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The PoliticsGirl Podcast
Who’s in Charge of this Shit Show? A Conversation with Simon Rosenberg
00:49:53
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- [00:00]
Simon Rosenberg
Musk is not a reformer. He's not shrinking government. He's breaking it. He's a criminal. He's a serial criminal. He's a betrayer of the country. We have to get the word criminal and crimes into the discourse associated with his brand.
- [00:24]
Leigh McGowan
Hello, and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host, Leigh McGowan. Let's get into it. So who is in charge of this shit show at this point? We just watched Trump's first cabinet meeting, and it was basically run by Elon. Republicans voted for a budget that would cut Medicaid and snap to make sure billionaires got even more money. Republican representatives are choosing to forego town halls moving forward after they had their asses handed to them this past week. Trump put out an outrageous and disgusting Trump Gaza video on social media, and we're apparently selling citizenship and hats for cash money from the Oval Office. How do you even look at all of that and have hope? Well, that's why we are talking to Simon Rosenberg, the author of the Hopium Chronicles this week. Simon is a highly regarded political strategist and commentator with more than 30 years of experience in national politics and television news. Simon has served in senior roles at the DNC and the DCCC and was a leading candidate for DNC chair in 2005. Simon has worked on two presidential campaigns, including as a leadership role in the Clinton war Room, and was instrumental in founding the new Democratic Coalition, the donor advisory network, Democratic Alliance. After a career in television news, Simon built a new home for his political analysis, commentary, and live political discussions at Hopium, an amazing and informative project on the substack media platform that not only gives everyone the information it needs, but actively helps candidates win across the country. So to give us a little hope without further ado, please welcome my guest, political strategist, commentator, and creator of the Hopium Chronicles, Simon Rosenberg. We welcome back, Simon.
- [01:55]
Simon Rosenberg
It's great to be here, Lee.
- [01:57]
Leigh McGowan
Feel like every day is a fresh new injury with this administration. As you wrote, Trump 2.0 is a profound, ongoing betrayal of America and everything that made this nation so remarkable and powerful and prosperous. And you said, as dark as this is, we can't forget for one moment that what he's doing is wrong. And that really resonated with me. I just think it's really important that we keep reminding ourselves that this is not normal, that this is not who we want to be, and it's just wrong.
- [02:30]
Simon Rosenberg
Yeah, it's wrong. It's illegal, it's unconstitutional. It's the most profound Betrayal of this great country that we've ever seen. And, you know, I think that part of the struggle that we all have, and I've been thinking a lot about this before I came on today, is that the way that Trump plays us is that he has us chase the new, as I call it every day. There's 7, 8, 9, 10 new things, new outrages, new injuries, new abuses. And that the whole media now becomes, it chases the new, it's chasing everything every day. And we get accustomed to that too. Right? Like we chase the new, the new outrage, the new thing. And that becomes the trap, right, that we fall into, in that we have to try really hard every day to stay focused on what's important as opposed to what's new. And what's important is the way that you started all of this, that there is this sort of top line story of which each day we're getting a new chapter, but we have to stay focused in the story. And the story is historic betrayal of everything that's made this country great, of working class Americans, of the law, of democracy, of the west, of Ukraine, of Europe and all of this. And that Trump is on a rampage against what I call the America, the four freedoms, which is the global rules based order abroad and our constitutional order at home. And that we need to stay in that place as much as we can in order to build this effective and ferocious opposition that I think that we all need in order to limit the damage and eventually beat him and get him out of office.
- [04:16]
Leigh McGowan
Yeah, I mean, I do think it's very hard for people, because like you said, it's so much at once that you're not sure which story you're supposed to be following and you end up following the news. And I was saying to someone the other day, we were talking about that ridiculous Trump Gaza video that he posted, you know, with himself, you know, sitting on a beach with Netanyahu, you know, in the rubble of what was someone else's homeland. And Elon throwing money and golden statues of him. And all of us were like, here's the thing. Like, it's the most outrageous, disgusting thing we've ever seen. And yet we're all like, yeah, like, that's just something he does. Right? Like, that's the vibe. You almost get numb to the outrageous behavior that we should all be just repulsed by.
- [04:59]
Simon Rosenberg
Well, let's talk about that for a second. Because I grew up in the media business. I started my career at ABC News and was a producer, writer, and so I grew up in that side And I think going back to this concept of chasing the new, I think that what we have to recognize is the mainstream media now has become this vast normalization machine every day of everything that he's doing because of what the dynamic that we were describing earlier. And our job is to resist that. Our job is to understand that that's the play that he wants us to chase the new and that the media is gonna be obeyant because their news, right? Their job is literally to chase the new and to tell you the new things. Our job, Lee, the work of the new pro democracy media that's growing is to stay focused on what's to have the discipline of not following him down the rabbit holes or to look at the daily outrages. You know, I was thinking about how Trump loves the wrestling, you know, the fake wrestling stuff. And you know, that's his administration, right? He's creating new levels of outrage and craziness every day in order to distract us, you know, and to keep us immobilized and depressed and all the things. And frankly, to feed the media beast. Because if the media isn't being fed new stuff, then they do more analytical work, right? Then they do more investigative work, then the hole, the news holes, for more thoughtful, analytical, important work grows as opposed to shrinks. And so by flooding, just the way the news business works, right? He sort of hacked the news business in the way that they operate every day. And so we, it's really important that those of us who are out forging and building this new pro democracy media don't emulate that, right? I mean, we have to, we have to fight against that. And I think that, you know, what I'm really excited about is this sort of bottom up grassroots uprising we're starting to see happen in the United States. Those are people who are rejecting that game, right? They are staying focused on the damage that Trump is doing to the country. And what I wrote about today in my latest post is that I do really believe that where we are doing well in the information war is the issues around Trump's economic plan being dangerous for the country and increasing inflation and slowing the economy down and just sort of basically being bad for people is in the electorate. People know this. His approval rating is dropping significantly, the consumer confidence is dropping. And I think that we will be successful as a movement in prosecuting these fundamental set of economic arguments that he's betrayed working people, that he's trying to cut health care. I mean, all the things that he wants to do. But I think that where we have not where we are, not where we want to be by a significant margin, is on this, what I call the second front, which is this ongoing daily assault on our government and on sort of the drivers of our prosperity and our security and our greatness that they're ripping apart, and that these are things that are going to be very hard to repair and that there needs to be a greater sense of urgency from our leaders about opening up this second front against Trump. The economic front is how we won the election in 2018 by eight and a half points. I was the lead strategist for the DCCC in 2018. In using conventional ways of politics, we're doing very smart stuff there. The problem is this is not a conventional time and that our leaders are going to have to become far more ambitious and creative and, frankly, be true to their oath. I mean, if you look at the oath of office that every senator and House member took, the very first line is to protect the Constitution. It isn't to protect Americans from $8 a dozen eggs. Right. And right now, the constitutional order is under assault. And we have to together find language and arguments that are going to resonate with the American people the way the economic arguments are. And I think this is an area of opportunity, Lee, for you and I and the pro democracy movement to help our leaders get there in the coming weeks, because it is certainly urgent right now.
- [09:11]
Leigh McGowan
Yeah, no, I think their second front makes. Makes a lot of sense because it's. They're doing the shock and awe they promised. You know, I will say I, I feel more shocked than I feel odd. But as you point out, like, extremists and ideologues are far better at the kind of bread and circus stuff than they are at actual governing. Right. And the actual, quote, unquote, governing that's happening is deeply unpopular stuff. Right. You wrote that he's a weak man, not a strong man. He's yielding, you know, in, in his behaviors, in the way he, you know, responds to Musk, the way he responds to Putin and these things that he's doing around the country, these mass and sort of arbitrary firings of government workers, eliminating national park rangers, infectious disease researchers, messing with things like our food inspection or air traffic control. And apparently we're now pro childhood cancer and we're allies with Russia and North Korea. Right. Like, this stuff is nuts. It's not popular, it's not enjoyable. It's not what the American people even voted for. Even if you think he has a mandate. Right. Which, by the way, he does not. Which I think is why you were mentioning that there has been such a major dip in his approval rating that the polls are seeing the highest disapproval rating of any president. And we need to be cleared for this. Any president at this point in the presidency ever recorded even higher than his own first term.
- [10:33]
Simon Rosenberg
Yep.
- [10:33]
Leigh McGowan
So what do you think that means for an overall goal? Because I do think people need to get that in their head.
- [10:39]
Simon Rosenberg
What it means is that the work that we're doing is working. Little cracks can become big cracks, and little wins can become big wins. And it's really important for. For understanding about how we are going to win, that winning itself becomes critical. Trump sees the world through winning and losing and weak and strong and losing matters to him. Being unpopular matters to him. And so we have to recognize that in many ways, that's his fundamental metric. So getting wins is really important. Seeing his polling numbers drop is really important. I mean, at a press conference he gave last Friday, he literally said his approval ratings at 65%, the highest that's ever been recorded. Like, he just. It was, you know, whatever these words are that we use to describe his delusions and his. These things that he says that are just so obviously invented and fictional, but it's clearly getting to him. And his own pollster released a memo, a private memo, done outside of his orbit about his standing in the House races and the danger and that he's underwater in the battleground House districts. He's come down. People are very concerned about sort of the growing plutocracy of the big tax cuts for wealthy people and less for everyone else. Right. That's not what they thought he promised. And what happened to Trump in 2017 and 2018. Cause I was there when this all happened, looking at the polling every day, is that he lost this imprimatur or this sense of being for the working guy. And they lost it through the battle over the aca, and they never got it back. And Trump never really recovered from the ACA battle throughout his entire presidency. And we're going through, I think, a very similar set of circumstances now on the economic front, to the point of the movement. We can change opinion about him. He is a diminished figure from where he was a few weeks ago. He's coming down, but we have to keep going. Right? I mean, what's critical is that we have to recognize that our work matters, and we have to keep doing more of it. Right. More public protests, more infra warring. Right. More sharing of stories and things through our networks, more phone calling and contacting elected officials. I Mean, one of the things that I was very adamant about in my community, which is now over 200,000 people, is that we focused very early on phone calls and in person contacts to actual representatives from their own constituents. And I have a national audience, as you do too. Lee Right. And everyone watching this has to recognize that your ability, one of the things that has to become part of our thing that we all do going forward is we just have to call our reps every day. This is now a permanent part of being the ferocious and effective opposition. We thank them when they do good stuff. We let them know about things. Because I the way I talk about this in my community is that we're helping electeds understand what is required of them now. And what's required of them now is something different than what was required of them before. They are no longer on our side. The Democrats are no longer just legislators or governors. They have to be communicators and influencers and information warriors and leaders of a new ferocious opposition. These are new things for them that they have to and that's required of them now to not just vote against, but to be an advocate against and to make the case using all available means. But the other piece of this is that for the Republicans, when you are when you have the blessing in some ways of being having a Republican representative, Republican senator, you've got to gather everyone you know and be contacting those offices every day because they log these things, they track this stuff. This stuff really matters to them. And when they have an uprising of hundreds and hundreds of people calling every day about an issue, it affects what they do. My last point on this, Leo, I've gone on kind of a long rant here, but when I reflect, sorry, no, I'm a ranter.
- [14:35]
Leigh McGowan
So I'm like, I'm into it.
- [14:36]
Simon Rosenberg
Listen, I just don't have a refrigerator behind me. I'm sorry about that. Is that, you know, and we could talk about refrigerators for a long time and. But we just got a new refrigerator in our house and it's been like really awesomely. I just want to say, who knew that a refrigerator, a cool new refrigerator could be so important?
- [14:54]
Leigh McGowan
You're like, I love this thing so much.
- [14:57]
Simon Rosenberg
So let me just make that the last point, going back to the things that matter as opposed, is that I have been disappointed, like many, about what I feel has been a slow and tepid response of our political leaders to the gravity of the moment. But I also think there's a weird sort of upside to all that, which is that the way the movement is growing, people are going to have greater ownership of it over time because they're building it themselves. All of you are building it yourself, Lee. You're helping build it every day. And I think the fact that this is being built from the bottom up is possibly that it's going to make it more sustainable and effective over time. And so, you know, it makes me inspired and optimistic that we're going to have the strength to repel, you know, what's happening here in the coming months.
- [15:44]
Leigh McGowan
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- [20:04]
Simon Rosenberg
Have the strength to repel what's happening here in the coming months and hopefully.
- [20:08]
Leigh McGowan
Give our elected leaders the secured backbone to do what they need to do. I know that the Democratic leadership was very upset that Democrats were calling them so much. And I thought, yeah, bro, that's what you're supposed to be here, supposed to be hearing from us. You hear from us when we're happy, you hear from us when we're not happy. And we need a, you know, a strong resistance. Now the Republicans are kind of getting the same thing, right? Like Trump's out here not doing what he said he would do. None of them are doing what they said they would do, which is very likely. When all those Republicans went home to their home districts recently, they were met with very unhappy constituents. So much so that the Republicans are now deciding not to, to have town halls moving forward because apparently they don't like being called out. You know, and I think that this is important to note because Republicans have always behaved as if their greatest fear was being primaried by a candidate that was backed by Musk or Trump. If they didn't do exactly what they were told by Musk or Trump, they might lose their job. And now it looks like maybe they should be looking around at their constituents and thinking, I might lose my job anyway. Because these people are furious and they're not feeling what I, I, I'm doing and they're not respecting what I'm doing. I have to say, I mean, Simon, I watched some of those Republican town halls and the smugness that I saw on display was astounding. I mean, one representative tried to get a booing crowd to stop by getting them excited that Trump was trying to end birthright citizenship, and they literally lost their minds, right? One representative refused to answer a citizen question and she was asking specifically about the SAVE act, which he had co sponsored that will make it harder for married women to vote. And he ended up attacking the audience, telling them he didn't need to be there, he was doing them a favor. And they were like, this is your job. You know, one town hall was so outrageous that the sheriff physically dragged away a doctor who was there speaking her mind.
- [21:59]
Simon Rosenberg
I saw that.
- [22:00]
Leigh McGowan
We now know that she was targeted by that sheriff because she had personally run for office three times as a Democrat. The Republican men in that room made a very publican violent statement to put her in her place, right? They physically manhandled her. They dragged her out. And the thing that upset me so much about watching that one, Simon, was that no one stopped them. Right? Like all of those protectors, all of those men in the room that talk about protecting women and these free speech warriors that are like, First Amendment, let it go. Let this woman essentially be kidnapped by a bunch of unknown men for publicly speaking out at a town hall. And I found the whole thing sickening. And there's this horrible firsthand story about a child at that town hall who was asking why they were taking her out. And the child's father said, because she's a bad person. And the child said, but she's on the floor. They have her on the floor. And the father said, yes, because she's a communist. And all I could think was, define communist. You know, define communist. Like you have been brainwashed to watch your fellow Americans be treated like we are in, you know, some completely different time and era. It's like 1930s Germany bullshit. And we clearly cannot carry on like that. But then seeing their response, the Republicans response, and being like, we're not gonna do town halls anymore, and I thought, ooh, snowflakes, it must be working then.
- [23:21]
Simon Rosenberg
Yeah, listen, I think the way we have to think about all this every day is that they try to take an inch, and if they get away with it, then they take another inch and then they keep going. And so this is a 24 7, 365 tug of war, right, between the authoritarian impulses of this new administration. Pushing and pushing and pushing, which is why pushback and daily calls and daily presence is so important, because we have to learn how to draw lines and then defend them. And I think that one of the things that I think our current set of leaders in Washington haven't really totally figured out yet is that they need to be doing things like. I mean, one of the simple things that hasn't happened is that we haven't had a joint letter from the Democrats in the House and Senate that has gone to the Attorney General laying out the crimes that Elon Musk and Donald Trump are committing and asking them to, you know, to make a criminal referral of Musk and the top people at. I don't wanna. I don't use the term for it at the place that he. Cause it's just absurd, right? Musk's top lieutenants. Because they are on a crime spree and an unconstitutional crime spree. And we should be saying, yeah, but.
- [24:34]
Leigh McGowan
We shouldn't be just saying that in a letter, because that's what makes Democrats around the country crazy. They're like, you, you sent a strongly worded letter, like, sure, send that. But then get in front of a camera and say, this is what we did.
- [24:44]
Simon Rosenberg
But, Lee, let me explain. Why the letter matters, right? Is as a first step, is that the absence of that letter is the critical thing. Right? The fact that they have not articulated to the country and to all Americans why they believe what's happening is unconstitutional, illegal, is a massive hole that needs to be filled as a starting place. Because once we have their argument that they're required to do, they're required to protect the Constitution. That document can also be used in every one of these legal cases that are coming up against the same abuse of power that we're seeing, this power grab, this unconstitutional power grab. And then it creates language that we can all use in the pro democracy movement that we're echoing, and that when we have those guests on our shows, we can say, you know, that letter said A, B, and C. Can you elaborate on that? And it became. It becomes the starting place, the rallying cry for all of us to get centered and oriented about what the fundamental argument is. Because I think one of the things that we're failing at miserably is defining what it is that Musk is doing. Musk is not a reformer. He's not shrinking government. He's breaking it. He's a criminal. He's a serial criminal. He's a betrayer of the country. We have to get the word criminal and crimes into the discourse associated with his brand, in my view. And the way to do that is to have all Democrats in Congress write a letter to the Department of Justice and make a criminal referral to the crimes that he's committing. They can deny it. They can say, we don't agree, but my God, should the Congress be on record about the greatest attack on Congress's authority in all of American history? And the absence of that is what makes this so remarkable that they've been unable to take that very first step to your point of many more steps that have to have, you know, come after that. And so, you know, I have been recommending criminal referrals. I've been recommending the daily press conferences like everybody else, because we have the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year. We, our movement has to start getting really tied into that document and to the meaning of July 4th. Because what July 4th was, was a throwing off of a mad king. And we're back in a very similar place now, almost 250 years later. And I think we're going to be able to use the Declaration of independence and July 4th holiday in very powerful ways in the coming battles ahead.
- [27:09]
Leigh McGowan
So you're mentioning Musk and how we need to be pointing him out as the criminal that he is. Right. Trump just had his first cabinet meeting last week. And as I was saying in this introduction, it was more or less run by Elon, much like that weird press conference was in the Oval Office. You're like, what is this man doing here? Like, why is he commanding the room? Why is he standing when everyone else is sitting? And then he made this kind of over the top speech about how this was the best cabinet ever, literally the best cabinet the country has ever had. And I was like, what are we talking about? Like, this is the group of the least qualified people that we've ever had in the Cabinet, least prepared. Unless the goal was to like fill it with just the richest and the most sycophantic, those people do not have any place in their in leading these agencies. And Sherilyn Ifill said, how much more apparent can the truth be? This is a return to affirmative action for mediocre white guys. Right. This is a room of the rich and the talentless. It the requirement in that room is money and or bootlicking. And other than that, that's where the metric ends. Right? And I, someone very clever online said that room includes an ex heroin addict who drove his ex wife to suicide, a drunk and accused sexual assaulter, a woman who shot her own puppy, a Russian spy, a reality TV star, little Marco, an election denier, Barbie and the psycho podcaster duo of the FBI. And I was like, yeah, that. That's who's in that room, right? And then a bunch of like super crazy rich guys. And Elon kept referring to the government in that cabinet meeting as the company, the company. And how the company should be thrilled at how things are going. And yeah, I mean, if this group is doing everything they can to favor and benefit the ultra rich, which is what the cabinet is filled with, then yes, I guess the company could be thrilled with how things are going. But I think we need to kind of remind people that the government is not a company, because the goal of government is not to turn a profit. It is to take care of its people. And I think that's where Elon really just doesn't get it. And then I think that's where the Republican representatives in the House and the Senate are dropping the ball.
- [29:22]
Simon Rosenberg
Yeah, look, I think there has been stated in articles just in the last few days, you're starting to see the Republicans in the Senate growing more alarmed about the clear illegal activities of Musk and his team. A letter was sent by Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to Marco Rubio saying that what that the State Department was doing with USAID was illegal. This is in a letter. They accused Marco Rubio of being a criminal and breaking the law. In very clear, plain language. And this is why it would be nice if we did that also, by the way. But the reason that matters is that we now have Republicans in the Senate on record in letterhead from the United States Senate saying that the Secretary of State was breaking the law and that Donald Trump and Elon Musk were breaking the law. Law that they are responsible for writing and for. For creating. Right. And you also saw Susan Collins and another story, who's the head of the Appropriations Committee, telling Susie Wiles, the Chief of Staff, that the way that Musk was going about doing this was outrageous. And, you know, she didn't use the word illegal, but that the Congressional Committee should be responsible and involved. And the thing is, it's just for anyone who's been in Washington, the idea that Musk and what Musk is doing, it is literally like a foreign import from some other society where there was not democracy, whether it was South Africa or Russia, where you could imagine coming in and attacking all these programs that had been passed by law. By the way, the law that we are operating under, the funding we're operating under, was passed in December and voted on by virtually every Republican in the House and the Senate. And now they're turning their back and saying, yeah, what Musk is doing is okay, and we're for it. It's just unbelievable bullshit. And so we have to recognize, going back to the thing we talked about at the very beginning about how to stay in this place, of what's really going on here as opposed to chasing the new, is that what Elon Musk is doing now is not only the most unconstitutional, illegal set of activities in all of American history regarding our democracy, but it's clear that he has ill intent about the America and all of us, that they're trying to do actual material harm to the United States and to the people of the United States. It is absolutely the most unpatriotic possible manifestation of sentiment that you could imagine, because he's not trying to make things better or make things smaller. He's trying to destroy the country, destroy our reputation, destroy the drivers of our wealth, destroy our public health, destroy the ability of the government to respond to crises. We are more vulnerable to a military attack, either cyber or otherwise, today than we have ever been in the modern era, because the government would not be able to obviously respond to any kind of significant intrusion into the United States, Physical or cyber or otherwise, or pandemic or anything else.
- [32:31]
Leigh McGowan
I would say we are more susceptible to attacks from the inside at this point. We're more susceptible to diseases. We're more susceptible to losing our farms, losing our homes. People are losing their jobs. Like, this is daily occurrences that are happening without even some sort of foreign invasion. Right? Like, we. There are people that literally are losing their livelihood, and not just liberals losing their livelihoods from federal, you know, contracts, Federal governments, Farmers out there losing their contracts for usaid grants, researchers losing their research to solve our diseases, to help track diseases. We have a giant tuberculosis and measles outbreak. A first child died in a decade from a measles. Like, we're having trouble just here. And these guys have been in power for less than two months. Like, what are we looking at? Okay, so I want to lose a little bit of weight for a big birthday trip I'm going on with all of my girlfriends. I am not particularly hung up on weight, But I just don't want to do that, like, sorry for my butt thing where you're constantly apologizing the whole trip. So I think it might be kind of nice to have a professional help me with those goals, which is why I'm excited that I'm partnering with fay. Fey is a revolutionary program that connects you with your own personal dietitian, Making expert nutritional guidance accessible and affordable. So whether you're looking to help lose weight or improve your general health or manage a health condition, Faye has a dietitian right for you. And the best part is that all the dietitians on fay accept insurance with over 700 insurance plans included. So you will likely pay $0 out of pocket for this incredible service. If you're tired of those one size fits all diet plans or generic nutritional advice, I think you will find the dietitians at fay are different because they work with you one on one to create a customizable program that is tailored specifically to you and your needs. So it's more than a diet plan because these dietitians are focusing on clinically proven methods to improve your relationship with food that will instill positive long term health habits. And it works. 93% of clients reported an improved relationship with food and 85% reached their target weight. A third party study showed that Faye clients lost almost three times more weight working with the dietitian compared to a comparable weight loss program with dietitians at special in over 30 areas including weight loss, sports nutrition, women's health, postpartum gut health and eating disorders, and offering both virtual and in person person sessions, you can customize your FAE experience to whatever is most convenient and best suited to you so achieve lasting results with the help of a registered dietitian. Through Faye, listeners of Politics Girl can qualify to see a registered dietitian for as little as $0 by visiting faynutrition.com politicsgirl that is faynutrition.com politicsgirl one last time. That's fay nutrition.com politicsgirl and make sure you use my URL so they know that I sent you okay, so we're coming into spring and you might want to get yourself some new clothes or buy the men in your life a little upgrade. Lately it seems like all guys are in jogging pants all the time, and it's not always the best look. But I know that men like to feel comfortable, which is why I'm happy to be telling you about Public Rec. You might remember me talking about how I bought my dad their back best selling Day Maker pants and Polo for Christmas and he loves them. He keeps raving about how comfortable the pants are. My husband got a pair too and he said they feel like sweatpants but they look pulled together. So whether you're on a golf course or going to dinner, Sean said they feel expensive and well made. My dad literally can't stop going on about them. I'm going to have to get him another pair. So quite frankly, if you have an older man in your life who just wants to wear soft pants but still wants to feel pull together, this is the way to go. Plus, usually when you order comfortable pants you only get to pick from small, medium or large. But with Public rec you get to select the exact width and length. So Whether you're a 30x32 or a 44x36, you can find the perfect fitting pants. And from navy to dark olive to stone gray, you're going to be sure to find the right color as well. For a limited time, listeners will get 20% off when you use the code politicsgirl at checkout. That's 20% off with the code politics girl@publicwreck.com and after you purchase, they will ask you how you heard about them. As always, please support the show and tell them we sent you. That's public rec.com happy gifting. What are we looking at?
- [36:56]
Simon Rosenberg
The worst case. Right. We're looking at the fact, the worst case. Elon Musk and Donald Trump are working now with Vladimir Putin abroad. We should assume they're also working with him domestically. And the question of whether or not all of our money and our treasury have been turned over to a hostile foreign power. Elon's now trying to exert control over the air traffic control system of the United States, which could ground all flying to a halt. We're in a crisis here, and it is important that our leaders, our political leaders in Washington who took an oath to protect the American Constitution, their constitutional order, become far more aggressive about defending it and not just retreating back to this sort of facile, important, and as we discussed, important attack on Trump, on his economic stewardship, which is central and critical in the first step. But we need to open up the second front because the things that are being broken right now are going to be very hard to repair. And, you know, in our lifetime, right now, a lot of this work is being done in the courts, you know, successfully, because the stuff is so obviously illegal and unconstitutional. They're losing virtually every court case. You know, and I think judges are getting increasingly outraged about the sort of the affront to our constitutional order. We also are benefiting from federalism, where there are limits to the power of the federal government in the United States and what they can do. These states have responsibilities to protect their citizens, and they're using them aggressively. The 23 Democratic attorney generals are being exemplars right now and doing remarkable work.
- [38:26]
Leigh McGowan
Yeah. And we're seeing power coming from places like J.B. pritzker in Illinois and Gavin Newsom in California. And, and, you know, Gavin, the people forget that the federalist system is actually, you know, this concept of states rights actually does exist. It's harder to just take over America as much as they're trying to do it. We have a bunch of things that are actually like, you can throw at the Constitution, which is what we're watching this government do. Our country is still set up around the Constitution, so it's harder to dismantle it. We also have to remember that, you know, a country like Hungary that is doing exactly what the Trump administration is doing. You know, Orban came in and got rid of the media and got rid of, you know, took over the courts and did all this stuff. That's a country of 40 million people. We're a country of 330 million people. It's a completely different animal to try and take over. And I think it's very important that we have such an active opposition to it. It's not just about resisting, it's about opposing. Right? And so we see people like the governors and the AGs, and hopefully people like Susan Collins and God bless her. I mean, I would love to see her more than concerned. Right? This is a running joke with Susan Collins. I mean, what concerns me is all the things you're saying. Like, they are breaking things that we are not going to be able to fix. Like, my family was devastated when they fired all the park rangers. Because it's like if you start drilling in our national lands, if you start clear cutting, you know, our national forests, you can't just grow that back. That doesn't come back with a new government, doesn't come back later. It's done, right? If you destroy the Department of Education, it's gone. Like, you can't just rebuild it. So I think what concerns me is how do regular Americans know what's happening if the mainstream media lies to them to please the President, when the press secretary decides who's going to be in the press room, who gets access to the administration, and then those people will be biased in what they report. It's like they expect us all to kind of just roll over and take it. We know the President lies. He knows that, we know that he lies. But there's nothing that we can do about it. And they're only going to surround themselves with people who won't call him out on it. I think about this recent budget vote that they took in the House, right? And they voted to literally gut Medicaid and gut snap benefits that affect literally 80 million Americans. This is where they get their insurance. This is where they get their health care. This is how over 50% of babies are born in America that will suddenly lose their health care just so we can give tax cuts to the ultra, ultra rich. And yet the Republican representatives were tweeting out things like, look, all the Democrats voted against this, and it was no tax on tips and it was no taxes on Social Security. Those two things weren't even in the bill. Right? They're just blatantly lying to the American people. And then the people are just supposed to believe it. I mean, you have a lifetime of experience in political strategy and television news. So how do you see the political media landscape right now, because obviously we're out here trying to tell the truth, but it's a very uphill battle because it's against people's best interests. But they don't even know, you know.
- [41:29]
Simon Rosenberg
Donald Trump, the central reason he won the election was this perception that the economy was better when he was in power. That's all gone already. He burned all that to the ground through his actual inflationary economic policies. And so the success that we've had collectively in changing people's fundamental understanding of Trump's economic plan to being one that is bad for them as opposed to good for them is a huge collective accomplishment that we have to build on now and tackle the next set of things. And I think that this is why this pro democracy media movement that is here is now so important. And why people supporting you and supporting Hopium and supporting Midas Touch and Courier newsroom and all the other things that are growing matters because our voices are going to be how many Americans actually really find out what's really happening in the country and where. I think that I, as I discussed earlier, where I have optimism is that I do think we have seen that we can move important messages into the electorate that changes their understanding of who Trump is. And I think Trump has been so impulsive and wild and narcissistic that they're making huge mistakes. The tariffs next week speak are mistakes. What he's doing with Musk is a mistake. They're going too far. We have more intrinsic power than we understand. And what I'm trying to say to everyone here is I'm giving you permission to go exercise that power. I'm creating the permission. Right now, you and I together are creating or giving everyone permission to go out and become information warriors for their democracy, for their country. And then finally, the other thing that gives me hope, and it's something that you alluded to with Hungary, we have 250 years of being America the free. Many of these countries that fell had very slow, only had been democracies for a few years. 10 years Germany, 10 years when it fell to Hitler. This stuff is far more ingrained in our culture and our Constitution and our way of life. And I think that we can evoke an outrage about the betrayal of all of this. It's the least conservative thing. If you wanted to make America great, how do you make America Russia again? Right? Because the thing you were getting at is the plundering of the federal government by oligarchs has begun the way it happened in Russia. Putin, I think, taught Musk and Trump how to do it, how to loot the treasury, how to steal the air traffic control system and privatize it underneath Elon Musk, so he now controls the air traffic control system. These were things that I think they were coached on and taught by Putin and the experience of what happened in Russia. I still come back to the inspiration that I receive from all the people in this country who are getting up every day, going to work, because we are Americans fighting for freedom and democracy is what we do. It's who we are. It's what we've been for 250 years. Donald Trump is the interloper in that. He's the betrayer. He is the guy that has betrayed the great American, American creed. We're on the side of the American flag and the greatest democracy in the history of the world. That's a powerful place to be. But we have to connect to that and we have to treat ourselves kindly, because this is going to be a difficult fight for many years. This is not going to be something that's going to get resolved in three weeks. We've got a long battle ahead of us, but we're on the right side of history. We just have to go act like it, be confident and strong and go kick this guy's ass.
- [45:01]
Leigh McGowan
Yeah, please. I mean, I think it's far easier to promise everybody everything, but when you need to deliver on those promises, you find out it's kind of impossible, Right? Especially if you're a pathological liar, only looking out for yourself. It's one of the things I like about the Hopium Chronicles. And if people aren't following Hopium, which Simon writes every day and does live videos on, I really recommend it because not only is it positive and informed, informative, it actually is action based. It always tells you, like, what you can be doing, what our biggest problems are from week to week. And I think that's really important because I think often people need action to not feel demoralized. And I think that's one of the things that you do best, Right? You even encourage your paid subscribers to self report actions that they've been doing in your daily chat. And I think that's really important.
- [45:49]
Simon Rosenberg
Every day now, our paid subscribers are teaching each other about what's possible because they're trying stuff out and saying, this is working here, you may want to try it there. Someone wrote a letter to the editor, they post it and then people cut and paste it and use it in their local newspaper. These kind of learning systems that we need to Build where we're learning from each other about what's working across the country and taking tactics and strategies that are effective and repopulating them all across the country immediately is going to be how we win. And what I've been really proud of, of the people in the Hopium community is that they get up every day. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people are reporting every day the actions they took that day. And my favorite part is when someone says, wow, that's a great idea. I'm gonna try that here. I need to do that. And we had an example of this where I've been encouraging our members to contact the local Democratic parties to get them to do protests themselves. Right? And last week, there was a protest outside one of the vulnerable House members offices that was organized by one of the Hopium members, right. With the local Democratic. And so it shows that, listen, you've got to channel your anxiety, your fear into action. It's what makes us powerful, and the absence of it is what makes them win. And you have to remember it every day. Not just the presence of things, but the absence of things. Donald Trump wants there to be absence. He wants us to disappear. He wants to be able to keep pushing with no pushback. So it's why. It's not just that when you take an action, you're taking an action. You're also preventing that absence from coming. It's a double whammy, right? In that sense. So, listen, I Lee, thank you so much. It's been great to be with you. Thank you for your incredibly inspired, articulate, interesting, creative leadership that you've provided all of us. It's really an honor to be with you here. I'm a big fan, and good luck, everybody. We got to keep fighting.
- [47:36]
Leigh McGowan
We got to keep fighting. Thank you, Simon. So that was Simon Rosenberg reminding us to stay focused. Don't get distracted by the new focus on the important. Our goal must not only be to limit the damage being done by these men who have no interest or concern in America or its people, but to change the public's perception and understanding of what this administration is doing. That, as Simon says, little cracks can become big cracks, and little wins can become big wins. We need to be a ferocious and effective opposition and demand our representatives do the same. That this idea that Trump and Master Mask are strongmen is a fiction. They are actually weak and feckless and making mistake after mistake, mistakes that we won't be able to fix if we don't get people to break from them. So talk to your people. Use terms like criminal and crimes and breaking the law. Encourage your leadership to do the same. At the end of the day, we are being betrayed and the patriots in all of us need to get comfortable with standing up and fighting back. I want to thank Simon for joining us today and you for caring enough about democracy to be here. Now go and subscribe to the Hopium Chronicles and channel your anxiety and fear into action. Until next week. PG out before you go, I just want to thank the premium members of this podcast and encourage you, if you're not a member, to consider supporting my work. As Simon said, it is our responsibility to grow the independent media space to support those telling the truth and working for the collective good in a world of propaganda, working for profit and power. So if you aren't a member of Politics Girl Premium, Please go to politicsgirl.com and consider signing up. You will get this podcast ad free, along with my rants and bonus content sent directly to your inbox. So even if my work is silenced on social media, you will still get access to the truth. There is a link to sign up in the bio of this episode, but also@politicsgirl.com and as always, please please like and share this podcast so we can grow the audience. The more people who have access to real information, the more effective we will be at defeating these criminals. As always, thank you for your time and support. Politics Girl Podcast is written and performed by me, Lee McGowan in partnership with the Midas Media Network and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment. All rights reserved.