1100: Trump White House Secrets Revealed

26:04She certainly does not do that. Like she really insists on being behind the scenes and not in photos. So the only thing she does really is just tell Trump yes. And that is by definition a bad shame of Steph. The other big one I thought was he asked her about Ghislaine Maxwell being moved to - This is another one, yes. This is insane. From like a real prison to club fed, this cushy prison that she sits in now. And Whipple asks about that decision. She said, oh yeah, I had no idea. And Donald Trump was the president was very unhappy about that, very unhappy. And like, well, then who did it? We don't know.

26:43But I can. And she's like, I can I can get back to you. I can find out. And she never she never got back to him on that point. So this means that somewhere someone made the decision to transfer Ghislaine Maxwell. That person exists in the federal government somewhere. And either this person is going to say, well, I got the order from someone else higher up, or we are led to believe that the White House chief of staff and the president of the United States have no idea how this extremely prominent prisoner was moved to a minimum security prison known as Club Fed. Well, in defense of Donald Trump, he is a firm believer in the independence of the Justice Department.

27:25And you can see he would not even allow someone on his staff to dig into that sort of decision. So I mean, here's the guy's fucking firing line prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia so they can prosecute specific people. And he's like, well, this is a decision. I don't know. I'm just an observer here. I care. I don't want to. It's not really my job to ask. It's nuts. Like she is either lying or is being willfully ignorant on this question because she doesn't want to know the answer. why do you think they're making such a point of rallying around her? Like I said, because I think they want the chief of staff.

27:58It lets them do whatever they want. I don't mean like Trump defended her, but in that original, that first, like as a New York post interview, I believe, he said he hadn't read the story yet, which so, I mean, they all look ridiculous defending it. They all sat down for the photo shoot. They all did the interview. She said the thing she said. They can't even, they don't even have a complaint, but like the complaint really comes down to the picture, the photos were too, were too, they were too close because they're not, she's not saying she didn't say those things. She tried it first and then he produced the tapes.

28:27She's not saying he violated off the record or anything like that. Yeah. She's just saying context was left out, which is, you know, it's absurd. I guess they're defending her because they, I don't know. I, it just, I think if you, if you really look at each revelation, each newsy part of it, none of them really make Donald Trump look too bad. In Donald Trump's mind. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's not... She's pretty loyal to him in the interviews. And the parts where she says, you know, like, I didn't always agree with him on the January 6th people. Like, he doesn't care about that.

29:04Yeah. That she didn't agree with him. And he doesn't really care that she called J.D. Vance a conspiracy theorist or that she's, you know... Like, I just don't know if any of the revelations hurt Donald Trump's image of Donald Trump to himself. Yeah, I think that's right. And a lot was made right away about her saying that he has an alcoholic's personality. That's nothing. And like, it did seem quite damaging. And then when you, this is the one place where you actually hear him say that he said that before. And it kind of, it's honestly one of the more self-aware things Donald Trump has ever said about himself.

29:39Like that one probably doesn't bother him. And so, yeah, I guess from his perspective. for people who haven't read it. She meant alcoholics' personality in the context of, because her father was an alcoholic, and she said alcoholics sometimes, you know, alcoholism sort of magnifies the personality that exists, and also they think that there's nothing they can't do. And Donald Trump is someone who thinks there's nothing he can't do. And of course, it's public, and she knows and everyone knows that he doesn't drink. And so it's not, I didn't find that as bad. And it probably doesn't bother him. Yeah.

30:10You just never know where things are going to see If they continue on the political trajectory they're on, this could be the putative reason why they make a change. Yeah. But in the moment, just they'd much rather. And they're all the other thing is all the president's top aides are all guilty here. They're all in on it. They all have their. This is like she was just having these conversations with Chris Wibble privately. They all stood in a room apparently for one entire day with foundation and mascara on to get their pictures taken together. So it's kind of hard to throw under the bus when you have all the deputy chiefs of staff, the senior advisor, the secretary of state and the vice president all holding the same embarrassing bloody knife.

30:49So it was news. I believe that Trump was flying flew on Epstein's plane. And I feel like he has been saying that Bill Clinton was on the plane a bunch of times and he's never said he was on the plane. I wonder if he knows that revelation was in the piece. That's one that I could see him being a little annoyed by. And saying that they were young single playboys in Palm Beach together. Yeah, in his 50s. Yeah, he was 50. Young playboy. So I think one of the most... I wouldn't call us playboys, that's for sure. One of the most damning comments from Wiles in the story was an admission that Trump, quote, wants to keep on blowing boats up until Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, quote, cries uncle.

31:40So we are murdering people with cocaine in their boats as a way to overthrow a regime that Trump doesn't like. Pretty stunning because I guess it's not about the drugs. Thought it was about the fentanyl that's not fentanyl because it's cocaine that was coming to America, to our shores that were killing 25 ,000 people with every boat. But apparently not. Apparently, we're murdering people in boats so that I guess Nicolas Maduro is like, no, I can't I can't traffic drugs anymore. So now I will leave Venezuela. Yeah, it seemed like a plan to me. Well, if you were looking for another insane rationale for war, Trump posted on Tuesday that Venezuela is, quote, completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America, which will, quote, only get bigger until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the oil, land and other assets that they previously stole from us.

32:40The Post said Trump was ordering a, quote, all caps, of course, total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela. He then repeated the threat on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday. Let's listen. Remember, they took all of our energy rights. They took all of our oil from not that long ago. As you know, they threw our companies out and we want it back. Getting land, oil rights, whatever we had. Stephen Miller, who is reportedly the brains behind this entire operation yet again, delivered the fascist GPT version of the rationale for war on Twitter.

33:20His tweet said, quote, American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela. Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. What the fuck is he talking about? What are any of them talking about? Okay, so I looked into this because why not? And it's just, here's the context, which is Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world. US companies have been developing oil in Venezuela since 1900 and did for a very long time. And other foreign companies, by the way. Yeah, yeah, lots of other people. But yes, all over the world, people, all kinds of foreign countries were pumping oil and exporting it, oftentimes to the United States, but also elsewhere.

34:10And then in 1976, Venezuela nationalized their oil industry and took the entire oil industry and put it under one state-owned oil company, kicking out all the US companies. Over the course of time, there was some backsliding there back, and then 15, 20 years ago, further US companies were kicked out, including ExxonMobil. And so now there is this one, all of Venezuela oil is pumped out by one, by this one state owned company. And although there are, they do have some deals with the US company Chevron, who does some, some work for them, but it is a nationalizing. Now it's very, the most important thing here is there is no, in international law, the oil is, was, and always will be Venezuela's.

34:59The natural resources belong to the country itself. This is a principle in international law that goes back to after the world wars, when we were dealing with the end of colonialism around the world. And when countries kicked out the colonizers, they got to keep the stuff. It didn't matter which country dug the mine or put the oil rig in the ground. The people in charge of that country, the citizens of that country, the government of that country, they own the natural resources. And so it is not a legal basis for us to invade Venezuela to take back oil that is Venezuelan. I'm almost laughing because I'm just imagining telling the American people that we're going to war in Venezuela to defend the honor of Exxon mobile and chevron from 50 years ago and all of our brave oil companies because it's not really going in there to like take the even if american companies i don't it's first of all it's so fucking stupid that we have to go down this path and explain this but even if american companies are allowed back in venezuela to pump oil that oil is not necessarily just going to america they're international they're american oil companies that sell oil all over the fucking world on the world oil market.

36:17Yes, it's not coming to us. It's most likely not coming to us. It's going elsewhere. It is literally invading a country so that ExxonMobil can start pumping again. I mean, it's so fucking stupid. Amazing. And then broadening it to be like, and the land. What land? There was no land. You're talking about assets. Yeah, maybe someone leaves like a fucking oil derrick there and it was like, oh, that's Exxon's oil, Derek, from the early 1900s. We're taking that back. But like, what land are you talking about, you fucking idiot? There is just like such a mask off moment here, which is all throughout the early 2000s, the argument of a lot of liberals was, we went to war in Iraq for oil.

37:02No blood for oil. And even the Bush administration - Was the protest sign, yeah. Right, and even the Bush administration was so scared of even anything that would suggest that they wouldn't even use the oil revenues from Iraq to pay for stuff because they thought that would be, that would validate the critique that we were going there for war for oil instead of war for non-existent WMDs and democracy. That Trump's just like, we're invading Venezuela, a country that I would bet that large majority of Americans have no idea has oil. So just imagine if Trump had given the speech that Tucker Carlson and the other side was going to give on Tuesday night, Tuesday night, Tuesday night, and had said, we're going to war in Venezuela for oil.

37:40Like what? Wednesday night. Wednesday night. today's thursday today's thursday thursday was that speech last night you're listening to this on friday that speech was last night yes okay last night fuck nothing matters anymore time like i've had a sick kid at home i truly have no idea like what what day it is like we could be doing the tuesday pod now for all did christmas happen i don't know um but just it's just it's so it's like an unbelievably stupid thing substantively and it's insane politically and it would it's just so confusing for the american people to even imagine that this could be happening what uh you think this is going to be popular with folks because uh i saw the yougov has a poll out today just the most recent uh asked people what they think about using military force to invade venezuela 18 percent support doing so 18 66 percent oppose now on in fairness to Donald Trump and the administration, they did not ask, do you support the U.S.

38:41using a military force to invade Venezuela so that ExxonMobil can make more money next year? Yeah, that's true. That's true. You know? So if you throw that in, it might change the messaging a little bit. It might change the support levels. It's also funny that Trump's outlying about how low gas prices are at the same time he wants to invade a country for oil. It's like just very... Did you see the post story about how Stephen Miller originally wanted to do these boat strikes, also known as just extrajudicial killings, war crimes, murders on the high sea? He wanted to do it against Mexican cartels.

39:20And then when Mexico started taking care of things on their own, he needed a new target. So they just shifted. They just picked Venezuela. Yeah, the story is truly unbelievable because there's – originally what they – like the theory that Stephen Miller has is that if you could break the cartels, then that would lessen the number of migrants coming to the U.S. Because one of the things the cartels do is they traffic migrants to the U.S. border. Mexico starts doing the things that we wanted them to do. He did want to use special forces in the CIA to do covert attacks. The Congress and the administration and some people in the administration opposed that, so he couldn't do that.

40:00Then Mexico kind of solved the problem to the extent that the problem could be solved. So then he goes looking for somewhere else to attack. Picks Venezuela, which – and the theory then is if you could – I mean this is so crazy. Picks Venezuela just because he wants a place to attack. Then – and we do have migrants that come from Venezuela. I don't know why launching war there would help sustain the flow of migration. History would suggest no. But it's this like comedy of errors where he then picks Venezuela, but it's about drugs. But then he hangs out maybe at the photo shoot, I don't know, with Marco Rubio, who has long wanted to overthrow Maduro because he thinks that would help overthrow Castro in Cuba.

40:42And so now we've transitioned from drugs overthrowing Maduro. Pete Hegseth is like, I need a win. So because so maybe, yeah, former official familiar with Miller's thinking said Pete very much wanted to keep Stephen in his good graces and also the president, which just tells you everything you need to know. And so because because of this was post signal gate fallout and Hegseth's like, fuck, I need to Stephen Miller's the guy really running the government. And so if he wants to kill some people in boats and my buddy Marco wants to overthrow this dictator, I'm in. Yeah. And now we're on the cusp of war with Venezuela because three fucking morons got together looking for something to do.

41:23It's un-fucking-believable. The execute order, the legal rationale to kill these people in these boats, contains targeting instructions that do not require positive identification of any individual, but rather reasonable certainty that adult males are members of or affiliated with a designated terrorist organization. Yeah, you don't want to be too precise when you are murdering people on boats. And also, there's no legal authority to name these organizations terror organizations. I just, Wiles admitted to Vanity Fair that Trump would need congressional approval for any land strikes, though Trump forcefully denied that in the Oval on Thursday.

42:08Does Congress try to get involved here? Like, it seems like Trump is thinking to himself, well, I'm not going to send troops in. I'm going to, like, lob some missiles. Maduro hopefully leaves. You know, maybe we can get him out without the missiles. Maybe he's just going to be scared by the armada because we use the word armada now because it's like the 1700s, I guess. And so he's hoping Maduro leaves. At worst, he bombed Duran, and everyone just sort of moved on. Maybe we can bomb Venezuela, and that's that. I think he believes this is very low risk. Oh, yeah. I think he is. And he's pretty right that anything absent ground troops, the US population has a pretty high tolerance for.

42:57Right? If we're just drones, missiles, that is – I mean, it's terrible that this is the case, but it's been true for a very long time. it's when people start getting killed or wounded from your community is when everyone turns as what happened in Iraq when we sent National Guard troops all over to Iraq. Absent that, Congress is not going to want to get involved here. Like, I mean, there will be a coalition of Democrats and a small handful of Republicans who do not like this, which is probably like Rand Paul, Tom Massey, and maybe like one other one. But, you know, Congress has no interest in getting involved in something like this.

43:29They're not gonna try to stop him. He'll file war power reports and feel like he is adhering to the War Powers Act, and that'll be that. Well, at least there's no history of American wars of choice and regime change coming back to bite us in the ass years later. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong from starting a, look, if you want to keep the border secure and stop the flow of migrants, I can't think of anything better than turning Venezuela into a failed state. Do you think, there's no way Trump could pick out Venezuela on a map, right? Not a chance. Doesn't know the capital. I don't think he would be able to answer the question what continent it is in.

44:11That's the next cognitive test. Map of South America, and he has to point to Venezuela, then he has to point, we just make him point to some countries since the new Pax Americana here is we're going to create an American empire in the Western Hemisphere. It stretches from Greenland to Venezuela. So that's... Oh, geez. I mean, it's not really a joke. It's kind of their theory. And I guess he thinks that's what's going to get the Nobel Committee to call. Nothing will lock up the Nobel Peace Prize like bombing Venezuela.

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46:10So Trump made those most recent comments about strikes on Venezuela at an Oval Office event where he signed an executive order accelerating the reclassification of marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3, which would allow it to be studied for medical uses. But before you get too excited, Trump made it clear that he has zero plans to legalize marijuana recreationally under federal law anytime soon. Unsurprisingly, this decision came about not because of any change of heart, but because of heavy lobbying from the weed industry, which has poured millions into Trump aligned political groups. In fact, aside from the research, one of the other benefits of this is I believe a lot of tax breaks for businesses that sell marijuana.

46:52So good for them. Thursday's other executive order came from RFK Jr. This one was much worse, who announced a new set of rules that would cut off Medicaid and Medicare funding to any hospital that provides gender affirming care to children under 18, which would essentially, if it holds up to legal scrutiny, shut down hospitals that refuse to follow the order since Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly half the money spent on hospitals. And I guess the big question is how likely is it that since he signs a million executive orders a day and many of them are just blatantly not legal how likely is it that this uh takes effect and how long until it takes effect yeah i mean that is there is a there's like a i think it's a 60-day review period comment period so there are there are many months that go through the process of signing the order to actual implement to the actual like proffering of the regulation in place um and as you point out There are a lot of legal questions about whether he has the authority to do this.

47:52The courts seem to believe that questions around gender affirming here for minors are to be decided by the state because they've allowed states to ban them, which conversely would suggest that they would allow states to allow it as well if it's a state decision. And it was a very recent decision. It was a 6-3 decision because Tennessee has a state ban and they upheld Tennessee state ban. And Roberts wrote in the majority in part because he's like, we're not we're not taking a position on the policy itself. We're saying that these are decisions much like they did in Dobbs. These are decisions that should be decided by the people and their elected representatives through the legislative process.

48:28So very difficult to square that with now allowing an executive order that's not even a piece of legislation to supersede blue states that allow gender-affirming care for minors in their hospitals. I think there would be a question of whether a federal legislation, which the House actually did just pass something similar, but that has no chance in the Senate, could do it. But you're relying on basically one line in the Social Security Act that gives you to do this and some real questions about what is in the Medicare and Medicaid legislation that would prohibit the federal government getting this involved in health care decisions and using Medicare and Medicaid funding as leverage.

49:05Which we're like the example people are using is the Hyde Amendment, which prevents the spending of federal funds for abortion services. But that is an actual law. That's not a regulation. And this, by the way, goes this would go further than Hyde. Yes. Because that's like money that's specifically appropriated for Medicaid and Medicare to then go towards abortion care. This is basically saying. If you do this. We're not saying that like you can't spend Medicaid and Medicare money on gender affirming care. We've already said you can't do that. and some hospitals all over the country have already stopped gender-affirming care for children because they rely so much on, because they do a lot of Medicaid and Medicare funding.

49:44This is just like, if you're a hospital that gets Medicare and Medicaid funding for any reason, which is all hospitals, pretty much, you can't do it. And so this is the, you know, it probably takes a long time for the court to act. The question is what do hospitals do? In the environment, we've already seen a bunch of hospitals and academic centers shut down their clinics their practices here. And this is all part of the larger, horrifying Trump project of basically defining trans people out of existence, right? Whether it's what's on the passport, it's every policy that you have no legal status, no cultural status, we will not recognize you.

50:22And it's horrifying. This is a cruel and capricious federal government turning its sight on the most vulnerable population possible and bullying them essentially. Yeah. And especially, I mean, one of the pieces about this, like we're talking about kids who are already either transitioned or already using gender affirming care and are now having to like ration the care that they have worried that it's going to like run out or be blocked or be eliminated. And so it is just, it's pretty pretty horrifying on the weed one what do you make of this uh he doesn't seem like he's going to it doesn't seem like as big of a deal as i thought it was when i first heard it um it seems like it's mostly for research and so it's kind of a it's i think it's a it's good i mean it's it started biden first did this and then it like got uh basically the process was held up and um so it just kind of got uh held up in the bureaucracy and then you know trump finally finished it but It doesn't seem like a big, big deal, but it's a good step in the right direction.

51:24Yeah, it's one of the few things he has done that's not horrifying, so we'll take it. As you point out, this is a minor step. This is not full legalization. He cannot do that. It would require Congress to do that. But the reason, I think, is you've nailed it, which is not some epiphany about libertarianism or the potential benefits of cannabis use. It is corruption, right? It's just the right people got money in the right people's pockets, and therefore Trump did it. Yeah. Trump got a bunch of questions at the signing event for the marijuana EO, including whether he wants Congress to do something to extend the expiring ACA subsidies.

52:01Here's his non-answer. But do you want Congress to extend these ACA subsidies? Well, I'd like not to be able to do it. I'd like to get right into this and ask Oz this question in particular, but I'd like to see us get right into this. I don't know why we have to extend. And this could be done rapidly if the Democrats would come along. We have a problem. The insurance companies own the Democrat Party. They own it. I love Dr. Oz walking close to the president like he was about to say something and then realizing he should run back away. Also, I don't. What was that answer? I don't think he. I think he knows much about this policy.

52:41No, it doesn't seem like it. No. I think this is another one where he's not really in the details. The reason that Trump was asked about this is that, lo and behold, four House Republicans have signed on to a Democratic discharge petition to force a vote on a clean three year extension of the subsidies, which means the vote will happen. But not until Congress returns in January, after the subsidies expire, and it's still unclear what can pass the Senate. John Thune said no on the clean three-year extension, but that maybe the Collins proposal for a two-year extension with some new income eligibility limits is possible.

53:17Who knows? And as we just heard, even if that works out, it's still unclear if Donald Trump signs it or not. Nevertheless, it was a tough week for Mike Johnson, who has now lost so many Republicans to discharge petitions that he got this question from a reporter on Wednesday. I have not lost control of the House. We have the smallest majority in U.S. history. These are not normal times. There are processes and procedures in the House. I have not lost control of the House. That's a sign that you have lost control. If you have to answer that question, you've lost control of the house. So funny. So funny.

53:58What do you think's going on here? First of all, let's start with Mike Johnson losing control of the house, which he has. This is now, I've lost count of how many discharge petitions. Discharge petitions used to be a thing where you had to be like a real fucking congressional nerd to know what they are. And they rarely, if ever, did anything. But now, if you have a majority of people in the House sign this discharge petition, then it forces a vote. We recently learned this for the first time with the Epstein files in this season of Trump. And now suddenly Republicans are feeling their oats and there's discharge petitions all over the place that Republicans are signing left and right.

54:36And Mike Johnson can't do anything about it because he is trying to keep all of these votes from coming to the floor, but he's failing. The narrowest majority thing, excuse, does not help at all with the discharge petition. Right. You're still losing people. That's the point. And so I think there are a couple of things going on here. One, before I say it again, Mike Johnson is kind of a doofus. Like he's not up for this task, is one. Two, he owes his entire job to Donald Trump. And so he is always protecting Trump's flank as opposed to his members. His members know that. So they're starting to break from him in various things.

55:11And this part is, I guess, where the narrow majority defense works is he's always in danger of losing his job because some conservative Republicans leave him. And so he is optimizing the House's strategy for unity among all of the caucus as he has it today and not trying to protect the vulnerable members so he has a majority tomorrow. because if you were doing this for what was best for the 28 House Republicans who are in seats that Trump won by less than 10 points, you would have passed this thing or you would have given the real thing to vote, not this absurd health savings account, we're going to give you money so you can just buy your own insurance thing.

55:54They voted on a health plan that the CBO looked at and said would mean less people would be insured and healthcare would be more expensive, Like a truly insane thing. You would have just voted on a two-year, a one-year extension with, you know, costs. You know, you would have done some things that made it unpalatable. You give them a vote, but he can't do that. And so his members like Mike Lawler look at the polls. They see where they are. They see what their district is. And they are bolting for safer waters. now for the first time especially when i heard that trump sort of non-answer i started thinking like i could see a scenario where the subsidies get passed the extension gets passed when they come back and trump have to care yeah or he i mean like the way to because the thing he's not going to want to do is say that he like you know that the democrats won this one right like if it goes to the senate passes the house goes to the senate and you know they change it so it's only two years and it's got some limits on it.

56:51He can say like, I, you know, I didn't really want to do this, but whatever. It's like, I'm, you know, I think, I think we should replace healthcare. I'm gonna have a great plan, but we'll do the extension for now. And the Republicans did some good things in the Senate. I don't know. That would be the smart thing to do. I think it only happens if Trump tells the Senate to do it because you're not like the Senate majority is such, and they really only have one vulnerable incumbent. And so they can, they can have these votes every day until the election and Susan Collins can keep voting for the extension and they're fine from that perspective.

57:22There aren't eight Republicans who need to come over the Democrats to get whatever they don't, there aren't enough Republicans to do it. So unless Trump were to get in a room and say, if we don't do this, we're going to lose house majority, figure it out. I know you guys can't do three years. I'm going to bring everyone in the white house. We're going to do two, we'll do two years and something like, but absent that it's not going to happen on its own because the house will not pass anything or they'll pass it and it will go to the Senate and it'll die unless Trump gets involved. And he doesn't seem to even know what it is or to care.

57:49You know, he's too busy, like building ballrooms and doing other dumb shit. So like I just, there's not, there's no momentum within Congress absent Trump saying, I need this for the majority. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I have to say though, nice job Hakeem Jeffries for shepherding this strategy through the house, because basically some Democrats, one of the problem solvers, were floating around some bipartisan proposal. It was like a one-year extension, a two-year extension that then got some Republicans on board. And Hakeem was basically like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not backing that. I'm not having Democrats sign on to those discharge petitions.

58:26It's three-year or nothing. And the Republicans that had signed on to the one-year and two-year finally were like, well, I don't like the three-year clean extension, but if it's the only game in town, I'm going to do it. And so he played his cards very well. And frankly, we can look back at this discharge petition, the fact that everyone on the Republican side is scrambling to come up with a health care affordability plan. The shutdown worked from a political perspective. It worked. It is health care affordability is on the agenda. It was not even being talked about before. Republicans are twisted in knots about their inability to do anything.

58:58They are like floating Obamacare repeal plans. Trump's saying insane things. Like this is a moment we talk all the time about how hard it is for Democrats to set the issue agenda in American politics. And they did it with a shutdown. They changed the contours of the race and they made an issue that is better for us near the top of the agenda. And kudos to them. And Jeffries – so kudos to all the Democrats, Schumer's included, on how the shutdown was played out. But then on the discharge petition, Jeffries has played his cards very, very well and put the Democrats in a position of maximum leverage here.

59:32I will also say I think someone asked Schumer today about whether when when funding when government funding expires at the end of January would they shut the government down again if they don't extend the subsidies and I think he said like no and I will just say I get it like I don't I don't because if they shut the government down again over this then the debate becomes about Democrats shutting the government down and the government being shut down and not about the fact that Republicans will not extend the subsidies. And I think that will actually give the Republicans an excuse to not do anything about the subsidies, because then they'd be forced into it by the mean old Democrats who we don't want to give a win to.

1:00:13And the only chance that you might get some kind of extension pass is now the Republicans feeling pressure themselves in their own districts, which clearly some of the House members did that signed on to the petition and some of the people in the Senate who proposed, you know, other types of extensions. and still doesn't mean it's going to happen. And probably, like you said, the chances are, you know, it may be low on this, but I think it's a better chance of happening than if Democrats shut the government down. Yeah, I think shutting it down the government would ensure that there could be nothing would pass because it would negatively polarize everyone against it.

1:00:46And now it becomes you can't give in in the midst of the shutdown. So, and it just, and it just from a purely practical point of view, those members who threw in the towel when they did, they're not signing them back up for this again. No, no, no, they're not. Okay, lots more when we come back from break, but first, a quick reminder. We got the perfect last-minute gift for you, a Friend of the Pod subscription. They'll get access to all the good stuff. You get ad-free episodes, ad-free of all your favorite crooked shows, exclusive content like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer. We got some other great shows coming that are going to be just behind the paywall, awesome shows, hilarious, entertaining, informative.

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1:01:54This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. So rewriting traditions. Therapy. You know, therapy can give you the space to create new meaningful traditions around this holiday season. Maybe a tradition of telling somebody how you feel instead of just sitting there in a kind of broken silence. Kind of a silence that's loud, you know? Wouldn't that be a wild addition to family traditions? Yeah, institute that one. Hey, we're going to try this and also, I don't know, cookies. The holidays are a time of traditions. Some people have many in their family and some have none. or just beginning their own, now's the time to reflect on what they mean to you or to rewrite those traditions and make your own.

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1:03:31Well, unfortunately, not all Democrats deserve praise this week, Dan. We've talked before about the DNC's much anticipated 2024 postmortem, also known as an autopsy, unless you're talking to DNC Chair Ken Martin, who calls it a, quote, after action report. According to NBC News, Martin told reporters after he won the DNC election back in February that he would make the final report public. And he even criticized the party then for not releasing the 2016 postmortem as an example of why he was going to release the 2024 postmortem if he won the election, which he did. And here he is talking to me about the importance of the report back in August.

1:04:12We're finishing our after action review to really dig into this, to give people a sense who invested so much time, energy, and money, what happened and why we lost. $10 billion spent in the ecosystem last year. What we're looking at is the campaign, the party, of course. We're looking at the tactics, the spending, the messaging, the timing, you know, all of it. There are no sacred cows. What we're looking at right now is everything. No sacred cows, Dan. Well, on Thursday, the DNC announced that just kidding, they won't be releasing the report after all. Martin said, quote, here's our North Star.

1:04:49Does this help us win? If the answer is no, it's a distraction from the core mission. Whew. You want to just, you want to, you want to take it? Well, I just sit here and seethe and then I'll go. If you miss anything. This is such an infuriating decision on so many levels. One, we should know what happened. Like that is, especially if you did all the work. And like there have been some really good reports that have come out. There was Deciding to Win. We talked about a bunch. Way to Win has a report that came out last week or the week before. Very useful to read. The DNC report wasn't going to settle all the debates in the party, but it would.

1:05:33They have the most access to the funders, the operatives, the donors. Like this would have been a very, very valuable. They interviewed tons of people, hundreds of people. I think there were 300 interviews. Yeah. Biden campaign, Harris campaign, states, the super PAC people, where the money was spent, the polling, all of it they had. And so, like, very valuable, both for, like, the direction of the party to, like, tactical things about door knocking and peer-to-peer texting that would be valuable for people running for a state legislator or city council. The fact that the two reasons that the DNC is not releasing this report, one said, one unsaid, just are so emblematic of everything that is wrong with the Democratic establishment.

1:06:15The first is we don't want to mess with our momentum. Like this has been a good year for Democrats. We won in blue states. We've lost by less in red states. We've had Trump's not doing great. But the idea that these victories in an off year when we're supposed to do well suggest that we've solved our problems is just a repeat of the fatal error the Democratic Party made in 2022 when we took the results of a midterm that just happened to happen three months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, where we did better in the Senate than we thought, but still lost the House and said, pat ourselves on the back and said, we're going to ask no hard questions, have no difficult conversations about running an unobtainment.

1:06:55unpopular 80-year-old for re-election in this political environment. It is pure complacency. In fact, and then anytime someone suggested in 2024 that the polling might be making us a little anxious and that, oh, maybe we have some problems and maybe there was a chorus of the same people who would say, oh, you told us there was going to be a red wave. Remember all the pollsters that said there was going to be a red wave in 2022 and there wasn't? Which, first of all, no, people did not say there's going to be a red. And also, it wasn't a blue wave. It just wasn't as big a red wave. And then the second reason, which is, this is the unsaid reason, I think, is the report was obviously going to piss some people off in the coalition.

1:07:37It was going to piss off some donors. It's going to piss off some of the groups. It was going to piss off members of Congress because any report worth its salt was going to look at how money was spent. It's going to look at our positions on issues. Immigration was going to almost certainly have to dig into the role that Biden's Gaza policy played in this election. And no matter which way the report came down, it was going to piss off one of the two sides of a very, very contentious thing. And this is a huge problem within our party for a very long time now, which is an unwillingness to anger parts of our coalition or even have difficult conversations with them.

1:08:11We treat our allies as children, unable to have an adult conversation about where the party goes. And so we're so afraid of that that we would rather shelve the report. And when you have, when your entire being is to anger no one, offend no one, then you automatically have lowest common denominator strategic thinking. Like you can't be good. You can't be sharp. You can't be incisive because you're just trying to do no harm. Like you're not taking the fucking Hippocratic Oath. You're trying to win. The last point here that I will make is that I think it is very – like even if you look at all of our success in 2025, do you know what the approval rating of the Democrats in Congress is right now in the most recent Quinnipiac poll?

1:08:54Is it 20? We're 55 points underwater. 55 points underwater. The Democratic Party brand, still worse than the Republican brand, on most issues, including some of the key issues of this election are going to be centered around. The generic ballot average today is 2.9 points, much less than it was at this point in 2017. And it is very possible that we could change nothing, do the exact same thing, run the same playbook in 2026, and win a narrow House majority. Trump is that unpopular. The economy is that infuriating people that we could win. But we should be thinking much bigger than that. We should be thinking about how to have a bigger majority.

1:09:33We should be thinking about how to win the Senate. And most importantly, we have to recognize that the demographics of this country are changing in a way that is going to make it impossible for the Democratic Party to win the Senate and win a presidential election unless we reshape our coalition. We become more popular with young people. We rebuild our coalition with Latinos. And if all we're thinking about, there's this short-termism that is, if we can just win this next election, we can all pat ourselves on the back and be happy without thinking about how to actually think big and think long-term, then we are going to be doomed to fail here.

1:10:06This is an infuriating, stupid, and self-defeating decision because of cowardice and caution and complacency. One of the reasons that we do what we do, and especially, you know, whether it's a message box with you and Polar Coaster or Wilderness or any of the things we do here at Crooked, is I think there's a group of Democratic establishment pollsters, strategists, staffers, officials, many of whom we've worked with, many of whom are very smart, great people, heart in the right place, who do all this research, have all this data, have all this experience, have been on all these campaigns. And there's this sort of like hoarding of information that they don't share with the rest of the public, which I think comes from like an old school model of, you know, what happens when there's too much information released and, you know, you get bad press forward or whatever else.

1:11:05And then the people that are not providing everyone else with the information that they have are the same people that then yell at and disparage activists and organizers and other volunteers online or elsewhere who are like saying stupid shit or don't get the politics or don't get this. And the reason that they don't get it is because they don't have the same information as the people in the, in the democratic establishment. And one thing we try to do is to talk to a lot of these people that will talk to us and share polling and share the information with people so that we can like make the audience who wants to also, by the way, volunteer and help on campaigns smarter.

1:11:44So when they're talking to voters, they know what's working and what's not. And just hoarding this information, hiding stuff from people, it's not only like counterproductive, it also feeds the distrust people have of the Democratic Party. And they think it's a fucking cabal. And you know what? On days like this, I agree. because it seems like they're just, it's like if you're in the club, you get the report and you get the information. For all you plebs out there, we think this is going to hurt the party. And so we don't want you to have the information. We just want us to have the information.

1:12:19The danger here isn't that the DCCC is going to get insight into the best way to win the election, right? Or the DSCC. Like the value of this is, it is the person running the state legislative campaign in Ohio. It is the person running, starting a long shot congressional bid in a Trump plus 15 district that we might be able to win here. It is the people who run local indivisible in swing left chapters. It's the people who are who are thinking of they may want to run. You know, they're thinking about signing up on the run for something website. Those are the people who would benefit from this information.

1:12:52I have talked to House candidates, House candidates that are like, you know, working with the DCCC. And they're like, oh, we listen to we listen to Pod Save America. or you're in the message box because you don't get a lot from the DTRIP or the DNC on messaging and what you're supposed to do. You're kind of on your own. And those are candidates. It's just, this is just, like to do all of the work and then just shelve the report is just like, it's just, it's an insane choice. If the report sucks and you realize the report sucks, say that, right? To say the idea, we did a great job, we have all the answers, but we're going to put them in a secret crypt somewhere because we don't want to upset our momentum from, losing a congressional race by 13 points less than we thought.

1:13:36This is a small point, but the idea that the public backlash from a report that is somehow embarrassing or bad or could cause some kind of fight is going to be worse than the public backlash from keeping a report secret here in the age of the Epstein files. What are we doing? That's a good idea. Hey, this report that I've been talking about for the full year, we're keeping it secret. and I'm letting everyone know. Hakeem, you're a DNC chair, Pam Bondi. What are we doing here? Hakeem Jeffries, you know what? Get us a discharge petition. Let's get this thing out. Anyway, look, we've talked to Ken Martin.

1:14:15We reached out. Hopefully he can come on and talk to us about this and we can have a civil argument about it because it really pissed me off a lot today. I'm quite angry about this. More than I expected it would. All right. One last thing before we go. In case you're worried, that the president's tireless focus on affordability is taking him away from his true passion, interior design. Fear not, Dan. He's been working on something special that you're sure to find both aesthetically pleasing and hilariously entertaining. You might remember the back in September, Trump added gold-framed portraits of all the U.S.

1:14:53presidents along the White House's West Colonnade, which he is now calling, quote, the presidential walk of fame. Again, this is an outdoor walkway. Now we're just hanging stuff up on it. The great joke at the time was that Joe Biden's portrait was a photo of an auto pen. Which was funny, I would say. Yeah. Mean, offensive, but funny. Very offensive, but funny. But apparently there's more where that came from in the comedy category. Trump has been personally writing out captions to go on engraved plaques below each presidential photo, which he unveiled on Wednesday. The Biden plaque begins, quote, sleepy Joe Biden was by far the worst president in American history.

1:15:39And it goes on from there. Keep in mind some of these plaques. The captions were so long that Trump himself wrote they needed two plaques to get all the caption so that the Biden one went on for two plaques. Barack Obama's reads, quote, Barack Hussein Obama was the first black president, a community organizer, one term senator from Illinois and one of the most divisive political figures in American history. It also mentions the, quote, Unaffordable Care Act. Bill Clinton's says that his wife later, quote, lost the presidency to President Donald J. Trump. Even Ronald Reagan's says that Reagan was, quote, a fan of President Donald J.

1:16:14Trump long before President Trump's historic run for the White House. time well spent Mr. President who is this shit for who is that for I truly have no idea it is stunning the lengths to which they will go to not work on making people's lives better ballrooms they read it in the Kennedy Center after Trump today just another thing they did you think he's just like sitting there in the oval just dictating the caption he's not writing anything he doesn't type I don't think he uses a pen other than a sharpie former golf caddy turned whatever he is now dan scavino wasn't he in the way he wasn't he was in the photo shoot too yeah so maybe they long day at the photo shoot they finish up and they're like we gotta you know it's this is a tough job the white house is there's no there's no off days there's no off hours so we're gonna stay up late work on these captions for all the presidents because we're only at millard fillmore and we got to get all the way to the end so um so then he's he's just this is what they're doing this is what they're doing with their time just it's so that but they can unveil it to reporters in hopes that we get mad, I guess.

1:17:22Barack Obama gets mad. Joe Biden gets mad. And then what? Like, what? It's just so stupid. It really is. The entire philosophy of the Republican Party over the last decade is just own the libs at all costs. And I think this is just a, like, I don't feel owned as a lib myself. Like, I do not care. No. I feel sort of, I feel like embarrassed for the country. Which I feel like, I mean, he does a million things every day. So it's not like high on my list of things that make me embarrassed for the country. But, you know, it's one of them. It's just, it's so. I don't feel mad. I just feel like you're a pathetic fucking loser.

1:17:57It's pathetic. It's just, the whole thing is pathetic. It's like, what are you doing? Relatedly, did you see the wonderful news that the board of the Kennedy Center, which is, of course, made up of handpicked Trump supporters, chaired by Trump himself, has taken a vote. Now, this surprised Trump. He didn't know this was going to happen. Not at all. Can't believe they did this. And they're renaming it the Trump Kennedy Center, even though that is not legal to do because it is named the Kennedy Center by law in a statute that was passed by Congress. And so much like the Department of Defense and the Gulf of Mexico, we now have the Trump Kennedy Center, which is not really the Trump Kennedy Center.

1:18:43Do you, wouldn't it be funny if that was a thing that took him down? The illegal renaming of things. It's like, January 6th, the crypto schemes. Official act. So, you know, John Roberts says it's okay. Yeah, it's just, also, it's interesting that they just didn't go full tilt and just name it at the Trump Center. Yeah, yeah, they wanted to. I think, I think because, He's for RFK. Well, no, I think that somehow makes it more, like they think that will troll people more to keep Kennedy in there. It's almost like it's like, fuck you, Kennedy family, because we're going to remind you that you're still part of it.

1:19:17But now Trump comes first. Who knows? Who the fuck knows? Like, are they going to change the signs, I guess? It's already changed on the website. They changed the website. Yeah. I mean, that's not surprising. But like, there's a lot of signage at the Kennedy Center. Yeah. The other website that changed this week was the FCC, which called itself an independent commission because it is an independent commission. and then when Brendan Carr was getting grilled by Congress and he refused to say that it's independent anymore, he couldn't say that, then 20 minutes after he said that, boom, independent came off the page.

1:19:47I would love to just see the email traffic or text traffic around that where he said it. They're like, to the website, get it to the website, get it down, there's still one thing left. Once again, more dumb, pointless shit. Also, Democratic president gets to the White House, God willing. like I also feel bad for the people they're gonna have to undo all this because it's gonna be like a first week thing you're gonna you're scraping all the plaques off the wall and the sign outside the oval office and all the other fucking bullshit you're taking the au bon ponk the yellow fucking umbrellas off the rose garden and what else there's a lot of shit yeah the ballroom that's a tough one Yeah, I have publicly, I've angered a lot of my message back subscribers by publicly arguing that we should not tear the ballroom down.

1:20:40But we should definitely rename the Kennedy Center and back the Kennedy Center. We should take a lot of the other stuff down for sure. Yeah. And then we should figure out some ways to troll Donald Trump if he's still kicking. I mean, we can leave his, what we do, keep the wall of presence, put his mug shot up. No, he'll love that. You know what we do? we put up the um the image of him that's been used on south park this season where he is naked except for his teeny tiny little penis oh the micro penis one that's a good one or and austin just pointed the picture of him and jeffrey epstein we could put that one oh that that's another good one which we have here in our office we look at all the time we like rename federal prisons after trump the trump epstein prison oh that's a good yeah rename rikers or rename the Club Fed where he sent Gley Maxwell.

1:21:29There's a lot of options. You know what? With the transition comes, President, Newsom, Shapiro, AOC, whoever, call me. This is what I want to work on. Petty shit. We will undergo an after-action report on this, interview a lot of people, come up with some ideas, and we pledge to release it. This is a great idea. We're going to need some content in early 2029. All right, Dan. That's our show for today. it's our last it's our last show of the year you and me yeah Austin yeah Austin's shaking his head I know I know this is the last one that you and I we've already recorded some other ones that are coming we've recorded 5 ,000 shows this week so that y 'all got plenty of content in your feeds over the two weeks but for the two of us Dan we're off until January wow I know what a time exciting and happy birthday happy early birthday December 24th birthday thank you happy birthday to Teddy and yeah yeah Teddy's the 22nd So Tommy's going to be back in the feed on Sunday with a conversation with Rahm Emanuel.

1:22:29Speaking of potential 2028 contenders, there's a, there's a, there's a chief of staff who ran a tight ship. As he'll tell you. And, and then we'll be back on Tuesday with the 2025 Pundis, which we just recorded yesterday. Very fun. So check that out. And everyone have a wonderful holiday. Merry Christmas. Happy new year. Happy Hanukkah. And talk to everybody soon. Bye everyone. 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.

1:23:08That 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 Illick-Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah 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.

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