Jon Favreau (3:07)

It's a beautiful thing, you know, it is. It is pouring in Los Angeles. Has been the last couple days, and I assumed it was rain, but apparently it's water from our Lord and savior, Donald Trump.

Dan Pfeiffer (3:19)

Barrels of water from northwest Canada via Donald Trump.

Jon Favreau (3:23)

Yeah, he just opened up the spigots and it's just been flowing from the skies because that's how water travels from north to south on our heads.

Dan Pfeiffer (3:31)

That's how gravity works.

Jon Favreau (3:33)

So much to unpack here. But let's start with Trump's aspiration to be known as a peacemaker, since we haven't had the pleasure of discussing his plan to turn Gaza into what he calls the Riviera of the Middle East, a phrase he blurted out during a press conference with Bibi Netanyahu on Tuesday. Trump did not rule out sending American troops into Gaza, which he said the US should quote, own, but not before the forced relocation of 2 million Palestinians, the very definition of ethnic cleansing. Trump later walks back the part about sending U.S. troops. But aside from Israeli politicians and Trump surrogates, just about every other observer is a mix of very confused and very opposed. Does this fall into the watch what he does, not what he says category, or is this one to take seriously? What do you. What was your reaction to this?

Dan Pfeiffer (4:24)

I, you know, we've talked a lot since Trump has been sworn in about how to modulate our reaction to certain things. We don't want to be at an 11 all the time. And you want to try to separate just him having verbal diarrhea on the stage from, like, the things he's actually doing hurt people's lives, many of which we're gonna talk about in this podcast. But I do think that's at times a false dichotomy.

Jon Favreau (4:46)

Right.

Dan Pfeiffer (4:46)

Like what the president says matters.

Tommy Vietor (4:49)

Right.

Dan Pfeiffer (4:49)

It has.

Jon Favreau (4:50)

Especially in foreign affairs.

Dan Pfeiffer (4:51)

Especially in foreign affairs. And so do I think that Donald Trump is going to be able to put together A plan to forcibly relocate 2 million people who do not want to go to countries who do not want to have them, against the wishes of everyone in the region and do so without the US troops. So we can build luxury condos in Gaza? No, I think that's unlikely to happen. But the fact that he said it and Tommy pointed this out matters because that is a massive recruitment tool for Hamas and groups like Hamas. This is exactly what they have talked about. The idea they're going to be moved from their home so the United States of America can own Gaza. For a resort.

Jon Favreau (5:29)

Right.

Dan Pfeiffer (5:30)

For a series of Trump resorts on the waterfront. That's a damaging thing to say. That does matter.

Jon Favreau (5:37)

Oh, is it?

Adrian Hill (5:37)

Yeah.

Dan Pfeiffer (5:38)

I mean, well, we are like, we have this. Everyone is. We're having concern policing. Like, oh, you can't be worried about this. You have to be worried about this. You're not worried enough about this. And one of the ways we concern police is there's things he says that he's never going to do and there are things that he's doing that he never talks about. Sometimes the things he says he's never going to do matter. And as you point out, particularly in foreign policy.

Jon Favreau (6:00)

So all the reporting and it was confirmed by the White House was that this wasn't just off the cuff. He had been thinking about this for a while. He's had this plan for a while and Axios had a story. And I think the headline was like, what was in Trump's mind and what Trump was thinking with this. And so I said, ooh, I'm interested to learn this. And there was a source close to Trump that told Axios he is a disruptor and he wanted to challenge the discourse.

Dan Pfeiffer (6:29)

That story made me want to throw my phone against the wall.

Jon Favreau (6:34)

He's a disruptor. He's just, you know, it's a war torn country with starving people in the middle of a conflict that has been going on for hundreds of years, if not more, that is sort of a solution, has evaded presidents and leaders. But you know what? Donald Trump's a disruptor. He's just wanting to, he wants to challenge the discourse by saying that we should own Gaza as a country. We got Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, Gaza. We're going to forcibly displace 2 million Palestinians. But, but then he said, oh, well, then they're gonna have new homes. New homes and just a nice life.

Dan Pfeiffer (7:17)

Modern new homes. Modern new homes.

Jon Favreau (7:19)

Modern new homes. Modern new homes they're gonna have. Yeah. So like, clearly, I think what happened here is Someone told him that a very real problem right now is how are the people of Gaza going to live in a country that, because of Hamas and the Israeli government is just absolutely fucking destroyed. There's people starving, there's disease. Like, it's just. It's horrible. Hamas has still not been completely rooted out either. And what are you gonna, like, how are you gonna rebuild? What are, what are people gonna do while you rebuild? Like, these are real questions, and it's a real challenge. And I think he didn't want to know more than that. And all he wanted to think of was like, well, why don't we do it? Why? We're buying up everything else. We're getting Greenland, getting the rest of it. We'll do it. It'll be great. We'll send troops. It'll be fine. They'll be fine. And then he just said it. I think that's probably. He wants to be the guy who is seen as fixing hard problems, but he doesn't want to do any of the difficult or unpopular things required to solve the hard problems.

Dan Pfeiffer (8:16)

Look, if there is one situation in the history of world where it makes sense to just start spitballing ideas, it's Middle east peace.

Jon Favreau (8:24)

That's where you do it. That's where you want to freelance. That's where you want to freelance. As you also heard in the clip of the prayer breakfast, woke is gonzo. We've talked about Trump and Elon trying to root out and fire federal workers who've had anything to do with any diversity initiatives. They also are trying to cancel all diversity programs. I think we've said this before, but there was even a Lunar New Year event at a public university that was canceled. Pam Bondi, who is now our Attorney General. So congratulations, Pam Bondi. She has already released a memo instructing the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to, quote, investigate, eliminate and penalize illegal DEI and DEIA preferences, mandates, policies, programs and activities in the private sector and in educational institutions that receive federal funds. In case you don't know dei, A, the A is for accessibility. So we are also making sure that people with disabilities cannot have any initiatives or help or anything like that. We don't want to. We don't want to do anything for folks with disabilities as well. They're the. They got added to the DEI for, for Trump. Bondi is also heading up a new task force to, quote, eradicate anti Christian bias, which Trump also announced at the breakfast. And on Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order to ban trans girls from participating in girls sports which will almost surely be challenged in court. Though apparently the NCAA has already moved on this and is abiding by the order. So the, but the, the 10 athletes that that applies to in, in the NCAA. So that's, that's. We got that. We got that problem covered. Promises, promises kept, right? The reaction from MAGA fans on social media suggests that this is the stuff they're most excited about. They're all high five and they're celebrating these moves. Question is, are these performative? Are they real? And are some of them seemingly just to an excuse to fire and harass people who aren't Trump loyalists?

Dan Pfeiffer (10:23)

In everything Trump and his minions do, harassing people who are different than them is always. That's the benefit of all of it. Right? That is to them what cutting Medicare was to Paul Ryan. Right. It's the thing they talked about when they were sitting by the keg in college. That is the truth. These things are somewhat performative in the sense that there are always questions about the legal authority they are using here. Does it exist? Will a court uphold it? Is the bizarre interpretation of various regulations they're using for these sorts of things truly give them the authority to do stuff, but they have real world effect. Right. Even like there's a very real chance, you point out that the executive order on banning trans participation in sports is going to be held up by a court. That didn't stop the ncaa. They did it. Half the country has laws on the books that ban trans participation in sports. What's going to happen? The half country does not have those laws. Do you think are high school and rec leagues going to really take that? We will take on a fight with the Department of Justice even if the Department of Justice has no chance of winning that. You see the same thing with the DEI programs. Just Google the other day announced they were abandoning theirs. Now, I think on the corporate side, a lot of them are just waiting for the reason, an excuse to do this. They're not necessarily afraid that Trump's gonna come after them. It's like they were waiting for a reason to get rid of these programs and now they can. Now Trump has given them cover to do it. But it has real impact. And it makes me think about. You'll remember this at a rally early in the campaign when Trump was first. First are talking about this issue. He basically said, when I bring up tax cuts, no one cheers. I give you all tax cuts, no one cheers. But I bring this up, you all cheer. And it kind of like you could see it clicking his brain There is real enthusiasm for it in the base, and that's probably why they are cheering here.

Jon Favreau (12:11)

Just in case people think that, you know, Trump going after all these DEI DEIA initiatives programs is about, like, canceling, you know, the agency's unconscious bias training or, you know, getting rid of all the Ibram x Kendi books, you know, that are sitting on the federal government agencies. A right wing group called the American Accountability foundation last week started a DEI watch list website that published photos, names and public information of mostly black employees within the Department of Health and Human Services. These are people in the public health agencies and had the word targets above their pictures. These are doctors, scientists, researchers. And so that website has been going around, there's about 50 employees suspended at the Department of Education. So there's a guy who works in a regional office for the Education Department at the Office for Civil Rights. This person is a West Point grad, Army veteran, former prosecutor, got a perfect rating in his last three evaluations. He was suspended from his job because he had been appointed by two Trump political appointees to a diversity council that was created under the first Trump administration. Cool. Trump administration creates a diversity council. Two Trump appointees appoint this guy to the council. Veteran prosecutor, perfect ratings, doing his job. He has now been suspended from his job. So these are the effects of these orders in this climate, which is, as Russ Vogt, who is set to be the new OMB director, said that their goal is to terrorize federal employees, to traumatize them. He said their goal is to traumatize federal employees so that it's miserable to come to work every day. That's what the real goal is. And you know it. You can say, like, federal workforce is too big and too many bureaucrats and we should cut. Like, yeah, sure, of course there's a way to do it. There's a way to identify budget cuts and send them to Congress and have them in a budget and tell employees, okay, you can leave. You got severance, you got this, you got that. This is not what's happening. This is not what's happening at all.

Dan Pfeiffer (14:30)

Ezra Klein made this point on his podcast recently, talking about this effort to basically force federal government employees to leave. It's like, do they have a plan for this? What happens if a bunch of primary care physicians in the VA decide to leave?

Jon Favreau (14:46)

Yep.

Dan Pfeiffer (14:46)

How are you going to replace them? Who's going to give health care to.

Jon Favreau (14:49)

Veterans, scientists and researchers at the nih? Law enforcement officials, judges. I mean, the list goes on and on. Air traffic controllers, exactly where we have.

Dan Pfeiffer (15:00)

A Shortage of people already. Like, do I think that the federal government could probably operate with fewer employees across the board? I'm sure that's the case, absolutely. But you have to have a plan that focuses on the most essential workers. Where do you have excess staff? Where do you have a dearth of staff? I mean, where do you have. If you lose these people, you have no easy way to replace them. Because you know what's really hard to do? Get other doctors who are not currently in the federal government to come work for the federal government.

Jon Favreau (15:28)

A lot of these federal workers, most of these federal workers could be making a lot more money in the private sector, but they do it because they believe in public service. And how are we going to. How are we going to get new people? Now you're gonna go to the DOJ so you can work for Pam Bondi as she hunts down DEI initiatives. Oh, by the way, so Pam Bondi, she's going after DEI initiatives and she's gonna stop the weaponization of government. Here's another one of her first moves. One of her first moves was to eliminate the DOJ's Anti Corruption Unit that prosecuted white collar crime and seized Russian oligarchs, yachts and billions of dollars in stolen assets. Sources tell Bradley Hope, who's a Wall Street Journal contributor, former writer there, he says that the sources tell him that the money that they have recouped from oligarchs, yachts, billions of dollars in stolen assets, the money that was supposed to go back to the victims and the governments it was stolen from is instead going to fund detention facilities in Gitmo. So we're cutting down on white collar crime so we can build mass detention centers to send undocumented immigrants.

Dan Pfeiffer (16:41)

That's what people voted for.

Jon Favreau (16:43)

That's what people voted for. We were being too tough on white collar crime and Russian oligarchs.

Adrian Hill (16:58)

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Jon Favreau (18:25)

Let'S talk about Elon Musk, the world's richest man and dumbest genius. He continues his Civics 101 education, which involves learning how government works, before trying to illegally dismantle the services people count on and terrorize the public servants who provide them. But he is starting to run into some resistance with the courts. On Thursday, a federal judge in D.C. ruled that the Treasury Department cannot provide access to any payment record or payment system of records to Elon's Doge Bags. I'm calling them Doge Bags. This comes as CNN reports, that just days after the inauguration, the Doge Bags tried to force the highest ranking career official at the Treasury Department to just stop all payments to usaid. Just stop them. And when he refused, that's when he resigned. It has also come to light that USAID's inspector general was investigating the agency's partnership with Starlink, a service Musk owns to provide Internet in Ukraine. Separately, another judge on Thursday also delayed the deadline for federal employees to decide whether they want to take Elon's fork in the road buyout offer. At least until the hearing on Monday, when the judge decides whether to block the program, which around 40,000 employees have now agreed to. Charlie Savage at the New York Times wrote a piece rounding up all the ways that Trump and Elon are ignoring or contravening the law as they do all this. You're seeing the lawsuits pop up. The federal judge is starting to issue orders. You see this as a hint of good news systems, the guardrails are holding, or is it just too early to tell?

Dan Pfeiffer (20:02)

I think it's too early to tell, but I think if you're looking for good news, and we should all look quite hard for good news these days.

Jon Favreau (20:07)

You really got to, really got to.

Dan Pfeiffer (20:08)

Dig deep like a truffle pig for good news. You got to get deep in there. The good news is that Trump and Elon Musk and his minions are not going about this in a smart way. There are ways in which you could try to affect real long term change and damage, frankly, the federal government in ways that are more legally sustainable. There are ways to paper it over, to go through steps or process, to pause and think about it. But they're not trying to do that. They are looking for short term wins, headlines. It's like Silicon Valley, move fast, break things. And in doing so, they are leaving themselves very vulnerable to legal challenges. Now, ultimately, you're getting things stopped at the district court level. What's gonna happen when it gets to the appeals court level where you're gonna have more of these circuits that are gonna be filled with Trump judges? And then of course, what happens when it gets to the Supreme Court level? And the Supreme Court's gonna have some pretty big decisions to make about how much power the President has. And like, they love Donald Trump. There was a majority that loves Donald Trump. He put a lot of them on that court. But something will have to be in the back of their mind is if you do a massive expansion of presidential power, is there's going to be a Democrat in that office hopefully in the not too distant future. And are they willing to do that? Right. When you talk about just the ability of the President to unilaterally just get rid of the power of the purse, to not spend money Congress appropriates, that would be a massive change in the balance of power in this country that has extended for centuries.

Jon Favreau (21:33)

Yeah, I mean, you could see them ruling and they've been sort of hinting at this for a while. And there've been some other rulings that pointed this direction, that the President does have more power than precedent suggests in terms of like, you know, firing civil servants or all that kind of stuff. The Schedule F stuff again, though, the way that Elon has gone about it, the whole thing about the payment systems and having, you know, random Doge bags access the payment systems, I don't think, I don't, I don't think they're going to get away with that one. But on some of the federal workers, I do wonder about the USAID stuff because I don't, I don't imagine that you can just eliminate an independent agency that was created due to a law that passed Congress. Yeah, they're of course trying to get away with saying that they are reorganizing it, but you know, just before we recorded the news is that only 290 of the 10,000 USAID employees worldwide will keep their jobs.

Dan Pfeiffer (22:29)

That, I mean, that has to be illegal. Right. Obviously the courts can decide what is truly legal or not. But as you pointed out, an agency created by Congress, funded by Congress, who do these things, and you can't just unilaterally fire all the people and make it go away and not spend the money like that. It's just that clearly is a violation of something.

Jon Favreau (22:48)

Yeah, yeah, it is. It is fucking the USAID thing. And again, we all know that foreign aid doesn't pull well, get it? But what is happening to usaid? Some of the employees at USAID have been serving their country for decades. They are some of the most apolitical, nonpartisan people you'll ever meet. They're in dangerous areas all over the world trying to keep people alive with food and with medicine. And since this freeze and you know, Rubio is out there bullshitting that like, oh, the freeze is over and we've made exceptions and now everything should be fine and if you can't get your grant back, then that's your problem. And maybe you're doing it on purpose to make us look bad, which is all bullshit. But since the freeze, and since the freeze has been ended, or at least there's been a carve out for sort of life saving assistance, it hasn't really worked. HIV patients still aren't getting their medicine. In Sudan, where there is a genocide, according to the United States government, half the population of 50 million is starving, needs food, famine is spreading and two thirds of the soup kitchens in Khartoum, the biggest city, have, are closed because of this. There are, I saw Samantha Power, the former USAID director, our friend on Colbert the other night saying that like this is how bad it was. Like kids. In some places in Africa, kids were in line for their TB medication, their tuberculosis, and like three kids got theirs and then the rest of the line had to go home because the freeze happened and they couldn't, they couldn't legally provide anymore. In Zambia, there's medical supplies to stop like hemorrhaging pregnant women and life threatening diarrhea and toddlers and those are all gone now. So it's just going to be like people, people around the world are going to die. And, and by the way, the money that it costs for malaria nets or some of these life saving HIV drugs is like tiny, tiny amount of, sorry, a small, small amount of money. We're not saving this money, money that's already been appropriated. So like, don't fucking tell me that we're like gonna take this money and now give people tax cuts in America which would, which most people still probably wouldn't prefer. But like this is just a waste now. And these, these USAID employees, like they, they have families in foreign countries. Suddenly they've been told like, you gotta go home. They don't know how to go home. They don't know who to contact. They're taking their kids out of school. They've like given their life for this. They are also. I've talked to some people at usaid. They are threatening to investigate the senior officials at USAID for some of this DEI stuff or whatever. And the reason they want to do this is to try to fire them for cause so they can make sure that none of these people have a severance. None of these people have healthcare after they leave. So just like cut them off immediately and send them out the door.

Dan Pfeiffer (25:39)

This is truly insane. It is a fraction of the government's budget and you can argue about individual programs or whatever else. It is a fraction of the government's budget. And maybe the reason they're going after this is because Elon Musk is mad at the USAID Inspector General for investigating Starlink. Or it may be because they recognize politically that foreign aid is the weakest of the herd.

Jon Favreau (26:02)

Right.

Dan Pfeiffer (26:02)

It's the easiest to go after, the hardest to defend. You get Democrats in a position where they're defending foreign aid. I think Democrats should defend foreign aid in this case. We should defend the point of it. We should defend the fact that we view it as our responsibility in the world to do good things. And the, it's just the way that like it is ruthless, it is cruel, it's truly sociopathic the way they are doing this. Just like targeting these people who did nothing. Like this isn't even USAID isn't even really part of some crazy MAGA conspiracy like the FBI or the doj. Like you under like it is also a new one.

Jon Favreau (26:38)

They just discovered.

Dan Pfeiffer (26:39)

They just like you can if like as a scholar of Trump insanity or mag insanity you can understand we're going after Jack Smith people or the FBI agents who've investigated January 6, even if they were just asked to do so by the superiors. That is also wrong and terrible. But this one just seems like so random and just like. And the ruthlessness of it is. It's truly crazy. Like it is. It's hard to fathom how insane this is.

Jon Favreau (27:05)

Another possibility is that Elon and the and the Dogebags are just. They're. They're looking at programs that they're finding online and they are in some cases outright lying about them or taking it out of context or they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. So it seems nefarious. And they could have just seen a couple of those programs at USAID and decided, oh, that's where we're going to start. And then again, these people, because they have no experience in government, because they don't bother to learn anything, because they think they're the smartest fucking people in the world, because everyone government's bad and everyone's attack is a fucking genius. Who's gonna save the world? That's how they think out there. A lot of them, unfortunately, they are now just. They're going on a website, usaspending.gov and all the Elon fanboy accounts on Twitter are doing this too. And they're looking at publicly available information about government spending and acting like they are making some incredible discovery about corruption that has been hidden. The website is there because George W. Bush signed it into law, thanks to a law that was sponsored by Senator Barack Obama and Republican, extremely conservative Republican Tom Coburn to make sure that all the government spending and the entire budget is online for everyone to see. That's the only reason that they're all finding all this fucking spending that they're like, oh, this is the greatest scandal in history. And they just like stumbled over it because they weren't fucking paying attention to anything the government did up until now. Unless it like had something to do with their companies and making sure they couldn't make more billions of dollars. I fuck, I can't stand these, these, these.

Dan Pfeiffer (28:41)

It does make me wonder if transparency is a mistake like it is. It's just if you have people with massive megaphones just pushing out, out of contact misinformation to large boss people at a time which the media is, does not have the capability or the reach to push back. It's not particularly great.

Jon Favreau (28:58)

There's so many examples of this. But the one that really took off this week is a real, a huge scandal, huge scandal. Here's Donald Trump describing it at the prayer breakfast this morning.

Donald Trump (29:08)

Did you see what happened yesterday where they found hundreds of millions of dollars of money was fraudulently given to newspapers and I guess Politico? I don't know. They hear good. I hope you're enjoying your breakfast. No, they gave money to all this out of, out of US Aid.

Jon Favreau (29:36)

So again, huge scandal. Trump also truthed about it early on Thursday morning, saying that billions of dollars had been stolen, Quote, much of it going to the fake news media as a payoff for creating good stories about the Democrats. What a scandal. What a scandal.

Dan Pfeiffer (29:50)

Well, think of all the good stories they wrote about Joe Biden. Money well spent.

Jon Favreau (29:54)

And just in case. You think this is Donald Trump. No, the brain rot is now Trump. Elon Musk. Just dozens of fucking maga doge accounts online. Musk fanboys, Trump fanboys everywhere, right? They all think the right wing media, they vote Fox. It's everywhere. The federal government purchased $8 million worth of POLITICO Pro subscriptions. Politico Pro is separate from regular Politico and it's for CEOs and companies and governments and it's, it's basically, I don't know, you, you learn information about legislation and analysis and very complicated.

Dan Pfeiffer (30:32)

It's like a Bloomberg terminal is basically what it is.

Jon Favreau (30:34)

It's like a Bloomberg terminal and it's like $7,000 a year for a subscription to it. Pretty expensive. Look, if, if I saw a bunch of Politico Pro subscriptions in our budget, I'd be like, hey, do we really need that? Maybe we should cut those down. But like the idea that that was turned into USAID is secretly funneling money to Politico to get good stories for Democrats, first of all, not getting their money's worth. Yeah, seriously, I don't know if you've read Politico last couple years, not getting their money's worth on that one. There's also, then they go through and all of these Republican Senate offices, House offices, also spending government money on a subscription to Politico Pro. In fact, in 2017, the Executive Office of the President under Donald Trump paid $97,000 to Politico Pro.

Dan Pfeiffer (31:29)

You are missing one key part of this conspiracy theory that is very important, which is on the day this sort of came up, it was reported by Semaphore that because of a glitch, Politico failed to pay their employees. So the theory is not just that the government was giving.

Jon Favreau (31:47)

That's a coincidence.

Dan Pfeiffer (31:48)

Was giving all this money to Politico. It's that once Elon Musk and the Doshbags, which I assume he made up and is quite impressive on the spot.

Jon Favreau (31:56)

Really very good.

Dan Pfeiffer (31:57)

That's just genius at work. Got invisible.

Jon Favreau (32:00)

You know what, guys? I'm just a little behind the scenes. Reid didn't want me to call them nerds because he thought that was, you.

Dan Pfeiffer (32:05)

Know, he said, and I quote, where he comes from in his social circle. Nerds are cool is what he said.

Jon Favreau (32:11)

You know what? Nerds. I was a nerd. Nerds are cool. I'm not making fun of nerds. I get it, I get it. But fuck these people.

Dan Pfeiffer (32:17)

Yeah. The problem is not that they're nerdy. That is not.

Jon Favreau (32:20)

Or that they're young or that they're smart or that they're like, great. I want young, smart people in government. And that's amazing. Want that.

Dan Pfeiffer (32:30)

But to go back to this, the point here is people believe that Politico was unable to make payroll because Elon Musk in the Doge bags shut off the fountain of money. And this one really is. This is like the chef's kiss apotheosis of perfect right wing conspiracy theories. You have a shadowy government agency that helps foreign countries and foreign people funneling money to a Washington D.C. based outlet that's owned by a German billionaire to write. To write good stories about Joe Biden and Democrats, ambassadors about Donald Trump. That is everything. If you could just get Anthony Fauci's name in there, it would be just perfect. Like you would.

Jon Favreau (33:13)

It's also perfect for like the anti. Anti Trumps or the former anti Trump, since they're all on board now because they're all out there like, look, obviously the craziest conspiracy is wrong, but that is so much money. And the fact that everyone's defending this much money, it's like, no, if you don't like the government spending as much on Politico Pro subscriptions, go talk to your fucking Republican senators and congressmen. Go through the normal process. So talk to your. Talk to the fucking. Like, fine, cut it. I don't give a shit.

Dan Pfeiffer (33:40)

Donald Trump wants to cancel all the pro.

Jon Favreau (33:43)

Great.

Dan Pfeiffer (33:44)

That's his.

Jon Favreau (33:44)

That's his.

Brian Schatz (33:45)

Do it better.

Dan Pfeiffer (33:47)

Do not cut those message box ones, though. I'll be very clear.

Jon Favreau (33:49)

No, do not. I'm sure there's a lot of those in the federal government right now. One more thing about the Doge bags before we moved on. So of course everyone is like, what are these? What are these kids helping Elon who haven't been vetted, don't have security clearances. They're trying to. I don't know, shut off millions of dollars of payments that have been appropriated by law. This is concerning. And then you get this from the Silicon Valley assholes who are on Twitter now that the Musk fans. And they're like, we should want. This is ridiculous. These are young, smart, brilliant people. I know this one, and he's brilliant and he's a coder. But it's like, great, fine, whatever. That's not our issue. Well, Wall Street Journal, right before we recorded. Here's the lead. A key Doge staff member who gained access to the Treasury Department's central payment system resigned Thursday after he was linked to a deleted social media account that advocated racism and eugenics. And you're thinking to yourself, well, what were the tweets? Well, you know, what do you mean by racism and eugenics? How bad could it really have been? Well, here's a quote, just for the record. I was racist before it was cool. The account posted in July, according to the Journal's review of archived posts. Another one, you could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity. The account wrote on X in September. Another one, normalize Indian hate. And then this was in December. This is just a couple months ago. 99% of Indian H1Bs will be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs. AI. They're going back. Don't worry, guys. To me, that's just that. That is the right. We're going to replace immigrants, people of color, ethnicities we don't like, with the machines, with the robots. That's the. That's the vibe. That's the vibe there.

Dan Pfeiffer (35:34)

I hate to tell this to this Doge guy, but who do you think the LLMs are coming for next?

Jon Favreau (35:40)

I thought, look, there was another one. There's another one whose name had been out there. And I went to his Twitter account. It's still up. Like he's retweeting. Fucking Nick Fuentes, you know, I know he had dinner with Donald Trump. So that's. I guess that's fine now. But, like, what? It's unfucking believable.

Tommy Vietor (35:58)

Foreign.

Adrian Hill (36:04)

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Jon Favreau (37:30)

All right, now it's time to talk about the Democrats again.

Tommy Vietor (37:33)

You know what?

Jon Favreau (37:34)

It's getting better every time we do this section. Lawmakers have been more vocal trying new legislative tactics, as we'll discuss in a minute. There's also been protests, rallies, went to treasury, went to usaid. They are still working on landing the perfect sound bite. Let's listen.

Donald Trump (37:51)

Hello, everybody. Are we gonna fight the fight? Are we gonna win the fight? Are we not gonna rest till we win?

Jon Favreau (38:01)

We will win. We will win. We will win. We will win. We. We won't rest. What do we need? We won't rest. We won't rest. We won't rest. Thank you, everybody. Okay. Okay. So I just want to say poor Chuck Schumer has gotten a lot of shit online for that. And. Yeah. Do you cringe listening to it? Sure. Is Chuck Schumer the most eloquent speaker? Is he gonna rile up a crowd? Probably not. Could you not understand what the crowd said when they said, what do we want? Me neither. Me neither. But you know what? They're trying. They are out there trying, and they are doing their best with what they got. And, like, I am gonna give them credit for that. And I realize it's cringe and I realize it's not great, but, like, you know what? It's all hands on Deck right now, and everyone's just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. And we're trying, and I encourage that.

Dan Pfeiffer (39:08)

When we were on this podcast last week or the week before, some other time in the 12 years in which Donald Trump has been president, we talked about how Democrats have to get out there and make noise. Just start talking, stop worrying about what exactly it is you're gonna say and just be out there. That clip makes me question that advice. I would say no, in all seriousness, like, look, is it perfect?

Jon Favreau (39:28)

No, don't worry about everything you're gonna say, but do say something.

Adrian Hill (39:32)

That's right.

Dan Pfeiffer (39:33)

I mean, the clip of Maxwell Frost asking what do we want? And then the party being unable to answer is kind of like the moment that will like, if you put we lost this election at time Castle, that would be it. But look, let's give credit. Where credit is due is they are out there, they are making noise. They are raising hell. We'll talk about it a minute. They are doing. They're fighting back now in ways they were not in the first couple weeks. And we should give them credit for that. And just the mere fact that there is an opposition presence raising hell about the bad things that are happening is a huge change from where we were two weeks ago. And it's a net positive for sure.

Jon Favreau (40:10)

And again, let's talk about Chuck Schumer. He's got this Democratic caucus. He's got John Fetterman in the caucus. He's got some other people who are probably telling him we want to vote for some of the nominees because that's good politics in my state. And he has to sort of balance all the needs of the caucus. And to Schumer's credit, they came up with a strategy this week. They said, can we stop any of these nominees? No, we don't have the votes because we don't have enough senators. And so what can we do? Well, we can slow them down. We can hold the floor and give a bunch of speeches so that we delay these nominations already. I think Cash Patel now is not going to be voted on for another week because of Democrats delay tactics. So they're gumming up the works. They're doing what they can. And they decided to hold the floor Wednesday night into Thursday for the nomination of Russ Vote for Office of Management and Budget, the budget director, and Brian Schatz, who you're going to hear in a bit. Talk to Tommy and Schumer's office. And everyone you know, they reached out to us and said, look, we're going to hold the floor. We want to make some noise. You guys were talking about making noise. How about you guys do a live stream and you know, we'll have all the senators who are on the floor or a bunch of senators on the floor, Democratic senators come talk to you guys and you know, we did it. It was great. And you know, they sat down, they were there all night, they popped into the live stream. And again, it's like we're. People are trying here, people are trying and we have limited power. That doesn't mean that people who aren't good or bad messaging, whatever gets a pass. Like we can all improve. But they're trying. They're trying. So now Schumer has also got the whole caucus to oppose, or he's asking the whole caucus to oppose all of the remaining Trump nominees as a protest. Again, probably not going to do anything because unless we get Susan Collins and Murkowski and McConnell and someone else to vote against them, so it's probably not gonna happen. But good for him. And then Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Minority Leader in the House, he had a letter earlier this week that made clear that House Democrats won't be helping Republicans deal with government funding or the debt limit unless they undo Trump's federal spending freeze and potentially other concessions. What do you think about that? That strikes me as the most effective move because it's probably the one piece of leverage the Democrats have.

Dan Pfeiffer (42:17)

Yeah, this runs very counter to everything I've ever said before in my career. But Democrats should absolutely, in my view, hold the debt ceiling hostage.

Jon Favreau (42:27)

Me too. And now we're in a new time.

Dan Pfeiffer (42:30)

But it's also, it is different. To be fair, before all the people who yelling hypocrite at us come at us is Democrats are not in the same position that McCarthy was with Biden or Boehner was with Obama. Democrats don't control the floor. And there are enough Republican votes to extend the debt ceiling.

Jon Favreau (42:45)

Yep.

Dan Pfeiffer (42:46)

They do not need a single Democratic vote. If Mike Johnson and Donald Trump are unable to get the votes they need and they want a Democratic vote, they're gonna have to give us something very significant for it. This is on them. It's not and not.

Jon Favreau (42:59)

And by the way, we're not saying give us something like give us universal healthcare and we'll raise them. It's like, stop fucking shutting down payments that Congress lawfully appropriated.

Dan Pfeiffer (43:10)

Yes.

Jon Favreau (43:10)

This is a very important Democrats stop letting 25 year old racists access to the fucking treasury payment system, you assholes.

Dan Pfeiffer (43:18)

Yeah, this is not Ted Cruz demanding the defunding of the Affordable Care Act. This is asking for the government to spend the money appropriated by Congress the way Congress wanted it to be appropriate in. Mind you bipartisan budget deals. Right. This is not, we are not even asking, although we could, to for Donald Trump to spend all the money that Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden sent his way. That's not even it. These are all deals signed off on by Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Mike Johnson. Like, that's all we're asking. But no Democrat should vote for the debt ceiling absent a significant set of concessions from the Republicans.

Jon Favreau (43:59)

Yeah, you want the debt ceiling votes, go talk to Chip Roy, who's probably not gonna give you. Yeah. A yes vote on that because it doesn't cut enough and which is for him. Most of government like, go, go, go yell at him. Go talk to the Freedom Caucus. They're going to be, they're, they're the ones who are going to vote no on this. Don't fucking talk to Democrats when you are like violating the law and refuse to be held accountable by anyone.

Dan Pfeiffer (44:20)

I think Democrats should adopt as a general approach essentially a no layups rule. Everything you want to do, we're going to make harder. Right. Even if, like it may, it may seem like you guys did this live stream, the senators were out there, they're eating up clock and you say, well, what did that actually get? He is going to get confirmed. You know what it gets us is every single minute that Donald Trump and the Republicans are able to do what they want to do. Same minute they're never going to get back.

Jon Favreau (44:47)

Yep.

Dan Pfeiffer (44:48)

Right. We are burning clock here and we should do on everything you delay it. We use every tactic we have and it's frustrating to people. There are. We don't have a lot of leverage, we don't have a lot of power. But everything we do have you do to delay, to obstruct, to make it, because there are no other checks.

Tommy Vietor (45:04)

Right.

Dan Pfeiffer (45:05)

There is no one in the Republican. There are not a people in the Republican Party who are going to stand up to him. The media cannot do it. The Supreme Court is on his side. They are trying to run roughshod over how our government works. And we have to use every tool we have to fight back in every way possible. And it's not always going to be satisfying, but every single little bit helps that delay. That is one week that Kash Patel is not going to be able to prosecute Donald Trump's or investigate Donald Trump's political enemies. Right. Does that seem like a lot? It's going to seem like a lot to the people in that who are going to get prosecuted that one week. Like, that's, it's not the end. It's not going to solve all of our problems, but it's the right approach, no layups.

Jon Favreau (45:42)

And again, the rest of us don't have to be spectators here. In fact, we shouldn't be spectators. Like the other tool we have is to make a lot of noise about this. And we don't have the megaphone that Donald Trump and Elon have. You know, we have some numbers and everyone has, you always say this. Everyone has the potential in their own life to talk to friends and colleagues and post and we all have platforms and doesn't matter how big your following is, like, we got to get up off the mat here and actually start fighting. And I know that like, you know, there was an Axio story that Democrats were getting like deluged with calls and to like ask them to fight. And, and I think that some of the Democratic politicians are like, okay, we are, what else do you want us to do? Like call some of the Republicans, the House Republicans in, in vulnerable districts so we can take the House back, call their offices, go, go protest outside their offices because like, you know, we gotta, the, the Democrats, they, they get it now. They don't have much power because they didn't win. And you know, if they're backing off and not even putting up a fight, then, yeah, we should yell at them. But right now they're trying to fight. Okay, when we come back from the break, you'll hear Tommy's interview with a very tired Brian Schatz who just talked through the night. Two quick things before we do that latest episode of Polar Coaster. Dan, what's the latest episode like?

Dan Pfeiffer (46:54)

Well, we talked a lot about where Trump stands right now, some of the weakness in his numbers, how all his various executive orders and policies are polling, and some sense of where Democrats go from here. And Caroline Reston floats, a very notable former Bravo personality as a Democratic nominee in 2028.

Jon Favreau (47:12)

Wow. Okay, now that's. Look, if that isn't reason enough to tune in, and if you're not listening to Polar Coaster because you're not yet a subscriber, go to qriket.com friends and subscribe. You can get ad free episodes of Pod Save America and more, a lot of other series. And for a limited time you can get a seven day free trial. Just go to Cricket Dot com friends. Or you can subscribe directly on the Pod Save America Apple podcast feed. Also 20% off now. All T shirts at the Crooked store go to crooked.com store to shop before the sale ends. Got all kinds of great merch there. And you can get 20% off right now. All T shirts when we come back. Brian Schatz.

Adrian Hill (47:56)

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Brian Schatz (49:01)

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Brian Schatz (49:44)

I am excited to welcome to the show a great friend of the podcast, Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz.

Adrian Hill (49:50)

How are you, Senator?

Tommy Vietor (49:51)

I'm doing fine. We're mobilized, we're motivated. We're a little tired from the overnight, but we're doing fine.

Brian Schatz (49:58)

I was going to say you are. You're fresh off a democracy bender. Senate Democrats held the floor for about.

Adrian Hill (50:04)

30 hours, I believe. First question is just how you feeling.

Brian Schatz (50:08)

But also, can you explain to listeners who didn't catch our livestream yesterday what you and other Senate Democrats have been up to?

Tommy Vietor (50:14)

Well, we're maximally delaying the vote on Russ. Russ vote to run the Office of Management and Budget. And in order to do that, we, we, you know, we took to the floor and basically haven't relinquished it. It will be done in a couple of hours. And all Democrats are united against Russ vote. I don't think anybody in the public has ever really paid attention to omb, but the reason that this guy is so important is he's one of the authors of Project 2025. And part of Project 2025 specifically talks about how they think the job of OMB should be especially powerful, that it should be representing, quote, the president's mind in all things, like, just weird stuff. And the person who wrote that is Russ Vogt. And now the person who is going to assume that position is Russ Vogt. This guy's the architect of the federal funding freeze. He's the architect of illegally dismantling agencies. And so he's quite a dangerous character. So for those people who thought they were gonna get like, we're gonna shake up Washington and maybe we'll get some mean tweets, they are setting about to dismantle the American government's capacity to solve basic problems, not like new programs, but Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start, federal firefighters, Virginia home loans, the Small Business Administration. So this is deadly serious. We are fighting back. And even today, I think there were at least two positive results in the federal court. So part of what we're trying to say to everybody is we will fight where we can. We are in the minority, which means that we're going to, frankly, lose some of these battles because it's going to be 53, 47, a lot. But we're starting to see a mass movement out there in the world that is standing up for democracy. And by the way, we are starting to see that, yes, the things that he is doing are illegal and they are being found to be illegal, and they are being stopped by the courts. So one of Trump's magical sort of political powers is to get people to believe things that are flatly not true about him. And he's trying to EO his way around the fact that the stuff that he's doing or the stuff that he wants to do is so unpopular, there's no way it would get through any legislative body. They can't pass a bill, so they just, like, write it down as if that makes it law. That's not actually how it works.

Brian Schatz (52:38)

That's not in the Constitution. Just jot it down, will it to be. Yeah, well, you know, you were telling me yesterday that Russ Vogt kind of thinks of himself as the hand of the king. Is that in the Constitution as well? I mean, there's just. It's just. I was ready for Trump 2.0 to be bad, but this whole element of setting up this Doge team under Elon Musk and having this young group of people that I don't even know if they work for the government or not, they've never been vetted. We don't know their names necessarily. They're just kind of rampaging through agencies, I guess, trying to cut whatever they can whenever they feel like it. And it just.

Tommy Vietor (53:15)

It's.

Brian Schatz (53:15)

It's taken us all, I think, a minute to catch up with how radical that is.

Tommy Vietor (53:19)

Yeah, that's right. I mean, but also, it's so radical that it sort of benefits us because, you know, it's not the frog being boiled. Right. It's the frog being fried. And so everybody's kind of like, okay, I'm out of my slumber now. Right? There is no ability to relax. There is no ability for anybody to claim, well, why don't you guys give him a chance? Or there's no ability for even the punditocracy to. To, like, stroke their chins and say, there the Democrats go again. Can't believe they're overreacting. This is no big deal. He's basically a normal Republican. And they're complaining about outcomes, but they don't like the outcomes. So they're saying, democracy is at stake. Nobody can credibly claim that what's happening is legal. And they have a very specific theory of action, which is, you know, as they talked about, you know, muzzle speed, flood the zone. But, you know, that's a fancy way of saying we're gonna do a ton of illegal stuff at the same time and see if, like, one or two of them will stick. And, you know, I thought Ezra Klein last Sunday wrote a very nice piece called Don't Believe Him. And I think he got criticized, you know, by the Internet for being. For, like, being too casual about the Trump presidency. And that's not how I took it. I think we should be totally alarmed, but we also shouldn't concede our power away, either our people power or our ability to win in the courts, or our ability to at least gum up the works legislatively. There's this sense that the coolest thing on the left to do is to catastrophize and say we've already lost, that the Democrats are hopeless, that the movement is dead, and that, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, I'm so left that I don't even wanna participate in the left anymore. And I think everyone, like normal people who wanna fight for our democracy and fight for our country are saying, yeah, enough of that bullshit. Activism is not just getting into someone's replies and saying, why aren't you fighting harder? It's figuring out how you personally can fight harder. And I think one of the places that I've seen over the last week, real courage is within the federal government. A bunch of people are starting to disobey, or I should say decline to execute illegal orders, to establish themselves as whistleblowers, to stand in front of federal buildings and protest, which is not risk free. But I think once you start to see each other right, there really is strength and safety in numbers. And I don't want to get too philosophical about this, but I just do think there's something very important about showing up in real life when you start to see each other on the street and not just intermediated through an app that you go, okay, I got friends here. This is real. I'm in. Let's go. We're gonna win this thing. We may be getting our butts kicked for the next six weeks, but six weeks is not six years. And other Americans have faced other challenges to the American experiment. And they did not simply tweet, we're cooked. They fought like hell and they continued the experiment.

Brian Schatz (56:34)

Listen, I. You and I both spend some time on Twitter. I think I know the kind of frustration you're feeling, the kind of tone you're talking about where people are somehow blaming the Democratic Party for everything that Donald Trump is doing. And it's exhausting, it's frustrating. But let's just sort of talk about the tension and the anger. I mean, Democrats are pretty angry right now. We're angry at Trump, angry at what he's doing. We're angry at Joe Biden for putting us in this place. And as you mentioned, a lot of people are lashing out at Democrats in Congress for not doing more. So help me just set up set expectations a bit. What power do Democrats in the Senate actually have? What can we do to block some of Trump's actions? And what is just going to have to be messaging to create a political cost down the road to some of the things Trump is doing?

Tommy Vietor (57:23)

Well, think of it this way. There are certain things that need, you know, 51 votes and certain things that need 60. So anytime it's 51 votes, all we can do is make our best case and delay them a little. And by a little, I mean 15 minutes, 27 minutes, 45 minutes, sometimes not at all. And, you know, we can make a nuisance of ourselves in small ways, but that's not really changing either public opinion or, or the situation on the ground. They're not getting their Cabinet any slower if we, if we do minor procedural roadblocks. And by the way, we are doing all of the, you know, in and out of a quorum call or in and out of executive session, but there's no magic bullet called slow them down. Remember that the people talking about Mitch McConnell's obstructionism are talking about an era when the cabinet needed 60 votes. Now the cabinet needs 51, and they've got 53. So everybody needs to understand they're very likely to get their entire Cabinet. And all we can do is scream bloody murder about how dangerous this is. Then there comes a point this year, and it's not that long from now, when they need 60 votes for regular legislation. And that's when Democrats are very relevant because they need seven more than 53. And that's when the Democratic senators can exert some authority and use some leverage. I'm not prepared to sort of tell you exactly how we're going to do that, because, frankly, we have to become united. And that's a leadership call, that's a joint decision. But we're not casual about those moments in time when we actually do have raw leverage to push back on what's happening right now. We have very little ability to stop them. And the best thing we can do is, as you say, make them own these votes. I do not think the RFK Junior yes vote is going to age well. I don't think the Pete Hegseth vote is going to age well, obviously, Kash Patel and all the rest of it. But I'll also just say that to be fair to folks who are frustrated, you know, they're not sure what we're supposed to be doing, but they know we're not supposed to be doing nothing. Right? And so one of the reasons that people Were, I think, fired up at this, 30 hours on the floor is like it was something we're fighting, we're showing some fight. We understand the urgency of the moment. But it's like the old, you know, Steve Jobs used to say, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. It is not their job to say, why don't you put the Senate in a quorum call? Because I take that as a I'm at the end of my rope. Would you please tell me what you're doing here and let me just tell you my theory of change here. Yes, we can gum up the works and we should. Yes, we will have actual raw leverage on the vote count later. And we should use that as ruthlessly and aggressively as we can. I also think, you know, let's not underestimate the power of the federal courts to declare, and this has already borne fruit, what the President of the United States is doing as flatly illegal and to enjoin and stop those actions. And then I think we also have to, together as citizens, build a mass movement. Because when you're fighting autocracy, and you know this as well as anybody, you need the legitimacy of people on your side. So it's not just us fighting and then people either cheering us on or, or not cheering us on. You know, on social media, people need to see each other in three dimension. It has to be tens of thousands of people. It has to be peaceful. We have to have the moral high ground. But the way to beat autocracy is not just like legislative maneuvering. It's actual people power. And let's not forget that.

Brian Schatz (61:16)

Yeah, that's well said and I agree with you. I think that that RFK vote's going to age like a vat of raw milk. That, that we might be available in store soon. Let's talk about you personally. One way you have used your power is you've put a hold on all of Trump's State Department nominees over this Elon Musk led effort to illegally gut usaid. Can you give listeners just a quick explanation of what does that mean in practice? And also, like, what are you asking Trump to do that will get you to release these holds going forward?

Tommy Vietor (61:47)

What it means in practice is that there are a bunch of State Department nominations because let me, let me back up. A lot of these nominations are mandatory two hours. And so that doesn't sound like a long time, but there are, you know, hundreds and hundreds of them. So when, for instance, Tuberville held up all the military nominations, these are like a two star becoming a three star, right? There were a thousand of them. And some folks were like, why don't you go to the floor and just start plowing through them? And the answer is, because it's 1,000 nominations times two hours, we would have been in the Senate for a year and a half confirming a bunch of rear admirals, and literally have no time for anything else. And so it does gum up their ability to get ambassadors and assistant secretaries through. But anyone they really want to get through, they just allocate the time and do it. And I haven't actually said this anywhere else because I issued the press release sort of without going through too much of an internal policy planning program.

Brian Schatz (62:52)

Okay.

Tommy Vietor (62:52)

I just sort of.

Brian Schatz (62:53)

It's very Trumpy interview. I like it.

Tommy Vietor (62:54)

Well, it wasn't quite Trumpy. I mean, I had with me, but I just told him this is what I wanted to do. Look, I am actually a little more willing than people may know to have a negotiation about how USAID is done. And I think that it's not unreasonable to ask the question if we've got the Belt and Road and everybody watches what China is doing and says, wow, that's really smart that they're all around the world helping folks. But it's also aligned with their economic and geopolitical geostrategic objectives. USAID does some of that, but there's an argument, and it's been on a bipartisan basis, that sometimes USAID is even at cross purposes with the State Department. So I'm open to better alignment. I'm also open to the idea that we should reduce overhead. I think wherever we can reduce overhead, we should. And I'm also open to the idea that, yes, there's some civil society stuff that we should be funding, but I'm not sure we should ever fund an opera overseas if we haven't gotten everybody who needs a mosquito net, A mosquito net. So I am actually open minded to reforms if they're done through, you know, a regular legislative process. I've just told everybody I will only arrive at the negotiating table once the agency is reopened. And right now they're shuttering the whole place. I mean, just flatly, illegally. It is an extraordinary thing they're doing. They are bringing, you know, thousands and thousands of patriotic Americans, skilled Americans who have set up a life in, wherever it is, right in Asia or South America or Central America or Africa or wherever it is. They brought their family there. And then they just got this email saying, you're coming home within the next 30 days. Yeah, it's just a rotten thing to do to humans. But also, you know, we may end up with eight people from our primary development agency in all of Asia. Like, this is nuts.

Jon Favreau (64:58)

Nuts.

Tommy Vietor (64:59)

There's, there's, you know, Marburg's disease in Tanzania. There's Ebola in Uganda. So I actually think this is going to back up on Donald Trump. And I know there's some conventional wisdom knocking around that foreign aid people don't care about it. And I stipulate to the idea that if you took a poll, most people would not rank foreign aid as their top priority. But it's one of those things where, like, also, people wouldn't rank the FAA as their top priority. People don't rank food inspections as their top priority until any of those things cause a disruption at home, a lack of stability and safety at home. And I think these diseases know no political or geographic boundaries, and this is a very serious situation.

Brian Schatz (65:48)

Yeah, no, look, I understand this. I have the same sort of tension in my head as you do. Where I worked in the national security world, I've seen the amazing good that organizations funded by USAID can do. I've also seen the agency as a whole feel bureaucratic and slow, and it can be frustrating at times. But you're right. I mean, there are specific examples of programs being run by usaid, like tracking highly contagious deadly diseases all around the world. You mentioned to Marburg, which is like, Ebola without a vaccine, basically is sort of how it's been described to me. There's Ebola, there's this bird flu outbreak that seems to be everywhere all of a sudden. And if suddenly we're just flying blind to this stuff and you can trace.

Adrian Hill (66:34)

It back to cuts to usaid, that.

Brian Schatz (66:36)

Is a incredibly powerful message.

Tommy Vietor (66:39)

Yeah, I mean, and, you know, look, I mean, I'm not rooting for Donald Trump, but I am trying to solve this problem. And so, you know, one of the things I've said to Republican colleagues is like, I get that foreign aid is not on the top of your list, except when we have our first Ebola case, you know, in the United States. And so. And people are going to say, wait, what the hell? We don't monitor this anymore. Or, you know, PEPFAR is shut down. And PEPFAR is shut down. The HIV AIDS prevention program, which has saved tens of millions of lives, is shut down. It's technically not, but the problem is that, you know, everyone's shut out of their email. Literally. People can't even operate. They've been sent home and Nominally, in order to, like, pretend to not violate federal Civil service laws and other laws. They're saying, we'll still pay you, please work from home. But then they shut them out of their emails. Which, by the way, is. You know, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm smart enough to understand this. It's one thing to send people home to telework, but if you don't have a reason to do that and then you shut them out of their ability to work, then it's all a pretext, right? And then you are just de facto shutting down the agency. And that's why I'm very, very confident that this will also be found to be in violation of the law. But this one in particular, usaid, it's an arson job, right? The other ones, they're trying to see what they can get away with. NSF, Small Business Administration, VA. And it's really super damaging, this one. They want to. I think they know they only have a couple more days before the full freakout happens with the media and international attention. And by the way, we have. Sorry to get all fired up here, but we have the Munich Security Conference next week. We have a bipartisan delegation of United States senators. J.D. vance is gonna be there. I'm assuming Secretary Rubio is gonna be there. All we're gonna spend our time doing is getting yelled at. Why did you shut off the primary arm of goodwill internationally? So usually the Munich Security Conference is. Is a three dimensional example of why America remains the indispensable nation. Everybody's hanging on our every word. Everyone wants to know what direction we're going in. And I think it's not going to be that. I think we're going to get just. I mean, people will be polite, some of them, but whether it's Africa or Asia or Central Europe or anywhere else, people are just the first item on their list when we have our bilateral meetings is, what the hell did you do to pepfar? What the hell did you do to disease prevention? What the hell did you do to foreign military financing or any of the economic supports? This is such small money in the scheme of things that we need to understand it for what it is. It is not a budget or fiscal question. This is a America first policy, right? What they want is for us to recede from the rest of the world. They want our government to be about half as big. They want it to do way fewer things. And they want. I mean, it is a quite radical vision. They don't want FEMA to exist. They think the FAA should have AI doing air traffic control. I mean, it's a very creepy, radical vision. And I'm not sure Donald Trump cares one way or another about all this, but he is letting these, you know, combination of these sort of, you know, oligarch tech dudes and whatever and some old school right wing think tank people just kind of have the run of the place.

Dan Pfeiffer (70:16)

Yeah.

Brian Schatz (70:16)

And just on the foreign a piece, I mean, a lot of this is money that has been dispersed and is budgeted, you know, and if we are helping fund some major component of the government in Jordan, for example, we can like rug pull them once on actually providing that funding before we lose our influence with that government and in that country forever. So this is incredibly damaging no matter how it kind of ends. But you mentioned your Republican colleagues. I mean, look, they like foreign aid when it's in the form of bombs. They might not talk about, you know, usaid, but they think they know it's valuable. And there's also some Republicans in the Senate that we know hate Donald Trump. Like Mitch McConnell hates Donald Trump, famously so, not enough to do anything about it. But he doesn't like them. Susan Collins is now complaining publicly about Elon Musk's role being inappropriate in conversations with them. Do you think this is going to shape up being like the first term where these guys kind of grumble on background but then refuse to use their power to change anything? Or are people getting more worked up?

Adrian Hill (71:18)

Like, how do you read this?

Tommy Vietor (71:19)

I don't know. I just don't know. I've certainly had conversations with, I mean, seven to 10 Republicans who have a real stomachache about this thing in particular, because as, as much as I disagree with many of them about almost everything, a lot of them don't want, you know, babies dying on their conscience and the question is whether they're gonna exert themselves. So this weekend the Republican senators are gonna be meeting with the President and we'll see. I mean, you know, I think it's not a, I mean, it's probably a safe bet to, to assume no, they will not step up. And even if like handicapping wise, maybe, I still think there will be instances where they stand up for, you know, what they think is important. I think there has to be more time elapsed. And one of the conversations I'm having with, you know, some folks is I don't think the question is time elapsed. I think it is damage done. And if they're doing the damage super quickly, you may not have six months. But I think there's also a human psychology element, which is if it sort of piles up over six months, it's easier to get there to displaying your independence. If it all happens at once, it looks like to them you're immediately turning on the newly inaugurated president, so they've got a tightrope to walk. Some of them do that more skillfully and frankly, more honorably than others. And my job is obviously to try slow them down, to articulate to the public where I think the country is going in the wrong direction. And that part, on some level, is the easy part. But I'm still trying to find three or four votes for certain things, because that is the job. And I think we should all hope that our Democratic senators are in the business of describing how horrific all this is, in the business of trying to slow it down, but also in the business of trying to do the senator thing, which is to find four votes to stop all this crazy shit. And if it, if it is, if we're unable to do so, then, then at least we know that we've exhausted the possibility and that we can go, you know, rhetorically speaking, full thermonuclear.

Brian Schatz (73:35)

Yeah. Let's talk about the Democratic Party right now, because we don't have a leader right now, right. Like, we have former presidents, we have congressional leaders, but there's not like a single person guiding the party on messaging and policy like you would have if there were a Democrat in the White House or a major nominee running for president. On top of that, a lot of the Republican leadership is getting up there. They don't seem particularly fluent in digital media platforms. The messaging can feel a little behind the eight ball. Now, I'm saying this to you because you're an exception to this. You are young and an effective communicator and someone who understands, like, how to communicate in 2025. And I'm just wondering, for people who are like, look, a lot of us are getting the cringy clips on the group chat. What do you say to them about the way you are pushing Democrats to evolve and get better and be more nimble?

Tommy Vietor (74:27)

Look, I remember there was a lot of that kind of chatter about Nancy Pelosi as she was speaking speaker. And then there were various moments during which we went, ah, she's really very good at this. And I just. Chuck Schumer is really very good at this. Is it true that he's new to the Internet age? Sure, but so am I, frankly. So I just worry about the theater criticism part of the job. Right. Like, we need to cheer each other.

Jon Favreau (74:56)

Like, it's not theater.

Brian Schatz (74:57)

It's like it's, there's good messaging and there's bad, right? The, like, there's a, the harder part is getting it to the people who need to hear it. And maybe if it's so cringey, it gets to them. That's good. But like, you know, like the corny ass chance, like, we can all just agree that maybe that's not going to cut it. Right?

Tommy Vietor (75:14)

Well, let me, let me answer the question this way. You know, Chuck has designated Cory Booker and Tina Smith to kind of get us to be better at digital. And look, I think you're exactly identifying the problem, which is we can say exactly the right thing, but if nobody sees it, it doesn't matter. And the problem with the kind of battle tested way of doing things from the past is you poll a thing. Among the things on the list of things you polled, you pick the one that's at 70 and not 67 and not 64. And then you say the thing that polls the best. The problem with that model is it's very likely that the thing that polls the best is also the thing that is the least offensive, because that's why it polls the best. So it's really a kind of lowest common denominator. Which thing do you find least objectionable? And that might work if you're in the mode of making a television commercial and basically forcing it into the brains of a bunch of viewers, but it will not go viral because it's definitionally not interesting.

Brian Schatz (76:20)

Yeah, it's boring.

Tommy Vietor (76:22)

And so that's where I think Trump was, is brilliant, right? They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. That was offensive. It hurt him in the short run, but he again surfaced the question of immigration. And what happens is he suffers for two days looking like an idiot. But then on the third day people go, yeah, but you know, he's got a point about immigration. And then we're talking about the thing that he wanted us to talk about. So his ability to command attention is not a trivial thing. Now we have a structural problem. As you pointed out, when you're out of power, you just definitionally don't have a leader until you have a nominee. Right? We could say it's the Democratic Party chairman, we could say it's Chuck, we could say it's Hakeem. But the truth is there's not going to be a one person who leads our party out of the wilderness. It's got to be all of us together. But I will say, like, we're all getting better at communicating online and understanding that, yeah, cable hits are important, but, like, there's very, very few undecided voters who are. Who are watching any of the cable shows. Not that we shouldn't do those anymore. It's just that we should think of those as one of the tactics in our toolkit. And just by virtue of metrics, we are doing, I mean, like, fivefold, Eightfold better than we did even three weeks ago. Because there's a commitment, not just from the sort of digital native members, but of the Senate, but some others who are, like, newly willing to be authentic and speak plainly and, like, you know, because part of it, too, is, like, you got hearings and you got votes and you got meetings and you got everything else. You have to actually allocate time to, like, staring into an iPhone and saying, here's what I'm up to.

Adrian Hill (78:02)

It's weird.

Tommy Vietor (78:02)

Yes. And I actually had to tell my staff, like, we're doing this thing. You have to grab me, even if it's just while I'm walking to the floor, stick a camera in my face and make me start talking. And so we're doing that more, and it's starting to work. We also need to, over time, build a bigger ecosystem of, you know, progressive media. And it's not exclusively. Well, it's you guys.

Brian Schatz (78:27)

I like what you're saying right now. Keep going. I didn't mean to cut you off.

Tommy Vietor (78:30)

Showing up, but it's also kind of the network effect of like, you went on barstool. Right? It's the recognition that. Think of it like your high school buddies. You do not. I don't exclude anybody who, like, thinks RFK Jr. Is great. You might argue with him, or you might never talk about it, but you just try to find common ground and try to build community. Because I think one of the things Trump did in the last election that was kind of brilliant, right, Is you can talk yourself out of Tulsi Gabbard's base mattering, because you could take a poll and go, oh, that's only 1%. And then you could do the same thing with RFK and say, that's only two and a half percent. Well, holy shit, we only lost by 1.5%.

Brian Schatz (79:17)

Exactly.

Tommy Vietor (79:18)

Coalitions that work, and you were part of the maybe most powerful coalition on the Democratic side in recent memory, are always, like, on policy and on politics, kind of contradictory. And we became the party that wouldn't accept anyone with a weird idea, wouldn't accept anybody without A kind of down the middle view that was totally rational and totally acceptable. And I think we have to be a party that says, look, if you've got some heterodox views, if you've got even some offensive views, we still want you in the tent. Right? One of the reasons in the state of Hawaii Democrats are so powerful is we have conservative Democrats, right. We just like welcome them because we figure, hey, better you're a conservative Democrat than a moderate Republican. And I tell you what, your listeners are going to hate this. I miss Joe Manchin, right? I miss, I miss his vote, not.

Brian Schatz (80:15)

His personality, but yeah, I miss his vote. Yeah, the House votes seem nice too, his votes.

Tommy Vietor (80:19)

I mean, I actually like his personality better than his votes, but, but, but I still, like. We would be thrilled to have three or four Joe Manchins. So we could all be frustrated at the fact that he doesn't vote like a Hawaii Democrat, but at least he votes to make Chuck Schumer the leader. Correct? And puts Patty Murray in charge of appropriations and put Ron Wyden in charge of tax and Martin Heinrich in charge of energy and Sheldon Whitehouse in charge of the environment and public works. Like that's what matters in the end. And so we have to kind of like we have to decide do we want to win. I remember talking to a buddy of mine who, who was in the Hawaii legislature. And the magic number in the Hawaii legislature to become the speaker is 26 out of 51. So you need 26 votes. And he was at 22 and, and it was really hard to get to 26. And we had a private conversation about a group of people who he found to be kind of objectionable. And I said, well, what the fuck, man? Do you want to win and try to get to 26 with no objectionable people? You can't do it. So you have to make deals, arrangements, promises with people that don't agree with you. And that's the way we're going to rebuild this political party is we're going to have to aggressively welcome people into our tent. It doesn't mean we abandon our core values. It just means that one of our core values is to exercise power on behalf of people. And we can't do that unless we actually win some damned elections. And people do not like being scolded out of the tent. And that was definitely the vibe for a while. And I think we've kind of shook off those cobwebs.

Brian Schatz (82:05)

Look, I love what you're saying. I've noticed that a lot of you you and a lot of your colleagues are taking reps, recording things that you're just posting on TikTok or on Twitter or wherever. Just trying to get out there, talk more, explain what's going on. I think it's. I think that's great. And I think you're right. We cannot rely on MSNBC hits because those people are old and already agree with us. I could not agree more with the need to go to different places. Like, I hope I once said, Democrats should never go on Fox.

Adrian Hill (82:34)

I'm wrong. People should.

Brian Schatz (82:35)

We should go on Fox. We should pick fights. We should be interesting. We should make content that is compelling to watch because there is tension in it. And people should go on like barstool sports shows or other places that I think were seen as not kosher. And that's not because you agree with everything Dave Portnoy thinks or said. It's because that's not a standard that we apply anywhere else. You know what I mean? Like, I don't judge, like ESPN talent based on what John Skipper's political views are when back when he was in charge of espn. He's not anymore. It's someone else who. I forget his name. But anyway, so I think that's great. One thing I just would love to get a sense from you on is, okay, you were worst NFL team.

Adrian Hill (83:17)

We're in a full rebuild.

Brian Schatz (83:18)

We're tanking to get the draft picks, we're firing the coach, new gm, quarterback is doing ayahuasca somewhere. What three things do you want people to think of when they think of the Democratic Party?

Adrian Hill (83:30)

Like, what are the three core values.

Brian Schatz (83:32)

That is part of our rebrand?

Tommy Vietor (83:35)

Economic fairness and fighting corruption and standing up for each other. And the standing up for each other. I think, let's be honest, I did this on the fly. I just think economic fairness is very straightforward. And the billionaires on the stage in front of the Cabinet was, I think, a gift to us because it put three dimensions around what we think is happening. And they're about to move forward with a massive tax cut. They're obviously trying to almost literally raid the treasury and shut down critical services. So that's relatively easy to talk about. And I just think we are no longer the party in power. And so we need to fight against the power structure and not defend all the elite institutions. These people are at the helm. And the corruption story is both true and alarming. But it's also something that attracts swing voters and attracts some of the voters that liked Barack Obama and then swung over to Trump. Because they wanted someone who was gonna kick these politicians in the stomach. Right? And then the third thing, and, you know, forgive me for not having the precise words, but it is just a little bit of belief in each other, right? This core value that we're building, a mass movement to actually envision something different and to forgive each other our past political or personal transgressions, to be welcoming in coalition building in a way that I think is gonna make all of us a little uncomfortable because we're gonna be so fucking pissed right now. You realize Trump's an idiot.

Brian Schatz (85:20)

I know. And we gotta be nice to those people.

Tommy Vietor (85:22)

We gotta be nice to those people. And I've been having, like, you know, I've been having a bunch of those conversations with folks. And remember that people move from, you know, in favor of somebody to a little bit less in favor of somebody to undecided, and then they join you. They never flip, Right? Because it's just psychologically too hard to go like, holy shit, I was wrong about everything. Some people might do that, but for the most part, you're moving them over in a way that allows them to not feel stupid, not feel put upon, not feel like they're being told that they were wrong. And that is honestly just millions of people who listen to podcasts and are politically engaged. One of the most important things we can do is win people over one by one. I believe that. I know that there's a little bit of almost technocratic, data driven campaign stuff where it's like, it's all person to person conversations, but at this stage, we're not in a campaign and we do just need to create a little room for people to say, by the way, people all the time misremember who they voted for. The worse Trump gets, the fewer people will remember that they voted for him. There's also a category of people I talked to a buddy who was describing his friends who are Republicans, and they said, you know, they, they voted for Trump because they were pissed about Biden and prices and his age, but they're not fans of Trump and they're gonna give him a relatively short leash before they abandon him. And so those are, those are real opportunities for us if we can just appear to be somewhat welcoming and not just turn this into a, I can't believe you allowed this guy to take the helm. And now you wanna join us?

Brian Schatz (87:06)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (87:06)

The answer is everybody's welcome. And I don't give a shit what your views used to be, how you voted. This is the biggest possible tent right now. Because in my view, everything is at stake.

Brian Schatz (87:18)

I agree. Those are great words to end on. Senator Schatz, thank you for staying up all night for democracy. And also, listen, those Maryland senators, they got nothing of a commute. You're coming from Hawaii to D.C. and back. So shout out to you for for logging some miles.

Tommy Vietor (87:33)

And thank you, thank you.

Jon Favreau (87:39)

That's our show for today. Thanks to Senator Schatz for coming by and thanks to all the Democratic senators who stopped by our livestream on Wednesday as they spent the night holding the Senate floor to oppose Russ vote. Dan's gonna be back in the feed on Sunday with an interview with Ben Smith, the co founder and editor in chief of Semaphore and former media columnist at the New York Times, about the wonderful media environment we're all living in. That should be fun for Sunday. And then we'll be back with a new episode in your feeds on Tuesday. Have a great weekend everyone.

Dan Pfeiffer (88:05)

Bye everyone.

Jon Favreau (88:06)

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