Will Elon Find the Epstein Files Before It's Too Late?

Summary

Detailed Summary of "Pod Save America" Episode: "Will Elon Find the Epstein Files Before It's Too Late?"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Pod Save America
• Host/Author: Crooked Media
• Description: Pod Save America offers no-nonsense conversations about politics, hosted by former Obama aides Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor. The podcast breaks down weekly news, providing insights and guidance on significant political matters. Regular guests include journalists, activists, politicians, entertainers, and world leaders. Episodes are available on YouTube and are released every Tuesday and Friday.

Episode Overview: In this episode, released on February 28, 2025, the hosts delve into the chaotic state of the Trump administration, focusing on Elon Musk's involvement in government operations. They discuss the detrimental impacts of policy changes on healthcare, foreign aid, and various federal agencies. Additionally, the episode examines Jeff Bezos's influence over the Washington Post and its implications for media integrity. The hosts also introduce a new segment, "Wait, Did That Really Happen?", highlighting bizarre political moments from the week.

---

1. Introduction to the Week's Political Chaos

Jon Favreau opens the episode by outlining the grim news landscape:

"[...] Republicans in Congress moving forward with the Trump economic plan, which, among other things, would take away health care and food from kids in order to fund a huge tax cut for the 1%." ([02:05])

Dan Pfeiffer echoes the severity:

"The news is terrible." ([02:04])

The discussion sets the stage for a deep dive into the Trump administration's destabilizing policies and their far-reaching consequences.

2. Elon Musk's Influence on the Trump Administration

The hosts examine Elon Musk's role within the Trump administration, highlighting actions that undermine federal agencies:

Dan Pfeiffer criticizes the administration's mishandling of foreign aid:

"The US Government's capacity to respond has, quote, been wrecked right as there's an Ebola outbreak happening in East Africa as we speak." ([04:52])

Jon Favreau underscores the chaos introduced by cutting essential services:

"This is just fucking ruining people's lives and like denying us potential treatments and cures that we've already paid for, our tax dollars have already paid for. It's fucking nuts, man." ([06:18])

They discuss specific instances, such as the mishandling of Ebola prevention funding and the crippling of the CDC and FDA:

"Catherine Wu reports in the Atlantic that the NIH is still violating court orders by refusing to restart most medical research." ([04:52])

3. Deterioration of Healthcare and Foreign Aid

The conversation shifts to the implications of cutting healthcare and foreign assistance:

Dan Pfeiffer highlights the administration's disregard for public health:

"We're headed towards healthy. We're headed in the opposite direction. There's so much to say here." ([04:57])

Jon Favreau points out the redundancy of cutting foreign aid meant to save lives:

"The money was appropriated already. We're not getting it back spent on, you know, $500 million in food. That's just like sitting in docks spoiling right now." ([06:08])

They emphasize that these cuts are not about saving money but about undermining government functions:

"They're just making things worse." ([05:59])

4. Impact on Federal Agencies and Public Safety

The hosts discuss the broader impact on federal agencies, citing recent budget cuts and their consequences:

Jon Favreau addresses the VA's budget pauses:

"VA pauses billions in cuts lauded by Musk as lawmakers and veterans decry loss of critical care." ([06:54])

Dan Pfeiffer condemns the administration's incompetence:

"It's truly insane. You have to be both dumb and lacking in even a single iota of empathy within your body to run the government like this." ([06:54])

They explore the dangers posed by Musk's interference, such as potential air traffic control failures:

"He's forcing the FAA now to withdraw a contract they gave to Verizon to modernize communication inside the air traffic control system and to hire Musk's own company, Starlink, to do it instead." ([16:17])

5. Budget Resolutions and Fiscal Mismanagement

The discussion moves to the Republican-led budget resolution and its unrealistic fiscal promises:

Dan Pfeiffer explains the budget reconciliation process:

"Trump and the Republicans want to pass this bill without fear of a Democratic filibuster [...] Everything in it must relate to taxes and spending." ([29:33])

Jon Favreau critiques the disparity between promised tax cuts and necessary spending reductions:

"They've promised over $4 trillion in tax cuts [...] It's about $1 trillion in tax cuts just for the top 1% and everyone else." ([35:23])

The hosts argue that the proposed budget will exacerbate the deficit and harm essential programs:

"It's going to add to the deficit, make the deficit worse, and it's going to cut a bunch of other shit that a lot of people depend on." ([35:44])

6. Government Shutdown and Legislative Stalemate

As the episode progresses, the hosts address the imminent government shutdown:

Dan Pfeiffer outlines the two major budget fights:

"First, the House budget resolution [...] Second, the Senate is basically like that." ([28:03])

Jon Favreau explains the complexities Republicans face in passing their budget:

"None of their math works. [...] They have promised a couple trillion dollars worth of spending cuts, which you can only get if you really tackle Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, veterans, health care." ([31:35])

They highlight the political risks associated with a shutdown and the administration's inability to manage government operations effectively.

7. Media Manipulation and Jeff Bezos's Control Over the Washington Post

The hosts criticize Jeff Bezos's influence over the Washington Post's editorial direction:

Dan Pfeiffer laments the decline of media integrity:

"The Washington Post is now nothing more than an organ for the billionaire with multiple interests in front of the federal government that owns the paper." ([46:35])

Jon Favreau underscores the shift from independent journalism to corporate-controlled media:

"Media is changing. The era of corporate media has come to an end because the firewalls are coming down." ([48:24])

They discuss the broader implications of media consolidation and its impact on unbiased reporting.

8. "Wait, Did That Really Happen?" – Highlighting Bizarre Political Moments

In this new segment, the hosts react to outrageous political events from the week:

1. AI-Generated Trump Video About Gaza:

   • Jon Favreau describes the disturbing content:

     "There's AI generated Elon Musk... golden statues of Trump in Gaza and everyone's very excited about the golden statues of Trump in Gaza." ([58:14])

   • Dan Pfeiffer condemns the callousness of the President:

     "It just shows the fact that there is no soul there. It's like just a bottomless hole." ([60:12])

2. Trump's "Gold Card" Immigration Policy:

   • Dan Pfeiffer mocks the absurdity:

     "We're going to be selling a gold card. You have a green card. This is a gold card. We're going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million." ([60:00])

   • Jon Favreau highlights the contradiction in Republican rhetoric:

     "We're against immigration now unless it's rich." ([61:29])

3. Epstein Files Conspiracy Theory:

   • Jon Favreau exposes the false narrative:

     "They have all the MAGA people have gotten themselves into this space where they think that there's some Epstein files... fake conspiracy theories that aren't true." ([62:41])

   • Dan Pfeiffer discusses the perpetuation of unfounded conspiracies:

     "They always find people to blame. There's going to be Democratic governors who are villains or any..." ([69:23])

9. Closing Discussions and Future Outlook

The hosts reflect on the state of American democracy and the role of media:

Dan Pfeiffer warns of the erosion of judicial integrity:

"Once that happens, the idea of judicial review, the findings in Marbury versus Madison falls apart." ([25:07])

Jon Favreau expresses concern over the potential for unchecked executive power:

"[...] the administration lawyers in the agencies that are like, I think we should follow the court orders. And then some other jackoffs are like, nah, fuck it." ([24:29])

They emphasize the importance of holding the administration accountable to preserve democratic norms and prevent further governmental dysfunction.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Dan Pfeiffer ([04:52]): "The US Government's capacity to respond has, quote, been wrecked right as there's an Ebola outbreak happening in East Africa as we speak."

• Jon Favreau ([06:18]): "This is just fucking ruining people's lives and like denying us potential treatments and cures that we've already paid for, our tax dollars have already paid for."

• Dan Pfeiffer ([05:39]): "We're not saving money, we're not doing anything. Right. We're just making things worse."

• Jon Favreau ([16:17]): "He's forcing the FAA now to withdraw a contract they gave to Verizon to modernize communication inside the air traffic control system and to hire Musk's own company, Starlink, to do it instead."

• Dan Pfeiffer ([29:33]): "This is the budget reconciliation process. [...] Everything in it must relate to taxes and spending."

• Jon Favreau ([35:23]): "It's about $1 trillion in tax cuts just for the top 1% and everyone else."

• Dan Pfeiffer ([46:35]): "The Washington Post is now nothing more than an organ for the billionaire with multiple interests in front of the federal government that owns the paper."

• Jon Favreau ([58:14]): "There's AI generated Elon Musk... golden statues of Trump in Gaza and everyone's very excited about the golden statues of Trump in Gaza."

---

Conclusion: This episode of "Pod Save America" offers a comprehensive critique of the Trump administration's policies and Elon Musk's disruptive influence on federal operations. The hosts highlight the negative repercussions on public health, federal agencies, and media integrity. Through insightful discussions and critical analysis, they underscore the urgent need for accountability and the preservation of democratic institutions. The introduction of the "Wait, Did That Really Happen?" segment adds a layer of engagement by addressing the week's most surreal political events, further illustrating the tumultuous political climate of early 2025.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

Today's presenting sponsor is Simplisafe Home Security. Here's a chilling. Homes without a security system are 300% more likely to be broken into. But securing your home doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Simplisafe is changing the game with innovative, affordable protection for every family. Traditional security systems only take action after someone has already broken in. That's too late. Simplisafe's Active Guard Outdoor protection can help prevent break ins before they happen. If someone's lurking around or acting suspiciously, those agents see and talk to them in real time and activate spotlights and even contact the police, all before they have the chance to get inside your home. No long term contracts or cancellation fees. Monitoring plans start affordably at around a dollar a day, 60 day satisfaction guarantee or your money back. Name Best home security systems by U.S. news & World Report. Five years in a row, John Lovett has installed the Simplisafe all on his own. And it has kept him and pundit safe for many years. And he really likes it. Visit simplisafe.com cricket to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and your first month free. That's simplisafe.com crooked there's no safe like simplisafe. Hi, Georgia. Hi, David. What do you think the world needs more of?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, the world always needs more podcasts.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Didn't you used to have a podcast?

[Jon Favreau]

Not only did I used to have a podcast, Georgia, it's coming back. David Tennant does a podcast with season three. It's coming at you. Okay.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And who are your guests?

[Jon Favreau]

Who are my guests?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What about Russell T. Davis?

[Jon Favreau]

What about Jamila Jamil? What about Stanley the Tooch Tucci? So it's really just you hanging out with your mates then? Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Come join me.

[Jon Favreau]

David Tennant does a podcast with. Bye. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

[Jon Favreau]

Dan, nice to have you in LA in studio. Oh, love that. Great. Well, we're going to have a good time today. No, we're not, because the news is terrible.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I know what we're going to talk about it.

[Jon Favreau]

No, we're going to talk about Republicans in Congress moving forward with the Trump economic plan, which, among other things would take away health care and food from kids in order to fund a huge tax cut for the 1%. So that's lovely. Democrats are also going to have to decide whether to use the limited leverage they have in the government shutdown fight that's rapidly approaching. We'll get to that. We're also gonna cover Jeff Bezos's decision to turn the Washington Post editorial page into the Wall Street Journal. Then we're back with our latest installment of Wait, did that really Happen? Where we, where we'll react to this week's most insane moments. It was a, it was stiff competition, but we think we found the three.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I'm sure everyone remembers the one time we did that segment.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Well, it's back. Okay, it's back.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Repetition, it's key.

[Jon Favreau]

And stick around later for a sneak preview of the excellent conversation that Dan and I just had earlier in the week with our pal Jen Psaki about White House press and communication strategy. That's on our subscriber only show inside 2025, but you get a sneak preview here, so.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Lucky you.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. But first, Donald Trump kicked off the first cabinet meeting of his second term with a special presentation from the most powerful member of his administration or any administration special government employee, Elon Musk, who showed up in his trademark dark MAGA hat and tech support T shirt to reassure everyone that Doge isn't a complete clusterfuck.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And we, and I should say also, we will make mistakes.

[Jon Favreau]

We won't be perfect, but when we.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Make mistake, we'll fix it very quickly. So, for example, with usaid, one of.

[Jon Favreau]

The things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola, Ebola prevention. I think we all want Ebola prevention. So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And there was no interruption.

[Jon Favreau]

So unfortunately for those of us who aren't keen on getting Ebola, what Elon said there is not true. Jeremy Kanandike, who led Ebola response at USAID under both Obama and Trump, said the US Government's capacity to respond has, quote, been wrecked right as there's an Ebola outbreak happening in East Africa as we speak. That's not all. Kanandike also says Doge has crippled the cdc. Also, the FDA this week just canceled their annual meeting to discuss next year's flu vaccines with no explanation. Catherine Wu reports in the Atlantic that the NIH is still violating court orders by refusing to restart most medical research. And the person now in charge of the nation's health, HHS Secretary RFK Jr. Said during the cabinet meeting that the measles outbreak in Texas that has now killed a child is, quote, not unusual. In fact, it is unusual. Quite unusual. It's not a diet of measles in the United States for quite some time. Quite some time. Is this Maha? Are we Maha now? Have we Maha'd? I don't know how to say it?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I think the question of whether we mahad or not depends on how you define the word healthy.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Because if you define it in its traditional sense, then no, we are not headed towards healthy. We're headed in the opposite direction. And there's so much to say here. But just on the Ebola thing, just an example of what an absolute chaotic clusterfuck the Trump administration is in Uganda where they have been dealing with this Ebola outbreak. They were in need of more protective gear because there had been one patient who had gone to six different facilities or six different clinics. And so they needed gear there to protect the workers there. We could not access the gear because it was in a WHO warehouse. And because you are not allowed to speak to who. This is according to reporting the New York Times. You're not allowed to speak to WHO within the Trump administration. So it just sat there. Then they tried to buy.

[Jon Favreau]

So they pulled out of the who, the World Health Organization pulled out of.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The World Health Organization.

[Jon Favreau]

And now we're not communicating with them at all, even though it's the World Health Organization. And they could use the only superpower in the world to help.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And they had protective gear that we had paid for. So then they had to do a contract to get more protective gear. So we're not saving money, we're not doing anything. Right. We're just making things worse.

[Jon Favreau]

So much of the USAID clusterfuck has not been about saving money because, and I, and I can't emphasize this enough because people like, well, voters don't like foreign aid and they want to spend money on other stuff. And some of it was wasteful. No, there was money that was appropriated already. We're not getting it back spent on, you know, $500 million in food. That's just like sitting in docks spoiling right now like malaria nets that were already purchased. Like this stuff was already, the money has already been spent in a lot of these cases. And it's just now the life saving food and medicine just isn't getting to people because they're all fucking assholes, incompetent assholes running the country.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's truly insane. You have to be both dumb and lacking in even a single iota of empathy within your body to run the government like this.

[Jon Favreau]

So are you saying that they're not showing competence in caring? That's what Elon said. He goes, competence in caring. That's what we're all about here.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There is no competence in caring. And like you make the point that, you know, the conventional Wisdom is people don't care about foreign aid. It's always top of list. When you ask people, where should we save money in the government, they always say foreign aid. You ask them anything else, they want to keep the military. Many people do never touch Social Security. Medicare certainly don't catch education funding, whatever else it is. But I think one, you can and should make the case here for what is happening, because it's not about whether you should spend that money or not. Even you should. You can make a case for why you should spend it, why it's good for our security, particularly when it comes to something like a bullet permission. We help prevent pandemics and epidemics in other countries. So they don't come here. Yes, it's exactly what we are doing. And if you don't control them at the root of the cause of the pandemic, then it spreads everywhere. Then an epidemic becomes a pandemic and we are back to right where we were before. But also, the NIH stuff is particularly notable in every funding fight in history between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans are trying to cut funding. The place where, where they always lose the public is on food safety, drug safety research in diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's. And that is what's happening here. And particularly if you look at the disease research. I think we talked about this a couple weeks ago. There have been major breakthroughs in Alzheimer's research. There's real momentum there. Just this week, there was an announcement about real progress with a treatment for pancreatic cancer using MRNA vaccine technology.

[Jon Favreau]

All.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There's huge momentum here. And all that's gonna stop in its tracks if we back away from this, which is exactly what Elon and Trump are doing.

[Jon Favreau]

So the NIH has helped fund 99% of the drugs that are approved in the last decade. Catherine wu's story in the Atlantic. Everyone should go read it. It will infuriate you. Basically, they try to freeze a bunch of NIH funding and then they go to court and the court says, no, you can't freeze it, you gotta restart. And people at the NIH want to start approving grants again because everything had been frozen. And then hhs, the political appointees at HHS from the Health and Human Services, this is before RFK Jr got there. They said to the NIH, no, you can't restart the grants. And then the lawyers at HHS and the lawyers at NIH was like, no, we have to. We are in violation of a court order. And the political appointees at HHS said, no, you don't do it. And so there's been this like weeks, weeks long thing now where here and there, some grants are like getting approved because people are just like sort of just doing their own thing. But everyone who works in the building is just like, they are demoralized. A lot of these grants aren't going anywhere. In some cases, there are critically ill patients enrolled in drug trials that cannot continue because of this. I mean, again, this is just, this isn't saving money. This isn't making government more efficient. This is just fucking ruining people's lives and like denying us potential treatments and cures that we've already paid for, our tax dollars have already paid for. It's fucking nuts, man. It's nuts. And you know, sadly, the Doge chaos continues apace across the entire federal government. I would refer you to this AP headline from Wednesday evening. VA pauses billions in cuts lauded by Musk as lawmakers and veterans decry loss of critical care. Lot of cuts hitting veterans, veterans, health care, veterans with disabilities getting fired left and right. VA hospitals. At the Cabinet meeting, Trump touched off a fresh panic by saying that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is planning to cut 65% of the agency's workforce, only to have the White House clarify later in the day that he meant EPA is going to cut 65% of its spending, not 65% of its staff. Still bad, not good.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

If you like clean air and clean water, right?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Then there's the fact that Elon and Doge have cut about 400 jobs from the Federal Aviation Administration only to have Elon tweet on Thursday, quote, there is a shortage of top notch air traffic controllers. If you have retired but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so. Is that where we're recruiting now, air traffic controllers?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Just who on Twitter?

[Jon Favreau]

On Twitter, yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's where we are.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know. Seems like there's downsides to the move fast break things approach from Elon and the Doge bags and the Silicon Valley types.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, it seems that way. Let's stipulate that government can and should be made more efficient, more cost effective. That there's possible that there are places where there are too many people doing not the right things. That is absolutely 100% true. But what Elon Musk and Donald Trump are trying to do here is not fix government. They're not trying to reform it, they're not trying to make it more efficient. They're trying to break it to absolutely destroy the idea of a federal government whose job it is to help people to protect people, to keep them secure and safe. They do not believe in that and they're trying to destroy it. And what that means is. And they have made a bet here.

[Jon Favreau]

Right?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right. Because of their actions, we are less safe, less secure. We're at greater risk of plane crashes, disease epidemics, pollution in our air and water, foodborne pathogens, dangerous drugs. All those things are there. The point here is that Donald Trump is responsible for everything, everything that happens from this point forward. He broke government. There will be consequences for that. Right. That could be a plane crash. As serious, something as serious and dramatic as a plane crash. It could be very. Not unrelated to this measles epidemic that is taking place in Texas, where we now have a. We've fired a lot of the people in charge of managing those things. And we have, as the HHS secretary, a vaccine skeptic and a president, frankly, who was a vaccine skeptic to some degree.

[Jon Favreau]

And that canceled meeting with the FDA was supposed to figure out the flu vaccine for next year. Like, they don't have a lot of time before they have to start production of next year's flu vaccines. So, like, no one knows why it was canceled. No one knows when it's gonna be rescheduled, and they're almost outta time to figure out next year's flu vaccines. And we've now had the worst year for flu that we've had in decades.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There are consequences of these actions. They have to be held accountable for these actions. And that is, like I said, that can be as serious as the things I mentioned. Also, when you try to run the Social Security Administration with half the staff, payments are going to be missed. Right. They keep talking about how they're going to. They're cracking down on fraud. You know, what's one way to have there be more fraud? To cut staff at the Social Security Administration or the IRS or those other places. And this is, I just cannot have said enough, is that every single thing. The Republicans held Joe Biden responsible for a million things that were nowhere near him. Right. Remember when everyone was supposed to be mad at Joe Biden because you couldn't find a turkey on Thanksgiving because of supply chain shortages, that you were gonna go to Target and there'd be no Christmas presents or holiday presents for anyone. And we have to hold Trump to a same standard, but we actually have a basis in fact for that. He promised stability. He promised security. He's doing everything to create the opposite of that. And he has to be held accountable.

[Jon Favreau]

This is also a direct result of Elon Trying to run the government. Like he runs one of his companies and you know, everyone's like, oh well he did this at Twitter and then he made Twitter, in some people's opinion work better or whatever. But like if you cut a bunch of staff, fire a bunch of people at a company and it degrades some services for a while, but eventually it becomes better run more efficient, whatever, right? Like if Twitter, if he took over Twitter fired a bunch of people and Twitter went down for a while. Okay, like that's not great.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Maha. That would be Maha.

[Jon Favreau]

That would be Maha, right? Yes. If you know, he's at SpaceX and they have to delay the launch of a rocket because they fucked something up because they didn't have the right people, whatever, right. With the federal government. They are breaking everything, firing all these people, gutting all these services and like say they make it more efficient and better run years down the road. Like millions of people's lives are at stake right now. And that is the difference between running the fucking federal government and running a business.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And he also doesn't run Tesla and SpaceX like he runs Twitter, right? Because there are stakes with nothing like the federal government stakes, but there are, you know, yes, you may have to delay a launch, but you could also have an explosion, right? You can, you know, if there is a problem with Tesla cars and the like the self driving software, like that obviously, but Twitter is exactly everyone confusing and it's like who gives a flying fuck if Twitter goes down for a minute, right?

[Jon Favreau]

And you know what?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So low stakes. It's like the sixth most important social media platform in this country. And by the way, LinkedIn is 10 times more more important than than Twitter.

[Jon Favreau]

And it is worse right now. So like spammy ads bullshit. Like come on, speaking of Elon in the faa, because this is one I'm following closely. He's why I will say you were as Dan was flying here yesterday. I was like sending a story about the near miss.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You were sending a video of a near miss as I was born.

[Jon Favreau]

I know you were on the plane, obviously, but it's, it's somewhat comforting in this time to know that other people who have not been afraid of flying their whole lives like you are now nervous as well. Misery loves.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I can still do the math, but.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, no, I know. So he's forcing the FAA now to withdraw a contract they gave to Verizon to modernize communication inside the air traffic control system and to hire Musk's own company, Starlink to do it instead. Now Elon Tweeted on Thursday that Verizon's existing system is on the brink of a catastrophic breakdown. Which is comforting. He said, we're single digit months away from a catastrophic breakdown. It's like, oh, it's. Is someone from the fucking FAA going to tell us that? Or do we just have to take the word of the ketamine adult fucking billionaire who's running the government? That, by the way, if we don't put in Starlink, air traffic control is going to have a catastrophic meltdown. Is like, is that what we're left to do to figure out whether we should fly or not? Like, is someone at the FAA going to come give a press conference, tell us about their fucking air traffic control communication system, or. No, it's just Elon tweeting, I would.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Just note that my bag is packed on the couch in your office, and the second we finish recording this, I'm going to leave the studio and go get on airplane to fly home.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, luckily, he said, we're a couple months away.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, look right here, I'm really leaning into the definition of the word brink.

[Jon Favreau]

And he said, now, he tweeted this in response to this story about Elon trying to push them to cancel the Verizon contract so they could do Starlink. And he said, well, no, no, it's the Verizon things on the brink of catastrophic breakdown, and I'm providing Starlink units at no cost to the taxpayer for now. Then it's an update for you. Just before we recorded, he corrected himself and said, actually, the existing system that's on the verge of a catastrophic breakdown isn't Verizon's. It's an old. It's another company. The new system that's not yet operational is Verizon. But now we're canceling that and giving Starlink the contract instead.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The funny thing is, is I knew this from the beginning.

[Jon Favreau]

And even.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And I'm not even in charge of Doge, because you just read the words in the article, it's very clear. The Verizon is the new system.

[Jon Favreau]

Unfucking believable. And this isn't the only government contract Starlink could be getting. The Biden era Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program. God, terrible fucking name, Bede. You know what? Some of this shit, I'm like, this is why. This is why we're doing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This is why Doge exists.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, right. It passes part of the infrastructure bill. It could have just said broadband. We're doing broadband. Anyway, they set aside more than 40 billion to improve broadband in Rural areas by growing the fiber optic network. Didn't really happen that well. Again, that's another problem for Democrats to think about next time if we ever want to be in power again. But Elon, surprise, surprise, thinks that it should be satellite Internet instead and that Starlink should, should, should run this show.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I am shocked to find that out.

[Jon Favreau]

So stipulating Starlink might be great to use. It might be the right solution for all of our connectivity challenges for air traffic control. Who knows? Still feels like a major conflict of interest at best that we're not having companies bid for these contracts. We're just going to have the guy that's running this, that's single handedly cutting government, firing people. His companies get the contracts.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's a coincidence. It's hard to imagine how that happened.

[Jon Favreau]

Feels like Democrats should make some noise about this. No. What do you think?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes, I think Elon Musk is Donald Trump's political Achilles heel. Yeah, we've seen this in polling and in focus groups that Peter Hammy wrote about in Puck News the other day. Voters, they don't trust Elon Musk.

[Jon Favreau]

I think he's a tool. That's what one of them said. Trump voters say he was a tool. Love that Trump voter.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Trump voter had a point. But they don't trust him. They don't like him running around unilaterally slashing government. They don't like the idea of the world's richest man rooting through government. They think he is filled with conflicts of interest. They don't think he's doing a particularly good job. In that Washington Post poll, only 34% of people approved of how Elon Musk was doing his job in government. And so we should talk about it all the time in this conflict of interest there. And I think this is really important because this is something I'm going to, I will flesh. I've mentioned this once before, but will one day flesh this out in an actual written argument. But my belief is that the narrative that Democrats should tell about the Trump administration is one of chaos and corruption. And nothing embodies that more than Elon Musk and dosh. This is incredibly chaotic.

[Jon Favreau]

It's funny because you've talked about chaos and corruption before this election.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I talked about in the last Trump election.

[Jon Favreau]

You love chaos and corruption.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, with Trump.

[Jon Favreau]

But I was gonna say you were ahead of your time. Really? Because if you thought that was chaos and corruption before Elon Musk.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes, I had. My problem is Donald Trump keeps becoming president.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's true.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, We've done this podcast or a version of this podcast for three consecutive presidential elections and Donald Trump's been in all of them. So chaos and corruption keep coming up. I don't know why.

[Jon Favreau]

Pod Save America is brought to you by Article we have Article furniture here in the Cricket Office. I have some Article patio furniture at home. It is fantastic. It looks great, it's affordable, it gets to you on time. Article offers a curated range of mid century, modern, coastal and Scandi inspired pieces that not only shine on their own, but also pair seamlessly with nearly any other Article product. This thoughtful design approach makes it incredibly easy to mix and match, helping you create a space that feels cohesive and stylish. Article offers fast, affordable shipping across the US and Canada with options for professional assembly. If you prefer a hands off experience, have a question or need help with your design choices? Article's Customer Care Team is available seven days a week offering knowledgeable support and even free interior design services to help you get your home just right. With Article's 30 day satisfaction guarantee, you can shop with confidence, knowing that if you're not completely in love with your new furniture, you can easily return it. This peace of mind ensures you can invest in your home without hesitation. Article's offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit Article.comCrooked and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com crooked for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. This podcast is supported by Comedy Central's Emmy Award winning series the Daily Show. Jon Stewart and the Daily show news team are covering every minute of every hour of President Trump's second first 100 days in office with brand new episodes every weeknight. From the lowest lows to the highest lows and everything in between, they'll be there to break it all down. Comedy Central's the Daily show new weeknights at 11 on Comedy Central and streaming next day on Paramount. The Democrats are sort of figuring this out, I guess. Hakeem Jeffries did a press conference today, I think Thursday, where he mentioned that Elon Musk is making $8 million a day in government contracts and the average person on Medicaid makes $65 a day because they're looking to cut Medicaid in the budget at least if we're gonna get to if you leave, at least if you believe the budget instructions. So yeah, I do think that's that's relevant that Elon Musk is making $8 million a day in government contracts and wants more. And wants more while he's trying because he says it's wasteful and inefficient. Yeah, I think that's something to look into, maybe something to talk about. And believe it or not, even bigger doge cuts are coming. Just one example. The Washington Post reports that the, as you said, the Social Security Administration has been told to start getting ready to cut its staff by half. Of course, cuts like this have already happened at places like USAID that we mentioned in a court filing. The administration detailed this week that they have canceled more than 90% of USAID's foreign assistance contracts on or about $60 billion in foreign aid across the government. A federal court had ruled that the government needed to pay out assistance money that was already obligated by Wednesday at midnight. But a few hours before the deadline, the Supreme Court stepped in and said the deadline shouldn't be enforced, meaning the foreign aid freeze can stand for now. So this was a. The SCOTUS ruling was pretty temporary and narrow. They basically, you know, there was a midnight deadline that said the government must pay. And I think the court was like, okay, we can skip the midnight deadline until we have a broader consideration of this case.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And the parties have to respond by tomorrow with briefs to the Supreme Court on this.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. So, you know, I would not call this a huge win for the Trump administration, but I do wonder if we're seeing the limits of what the courts might be willing or able to do to stop these guys from just destroying whatever they want. And I think back to the NIH example that we just talked about, where, you know, there's even the lawyers, even the Trump administration lawyers in the agencies that are like, I think we should follow the court orders. And then some other jackoffs are like, nah, fuck it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, this is the test, right? This is the ultimate test of the system is the idea of the Supreme Court or the judicial branch as a co. Equal branch of government is really just a theoretical concept that exists only through the acquiescence of the executive branch. Because the people who enforce court orders work for the executive branch.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And so this is the test. And there's real speculation that John Roberts is going to try as hard as he can to avoid testing this proposition in a way that would have Trump violate with impunity an order from the court, as J.D. vance has encouraged him to do.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Because once that happens, the idea of judicial review, the findings in these, the main Supreme Court case that you learned in the first day of all con law classes, Marbury versus Madison falls apart. Because once you say, do this or else, and they say no, and there's no or else, the whole system collapses. And so this is like a very serious situation. You can really see John Roberts, who's tried really hard to ruin the court slowly to sort of avoid an epic confrontation that is going to be to Trump's benefit as these cases proceed through the. Through the process. And I will say, for being totally fair, and I don't know why we have to be, but Trump has said he would follow court orders.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, that brings up another scenario which could also happen here, which is Trump doesn't openly defy the court, and then the court issues a ruling, and then Trump says, I'm not gonna follow this. Like the suit.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

They just don't, you know.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. They just don't. And they don't do it at the Trump level. Trump doesn't talk about it, but, you know, we had to wait for a Peace in the Atlantic, but Catherine rooted to find out that all of these fuckers at HHS were telling the NIH to violate court orders. So, like, how many times across. How many agencies could that happen? And then what remedies does the court have? You know, they can try to hold people in contempt. None of them have wanted to do that yet. And they haven't even wanted to word their rulings or decisions in a way that. That would suggest that people might face contempt charges. Right. Because I think all these courts are nervous that if they hold someone in contempt in the administration and then they don't show up, like, what are they going to do? Send the. Send the marshals.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Is Cash Patel coming to get him? Yeah. It is a really bad. This is a real precipice of something very different in American life that we are standing on right now.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And part of what I wonder is how to put it back together, you know, like, if we, like, you know, Democrats win the midterms, which we have to. But what's to say that whatever the Democrats do in Congress or try to stop in Congress, that Trump's not just going to plow ahead or the agencies aren't just going to plow ahead? You know, I mean, like, this is a real. We're in for it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. On his podcast, Ezra Klein once described American democracy as a series of norms in a trench coat, which. Which really is being. The trench coat is open and there are storms there. Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

That's rough. That's rough. All right, as much as it pains me to say this, let's talk about what the Republicans in Congress are doing, since it could end up affecting people's lives even more than Doge, Believe it or not, we got two big fights brewing over spending, and they're both important for different reasons. First, we had the House budget resolution, or as Trump calls it, the big beautiful bill. Mike Johnson got this thing passed on Tuesday after both the hardliners on the right and some of the more vulnerable frontline members both reneged on their pledges to oppose it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So under the urging of Trump.

[Jon Favreau]

Under the urging of Trump, in fact, there was a couple holdouts, and it looked like it might not pass, and they pulled the bill, and one of them was Victoria Sparks. Did you see the Puck story on this?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

No. No.

[Jon Favreau]

Apparently, Trump called Victoria Sparks and started screaming at her and said, you'll just be a fake Republican. I'm the president, remember who I am? Started screaming, and people were hearing him scream at. And then she hangs up, and Mike Johnson's right there, and he pats her on the back and he goes, you know what you have to do now? Fucking mob. Just a mob family. That's where we are right now.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. I mean, related to this is there was another story about how Trump's team has told the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, the nrcc, as it's known, that they were only gonna support candidates who are. Who pledged their loyalty to Trump.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. And so this. This is going to matter for. Because the budget resolution is like the first step in passing the bill. Right. It's just a. It's basically like a shell of a bill. It's instructions to the committees, whatever, blah, blah, blah. You don't. You don't really need to know. You just need to know. It's the first step in a process.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's a First. It's a critical but largely meaningless step.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. Because if you're a Republican who is thinking of not voting for the final. You vote for the budget resolution because it's a step. It just moves the whole thing a step forward. We had. We dealt with the same thing with Manchin and Cinema in Joe Biden's Build Back Better, which then became Inflation Reduction act is. They were like, yeah, we're going to vote for the budget resolution, and then we'll do.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We do a little explainer on this or.

[Jon Favreau]

Sure, yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So just so people understand, what Trump is trying to do here is he and the Republicans want to pass this bill without fear of a Democratic filibuster. So the only way to prevent a filibuster on a piece of legislation because the filibuster still exists for legislation. Thank you, Joe Manchin. Here's the cinema. But actually right now, maybe. Thank you, Joe Baylor. I would be happier if we had passed a whole bunch of other bills like voting rights and some other things. And the filibuster is still stupid, but is to use the budget reconciliation process, which is a process that was set up understanding that you have to pass a budget and deal with budgetary matters, and you can't do that with a filibuster. So this is basically like a filibuster free card. Step one of that is pass the budget resolution in many years. And you're not trying to use budget reconciliation. Congress never passes a budget because it doesn't. You don't really need it. It doesn't. Remember, particularly if the party is in control of Congress and the other side is different than the president. It's a fake thing, but here it actually matters. All it is is the ticket to ride on the budget reconciliation process. And budget reconciliation process, you only need 50 votes, but everything in it must relate to taxes and spending.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. You have to pass laws that are just like, you know, famously, we couldn't raise the minimum wage through budget reconciliation. Yes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Because there are some. There's something called the Byrd rule, named after Robert Byrd, which dictates what is allowed in the budget resolution process. When there is a question, the Senate parliamentarian rules on that. Now, it is worth noting that the presiding officer of the Senate can ignore the parliamentarian, and some of us may have made a case that they should have done that back then, but lo and behold, we don't have voting rights, so. But at least the parliamentarian's integrity is intact. So that's the process that has begun. And now the Republicans, both the House and the Senate separately, theoretically have to write a gigantic tax bill and a giant spending cuts bill that they have to pass before the debt ceiling runs out sometime in late July or August.

[Jon Favreau]

And the important thing to realize here is that none of their math works. And none of them have agreed on anything, really, because they have promised, and a lot of this is in the budget resolution, a couple trillion dollars worth of spending cuts, which you can only get if you really tackle Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, veterans, health care. They've also promised over $4 trillion in tax cuts. They want to make the Trump tax cuts permanent. They want new tax cuts. That's a lot. They want to raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion. None of this adds up.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Either adds up mathematically or legislatively.

[Jon Favreau]

Exactly. And what everyone's focusing on is the House budget resolution instructs the committees to find $880 billion in savings from Medicaid. And yet all the Republicans, including Donald Trump, are out there and Mike Johnson saying, we're not going to actually touch Medicaid benefits that people are going to get. It's all waste, fraud and abuse. So. And the Senate is basically like that. Too much Medicaid. We don't want to touch Medicaid. But if they don't touch Medicaid, then they need to find spending cuts other places. But there's just not a lot of money other places. What do you think is going to happen here? Like, do you. Is there a version of this that works that you can see?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, there's got to be a version to lift the debt limit before we default on the full faith of Credit United States. And look, Trump is able to get this through last time fully unpaid for. Like they did not do cuts to pay for it. Will he be able to do that again? He obviously had a much larger House majority, relatively larger House majority. It's not a huge House majority. It's really incredibly complicated, the Medicaid math. And just so people know, Medicaid provides healthcare and nursing home care for like 72 million Americans, including children.

[Jon Favreau]

Yep.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And they've talked about all kinds of things. You know, one of the things that the Republicans, some Republicans are batting around is one of the ways in which a lot of people have access to affordable health care is through a provision in the Affordable Care act called Medicaid expansion, where the government covers 90% of the Medicaid match for state Medicaid funds. If they expand healthcare, they may try to cut that back, which would kick a whole bunch of people off healthcare.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, it's work requirements would save them $100 billion. There's also a bunch of Medicaid reforms that we proposed that I think didn't go through that for, to like target waste, fraud and abuse and tax stuff. They could throw those in there. Like, I could see them getting to a point where they cut some Medicaid that didn't necessarily get to people's benefits. And they got, they did some other stuff there just to say that they did. They got some fraud and abuse, but they didn't cut the benefits here and there. And then they just add to the deficit, make the tax cuts permanent, somehow lie about the accounting.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, that's one thing they're definitely going to do.

[Jon Favreau]

And then when the hardliners on the in the House And Rand Paul in the Senate start yelling about it, and then Donald Trump just calls them and, like, threatens them.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, the only.

[Jon Favreau]

That's. That's sort of the only way this.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Passes is a whole bunch of people have to vote for a bill that they said they would never vote for.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

They either have to vote for a tax cut that massively increases the deficit, which seems like.

[Jon Favreau]

Seems like no matter what they do, even in their own math, it increases the deaths. Absolutely. That's the point.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But without any sort of significant spending reductions or changes to programs like Medicaid, or they have to slash Medicaid in a way in which they all said they would not do.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And Donald Trump. It's worth just noting Donald Trump in 2016 campaign said he would not touch Medicaid. And then he pushed like hell to pass a bill to repeal the Affordable Care act that drastically slashed Medicaid.

[Jon Favreau]

And even if they don't touch Medicaid, it's important for everyone to realize nothing in this bill is for you.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Unless you make over $750,000 a year, in which case you're in the top 1% and you will get a very substantial tax cut. It's about $1 trillion in tax cuts just for the top 1% and everyone else.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Maybe you get like a couple hundred dollars.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You're probably not going to get more than your current. You already got.

[Jon Favreau]

Exactly. Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So you've had this tax cut since.

[Jon Favreau]

2017, and they don't even think there's going to be room in there for his no tax on tips proposal. Although maybe someone will find out a way to get in there. But, like, there's nothing else for anyone. It's not going to help fix the deficit or even lower the deficit. It's going to add to the deficit, make the deficit worse, and it's going to cut a bunch of other shit that a lot of people depend on.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Just you. It would be hard to go into a lab to craft a policy more unpopular than cutting health care for Americans to pay for a tax cut for billionaires.

[Jon Favreau]

Yep. And again, the alternative is they don't touch health care, which is going to be really hard. And I don't believe that they'll be able to, but they don't. And then you go, go test this one. A tax cut for billionaires that just adds to the deficit.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, we. We did this. We tested it, and it was very unpopular. It showed up in a shitload of 2018 House midterm ads.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And you know what? We did. We got that one? We did pretty good.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That was like. That was a fun election.

[Jon Favreau]

It's a fun election. Yeah. Okay. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything from products to content to time, all in one place, all on your terms. Introducing design intelligence from Squarespace. Combining two decades of industry leading design expertise with cutting edge AI technology to unlock your strongest creative potential. Design intelligence empowers anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored to their unique needs and craft a bespoke digital identity to use across one's entire online presence. Upload video content, organize your video library and showcase your content on beautiful video pages. You can even sell access to your video library by adding a paywall to your content. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.com crooked to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com crooked. This podcast is supported by Comedy Central's Emmy Award winning series, the Daily Show. Jon Stewart and the Daily show news team are covering every minute of every hour of President Trump's second first 100 days in office. With brand new episodes every weeknight. From the lowest lows to the highest lows and everything in between, they'll be there to break it all down. Comedy Central's the Daily show. New weeknights at 11 on Comedy Central and streaming next day on Paramount. The other issue that Congress has to deal with much sooner is government funding, which runs out in about two weeks. So usually only two things happen with a shutdown. First it looms, and then it's averted.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's great fucking writing.

[Jon Favreau]

That's great. Reid gave me that line. That's good read. Anyway, the. So the way a shutdown's averted these days is by passing a continuing resolution known as a cr, which just keeps the government open at current spending levels with the hope that an actual budget gets passed somewhere down the line.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Which is probably. Probably won't happen.

[Jon Favreau]

Probably won't happen. Which never happens. We've been. We've been funding the government. Government on CRS for like CRs and omnibus spending agreements. Yeah. Forever. It's a fuck.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And no one's passed the fucking appropriations bill in a long time.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. And you know what? People in both parties are mad about it, they all complain about it, and then it never changes. So two problems for Republicans this time around. One, the House doesn't know if they can pass a CR with just Republican votes since they have a few loony hardliners who have basically like, made a living saying, I'll never vote for CR ever, and I don't want to lift the debt ceiling and I don't want to do any of this shit because they. They think that they want to, like, eliminate all of government so they don't know that they can get all the Republicans. Second, even if they can get all the Republicans and it passes the house, Republicans need 60 votes in the Senate because this is not the 51 vote budget resolution, it's a 60, which means they need the votes of at least seven Democrats. So the question becomes, what should Democrats do? Mike Johnson said on CNN this week that a cr. He wants a CR to include language that codifies the Doge cuts. He has also rejected Democratic efforts to include some guardrails in the CR around Elon and Doge. What do you think Dem should do?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We've been talking about this in many forums personally, you and I, for a few days now.

[Jon Favreau]

Should we just start recording our conversations? It would be so much easier.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Just turn this whole thing into a reality show.

[Jon Favreau]

Do them multiple times.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's right. That's why I'm always like, did we talk about this on the pod or.

[Jon Favreau]

Was it a text? Was it in person? I don't know.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I do not think the Democrats can vote for a bill that does not do something to stop what Elon Musk and Trump are doing. What they're doing is dangerous and frankly, unconstitutional, and they cannot allow it to happen. Now, there's some ways in which I think to go about this that would be smart. Senate Democrats should really say and insist that the House goes first. They should not negotiate. And I think that, like, if Mitch McConnell was still there, he'd make the House go first because he does not want to pass a bill that he sends to the House that the House then rejects. He needs the House to collapse in a heap of their own failure, which they often do. And then what he does is he gets together with Schumer, passes a bill that has some sort of bipartisan agreement, sends it to the House, sends all of his members home, and says, pass it or be responsible for shutting down the government so the House goes first. That really simplifies things because Democrats aren't the ones shutting down the government either. Mike Johnson and the House Republicans can keep it open or they can't, and so leave it on them. That's one, two. I think, in the way in which we talk about this, it has to be about the specific things that Elon Musk and Donald Trump have done that have hurt people. Right. Food safety, cancer research, the FAA having competent air traffic controllers. It cannot be about the power of the purse or congressional prerogatives. And I've already seen some members of Congress and a political survey on this today talking about that cannot be about that is that we have to be protecting people from cuts that are hurting them. That is absolutely essential. And look, there is risk in a shutdown. Politically, a shutdown is going. We are not the ones shutting down the government. Republicans are shutting it down because they cannot pass a bill in the House. They are too incompetent to do it.

[Jon Favreau]

Or if it gets to the Senate, Republicans are. I mean, the reason they couldn't get Democratic votes is because they are just blatantly destroying government with, like, illegally.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Previous shutdowns have always happened other than previous. Previous shutdowns have happened when the government is divided. And the part in the House, usually Republicans in the House, refuse to bring up a bill to keep it open. Right. Or they pass something they know the president won't sign. Republicans control all the levers of government. If they can't keep this thing open, that's on them. And there is political risk in this. Like, shutdowns are bad. People get hurt in them. We do not want this to happen. But also, we cannot save the Republicans from themselves here.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Because this is the one point of leverage we have. And there is political risk in it. Right. There absolutely always is. But I think the greater political risk in the long term for Democrats here would be to walk away from a fight when the party absolutely must demonstrate strength, must find a point of conflict where we can demonstrate to the American people. We can grab their attention and demonstrate to the American people what it is we stand for and who we're fighting for. And if we walk away from that, we're not gonna get another opportunity.

[Jon Favreau]

No, I was gonna say we have said now many times that Democrats don't have much leverage and much power in this Trump presidency, at least for these two years. And that is true, except for moments like this. Right. Moments where you need 60 votes in the Senate is, like, the only leverage we have. And we've just talked about stories where the courts are issuing rulings that are not being followed, where Elon Musk and his people are going in, getting access to Our private data and personal information. They are firing people that are providing services that are, in some cases, life saving, that people depend on. And Democrats are complaining, sending letters. In some cases, Republicans are starting to complain and send letters. Those letters are not being responded to at all. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are basically saying fuck off, as are the rest of the people they have in the government. There are nominees that were voted into the cabinet that just lied during their hearing, said they weren't gonna do this, weren't gonna do that, and now we're just doing it anyway. So, like, yeah, yeah, that you need our. If you want our votes in the Senate, then you need to, like, start following the fucking law and being responsible stewards of people's tax dollars and not cutting the services that they depend on.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Just. There has been this real dissonance at times between Democratic rhetoric and Democratic actions. We talk about the existential threat of Donald Trump. We talk about the deeply damaging things he is doing or could do. And then we were then. But our response exists in the frame of normal politics.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And if this is as dangerous as we believe it is, and I think Senate and House Democrats believe it is, as they say it is, then you have to be willing to engage in more politically risky maneuvers to try to do something to stop it.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, yeah. And I think, like, I think they need the fight, you know? Well, we'll be talking more about this in the next couple weeks. One more thing here on the serious topics list. It's a long list. On Wednesday, Jeff Bezos sent out a memo to the staff of the Washington Post, which, of course he owns, saying that from here on out, the opinion page would, quote, be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics, too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. He then informed staff that David Shipley, the opinion editor, would be leaving the paper as a result of his decision. Former Washington Post journalist Gene Weingarten today also reported that a piece about Bezos New Policy by Post media reporter Eric Wemple was killed. You wrote a message box about this on Wednesday. Give us your take.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This is a very sad day for the Washington Post. The Washington Post is, while it's been struggling financially in recent years, is one of the most important media institutions in the country. It is famed as a media institution that will cover anyone and everything without fear or favor. They will stand up to incredibly powerful forces in this country. They took down a president. They published The Pentagon Papers, they came.

[Jon Favreau]

Up with a slogan, democracy dies in darkness, which that was kind of on.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The, that was in the, probably the beginning of the decline.

[Jon Favreau]

Feels a long way away, doesn't it?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes, but now at least the opinion section of that paper is nothing more than an organ for the billionaire with multiple interests in front of the federal government that owns the paper.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And what I think this. So this is a problem for the Post. It's deeply demoralizing and unfair to the very good journalists at the Post who do very good reporting. They deserve much better than this because this has caused people to cancel their subscriptions. It has caused people to not trust the work they are doing. And I think it also is, and this is the broader point, it is just another signal about the dangers of corporate owned media. The 21st century was a period of media consolidation. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. Comcast bought NBC. The Walt Disney Corporation bought ABC News. The CNN is owned by Warner Discovery. And for a long time, even as those were good purchases because the business of journalism was so good that they were profit engines for these companies and they were good for the brand because they also own these valuable news brands. That meant a lot in recent years. And because of that, these corporations abided by the traditional firewall between the business and news side. They did not get involved in interfering. Over the course of time, the financial value of these journalistic organizations within these larger conglomerates came down. They're now, they still make money, but they're declining assets. In fact, in some cases they're drags on the stock price because people know that these networks are in inexorable decline because of changes in how people consume media. And now the firewalls are starting to come down because they know, they believe that Donald Trump will hold the larger corporation and its interests hostage over the coverage of the news entity. And so we see this in the.

[Jon Favreau]

With good reason.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes, they're not wrong for thinking that. Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Also remember in the first term, Donald Trump just called it the Amazon Washington Post and threatened them all over the.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Place and canceled a, or at least tried to, I can't remember the full details, but tried to cancel a Pentagon contract with Amazon. Jeff Bezos has Amazon contracts and Blue Origin, a space company, depends on federal funding. And all of them worry about regulatory scrutiny in a vengeful way from the Trump administration. And many and what they want the.

[Jon Favreau]

New FCC chair has been carrying out.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And that's what they, what they wanted. Many of them want to merge with other companies. They want to buy companies. And they know that Trump will, Trump's FCC or FTC or whatever else is involved in it will hold them. And so there are some examples here, right? The Disney Corporation has been in the crosshairs of Republicans for a couple of years now. They settle a pretty specious lawsuit involving George STEPHANOPOULOS For a $15 million donation to the Trump Library. Trump has an even more specious lawsuit against 60 Minutes involving the editing of a Kamala Harris interview. Paramount. The Paramount Corporation, which owns CBS News, has been bought by Skydance, a production company owned by Trump's buddy Larry Ellison's son David. That is going to need approval from the fcc. And so what does Sheri Redstone, the owner of Paramount, want to do? She wants to settle that lawsuit, that absurd lawsuit in order to stay on Trump's good side. And so the point here is that media is changing. The era of corporate media has come to an end because the firewalls are coming down. And so you mentioned the Eric Wemple thing, right? Eric Wemple actually is, as I understand it, is a columnist for the Post. So he's on the opinion side.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But the story the Post ran about this was basically the press release from Jeff Bezos. It doesn't say there's a furor inside the Post. In a different era, the story would be about the reaction within the Post. Right. We've seen this in the New York Times and there's been certain situations when.

[Jon Favreau]

And probably ironically, the Times or Politico or Puck or someone else will write the story about the turmoil inside. Now, the Post did it and the.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Post did not do it. And so what do we think is going to happen? Let's say the Post were to stumble on. The example I used in my message box were let's say the Post were to stumble on a scoop akin to the Access Hollywood tapes or when the New York Times got Trump's tax returns. Are they going to publish that?

[Jon Favreau]

Well, you know, they, Jeff Bezos just paid $40 million to Melania for a documentary, three times more than anyone else had ever offered for a documentary that she'll be pocketing 70% of that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

A million dollars to the inauguration. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Million dollars to inauguration has to sit there. So no, I don't think they'd be publishing that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Obviously if Jeff Bezos stopped the public, like there'd be mass resignation at the Post and be the end of it. Like we would all know that. But that's the future. And my argument, and I think, and this is obviously self serving for a whole Host of reasons, but it's also why we do these jobs and why we're in this business as opposed to something else. Is the future of media is not corporate, is independent.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It means it's going to, like, entities will be smaller. Right. Because the economics have changed and they're going to be more transparent about their biases. Right. Some of it will be like purely traditional objective journalism. Some of it will be, you know, what we're doing here at Cricket Media, Ponzi America, or what I'm writing on the message box. But that, that is the future. And like, as I said to people, is if you want a better media ecosystem, you got to build it yourself, which means you have to support these entities.

[Jon Favreau]

And look, I know, and, and I don't want a media world where it's all just, you know, takes flying left and right and that's all that we have. You know, people like, we need to make journalism a viable business. But you're right that like independent journalism, which is, you know, there's not a. There's not enough of it right now. Like, that is the. That's got to be the future at this point.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. And the economics are very hard. Some of it's nonprofit like ProPublica. Some of it is smaller stuff like what our friend Jessica Yellen's doing at Newsnet Noise. There's. But there's just, it's just, it's a world and you just. There is this inherent and irreconcilable tension between a media entity who views its job as trying to hold the powerful accountable, being owned by a large corporation with multiple business interests before the powerful.

[Jon Favreau]

And this is all true. And it is. It is a story about corporate media and where it's headed. It's also a story just about, like, this is what happens in authoritarian government, you know, and like, this is hungry shit. This is like Russia. I mean, Peter Baker, the New York Times was talking about the. As we're going to talk about this with Jen in the Inside 2025 episode too. But the idea that the now the Trump White House is just picking the press pool, so they get to pick who covers them from the press. And they have like, you know, gateway pundit and Oan there. And he was like, you know, I covered. I was the Moscow bureau chief for a while for New York Times. And this is like Russia.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, it's not Russia yet, but it certainly looks like the beginning. And the idea that now, the now, corporate America media, corporate media owners, whatever else, are now basing their business decisions and basing their other decisions on, like what? On how to make sure they either curry favor with Trump or don't piss off Trump. Is it's getting to a pretty scary place. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, but two quick announcements before we do. Trump's given his first joint address to Congress this coming Tuesday, March 4th. Come hang with us. We're gonna be there, the whole gang. Tommy Lovett Dan and I are gonna live stream a preview of the speech on Tuesday at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific on the Pod Save America YouTube. We'll break down what to expect and we're going to take some questions from Friends of the Pod subscribers. So check that out. Then when the speech starts at 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific, head over to the Friends of the Pod Discord for a subscriber only live chat where you can sort of process everything and feel just a little bit less alone. And then of course, we'll have an episode out the next day about the speech. Also, stay tuned at the end of this episode for a preview of our exclusive subscriber series inside 2025. As I mentioned earlier, Dan and I are talked to Jen Psaki. We break down how modern presidents have used the press to their advantage, what it takes to control the narrative, and how Democrats are doing in the early days of Trump 2.0. To get access to shows like Inside 2025 and to ask us questions on the State of the Union livestream and get access to our Discord and all our other great subscriber only shows. Join Friends of the [e-mail] friends or directly from the Pod Save America feed on Apple Podcasts. You can get started with a free seven day trial. Pod Save America is brought to you by Beam. Here's the thing about sleep, it's the foundation of whole body health. Tommy that's true. When we sleep well, our minds and our bodies perform at their best. Good sleep is both mental and physical and our daily performance depends on it. That's why I'm so excited to talk about Beam's Dream Powder, a science backed healthy hot cocoa for sleep. We love Beam Dream. Beam Dream is good. Tastes really good. Yeah, it's like you like hot cocoa, you like sleep. Why don't you have one before bed and then boom, you're out. You're out like a light. This bedtime essential is so decadent and totally guilt free and available in delicious flavors like sea salt caramel brownie batter, vanilla chai, and the Beam Dream Powder Original flavor Cinnamon Cocoa. Each serving is only 15 calories and 0 grams of sugar. We can say this with confidence. Better sleep has never tasted better. Other sleep aids can cause next day grogginess, but Dream contains a powerful all natural blend of Reishi, magnesium, L theanine, epigenin and melatonin. To help you fall asleep, stay asleep and wake up refreshed. Beam Dream is easy to add to your nighttime routine. Just mix Dream into hot water or milk froth and enjoy before bed. If you want to try Beam's best selling Dream Powder, get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to shopbeam.com crooked and use code crooked at checkout. That's shop b e a m.com crooked and use code CROOKED for up to 40% off. This podcast is supported by Comedy Central's Emmy Award winning series, the Daily Show. Jon Stewart and the Daily show news team are covering every minute of every hour of President Trump's second first 100 days in office. With brand new episodes every weeknight. From the lowest lows to the highest lows and everything in between, they'll be there to break it all down. Comedy Central's the Daily show new weeknights at 11 on Comedy Central and streaming next day on Paramount Plus. All right, we have a new Friday show semi tradition around here.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We're gonna make it a fucking tradition. You're gonna like it.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, we have a new tradition around here. It's our segment. Wait, did that really happen? We're gonna listen to the three craziest moments from this week. And look, if we missed a crazy moment and these aren't the three craziest, please let us know because there's a lot of crazy moments this week. These are just three that really stuck out to us.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Really just great engagement tool.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, you know what?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Tweet at us.

[Jon Favreau]

So we're gonna listen to the three crazy moments and then we're gonna try to put the shattered pieces of our brains back together. All right, first up, this is an AI generated video about Gaza that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, posted to his social accounts on Tuesday nights. Donald Trump has no meant to set you free Bringing the light for all.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

To see no more tunnels, no more.

[Jon Favreau]

Fear Trump Gaza is finally here Trump.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Gaza shining bright golden future A brand.

[Jon Favreau]

New light, feast and dance the deal is done Trump, Gaza number one. Trump, Gaza shining bright golden future A brand new light feast and dance the.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Deal is done Trump, Gaza number one.

[Jon Favreau]

Okay, for those of you who are not watching on YouTube, you're going to. This is a good opportunity to just go to our YouTube channel and start watching here because you got to see.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The video and while you're there, like. And subscribe, like.

[Jon Favreau]

Of course, yeah, of course. It's all about the content, but the video, the. The audio. The audio is pretty fucking nuts, but it does not do the whole thing justice. You gotta see the video, which involves Elon Musk. Many times dancing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

AI generated Elon Musk.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. AI. There's all. AI generated Elon Musk. And there's. There's, like, cash showering down on him a couple times. There's golden statues of Trump in Gaza and everyone's very excited about the golden statues of Trump in Gaza.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There's a Trump Gaza casino.

[Jon Favreau]

There's a Trump Gaza casino. There's a shirtless Trump and a shirtless Bibi Netanyahu on the beach together. That's the last scene in Gaza. I mean, it's like, you want to laugh. You want to be like, I can't fucking believe this is real. And also, it's like, just horrible and awful when you think about, like, what has happened in Gaza, what is happening in Gaza right now. And just like, the. The death and destruction and starvation and everything that's happening. And then, like, the President of the fucking United States puts this video up. What is going on, Bean?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Trump shares a lot of memes that somehow make it to him. I don't know how they get there. And sometimes I feel like we're a little, like, overly pedantic about it. We're like, oh, how can the President of the United States do this? And it's like, you know what? Everyone can relax a little bit. The President of the United States is already a ridiculous human being. This is low on the list of concerns, but this is one that is particularly offensive.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And just because it just shows such disregard for the people in Gaza, the people who have family in Gaza.

[Jon Favreau]

Yep.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You know, it just. It is. It's so callous and so cool to think that that's funny with what is going on. There is just like. It just shows the fact that there is no soul there. It's like just a bottomless hole.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Everything is just like, just memes and fun and whatever else. Like, who cares? And he actually. He probably somewhere in his fucking deep addled mind. Somewhere in his fucking addled mind, he probably actually thinks, like, I'm sure it's not going to look at the video, but, like, yeah, I can. I can remake Gaza as the Riviera of The Middle east, as he said in a fucking press conference, and put a casino there. It's. It's fucking dark, man. All right. Second, we have Trump making an announcement in the Oval Office about a new immigration policy. We're going to be selling a gold card. You have a green card. This is a gold card. We're going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million, and that's going to give you green card privileges. Plus it's going to be a route to citizenship. And wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They'll be wealthy and they'll be successful, and they'll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Would a Russian oligarch be eligible for afford a gold car?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, possibly.

[Jon Favreau]

Hey, I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people. It's possible. This is it. We want to be importing Russian oligarchs. Now. Just let's. We're against immigration now unless it's rich.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oligarchs from abroad that we're selling American citizenship for the price of $5 million.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's right. That's what we're doing now.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We've come a long way from the principles of the Statue of Liberty right here.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

No, I would say it's so ridiculous that it's almost hard to believe. You're probably too young for. This is where our age difference comes in. But do you ever see the HBO sketch comedy show Mr. Show with Bob Dukirk and David Cross? This is almost like word for word what a Mr. Show skit would be, because they used to really make fun of really bad infomercials on TV all the time. This is what it sounds like. You like green cards. Try a gold card.

[Jon Favreau]

Also, I'd love to know what, like, the Steve Bannons and the hardcore MAGA people think of this because they don't want any immigration.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Should we just ask Tommy?

[Jon Favreau]

They don't want any immigration whatsoever because they just don't like immigrants. Right. If you problem is not necessarily what kind of immigrants are coming or how they're coming, whether it's illegal or legal immigration, they just don't like immigrants. And now Donald Trump is like, oh, for 5 million bucks a pop, first of all, like, also. And they're like, oh, they'll be carefully vetted. Like, this is so ripe for abuse for sketchy people. I mean, like, Jesus Christ.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, for people like Andrew Tate, right?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, The Tate Brothers accused of sexual assault. There's reporting that the Trump administration had leaned on Romania to let them leave Romania, where they were under house arrest, and they were free today and ended up in Florida. And then Trump said he didn't know anything about it, of course. Yeah, yeah, but that's what. That's what we're getting now.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Real push come to shove is when Romania wants him back for their trial. And what happens then?

[Jon Favreau]

Well, even Ron DeSantis was like, I'm not keeping. No, I don't. I didn't ask for this. We're not. We don't want this.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Nothing you can do about it. Yeah, yeah, just send him to Alabama. Like I don't.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, here's the last one. Oh, and by the way, the gold card's not. He can't do it, Trump. It's gotta be passed by an act of Congress. You can't just unilaterally do that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Or can you, Jon?

[Jon Favreau]

Well, where's the. I mean, who. What? Maybe. Who knows? I don't know. Yeah, you're right. Maybe it's 5 million bucks a month.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Many of the principles of Schoolhouse Rock inoperative.

[Jon Favreau]

Now is like, Assad gonna come here. Putin, maybe, is that. We're gonna get. We're just gonna get all the oligarchs and autocrats around the world just gonna come pay $5 million to come to America live at fucking Mar a Lago in Florida.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I just can't believe people would really be into the selling of American citizenship to the highest bidder.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, Trump's America. All right, last one. And we have saved the best for last.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Let me tell you. Here's a photo of three people standing outside the White House. Again, for those of you who aren't watching on YouTube, that's Chaya Raichik, also known as Libs of TikTok. It's someone named D.C. drano.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's a real meme guy.

[Jon Favreau]

Jack Probacek, whatever his fucking name is.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You know what? Don't even try.

[Jon Favreau]

Another right wing influencer, Liz Wheeler. Another right wing MAGA podcaster. They're all right wing social media influencers. They're holding up a binder. They're each holding up their own binder that says the Epstein files, Volume one declassified. But alas, there was almost no new info about the Epstein trial in those binders, which made the MAGA Internet very mad. Especially when the Republican House Judiciary account tweeted in all caps with the alarm emojis breaking. Epstein files released with a link that when you clicked it led to this. That's right, Dan.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The House Judiciary Committee. Rickrolled America.

[Jon Favreau]

Rick rolled America. What the fuck? Would you like to talk? I don't even know how to get into this for people who are so confused right now.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I have so many questions.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I do. You want to ask me? Maybe I can.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, let me ask you a question, because I have.

[Jon Favreau]

I've gone a little deep on this.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Why were the Epstein files classified?

[Jon Favreau]

They weren't. That was just a lie. Okay, now, keep in mind. So these social media influencers were in the White House with Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, Cash Patel, the FBI Director. I think Trump stopped by to say hi.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You think Trump's missing that meeting?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And because Pam Bondi had promised many times that the Epstein files would be released, right? There's this big thing. So then they get the Epstein files and it's all stuff that has been released before, in some cases years before. In fact, you can go on Amazon and buy like an Epstein files thing, which, like, has whatever evidence they had that was publicly available, and it's basically what was in the binders. Okay, so now everyone's really mad about that. So they're like, oh, fuck, what are we going to do? Liz Wheeler, one of the social media people, decided to tell the whole story. And so she said the FBI was told to deliver the files to Bondi. They did about 200 pages. Bondi smelled a rat because there was nothing juicy in the 200 pages. Just flight logs and Rolodex of phone numbers. No smoking gun. Still, Bondi promised to release the documents, so she prepared a binder of them. Then last night, before the binders were delivered to all the influencers, a whistleblower contacted Bondi and revealed that the sdny, the Southern District of New York, was hiding potentially thousands of Epstein files, defying Bondi's order to give them all to her. We're talking recordings, evidence, etc. The juicy stuff names. These swamp creatures at SDNY deceived Bondi, Cash, and you, America, be outraged that the binder is boring. You should be, because the evil Deep State lied to your face. And so, next thing that happens is that Pam Bondi sends a sternly worded letter to Cash Patel saying, hey, we have both been lied to. And that the Deep State FBI and the Deep State goons at the Southern District of New York, the Justice Department that is now filled with Trump people somewhere, is hiding the real Epstein files. And she's demanding that they be delivered to her tomorrow, Friday, when you're listening to this today.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Everything is so stupid.

[Jon Favreau]

Also it's funny. It's also about like, like sex trafficking of children, this whole thing. And I don't know what people are looking for. They have all, all the MAGA people have gotten themselves into this space where they think that there's some Epstein files I guess is going to be like a list of high profile Democrats and Democratic leaning celebrities and media figures who have all helped Jeffrey Epstein traffic children. I guess this is what they're looking for.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, that's what they think is there.

[Jon Favreau]

They think it's like a Pizzagate thing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's exactly, it is. Part of which is why the pizza.

[Jon Favreau]

Gate guy was at the White House.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Pizzagate Cubanon conspiracy narrative.

[Jon Favreau]

This is what they think and they think these files are there. But it is. Here's what's interesting about it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Tell me.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, I've been thinking about this for a while because they now have everything. They've won everything. Right? They got the White House, they've got this right wing media apparatus, they've got the FBI, they've got it all, they've won all the branches. But they still have a bunch of dumb conspiracy theories that aren't true. They're still gonna fuck things up as they have been in the last month. They're not gonna get their way all the time. And so they are still going to blame, have people to blame. Like lest we think, oh they own everything now and now who, now who are they gonna blame? They always find people to blame. There's always deep state people out there that still haven't been, you know, found in the agencies and they're still lurking and they miss the purge. Missed them. And so there's always some kind. There's gonna be Democratic governors who are villains or any. Anywhere there's an elected Democrat, anywhere there's someone in the media who is not loyal to Trump, anywhere there's some bureaucrat who isn't a loyalist to maga, they'll be blamed to be cast by the Democrats.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I mean that's the entire evil genius behind the Deep State narrative is it allows Republicans to control everything and have someone within their own government to blame. Now that can work with a segment of people who are looking for reasons to stick with Donald Trump.

[Jon Favreau]

And there are a lot of fucking crazy people.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, well, I mean just Republican based voters.

[Jon Favreau]

Right?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right. If you like Donald Trump.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm saying I was thinking about the Pizzagate.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The Pizzagate is off. But just this idea that Donald Trump is failing because someone inside the government is preventing him from succeeding. Which is how a lot of Republicans justified Trump's colossal failures in his first term. Yeah, but that's not going to work for everyone.

[Jon Favreau]

No, it's not. Isn't. You're right. I totally agree with that. I just think it is wild that the Attorney General of the United States sent a letter to the FBI director saying that there's a deep state hiding files that are going to expose corruption from Jeffrey Epstein, who is dead.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Let's just follow the story closely.

[Jon Favreau]

Anyway, that's our crazy shit for this week. That's our show for today. But you're about to hear a special preview of our subscription show, Inside 2025. This is Dan and Jen and I. We talked about White House communication strategy and press strategy. It's a great episode. Again, sign up for ad free episodes of Pod, Save America and all our subscriber only shows all kinds of other good [e-mail] friends or through Apple Podcasts. Here's Inside 2025.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I think there is a way to be respectful and valuing the freedom of the press without being so old school wrapped up into the rules they want you to live by because they're not effective in terms of how you communicate with the public anymore. And that is like you gotta, like, if you're running for president now, you're gonna be in the White House. You gotta throw out some of how some of this is done to state the obvious.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I would just one other thing on this cuz I can't let it go. Is part of the problem for the press here is they have a boy who cried wolf problem. Which if you screen that the president not having a formal press conference or not doing enough rope line Q&As is an abridgment of freedom of speech. Then people are gonna take you less seriously when there is an actual threat to press freedom, which is what happened to this president.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There's been too much confusion between the First Amendment and access.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And when you get mad about it, when you, when you paint access or transparency as assault on freedom of speech, then you, you are sort of, you're setting yourself up for when the actual threat to freedom of speech comes to be taken less seriously.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. And also the American people, I don't think believe that the only person who can ask a president a question is somebody who has a seat in the White House briefing room. That's just because it's not so, you know, the notion that they're the only ones, it just isn't how the world works anymore. But, yes, that was better stated than what I said I was getting at the same point.

[Jon Favreau]

It's an interesting fight that the Trump people are picking, and I think part of the reason they're doing it is just for the sake of having the fight. Because, like Trump himself, it's not like he's not visible and not out there answering questions and doesn't like to mix it up with the press. Like, he is in our faces way more than even his first term. And so he's, like, willing to answer questions. If he doesn't like your question, he'll yell at you, he'll lie, he'll do whatever, but he's answering those questions. So it's, it's funny that they are kicking out press, even though he is very available to the press. It's. It's weird.

[Georgia Hardstark]

But don't you think it's because they think it's. And I think it is effective, unfortunately, in getting some. To obey in advance, right?

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

To not do stories so that they don't piss them off, to do extra outreach, to go like, so beyond the pale at the extra mile. And, you know, look at all these payouts that have happened from. And more will happen. I mean, they will sue all. Maybe all of us. I don't know. And like, sorry, I get. Just because I say it doesn't mean it's. If I don't say it doesn't mean.

[Jon Favreau]

Jen works for the network. That was the subject of a truth yesterday. We weren't.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes, well, congratulations to me. But, you know, I, I think it's. It is. It is that. And it doesn't mean it's like people, outlets or reporters are going to be like, we're obeying in advance now. They just do it. You know what I mean? And I think they know that it can work in some capacity.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. So before we go, Jen, you started to give advice to future Democratic presidential candidates, future Democratic comms directors, press secretaries. We have talked over the years about press strategies, communication strategies, message strategies. It seems like now we need attention strategies. What are some good attention strategies for future people who are gonna sit where you guys sat? Hopefully Democrats someday.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, my God. That's such a good question. I mean, I'm gonna steal a little bit of what Dan said, which is like, Democrats sometimes don't take advantage of the cultural moments. It doesn't have to just be the Super Bowl. Sometimes there is an unwillingness or discomfort in showing all sides of yourself. You know, I mean, there's a lot of like extremely smart Democrats out there, a lot of them are elected. You don't have to always talk like you are defending your PhD thesis, right. @ every moment, you can talk about your love for sports, football, art, cultural things, music, whatever it may be. There is a stiffness sometimes, is one of the things I would say. Maybe there's another way of saying it, but everybody needs to let their hair down a little bit more. I don't know. I just used 12 analogies, but I think you know what I mean.

[Jon Favreau]

You're right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The other thing I would say about communicators, which is less about the attention, but I do think it helps you in this regard, is one of the things that helped me in being the bridesmaid many times for the press secretary job and never the bride until finally, is that you have to know the policy and the policy and the substance of the person you're working for. What do they believe? Why do they believe it? What's the answer to the 18th question? Sometimes people think of being a press secretary, and this is where people get confused about the attention question as being able to craft a good tweet, or X or whatever the hell we're calling it. It's not just that. It's like, you've got to understand the depth of the housing policy so you can help your boss figure out how to communicate and talk about it in a human way. And sometimes I think that part is undervalued.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, no, I, I, I hear that. Because I had to become, I had to become an expert in, like, 10 different, like, every topic, but, like an inch deep.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, I didn't want to go too deep on it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I'm like, I think of, like, which I still don't know if I could explain now, but, like, credit default swaps was, like, a phrase that came out of my mouth a lot in 2009.

[Jon Favreau]

No, me and you both in 2009. Larry Summers had to teach us about that. And I was a great teacher. Dan.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Okay. I give a few pieces of advice. The first is when I was the. I was the communications director on the transition, which meant one of my jobs was to try to figure out how to set up the White House Communications. Communications office. And so they handed me a binder on my first day, which had the org charts for every White House communications press office from Jimmy Carter until George W. Bush. And the thing that is so fucking alarming is the Carter and the Bush ones are almost exactly the same.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Thank you.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And you know what? Frankly, it's changed Some, but not that. Not that much.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Not much.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Not much.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And so I would tell every person, if you're about to start your presidential campaign, your senate campaign, your senate office, job, whatever else, take the org chart you have and light that thing on fucking fire.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yep.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Because what it is, is it's.

[Jon Favreau]

We're.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

All we're doing is we're building on a view of communications that uses the traditional legacy media as the primary vehicle for delivering our message. So we have to get it. If you keep just tinkering around the edges, you're always going to keep doing the same thing. It's why legacy media brands keep failing because they keep trying to become digital by just appending onto the old print infrastructure, whatever it is. So that's one dish that you got.

[Jon Favreau]

To doge that org chart.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, sometimes we're pro doge.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I need a dozen guys under the age of 22 who didn't go to the prom.

[Jon Favreau]

Get big balls to get to big.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Balls to help you.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The second thing is we have to think about communications as message delivery. Right. It's both. It's almost. It's all content generation or message generation. Our heads, like, what's the event we do, what's the interview we do, what's the social media post we do? The real question is, the one we should build all of our infrastructure on is how do you get the piece of information that you want to put out in front of the people that you need to see it? It used to be that you would just put it out in the press and they would organically consume it in some way, shape or form. It doesn't work that way anymore. So you have to have an actual plan to do it, and you have to build up an infrastructure that allows it that includes both very aggressive influencer work, organic social stuff. And actually, the thing that I'm most passionate about is empowering your supporters to be your messengers to actually carry your message. And the next thing, and I said it, Jen, saying it, but it's so important is everyone says politics is downstream of culture. And that is true. But the thing that I think in terms of communications is if you are a politician, find the thing outside of politics that you are passionate about and can talk about authentically and go talk about that thing all the time. Like, I still am so struck by the Kamala Harris interview on Caller Daddy. And it was all policy.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Like, you know, the Trump interview, obviously the Caller daddy was like 30 minutes and the Trump rogue interview was three hours. But the part of the Trump rogue interview that worked for him was when he was just talking about ufc.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Like a guy who came like a UFC fan. Right. And like for some segment of his audience, that's persuadable universe. That's a big deal. If it's sports, go talk about sports all the time. If it's pop culture, talk about pop culture. If you go talk, talk about what was on White Lotus or which Bravo shows you like or which music you like. Right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And because that is a way to connect with people outside of politics. Obama did this all the time.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right. And he could do all this. He could talk about sports, he could talk about movies, but find ways to do that so that you can connect with people on something other than policy. Because if you have that human connection first, then they're gonna be more willing to listen to what you have to say about the other stuff.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Can I give them two more pieces of advice? Cause we're rooting for these people to bring us back from the brink.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, we are.

[Georgia Hardstark]

One is, this is so obvious in old school, but, like, why are you running for president? Please determine the answer to that question. The second thing is figure out what you actually think of a range of policy issues. Right. I mean, we go through this thing where you see politicians try to bend themselves into a pretzel, answering questions about any range of issues. And it's like, start with the place. And this is like to comms people who are advising people who may run for president. What do you think about what's happening in Israel? What do you actually think? Right. What do you think should happen with healthcare? And I think sometimes it gets so wrapped up in like poll tested language and words that it's confusing and it doesn't feel authentic. And if you piss some people off, that's okay. And I think we've gotten a little bit away from that.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. I think use polling and research to help you find the most effective way to talk about what you already believe and what you care about and what you want to prioritize. Right. Like, that's the. That should be the direction, not the other way around.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yep.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

One final piece of advice, John, that's very important.

[Georgia Hardstark]

This is so fun is that you.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And I have been podcasting for three presidential elections now.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, my God.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And I would say the record of people who've been on our podcast is one and O. And the record of people who did not go on our podcast is. Zero, two.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Just something. Just something to think about.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, but that is such a good I will say just go back to the New York Times editorial board thing. It's like there is still people who are of the age who might run for president who think if you have a Washington Post op, I keep picking on them. It's really.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's not even Jeff Bezos related like that's written in the print forum. You're reaching, America. I'm here to tell you you're not. And so actually, to Dan's point, don't be so fragile about like, what the name of the outlet is. Like, who is reaching people and how is it reaching them? And is it reaching the audience you're trying to reach? That's it. It doesn't matter what their name is, doesn't matter how long they've been around, doesn't matter what their masthead is or no masthead. And that, that would serve a lot of people well too.

[Jon Favreau]

Talk to everyone all the time and just be fucking human. Just be human.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Talk like a human.

[Jon Favreau]

Talk like you're talking to people in your life. And if you talk to people in your life like you talk as a politician, then don't run for office.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes, it's true. Please stop yourself.

[Jon Favreau]

Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, we hope you'll [e-mail] friends or through the Pod Save America feed on Apple Podcasts. Love it. Tommy and I will be back with a new show on Tuesday. Talk to everybody then. Have a great weekend.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Bye, everyone.

[Jon Favreau]

If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free or get access to our subscriber discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the pod [e-mail] friends or or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed. Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content and more. And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Ree Churlin is our example executive editor and Adrienne Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanter is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt De Groat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kiril Pelaviev, and David Toll. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

TaxAct knows small business owners can sometimes use a little help with their taxes. That's why TaxAct has expert assist, a team of live tax experts ready to answer any questions you may have. Think of them as your own personal sidekick. Not like one of those funny talking animal sidekicks, More like the super smart nerding out on tax code and business casual attire sidekick, but just as helpful and lovable Tax act.

[Jon Favreau]

Let's get them over with.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Sticking to New Year's resolutions can be overwhelming. That's why it's best to set easy, attainable goals. Start with staying hydrated with Brita.

[Jon Favreau]

The Brita Elite Filter makes tap water.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Taste great and safer to drink too. Brita Elite removes 99% of lead from your water and reduces other contaminants so you'll actually want to drink it. Raise a glass of water to your 2,025 hydration goals. Pick up a Brita pitcher with elite filter.

[Jon Favreau]

Today 99% of lead certified by WQA.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Substances reduced may not be in all users water.