That'll Leave a Denmark

Summary

Pod Save America – “That’ll Leave a Denmark” (Jan 20, 2026)

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode of Pod Save America delivers a sharp, satirical, and often exasperated breakdown of Donald Trump’s first anniversary back in the White House. The hosts—Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor—examine Trump’s escalating international antics (especially toward Scandinavia and Greenland), new tariffs, controversial pardons, political fallout at home (notably the ICE crackdown in Minneapolis), and the growing fractures—and opportunities—in American politics as the 2026 midterms approach. The episode also features an in-depth interview with Jason Zengerly on the rise of Tucker Carlson and what it means for conservative media.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Trump–Scandinavia Meltdown: Greenland, Tariffs, and “Peace” (01:53–18:42)

• Trump’s Year One: Escalating Foreign Fiascos
  • Trump marks his one-year return to the presidency by threatening military action against both Minneapolis and Greenland, imposing new tariffs on European allies, and tying foreign policy to personal vendettas, particularly over the Nobel Prize snub and Greenland acquisition (03:06–07:27).
  • “The logic of 'I’m not going to avoid killing people unless you give me a prize for it' is just such a sixth grader...” – Tommy Vietor (06:46)
  • Protests erupt in Europe and even at an NBA game in London in response to the Greenland debacle (05:02).
• Absurdity and Danger in Trump’s Demands
  • Hosts mock and analyze Trump’s claims that Denmark has no real claim to Greenland and point out the precedent for treaties (1916, 2004) acknowledging Danish sovereignty (08:33).
  • Discussion of European leaders’ tepid and dithering response; critique of Western allies’ reluctance to confront Trump directly—“They've sort of internalized a certain lesson of how you deal with Trump...” – Jon Lovett (10:09).
• Tariff Reality Check & Congressional Response
  • Tariffs justified by emergency powers: 96% of tariffs are paid by Americans, not foreigners. Congressional Republicans are more split on this than other issues, with even Ted Cruz on board for territorial expansion—highlighted by an ironic “blast from the past” clip of Cruz in 2016 warning Trump might nuke Denmark (15:01–16:21).
  • “He's creating the emergency, he’s the emergency.” – Jon Lovett (12:42)
• Trivializing World Affairs
  • Trump launches the “Board of Peace”—an ersatz, self-centered UN-like entity with a billion-dollar membership fee, loophole power plays (like inviting Putin), and ostensible peacebuilding aims that now ignore Gaza (20:03–23:39).
  • “Is Trump trying to start his own U.N. here? … But this just replaces it with Trump running the show.” – Tommy Vietor (21:05–22:37)

2. Corruption on Display: Pardons & GOP Enabling (24:09–29:07)

• Transactional & Repeated Pardons
  • Trump’s recent string of pardons involve outright quid-pro-quo donations, recidivist offenders, and clemency for relatives of loyalists—exposing the broken pardon system and the lack of legislative or judicial guardrails (24:09–28:13).
  • “We have now shown that this country cannot handle a pardon power. We gotta knock that thing off.” – Jon Lovett (26:50)
• Enabling Structure: Congress & Supreme Court
  • Hosts excoriate Republicans and Supreme Court for the culture of impunity: “The real people who are really at fault here are the founders... the Constitution is pretty clear that the pardon power is basically just unlimited.” – Dan Pfeiffer (28:13)

3. The Minneapolis Crackdown: ICE Raids, Insurrection Act, Escalating State Violence (31:56–55:07)

• Federal Authoritarianism & ICE Abuse
  • Up to 1,500 paratroopers and 200 National Guardsmen are on alert for deployment to Minnesota, as ICE agents run rampant—detaining, harassing, and teargassing innocent civilians and enforcing mass arrests, many of which are documented as targeting legal residents and citizens due to racial profiling (31:56–38:20).
  • “It’s just total impunity...I know the name Mark Rich because it was [a] defining scandal 25 years ago. It’s 25 years later. We know the name Mark Rich. Any one of these pardons is…more clearly a quid pro quo. We’ll forget these, we’ll move on in a couple days. That’s how far we’ve gone.” – Jon Lovett (25:04)
  • A family teargassed in their car—details of the ICE escalation, callousness, and subsequent lying and blame-shifting from DHS/Kristi Noem (33:25–39:19).
• A System Incentivizing Abuse
  • ICE agents motivated by quotas, not crime; turns to mass harassment and violence—statistics reveal most arrests target people with no criminal convictions (35:14–36:26).
  • DOJ investigating both Governor Waltz and Minneapolis’s Mayor for “interfering,” part of a broader pattern of using federal power to stifle dissent and criminalize political opposition (41:44–45:05).
• Bottomless Hypocrisy & Unraveling Social Fabric
  • Trump’s selectivity on “law and order” and the normalization of open lies, violence, and impunity; hosts stress increased danger and the risk of political violence spiraling out of control (46:08–52:52).
  • “As situations become more chaotic and more dangerous…what matters is no longer in our collective hands—it’s in the luck and happenstance and mindset of a few random people…And that is incredibly dangerous.” – Jon Lovett (48:07)
• Significant polling pressure
  • Trump’s team, recognizing growing backlash to ICE’s conduct and the political blowback, privately discuss “recalibrating their approach” (52:15).

4. 2026 Polling, The Democratic Brand, and the Midterm Outlook (59:47–66:15)

• Democrats’ Midterm Opportunities and Brand Crisis
  • Despite Trump’s low approval ratings and wild behavior, Democrats only hold a modest lead in generic polling (4–5 points). Large swings among highly motivated voters suggest potential for a wave—if the party can unify its message and capitalize on the moment (59:47–61:30).
  • Hosts debate whether negative party image comes from Democratic voters themselves or reflects a broader malaise; argue that midterms will be a referendum on Trump as much as the Democratic brand (62:08).
  • “My general response to these polls is that they're bad for Trump and bad for Democrats.” – Jon Lovett (60:46)
  • Discussion over the lack of unified Democratic messaging or vision, especially on issues like immigration and ICE, and how Democrats can’t simply ride anti-Trump sentiment forever (63:36–65:05).

5. 2028 Drama: Democratic Contenders’ Early Fights (69:05–76:40)

• Shapiro vs. Harris—Icy Veepstakes
  • Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s new book recounts friction with Kamala Harris during the 2024 VP selection process—a spat over vetting, loyalty, and even (absurdly) alleged ties to Israeli intelligence. Both sides publicly dismiss each other's accounts as “blatant lies” (69:36–74:40).
  • The hosts, rather than decry the drama, express appreciation for the candor: “I hope more politicians do the real beef airing out in the books. It is better, it is more fun...” – Jon Lovett (75:59).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump’s tantrums:
  • “The logic of 'I’m not going to avoid killing people unless you give me a prize for it' is just such a sixth grader...” – Tommy Vietor (06:46)
• On ICE in Minneapolis:
  • “They're grabbing people and not technically arresting them and then letting them go... They're being harassed and grabbed and intimidated and then thrown out of a car a few hours later.” – Jon Lovett (35:14)
  • “This would turn me into John Wick. I mean, that is like a radicalizing…” – Tommy Vietor (38:20)
• On Congressional impotence:
  • “Congress can’t by law stop the President from conducting a lawless invasion of Greenland does point to a deeper set of issues we're not willing to grapple with.” – Jon Lovett (18:46)
• On bipartisan foreign policy drift:
  • “We have now shown that this country cannot handle a pardon power. We gotta knock that thing off.” – Jon Lovett (26:50)
• On violence begetting violence:
  • “As situations become more chaotic and more dangerous…what matters is no longer in our collective hands...all of a sudden things can escalate because of one or two or three or five actors. And that is what makes it so dangerous.” – Jon Lovett (48:07)
• On 2026 polling:
  • “My general response to these polls is that they're bad for Trump and bad for Democrats.” – Jon Lovett (60:46)
• On Democratic messaging:
  • “I have no fucking idea what Democrats believe...not even on the technical policy, but like on a philosophical matter, like what the core Democratic vision is for the future.” – Jon Lovett (64:03)
• On Shapiro/Harris veepstakes:
  • “I hope more politicians do the real beef airing out in the books. It is better, it is more fun…” – Jon Lovett (75:59)

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Interview: Jason Zengerly on Tucker Carlson and the Future of the Conservative Media (80:20–END)

Tucker as Mirror of Conservatism (80:20–92:03)

• Zengerly, author of “Hated by All the Right People,” argues that Tucker Carlson’s career arc—from bow-tied CNN host and magazine journalist, through Fox News kingmaker, to MAGA-adjacent right-wing media mogul—reflects deeper, structural changes in the conservative movement and its media landscape.
• “He’s a remarkably entertaining figure...Say what you will about Trump, but that is one of his superpowers…For the last ten years or so [Tucker's radar for the audience] has been operating on the highest level.” – Jason Zengerly (81:27)
• Jon Stewart’s infamous takedown of Carlson on Crossfire (2004) marked a turning point; the subsequent resentment and sense of betrayal fueled Tucker’s journey toward outcast and, ultimately, right-wing populist icon (88:00–89:53).

The Incentives of Extremism: From Fox to Full Fringe (94:31–111:02)

• Zengerly describes how, now unmoored from network restraints, Tucker courts outrage and audience growth by platforming neofascist figures like Nick Fuentes.
• “I think Tucker realized you can’t be successful in that world unless you have the groypers and the neo-Nazis on your side…he had Fuentes on his show and did this softball interview...an olive branch to try to defuse the feud because he was worried he was going to lose these people.” – Jason Zengerly (101:12–103:40)
• The growing bond between Carlson and J.D. Vance is flagged as particularly significant and potentially dangerous for the Republican party’s direction.

Will Tucker Run for President? (107:45)

• Zengerly argues Carlson is no longer just a media personality but a political actor and kingmaker with “a very tight symbiotic” relationship with the likely future of Trumpism.
• “He wants power...He believes what he’s saying...and he believes them in some ways more deeply than a lot of people in Donald Trump’s world.” – Jason Zengerly (110:01)

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Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• Trump-Scandinavia Escalation: 03:06–18:42
• Corrupt Pardons & Congressional Enabling: 24:09–29:07
• Minnesota/ICE Crackdown: 31:56–55:07
• Polling & 2026 Midterm Outlook: 59:47–66:15
• 2028 Democratic Fractures: 69:05–76:40
• Jason Zengerly Interview – Tucker Carlson: 80:20–111:57

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Overall Tone & Style

The tone is quintessential Pod Save America: irreverent, frustrated, darkly comedic, but anchored in an earnest concern for the fate of American democracy. The hosts deftly mix policy analysis with sharp humor, exasperated sarcasm, and biting critique.

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Takeaways for Non-Listeners

This episode encapsulates both the bleak absurdity and urgent stakes of the Trump era’s second act—where U.S. foreign policy becomes a personal sitcom plot, institutions fail to provide any check, the opposition struggles for traction, and the right’s internal radicalization accelerates. The in-depth interview with Jason Zengerly further illuminates how these trends mutate through a media ecosystem ever more loyal to spectacle and outrage than to facts or accountability.

Transcript

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

[Jon Lovett]

I'm Jon Lovett.

[Tommy Vietor]

And Tommy Vitor.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

On today's show, we will celebrate two of history's greatest advocates for peace, Martin Luther King Jr. And Donald Trump, by talking about the latter's threat to invade Minnesota and Greenland. We'll also talk about Trump's new tariffs, his latest corrupt pardons, and polling that shows he's dragging down his party's midterm chances. We'll also touch on the beef brewing between potential 2028 contenders on the Democratic side. And then Tommy talks to our pal Jason Zengerly. About his new book published by Crooked Media Reads that explores the rise of Tucker Carlson. It's called Hated by All the Right People and you can pre order it right now.

[Tommy Vietor]

I both highly recommend folks listen to the interview with Jason because he's really smart, has been following Tucker forever, has known him forever. But also the book is incredible. It's like an amazing look at who Tucker Carlson is, the arc of his career from kind of like across the mainstream media. Guys, remember Tucker Carlson worked at MSNBC for a while.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Sure.

[Tommy Vietor]

Remember that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's more. Is it more of a hagiography?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, but it sort of tracks his trajectory and what he has become and how that helps you understand the MAGA movement and the incentive structure in the media in 2026. It's just. It's truly excellent. Check it out.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Very excited to read it. But first, we are now a year into Trump's second term and as expected, the forces of freedom on both sides of the Atlantic are rallying to stop the President from capturing Minneapolis and Nuke, especially now that Caracas has fallen. Trump announced over the weekend that he'll be imposing a new 10% tariff on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland that he will raise to 25% by June if Denmark doesn't let the US buy Greenland, a purchase that along with the tariffs, would be paid for by us, the American taxpayer. Then, in a wildly successful demonstration of his mental fitness, our octogenarian leader texted Norway's Prime Minister, Jonas Gar Storr, that because Norway decided not to award Trump the Nobel Peace Prize, a decision that, again, the Norwegian government has nothing to do with, he quote, no longer feels an obligation to think purely of peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Trump then questioned why Denmark has a right to Greenland anyway. Writing quote, there are no written documents. It's only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but also we had boats landing there. The world is not secure. This is how he ends it. The world is not secure unless we have complete and total control of Greenland. Thank you, President djt. Protests erupted in Nuuk, Copenhagen and other European cities, including in an NBA game in London during the national anthem. Let's listen. America's hot right now. Hottest country in the world. Golden age.

[Tommy Vietor]

Good stuff.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So I guess Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Machado was a little too late in giving her her peace prize to Trump. So now we're going to war with Scandinavia. Is that what's. Is that what's happening.

[Jon Lovett]

It was really, was a. There was something about this weekend being the one year mark and all these things overlapping kind of hit me at once. We're going to talk about it. But Greg Bevino marching around Minneapolis like gay Generalissimo Franco and like the barely literate threats to fucking Norway over Greenland via text.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Do you think there was any emojis in the text? Was it.

[Tommy Vietor]

So it was a text. It was described as a letter in.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Most everyone's described it as a letter. But the Times, which I, you know, trust the New York Times, it was a text. And then they of course retrofitted the text into a letter and then. And then that. That was what happened.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, man. A lot of texts give you anxiety.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Imagine that one. I guess. I guess the. The Norwegian prime minister texted Trump first along. And I think he had the Finnish Prime Minister on the text chain as well. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

So that's a green bubble chat right there. You Android City.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And then Trump responded in kind.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, my God.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, it's pretty bleak. And I was really thinking about what would it have been like one year ago, the night before Donald Trump is inaugurated and you can't sleep and so you go to social media and you say, here's some things I'm worried about. You would have been said to be a crazy person. Very much so. What are you talking about? Cooler heads will prevail.

[Tommy Vietor]

Tds.

[Jon Lovett]

Hmm. And here we are.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The invasion of Minneapolis. I might have. I might have been worried about.

[Jon Lovett]

Sure, yeah, sure.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Greenland did not see coming.

[Jon Lovett]

No. That's a surprise. That is a surprise.

[Tommy Vietor]

I have to say. Like, there's so much about this that's amazing to me. Like the logic of I'm not going to avoid killing people unless you give me a prize for it is just such like a sixth grader. Like, I'm not even going to do my. If you won't let me play Xbox. Like, why even bother trying my homework. Also, yeah, as you mentioned in sitting members of Parliament are not allowed to be on the Nobel Committee because they didn't want it to be seen as like a government award. I would also point out that the argument that boats landing somewhere a few hundred years ago doesn't mean you own the place will come as a surprise to a lot of these kind of right wing heritage Americans who think they were the first residents of North America. And then like, I just, it's worth. It's exhausting. I do want to just repeat that Trump has not solved eight wars.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Eight plus.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, not even close. He says he ended a war between Egypt and Ethiopia that was never fought. Like, I don't know how to say that differently. There was never one. They have a long standing diplomatic dispute over a hydroelectric dam project, but there was never war. He also includes Israel and Iran in there. You guys might recall the United States bombed Iran as part of that conflict, which doesn't feel very Nobel Peace Prizey. And I just, I do want to quickly point out, I try not to do this often, but with respect to Iran, Trump is probably directly responsible for getting thousands of Iranian protesters killed because he tweeted that he would, quote, rescue them. Protesters, if they go to the street, they should take to the streets, take over their government. Then there was a huge crackdown by the Iranian regime. And it seems like the regime saw that tweet, decided to massacre the protesters before Trump could actually make a decision. And then Trump had tweeted this without his, you know, team getting together to review options or without having an aircraft carrier in the region that could actually facilitate some sort of operation. And then there was this massive crackdown and he's since done nothing about it. So, like, I just would love the press to give this a fraction of the coverage they gave the Syria redline with Obama because it is essentially the same thing, but whatever.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Seems like he put as much thought into that as he did the text to Norway.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes, here we are.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Also, we did sign a treaty with Denmark in 1916 where we recognized their sovereignty over Greenland. We then signed a defense agreement in 2004 recognizing Greenland as an equal part of the Kingdom of Denmark. In the treaty that we signed way back when, that's when the Danes gave us the Virgin Islands for $25 million in gold.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's a good deal.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It was a good deal back then.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, you guys are making some pretty good fudgeing nuts. Yeah, I was going to say, it's like, it's like you're kind of used logic to persuade a silverback gorilla to put that woman who fell into the. To the. To the Harambeer down. No, I'm not talking about Harambe.

[Tommy Vietor]

There's another gorilla incident.

[Jon Lovett]

Oh, man. Basically, you think that's the first time a gorilla's ripped off somebody's face?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, no.

[Jon Lovett]

Grow up, grow up. They'll come for you.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Danish combat forces have arrived in Greenland just, just hours before this recording.

[Tommy Vietor]

I was reading about some of those European deploy teen German troops. What are we doing here?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I think the Danes have upped it today, which is good. This is my thing though. Like what the year we're all trying to do the, like, yeah, he's wrong because of this, that and the other thing. But, like, so are the European leaders so far. Like, some of them are a little further out there. And like, this is ridiculous. And then, you know, like, Keir Starmer's out there being like, well, we don't want to. There's gotta be some kind of a diplomatic solution to all this, right? Why don't they just put a bunch of fucking tanks in Greenland and be like, all right, go for it. You want to, you want to start a war within NATO, go for it, Trump. Trump's not going to do that.

[Tommy Vietor]

They don't have a lot of tanks.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Whatever they have, what do they have?

[Tommy Vietor]

Buy them from us.

[Jon Lovett]

They're all.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Wouldn't choose.

[Jon Lovett]

I think they're all kind of, they've sort of internalized a certain lesson of how you deal with Trump as well. Like, this is like the rude lesson, which is you can disagree amicably, but if you start to do anything that challenges his ego, it gets worse. And they're seeing if there's a way that they can agree themselves out of a war for the territory of Greenland. I, I've like told this before, but I do remember hearing kind of an historian of Denmark and Greenland talking about how hard it is to, to sort of exist in Greenland, how unforgiving it is. And his joke was that if anyone ever tried to invade Greenland, Denmark would have no choice but to rescue them. So I do think some of the, the harsh nature of the terrain is.

[Tommy Vietor]

Is part of it quite cold.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

See that NBC story, too, that Trump has been, he's starting to complain about Canada's vulnerability in the Arctic. The Arctic, the northern border of Canada.

[Jon Lovett]

I saw that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

No conversations yet about sending any troops there or taking over Canada. I mean, we did do the 50, 50 first state thing a while back, but he's, he's getting annoyed. So this is how it starts.

[Jon Lovett]

Can I go, Can I go full blue sky for a moment? This place I'm not on. If you were to write down the list of the things a president would do to destroy America's standing in the world and make a Sopria nation and kind of destroy our long term prospects as a leading economy, is there anything that you'd be doing differently than what Trump is doing? Or is this just the full list of things you would do to hand the world order over to China and.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Russia via a dispute over Greenland, which is the most absurd, funniest, and stupidest, and thus typically American Way to do it with our TV host at the head of the government. So it is in some ways fitting.

[Tommy Vietor]

And don't take John's word for it, the oligarch that, you know, the United States was negotiating with over the future of Gaza, in Ukraine, I mean, Dmitriev Kirill, or whatever the hell his name is, made exactly that joke on Twitter. He's mocking, mocking us.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. The tariffs are also. We haven't even talked about the tariffs like the. Because the, the text kind of took over the tariff story today.

[Tommy Vietor]

General Dmitryv, Sorry, I got.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But like we're now, we're doing, we're going back into. We're levying tariffs on ourselves again. Right. There's a new study out. 96% of the tariffs so far have been borne by Americans. Only 4% on foreign exporters. So now we're just charging Americans more for these, these tariffs because of Greenland. And then if we end up buying Greenland as opposed to taking it by force, where's that money coming from? I know, I know. He'll probably say, oh, it's coming from the oil or the sale of the rare earth minerals, but that's just a lie. So obviously it's going to come from the treasury, so that's going to be more money from us too. So that's great. Well, also good way to, good way to deal with costs.

[Jon Lovett]

What is the limit of these tariffs exactly? The emergency authority he's been abusing to put these tariffs in place. He's creating the emergency. He, he's the emergency. Greenland. The emergency is we must take Greenland and we must have terrorists until we have Greenland. Besson was asked about this on television. He basically kind of Fumford and had no defense for the claim that the emergency is we want Greenland. What the fuck is he talking about?

[Tommy Vietor]

Someone said the emergency was preventing an emergency.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes, that's right. The emergency is preventing an emergency.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, by the time you guys listen to this, the Supreme Court could have struck down the tariffs, but they're also ready. The trade representative says he's ready with new tariffs that somehow are, are gonna be more legal than these. So they're all going to Davos. They're all gonna, it's all going down to Davos this week. Trump's going there with the, with the other European leaders. I just wanna read you guys. This is just sort of a sign of the times right now. This is a headline from Politico. A lead from Politico. The fear had been that Davos might be slipping into irrelevance no more. US President Donald Trump may be at odds with the rules based, consensus led global leadership that World Economic Forum stalwarts espouse, but they owe him thanks this time. A record number of world leaders are attending only because he is.

[Tommy Vietor]

Are you kidding me? That is the, that is so stupid.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, yeah, that's what, that's what Politico sent. That's there. What, that's, that's, that's, that's something that's happening there.

[Tommy Vietor]

What does that even mean? Like, no, no world leader benefits from Davos being a place people want to go to.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The headline, it's, it's Politico Forecast, which is a new newsletter that I have been sent non consensual by Politico. And it is, the headline is Trump Makes Davos matter again.

[Tommy Vietor]

This is what we're, this is what that.

[Jon Lovett]

I'm so discouraged.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It is discouraging. I also, we have a bipartisan delegation that is like meeting with the Danes and you got to think like, what, how impotent Congress is that? Like, now we send bipartisan, we send CODELs abroad, bipartisan delegations to be like, they're trying to reassure NATO and the European allies that we're not actually going to take Greenland by force, but they can't do that because they're not actually going to, they're not actually going to do anything. We talked about how around 75% of Americans oppose acquiring Greenland. Over 90% oppose acquiring Greenland by force, including most Republicans, which is why more Republicans in Congress are breaking with Trump on this than almost any other issue. Though you can already see some of them starting to get a bit more comfortable with Trump's imperialist ambitions. Here's Ted Cruz over the weekend.

[Jason Zengerly]

I believe it is overwhelmingly in America's national interest to acquire Greenland. Some folks in the press, they clutch.

[Tommy Vietor]

Their pearls and they say, well, what.

[Jason Zengerly]

Do you mean, acquiring Greenland? How could that happen? Look, the whole history of America has been a history of acquiring new lands and new territories.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, that's just, that's just the way it is. We just acquire things.

[Jon Lovett]

And I just thought like, we kind of, we got to the Pacific Ocean and yeah. Some exceptions beyond that, but we felt like that's, that's the meat of it.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

You know, you know, like there's going to be, there's Alaska and there's Hawaii and we've had some, we had some, you know, a kind of a little empire going for a while. There's some territories like. Oh, that's right, Guam. Huh. I don't remember what that was about. I think somebody did we go some new. Blew up some nuclear bombs near there for a while when we were being the best country in the world. But, but, but we're good now. I thought, I felt like we were kind of good.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The sun, the sun must never set on the Mar A Lago empire.

[Jon Lovett]

I thought we're going to do like tech stuff. That was going to be our new thing. Our empire was to be with tech stuff.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I thought. What was, what was particularly notable about Cruz's comments there is that here he is in 2016 speaking to us from the future.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, we're liable to wake up.

[Jason Zengerly]

One morning and Donald, if he were.

[Tommy Vietor]

President, would have nuked Denmark. That's not the temperament of a leader.

[Jason Zengerly]

To keep this country safe.

[Tommy Vietor]

Nailed it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Nailed it.

[Tommy Vietor]

Wow, Ted.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

How did he know? Now he's all for. Now he's like, let's do it.

[Jon Lovett]

Lay off, Heidi.

[Tommy Vietor]

That was when he was yelling about that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

How are you guys feeling about whether the, the overwhelming resistance to Trump taking Greenland will stop him from doing it?

[Tommy Vietor]

I do wonder if Ted Cruz saw what happened to Bill Cassidy in Louisiana, getting a Trump endorsed primary opponent and wondered if that could be me. But anyway, I mean, I think that in terms of stopping Trump, I fear that his preoccupation these days is more with legacy than any kind of political standing or. And I think he thinks that adding Greenland to his resume, territorial expansion could be like his historical legacy item. In theory, I guess Congress could pass legislation to prevent hostilities. There could be like some sort of war Powers Act. There could be, you know, barring funding for a Greenland operation. But I think you'd need a veto proof majority. And then I think even if you got that, Trump would just be like, well, I don't care because under Article 2 of the Constitution, I'm going to do whatever I want. So then, you know, you kind of get out like, okay, what comes next? It's like massive protests, a general strike that shuts down the economy. Like, I don't see Americans caring that much about Greenland or NATO. But then internationally, to your point, I mean, it's like Europe needs to work together and decide they care enough to respond. And that means either enormous tariffs on the US or the EU actually has a specific provision called the anti coercion tool that is designed for this scenario. It's designed for us doing this or China doing something like this that could basically shut off access to the European market. It would create a trade war. It would further eviscerate NATO. It would make you question, you know, whether the US Would back any of these countries if the Russians invaded them and all sorts of other problems. But it's just, you know, no one has figured out how to respond effectively.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. I interviewed Senator Gallego on Friday's show and he said he introduced a bipartisan legislation to stop the Greenland thing. He thinks he could get like a bunch of Republicans. But I don't, like you said, I don't know if you're gonna get 60. And then does he even pay attention? I mean, Democrats could. I just saw someone on Twitter be like, they should shut down the government over Greenland. Yes, we can shut down the government of Greenland. Ice, health care. We could do it all again.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, we can only shut down parts of the government because of the, you know, there'll be some other spending bills that Democrats will have already approved by the time we get to that. But yeah, it's worth sort of taking a moment to say what should happen. And of course, what should happen is he should be impeached. Removed from office immediately.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yep. Yeah. Just one of many things on that list. Just this week.

[Jon Lovett]

It's like, oh, the fact that it's probably, you're probably right. That Congress can't by law stop the President from conducting a lawless invasion of Greenland does point to sort of a deeper set of issues that we're not willing to, to grapple with the tariffs that he's applying and he's doing with authorities lent to him by Congress that they could take back at any moment, but they are choosing not to. So they are going to allow Americans to pay, as you said, 96%. And that is, you know, whatever their claims are, we are paying basically the entire cost of this tax. There's. That is the evidence. That is from the Wall Street Journal. That is the evidence. It's not. We are paying it. So he. That the Republicans in Congress are cool with imposing a massive tax on Americans because Trump wants Greenland a topic none of them even knew was going to be a topic a year ago.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I also like, there's a lot of people who are like tweeting that national security strategy. They're like, you don't see the word Greenland anywhere in this. And I'm like, you got him.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Real contract driven guy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Consistency is really the name of the game there.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, we were in the end user license agreement phase. That'll do it.

[Tommy Vietor]

I did notice the S and P is like a half a percent off. Its all time high. So I think the business World assumes this is just another taco scenario and Trump will give up on this, but who knows?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We shall see. Now, in fairness, Trump did say that even though he no longer feels obligated to think purely of peace, it will still be predominant. Which is probably why invites went out over the weekend to world leaders asking them to join Trump's Board of Peace, which, while originally discussed as an entity to help oversee the rebuilding of Gaza, no longer mentions Gaza in the draft charter that's been published and is now being talked about by the administration as an international peace building organization. Among the leaders who scored an invite is international war criminal Vladimir Putin. No word on how many countries will pony up the $1 billion fee that Trump is charging to become a permanent member. You get the first three years free. It's a little like it's a Columbia. Sure, first three years free on the board, but then if you want a permanent seat, that's one bill, and it's.

[Tommy Vietor]

Ads free, and you get a NATO country if you do the full term.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I have a few questions on this one. What happened at the Gaza part? Also, is Trump trying to start his own UN here? Is that what's going on?

[Jon Lovett]

Well, if you're gonna start a un, you do need to put Vladimir Putin on the peace Council. That is the sort of the UN vibe. This is the first time it made me think they were like, the un. I can't wait to see who's on his Human Rights Council. So, yeah, I'm pretty psyched.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, this. So, like, what he announced is, I think, equal parts confusing and stupid. So I'll try to unpack it. I just. On the Gaza piece, it's worth noting that there's a ceasefire in name only. There's, like, airstrikes constantly. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire was announced. Hamas is not disarmed. They have been attacking. Israel occupies half the Gaza Strip, so it's just a fucking mess. So there's a bunch of things they announced. I'll try to unpackage this quickly. So the Times of Israel had the full text of the Charter of the Board of Peace, and as you noted, it does not mention Gaza. It seems like the goal is to replace the United nations, but without all that annoying input from the other 192 countries that are part of the UN it's just like the US decides unless they're rich. Well, the new answer, as he says, Trump is basically in charge. He gets to pick who's on the board. He gets to veto decisions even if they are Approved by a majority of the board's members. It seems like the plan is for him to personally serve on the board as the chairman in perpetuity and then name his successor. This is not like a slot for the president. I'm pretty sure it's like a for him thing. And in many ways, like the billion dollar fee is like the least of the problems with this thing because there's also an executive board under the leader level board that is Jared Kushner, Rubio, Tony Blair, random business dudes like Mark Rowan from Apollo Global Management. So there's a big crony capitalism piece here, but these are the people that are sort of like day to day running the things and they're going to.

[Jon Lovett]

Solve the Middle east first.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

And then there's another thing called the Gaza Executive Board that runs reconstruction in Gaza, but the Israelis hate that because it has reps from Qatar and Turkey. There's another thing called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. That's like Palestinian technocrats. It's supposed to be the Palestinian government, but just on the board of peace, like, as you said, I'm the first to admit, like, the UN is a mess. It's been broken for decades. And the problem is, you know, the UN Security Council, like you get the us, Russia or China vetoing whatever goes through it that matters. But this just replaces it with Trump running the show. There's the absurdity of inviting the Russians as they're waging war with Ukraine. There's the absurdity of doing this while we're threatening Greenland, which is why the French said no. I was told by someone, the UK said no. So I just don't know what they're doing here. It's like a one pager to replace the un.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Trump calls it the greatest board ever. Greatest board ever. Think you're gonna score an invite surfboard.

[Jon Lovett]

I wonder what the kind of liabilities are for being on that kind of a board. What are the fiduciary responsibilities? How often does it meet?

[Tommy Vietor]

It's interesting to see at least once a year.

[Jon Lovett]

At least once a year. At least once a year.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I did see that some of the European leaders. Again, this is like this sort of the Greenland stance as well. They're like, well, this is obviously fucking crazy, but we don't want to piss them off more. So like maybe do you have to say yes to the board?

[Jon Lovett]

Piss him off.

[Tommy Vietor]

Jesus Christ, when are these people gonna stand up and do something? Collective action, guys, look at Jerome Powell's video.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Just do that.

[Jon Lovett]

You know, why aren't more people being inspired by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You know what, the heroes come in the, in the oddest forms these days.

[Jon Lovett]

That's right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So if you can't afford Trump's billion dollar Board of Peace fee, don't worry, you can still buy a pardon for a few million bucks. Last week, Trump pardoned a Venezuelan banker charged with felony bribery after his daughter donated $2.5 million to Trump's super PAC. He pardoned another convicted fraudster for the second time. After Trump commuted her sentence in 2021, she committed fraud again. Guess she learned her lesson. She was convicted again in 2024.

[Jon Lovett]

She did learn her lesson. I can get away with fraud and it's fine.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And then Trump just pardoned her again. And then because the President cares so much about drug trafficking, he commuted the sentence of a guy who was convicted of dealing meth. Just happened to be the son of a Trump loving Republican congressman. So that's why that happened. I feel like those drug boats from Venezuela might have a better chance if they just carry a bunch of cash with them. Let all the drones in the sky know, like, we have money for you, Mr. Trump.

[Tommy Vietor]

Take this.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, it's, you know, I know the name Mark Rich because it was defining scandal 25 years ago. It's 25 years later. We know the name Mark Rich. Any one of these pardons is certainly these sort of, I donate your super pac, then get a pardon, then get another commutation, then another pardon. I mean, these are on the level, if not more, I mean, more clearly a quid pro quo. We'll forget these will move on in a couple days. That's how far we've gone. And we focus on the Trump of it. What is making this possible? Senate Republicans are making this possible. Look, it is not surprising, I guess, at this point that they really will look past virtually everything. But taken in totality, they are responsible. They are the ones that are responsible for this, because there's never gonna be hearing about this. There's never gonna be an investigation of this. The Department of Justice is fully and completely captured. It does not investigate the administration. It only investigates the administration's adversary. So there's no hope there. Trump is being enabled by these people and the pardon power, which, you know, it's sort of like you get the responsibilities you can handle. And we have now shown that this country cannot handle a pardon power. We gotta knock that thing off. The next time we can start talking about a constitutional amendment.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You know what that reminded me of too is have you Seen these comments from Thom Tillis over the last week. So he's like, this Greenland thing is crazy. What is he doing? But he's still. This guy is retiring. He's safe now. He doesn't owe Trump anything. And he's out there like, you know, I don't think Trump wants to do this Greenland thing. I think it's his advisors. And those advisors, whoever's advising him on Greenland is going to sully his legacy.

[Tommy Vietor]

So dumb.

[Jon Lovett]

Mm.

[Jason Zengerly]

It's just not.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What, like, what are you.

[Tommy Vietor]

So clearly not the case?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Like, no. No one wants to look into this. No one wants to stand. They just don't fucking care.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. His advisor is like sleep paralysis demon Roy Cohn. How are you gonna get through to that guy? The ghost of an 80s monster who visits him in the night.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I love it. I would add to your list the Supreme Court, who basically give him just absolute immunity and the power to do these pardons. I was listening to an interview with Trump's former pardon attorney who was like, kind of the first person fired for questioning this process because she thought maybe it was a bad idea to give Mel Gibson his gun license back because he's like a serial domestic abuser and they tend to shoot people. So that was a canary in the coal mine. But yeah, the examples you read are just like so far beyond the pale, it's hard to know what to do with them. It's pure bribery. There's all these Trump connected officials that have started a business around this. Like, they're getting fees of like, up to a million dollars just to buy pardons. And just on the specific drug, specific pardons, we've talked about Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president Honduras, who got sentenced to 45 years for conspiring to traffic 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S. then there was Ross Ulbricht, who founded the Silk Road, which is that online marketplace that prosecutors say facilitated roughly $1 billion in. In drug sales. He got a pardon. He was also accused of hiring a hitman to kill five different people. Five. And there's just so many examples. Like there's the crypto CEOs who paid bribes for pardons, but most people will just never hear about it. There's never going to be a hearing on Capitol Hill about it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I mean, this is the. The real. The people who are really at fault here are the founders. Because in fairness to the court, the Constitution is pretty clear that the pardon power is basically just unlimited.

[Jason Zengerly]

And yeah, it's a botch for sure.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's a botch. It's a botch. And if, if we ever had the ability to sort of pass another constitutional amendment that would be right for that, though, you know?

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, I would say form is a.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Good issue for somebody, but but it has to be an amendment.

[Jon Lovett]

In defense of the framers, I would say that there were a few guardrails that they probably would have thought would have kicked in before we got here.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Impeachment was supposed to be the punishment for abusing the pardon power, just like it's the punishment for all the things that Trump has done.

[Jon Lovett]

And if Merrick Garland had been given a prescription For Vyvanse in 2021, maybe things could have moved a little faster and this guy could have been in fucking jail by now. So there's a lot of things that happened that had a lot of things had to go wrong. Cascade of failures that he could abuse the pardon powder in this way.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Mitch McConnell, that's Mitch McConnell, had the chance after January 6th, could have done it, didn't do it. Mitch's fault Foreign.

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

Let'S talk about the other place Trump is threatening with military action Minneapolis. Multiple outlets reported over the weekend that the Pentagon had ordered about 1500 active duty US army paratroopers stationed in Alaska to prepare for possible deployment to Minnesota in the event that Trump invokes the Insurrection Act. The Department of Defense also alerted around 200 Texas National Guard troops about possible deployment to Minnesota, even though governor Tim Walls has already mobilized the state's National Guard. Over 3,000 armed federal agents from ICE and other agencies are still terrorizing Minneapolis. They are arresting US Citizens and legal residents based on their accents or skin color or just cases of mistaken identity. They're assaulting unarmed, peaceful residents, some who are protesting, others who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is all despite a court ruling from a federal judge on Friday that prohibits ICE from using tear gas and other crowd Dispersal tools against, quote, peaceful and unobstructive protesters, and says they can't detain or arrest protesters who merely follow ICE at a safe distance. Governor Waltz and Minneapolis's Mayor Jacob Fry have urged ICE to leave and asked protesters to remain peaceful. And for that, the Trump administration has also launched a criminal investigation into both men for simply speaking. Kristi Noem, our wretched excuse for Homeland Security secretary, was grilled on all of this by Margaret Brennan on CBS this Weekend. Here's all the lies she told in Minneapolis.

[Kristi Noem]

This family with six children, with one as young as six months old, got kind of caught in the incident as they were driving to basketball practice. ICE released a canister of tear gas, and the mother described giving her infant cpr. We're showing that video there. The family was caught up in that situation because of violent protesters that were impeding law enforcement operations. And are your agents going to. Has asked him to. Sorry. With the federal order on Friday to not use chemical agents, that federal order was a little ridiculous because that federal judge came down and told us we couldn't do what we already aren't doing. We. We are. We just saw video of chemical agents being used. We only use those chemical agents when there's violence happening. What's the breakdown of the percentage of those who you have in custody who have actually committed a criminal offense versus just the civil infraction? Every single individual has committed a crime, but 70% of them have committed or have charges against them on violent crimes. It's not 70%. Yes, it is. It absolutely is. 70% of everyone. Keep changing your percentage. You pick and choose what numbers you think work. Okay, well, our Reporting is that 47%, based on your agency's own numbers, 47% have criminal convictions against them. But let's talk about the other numbers. Wrong again. Absolutely. We'll get you the correct numbers so you can use them in the future. Well, that's from your agency.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Just. They all lie. The whole administration lies. Department of Homeland Security lies. They don't even try to come up with good lies anymore or even believable lies or anything like that. They just casually say whatever comes to mind. Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

One thing also, I just is, whatever the statistics, there's a lot of stuff that's not being measured right now that's they're grabbing people and not technically arresting them and then letting them go. They're keeping them for hours, maybe longer. We don't really know. And we don't. Are those things being documented? Are they being written down anywhere? They're not Technically arrested because these are people that can't be arrested. They haven't committed any crimes, but they're being harassed and grabbed and intimidated and then thrown out of a car a few hours later. Is that in their statistics for who they're picking up or no? I assume not because I don't know that anyone's writing it down. And the people doing the grabbing are wearing masks and accountable to no one.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it's just, it's total impunity. I mean, she will lie about anything. She will deny reality, she will blame anyone but Trump. They don't care if a mom gets shot in the face three times. They don't care if a baby gets tear gassed. Kristi Noem doesn't care about disgracing herself and humiliating herself on national television. It's like audience of one shit. And you know, there's just, there's good stats on this. I mean, she's just wrong and lying like Ms. Now at a story where they said of those arrested by ICE and held in ICE detention, the majority have no criminal convictions. More have no criminal convictions at all than have convictions or pending charges. 92% of increases in ICE arrests are people with no criminal history. And you know, the budget for ICE went from 10 billion to 30 billion. We're just wasting so much money on this.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I was so angry about this over the weekend. I sort of went deep on the story of the family that was driving back from the basketball game. Because you're like, okay, how did this happen? They're driving back from the basketball game, they run into a bunch of ICE agents and they blocking their path. They immediately start screaming profanities at them. They've got an 11 year old, 7 year old, 4 year old, twins, 2 year old and the 6 month old baby in a van and the two parents and they start screaming at them. They're like, get out of here, get out of here. They're like, well, get out of our way, we'll get out of here. You know, and they're worried because the parents later said they're worried about Renee Goode, what happened to her. So they're like freaking out. And then they feel an explosion under the car. The car lifts up off the ground, airbags release, the doors all lock. So now they're trapped in the car and the car's filling up with gas and all the kids are getting tear gassed. Neighbors run out of the houses. They pull the kids out of the car of the van and the last one they pull out of the van is the infant who's not breathing and not conscious. And the mother starts doing CPR on the baby, but like can't really breathe herself. And so she was like having trouble. Finally begs the ICE agents to let. ICE agents are standing around, don't do anything. Begging the ICE agents to let the EMTs through. They won't. Finally a Minneapolis police officer gets through. The ICE agents gets the baby, brings them to the hospital, and then the baby starts breathing again. And this family is like completely traumatized. The first tweet from the Department of Homeland Security is, these parents are violent agitators who should not have brought their children to a Protestant. Then they delete it because they're liars. Trisha McLaughlin's a fucking liar. Disgusting.

[Tommy Vietor]

She's the worst.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The worst. And so then they start. Now their new line is, well, it's the protesters fault because since there were protesters nearby, the protesters forced the ICE agents to explode a canister under a car that they knew was carrying six children because they had been talking to the people.

[Tommy Vietor]

This would turn me into John Wick. I mean, that is like a radicalizing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But this is what. And it's like, is there no apology coming to this? Like no apology? No like we will try to do better. No nothing? Like Christine Ohm just stands there, sits there, looks at Margaret Brennan and has like just no emotion about it whatsoever. Like no fucking empathy for this family. She's a grandmother, she's a mother. Nothing.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, the, the, the. How did that first post go up? Right? How does the first post go up?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

They had no information.

[Jon Lovett]

They had no.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Because Trisha just lies.

[Jon Lovett]

They just.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

She has no information. She lies all the time.

[Jon Lovett]

And then they did feel compelled to delete it, right? Which is something of a capitulation that they've not done in a lot of other cases. So must be probably why they don't do it, right? Well, it was so obvious this, There was some reason about this case that was so obvious. They didn't feel like they could slime this family. But the fact that their first indictment was supposed to just complete falsehoods and the fact that here they're at least acknowledging they're doing the courtesy of this family of not blaming them for their own, for the, for ICE attacking them, but they are just blaming the random protesters.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

If you read the. The ruling is wild too from the federal judge because there's all these instances. Everyone should go read the ruling. There's also just a New York Times story about it if you don't want to read the Whole ruling. But, like, they go through and they have what DHS has claimed happened, and then they have what videos, evidence, witnesses actually show, and what the judge ruled on, like, one guy that they tackled to the ground and locked up and shackled American citizen. They were like, oh, he was leading a protest. And then the videos show that he was actually pushing protesters away from the ICE agents and holding up a hand for everyone to get back. Just like lie after lie after lie after lie.

[Jon Lovett]

And it's in that ruling, too, where the judge found that these officers are deploying tear gas and kind of turning on these protesters. Not because of any inciting incidents for the protesters, but they just hit their limit and get a bit annoyed.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

And they just sort of lash out.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And the Wall Street Journal reported that. So they. When they make an arrest and then they let the person go because they're a citizen or because they got the wrong person, that arrest still counts towards their 3,000 arrest quota.

[Tommy Vietor]

Interesting.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And so they are now incentivized to arrest people who they don't even. They're not even going to charge with anything because. Because it helps make Stephen Miller's quota.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's a good system.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So that's what's happening there. It does seem like Trump is just itching to invoke the Insurrection act, though it's unclear what the paratroopers from the 11th Airborne Division will do in Minneapolis that the guard couldn't, other than freak everyone the fuck out.

[Jon Lovett]

I was surprised to see the paratroopers.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it's just like the bus.

[Jon Lovett]

Is that just the unit, or are they actually planning to have send these guys out of a plane into Minneapolis? I. I can see Trump liking the drama of that. I do think it would be a pretty powerful message for. To. To. To why this is terrible. I also don't want it to happen. So a little bit of attention there.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think it's probably just the unit, but, yeah, they're probably highly trained. It's probably just the unit.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I think of those people, too. These guys are like, men and women are, like, in Alaska waiting for, like, something real to happen. It's like, oh, you might have to go to Minnesota, by the way, to potentially fight like your fellow citizens.

[Jon Lovett]

And they're like, oh, God damn it, we're in Alaska. Why the. One of the fucking coldest ones. Can't they do a fucking lawless crackdown in Miami or something? I want to go to the. I want to go to the LA Insurrection Act. I don't want to go to the fucking Minneapolis one That sucks.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What do you guys think about the criminal investigation into. Into Wells and Fry? It seems like complete fucking bullshit that we get laughed out of court, but it's still like crazy.

[Jon Lovett]

Todd Blanche, the deputy Attorney General, posted earlier, like, I think on Wednesday or Thursday, Minnesota insurrection is a direct result of a failed governor and a terrible mayor encouraging violence against law enforcement. It's disgusting. Waltz and fry. I'm focused on stopping you from your terrorism by whatever means necessary. This is not a threat. It's a promise. Which is. I know. We're now inured to it. That's a shocking thing to hear from the Department of Justice. The Deputy Attorney General is. That's not a threat, it's a promise. You're terrorists. That is shocking. But of course it's serious. Of course it's serious.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I think it's a big deal for them personally, too. I mean, yeah, it's obviously designed to threaten them. It's obviously, like, ridiculous. But they're trying to intimidate them. And we've seen DOJ do this before. I mean, Lamonica McIver, member of Congress, is being prosecuted for trying to go to an ICE facility in her home state. And the FBI is using its records to go after Trump's enemies from impeachment or the January 6th, et cetera. So it's just a continuation of that process. And, you know, again, the hypocrisy makes you want to tear your hair out. Right? Like, Trump claims that this, you know, the governor and the Mayor of Estates, their comments, their words are criminal interference in law enforcement. But siccing a mob on the Capitol on January 6th is just, you know, giving a speech like, it makes you want to lose your mind. But that's part of the. Part of the plan, I guess.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Also, the two of them said ICE should get out. They encourage people to film things that they're seeing, which is entirely legal. No matter what they say, you can go film ICE anywhere you want. It is not impeding a fucking investigation. If you are staying away from them and not causing them trouble and staying back, you can film them anywhere you want. And then they're calling for. They've called for peace. They've called for, like, peaceful protests over and over again. So it's like, what? It's protected speech. What are you talking about? The other violence. It's crazy.

[Jon Lovett]

When I see Nome and I see Pam Bondi and, like, you know, these were, in some sense, in the previous era. They were right wing and whatever, but they were normal, ostensibly normal politicians. But there is Pam Bondi presiding over the complete and total political takeover of the Department of Justice in a way that has just not been the case in ever. And doing it so kind of brazenly. There's not even a. There's not even a kind of like, tilt towards what it should look like or claiming it's independent. They are just going after their enemies.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But that Wall Street Journal story from last week tells you why. Because Trump's going around calling Pam Bondi weak and ineffective. And you hear the complaints from the far right and they're like, oh, she's too much of a lawyer. She did too much by the book stuff. She's not breaking the. You know, and so what is. So she's faced with that, right? She doesn't want to get fired because she doesn't want to get excommunicated from MAGA world because also she could get. Not like she just loses her professional career, but who knows if Trump comes after her, right? So it's like you don't want to piss Trump off. You want to make sure you get your pardon when he leaves so you're not prosecuted.

[Jon Lovett]

Right?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So the more that, like, every incentive that all of these people have is to do literally anything Stephen Miller and Donald Trump tell them to do.

[Jon Lovett]

Right?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But it's the only way you can protect yourself at some point. Not like excusing them, but like, that is the whole system. That is the incentive structure. It's not. It's not to be like, I'm going to stand up and do the right thing.

[Jon Lovett]

Right. In a godless world.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's.

[Jon Lovett]

But that. But like, I really, like, we're the liberals are the godless. I thought we were the ones that didn't believe. Aren't you guys all keeping a. What about the ledger? Aren't. I thought you had the ledger. I like.

[Jon Favreau]

Is there no ledger?

[Jon Lovett]

Are you not worried at all?

[Jon Favreau]

None of these people seem worried about the book.

[Tommy Vietor]

No.

[Jon Lovett]

The big Book.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, they are worried about protesters interrupting a church, which is what they're all up in arms about.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Did John Lemons turn in the barrel.

[Tommy Vietor]

To read the story about there's a bunch of federal prosecutors at the White House for, like, some photo op. And Trump's like, oh, yeah, bring it in. He's berates them all for not going fast enough. Like, Tulsi Gabbard's a new example. Right? Like, she dares to say what the intelligence says about the Iran strikes. Trump cuts her legs out from under her. Fast forward six months, she's Putting out tweets of herself doing yoga on the fucking beach the day before the Venezuela operation. Just like I said, a lot of.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Big talk that she was going to get. Get Barack Obama, right?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Was supposed to show up in handcuffs and that never happened.

[Jon Lovett]

So now she's quiet quitting.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

One story that drew a lot of attention over the weekend was about Jake Lang, a Nazi saluting influencer and pardon January sixer who tried to lead an anti Somali pro ICE rally in Minneapolis on Saturday. Great timing. Called the March against Minnesota Fraud. Lang was chased off somewhat violently by a much larger counter demonstration. Lang and allies posted about his injuries, but it's hard to know what's exaggerated and what isn't. He was also there, by the way. He told everyone he was going there to burn a Quran on the steps of city hall.

[Tommy Vietor]

That always ends well.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. So what'd you guys make of that story?

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, this guy's a scary Nazi lunatic who's clearly more emboldened than ever. And it makes you wonder about what these freaks will do on, you know, 1.6.2.0, whenever that comes. There's also, there's a D.C. based organization called CREW that put together a report about all the pardoned January. Six people out of the 160033 insurrectionists have been rearrested, charged or sentenced for other crimes. Those charges include aggravated kidnapping, child molestation, possession of child pornography, sexual assault. A lot of these incidents are from before the pardons, but either way, like this is Trump pardoned. All these dangerous criminals, put them back on the street, and now, shocker, they're doing dangerous, scary stuff like, of course this was gonna happen.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, it's also, it's like none of this is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy requires you to have, like, certain principles. Start with universal principles to begin with. It's just if stuff's on, if people are on my side, good, Commit crimes, do whatever you want. If you're not on my side, you're fucked.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, we all have.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And if I have the power, I can use it to protect my people and to screw your people. That's it. Not hypocrisy.

[Jon Lovett]

We lamented about the hypocrisy for a long time, but hypocrisy is in some sense, kind of a. You're at least acknowledging what the values should be. Once you leave that behind, you're like, God, I miss hypocrisy. At least we all had a pretend sense of moral. You just didn't live up to them at all. You know, when I saw, I saw the videos of this guy kind of cornered on a window ledge and actually a protester kind of holding other people back. And I actually thought about the story you mentioned about the guy that got grabbed by ICE because he was trying to stop things from escalating. And this is true of Trump. It's true of any kind of chaotic and violent circumstance. It's true of what happened with this, with ICE shooting Renee Goode, which is as situations become more chaotic and more dangerous, as people like this travel to Minnesota to rile people up, all of a sudden what we're talking about as a country, what matters is no longer in our collective hands. It's in the luck and happenstance and mindset of a few random people and how they interact in a street confrontation. And that is incredibly dangerous. If you look back at countries that have gone down this road and to much darker places from it, street confrontations, they are, they accelerate because the next time more of those guys show up, and this time they're armed, and the other side feels like they've got to show up and protect themselves. And by the way, like, I have been like, so moved by the people in Minnesota just showing up every fucking day and just being out there and standing up for that community and being willing to put their bodies there, that is fucking scary. And it is getting scarier. And good that they're doing that and good that they're doing, but they're angry and it's tense and they're right to feel that. And then these fucking proud boys show up and these fucking Nazis show up. It is a, it is a, it. Even the most committed people in a big group, these guys are, are, are, are, are kind of pushing for that to turn into something ugly and more dangerous and more violent. And they have been so peaceful and trying to try. So most of them obviously have been trying to kind of just protect people and follow cars with whistles and trying to do what they can to send the message that Minnesota isn't for that. And there are gonna be people that try to test that. And it's. Unfortunately, it's not up to the vast majority of people in Minneapolis to collectively say they want peace. Because when you end up in these small moments, all of a sudden things can escalate because of a one or two or three or five actors. And that is what makes it so dangerous.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Which, like, law of averages, of course there's gonna be those actors, of course. And like, and the right wing media influencer infrastructure is just waiting for the content, right? And they got, they got some of it with Jake Lang. Right? And then they got with protesters who stupidly walked into a church during. During, you know, people worshiping in church. Right. And so this is literally of all the bad news that's out there for the Trump administration. All they're talking about today is this church thing. And now they're going to, you know, Don Lemon went into the church with the protesters and started interviewing them. Also interviewed the people who worked at the church, the church officials and stuff like that. So he's just covering it. But now Don Lemon, they want to arrest Don Lemon because of this. But this is, this is it. This is all they can talk about. Because they want to be like, see, the left is exactly what they said we are. And it's like, no, fuck you. You know what? When you do this kind of stuff, you put this kind of pressure on people. You are, yes, you are going to have some people, like, I'm shocked that there hasn't been more.

[Jon Lovett]

And the other part of this too is this is where like, oh, you think like, you know, Trump is turning us into a. Training us to be kind of a more callous and cruel society. That's what he wants us to be. But this is how violence begets violence. Because when the federal government is a group of masked fucking thugs, you're standing on the street trying to protect people and like, it is no longer about winning with reason and argument. It's. You're just trying to literally put yourself in the way. Because all that. Because, because that the bodies matter. Cuz the number of people starts to matter. It's all part of what makes this so dangerous.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Did you see that? The guy that actually saved Jake Lang from the crowd and pulled him away was a black guy. And he was interviewed later and he was like, you know, he's like, we can't. He's like, my thing is showing love regardless of what someone else did to you. We can't, we can't treat hate with hate, you know, and it's just like, wow, that is a, like having that kind of attitude. That is, that's tough. But you're like, not everyone has that.

[Jon Lovett]

No. And, and by the way, they're being trained not to. Right? That a peaceful movement right now is being peaceful despite the every message coming from the President. And good for them. Cuz that's what we need to do. That's what we should do. That's how we'll prevail. That's how we can. Because you Will you lose in a fight to out violence fascists? You will not win. It is. But, man, even on the right, Trump.

[Tommy Vietor]

Is contradicting, like, Erica Kirk was like, I forgive Charlie's assassin.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

I was like, I don't. I hate my enemies. Like, that is the. That's coming from the White House.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yep. So Axios just reported that Trump's team saw some, some bad private Republican polling on his immigration policies and the ICE raids. And it's causing some of his advisors to start quietly talking about, quote, recalibrating their approach. A Trump adviser told Axios he wants mass deportations. What he doesn't want is what people are seeing. It looks bad. So he's expressed some discomfort in that. He also just posted something related to this. He said, there's too much media attention on ICE right now. What do you guys think? Is that. Is there a possibility they back off because of political pressure here that he doesn't like how it looks?

[Tommy Vietor]

I can imagine a situation where he's half paying attention because he is far more focused on foreign bribes and going to the Miami football game tonight and all the bullshit he does and wanting the Nobel Peace Prize and he kind of outsourced his policy to Stephen Miller. And then he wakes up and he reads the paper or he gets a call from a rich donor and he's like, hey, Steven, I don't like this. Reign it in. I just, I don't imagine him ever wanting to be perceived as caving in any way right in Minnesota or to the left because he is like a strong, weak, like, binary viewer of politics.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I think that's probably true. What do you think?

[Jon Lovett]

I have no fucking idea. I really don't. You know, all of this, the sort of, the enjoyment of the cruelty, the fact that Stephen Miller has the reins, the fact that he can't capitulate. I agree with that. The fact that his personal news environment is so fucked up, like, I don't really know what he's seeing. So I genuinely don't know. I can see a world in which he does not do, like this winds down in some way and it doesn't go on to the next city in the same way. But do I think there's going to be some great turn that we're all going to know about? Like, he could. There's a lot of things he could do right now to turn down the temperature. He could tell ICE that they all have to take their masks off. Oh, yeah, he could do a lot.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

All it tells me is that the people making noise about this, sharing stories, filming this, sharing it. Like it does, it does make a difference because they are going to feel the pressure and they are seeing it in the polling. And, and again, when you talk to people in focus groups and you ask them, like, this is the first thing that comes up now, right? Like, it is. People worry about the cost of stuff and they are mad about the ice, the ice raids, because they are seeing it everywhere. And it's covered on TikTok, it's covered on local news, it's covered everywhere. People are getting their information these days. Now you're right, like, whether, whether that changes the behavior, who fuck knows? But I do think it's. It's putting some pressure on them.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I also, like, we were talking about it before, but like, man, these guys are. They signed up for an idea of what this was going to be like and now they're in these situations and all the anger and the kind of, kind of, kind of twitchy reactions, there's just this look of like, this has got to be a brutal thing to be dealing with. And like, they put what, 3,000 people in Minnesota, That's a huge share of their force.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's crazy, right?

[Jon Lovett]

Like, and that is, that is these guys, like, there's all kinds of stories of morale being low. They have to seek volunteers to do this kind of shit. Like, they're going to do a lot of bluster. But even with this new giant ice, like, this is still America. It is a big, rebellious, ungovernable place. And they just don't.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

They like proven that now.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, yeah. And like, what are they going to continue this that we send the state, we put these guys in the next fucking Best Western.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Foreign.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Lovett]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Lovett]

I love Cook Unity.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Lovett]

I got a couple chicken things.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

Sounds Delicious.

[Jon Lovett]

I got a miso cod.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm excited about anything lunar themed. Nothing lunar themed. I'm not sure what where we are now culturally, where the differences between appreciating and appropriating a culture seems to me.

[Jon Lovett]

That it's completely capricious. But.

[Jon Favreau]

So, yes, I will be enjoying the right amount of lunar New Year things.

[Tommy Vietor]

To the moon Alice. There's a topical, timely moon Alice.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, Tommy.

[Jon Lovett]

Of course.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Tommy Vietor]

It's insane.

[Jon Favreau]

He's coming home from work. Pops in a Cook Unity meanwhile. But it's great. It's great.

[Tommy Vietor]

Charlie's like, can I have something? No, this is for me.

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Tommy Vietor]

Positive America is brought to you by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. I love it. What's the most slept on part of the First Amendment?

[Jon Favreau]

What a funny way to describe the first Amendment.

[Jon Lovett]

I mean, well, one thought, perhaps it's the establishment clause.

[Tommy Vietor]

Establishment clause, the whole freedom. Don't. Don't sleep on the freedom of religion. The establishment cause, baby, that is the freedom of and from religion.

[Jon Favreau]

It's giving. It's giving. Totalitarian state.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

You know.

[Tommy Vietor]

It'S serving freedom for sure.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, learn, yeah, separation of church and state totally slays Tommy.

[Tommy Vietor]

Learn more about how you can get involved in this critical fight by visiting th house down by visiting thesurf.org that's t h e-sr.org T-H-E-Sr.org, thesrf.org.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Speaking of polling, we're getting quite a bit right now since it's the one year anniversary of Trump taking office. The President's approval is stuck in the low 40s, much worse than Obama's or Bush's at this stage in their second terms. And he's also near record lows for his handling of the economy and now immigration. This is unsurprisingly dragging down his party's midterm chances. Democrats have an average 4 to 5 point lead on the generic ballot, though CNN found that Democrats hold a whopping 16 point lead among those who say they're deeply motivated to vote. So that is something to keep an eye on. I've seen that a few polls now. The Wall Street Journal poll shows a similar four point Democratic lead in the generic ballot, despite voters saying that they trust Republicans more on immigration by 11 points and the economy and inflation by 6 points, though they say they trust Dems more on health care by 15 points and by 3 points on looking out for the middle class and caring about people like you. Anything else that's jumped out at you guys in the recent polling and is anything changing how you feel about the midterms?

[Jon Lovett]

My general response to these polls is that they're bad for Trump and bad for Democrats. That's, that was sort of my takeaway from looking at them. And you can try to blur your eyes and find the positive in them, but the fact that even facing all of this, there's like a four point lead in the Wall Street Journal poll for Democrats and the 58% of voters have an unfavorable view of the party, which is roughly the same disapproval that Trump has. Is pretty fucking bleak because this poll has people saying by huge numbers that Trump is going too far on deporting illegal immigrants, on expanding the pardon power, on deploying, deploying ice, on threatening action against forest government. Like this is, like the country is taking this in and, and they don't like it, but they just don't see us as a viable alternative. That may mean we can overcome it, but if we win, it will be despite what the Democratic Party is to the American people and not because of it.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, that my takeaway is similar. It's like this is a big splash of cold water on the face to every Democrat who thinks we're just going to romp the midterms and maybe we will do well. Maybe we're just, you know, it's just a turnout thing and more Dems to turn on midterms. But you know, border security Republicans have a 28 point advantage. The economy, six like you said, inflation, rising prices, they have a six point advantage. Like this is very bad. And what it says is the Democratic Party's brand problem is just as big as it ever was, even in the face of a wildly unpopular president doing insane things. And we need to figure out a way to fix it and like talk about who we are, what we stand for. Sell people on a newer, different version of the Democratic Party than the one they currently hate, just a little less than they hate Trump.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I have a, I have a slightly different view, which I don't necessarily think is rosier because I think that the image of the Democratic Party is as bad as these polls suggest. I also think that a lot of it's coming from Democrats. A lot of those numbers are coming from Democrats who don't like the party, who are going to vote for Democrats no matter what. And many of them will crawl over glass to vote for Democrats in the midterms even though they're not happy with the party. But I think that the Trump numbers versus sort of the Republican Party numbers, it's leading me to think that this, as most midterms are, it really is going to be a referendum. Like, do you like what's happening with Trump or not? And do you like the candidate, the Democratic? You might hate the party in Washington. You might be really sick of them. Do you like the candidate who is in the ads in your House district or your Senate district that you're seeing right now? And does that candidate effectively tie the Republican to Donald Trump? And I know certainly when we head to 27 and 28, it is like, we need a positive case. We need to talk about what we're for, and we should. Democratic candidates should absolutely do that in the midterms. But I think at the end of the day, the choice that voters are gonna make are like, Trump, thumbs up, thumbs down, how am I gonna vote? Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

The other part of it, to your point, is in previous eras, the president would kind of give tacit permission to his party candidates. Like, if you need to run against me, that's fine. You know, run against me a little bit. But not this guy.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's not.

[Jon Lovett]

That's inconceivable.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This guy and the last guy.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, I do think part of this. Right. Like, look, I don't want to go back to a pretty empty well, but the like part of the Democratic brand problem is you have, you know, Joe Biden is our. Is our candidate. He is defined by wanting to defeat and remove Trump in his first run and then incomprehensible in his second. Kamala comes in and I do think is a cautionary tale for what happens when you try to run without a worldview. And every question becomes a hard question. Right now we're having this sort of kind of. It's mostly like a super kind of, I think, highly engaged debate about whether or not Democrats should be for abolishing ice. But it is something that the right wing is obviously picking up on because they like this kind of dissension. And I think there's reasons to say it is kind of unhelpful to be to debating whether or not we should abolish ICE when we would have to go on a world historic winning streak for several years for that to be even on the table. But if you think that debate is unhelpful, I think it's worth thinking about what is the quiet around the question about whether or not to abolish ice? And the quiet around the question is, what do Democrats stand for on immigration? What should immigration enforcement look like? What kind of like legal immigration order combined with a rigorous but humane enforcement order, are you in favor of? I have no fucking idea what Democrats believe. Not even on the technical policy, but like on a philosophical matter, like what the, like core Democratic vision is for the future. And across virtually every issue, that is just like white space. And you're right, we may not need it for the midterms, but when people start talking about who the leaders of the future of the party are going to be. That is the space.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, and also no time like the present to start, of course, putting it out there.

[Jon Lovett]

Of course.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Of course. We haven't had a chance yet to talk about Mary Paltola entering the Senate race in Alaska, which now gives Democrats a real, if quite narrow path to the majority if she can pull out a win. And we can also flip Maine, North Carolina and either Ohio, Iowa or Texas. Thoughts?

[Jon Lovett]

I hope we do.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it's tough. I mean, you know, Iowa, it's got open Senate primary, there's like three or four contested House races, a really strong governor candidate and Rob Sands. So there's a good shot there, you know, in Ohio, like, look, Ohio's tough, but Sherrod Brown gives us the best chance we've got in Ohio, I think in Texas we have a Democratic primary, but, you know, Cornyn is not the most popular, you know, Senator, so it's tough. It's tough.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

We should try.

[Jon Lovett]

It depends, like, what you look at these polling say, well, what has to happen for us to win all these races? Well, they all have to run really great campaigns and there has to be a real wave and momentum. And if you look at these polling, you can actually tell yourself a story that we're heading towards that possibility. And you can also say we're not heading. Right. Like the polling gives you both options. So I just, I just think we know.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So Matt Iglesias, who's been rather obsessed with like, hey, if we don't figure out a way to actually win the Senate, nothing's going to matter because the Senate's always going to like, everyone's like, oh, it's a tough Senate map, but it's always a tough Senate map. There are no more easy Senate maps if you start looking down the road at 28 and the rest. And so he sort of just looked at the congressional races, special elections from 25 and the over performance. So the average of the generic ballot polling for all of these was +4, which is about where we're sitting right now. It was seven in Tennessee, nine in Arizona, eight in Virginia, 11 and eight in those two Florida specials. Now, you know, you're going to get a big larger turnout in the midterms. Right. So that makes it slightly harder though. The turnout in Tennessee in that race was like midterm level turnout. It was actually the same as the midterm. So you get that kind of turn. So it was a pretty, you know, over performance by 7 in a. In a place where both parties spent a Ton of money. And there was like midterm turnout is like a pretty good indicator. And then when you look at the Senate races that we need to win. So Harris loses Ohio by 5.7, Iowa by 6.7, Alaska 6.8, Texas 6.9. So like it's right on the. It's right there. Like it is possible. And if you get the kind of over performance that you had in 25 in some of these Senate races and you have good candidates in these races, then it is possible. It is possible. And also like Democrats need to make it possible.

[Tommy Vietor]

You just, we just can't.

[Jon Lovett]

I would just say like the fact that it is easier for us to imagine America as a permanent autocracy than it is to imagine Democrats having a 60 seat majority in the Senate tells you that there's something.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

60? What are you talking about? I'm talking about 51.

[Jon Lovett]

Why. But I'm just like to a night to it to, to. To a majority that we had when we were in politics.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right.

[Jon Lovett]

Which we were. We had a 60 seat majority in the Senate not that long ago. Now it is less conceivable than total destruction of democracy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's like, guess what? Iowa, Ohio, Texas. You can't look at those three states and be like, well, all of them are really tough. One of them has to be not tough.

[Tommy Vietor]

One of them.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And particularly Texas, if we're going to win presidential races again in the electoral College, you know, and same thing with Alaska. Right. Like we're close in that state.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, you might say that. You know, Democrats need to be able to win the country, you know, and sort of. And in all in various parts of it that we currently are not competing.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's why I'm kind of beating the Iowa drama, obviously. Rob Sanders friend, I really like him. But also like there's so much bang for your buck there. Like Texas is so expensive. But in Iowa, there's governor's race, there's several House seats we could pick up. There's a, you know, Senate seat. Like we got to invest there early.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. Iowa's like the short term we have to do it. Texas is the not even long term, medium term, we have to do it. Also she won. She lost Florida by six points. And I know like we, I just went through all of those margins. Like Kamala Harris lost Florida by six points. And the fact that we just like now don't run any. We like don't pay attention to it is probably not, probably not doable for the long term.

[Jon Lovett]

There's at least one More vote for a Democrat if my dad wants to come to my wedding. So something to think about.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So we talked about 2026. One piece of 2028 news we do want to touch on before we get to Tommy's interview with Jason Zengerly. Josh Shapiro's got a new book coming out this week and the newsiest parts are starting to leak. They include the news that Shapiro did explore launching a presidential bid right after Joe Biden dropped out, but it was quickly shut down by his wife. I guess she was in a Canadian wall. She said, I'm in a Canadian Walmart right now. I don't think we're ready.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, not a fair, not a bad point.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There's also news that Trump cautioned him against running for president, given how dangerous the office is. This was after his home was attacked and an anti Semitic attack. He also has an in depth accounting of Kamala Harris VP vetting process, which Shapiro apparently found to be quite contentious. He writes that the vetting team asked him at one point if he had ever, quote, communicated with an undercover agent of Israel or if he ever was himself an agent for Israel. That news comes after Harris wrote in 107 Days that Shapiro was presumptive about being selected as the vice presidential nominee, saying that he wanted to, quote, be in the room for every decision and asked if the Smithsonian would lend Pennsylvania art to display in the Vice President's residence. Shapiro has basically denied that account, calling it bullshit. No love lost between these two, huh?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it's a little surprising that they're airing it out like this. I mean, maybe it was unintentioned. Maybe like reporters found the book and they just. Someone picked up on this. So the rest focused on it. But I don't think it makes anyone look great here.

[Jon Lovett]

I love it.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, you like it? I mean, look, we want them to be more honest. So let rip, I guess.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

When 107 days first came out, Tim Alberta asked Josh Shapiro about it. It's seemingly in real time. And Josh Shapiro goes like. Like, that's a blatant lie. And then he curses about, oh, he's talking. That is bullshit. Yeah, bullshit. Shot at her ass or something to that effect. And then he kind of catches himself and he's like, I shouldn't have said it that way, you know? And it's like, why, man? Let it rip. If you think it's a blatant lie, say it's a blatant line. I think she's talking out of her ass. Say she's talking out of her ass. We need to know if Josh Shapiro is in Mossad or not.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's a.

[Jon Lovett]

There's a tough campaign. She want to Pete Buttigieg, but he's gay. But not because she doesn't think the country's ready for a gay guy. But the country's not ready for a gay guy. But that's not what she thinks. So that's why she doesn't choose Pete.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Now she's got Josh Shabira, who's the country ready for. A Mossad agent.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, he is in Mossad.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Jon Lovett]

We all know that because he's in it. And so she's got to get to.

[Jon Favreau]

The bottom of that.

[Jon Lovett]

It's only 107 days.

[Tommy Vietor]

The direct quote was, that's complete and utter bullshit. He told Tim Alberto, this is Josh Shapiro. I can tell you that her accounts are just blatant lies. So, yeah, that was a. It was a. It was an honest immediate reaction that was quite strong.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What do we think about the vetting thing? Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

So look, let me just say I get how fraught this question is, how it must have felt for Shapiro in the moment, how offensive it could feel after dealing with like years of anti Semitism, your house being attacked, etc. I think this does come largely from a misunderstanding about the standard vetting process. Like the question, are you a double agent for the Israeli government? Have you ever talked with a double, you know, an agent of the Israeli government? Sure, it seems ridiculous, but that is like, kind of standard. Like the SF86.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We got asked all that.

[Tommy Vietor]

The standard vetting form for national security said, asks, quote, have you ever been a member of an organization dedicated to terrorism or advocated for force, violence to overthrow the US Government? The idea is not for you to admit it. This isn't A Few Good Men. It is to get you on the record in case they find something later and then can. Can show that you lied. And we know now that Tim Walls was asked a similar question about China, because Tim Walls had traveled to China extensively. Shapiro had lived in Israel during high school. He once identified himself as a volunteer for the IDF. And then after college, he spent six months working for the Israeli embassy in D.C. if I had done those things, I would have gotten asked about them extensively on my security clearance, in my background check. And you better believe that the fucking Vice President, United States, potentially, is going to get asked about it too.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, you get asked about everywhere you've traveled in the last decade, like for outside the United States in detail. And then the FBI will come back at certain Places that you travel and be like, what happened when you were there?

[Jon Lovett]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You talked to. When you were like this. This happens when you're getting a security claim.

[Tommy Vietor]

Obviously, this is a political vetting more than anything else. And Gaza was a very hot button issue at the time. And it obviously erupted in the wrong way and there were political considerations. But it was just like. Like he just takes such umbrage at it. Like he says. It nagged at me that their questions weren't really about substance, he wrote, rather, they were questioning my ideology, my approach and my worldview.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It stuck out at me, too.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm like, substance?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Isn't that the whole point of the interview?

[Jon Lovett]

I thought it was a strange sentence, too. That is. That is substance.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I know.

[Jon Lovett]

That's the good stuff.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I'm interested to see how that's what context that's in the book, because it was just like in the Atlantic piece. But I was like, that is a weird thing. I don't understand that. Of course it should be about your ideology, your approach and your worldview.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I thought you for vice president.

[Jon Lovett]

I thought it was strange when the person doing the vetting of Shapiro kind of like, push some ham towards you and then just said, like, what are you going to do with that ham? You going to eat it? Do you love his country or not? Eat the ham. Eat the ham, Josh. Eat the fucking ham, you Mossad agent. No, of course you can't be Kamala's running mate. Of course not. You won't eat this ham. I love the fight. I'm so into it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But I think this started in fairness with, like, Kamala Harris in 107 days, taking a shot at Newsom and then taking a shot at Shapiro for no real reason.

[Jon Lovett]

But you know what? Good for her, too. Yeah, more, More.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Totally fine. But like, that's. This is what's happening for sure.

[Jon Lovett]

So.

[Jon Favreau]

Great.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, also, I do think I will say the fact that in 107 days, it's like, basically, like, has this basically insinuates that he was, like, measuring the drapes and decorating it. I do like, Like Josh Shapiro being like, what the fuck is that? That's bullshit. I kind of like. It does sound like small talk being turned into something. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

He's like, like, okay, if I was going to move into a naval observatory and I was making small talk about, I'd be like, I don't have that much stuff. What do you put in the thing? Do you get it from a museum?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Like, I mean, small talk. I think you'd have to be a psychopath to be like, hey, in case she picks me after this interview, that's maybe the most important of my life. What do we think about the art?

[Tommy Vietor]

He also says one of the articles, I was surprised by how much she seemed to dislike the role of vice president. And I was like, really? Have you spoken to a vice president before? Because they all seem to feel this way. He also seemed offended that Dana Remus, the person doing the vetting, sort of flagged how expensive the job can be. Like the price of entertaining, you have to pay for some of it yourself. Clothes for the first lady, hair and makeup for the first Lady. She noted they didn't have a lot of money. That seems like actually a really good thing to flag for someone before they get a job. It's like, hey, you're going to go into debt if you take this job that is reasonable and relevant.

[Jon Lovett]

I guess both his. The way he takes that in the book is that basically like now they feel like, oh, now we're down the road with Josh Shapiro. We. We don't want the political problem of not choosing him. So like, you don't really want this job. You know, that's what he's. That's like in the.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, but that's not Dana Remus's job to relay that.

[Jon Lovett]

Also weird to kind of be doing budgeting for him in the moment. I don't know. I found the whole. I found the whole thing strange.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Aren't they all relieved that no one had to test it out?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Weren't they friends before this? And they have a pre existing relationship that makes all this so they've known.

[Jon Lovett]

Each other for 20 years. That was the whole thing. That's the thing. And like I think they both met when they were in the Mossad. I love this and I just want to say I hope more politicians do the real beef airing out in the books. It is better, it is more fun than the kind of bromides and the after. After, over tea, we talked about our children and realized that we had a lot of the same values. But this wasn't the right moment for us. Like, I am so much happier with this and even if this new site.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Is annoying, if only Pete and Amy had aired out their dirty laundry before the primary in 2020.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. You want to see violence in the streets of Minnesota? Let's get that one going. I'm excited. I'm excited about that.

[Tommy Vietor]

Let's go.

[Jon Lovett]

Enough. Is the kind of political version of our disagreements working out for us as we debate whether or not we can ever win in Ohio again.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, boy. One year, guys. It's been one one year since Trump is inaugurated. Here we are, one down, three to go.

[Tommy Vietor]

Getting booed at NBA games in London.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What's happening right now? All right, in a moment, we're going to jump to Tommy's interview with Jason Zengerly about his new Crooked media reads book about Tucker Carlson, another potential 2028 candidate.

[Tommy Vietor]

But before we get there, we talk about that, actually. Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, gosh. There you go. Some housekeeping before we get there. Just a reminder for our friends at the pod and anyone who wants even more Pod Save America. We just launched a new weekly newsletter, Pod Save America Open Tabs, which releases every Thursday morning. Open Tabs offers a behind the scenes look into how we put Pod Save America together, what's coming in the next episode, and the stories rattling around in our heads before we get into the studio. Can I just say, fantastic newsletter.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's really well done.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Our editor, Pod Save America, Reed Churlin is writing it. Reid is the best he's written. It's such a great product. Check it out. But you got to be a subscriber.

[Tommy Vietor]

Gotta be a subscriber. And just by the way, if you really like Pod Save America, if you want to support what Crooked Media is doing, the best way you can help us as an independent progressive media company is to become a subscribers go to crooked.com friends. That helps us, you know, limit our reliance on big tech companies or advertising and just go directly to you and work with you guys. So crooked.com friends become a friend of the pod. It helps us a lot. You get great content. You get newsletters, you get ad free episodes. You get subscription stuff. It's worth the money, we promise.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Here's the thing, like you guys have all seen, you know Nick Shirley, that YouTuber, he, you know, he uncovered all of that. He did the big investigation into the Somali fraud that basically led to the deployment in Minnesota. We want to send Elijah out to some of these places to uncover some frauds.

[Tommy Vietor]

We're sending Love it. To the Mar A Lago daycare that is the Trump White House.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Dress me up with a little baby water. Goo goo Gaga gate.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Is that anything I liked a lot. Subscribe cricket.com friends goo goo gaga Gate. When we come back, Jason Zangerly.

[Jon Lovett]

Pod Save America is brought to you by AG1.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Lovett]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Lovett]

This year was actually my resolution to.

[Jon Favreau]

Have like a smoothie every morning and.

[Jon Lovett]

To have protein and to have greens like AG1. And I'm trying to do it every single morning.

[Tommy Vietor]

Let me tell you, AG1's a hell of a lot more efficient way to get all your greens than just like stuffing every vegetable in your fridge into that smoothie as you, as you blend that thing.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, totally.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Lovett]

That's drink ag1.com crooked.

[Tommy Vietor]

Choose to show up with the bold styling of the Mazda CX30.

[Jon Lovett]

I'll wake up.

[Tommy Vietor]

Joining me now is the author of Crooked Media Reads newest book, Hated by All the Right People, Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind, Jason Zangerle. Jason, great to see you. Welcome to the show.

[Jason Zengerly]

Thanks for having me on. It's good to be here.

[Tommy Vietor]

It is great to see you. We've known each other a long time and this is an incredible book which I have read and I highly, highly recommend everybody go pre order a copy right now because Tucker is a fascinating character and I think understanding his arc really does tell you the story of, of the MAGA evolution, the way the world has changed, the way the media has changed over the last couple decades. So I just, I cannot recommend the book enough. So let's just, let's just start at the top. So the, the book's about Tucker Carlson, kind of like the arc of his career across the establishment media world. His time at Fox, his still very mysterious firing from Fox, and then there's this modern iteration where he is this massive force in independent media, but also like a confidant and advisor to Donald Trump in a lot of ways. So first question is, like, why did you decide to follow Tucker instead of some of the other big names in conservative media?

[Jason Zengerly]

Right?

[Tommy Vietor]

Like a Bannon or, you know, Ben Shapiro. And then, I don't know, how do you think Tucker's story kind of tracks that evolution in American politics that we've seen?

[Jason Zengerly]

Well, so the, the original genesis for the book was I was talking to my agent not too long after January 6th in 2021, and we were talking about doing a book about, you know, the coming Republican civil war, because Donald Trump was clearly gone, right? He was never going to come back from that anyways. And we were talking about, you know, what, how 2024 was going to play out, the various factions within the Republican Party who was going to sort of triumph in that. And I was explaining to my agent that I thought all the people who are going to try to inherit Trump supporters, you know, the Ted Cruz's, Josh Hawley's, all those guys, no matter how many positions like Trump, like, positions they staked out, they were never going to get Trump's supporters, the MAGA base, because they weren't entertaining. They have no charisma. They're not able to kind of hold their attention. I mean, say what you will about Trump, but that is one of his superpowers. He's a remarkably entertaining figure. And as just kind of an aside, I said to Chris, the only guy who, who can do that is Tucker Carlson. And we both kind of paused and we're like, oh, wait a second, that's the book. And the more I thought about Tucker, the more I just kind of recognized that his whole career is such an incredible window on the incentive structure that exists in conservative media and conservative politics. Because at every step along the way, he's kind of tailored his own personality, tailored his own stances to that incentive structure. And what you see him doing today, what he did at Fox, he's kind of responding to what the conservative base and conservative viewers want. And he has a really just well developed kind of radar for where the audience is. And he's had that his entire career. I mean, sometimes it's failed him in certain instances, but I think for the last 10 years or so, it's been operating on kind of the highest level. And he's just a really good vehicle to kind of tell this much larger story about how we've gotten to this place where we've gotten.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay, so you said a thousand things there that I want to follow up on, so I'll try to choose a few. And at the end, I want to ask you about whether Tucker himself might run for office. But let's, let's put a pin in that one. So, you know, as you mentioned, like Tucker benefited. He's a great writer, right. He was a great magazine reporter. And he benefited from some very correct early political predictions. For example, you write about how he wrote this kind of scathing, iconic takedown of George w. Bush in 2020that got at a lot of the personality traits that would ultimately destroy the Bush presidency. And then Tucker was also one of the first people at Fox News who took Donald Trump seriously. How do you think Tucker kind of was able to judge those two correctly before others did? And then what was the impact, do you think, of that, that early symbiotic relationship with Trump on Tucker's career?

[Jason Zengerly]

Well, I think Tucker, when he was a magazine journalist especially, like he had a really good bullshit detector. And he was also pretty courageous. He was not afraid to kind of cross the important conservative figures, not afraid to go against the conventional wisdom with Trump in 2015, 2016. I think one thing that happened with Tucker after his cable news career kind of flamed out, he developed a website called the Daily Caller. And his original vision for the Daily Caller was a fairly, I don't want to say sober, but very fact based website. He talked about, you know, had the New York Times was sort of a model in some ways because they cared about facts. Yeah, I remember that really playing out quite well.

[Tommy Vietor]

That was the early pitch, wasn't it?

[Jason Zengerly]

That was the early pitch and that was the first staff that he hired. I think he realized very quickly that there was not an audience for that. But, you know, in recognizing what the audience was, he was able to see that, you know, conservative viewers, like really wanted, you know, kind of like nativist content, you know, kind of racist content, you know, focus on like black on white crime and things like that. And he saw the, the gap that existed between the conservative base and the Republican establishment, I think a lot earlier than, you know, most conservative pundits did, just because he had the, the, the, the traffic metrics in front of him and he saw what readers wanted. So when Trump came along in 2016, you know, Mo, I mean, people don't remember this now, but like Fox was not a big booster of Trump in 2016. I mean, they tried to torpedo him in that first debate. And it created a problem for Fox that they needed just to produce like a compelling television segment. They needed someone who was camera ready to go on the shows and at least not bash Trump, at least sort of be, you know, open to the possibility of Trump. And Tucker, who was kind of on the third or fourth rung of the Fox pundit roster at that point he was willing to do that, I think, because he did believe it. And he started getting a lot more airtime. And that was kind of how his star rose. I mean, he was not like a, a huge Trump supporter necessarily. And he, I think, had a lot of, you know, personal qualms about Trump. But he did see kind of how the issues that Trump was banging on might resonate and that, that gave him his break and that was sort of his ticket out of, you know, the, the Fox kind of Netherland netherworld of, you know, the, the weekend morning show.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, I guess, God forbid that only. Yeah. You're only Secretary of Defense these days.

[Jason Zengerly]

Yeah. So for a while, Tucker was like the great success, you know, getting from the morning now Hegseth, I guess, has surpassed him. But for a time, he was the biggest success.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, well, I think, well, Tucker was sober by then, so, you know, maybe that seriousness of purpose hurt him from getting a job in the Trump administration. I want to ask you about, like two moments or sort of periods in Tucker's career and maybe how they impacted his career arc. And then you know Tucker personally. The first is this now iconic moment in 2004 on the CNN show Crossfire. So for the kids out there who don't remember Crossfire, like, congrats. The gist is it was a cable news debate show that was essentially murdered on air by Jon Stewart who told the hosts that they were hurting America and the show was canceled, like not long after. The second moment is fast forward July 2020. So Tucker Carlson is one of the hosts of Crossfire. I should have said that. The second moment is July of 2020, when Tucker Carlson Tonight, Tucker's then Fox News show becomes the highest rated TV program in US cable news history. How do we get from, from here to there?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Like, you know what I mean?

[Tommy Vietor]

Like, it's extraordinary when you think about it.

[Jason Zengerly]

Yeah, there are a lot, there are a lot of steps along the way. You know, as I try to, as I try to detail in the book. I do think, though, you, you can't consider what Tucker is today without thinking about that, that, that Jon Stewart appearance. Because I mean, that, you know, he killed Stewart, killed Crossfire, and he really killed Tucker's career. I mean, Tucker was let go from CNN not long after that. He washes up at msnbc. You know, people don't take him seriously. Stewart made fun of him for wearing his bow tie. You know, I think, what do you say? Like, you're 35 years old and you wear a bow Tie?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. You called him a dick or something.

[Jason Zengerly]

He called him a dick, yeah. In front of a studio audience that is cheering Stewart on. I mean, it was, you know, and Paul Begala, who was the host on the left, like, he's not saying anything. You know, he just. I think he kind of like, sort of, you know, he's like Homer Simpson kind of fading into the bushes, and, like, Tucker's the one sort of, you know, arguing with Stewart, and he just. He just got destroyed. And, you know, for Tucker, I mean, it was. He had been really riding high before that. And, you know, he's the youngest host in CNN history. Crossfire. I mean, people might not know about it today, but, like, at the time, it was the preeminent political show. And being in the chair on the right, I mean, that was a. You know, that was a very prestigious thing. And it really, you know, it destroyed Tucker's career. And I think it sort of bred in him a lot of resentment because he was very much a part of the D.C. kind of political and media elite, and when he was ethered that way, they didn't really come to his defense. I mean, the way Paul Bagala behaved on that set was the way a lot of people in that world behaved, and they didn't rally to Tucker's defense. And I think he was hurt by that. I think he was genuinely hurt. I think he started to question maybe who some of his friends were, and I think that kind of built in him a resentment. And over time, that resentment grew. And especially as he felt that his talents were not being recognized or rewarded by network executives and the various gatekeepers, I think that made him, in a weird way, identify with and be receptive towards the resentments that fueled so much Trumpism and populism. And I think know he does not sort of portray himself as, like, an everyman or anything. And I think that's actually kind of what makes him so effective. I mean, in some ways, he's kind of, like, upped his sort of waspiness. You know, he's always wearing the reptile. He's got his Rolex. You know, he sips Perrier. He drinks from a visible Perrier bottle. He's playing the role of a class traitor. And I think that in some ways makes him more kind of, I don't know, credible in the eyes of his populist fans. It's. It's not actually that different from what Trump does. You know, he can sort of say, like, I've been in these rooms. I've seen the way Elites act. And let me tell you, they're just as bad as you think. And I think that, you know, he's. He's comfortable kind of attacking these elites because I think in a way, he personally feels that he was betrayed by them because they didn't, they didn't help him at his lowest moment. And I think, I think, you know, as I try to show in the book, like, that's not really totally true. I mean, you know, he. He did get a job as msnb. You know, he was when he launched the Daily Caller, like, you know, the people who turned out to support that. You know, you sort of read the list of the people who were at the launch party and where the launch party was held. You know, it's like it's, you know, it's Jake Tapper, it's Juliana Glover, it's Mike Allen. It's all these kind of like, you know, creatures of, you know, what he now refers to as legacy media and disparages. But they were all, like, rooting for Tucker. And, you know, I guess he's kind of sort of missed that a little bit or he kind of ignores it. But, you know, that 2004 moment, I think definitely kind of fed this resentment that led him, in addition to being able to kind of sort of intuit where the conservative base was. It made it easier for him to become a populist and stick the knife in these people who had once been his friends and his allies and his cheerleaders.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. To a level of success that is almost unimaginable. I mean, like, 4 million people a night were watching that show or something like that. I mean, it's unbelievable numbers in cable.

[Kristi Noem]

Yeah.

[Jason Zengerly]

I mean, you know, and like, to his credit, it was so different from the other Fox shows. I mean, if you tuned into Hannity or you tuned into Laura Ingraham, like, you knew what you were going to get. Right. Like, Tucker was like, pretty unpredictable. And it wasn't as Trump focused and Trump obsessed as those shows were. I mean, he obviously was supporting the administration for the most part, but he tried to maintain, like, a little bit of personal, I think, distance from Trump during that first. And I think that made the show in some ways, like, more interesting. I mean, not just to, like, sort of regular viewers, but I think to. It was always, you know, like conservative intellectuals. Like, that show, like, you could actually, like, read like a Ross Douthat column about a Tucker Carlson monologue. Like, you would never get that about, you know, a Sean Hannity monologue or a Laura Ingram Monologue, like, it was just. It was operating at, like, a higher level.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, no, it certainly seemed like Tucker. I mean, he was personally investing maybe more of his time and energy into the writing, whereas some of those other hosts, it just feels like they're mailing it in. You're 20 of some EP writing the same garbage script.

[Jason Zengerly]

Yeah. He cared about the writing in a way that I think very few others did. And that was new, I think, for a lot of his cable news career. After he left magazine journalism, I don't think he sort of spent a lot of time writing when he was at cnn, msnbc. But he really treated that monologue like he would have, like, a magazine piece earlier. Even the way he. He talked about it, like, you know, he would say. He would say, like, I'm filing it to, like, his producers. It just. It was just a different mentality.

[Tommy Vietor]

And I think that's a mentality that served others well. I mean, I think Rachel Maddow is very similar in her preparation for the show back in the day, which was she. She would, I think, go into the office and spend hours and hours and hours hammering out her opening monologue. And, you know, often they were 20 minutes long, so it would take a lot of time. But she's personally invested in that.

[Jason Zengerly]

Yeah, yeah. No, and I. I mean, that's not a coincidence. I mean, I think. I think, like, one. I mean, one of the things I, like, like, doing with this book was sort of introducing people to Tucker who maybe only know him since, you know, he had his Fox primetime show. Kind of the. The things about him that they probably were not aware of. You know, one of them is, like, you know, he. He kind of discovered Rachel Maddow. Like, he was the one who brought her to MSNBC when he was on msnbc. Like, he needed an intelligent debate partner and he want. Maddow was, I think, a Air America host at that point. He saw her audition tape, he wanted her to come on. The execs did not.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Not want her.

[Jason Zengerly]

They thought, you know, she was not TV ready. And he really fought for her and, you know, and brought her on the show. And, you know, as I understand it, like, they're still. They're still friendly.

[Tommy Vietor]

So another mystery about Tucker is, like, no one seems to know why he was fired from Fox News. There's a lot of theories. There's some people thinking, you know, kind of made the wrong powerful person at the network cross them, you know, pissed them off. I talked with someone recently who is personally close with Tucker, who insists that the firing was one of the terms of the lawsuit Fox News settled with Dominion Voting Systems.

[Jason Zengerly]

Yeah, that's the Tucker theory.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay, so what's your. So that's coming from Tucker, you think, what's your theory?

[Jason Zengerly]

I don't know. I mean, I wish I could say I did. I wish I could say this book kind of tells all and reveals it. But honestly, like, none of the explanations I've ever heard, none of the theories, like, are fully sort of satisfying and add up. I mean, I do think it was probably a combination. I mean, Tucker's theory is that that Dominion wanted Rupert Murdoch to get to a billion dollars. That was like their line and Murdoch would not cross that. He would not get to a billion. So he basically counter proposed 700 million in Tucker Carlson's scalp and they took that. But there's no proof of that. And Tucker has, I think, a lot of theories that are probably not necessarily grounded in reality. I mean, there's a theory that Murdoch himself became. Became uncomfortable just with the amount of power that Tucker had amassed inside the network and just in his world. I mean, there's this famous story that Tucker went out to Murdoch's estate in California not too long before he was fired to have, I guess, lunch or some meal with Rupert Murdoch and his then fiance. And his then fiance was a huge Tucker Carlson fan, so much that she thought he was a messenger for God and told this to Tucker during the meal. And Murdoch was so kind of weirded out by this that, understand, the next day he broke off the engagement and then not much longer, Tucker was fired. So that one seems not implausible to me.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's a great theory. I love that. Okay, so nearly every profile book article, conversation you have in D.C. about Tucker Carlson seems to struggle with a fundamental tension, which is that that people who've known him personally, who've interacted with him personally compared to like in that experience, compared to what he says on his show, which is like open racism, anti Semitic guests, content that's just generally extremely paranoid sounding. I know you've known Tucker since, you know, 1997. You guys sort of first crossed paths even. I have had personal interactions with Tucker where, you know, I came away confused by the disconnect between the things I see and hear from him on his show versus the conversation I had with a guy who could be at times, you know, charming and smart and funny and just, you know, seemed very normal. And it leads to the question, like, who is the real Tucker? Does he buy the shtick? Is it the, you know, D.C. lifer, you know, who's chummy with the people he demonizes, or is it the Persona we see on the show? Where have you landed on this sort of, like, fundamental question?

[Jason Zengerly]

I think. I think the guy you see on his show today is who he is. He's not chummy with DC DC people anymore. I don't think. You know, I think that he. During the first Trump presidency, he really. I think he realized that the place that he kind of held in, you know, in Washington society, was no longer tenable because of Trump. I mean, he was always kind of the, you know, like the invited skunk to the garden party. You know, like, liberal D.C. people would have him for, you know, dinner parties and go out with him and be friends with him because. And, you know, he would say outrageous things, and they were just going, oh, that's Tucker. You know? But I think when Trump came into office, that was really no longer tenable. And it got to the point that he had to leave D.C. and when he left D.C. he cut off all of his contact with those people. And he now lives in a very kind of hermetically sealed world up in Maine and down in Florida, like, on.

[Tommy Vietor]

An island, literally, in Maine.

[Jason Zengerly]

An island in Maine and an island in Florida. Same deal. And his social circle, he's kind of traded in Bill crystal for Don Jr. His whole social world is completely, you know, it's all MAGA people. It's all, you know, podcasters and the, like. It's not a horrible conservative knock. Yeah. Not conservative podcasters or, you know, like.

[Tommy Vietor]

He'S with the NPR crew.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

No, no.

[Jason Zengerly]

Yes. He's. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

I've also heard, though, you know, there were some. There was one point right before Tucker left where a bunch of protesters went to his home, I think maybe banged on the door, frightened his. Tucker's wife when Tucker wasn't home. And I was told that that was an incredibly radicalizing experience for him.

[Jason Zengerly]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Do you think that that was right?

[Jason Zengerly]

That was the final straw? Yeah. I mean, up until that point, like, he had, you know, he was having a hard time. Like, you know, he'd go to, like, the dog park and people would curse him out. Like, he could no longer eat at the Palm, which is favorite. Which was his favorite restaurant. I know, I know. He had to go to the prime rib, so. But these are. These are hardships. He was upset about this, but when the. The protesters came to his house, that really. I think that sort of was along in the sand for him. But he's completely spun this story. About how it was horrible, protesters came to his house and frightened his wife. But he makes it sound like the D.C. sort of political class supported that. And that actually is not the case. Everybody denounced that, even people that he was at war with Max Boot and people like that said, you shouldn't do this, but he's sort of allied at that and just kind of lumps them all in together.

[Tommy Vietor]

Interesting. Similar related question. So as Tucker has gone into independent media, he has pushed the envelope further and further to the right in terms of booking guests and talking about subjects that might otherwise have been seen as just like out of bounds, certainly out of bounds for Fox News. Like a couple examples are there was an extremely cushy interview with Vladimir Putin in 2024 that included like segments like praising, you know, a Russian supermarket and the kind of like Russian system. There was this open embrace of the great replacement theory, which is this anti Semitic theory that suggests, you know, the Democrats are trying to bring in new voters to replace others and the world is controlled by Jews. And then, you know, most recently, like there was Tucker's again, very, very soft interview with this neo Nazi named Nick Fuentes, who again, like, you know, was. No one would touch the guy a year or two ago. And I think Tucker was seen as is bringing him in to the more, you know, establishment MAGA media world. I'm curious as to why you think Tucker does this stuff. Like, is it that he just won't be told who he's allowed to interview? Is he genuinely interested? Does he share these opinions? Or is like, I don't know, is, is keeping up with the neo Nazi fringe how you stay current and relevant in this era? Like, I don't know, what's your view?

[Jason Zengerly]

I mean, when I talk about incentive structure, I do think that's, you know, that's an instance of this. I do think, think, you know, I think Tucker's calculating that is, that is how you stay current. You know, he in, in sort of creating this, this new media company that he has in this video podcast. Like he does not, he can't, he doesn't have Fox's built in audience anymore. And you know, in the intention economy, which he's proven to be kind of a master of, like you need to generate outrage. And, and one of the ways you generate outrage is you have guests like, you know, Vladimir Putin or, you know, Andrew Tate or Alex Jones, you have these guys on because people are going to pay attention to that. They're going to tune in. So I do think that's part of his strategy. I mean, I also think at Fox, Roger Ailes always had this sort of rule that no one was bigger than the network. Like Tucker, who came along after Ailes was gone. He violated that rule. He did become bigger than the network in a lot of ways. And there were a lot of lines that he crossed there. And then they just kept on moving the line to allow him to cross. That said, now there are no guardrails. I mean, people talk about sort of the second Trump term and how there are no guardrails anymore. I think that applies to Tucker just as much. There's no one to tell him, no, he doesn't have bosses. It's not a publicly traded company. There are no shareholders to worry about. They actually bought back. They paid off all the investors who originally invested in the company. They bought it back from them. So he truly has no bosses. But at the same time, he's very responsive to where he thinks the audience is. And the Fuentes thing is a really fascinating example because he was in this huge feud with Fuentes. He said he was a fed, he called him gay. I mean, he was attacking him on his show. And then Fuentes fired back. And I think Tucker was losing. I think he kind of saw via social media that Fuentes's fans were taking Fuentes side. And Tucker realized that, or at least he thinks that you can't be successful in that world unless you have the groipers and the neo Nazis on your side. And so he had Fuentes on his show and did this softball interview with him, I think is kind of like an olive branch to try to diffuse the feud because he was worried that he was going to lose. He was going to lose these people. And, you know, I think that that's. I think a lot of that is what's driving him, is this. This idea that this is where the audience is and he's trying to sort of skate to where he thinks the puck is going to be. And he, you know, I think is making the calculus that it's going to be where. With these sort of more extreme people.

[Tommy Vietor]

And look, this is, again, why Tucker is so, I think, uniquely powerful in the mega media world. I think a lot of people would argue uniquely dangerous to our political discourse, because I don't know if you saw this, but over the weekend, there were a bunch of videos that Nick Fuentes and these other absolute loser douchebag, like, neo Nazi misogynist horrible people, they all went to a club in Miami and posted videos of themselves singing a song by Kanye west called Heil Hitler. And, and doing Nazi salutes and, you know, like, and, you know, these with the Tate brothers who are accused of rape. I mean, vile people. And, you know, if Tucker is seen as like the biggest force in the MAGA media world and he is kind of bringing someone like Fuentes and those individuals into the fold of the MAGA world while also somehow maintaining a relationship with JD Vance, the current vice president who was attacked in the most racist terms possible by Nick Fuentes. It just like it feels like those two things shouldn't be able to be true, but it's quite dangerous to me.

[Jason Zengerly]

Yeah, no, well, yeah, I mean, I did see that video. It was sort of like the final straw for me. I've been like resisting having to learn who clavicular. And now like, I broke down this weekend and read about him. So I'm sure he'll be a guest on Tucker's show soon. You know, and Vance is. Vance and Tucker, I think, are very similar one. I mean, they actually are like genuine friends. I think they actually share a lot of the same kind of views and resentments. And the way Vance has responded to the Fuentes, I mean, Fuentes going on Tucker's show was. It's kind of crazy how that that episode triggered this response in this kind of, you know, civil war within the conservative movement. I mean, people like, sort of forget that, like Fuentes had dinner with Donald Trump in 2022. No one responded to that the way they're responding to Tucker hosting him on his podcast, which I think is like, really interesting. It's either, you know, people are kind of virtue signaling and they think it's easier to attack Tucker than it is to attack Trump or. And I think this is actually like a real view. I think there are a lot of people in the conservative movement, especially Jewish conservatives, who are more fearful of Tucker than. And where Tucker is going, than they are of Trump. Like, they don't. They think Trump, Trump, at the end of the day will be with them. What they're worried is what's going to happen after Trump and where Tucker is taking the Republican Party and the conservative movement. And you know, and I think in their view, taking J.D. vance along with him, the Tucker, Vance relationship, I think is. Is something that troubles a lot of. Of conservatives, people who. And, you know, it's different kind of trouble. Like some people like really like Vance and they're like, why is he going along with Tucker? You know, Tucker's going to really like, lead him to the wrong place. But, you know, I think Vance is going along pretty willingly. And I think Vance who. You're right. I mean, the things Fuentes has said about Vance himself, much less about his wife and J.D. vance just, you know, he once, back during the campaign, I think he said something kind of nasty, or not even that nasty. He just said that, you know, Doug Fuentes was a loser, but now he will not take the bait. You know, at that Turning Point conference where Ben Shapiro showed up and kind of read the riot act to Tucker and, you know, Fuentes and all these people, when it was Vance's turn to speak, he completely wussed out and he said, I'm not here to cancel anybody. And I think that's. He's made, I think, the calculus that Tucker's made that you can't succeed in conservative politics these days and in the Republican Party without the neo Nazis on your side.

[Tommy Vietor]

That is scary and pathetic. And I won't make you go into all the foreign policy implications. But Tucker definitely has a very, very different view on US Support for Israel and whether the US should be sending money and weapons to Israel than. Than others than Republican Party. And so the stakes are quite large there from a foreign policy perspective. But final question for you, then. Like, big picture is, you know, I've wondered whether Tucker would run for office himself, especially run for president. I kind of wondered if Trump hadn't. Hadn't run again. I was where you were when I assumed Tucker might. What do you think? I mean, does you think that's possibly in the cards? It's a very different life than what he's got going on currently. You can't do it from Maine.

[Jason Zengerly]

Ah, I don't know, Kenny. I mean, seriously. I mean, I feel like the way our politics are going, I mean, you know, he. You don't have to be on the campaign trail every day. You can just, you know, sit in a studio and, you know, put out tweets and the like. I think. I think that. I think it is possible to do it that way. I mean, you have to do some travel. But, you know, he did that. I mean, he had his arena tour in 2024. But I mean, like, putting aside kind of like the logistics, I mean, I think that, that. Look, he. I think it's important to think of him not as like a media figure, but almost as a. As a political operator. I mean, because that's kind of the way he runs his media operation. And he. He doesn't just want to be a podcaster. And, you know, he. I think he really wants to change the country. And I think the question for him is going to be can he do that without actually running for office for, you know, himself? And like right now he has this very, you know, tight symbiotic relationship with J.D. vance. And J.D. vance is saying a lot of the things that Tucker says, maybe lowering the sort of, the really kind of nasty stuff a little bit, toning it down a little bit, but still very much in line with what Tucker says and believes. And I think J.D. vance worries a lot about what Tucker thinks and what Tucker's reaction is going to be to things. And I think if Tucker is confident that one, J.D. vance will stay allied with him and two, that he could get elected. Yeah, he probably doesn't need to do it himself, but at a certain point if he feels like Vance is maybe not going to follow line that Tucker wants, or I think even more sort of like plausibly is not a particularly good politician and can't get elected, then yeah, I could totally see Tucker doing it. And I think the way you would run for president now is so different than it was four years ago, eight years ago, 12 years ago, that in a way, I mean Trump is just, you're a media figure and that's the way Trumper could do it. I mean, he'd probably have to get out of his bubble a little bit, but not, not, not as much as maybe you might think.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, you'd have to hit the road. I mean you're certainly right that having a built in audience, having a studio to broadcast from, like that, that's a lot. You know, it's influencer piece. There are a bunch of like, you know, security concerns, you know, lifestyle concerns, increased scrutiny that I'm sure no one would enjoy. But maybe it's worth it for power.

[Jason Zengerly]

Yeah, no, he wants power. I mean, he, look, he, he believes what he's saying. I think, I think that's sort of, of one sort of takeaway from the book I hope people get is like you need to, you can have the debate. Like did he always believe it? Did he sort of do this out of cynicism? But he's been saying it long enough now and he's been successful in saying it that I think it's just sort of human nature to start to believe it. And you talk to enough people around him, this is what he believes. These are his views about what he thinks the country should be doing, where it should be headed. And he believes them in some ways more deeply I think, than, you know, a lot of people in Donald Trump's world do. He's not, you know, he's not sort of aligning himself with Trump to, you know, protect his bottom line or, you know, increase his company's, you know, shareholder value. Like he, he wants these things that Trump says he wants in terms of, you know, the character of the country and the like. And I think he, he's not going to, he's, he's going to do what he has to do that he thinks he has to do to make that happen, to achieve that goal.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, I guess there will be a lot to watch in the future. There's so much more in the book that we could have talked about. There's understanding Tucker's mom and the way she essentially abandoned their family and how he blames liberalism for that. There's the relationship with Viktor Orban in Hungary. And basically, I mean, the title of the book Hated by All the Right People is a reference to, I think, a line Tucker Carlson said about Viktor Orban, right?

[Jason Zengerly]

Yeah. And a toast to Viktor Orban. Yeah. He was eating Dan dinner with him and that was his toast to Viktor Orban. You're truly hated by all the right people.

[Tommy Vietor]

And now Orban is like a darling on the right. And I think Tucker has a direct line in that. And again, so everyone should buy the book Hated by All the Right People, Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind. Pre order it now. Get it while it's hot. It's an incredible book. You will be fascinated, but also learn a lot about Tucker and this political moment we're in. Jason Zengerly, great to see you. Thank you for writing it.

[Jason Zengerly]

Thanks a lot for having me on.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's our show for today. Thanks to Jason for coming on. Remember, you can pre order Hated by All the right [e-mail] books or pick up the book wherever you shop when it releases on January 27th. Dan and I will be back in your feed on Friday. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Ilik 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 Kanter 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, Hayley Jones, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Kiril Pelaviev, David Toles, and Ryan Young, our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

[Jon Lovett]

Olivia loves a challenge. It's why she lifts heavy weights and likes complicated recipes. But for booking her trip to Paris, Olivia chose the easy way With Expedia, she bundled her flight with a hotel to save more.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Of course, she still climbed all 600 to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

[Jon Lovett]

You were made to take the easy route.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We were made to easily package your trip.

[Jon Lovett]

Expedia Made to Travel Flight inclusive packages are atoll protected Hi there, it's Andy.

[Jason Zengerly]

Richter and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, the three Questions with Andy Richter. Each week I invite friends, comedians, actors and musicians to discuss these three questions.

[Jon Lovett]

Where do you from come come from? Where are you going and what have you learned? New episodes are out every Tuesday with.

[Jason Zengerly]

Guests like Julie Bowe and Ted Danson, Tig Notaro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more. You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter Call in show episodes.

[Jon Lovett]

Where me and a special guest invite.

[Jason Zengerly]

Callers to weigh in on topics like dating, disasters, bad teachers, and lots more. Listen to the three Questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts.