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Trump Promises Free Speech Crackdown
01:20:34
In response to the murder of Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump vows retribution against his political opponents, JD Vance asks Americans to snitch on anyone criticizing Kirk's politics, and Stephen Miller pledges to "disrupt, dismantle, and destroy" left-wing organizations. Jon, Lovett, and Tommy react to these new threats, then break down the latest news about Kirk's killer, Kash Patel's mishandling of the FBI's investigation, and the bleak future of TikTok and of one the legacy media organizations it's supplanting: CBS News. Then, Sen. Chris Murphy joins Lovett to talk about how Democrats should stand up to Trump's impending crackdown on free speech.
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- [00:00]
Jon Lovett
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- [01:03]
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- [01:55]
Jon Favreau
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
- [01:58]
Jon Lovett
I'm Jon Levitt.
- [01:58]
Tommy Vietor
I'm Tom Diesel.
- [01:59]
Jon Favreau
On today's show, we're going to talk about a possible US China deal to save TikTok. Thank God. Trump's war on the legacy media and the split among New York Democrats over endorsing the party's nominee for mayor, Zoran Mamdani. Then Lovett talks to Senator Chris Murphy about his latest warning that, quote, something dark might be coming. No shit. Speaking of which, let's Start with the fallout from the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which right now is the central focus of the President, the White House, the Republican Party, right wing media and the MAGA movement. The suspected killer is set to be charged in court on Tuesday. More on that in a bit. But before the FBI had any idea who killed Kirk or why, Trump promised to go after any organization that has contributed to any of what he calls, quote, radical left political violence. What does he mean by that? We still don't know for sure. But Trump has expanded on his remarks. He did it over the weekend and then in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon, as did Stephen Miller on Monday when he appeared on Charlie Kirk show, which was guest hosted by Vice President J.D. vance. Let's listen.
- [02:58]
Jon Lovett
Well, the problem is on the left. If you look at the problem, the problem is on the left. It's not on the right like some people like to say, on the right. The problem we have is on the left. You know, they're already under major investigation. A lot of the people that you would traditionally say are on the left.
- [03:14]
Tommy Vietor
They'Re already under investigation.
- [03:16]
Senator Chris Murphy
Already under investigation.
- [03:17]
Jon Lovett
With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have.
- [03:21]
Senator Chris Murphy
At the Department of Justice, Homeland Security.
- [03:23]
Jon Lovett
And throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make.
- [03:28]
Senator Chris Murphy
America safe again for the American people.
- [03:29]
Jon Lovett
It will happen and we will do it in Charlie's name. Do you plan on designating Antifa, finally, a domestic terror organization? I would do that 100% and others also, by the way. But Antifa is terrible. We have some pretty radical groups and they got away with murder.
- [03:46]
Senator Chris Murphy
And also I've been speaking to the.
- [03:48]
Jon Lovett
Attorney General about bringing RICO against some of the people that you've been reading.
- [03:53]
Jon Favreau
About that have been putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation.
- [03:57]
Jon Lovett
These aren't protests, these are crimes.
- [03:59]
Jon Favreau
What they're doing, still kind of vague, still very terrifying. Two senior administration officials told the New York Times on Monday they're working to identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives. The goal, they said, was to categorize left wing activity that led to violence as domestic terrorism. What's been your reaction to the threats coming out of the administration, Tommy?
- [04:22]
Tommy Vietor
My takeaway watching that whole livestream was Stephen Miller. J.D. vance, like a lot of the MAGA world, they're seething. They're seething with rage and they are looking to punish a big group of people well beyond this sick individual that murdered Charlie Kirk. And I think on a human level, I get their rage. If someone shot one of you guys I would be raging too. But I think everyone should watch JD Vance's full closing statement on Charlie Kirk's show today because I think it gives you the full roadmap for what's coming down the pike.
- [04:51]
Jon Favreau
But.
- [04:51]
Tommy Vietor
So Vance starts by being. He talked about this article in the Nation that he says took Charlie Kirk out of context and was not just unfair, but he claims was an attempt to justify Charlie Kirk's murder, which is absolutely not true. Like, I read the article, it was extremely harsh. There's a correction appended. So clearly they got something wrong. But like the, the article concludes, I won't celebrate his death, but I'm not obligated to celebrate his life either is clearly not justifying his murder. But Vance kind of, he builds his outrage to this one article into a bigger argument against what he calls a pyramid or structure that includes donors, activists, journalists and politicians. So the big group of people and then he says, asserts as a fact, based on some polling that I'm not really sure where he's pulling it from, that liberals are the real problem when it comes to political violence because liberals believe it's okay.
- [05:36]
Jon Favreau
It was a, it was a single YouGov online poll that came out the, the day after the assassination.
- [05:43]
Tommy Vietor
Oh, good.
- [05:44]
Jon Favreau
Okay, so that, so just classic, just very strong data set from one online poll. Got it fielded the night after the, the assassination.
- [05:53]
Tommy Vietor
Oh, good.
- [05:54]
Jon Favreau
Okay. So that usually works out well.
- [05:55]
Tommy Vietor
Gold standard.
- [05:56]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [05:56]
Tommy Vietor
So then he ties together not just actually violent people, but also someone who yelled rude things at him and his family when they were at Disneyland. And then people who Vance says have lied about Charlie Kirk. And it builds to him saying there can be no unity with people who fund these articles or pay the salaries of what he calls terrorist sympathizers. So my takeaway was they're going to go after these media organizations who write things they don't like. They're going to go after the tax exempt status of progressive foundations that fund organizations they don't like, including the media. They're going to organize the mob to cancel random people who say terrible things on the Internet. And they don't care that it's all kind of antithetical to the, the principles of free speech that Charlie Kirk talked about or all the anger and frustration at cancel culture that we've heard over the years, including at TPUSA events. And again, they refer to these groups as terrorist organizations, which to me is very significant in the wake of the administration just deciding that it can murder suspected drug dealers because they've been designated a terrorist organization by the White House, including a second military strike on a boat today.
- [06:58]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, I watched the whole thing, too. And one thing I think was worth watching it in full, too is because you see lots of clips of it going around. Right. But you would never know that inside of what he said is he actually does acknowledge that he received a lot of personal notes from Democratic friends and former Senate colleagues. And he makes a point of saying that the vast majority of Democrats do not condone political violence. But it's almost an aside to get to his main point, which is the crackdown. Like, he doesn't see saying that as a kind of, I don't know, entree into a better kind of conversation that recognizes that this is not a partisan problem. Right. Like he's referring to a single study that shows Democrats are more accepting or tolerant of political violence. Meanwhile, Cato Institute is not exactly a left wing organization, looks at the data and shows that that right wing, actual right wing murder and mayhem is tilted towards the right. But like, even in this, there's this competition to prove that it's a problem of the left or a problem of the right. And meanwhile, like, you have a set of political assassinations and attacks, they are clearly run the gamut across the ideological spectrum. We've seen all kinds of attacks on Democrats. We've seen two attempts on Trump, this murder of Charlie Kirk. There are also mass shootings that are similar in that these are all people wanting to go out in some kind of a blaze of glory. The ideology of which is, if it's legible at all, is often incomprehensible and strange and deranged. And it's all along a kind of smooth curve of motivations. And you look at it and you say, okay, we do have a really serious problem. And to understand it requires not looking at it with this like, political valence of trying to compete to which side is going to own most of it. And meanwhile, we have this toxic political culture that he is of course contributing to by saying they're going to target the broad left and foundations. Because there was an article in the Nation he didn't like, an article nobody read.
- [08:59]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. He said at one point, it's a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left. That is not a statistical fact. The fact that the Vice President, United States is saying that is just unbelievably irresponsible. We mentioned there's a YouGov poll. There's also a huge poll, large sample from earlier in the Trump administration, March or April, has the ideology of killers. Like 20% of Trump supporters agree that Americans may have to resort to violence to save the country. 10% of people who don't like Trump agree with that. The Anti Defamation League, which as you know is not some liberal bastion these days that you know, has data from 2013 to 2022, overwhelmingly right wing instances of violence. The FBI's own statistics, DHS own statistics, like it's not. And again, this is not to say that, you know, left wing political violence to the extent that it happens is not a huge fucking problem. But like the statistics tell a very different story. And at the least, maybe if you're the vice President of the United States and you're trying to bring the country together, you don't just jump up there like you're a poster on social media and decide to lay it all at the feet feet of the left incorrectly.
- [10:09]
Tommy Vietor
And two little things on that, I mean, one, I think broad based, you can ask people like, do you support violence to advance some political agenda. They might say yes. When you get more specific, okay, would you support assassination? Would you support physically harm? The numbers go way down and down and down. Right.
- [10:23]
Jon Favreau
So the most like 7% or something.
- [10:25]
Tommy Vietor
It'S again, it's too many, but it's small. And then also the most important thing though is I think when you look at kind of the body of research, studies find that Americans are more likely to support political violence than if they think the other side also holds those views. So if one party says they're coming for us, it's only a matter of time that is going to lead that party that feels attacked to support political violence. So that's why J.D. vance and Trump's message and Stephen Miller's message of like rejecting unity and targeting the other side before they get us is quite scary and dangerous.
- [10:56]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, that's from that G. Eliot Morris has a subsec about that which I really would encourage everyone to read because there's an actionable item out of it which is the more you share and let people know the fact that there's only a tiny, tiny percentage of Americans who actually support political assassinations or violence like that. The more it helps sort of reduce both sides support for that kind of thing.
- [11:21]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, there's also a Morning Consult poll came out and it showed that there's basically unanimity around people blaming political rhetoric generically, social media and mental illness of any kind of a killer. But then you get into the details and Democrats blame Republican rhetoric and Republicans blame Democratic rhetoric, rhetoric, Democrats blame Trump, and on and on and on. But you see in that, that people instinctively understand that we have a huge problem with rhetoric. And you do have to have two ideas in your mind that are a little bit in conflict, and one of which is undoubtedly heated political rhetoric kind of contributes to create a medium in which these kinds of things can emerge. And also, no, we should not, unless there's clear evidence, tie the actions of random murderers and maniacs to entire movements, in part because that gives those murderers and maniacs more power. It suggests that they were successful in yoking control of our politics, which is what a person who does this is ultimately doing by like declaring their views and their desires and their dominance, like their, their, their worldview.
- [12:24]
Jon Favreau
More important, I was trying to figure out what the, how this is going to go, how the sort of like legal attack from the administration on these groups could unfold. So I was like asking around if you noticed Miller, Stephen Miller, in the Oval on Monday when Trump was asked about this. And then Miller, like, what NGOs are you talking about? What's the specifics? You know, he said, he mentioned ice, people who are like doxxing ICE and handing out gas masks at protests. And it sounds like from what Miller has been saying and even what J.D. vance has been saying, that they were planning something like this prior to the assassination. Especially because Miller says that, like Kirk's last text to him was like, go these left wing organizations, make sure you do that. And there's no law that would allow the president or authority, allow the president to designate a domestic group as a terror organization. You need to have some kind of foreign ties to that. That seems more like one of his sign an executive order that doesn't really have any force of law. Or maybe he just labels them that they've been thrown around RICO a lot. RICO is, that's the racketeering law. It's used for conspiracy. It's hard to do a criminal RICO case unless there were like, direct connections between organizations and people who have committed violence. One thing they, they have done before or the government has done before in history is there's like a, you can bring civil RICO cases and you can do civil forfeiture. And so what you do is basically freeze the assets of a group that you think is part of a conspiracy and they can sue to get those assets back. But it basically ties them up for years in court. And this is what happened with a lot Muslim charities after 911 is they basically, they were bankrupted through forfeiture even though there were no convictions and eventually were found to, like, not have, you know, supported any kind of terrorist groups. So it is, it's a campaign of intimidation. It's a campaign of like, perhaps we could seize assets and money and power. Which also Miller said over the weekend, he's like, we're gonna take your power away, take your money away, and then if you've broken the law, then we'll take your freedom away. And it's like, well, how are you getting the money? Money?
- [14:35]
Jon Lovett
You gotta go to the law first. Yeah, yeah, there it does, it does seem like. Look, I mean, the thing that is so worrying to me about it is in part, we've seen so many major organizations capitulate just on the threat of action by the Trump administration. We'll get to some of the media examples later. But like, we have not seen people not seen, like, kind of mainline groups show a lot of, kind of grit in the face of intimidation tactics by the administration. You know, I talked a little bit about this with, with Chris Murphy and John Ganz wrote a great piece about this, just about what a crackdown could look like. And we've talked about this before, that there are parts of America's kind of culture that give us advantage, one of which is this is a big, complicated, fractious country with a lot of layers of government. And he talks about this, that it's virtually ungovernable. That's been true throughout our history. And that is a protection. But you only have to target a few places to have like a real chilling effect across free streets. Organizations afraid to get involved in protest, organizations afraid to get involved in, say, fighting on behalf of immigrants for fear of being tied to some action of some disparate group. And then that coming back to them because they were involved in a meeting or a different meeting or protest or whatever.
- [15:51]
Jon Favreau
I will say back to that nation Peace that made him so mad. Not only did he like mischaracterize the peace itself, he said that, you know, and the nation is funded by, you know, George Soros is Open Society foundation, the Ford foundation. And both Open Society and the Nation were like, no, that's not true. There's no connection between us whatsoever.
- [16:09]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. But step one is going after the Soros Open Society foundation, the Ford foundation, and stripping their tax exempt status, which will make it impossible for them to operate.
- [16:17]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. And it'll be like a Harvard thing. Right. Where they'll, they'll sue, obviously. And maybe they don't have, maybe the administration doesn't have a leg to stand on, but it'll tie them up, you know. So anything else from the JD Vance hosted? I know I watched most of it. You watched all of it?
- [16:33]
Tommy Vietor
I thought Tucker Carlson's part was pretty interesting. It was the most low key of the thing, which is surprising that it was Tucker. But he focused on the intra MAGA split on foreign policy in the Republican Party and Charlie Kirk's role in pushing back on the neocons and opposing war in Iran. And then this is where it got interesting to me. Tucker says, quote, I don't think it's helpful for people, particularly foreign heads of state, to jump in and say he lived for my cause or whatever. That's disgusting. Actually it's also literally untrue. That is almost certainly a reference to Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister who even before the killer had been ID'd, went on Fox News and he blamed Kirk's assassination on, quote, a combination of radical Islamists and ultra progressives. So just linking the progressives with the Islamists. And it's all even weirder because Netanyahu's got to deal now with this far right part of the MAGA world that has been asserting that Israel was behind Charlie Kirk's assassination, which the first time I saw this was like from someone at Infowars, but it kind of like blew up on the right to the point where Netanyahu was asked about it during a TV interview. And there's zero evidence for the claim, frankly, I find it insane on its face. And it's like, you know, the latest kind of anti Semitic trope you might hear. But it is, it was just a bizarre subtext that kind of came out today.
- [17:47]
Jon Lovett
There was a political assassination. It does have underlying causes and we're going to learn more what the motives are in the specific cases. But like there is rising mass shootings, political violence, there are a lot of like underlying reasons that it's happening. And the fact that we're going to now be dealing with a kind of partisan debate over a crackdown on the left when that is such a ancillary and like unrelated part to what's actually kind of driving this from like the depths of the Internet and like what's broken on our society means even as we're trying to figure out, out where the, where Stephen Miller is going to find his next target, there may be more deaths, there be more attacks, right? There'll be more mass shootings shooting in Minnesota, the random attacks happening all the time. And there's me no attention on that, right because we're not going to do anything, like, to have an actual helpful national conversation about what to do to, like, figure out what is driving these kinds of, like, blaze of glory murderers and like, that will, then there will be another. And we will do the same thing where we race around trying to figure out who can own the motives, if those motives are even legible. And it's like, it's, it's, it's sad and scary because it just means we're going to spiral down because if we're focused on like a fucking online lefty magazine that wrote an article that you didn't like, we're not focusing on the actual danger that is very real and by the way, threatens Democrats and Republicans alike.
- [19:11]
Jon Favreau
So there's the, the government crackdown. There's also MAGA influencers and supporters who are just going after anyone who's posted comments that range from celebrating Kirk's murder to joking about it, to condemning the assassination while still criticizing Kirk's politics and past statements. After some person tweeted a public spreadsheet of target names, Elon Musk responded, quote, they are the ones poisoning the minds of our children. And here's what Vance said in his closing remarks on the Charlie Kirk Show Monday. So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's.
- [19:43]
Jon Lovett
Murder, call them out in hell.
- [19:45]
Jon Favreau
Call their employer. So I guess for JD Vance and Elon and the rest of MAGA now free speech is out. Cancel culture is back, and it's good now, right? What do you guys make of the naming and shaming and I guess, trying to get people fired campaign?
- [19:58]
Tommy Vietor
Remember when Elon bought Twitter as he said, it was because he was a free speech absolutist. Generally, absolutists would entail speech that offends you. It does show how dumb and hypocritical the debate has been all along? I mean, there are some very principal defenders of free speech out there. And then there's a lot of people who just mean, like, free speech is speech I believe in, or like. And I think we've always known that MAGO is full of on this, that Trump was full of on this, because last month he had a executive order about prosecuting people who burned the American flag. That's been a test case for decades for free speech. Before that, they were arresting foreign students who are critical of the war in Gaza. Now we're getting people fired for saying shitty things about Charlie Kirk. I'm not defending any of those comments, but, you know, when people complain about cancel Culture, I think they're very Rarely talking about anything a political leader or politician did. It's usually just online mobs. And now these guys are creating spreadsheets, and Elon Musk is helping unleash these online mobs on the platform that he purchased to be a free speech absolutist. And it's just like. It's absurd.
- [20:57]
Jon Lovett
Yeah. You know, it's like, you know, Epstein turned all of us into conspiracy theorists, and now, like, the right is turning themselves into a bunch of narcs. The way they said that the left had become a bunch of fucking narcs. And, like, I am, like, there is, like, a real, like, hardening and, like, viciousness online, and there's a lot of kind of performative indifference and a lot of kind of performative effort to, like that somehow you demonstrate your political bona fides by not caring about a political murderer. I think it's, like, depraved, and it's also stupid. Especially, like, you don't have to. You can despise Charlie Kirk if you don't feel terrified about where this leads. Like, you're just not paying attention. But like, a culture in which people are policing each other online and then Googling and searching through records to find where they work and call them. Like, you may get a nurse fired who said something heinous. Right. You may get a teacher or administrator or college out of their jobs. Like, that's absolutely true. But, like, is this the. Collectively, are we all happy with that world? The government doesn't need to crack down on free speech because we built a panopticon where everybody vents their spleen and then goes around trying to figure out who they can hurt by it. Like, go find their. Find the way in which to make them pay for that thing. I saw online that I didn't like turning the whole country into one little tiny village where everybody's, like, watching each other through the window. Is that a good world we want to live in? By the way, I would have said this when this was policing people from the right or from the left.
- [22:22]
Jon Favreau
I think we did.
- [22:23]
Jon Lovett
I think we did. And I think we did.
- [22:25]
Jon Favreau
You know, it's the reason the legal standard, again, for free speech, we have a pretty, pretty broad one here in America, you know, for speech must be directed to inciting imminent lawless action and be likely to produce such action. Right. That's the standard that the Supreme Court has decided on. Free speech, for it not to be constituted as protected free speech. So beyond that, the reason that you sort of have a big, broad definition of this is because people start with someone saying, oh, I'm, you know, this, this person posted. I'm. I'm glad he's dead. Or this person posted, you're next. So and so. Right. And now we've gone to all the way down to someone who's saying, I condemn violence. But, but let's. And I think it's awful that he was assassinated, but I also think he said some bad things. Now, now, now the right. Is including that.
- [23:13]
Tommy Vietor
Which is what that Nation article basically said.
- [23:15]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, just like, I'm sorry, but like it's you at the point where just people posting quotes out of context.
- [23:19]
Jon Favreau
Right?
- [23:20]
Jon Lovett
That the. Out of context quotes. Now we're going to go after people.
- [23:22]
Jon Favreau
The. And then it just got, it sort of veered and it was, you know, making me angry. And then at some point in the last 48 hours, 72 hours, I had to laugh, you know, so it was veering into the absurd. And fortunately, the chairman of the Oakland County Republican Party in Michigan, he did it for me. He made me laugh. He decided to drive around all weekend and post pictures of private businesses with flag poles demanding that they lower the flag, even though President Trump's order to lower the flag is for federal buildings only. And so you get tweets like this from this guy. Hey, Chase bank, why isn't your Barclays Circle branch in Rochester Hills complying with federal and state orders to lower the flag in honor of Charlie Kirk you've had since Wednesday? You think the.
- [24:10]
Tommy Vietor
I know you're mad, man, but there's got to be a better way to spend your time.
- [24:13]
Jon Favreau
You think the bigwigs at Chase HQ going to come down heavy on the, on the Barclays Circle branch?
- [24:18]
Jon Lovett
It's, it's so, it's such an. Like this. You know, there. People have been pointing out that, like, after Kennedy was killed, there were like little. There were reports about people celebrating it and that and that leading people to say, hey, it's not social media. But, like, I don't doubt that there's this part of us that has like a schadenfreude and kind of a lack of care for political opposition that can get pretty vile and that it's always been there. But, like, there is it just so obvious that being exposed to so much of it and exposing ourselves to so much social media leads people to really like, like, I felt it myself just this weekend kind of reading about this stuff. Like, I felt myself like getting this sort of like, anger and then you feel it and there's nowhere to put it. Right. Cause you're just reading things on the Internet and so you want to, like, you have to do something with it. And so he's going to point it at that Chase branch. Like, there's so many people I disagree with and they're all out there saying these things all the time. And like, people don't know what to do with that energy and it's just so fucking toxic.
- [25:13]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. And that's not even like I disagree with the Chase branch. That's like the Chase branch probably not even crossing the manager's mind that they.
- [25:22]
Jon Lovett
Should lower the flag.
- [25:24]
Jon Favreau
I mean, come on. So here's what we know about the alleged killer as of Monday afternoon when we're recording this. We may know more by the time you're hearing it. The suspect is 22 year old Utah native Tyler Robinson, who agreed to turn himself in after his father recognized photos released by the authorities. Robinson comes from a family of Republicans, but Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said over the weekend that Robinson himself held a, quote, leftist ideology. Six sources familiar with the investigation also told Axios that Robinson was in a romantic relationship with his transgender roommate, who they said is being quote, extremely cooperative with the investigation. And Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, the podcasters running the FBI. Fucking dream. Yeah. Said on Monday that Robinson had a, quote, obsession with Kirk, that he sent text messages before the shooting saying he had a, quote, opportunity to go after the conservative activist and that he was going to, quote, take it. And Robinson had been linked to DNA evidence found at the scene. Speaking of cash, Fox News reports that his job may be in jeopardy in a story sourced to 10 sources in the Trump administration. Apparently Pam Bondi and Todd Blanch have, quote, no confidence in Cash and, quote, Pam in particular, can't stand him. Live tweeting incomplete information about the investigation from Reyes in Manhattan didn't exactly help. Rao's.
- [26:41]
Jon Lovett
Rao's.
- [26:42]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I don't know.
- [26:44]
Jon Lovett
I'd never heard of it.
- [26:44]
Jon Favreau
First I thought Rao's. Rao's 100%. Rao's cash is going to face a Senate hearing on Tuesday. I'm sure that will be fun. But until then, he's been doing the rounds on Fox to defend himself to the network's most important viewer. Let's listen.
- [26:57]
Jon Lovett
Could I have worded it a little better in the heat of the moment? Sure. But do I regret putting it out? Absolutely not. I was telling the world what the FBI was doing, as we were doing, and I'm continuing to do that. If you go back and look at historical cases like Luigi Mangione and the Boston bombing, how long did it take the Bureau to release information to the public? We're not doing that. Those two manhunts took five days, and they happened in downtown major metropolises. We apprehended our suspect in 33 hours because we were transparent and open. So anyone that thinks that the FBI is not on top of its game and that me and the deputy and everybody in leadership in our Salt Lake City field office in Quantico is doing anything politically, I'm not having it. And if you've heard anything else about it, they are lying to you.
- [27:38]
Tommy Vietor
Not having it.
- [27:40]
Jon Lovett
Not having it.
- [27:40]
Tommy Vietor
For those watching on the YouTube, you'll notice that he's doing something you just cannot do. If you're doing tv, which he's looking at the monitor above him, his camera at himself constantly, which just makes you look so shifty.
- [27:51]
Jon Favreau
What I was doing was telling you all what the FBI was doing as it was doing it, which is what every FBI director is famously supposed to do. Right. When law enforcement is conducting a law enforcement operation and investigation, you're supposed to just keep people abreast of every detail.
- [28:04]
Tommy Vietor
Bob Mueller used to tweet. Got one. Just getting clear.
- [28:07]
Jon Lovett
He. There. He put. He. He says something in. Maybe it was this interview about the DNA evidence that they collected from the crime scene. And it's like, why. It's. It's. Do you understand why you share information, right? Like, is it to help. It's to help people either to protect their communities or maybe to find somebody. No, you weren't. It wasn't like, you, like, I overrule you guys. I think we should put the guy's picture out there, dude.
- [28:28]
Tommy Vietor
He was saying that, though.
- [28:29]
Jon Favreau
He was.
- [28:29]
Tommy Vietor
He was talking about how, like, he gave a TikTok of the key events, and one of the key events was what time he and Dan Bongino landed on the ground in Utah. And now they decided. They decided to release the photo. And it's like, do you think that that was the first time the FBI.
- [28:43]
Jon Lovett
Has released a photo? That doesn't make any sense.
- [28:45]
Tommy Vietor
It was crazy.
- [28:45]
Jon Favreau
He's like, we apprehended the. The father turned him in. What did you do? What the fuck did you do?
- [28:51]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, he tweeted this would have to be. Father turned him in. Be cops. Like, the dad turned him in. You were.
- [28:56]
Jon Favreau
You were there to receive the information from the dad.
- [28:59]
Jon Lovett
Yeah.
- [28:59]
Tommy Vietor
Also he said like. He's like. Would I have worded it differently? Sure, buddy. You tweeted misinformation about your own investigation.
- [29:05]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, there's also like, there was an Axios story and it wasn't that remarkable, but it was, it said that about, it was about the transgender roommate and how it might lead to motive. And there were quotes by Cox in there, but Cox, who by the way, seems to just be behaving honorably and responsibly throughout this. But at the end of that story, it said something I just hadn't seen in this kind of tone before. It said, it's pretty clear that Robinson's roommate knew a lot and didn't say anything after the killing. So they're a person of interest officially and cooperating. A second official said, we want to keep it that way. That is a really strange story to come out of law enforcement to Axios. Right. So weird. And it like, look, I.
- [29:47]
Jon Favreau
Especially since, yeah, one of the sources said the person was extremely cooperative and made it sound like that's. They're like really happy to have that cooperation, which is why they didn't release the name or identity of the person. And then that official at the end, I thought that was weird.
- [29:59]
Jon Lovett
And so I don't know. I don't know who this official is. Maybe it's a career person and maybe just a strange quote. But throughout this entire couple of days, we had the Wall Street Journal reporting incorrectly about the bullets. We had a Guardian story that had some incorrect information that they had to withdraw. And then you have these kinds of stories and because we have someone like Cash Patel who's a mix of kind of partisan loyalist to Trump, plus also a deeply strange incompetent. You don't know what the balance is and you don't know where these quotes are coming from. Like, is this a story? That's because they're just trying to prove they know stuff and get stuff out there in a kind of unhelpful and kind of ham fisted way. Is it because they're actually like wanting to put it out there into the world that there's this transgender person connected to it, as you have Elon Musk seeming there's like a transgender terror cell operating despite the fact that there's that Cox has said this roommate is cooperative. So I just found myself reading this and saying, oh, I'll never know. It's hard to know because we have a, a couple of partisan hacks that aren't prepared running this department.
- [30:57]
Tommy Vietor
Kaj Patel's grossly unqualified for the job. He was a low level prosecutor at doj, then he was an aide to Devin Nunes before he got Into Trump world where he was like a low level NSC guy before getting some garbage time gig at the DOD and now enough for me. No law enforcement experience. He's talking about how he walked the crime scene in Utah. It's like, buddy, I'm sorry, did you learn about that on Capitol Hill? What value did you add?
- [31:21]
Jon Favreau
What training allowed you to walk the crime scene?
- [31:23]
Jon Lovett
A pair of blacklight glasses, kind of like, like what are you talking about?
- [31:26]
Tommy Vietor
Someone on Twitter tweeted that Patel permanently has the facial expression of someone walking through Dubai customs with a brick of cocaine.
- [31:33]
Jon Favreau
So.
- [31:35]
Tommy Vietor
Tim Dillon said, comedian said he wouldn't trust Cash Patel to investigate a dispute with DoorDash to get him a $10 credit. So like, like that Fox story is sort of hopeful, right? According to Fox, the White House, the ag, the deputy ag all have lost confidence in Cash Patel. I would bet big money that the rest of the bureau doesn't like him either because of the way he's politicized the place and pushed out people. So the one interesting thing is the White House just installed a new second deputy director because you always have a backup deputy director who a lot of people think is in place so that in 90 days he can take over. Because under the Federal Vacancies Reform act of 1998, you can fill in for the director if you've been in the job for 90 days.
- [32:17]
Jon Favreau
This was like that Missouri Attorney General, I think that they grabbed.
- [32:20]
Tommy Vietor
Yes, that's so someone said he'll get Billy Longd, which is the IRS commissioner who is now the US Ambassador to Iceland.
- [32:25]
Jon Favreau
A story we didn't even talk about because it's just one of 20 things that happened that week. Speaking of that, I know you talked about this last week, but Cash is also being sued by some former agents for firing them.
- [32:39]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, three career agents say they were wrongfully terminated. The one story that just blew my mind. So there's a guy named Brian Driscoll. He was a career agent. Like when you read his bio, it's like absolutely incredible. Like he like kicked down the door, took out some ISIS guy himself, saved a five year old. You're like, holy shit, this guy's a hero. So during his vetting, he's asked questions like, these are verbatim from a 29 year old white House liaison. Who did you vote for? When did you start supporting President Trump? And have you voted for a Democrat in the last five elections? Cash Patel told him as long as you hadn't given to Kamala or posted on social media, you'll Be fine. So that's how seriously they're taking this. So Driscoll was supposed to be installed as the deputy acting director. Basically, like, keep the trains running until Cash Patel is nominated or confirmed. But the White House made, like, a clerical error in the press release, and they announced him as director. And when they called over to be like, yo, do you want to fix this? They're like, no, we're good. The White House refused to fix the error.
- [33:30]
Jon Lovett
They didn't want to admit their mistake. And what's wild about this is if you go back to the original story about Driscoll in the Times when he was kind of. There was a moment because he had a funny. He has a funny picture. His picture.
- [33:39]
Tommy Vietor
That mustache.
- [33:40]
Jon Lovett
Mustache. And he kind of has, like, a weird smirk. And everybody thought it was, like. It was, like, hipster FBI guy in that story. They joked about how him being acting director felt like some kind of mistake. It actually was.
- [33:50]
Tommy Vietor
Actually was.
- [33:51]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, it was a mistake.
- [33:52]
Tommy Vietor
Incredible. Also sounds like Stephen Miller is, like, really running the show. No surprise, but which at doj, at.
- [33:58]
Jon Favreau
FBI, at dhs, at ice, everywhere.
- [34:02]
Jon Lovett
Busy, busy. Just one thing like, that story about, like, Driscoll. Like, there's a part of the end of it where Cash Patel fires a seasoned veteran of the FBI while his wife is dying of cancer for not being sufficiently loyal. And it, like, I do think it's, like, as we talk about some, like, abstract or an imaginary version of what a crackdown could look like, it's both, like, I don't know if it's a mix of kind of, I don't know, like, hopeful, terrifying that people as incompetent and cruel as this are going to be running it. Because Akash Patel has alienated a ton of people. It's probably why they need to have somebody in the. In the wings to replace it. But it is, like, worth remembering. Like, these are not some crackdown that, like, it's gonna be run by. It's not gonna be run by other people. It'll be Pam Bondi and Dan Bongino and Cash Patel trying to figure out how to go after people. And these guys are fucking bozos.
- [34:49]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. Which Stephen Miller was, too. But he is not.
- [34:52]
Jon Lovett
He is not.
- [34:53]
Jon Favreau
So Trump's taken off for a working visit to the UK On Tuesday. He's gonna get a whole welcome by King Charles. Sorry.
- [35:01]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, yeah.
- [35:02]
Jon Favreau
And Camilla. But he's gonna be back in the States for Kirk's funeral and memorial on Sunday.
- [35:07]
Tommy Vietor
If the qu. They'd be rolling out all the stuff.
- [35:10]
Jon Favreau
Any sense of what's on the agenda for the UK trip, Tommy?
- [35:13]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, he meets with the King and the Royal family. They do like a carriage procession and the state banquet at Windsor Castle. And then he and Keir Starmer will hang out over at Checkers, one of the countryside residences. What I think is interesting about this trip is how much Jeffrey Epstein is in the background of all of it.
- [35:26]
Jon Favreau
Because not literally everyone.
- [35:28]
Jon Lovett
The British ambassador, I thought it was Andrew's plus one to the dinner.
- [35:33]
Tommy Vietor
Well, that's exactly right. The British ambassador to the uk, this guy Peter Mendelsohn, just had to resign because is this cache of Epstein's, like his Yahoo inbox became public and Bloomberg News got a hold of them. And there's like hundreds of emails back and forth between Epstein and Mendelssohn, including long after he had been prosecuted. Peter Mendelson's like, staying at his house. He's a very senior person under Tony Blair and now the ambassador to the U.S. and then obviously, as you mentioned, like, Prince Andrew was a big Epstein buddy and a creep. So that's always kind of lurking in the background. So I wonder how much this will kind of blow up over that.
- [36:06]
Jon Lovett
Those Mendelssohn emails are like bananas. It's not just that they take place after. He's like, God, I can't believe they're doing this to you. I can't believe this is happening to you.
- [36:14]
Tommy Vietor
Crashing at his house.
- [36:15]
Jon Lovett
It's crazy.
- [36:17]
Jon Favreau
I'm sure all of the Brits, however they feel about the assassination, will be tripping over themselves to offer Donald Trump condolences and doing moments of silence and all that. It's very, I mean, not to make Tucker's point, but like the international sort of shows of solidarity among sort of global right wing populists all over the world has been interesting to note.
- [36:40]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. But even like, I think it was like the European Parliament had a moment. Like, I mean, I think they're all taking their cues from Trump about sort of how serious and important this is. And obviously it is very serious and important. It's a scary moment in the US and in the political climate. But, yeah, I think this will be a big topic of conversation out there. There's also just, it's coming at a time when. And the Labor Party is a disaster. Like, Keir Starmer keeps tripping all over himself. He just had to fire his deputy prime minister into this huge cabinet reshuffle and Nigel Farage's party is leading in the polls. So, like, things are not looking good for a lot of the kind of progressive left internationally.
- [37:25]
Jon Lovett
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Tommy Vietor
Me too.
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Jon Lovett
Making the salmon. I've made some white fish. I made all kinds of things.
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Tommy Vietor
Fish tacos.
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- [38:59]
Jon Favreau
Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawke.
- [39:01]
Jon Lovett
Allow us to introduce you to Lee Raybon, a quirky journalist slash rare bookstore owner slash unofficial truth seeker who is always on the tail of his latest conspiracy. This time, his most recent expose puts him head to head with a powerful family that rules Tulsa. Meaning only one thing. He must be onto something big. FX is the lowdown. Premieres September 23rd on FX, stream on Hulu.
- [39:30]
Jon Favreau
In the wake of the assassination, Governor Cox of Utah called social media a cancer. There's been a lot of discussion about the role of these platforms in both radicalizing People in just, just making us the worst version of ourselves. Well, the Trump administration's responding with the big announcement. TikTok is saved.
- [39:44]
Jon Lovett
Nice.
- [39:45]
Jon Favreau
The deadline for ByteDance selling the app is Wednesday, but after. After multiple extralegal extensions by the White House in violation of both the law and the Supreme Court order. But whatever, but then Trump. Whatever, whatever, right. Trump posted on Monday morning that, quote, a deal was also reached on a certain company that young people in our country very much wanted to save. They will be very happy. I will be speaking to President Xi on Friday. Scott Besant basically confirmed this news, saying that the two sides had agreed on a framework of a deal that would transfer ownership of the app to the U.S. he also said, quote, we are not going to talk about the commercial terms of the deal. It's between two private parties, but the commercial terms have been agreed upon. So I assume our America first president would never cut a deal that leaves TikTok users vulnerable to any kind of influence or, or data collection by the Chinese Communist Party. Right.
- [40:34]
Jon Lovett
I think we just. Yeah, I don't think he gives a fuck, but I think we have no idea. Right? We just have no idea what's about to happen. Like whether or not the deal is that. That China will still be kind of in control the algorithm or not. We just don't know. Do we know?
- [40:45]
Jon Favreau
It seems like. It seems like the, the Chinese side of the negotiations did mention something about licensing the algorithm, which was something that was first floated, I think, by the White House back in April on this. So basically the Chinese continue to have control of the algorithm, license it out to whoever buys it in the US and it's. So, so the, the, the privacy data collection concerns are somewhat ameliorated, I guess, supposedly. But the, you know, Chinese Communist Party in control of the algorithm and turning it on and off for the propaganda purposes like that. That does not seem like it is. It is fixed by that kind of arrangement, if that's what the arrangement may be.
- [41:29]
Jon Lovett
Okay, good, because I don't want to stop seeing those cool Chinese folk songs sung by all kinds of people. I love them.
- [41:34]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. So the data privacy thing, like, it makes me worry, but also there was this giant hack called Salt Typhoon, which apparently means that the Chinese have had like a decade of access to all of our communications. So I think we're kind of ships kind of sailed on that one, them licensing out and get you a good deal on an algorithm. Now we're seeing Chinese Communist Party just turning up and down the dial on, like how we all feel about the world. 170 million Americans using this thing a month.
- [41:58]
Jon Favreau
Also, what do you want to bet that either the government, U.S. government, has a stake in TikTok 100%. Or, or, or. And like, a bunch of Trump close allies. There was some kind of a deal there about the. I mean, who the fuck knows what they said?
- [42:13]
Tommy Vietor
It is either going to, like, a giant billionaire Trump fan, like a Larry Ellison type, or like someone backed by 1789 or whatever the hell Don Junior's VC thing is called. Like, like it's going to be a political ally Trump, which I think we just have to step back and be like, okay, so that means Trump will have a huge say over TikTok. Elon Musk owns Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg will do or say anything. Trump wants to avoid regulations. So see you later. Facebook and Instagram, I guess we can fight it out on LinkedIn. Guys, we got a rump state over on Blue sky where we can, if we end the civil war there, we can maybe, you know, mount a counter offensive.
- [42:49]
Jon Lovett
Everybody from Blue sky is about to get fired for their post about Charlie Kirk. So I don't really know the, like, the whole. Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of, like, concern about the algorithm and the data. And then I look and it's like, I don't know, like, the Twitter algorithm is wholly owned by. By. By a capitalist, and it's a fucking nightmare. Instagram's a nightmare. These places are already a nightmare. Like, I.
- [43:13]
Tommy Vietor
Get worse. I can get a lot worse.
- [43:15]
Jon Favreau
Well, we're going to. We're going to talk about the legacy media organization that TikTok and other platforms are rapidly replacing. Outlook continues to be pretty bad there as well. You'll remember that in July, CBS's parent company agreed to settle Trump's absurdly meritless lawsuit over 60 minutes to the tune of $16 million, so that the administration would approve its merger with Skydance, which is owned by the son of Trump ally Larry Ellison. The merger closed in early August after the head of CBS News resigned, the executive producer of 60 Minutes resigned, CBS canceled Stephen Colbert show, and Paramount's general counsel pledged to hire an ombudsman to monitor CBS News coverage for any hints of political bias. In a surprise to absolutely no one, they selected Kenneth Weinstein, a Trump donor who he originally nominated back in his first term to serve as ambassador to Japan. This comes as rumors.
- [44:01]
Tommy Vietor
There's no news experience, by the way.
- [44:03]
Jon Favreau
No, of course not. Why would he have a newspaper?
- [44:05]
Tommy Vietor
Conservative think tank guy, hey, listen, it's.
- [44:07]
Jon Lovett
Time we say sayonara woke.
- [44:11]
Jon Favreau
He didn't actually serve as ambassador to Japan. Didn't go through. But anyway, this all comes as rumors swirl that Ellison is close to appointing conservative media commentator Bari Weiss in a leadership role at CBS News as part of a broader deal to absorb her startup, the Free Press. And as Trump continues to toy with the idea of revoking the broadcast licenses of CBS's historical rivals NBC and ABC. What do you think, guys, of our new corporate media overlords?
- [44:37]
Jon Lovett
I think it's worth noting that Disney paid a settlement for a frivolous lawsuit by George Stephanopoulos in the same way that CBS did. They seem to have gotten no credit for it. They didn't really seem to get very much for that George Stephanopoulos payout if now they're coming after their license anyway. And I had actually thought that that I'm like, not surprised would not be the word. But I thought that Trump understood that he needed to demonstrate that there was some value at first to these kinds of capitulations so that he could get some more of them. But that seems to be out the window now. So he says he goes after Colombia, Columbia strikes a deal, then all of a sudden they're going to be coming after them again. ABC thought they could get out of the barrel. They're still in the barrel. And so any capitulation really doesn't get you very much at all.
- [45:19]
Tommy Vietor
I mean, the New York Times said they want to make Bari Weiss editor in chief or co president of the network. So that's a big gig with, along with this ombudsman, the Free Press in its founding documents built.
- [45:33]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, right. It's right. Yeah. I think they're written by Publius billed.
- [45:37]
Tommy Vietor
Itself as the, this bastion of like heterodox opinion, truth telling. But they're just the establishment at this point and their primary focus is attacking anyone critical of the war in Gaza or anyone who like, wonders aloud if it's a good idea for the United States to keep funneling arms to Bibi Netanyahu is, you know, this they can indiscriminately massacre civilians or periodically starve the population of Gaza. And so, you know, that includes like repeatedly downplaying the famine in Gaza. There was an article in May that was headlined the Gaza Famine Myth. Subtle. There was a video from the Free Press suggesting that it was unfair. They did this big piece about how there have been images in the news of starving kids and that news publications were bad because they didn't mention that some of those Kids, I think most of those kids in the story had pre existing conditions. And then they made a video kind of responding to their reaction to that piece. And it was tweeted out by no other than Bibi Netanyahu himself. So again, you're just sort of like helping out the powerful here. And, you know, I think what's so weird about it is what Barry Weiss has built at the Free Press, I think is the opposite of what CBS wants to be, which is down the middle, nonpartisan to the point of feeling tortured at times, kind of old school. Just the facts, ma'. Am. Boring ass reporting. And she is a partisan actor whose primary skill seems to be ingratiating herself with the most elite billionaires who are like really mad at the left and want to fund this kind of stuff. And like, I had a little dust up with the, you know, they called Ben Rhodes Hamas because he was critical of their piece the other day, which is nice. And then I had my own little dust up with the Free Press the other day because I tweeted on the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated, I tweeted that it was sickening that that video of his assassination was getting pushed into our feeds all day long over and over again. And the reason that bothered me was because there was clearly an algorithmic incentive for Elon Musk to make this snuff film go around. And also there are influencers on Twitter who get paid per view, Right? So you have something inflammatory or horrifying that could scar his friends or family or anyone or kids who are on Twitter that day. It's disgusting that Twitter is just like pumping that. And Barry's partner, Nellie Bowles wrote this piece attacking me, among others, and saying, well, it's far more ghoulish to slaughter a polite conservative than, you know, to talk about the algorithm, like, suggesting that I hadn't criticized the assassination itself. And she goes funny to see where their outrage goes. Like she had ignored that. My previous tweet was saying what happened to Charlie was horrific and indefensible and condemning political violence. Right. So it is just like it is that kind of partisan hackery that CBS is acquiring for $200 million and making the. The sort of editorial lens for the network.
- [48:20]
Jon Favreau
They also, they, they clearly think of themselves not as partisan hacks, but like center right thinkers, you know, like Tyler Cohen had a piece there today about how the cancel culture on the right is just as bad as when they complained about it on the left. But like, that requires Barry Weiss and company to constantly be attacking the straw man of the left that they have in their mind and that maybe was, you know, justified for some people at some time. And so everyone, you know, the left always has to be a liberal for the pre. For the free press to continue. And so that's what I think is going to be like the, the real CBS thing, right? It's like going to pick out crazy things that Trump does here and there so we can continue to report on that. But then the left just look at all the things they're doing. And if there's a nurse in Colorado somewhere who didn't properly, you know, mourn Charlie Kirk, they're going to go after.
- [49:12]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, it's also like, it's sort of an outsider insider thing. Like the free press, like we're gonna tell you the truth, right? Like, they have done an amazing job of building a brand. Even the name is excellent. Right. And like, I just, they have built a kind of like parasocial relationship with their fans in part because, like, hey, if you support us, if you're here, it's because you're a truth teller and you're not afraid of a truth, no matter where it comes from. Like, you can handle it. And the left doesn't think you can handle it. And even some people on the right don't think you can handle it, but we know you can. But like, that is a definition about being on the outside, right? But you, but if you're about to take hold of like a storied mainstream giant media institution, by the way, one on decline, as is every other mainstream institution, right? Like, I, I don't know what, what exactly. You're kind of like hoping to build in the kind of slowly enjoy rolling.
- [49:58]
Jon Favreau
Over the ashes, right?
- [49:59]
Jon Lovett
But then it's like, okay, sorry, you're in charge now. You're not covering, you're not like, you're not covering how CBS should be doing the news. You're doing the news. And in reality, the news is kind of boring. The kind of news that CBS does for the most part doesn't actually get a lot of attention.
- [50:12]
Jon Favreau
Spice it up.
- [50:13]
Jon Lovett
Well, sure, but like, it doesn't get a lot of, like the stuff that you don't talk about is just the day to day coverage that you have to provide. And like, I don't know how different that looks. How, how different is your storm coverage.
- [50:23]
Jon Favreau
You know, I don't want to know.
- [50:24]
Jon Lovett
Well, let's find out. I'm excited to find out. Pod Save America is brought to you by Helix. I have a Helix mattress. I have the dawn luxe. Very comfortable. It's plush.
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Tommy Vietor
Great mattress.
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Jon Lovett
Really comfortable. It's so nice. You know like at the end of the day you can turn on your Vanda Pump rules for example comfortable stream till the thoughts end.
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Tommy Vietor
Crawl into that bed, big beautiful bed and just chill out.
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Jon Lovett
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- [52:13]
Jon Favreau
All right, before we get to Lovett's conversation with Chris Murphy, we just want to mention another Democratic senator who seems to understand the gravity of the moment, Chris Van Hollen, who talked to Tommy for the show last week. Van Hollen spoke at the annual Polk County Steak Fry in Iowa over the weekend, and during his remarks he said that the hesitancy of New York Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to endorse Mamdani is spineless and said they need to, quote, get behind him and get behind him now. On Sunday, after the New York Times covered Van Hollen's remarks, New York Governor Kathy Hochul endorsed Mamdani in a Times op ed, leaving Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand among the prominent New York Dems that have yet to endorse. A Jeffries spokesperson then weirdly told the Times, quote, leader Hakeem Jeffries will have more to say about the general election well in advance of November 4th. Meanwhile, confused new Yorkers are asking themselves the question, chris Van who? After Hochul's endorsement, Trump again posted Truth Social about the need to beat Mamdani, and in his mob boss way, seemed to float. Pulling federal funding from New York. What do we think? So Chris Van who?
- [53:20]
Jon Lovett
Chris Van who? So I saw that over the weekend, and it really annoyed me in part because it's like, okay, Chris Van Halen has criticized you.
- [53:28]
Jon Favreau
They also served in the House together. But he's quite familiar with Chris.
- [53:32]
Jon Lovett
You're not responding to the actual substance of what he's saying. You're saying you're gonna have something to say about this in the coming weeks, but you're gonna come back with like a dig that feels like it's from another era of political media where it's like, haha, got him. But it's like, you know, who's seeing this? It's. This is for no one. This comment. It's for no one, right? Like, people who want you to endorse content for us, it's not an argument. You're not making an argument to anybody. You're not making an actual point. You're kind of treating people like they're stupid. And then you think, okay, you're gonna get to this in a couple weeks. What's gonna happen in a couple weeks? Mamdani's not gonna fundamentally change his views on anything. If you're not gonna endorse, that's a huge fucking problem. If you are, why are you gonna be dragged to it? Being dragged to it doesn't help anybody. First of all, it's embarrassing for you. It makes people feel like you're not doing it for any other reason than political expediency. You're not actually helping him because you're making it look like it's reluctant. And by the way, you're still gonna get the same blowback from Trump and every other person. So it's just bad politics to me. And then you look at like. And then Hochul comes out and she does it great. I don't know if she was pushed by the Van Hollen thing or not. But then it's really a long and kind of empty op ed that really has nothing to say other than what every Democrat who wants to endorse Bondani but is a little nervous about it is gonna say, which is we don't agree on everything. We don't see eye to everything. But I think he's gonna do a good job in affordability and Cuomo's worst, which is not that hard to fucking say. So just say it. Yeah.
- [54:45]
Tommy Vietor
Like, look, I don't blame Hakeem Jeffries, spokesperson. You're doing their job. You're pushing back. Right. Like defending the boss. But it was a bad quote. And I also think, like, Chris V. Holland has shown a lot of political courage this year. Like, he went down to El Salvador to get his constituent back from a foreign gulag. He's been. Just got back from Israel, where he was on the show where we talked about what's happening there and called it Gaza ethnic cleansing. Right. So he's like, saying and doing some gutsy things. And I think that he is absolutely right that it is cowardice to not endorse Hamdani. And it's. You're right. What's the point of waiting a couple weeks? What's going to happen in a couple weeks? And, like, I've heard from people who are sort of inside this world that in private meetings, you know, your leadership will say, well, we have a lot of donors who are concerned about Mamdani. And it's like, that's kind of what this smells like.
- [55:33]
Jon Favreau
It's such stupid politics. I mean, it's just. I just don't understand it. Right. And like, if. If you were gonna not endorse him and you're gonna make them, and that's your final decision, then should have articulated why earlier. You know, the fact that we're dragging out the slide. You're right. You get no credit for endorsing. You still get all the criticism that you got. Rightly so, I think. And so what was the purpose that, like, later, when someone attacks you for the endorsement, you could say like, well, I didn't do it until the very end. And everyone knows I was dragged kicking and screaming into it. I also, by the way, that's gonna help you.
- [56:05]
Jon Lovett
Yeah. I also don't love that. It's like, oh, well, you know what it is? It's those donors, which is like, okay, like, you're a coward, so you. Let's blame the fucking juice. Like, that's. That's sort of what it boils down to.
- [56:13]
Tommy Vietor
That's nuts.
- [56:14]
Jon Lovett
I thought.
- [56:16]
Tommy Vietor
Or is that what they said? I'm not saying the religion of these donors.
- [56:20]
Jon Lovett
Okay. I don't know what you. I know you're not. I know you're not saying that. I'm saying that, like, this idea that, like, oh, they're hearing from the donors. They're hearing from the donors. And this is New York politics. I know what that means. And it's like, okay, so you think if you, if you endorse Mamdani, you're a big fundraising problem once you endorse Mamdani? I have a feeling you're not going to say that, so. I'm not. I'm not suggesting that you're saying that at all. Of course not. I'm saying that, like, I feel like that's, like, the implication. Well, it's like there's a lot of Jews that are pretty concerned about Mamdani. Meanwhile, he's doing well with Jewish Democrats. He's done everything he can to address concerns about that. And the other thing that's interesting about Mamdani is he keeps having these meetings with business leaders and others that are kind of instinctively opposed to him. And he's kind of charming the fuck out of them because he listens and he's curious and he's actually receptive. So I don't know what these conversations that are going on behind the scenes with people like Jeffries and Schumer, but if it's gonna result in an endorsement two days before the election, fucking do it.
- [57:10]
Jon Favreau
Meanwhile, there was a local TV news reporter in New York today that reported that, according to two sources, Adams is probably going to drop out by the end of the week. So we shall see if that. If that comes to pass. But that was the report today.
- [57:26]
Tommy Vietor
Your choices are Cuomo or Mamdani.
- [57:29]
Jon Lovett
Pick.
- [57:30]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, pick soon.
- [57:31]
Jon Favreau
What about Curtis? Curtis.
- [57:33]
Tommy Vietor
So, well, I'm guessing that Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are not going to vote for him.
- [57:37]
Jon Favreau
Cats in Gracie Mansion? No. Okay. When we get back from the break, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with Senator Chris Murphy, who's been sounding the alarm about just how bad the Trump crackdown on the left might actually be. Two quick things. Before we do that, we want to hear from you. We're asking all of you loyal listeners and friends of the pod, what you want out of Crooked's Friend of the Pod subscription. Do you want more exclusive content? Better merch? Fewer emails? More ad free shows? More Dan.
- [58:00]
Jon Lovett
Everybody wants more.
- [58:01]
Jon Favreau
Dan, this is your chance to tell us what you love, what you hate, and what ideas you have. Take the survey@cricket.com survey again, that's Cricut.com survey. It's really helpful to us. So, yes, please, please take the survey. I'll be taking it.
- [58:14]
Jon Lovett
Great.
- [58:14]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. Hopefully also you're like less than.
- [58:20]
Tommy Vietor
More Mondays.
- [58:22]
Jon Favreau
Love it or leave It's New York show is sold out but for you Angelenos there are still tickets to the LA show this Thursday, September 18th at Dynasty. Typewriter. Who you having on? Let's see if you know.
- [58:36]
Jon Lovett
No idea.
- [58:37]
Tommy Vietor
I love when this happens.
- [58:38]
Jon Favreau
Colton Dunn, Michaela Watkins and more.
- [58:40]
Jon Lovett
We've got Colton Dunn, we've got Mikayla Watkins, some other guests lined up have some amazing shows at Dynasty. So come on through.
- [58:45]
Jon Favreau
To see Love or leave its upcoming shows and guests and grab tickets, head to cricket.com events.
- [58:59]
Jon Lovett
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- [59:37]
Tommy Vietor
I love quints. I got a bunch of quint stuff. I have shorts, shirts, sweater, sweatshirt.
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Jon Lovett
Wow. Keep it classy and cool this fall like we just did with this ad with long lasting staples from quints. Go to quints.com crooked for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com crooked free shipping 365 day returns quince.com crooked did you know that.
- [60:03]
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- [60:33]
Jon Lovett
Senator Chris Murphy, welcome back to the Pod. Thanks for being here. So I want to talk to you obviously about the murder of Charlie Kirk and the reaction to it coming from the right. You talked about this on social media over the weekend about the ways in which this could lead Americans to unite, to confront political violence. But that. That we're seeing something else that's really worrying from the right. Can you talk a little bit about what you're worried about?
- [61:00]
Senator Chris Murphy
This awful, tragic assassination could have been this moment where Democrats, Republicans, the right and the left come together and decide that we're going to do a set of things communally to draw a line in the sand on political violence specifically and mass violence, public violence writ large. Obviously, we're all shaken by the fact that more and more political figures are the targets of attack. And there's a system of radicalization that exists online, some of it political, some of it, frankly, non political, that puts us all at risk. But predictably, Donald Trump is doing the opposite. He has been likely looking for a pretext all year in order to supersize his efforts to try to use the legal system in this country, which he now controls, out of the White House, in order to destroy his political opposition. And we now have growing confirmation that that's the conversation that's happening inside of the White House, that they are going to just create this mythical world in which the only threat of violence comes from the left, which is not true. There's radicalization in both the right and the left. But if you really want to to do the counting, there's far more violent radicalization happening on the right than on the left. They're going to tell this false story in order to empower the DOJ and the FBI to shut down Democratic organizations, to harass and lock up more Democratic political officials. And what has already been a pretty dark year could get a lot darker. And I just think we have to name what they are talking about doing now so that when it happens, they have a lower likelihood of getting away with the stated reason versus what is the actual reason, which is their political agenda to try to seize power and allow Trump and his family to rule forever.
- [62:58]
Jon Lovett
Yeah. So JD Vance guest hosted the Charlie Kirk podcast and he focused on this article in the Nation that was very critical of Charlie Kirk and from there extrapolated out to a need to go after a lot of left wing institutions. But there are two parts of it that jumped out at me. One is, at first I only saw clips of it, and when I saw clips of it, I saw clips of J.D. vance saying that the left is statistically more likely to be lunatics and that he's going to go after left wing institutions. But what I didn't see in anything shared on social media was in that speech, J.D. vance makes a point of saying that he heard from Democratic former Senate colleagues and Democratic friends who want to unite against political violence. And he says that he thanks God that the vast majority of Democrats do not condone political violence. And it struck me that even in this set of remarks about the need to take on political violence, we are all kind of subject to, like, the algorithmic feed and how it radicalizes us against one another. And I wonder if even this kind of debate about the proportion of which direction the political violence comes from is almost beside the point. Like, okay, we claim it's further to the right. Vance claims that the left has lost its mind and is celebrating a killing. But like, is there any hope to collectively talking about this as a cultural and Internet driven phenomenon?
- [64:31]
Senator Chris Murphy
Of course there is, but it does require leadership from the top. And you're right that there's going to be a tendency to cherry pick anything that the vice President says or anything that the president says. But, you know, there's also confirmation today that there is an effort underway right now in the administration to name and target and prepare plans to shut down and disrupt only political organizations on the left. So, yeah, I appreciate the section of the vice President's speech in which he says what we all know, which is that inside the sort of broad political mainstream, there is no tolerance for political violence, whether it comes from the right or the left or targeting the right or the left. But that kind of talk maybe masking the plans that he is actively engaged in, which is an effort to try to go after somebody like George Soros, right, who probably is the most notable funder of kind of generic political opposition to the president in this country, has zero connection to violence. In fact, has dedicated his entire life to fighting violence, condemning violence. But he's been named by Donald Trump as someone who might face criminal charges. And that likelihood that mainstream Democratic figures and funders get targeted has probably greatly increased, notwithstanding some of the pieces of Vance's speech that didn't get covered.
- [66:06]
Jon Lovett
So there are obviously Republicans that are saying the right things here. Governor Spencer Cox has been a model of trying to demonstrate responsible leadership in this moment. I saw your colleague Senator Lankford saying what looked to me to be far more responsible than what I've heard from President Trump. Obviously, in the Senate, in Congress, everyone is aware that the number of threats has gone up dramatically against Democrats and Republicans. That's not a Twitter thing, that's a real thing. Right. Is there any hope that because of the actual reality of this confronting both Republicans and Democrats, that without someone like Donald Trump doing what's right here and showing wisdom, which is obviously impossible to imagine, that there will be voices outside of those that could have some purchase.
- [66:56]
Senator Chris Murphy
I mean, listen, I. I wish I could be the bearer of good news here. You are right that there are responsible, thoughtful Republican voices, but they tend to be the same ones over and over again. This is not the first time that Spencer Cox has said something full of all sorts of thought and common sense. James Lankford continually steps up and tries to make the Senate a more functional place. But by and large, there has been no willing willingness to stand up to the boss, to President Trump, when he does exactly the opposite, when he lionizes and endorses violence, when it happens on the right, and when he invents a world in which the only threat of violence comes from the left. Now we have an opportunity to do something. Right now. We're going to confront the budget for the coming year. And the President has made it clear that he wants to turn the doj, even more so than it exists today, into an operation to hunt his political opponents. We could put constraints on the DOJ in that budget. We could require it to have a level of independence that it historically has had. But I just don't think, aside from the few Republicans you named, there will be enough that will actually try to, through law, put constraints on the President's instinct, which is to use the assassination of Charlie Karl for political ends.
- [68:18]
Jon Lovett
So what are the constraints? What are the levers to slow or stop that project? Kash Patel has not exactly shrouded himself in glory in the last couple of days, which actually, to me, the imagination of what a kind of unchecked Republican administration that's hell bent on cracking down on its opposition would look like is far worse than what you're. You're kind of seeing in practice. America is a pretty big and complicated fractious place with a First Amendment like. It's a hard project to crack down on. Dissent in this country isn't.
- [68:53]
Senator Chris Murphy
Is a hard project, but you don't need to be universally successful. And this is, I think, the reminder that I'm constantly giving folks. You know, if you go to countries that are today very illiberal democracies, places like Hungary or Turkey, you will still see dissent. There are still elections. The opposition party can win, but they can never win at the national level. There's never allowed to be enough dissent and enough support for the political opposition that they are able to win at the highest levels in contests for the President and for Parliament. And so I don't want our sort of measure for success in this country to be that dissent has not been completely eradicated. What we have to look to are the places where the political opposition gets its main oxygen. Are donations being curtailed? Are they trying to consolidate control of the media in a way that only the regime's story is being told? Are they targeting just enough people with the criminal justice system to convince a lot of would be volunteers or activists to, to stay indoors? I think we are reaching that point where they've done just enough to frustrate dissent, not to eliminate it, that they are going to be able to keep the Democratic Party so weak that we'll be able to compete but not win in elections, which is why this to me is a really decisive moment when they're contemplating ratcheting up their attacks. We need to show that it's not working. We need to actually see in the coming, coming weeks and months there being bigger protests, there being more people signing up for activists and mobilization efforts than ever. And if we do that, then you will sort of, sort of prove to folks who may be thinking of sitting on the sidelines now that the times are getting darker that there's safety, that there's sort of safe space to still remain involved in our democracy.
- [70:51]
Jon Lovett
So I'm like almost reluctant to raise this in part because I do see such an asymmetry. I see like this Manichean language about a killer be killed civil war that's from like the highest echelons of Republican politics, whether it's an elected leader or very powerful people. Elon Musk, others. Right. It's a very. Those are, these are people in positions of power. And that is often set against random people on the Internet spouting off right performatively indifferent or justifying or celebrating a murder. And I view that as depraved, I really do. But at the same time, there's value in being confident in the truth. And there is a strain of that on the left, isn't there? And is it giving in to the argument from Trump and Vance to talk about that, or is it worth confronting it as real to demonstrate our actual democratic values?
- [71:45]
Senator Chris Murphy
No, I think it's absolutely worth acknowledging it and confronting it. Of course it's, it's different when it's just run of the mill political voices lionizing and endorsing violence on the left versus the President of the United States of America doing it. But that doesn't mean that we don't have an obligation to try to shut it down and keep it as Fringe, Absolutely. We need to call this phenomenon out when it happens. On the left, there are people who are celebrating these acts of violence. We saw that with the assassination of the health insurance CEO that there were frankly a lot of people online who were making the case that the system was so badly rigged that they could their only recourse was to resort to violence. That is simply not true. There is no justification for violence. The energy should be put into fixing a broken system. And the system is absolutely not so broken. Our democracy is not so badly rigged that it cannot be fixed. And so when you see this endorsement or excuse of violence happening on the right or on the left, I think it's just kind of a job requirement for all of us to call it out.
- [73:02]
Jon Lovett
Part of this too is what people are exposed to, right? What they're seeing. And there is a kind of way in which social media feeds a cynicism and a sense of powerlessness as well as is like this idea of forget celebrating violence, but like kind of performing indifference to the death of Charlie Kirk or justifying the death of Brian Thompson. It speaks to a kind of a depravity that flows from being exposed to content that points to Republicans as an enemy, as someone that's coming after you, that is targeting you. And there is some truth to the fact that Republicans are in power and there are people that feel as though they're coming after marginalized groups. But. But there is something really toxic that has kind of creeped in, in both directions. And I just don't know how we get to understanding and tackling it when it is so politicized, especially when it's coming from Vance and Trump.
- [73:54]
Senator Chris Murphy
So I hear what you were saying, right? We live in this world in which each side believes the other is an existential threat to the survival of the nation. And when you believe something like that, that then you start to believe that any means are necessary in order for your side to prevail. I mean, I will caveat what I'm about to say with this. For a lot of Americans, this administration is an existential threat to their survival. I mean, they're about to throw 17 million people off of their healthcare. People are going to die because of that. The way in which they are targeting the immigrant community is deeply immoral. But that does not mean that any of the sort of non conventional, nonviolent means are justified. Here's John, what I think one of the most important projects we need to be involved in is to convince people that the lines that are perceived to divide us Right now, black and white, good and bad, true versus evil are kind of not the only lines that matter. So yes, we are divided on, on issues of taxation and guns and climate and choice, but we're not divided on many other issues, like the way in which our economy works only for corporations and not for regular people. Like the way that our local communities have become so unhealthy, like the way that our Internet perverts our family's conversation, our kids existence. There's a realignment that could happen in this country where we, we decide to actually unite social conservatives and social progressives around a project to dismantle consolidated corporate power, to hold tech companies accountable for their crimes. But we're so addicted to the way that we divide politics today along these kind of static lines of division on mainly social and cultural and other hot button issues that we can't find that other realization. So I just think that project of kind of finding that, that hidden realignment that exists is probably more important, especially in the wake of this political violence, than ever before.
- [75:59]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, I saw a video going around of, of, of, of Charlie Kirk denouncing brain rot caused by Nick Fuentes. And that was brain rot that radicalizes people against the Jews. And I, I do, I, I feel like there are these two ideas that have to be held in our mind at the same time, which is there is a really dangerous right wing project, project that is coming after core American values and is trying to change this country in a way that is really dangerous, while at the same time like we have a collective fight against the ways in which we have rotted our own brains and hardened ourselves to each other, even when some of our concerns and justifications are real.
- [76:39]
Senator Chris Murphy
Let me say just one more word about, on the topic, we're just closing out because I think it is important that there is an ability, ability to unite a lot of elements of the right and left around a revitalization of the idea of the common good in America. People are really sick and tired of an economy that is driven by a cult of profit in which we sort of don't value anything else other than making a dime. This is sort of a virtueless economy, a virtuous society anymore. Trump has exploited that erosion of the common good, that erosion of communitarian. But there is an ability to sort of reunite the country around that conversation in which we say, what are the six or seven things we can do to incentivize us to care about our neighbors again? And I think you'll find strange bedfellows if you Sort of start with a conversation of why we have been kind of torn away from each other, from our neighbors, in a way that feels very unfamiliar.
- [77:37]
Jon Lovett
Before I let you go, Donald Trump just posted about the continuing resolution, the cr. This is about the funding of the government. You've been outspoken, you've been often a lone voice, even in committee, about why Democrats should not be going along with Republicans on the funding fight. What's the status of that? What's happening right now? Where are your colleagues?
- [77:59]
Senator Chris Murphy
Yeah. On the specifics of this shutdown, this is going to be a hard fight because I just don't believe that, that the Democratic Party has an obligation to fund the destruction of our democracy. And if we're going to lend our votes to a witch hunt operation against progressive organizations or colleges and universities or our fellow citizens who are undocumented, I think that ultimately becomes a real moral stain on our movement. So I know we always have this instinct as the minority party to be responsible, but we need to start drawing lines in the sand about what kind of government we're willing to fund and what kind of government we're not willing to fund. And to me, that means trying to stop the health care disaster that's about to be visited on our communities and building some protections into this budget that make it harder for Trump to get away with his lawlessness. I think this is a moral moment, moment for the party, and I think the country is going to be looking to see what the price for Democrats is of putting our imprimatur on a budget that could potentially fund the death blow to our democracy if we're not careful.
- [79:16]
Jon Lovett
So I agree it's the moral moment. But then all of a sudden, the government shut down and everybody's trying to figure out what it looks like to get it reopened. Is what you're saying is you think that there are winnable fights if we hold the line on Obamacare funding, plus some other protections that you believe if Democrats held together, they could win that fight and get a vote that includes them and forces them into the budget.
- [79:41]
Senator Chris Murphy
Well, I think my vote is really easy to get because all I want is for the president to obey the law, implement the budget we write, and for premiums to not go up by 75% later this year. I don't need some big new social program. I'm not looking for Obamacare, too. I just want premiums to not go up and for the president to obey the law. And, you know, you ask a common question, which is like, can you win those fights? Well, that's that's a question of whether Republicans are going to be reasonable or not. I mean, they're in charge. They know that in order to pass a budget, they need Democratic votes. And what we're asking for is not the moon. And if their belief is that unless Donald Trump can act lawlessly, we're going to shut down the government, I'll take that case to the people.
- [80:27]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, it's two things, right? It's whether Republicans will be reasonable, but also it's with Democrats are going to hold together, have a clear line, make that case to the country. That's not up to Republicans. That's up to you. And do you feel like you and your colleagues are ready to make that fight, draw that line in the Senate, hold to it?
- [80:41]
Senator Chris Murphy
Well, listen, I can only speak for myself and I think I can win that fight. I think I can say to the American public that Republicans were so committed to, to the president being able to act illegally, and they were so committed to raising your premiums by 75% that they decided to shut down the government, that that's all we asked. And, and that we have an obligation, a moral, ethical and representation, representational obligation to ask for those simple things. And they wouldn't do it. And thus, as the party in charge, they decided to shut down the government, I think we can win that argument.
- [81:13]
Jon Lovett
Senator Chris Murphy, thank you so much.
- [81:14]
Senator Chris Murphy
Appreciate it.
- [81:20]
Jon Favreau
That's our show for today. Thanks to Chris Murphy for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access 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 in everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Ilick 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 de Groot is our head of production. Naomi Segment is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Kirill Pelaviev, David Toles and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America east.
- [82:28]
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