background. Rough background. Who among us hasn't had a rough? He's like, we've all had rough backgrounds. Good looking guy. Look, I should say, like, I support trying to, like, remove sanctions on Syria and trying to bring al-Shara into the fold. Like, I don't think it's a bad policy, but certainly it's not what, like, your average swing voter gives a shit about. Also, not to go all hypocrisy, but, like, just imagine what the right would be saying if Joe Biden or Barack Obama did that.

46:28That's not even the hypocrisy I thought you were talking about. Like, the short list of people for whom Donald Trump has grace. We'll get to the pardons later. but like it's Argentinian beef farmers and fucking former al-qaeda meanwhile they're shipping uber eats drivers to to a prison in el salvador no no no grace for for undocumented people who committed no crimes zelinski's in the oval office and uh jd vence is like have you said thank you yet it's by the way though it is so i remember uh i remember they pulled it out and put it on fox news because whenever we would talk about biden negatively it would like make it out but like it was amazing how at the end of his time biden started acting more and more like trump and Now, here we are in the Trump administration, and he is bitching about how the media isn't covering how good the economy is.

47:09And he's one step away from screaming, I'm the guy that did AUKUS. It's unbelievable. And so, yeah, by the way, could the backlash become real? I think we are in a very real backlash. Yes, to Tommy's point, there's an Epstein cycle, and the news moves on. And there's an affordability cycle, and the news moves on. But each time he's coming out of these fights a little bit weaker and his approval is a little bit lower. Like he is in a much worse position at the end of this shutdown. Like this Republican infighting is real. And I actually think it like as we head into the midterms, like there's an even bigger and deeper existential problem, which is this is going to put together two things.

47:49One, the fact that Donald Trump isn't doing enough to address the core reason he was elected. But at the same time, it's how do Republicans run in a world without Trump? And both of those problems are going to be like they're going to be impossible to tease out from each other, which are going to make both of them worse. And so they are headed towards a cataclysm, which they lose ideally, which they could lose a bunch of seats in the midterms while having no sense of an agenda or kind of defining vision outside of just defending Donald Trump. I also think like the Epstein files is an attentional issue, which if you hold out long enough, hopefully it goes away and it fades from the headlines.

48:26And affordability is the big watchword that everyone's talking about. Could fit. We'll do the same at some point, but people will still feel that everything is very expensive and be pissed. So you might you may get back like the Sean Davises and the. I was talking about the MAGA. For sure. For sure. Who are like pissed off and they'll move on and realize that they should still attack Democrats. But people and even MAGA voters are going to be like, yes, normal people are like, hey, Mike. groceries are so really expensive and you're hanging out with al-Qaeda guy. I'm the guy that brought the stands into the Abraham Accords.

48:54Have you seen the new presidential walk of fame? Yeah, it's now gilded. Affordability isn't the only thing the right is fighting about right now. We talked briefly last week about how Tucker Carlson's friendly interview with avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes caused an uproar among MAGA media types like Ben Shapiro and touched off a big internal fight at the Heritage Foundation. Just in case anyone needs a refresher on Nick Fuentes' views. Here's what he said in a March episode of his own podcast. Quote, Jews are running society. Women need to shut the fuck up. Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part.

49:26And we would live in paradise. It's that simple. Well, just a week after Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, defended Carlson and hedged about Fuentes, he told staff in all hands that he made a mistake. Quote, period, full stop. He then threw his chief of staff under the bus for good measure. That didn't stop the national task force to combat anti-Semitism. some members of which had already resigned from severing ties with Heritage. The disagreement went full bravo on Thursday when Ben Shapiro made an appearance at Megyn Kelly's live show in Jacksonville, just after Tucker Carlson appeared at Kelly's show in White Plains, and Shapiro didn't hold back.

50:01What I saw Tucker do was not whitewash his ideas, but try to put bumpers up on the guy. I know Tucker well, and I think that was his approach. And the way, if you want to put a bumper up on Nick Fuentes, is it helpful to say, you're fucking vile, you're an anti-Semite. No, it isn't. Yes, it is. That doesn't put a... Yes, it is. No, it isn't. If I see somebody breach basic moral values by having on a Nazi, and in my own view, you can take your own view, in my own view, gloss the Nazi, then I'm going to speak out about that, and I'm going to point out that there is a long pattern of him ideologically laundering terrible ideas over the course of the last two years, saying last week that the Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro is actually not that bad because they're being attacked by, in his words, Globo Homo.

50:49Tucker's made the point, I'm not going to be Tucker's defender, but he's made the point that Maduro is culturally conservative. Who gives a shit? That's a great conversation. It was great. It was great. Shout out Megyn Kelly booking that back to back. We all watched the Ben one. I saw, we were all watching the Tucker one. We are, we're, we're fiends, but we deserve that today. Yeah. Yeah. This controversy is a, is a grower and a shower. at the moment, but it will continue to grow. Yeah, and the only question is, is it circumcised? I think we know that. That's the battle. I would say, like, the other ones, like, okay, again, MAGA elites could stop talking about this.

51:23Like, maybe Tucker will move on because Gaza is not in the news. Maybe Ben Shapiro will be, you know, focused on something else. But Nick Fuentes is not going anywhere. Like, his standing is growing. He's getting more followers. Which Tucker said to Megan, yeah. Yes, his political standing is growing by the day. Nothing is blending that rise. And, like, Megan Kelly was like, I think Tucker's goal was to put bumpers around Fuentes and constrain him. That is not what happened in practice. Like Nick Fuentes has an audience, but Tucker has a bigger one and Tucker introduced them to the most sanitized, sane, washed version of Nick Fuentes as you could find.

51:56And like, I see a lot of Fuentes clips and it is not just like dudes chanting Sig Heil on their way to the Unite the Right rally, listening to this dude. He gets questions from his audience and these kids will be like, me and all the dudes at my frat house at like name some sec school listen to you right like that that is the audience like men under 30 and i think the thing like people talk a lot about fuentes being a racist and an anti-semite um and a misogynist he's also violent he's a violent person here's another quote from his show there's an occult element at the high levels of society and specifically among jews uh dot dot and more than anything else those people when we take power they need to be given the death penalty straight up.

52:36They must be absolutely annihilated when we take power. This is God's country. This is Jesus' country. This is not the domain of atheists or devil worshipers or perfidious Jews. This is Christ's country, end quote. Like that, and this was not said with a smile. He was not kidding. This was dead serious. It's like a violent Nazi. And I finally listened to the whole Tucker Fuentes interview, and it's like Tucker did there, and then he tried to do it again with Megan, which he keeps trying to make it all about uh israel and his whole thing is like it's just about like views on israel and separating you know anti-zionism from anti-semitism like it's this whole thing and he doesn't even in in two hours with nick fuentes doesn't touch any of the stuff you mentioned tommy just then the stuff that i quoted from march any of his other views on any of the other stuff and it's like why would you not if if you're taking tucker at his word here why would you not interrogate him on all the other fucking bullshit that he said yeah you think because you can't take tucker on his word here I was really glad I watched the full Ben Shapiro conversation with Megyn Kelly because Ben is like excellent in this conversation at kind of taking down Nick Fuentes and making a very logical and methodical argument about why you don't like teach the controversy with someone like Nick Fences and attack the danger that this idea poses.

53:55And the point that he makes is it's not only kind of dangerous to society, that he think it undermines the conservative movement, which is I'm glad he's making that argument. And Megan tries her best to defend her friend, Tucker Carlson, with this idea of bumpers. I don't really understand what the bumpers are. Is it that guardrails or something? I don't know. I mean, you can see from the clip, but like, I think she was trying to make the point that Tucker Carlson, if he was just had Nick Fuentes on and was like, you're an anti-Semite, awful, this, that, the other thing, and just started yelling at him, that's not going to convince anyone.

54:25But it's like that there's a space between that and what Tucker did, which was just a pretty friendly interview where he gently pushed on. Well, you don't believe in collective punishment of people, right? Like that. It was a very. But the other part of it is like Tucker has had revisionist historians about the Holocaust and World War II on his show. The point that Ben makes and when he talks to Megyn Kelly is about Tucker Carlson's evolution over the last two years. Well, he spoke at the Republican convention and it was much less than two years ago. Like Tucker's transformation has been ongoing and he has been a big part of MAGA, which is why I think it's very good that Ben's doing this.

55:06But he also is not, I think, grappling enough with the ways in which this is already inside of the Republican Party. Donald Trump had a meal with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, right? Like this is somebody that has already gotten inside of the gates. And that's like to me is what is a harder thing, I think, for someone like Ben Shapiro to reckon with. But I think at least this is, I think, making a clear line that this person should not be included. And by the way, like there is no justification even for doing the harder version of the kind of debate with someone like Nick Fuentes. You either describe it as vile and anti-Semitic and Nazism and all the rest, or you are treating it as if it is legitimate, like Kevin Roberts can, some days came, that's cancellation, some days not, whatever he says now, I don't know.

55:49But you cordon that shit off because these people do not believe in, he's not in it for a debate to try to win an argument. He'll, to Tommy's point, he'll go off and say, look what I did, I got on Tucker Carlson and got in front of all of these people. This is something you must excise like a cancer.

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57:44All right, we had a few quick legal updates for you on Monday and some good news. The Supreme Court, you don't hear that in the same sentence often, declined the chance to overturn Obergefell versus Hodges, its landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage. The case was brought by a former county clerk in Kentucky turned conservative microceleb who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court's original decision 10 years ago. The potentially worse news from the court, they will hear a challenge to the Mississippi law that allows counting of mail-in ballots received up to five days after election day.

58:19The court has already taken up a challenge to mail-in voting rules in Illinois in a case that could open the door for Trump allies to change all kinds of voting statues they don't like. Thoughts on either of these cases? I'm glad the court didn't take up Obergefell. I think like on the one hand, I do think people were like drumming up this fear of this Kim Davis thing because it was always a long shot and like she's nuts. But there was a coverage that was very like Supreme Court on the verge of kind of stuff. And every time you looked at the coverage, though, there were no real hints that the court wanted to take it up.

58:53But at the same time, I do think it like that doesn't mean there aren't several justices who would be willing to overturn Obergefell. and and i do think sometimes people don't people try to sort amy coney barrett into the like she's right wing and she is and i think she has a lot of really um uh bad views uh but i do think she's more intellectually honest than the rest and she said like i i don't i worry that if she were to take a case like this she would overturn it but one point she made when she was being confirmed is uh there are a lot of cases we won't take right like like and i do think like it's the strange thing where like i'm sure that there are people i'm sure like there are members like alito and thomas who are like itching for this because they want to overturn it i think she's someone who's not itching for this because she would have to overturn it um yeah if we had a court full of alito and thomas's i think this this would go but we don't so far yeah i mean i i'm with you i'm like i'm glad they didn't try to reopen this case but um man i mean i don't i don't think that right-wing groups that are attacking obergefell are done you know and especially if the court changes that make up at all.

59:56They'll be back, I'm sure. I mean, I do think that one of the mail-in ballot cases that they took up is pretty worrisome because it could be ruled in a way that leads to just a flood of lawsuits that make it harder for people, especially Democrats, to vote, especially, you know, people in, let's say, Philly, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Atlanta, if mail service is slowed and a bunch of mail-in ballots get in late and all of a sudden all those people are disenfranchised, you know, like that's kind of the goal here. And the hope is that it's not just those people. Rural areas especially would be disenfranchised because mail can be slow there.

1:00:28And the people who would probably be most disadvantaged are members of the military who are overseas often and their ballots are often counted after election day. I mean, the whole thing is going to turn on the meaning of the word election day and the idea that voting before election day, but it getting there after election day is something like election day now is before Or election day. That's what the court's going to say. Like, it just doesn't make a lot of sense. But this is one that the right has been pushing for quite some time. Also, it goes into the category of ways in which there could be chaos that bad actors take advantage of when it comes to certification, seating people, etc.

1:01:04Which, you know, maybe the optimistic case would be at least they're taking it before and going to decide it well before the next set of elections, both in 26 and 28. So that there isn't that confusion. But we shall see. It's just a methodical effort to make it harder to vote. I mean, endless. We also learned Sunday night that Trump has pardoned a number of his election subversion co-conspirators, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and the fake electors who were involved in part of the scheme. These pardons are either symbolic or preemptive because there were no federal charges against any of these people.

1:01:41Preemptive in kind of like a rainbow unicorn hope sort of way, like under this Department of Justice. Right. Well, maybe the next one. Yeah. You know, and the state level action against them right now will not be affected by this because you can't, a president can't pardon you for state crimes. Yeah. Those are all kind of like, there's a bunch of those are like stuck or falling apart, man. Ed Martin, the, you know, eagle eyed Ed there, the January 6th, former January 6th lawyer, who's now the weaponization guy. He announced all this on Twitter by saying, leave no MAGA behind. Reply to himself, right?

1:02:13Reply to his own, leave no MAGA behind. And yeah, I mean, I think the takeaway from this set of pardons and the January 6th pardons that happened earlier on is that Trump has just reminded us over and over again that he cares more about his grudges and his ego and his personal vendettas and his, you know, anger that he lost the 2020 election more than his political standing. People probably won't hear about these moves, but they wouldn't be popular. None of this makes any sense. It's also just a classic dictator move. Like, you don't like history? Get out that pencil. Let's start to rewrite it, right?

1:02:40I mean, hopefully by 2030, we won't be like China where you can't Google Tiananmen Square. It's about history. It's also about the future. It's a signal, right? Because if it doesn't really have teeth because of the reasons we just talked about, it's, hey, if you commit a crime in my name for me, I will take care of you, which is the real danger. It sends a message to anyone considering doing a little federal election fraud that Trump has got you back. The timing is also very weird. Do you see this Blaze story? No. The Blaze is a Glenn Beck's thing. They claim to have figured out who planted the pipe bombs on January 6th.

1:03:12Oh my God. They named a specific person who has not been named by law enforcement based on what they call gate analysis, which is video of you walking, fed into some software. This is either a big scoop or the most open and shut defamation case in a long, long time. So we're not going to say that person's name, but weird. A wild bit of reporting, the gate analysis. I have a strange game. Yeah, I could figure out your game. I could be tied to something based on my game. Or if you just did like a silly walk. You gotta walk backwards like in a David Lynch show. Who's next on the pardon list? Potentially Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's confidant and co-conspirator.

1:03:48A whistleblower has told Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee that Maxwell is going to ask Trump to commute her sentence. The same whistleblower also revealed that Maxwell is receiving, quote, concierge-style treatment in the minimum security prison facility that she's been transferred to, including customized meals, after hours gym time, and the permission to play with a puppy who another inmate was training to become a service dog. The whistleblower said that a top prison official complained that he was, quote, sick of having to be Maxwell's bitch. In a letter to Trump on Monday, Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, demanded information about the commutation, including asking Deputy AG Todd Blanche to appear at a public congressional hearing and called on Trump to reject Maxwell's appeal.

1:04:29Meanwhile, Democrat Adelita Grijalva, the Arizona representative-elect who Johnson has declined to seat during the shutdown, is finally likely to get sworn in this week, meaning she'll become the 218th signature and the last one needed on Thomas Massey's discharge petition, which would force the House to vote on making the Epstein files public. So, no health care subsidies, but maybe yes on the Epstein file. That is. Also, do you think Democrats should make a big deal out of the concierge-style prison treatment for Ghislaine Maxwell? Yes. Yes. I read in preparation for this, I think it was in the Guardian, an excerpt of a woman named Virginia Giuffre's book.

1:05:10She's an Epstein victim who died by suicide earlier this year. She writes about how she was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell when she worked at Mar-a-Lago when she was 16. The first massage she was forced to give Jeffrey Epstein was with Maxwell in the room, who was like massaging with her as part of the grooming process. Then they assaulted her the first of many times. Then they started trafficking her out to their friends, including Prince Andrew. we were like, Ghislaine Maxwell is just as much a villain as Jeffrey Epstein. She is not a lesser person. Like, she's a disgusting human being. She's vile.

1:05:44And the idea that like, this woman is getting sweetheart treatment, getting to play with a puppy while in prison on the way to a commutation is insane. And for what other reason than the one that we're all, the one reason that everyone we've been thinking. They've never explained it. They've never bothered to explain it. They don't, they're not getting questions about it anymore. I presume they'll get some questions about this now. They transfer her to a nicer place without justification. Now apparently she gets a puppy. Elizabeth Holmes is staring down at the same food. Every single night she looks across the fucking mess hall or whatever, and there's Ghislaine Maxwell with pierogies or whatever.

1:06:21And it's like unbelievable. It's shocking. Americans just being thrown in detention by ICE for days at a time without being able to call their families who didn't do anything completely innocent. But Ghislaine Maxwell is taken care of. It also just like commuting her seems like the most damaging political thing you could possibly do. Or second most politically damaging thing that could happen. Whatever the fuck she would say if that doesn't happen. Yeah, but like, I don't know. She would have said it by now. Who knows? I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't either. What? Maybe when the Epstein files are finally released, when the discharge petition happens.

1:06:56We'll find out. One other news item you may have missed. On Sunday, Trump became the first sitting president since Jimmy Carter to attend a regular season NFL game. And he did it in high style, complete with an Air Force One flyover of the Washington Commander's Stadium and a live swearing in of new service members during halftime. But the crowd wasn't exactly thrilled with Trump's appearance. Here's what it sounded like.

1:07:27You can see in the photos that someone right below Trump's box is giving him a double bird. Solid. So what do you guys think? Maybe they're from Philly. I think they were saying you. Yeah, that's right. Right. That's what they're saying. I like that they're trying to use a military swearing in to prevent getting booed. And everyone there was like, uh-uh. No, no. We see through this one. It's a stadium full of federal workers whose city has been militarized by the president. Yeah, they absolutely hate him. I mean, like, there's a lot of this that I find very annoying. The hypocrisy makes me insane.

1:07:55And for years, Republicans told athletes to stick to sports. Remember, LeBron James was told to shut up and dribble, stop bringing political messages into sports. Trump yelled at players for kneeling every single Sunday. By the way, players who are paid to be on the field and earned the right to be there. And now Trump just shows up at every sporting event. He makes it about himself. And then in 2013, Obama said the Washington Redskins should change their name. Trump tweeted the following. President should not be telling the Washington Redskins to change their name. Our country has far bigger problems.

1:08:26Focus on them, not nonsense. So that's - Unless that name is the new Trump stadium. Yeah, the commander's stadium. What did you guys think about that story that ESPN reported that the Trump people have approached the team's ownership about naming the stadium after him? The team didn't comment, but Caroline Levitt didn't deny it, saying it would surely be a beautiful name. We're just like so through the fucking looking glass. Like what is there left to say? like we're like that we're trump pardoning people that tried to overthrow the election uh is like a 24-hour story the president is trying to name football stadiums after himself and everyone's like well it sounds like a good idea to me i'm sure the team given that trump threatened the team if they didn't change the name uh i am sure there are you know everyone has to treat him with kid gloves and welcome him be excited for him to come humor him on whatever ridiculous cockamamie proposals he's talking about.

1:09:23Like heard this new patio is beautiful, Mr. President, that kind of thing. And it's all just embarrassing and pathetic, but like there's just too many of these at this point. Like do people - You're gonna put his face on the flag. Is that the next? I can see that. I think it's a currency talk, right? Yeah, I was gonna say the currency talk, but that actually, yeah, some - That's out there. Jackass in Congress was like, yeah, let's put him on a new$200 bill or something. This is, again, that's one thing the filibuster can stop. So that's good. And I just also, I always go back to the Shane Gillis at the ESPYs speech.

1:09:54Trump does not know ball. He has no idea what he's talking about. He was listening to the play by play right before he came in, because he did like 10 minutes in the booth. He says, it's going to be a very important couple of plays. It was second and seven. Then he goes, we'll see what happens, which is what he always says about everything. Then he's like, this is a very important play, don't you think? The commanders were down 22 points. He said the commanders are a very good team. No, they absolutely suck. They're 3-7, and their quarterback had this disgusting, elbow-bent-the-wrong-way injury last week because they left him in in garbage time of a game when they were getting destroyed.

1:10:28Like, their receivers are out. Like, their cornerbacks are out. Commanders fucking suck. He's like, oh, it was a very important game. It's been a very good team. No, absolutely not. Also, all the Lions fans out there should be ashamed at Amun-Ross St. Brown doing this stupid Trump dance looking like a goober. Then he got punched in the face by a linebacker. DN maybe a couple plays later. He's just directing this directly at Austin. I like the Lions and I'm a big Dan Campbell fan and I'm Ross St. Brown's an awesome receiver, but that was dorky and lame. So anyway. Stay at our sports, Don. It is so funny that like, it's more obvious to like sports fans when he does it here, but it is what he does with just about everything.

1:11:09You know, it's like literally every conversation he has, he knows how to get through it by just being like, yeah, it's unbelievable. It's great. People are saying it's amazing. It's amazing. Running back has ball. We'll see what happens. Oh, incisive. All right. Last thing before we go, a huge thank you to all of you who came to Crooked Con. Oh, yeah. What a time. Attendees, speakers, sponsors, volunteers. It was a wild success. I'm so like blown away by like our team put it together. We just showed up and talked a lot and yapped. But the team at Crooked just did a fucking incredible job. Yeah, come be a producer on a podcast where we sit in the studio and talk and also pull off a 2 ,000-person event where we change the venue 45 days out.

1:11:49Go. Shout out Sophie and everybody on the team here who just did an unbelievable job. Also, like, I don't know what other big conference you could find. Andy Beshear and Hassan Piker at the same point. It was just, like, the mix of people that we had there, the diversity of views, of backgrounds. You said tweet in the Atlantic? And it was... Okay. Don't get me started. Don't get me started. It was, yeah. But it was just like, it was so great to be in person with people who like we've been on each other's podcasts. We've been talking to each other online, sometimes fighting online for like the last several years.

1:12:25And then you meet these people in person for the first time. You're like, oh, I feel like I know you, of course. But now we get to actually hang out. It was wonderful. And I'm sure Jessica Tarlow was getting shit for taking a picture with Hassan back at Fox News HQ. I did ask her, I was like, how many segments do you think Jesse's going to put up that picture when you go back to work on Monday? Jesse did like 10 minutes on our, we programmed his whole show Friday night. It was on our panels. Yeah, we talked about doing Crooked Con years ago. Like it's something that we've been thinking about for a really long time.

1:12:54And I just feel really like proud of the team that we got to the place where we could put on something so big. Like we've all been to conferences. I'll just be honest and like I never really thought that much about what it takes to put them on. You know, you show up, you get your little sandwich box. You know, you think you badge and you will show up. You make your little jokes, Trump bad, whatever. And then, but like it was an extraordinary like Herculean task to put this together. And had it been half the size and gone less well, we would have called it a success. And like, this was a huge undertaking that went so well.

1:13:24And I do think it really is like proof of concept and the need for something like Crooked Con, like a big gathering space for like the big pro-democracy and progressive coalition. and like we will keep doing it. We hope we can have room for more people next time. Big announcement. Everyone gets like a day off and then tomorrow. I'm going to start planning. Yeah, it's like December 26th. Elves take the day, get a good night's sleep, Austin. Crooked Con 2026 planning starts tomorrow, bitches. It's in January. There was some of the coverage. Sophie's crying somewhere. Yeah, no, she definitely is.

1:14:01There was some of the coverage that was like, did the Democrats solve their problems and actually create a Big Ten? Of course not. That was never like on the table, but not the goal. I can't overstate how important and valuable it is to just have people meet together and face to face as human beings. It really does matter. Republicans do it all the time. They have CPAC. They have all sorts of events and conferences. They have CPAC in other countries where they trade notes with, you know, Americans. And I think this was really just fun and valuable. Well, if you couldn't make it and you want to hear all the conversations and all the other fun stuff that happened at Crooked Con, go to CrookedCon.com.

1:14:34We'll be posting a lot of content there. And we're going to be posting some select conversations in this feed and on YouTube. Right now, as you're listening to this, if you're in the Pod Save America YouTube feed, there is one episode so far that has two outstanding panels. There's my conversation with Sky Perryman and Norm Eisen about taking legal action against the administration. and then if you listen to that same episode, the latter half of the episode is Tommy's conversation with the top strategists for Zoran Mamdani, Mikey Sherrill, and Abigail Spanberger. Both of those went out Sunday.

1:15:07There's more coming soon. Sign up at CrookedCon.com for all the details on our next CrookedCon coming to you in 2026. That's our show for today. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. 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. Cricket pod save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma, Frank, and Saul Rubin.

1:15:41Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin 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.