Democratic Economic Agenda and Future Proposals

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And then get to the drilling in your home with the peace of mind of knowing you're safe. Snug as a bug in a rug. No need to wait around for a technician appointment. I set up a Simply Safe. Really huge fan of the app , the customer support, really reliable, gives you peace of mind. We've partnered with Simply Safe to offer an exclusive discount for our listeners. Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting SimplySafe.com slash crooked. That's half off at SimplySafe.com slash crooked. There's no safe like Simpli Safe. Welcome to Plot Save America. I'm John Fabra.. I'm John Lovett I'm Tommy Vitor. Welcome back, Tommy. Great to be here. I missed you guys. You didn't miss much. Oof. Man, a lot of weird stuff happened. Were you able to unplug a little bit from the news? I unplugged, but not from my 3,000 CC boobs that I travel with everywhere. Really tough that you missed that. I was thinking about you. Isn't that a weird thing? I was like Tommy was really talking about this story. Beautiful Bazinga's Bimbo Focation. And you said that you had just suddenly appeared in that waffle house. I 've been slowly making your way back? I was in the Waffle House with the three thousandcc breasts and I was like, how did I get here? I must have I'm on vacation. Record scratch. All right, sorry. I noticed I noticed Tim Miller wore some himself on the bulwarks. Tim's doing prop comedy. Love it where you l you letting Tim do that. Only the fag has to wear the boobs on the show. Where are your tits? I mean Where the t can we fly in a pair of magnificent magnificent boozums for John? I was thinking more of the person who likes to be at the center of all the comedy. Oh the court jester. You're right. You're right. I honestly I reacted defensively. Next week is a good question. Smash a watermelon on this table next week. Anyway, we're moving on. We have a lot of other things to talk about. On today's show, we're going to talk about Trump's Easter threat to commit war crimes against Iran if they don't quote open the fucking strait. Uh the press conference he held to congratulate himself on the rescue of the downed American pilots, new warning signs about the war's economic damage, and why the White House is asking for a $1.5 trillion defense budget for next year, paid for by cuts to nearly everything else. We'll also check back in on the mass deportation campaign, which is continuing at full speed, uh, even though it's fallen out of the headlines. Then Congresswoman Sarah McBride stops by to talk with Lovett about her first year in Congress and how Democrats are preparing for the big fights coming up. Can't wait to hear what they're doing. Yeah. Remember them? I do. I do, fortunately. Quick reminder: please consider becoming a Crooked Media subscriber if you haven't already. So you don't miss out on any of the great content we're putting out for our friends at the pod. Subscribers get our new extra episode of Pod Save America called Pod Save America Only Friends, other subscriber-only shows like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer. Access to all of our excellent Substack newsletters like PodSave America Open Tabs, written by Reed Churlin, who's here with us in studio today. Wow. Wow. What a what a uh what an appearance. Uh and then also you get ad-free episodes of all your favorite crooked pods, uh, and you get to feel good about supporting one of the few independent, proudly pro-democracy media outlets left in Trump's America. So head to Crooked.com slash friends and subscribe today. All right, let's get to the news. Week six of Operation Epic Fury and there is no end in sight . The energy crisis is getting worse. Iran is shooting down U.S. military jets. Negotiations are going nowhere. And Trump has become so desperate that he's threatening to commit war crimes against Iranian civilians and destroy the entire country in one night. Maybe tonight. By now you've probably seen the president's Easter message to the Iranian regime: quote: open the fucking strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Praise be to I believe the holiest of the Christian holidays. Yes. Yeah, it is. It is the holiest of the Christian holidays. Or anyone. Yeah. Or anyone. I thought it was a joke when I saw I thought it was a fake tweet. It was the f because it was Easter morning. I actually didn't open Twitter because my kids were up early with the with their Easter baskets. Um, not not for any religious reasons, don't worry. Um, and my brother sent me a text and he's like, I can't fucking believe Trump's truth. Did you see it? And he sent it to me. I'm like Andy, did you fall for some some misinformation somewhere. I thought some people got caught too. I did too. And then I started looking, I was like, holy shit. I really th takes a lot to surprise me. It's it was it was shocking. It was shocking. I think it was also the capitalizing of F and fucking straight, which also maybe that's In press conference when he was promoting his fight against Lennox Lewis. Of course , he said, I'll fuck you till you love me. Oh yeah. All praise to Allah. I forgot he added all praise to Allah. I don't remember almost verbatim. The fuck you till you love me, really. That was that stood out. That took all the attention. Yeah, no, I know. I know. Lennox Lewis. I don't know. I don't really remember that well, but anyway, back to the war crimes. They're bad. If Iran doesn't open the uh fucking strait by eight PM Tuesday, the president says he will order the destruction of all the co untry's bridges and power plants. He took questions on all of this Monday morning at a press conference uh at the White House. Let's listen. The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night. You've said Iranians would be mad if you stopped these attacks, but why would they want you to blow up their infrastructure to to cut off their power? Wouldn't that be punishing Iranians for the actions of the regime? They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom. We've had numerous intercepts. Please keep bombing. Bombs that are dropping near their homes. Please keep bombing. Do it. And these are people that are living where the bombs are exploding from the government. Who are you with? I'm with the New York Times. Zolan from the New York Times. Are you feeling it? No, no, no. and end the war going to be bombing Iran to the stone ages. So which is it? Are you winding this down or are you escalating? I don't know. We're giving them till tomorrow, eight o'clock Eastern time. And after that, they're gonna have no bridges, they're gonna have no power plants. Stone Ages, yeah. Stone Ages. Trump also started that press conference off by saying, militarily, it's been one of the best Easters. That's just so funny. Really? Interesting adverb that he's turned militarily, it's been one of the Really getting into that Easter spirit. Yeah. That famous Easter spirit. I also think he thinks that Easter 's Monday. He said a couple times, Happy Easter. Happy Easter. It's great Easter today. I'm like it is Monday, sir. He kept referring to Easter Monday. I think what he meant was it was the day of the Easter egg roll. Right. Well in his mind is probably the only Easter that really counts. Right. All right, lots to unpack here. Uh let's start with the war crimes, uh, which the administration is already trying to argue would not actually constitute war crimes. A White House official told the Wall Street Journal that power plants are quote, legitimate military targets because destroying them could foment civil unrest, complicating Tehran's path to a nuclear device. Seems like a bit of a stretch to me. What do you think, Tom? Yeah, I agree with that. I ran that quote by uh Ona Hathaway, who's a professor of international law at Yale Law School, no big deal. She's been on Podse of the World. Uh she said they gave they gave JD Vance a degree. Yeah, and I think all the classes are pass fail, but yeah, go on. Anyway, sorry. I'm sure she's wonderful. Like the smartest person I know . She said it would be a war crime to carry out those threats, destroying civilian infrastructure to foment civil unrest is clearly unlawful. And then but on Monday, as you mentioned, I mean it gets worse, he threatened to bomb all of the bridges and all of the power plants in Iran by midnight on Tuesday. Um, and explicitly threatening to bomb all of the power plants serving a country of ninety million people, that's about as clear cut of a war crime as I could think of. I mean, i in case anyone still cares, the Geneva Conven tions want um an international humanitarian law. They want you to distinguish between military and civilian infrastructure. So like don't hit a power grid, don't hit uh water systems. And attacks are also supposed to be proportional. So you could say, okay, take out that power plant that fuels that base over there, but taking out all of them, it's just collective punishment. Same with the bridges. Yeah. If you bomb the Eiffel Tower, it would screw up production of the next season of Emily in Paris. And even if that's a worthy goal, we would all say that it was uh uh an inappropriate use of force. Yeah, the the whole thing is it's all ludicrous. It is ludicrous, even if that's a worthy goal, even if it would be in our national interest to stop that production. Uh it's all ludicrous, right? Like it's not a j it's not a nobody believes we would be bombing civilian infrastructure because we were trying to foment unrest so that the nuclear program is disrupted. But they really backed them. Like it's just worth why are they saying something so stupid? And it is because, well, they can't say they're fomenting arrest because they want the regime to change, because either the goal of the war is not regime change or the regime change has already taken place. They can't say it's because they have a military necessity to conduct the the bombing missions that they're sending people sending the military on because they claim they have total dominance of the skies and, there's never been a more effective military campaign in the history of warfare. So they have to come up with some cockamame justification for doing this. When we all know why they're doing it, he would be bombing civilian infrastructure so that the threats to do so before the bombing uh would have been true. They were real threats for whatever future horrible things do to you. What did Lily Collins do? What did Lily Collins do to you? Is that someone involved in the star of Emily and Paris? I don't I have actually never been here. I'll be honest, I've never seen Emily in Paris and I just thought it'd be I just couldn't think of a show. I thought but I I'll tell you to be honest, if you want to get behind the scenes, I thought what would bombing what would bombing Paris dis disrupt? Emily apparently So that's all. So if you really if you really want to interrogate it, there might be there is a justification for the threat he's issuing. He is trying to The threat is a warrant Well he's I yes. But what the the the threat has a purpose. The threat look he's political purpose. He's putting political pressure on them to try to to get to some kind of a deal when as we talked about last week, he's on this sort of ratchet of false threats and assurances, and he each one has to keep being backed up. He does this threat, then he carries it out. Then what's the threat after that if the regime holds together? But the the like once the threat, once he's acting on it, there is no purpose because it only existed so that he could try to get some s sort of a deal to end the conflict. journal was like, oh, it's to foment civil unrest, to topple the regime. When it's like that specific thing that was happening in the in the Geneva Conventions and in the DOD war manual is against the law to say that like you are going to target civilian infrastructure in order to foment unrest, in order to stop with the dream. But you know what? It's like we get into like, is it a war crame? Is it not a war crack I and the reason we're talking about this is I saw on on Fox News this morning, John Roberts uh on Fox was like, gonna be hard for the Democrats to argue this is a war crime because uh they they did this in Kosovo uh and they they took out the power lines there in that war and we did it in the in the first Gulf War. And it's like, yeah, what we learned after doing it in the first Gulf War is that uh taking out uh the Iraqi power grid in the first Gulf War ended up leading to countless, countless civilian deaths. And horrible yeah, consequences for decades. I mean wrong I mean this just war crime debate aside, like you want the population to overthrow their leaders and be a new friendlier US aligned Iran. So you're gonna bomb them into submission, take out all their infrastructure, destroy the country for a decade. And then you know Trump's response on the I I ICC stuff is like, we're not a party to it as a country. And also like, okay, Haig, come and fucking get me if you want to arrest me for war crimes. But the his bigger problem is going to be when the Iranians respond by hitting desalination plants in Kuwait and Iraq and all these places. And then you have a genuine humanitarian catastrophe throughout the Gulf. Aaron Powell Yeah. And I think people hear like, oh, so a couple of bridges go away and power plants, like that's not great. But you know, the the power plants go down in a country. That means that every hospital where someone's on a ventilator, someone's in a dialysis , k little kids in incubators, insulin is spoiled. Like all of people die in hospitals right away, uh, if there's if all the power is gone. Um it hurts water treatment.for Bee you even get to the bombing, the desalination plants, there's water pumps that that uh clean the water. So you get when you bomb power plants, you get water that's contaminated that people drink, then that causes all kinds of disease, food access, the food, a whole bunch of food spoils. I mean, like it is a humanitarian catastrophe just bombing the power plants. And and never mind anything else that he wants to do. Never mind any of the people who are gonna die, civilians who are gonna die in all of this. I mean it's just fucking nuts. What what are we talking about here? We're p no we, should not be doing World War II style total combat against the country of Iran, a place we are have not declared war against, that Congress has not authorized a conflict with there's no even mention of any kind of imminent threat. We are still in a place where he needs to be saying there's an imminent threat to the United States in order to justify there can uh any kind of military action. No, bombing the bridges of Iran is not preventing any kind of imminent threat to the country. It's it's i it we're like the idea of like, oh, is it a war crime? Is it not a war crime? Like sometimes it can be justified to bomb a power plant, like all of that is predicated on a rational set of goals you're trying to achieve in a military campaign that you're weighing against the cost to the civilians, how could it be proportional when we don't want to know the fuck we're doing it? Like we don't even know what we're doing it for. Well the strategy's also kind of uh the logic's a little bit uh faulty in that uh the regime is made up of a bunch of lunatics, but somehow who who who kill their people, but somehow if you hurt their people, that's gonna pressure them to make a deal. Like that's not usually how it works. Here's here's one um reaction to Trump. He has gone insane and all of you are complicit, rep meaning Republicans. Our president is not a Christian, and his words and actions should not be supported by Christians. This is not making America great again. This is evil. Marjorie Taylor Green. Marjorie Taylor Green. Uh speaking some truth. Probably one of the strongest responses. Yeah. Um on uh on Easter Sunday there. So on the rescue, because we don't want to gloss over that, obviously an incredibly heroic, impressive operation by the military, which Trump spent a lot of time talking about at the press conference, probably a little too much, judging by this exchange with uh General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. did you send all together approximately uh to the operation? I'd love to keep that a secret . Okay, well we are but I will tell you the number, I'll keep it a secret, but it was hundreds. Sir, that's not how a secret works. Uh Sir, Hutter Cold, uh one fifty two very much um uh the the the the person who reported this was anonymous but but goes by either Lisa S. or L. Simpson. Simpson's joke. This is like just a couple of weeks ago. Remember when he divulged the member of Congress who had a terminal illness that he believes he saved? Yeah . In front of Mike Johnson's like, sir, that was not supposed to be public information. Oh my I mean just for what it's worth, like I I I watched the little press conference we all did. Like I'm very skeptical that anything that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth or Pete Heggs' mouth. Dan Cain, I think, is more of a like just the facts kind of guy. The stories are amazing. This person climbing 7,000 feet, the the pilot or the uh the the bomber person, the the airman, sorry, um, to avoid getting captured, the A-10 Warthog pilot who got hit, continued to fight, flew out of the country, and then had to eject. Like it's amazing stuff. There will be medals of honor awarded for this. But I I kept hearing the my NSC staffer head uh was was screaming , shut up, why are you guys doing this the whole time? Because like what happens if another pilot gets shot down and they want to conduct a similar mission and they've just talked about all the ways they did it. Like the CIA is bragging about creating a disinformation campaign to help the pilot get out of Iran.Feels like those assets or tools would be useful as it's an ongoing conflict. Um Trump is uh the worst offender, obviously, about talking about sensitive details because you have both John Ratcliffe, the CIA director and then Dan Cain, the chairman, started their remarks by saying, like, I know you guys are gonna want a lot of details, but we're not gonna give them to you. And then Trump just lays out all the details. Like you keep reading examples in news reports to the CIA's uh exquisite technologies or something like that. That's the way they're fuzzing it up. Trump seemed to all but confirm that it was a drone or a satellite capability that was able to spot the pilot on a mountain from 40 miles away at night with some sort of specific new lens. That sounded to me like a lot of a lot of detail I might not want out. Uh he was again bragging about cyber operations to take out weapon systems in Venezuela. And the irony of it all is they're also bitching about a a a leak, which is a really bad leak that uh I think the the news outlets were reporting that um the US had identified the pilot, but the other crew member was still missing in Iran and that obviously is a big tip for the Iranians. Um but so they're gonna do a leak investigation. They might even prosecute media outlets that reported on it. But I think this was first reported by someone in Israel, uh Israeli reporter who was really close close to Netanyahu, which makes you wonder what if Netanyahu is the source on this, then what happens? So that was an interesting wrinkle in all this. But I think this this whole thing was very ill considered. Aaron Powell The fact that the military can achieve the goals that the president sets, whether in the rescue, which was extraordinary, or in being able to complete the objectives of the bombings of Iran, like that that is uh we have an extraordinary military with incredible capabilities. But the reason they were doing this today is they want the respect and glory and plaudits to redound to them. But this administration doesn't get any of that credit. This is not something that they did. This is something they put the military in a position to have to execute, and I'm glad that they did, and I'm glad we have a military that's capable of this. But all of the everything that they're describing, all the the the techniques and capabilities that may have been revealed, what our enemies learn from this, the uh incredible cost of it, the risk of it. All of it is not an argument that like s that makes this administration seem more impressive. It is uh all the more kind of like uh an example of how absurd it is that that we've put this incredible capabilities in the hands of this person to be deployed in this haphazard and dangerous way in this campaign. So like they are doing this because they think it makes them look good, but it just doesn't. Yeah, the whole thing pissed me off 'cause like I you know, my my first reaction when I saw the news that they were rescued was like, Oh thank God and then it was like, Wow, I can't believe the the military pulled this off this is incredible. And then my next reaction was being so fucking pissed at Donald Trump for putting them in this position. And you know it's funny, I started thinking about all the times we had to listen to fucking uh, you know, uh war crime Dr. Seuss, Pete Hegseth over the last week be like, we control the skies, we fly over Tehran , no one can touch us. We do in it. And then even today at the fucking press conference, Heg Seth goes We control the skies. You see, we flew for seven hours in daylight over Iran to get the first pilot, and Iran did nothing about it. Well, they did shoot down two of our planes, so I guess they did something about before that. And you keep telling us that the whole military's destroyed, that their navy's destroyed, that whatever I mean it's just a it is indicative of their larger how fucked up there are larger messages on this whole thing, which is like we won the war, but also we're gonna bomb them back to the stone age because we haven't won the war yet. uh we were there was somebody that we thought was like generally pretty smart, but they were like uh and we're talking about how like, oh, people's insecurities will always get in the way of their of their even their even the intentions that they have, like they even if they know what's best, their insecurities will always get in the way. Like who is this performance of domination of Iran for right now? Right? Like who is it for? Like the that Fox News is he's got the people on Fox News, the countries against this, not a lot of people are going to be persuaded by Pete Heggseth at the podium talking about how we dominate the skies at this point when gas prices are gonna uh hit like movie theater popcorn prices soon. And and it's certainly not helpful when clearly we're in this sort of fucking like contest with a bunch of people and of leaders in Iran that are putting their own interests ahead of their peoples every single day and who have their own need to have protect their egos more than they do of protecting the people of Iran . So what is the value at this point, right? Like why are you not speaking softly and carrying a big stick? Why are you not creating this space where if you really do believe that there should be a deal, where you are talking about how much you want that kind of a deal rather than like the endless, like I think it's just who they are. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's like it's Trump too. I like m watching yeah I was reading I was I was off last week I was reading the stories like seeing that these guys were downed and then they were rescued. My reaction was thank God also and all and there were all these people online who were like, oh, you you know you, you're probably unhappy that they got saved or you know, this makes Trump look that's such a crazy thing. It's like my reaction was thank God both for the missing airmen and for the people involved, the Americans involved in the rescue effort, but also for this broader war effort generally, because I wanted to be over. And I thought the worst thing possible was if Iran suddenly had a bunch of hostages. Yeah. Like the escalation that would have occurred from that, the way this thing could get protracted, the way you could see ground forces going in for some sort of like I it would have been awful. Like thank God these guys were out for every single reason imaginable under the sun. Yeah I had the same thought too is that like if there's God forbid there's like a a mass casualty event of American troops or hostages and footage broadcast, like y you think that's going to like bring us closer to some kind of end of the war or diplomatic? Like that's exactly how these things escalate and get out of hand and, when you have bloodthirsty warm ongers who are barbaric, like Donald Trump and Pete Heggseth, then it's even fucking worse. So who knows what the state of the negotiations will be by the time this episode is out Tuesday, but as of right now, they are not great. The U.S. reportedly tried for an immediate 45-day ceasefire to give more time for negotiations that would hopefully lead to a permanent deal. Iran wants the permanent deal first. Trump thinks uh threatening to destroy the entire country might change their minds . What do you guys think? Does a 45 day ceasefire mean that Iran de facto reopens the Strait of Hormuz for 45 days? I think that's what they wanted and that's what I I read somewhere that was part of what they wanted in the forty five day ceasefire. Because what like what scenario would Iran do that? Just sort of like give up all your economic and political leverage that is built and is building on Trump to end the conflict. I I don't see the logic of this for them in any way. It seems like they've rejected the ceasefire. It seems like their rejoinder was a set of maximalist demands. I don't s have any hope for a deal. Again, Trump is like, we're just gonna bomb you more 'cause the people want us to bomb you. I mean, he's crazy. Um and so uh meanwhile like the Iranians are learning and adapting and they're starting to use like clustered munitions on their uh ballistic missiles that are hitting civilian areas in Israel and could be very effective against US bases. So I I just I feel like both sides seem to think they have the upper hand in different ways. It does feel like a very Trumpian offer, which is like, let's get just a a quick ceasefire now and then we'll just punt everything, you know, forty five give just give me another forty five da Yeah. Because everything is short term, everything is tomorrow. Let's see how the markets are. Let's see the everything will calm down. And then in the forty five days, at the end of that, you know, maybe we'll push another forty five days if we don't get a deal and another forty five days. And this so and I I think the Iranians know that. Obviously, why would they trust uh how are they trusting them at this point? Yeah, the the like I don't we also don't know what kind of information Donald Trump is getting. Obviously reports that he's not getting like the full picture of of of the like implications of the war , but presumably someone inside the White House is talking about what happens to oil prices if if we escalate and Iran escalates, if the region is further destabilized, that this will have l immediate and then kind of sustained terrible economic consequences. I'll just say like I I hope that that that Donald Trump's threats do lead to some kind of a ceasefire of some kind, even if it seems unlikely, even if it even if where we're at right now as we record this, uh it it seems like both sides aren't willing uh uh to give because like the best case scenario right now is that he does not go through with what he is promising to go through with. And the fear, whether it's because a plane is shot down over Iran or because he feels obligated to carry out this threat is we are now on this endless ratchet where okay, he carries out this threat, the regime doesn't fall and doesn't capitulate. What's the next group of threats that comes after this? What happens in the next week after he's destroyed the country and yet the country still exists and the regime is still in power. Like I don't know that they're thinking three days ahead, but I suppose the rest of us ought to at least remember that there is a next week that will continue to be after he goes through with this on Tuesday. It's also ridiculous that we're talking about this right now when right before the weekend after he gave that primetime address. Remember when he was like uh the strait? We don't need the strait. The straight after the after we after we leave, the strait will just open naturally. It's like and then now it's open the strait or we'll bomb you back to the stone. Also you keep saying it's Europe's problem when like eighty percent of the oil and gas that goes through the Strait of Hormuz is going to Asia and it's screwing everyone there. So yeah. Meanwhile the, the uh war keeps getting more unpopular by the day uh here in America. Good news, Trump seems to know that. Bad news doesn't seem to care. Uh here he is telling reporters at the White House Easter egg roll that he'd like to take control of Iran's oil, only if the rest of us would let him enjoy the music in the background. Take the oil. Because it's there for the taking. There's not a thing they can do about it. Unfortunately, the American people would like to see us come home . When you say the American people don't want that, how do you know that? Are you listening to Peter? Well I tell you what, I'm pretty good at this stuff and I go around and I check. They'd like to see us win and come home. And everyone's saying, oh is Trump losing MAGA? No, I'm not losing MAGA. MAGA loves what I'm doing. And CNN did a poll of MAGA voted, a big poll, very important poll, Harry. And he uh went on, he said, this is amazing. 100% support. What do you say to Americans? I don't know. They're foolish. I always quote from the book of Harry on Easter. Harry. There's a big poll from CNN. It's a Harry pole. Harry got a Harry pole. Uh oil's the oldest resurrection story, sir. Quite a message for the midterms there. Wild. You think Republicans are gonna run on that? You think uh like is he just I is he just impervious to bad polling? Because he clear it's funny, he he did the Harry, the Maggas With Me poll, but he he clearly knows th that it's not popular with other people. Yeah, every day I'm more convinced that Trump does not give a shit about the midterms, does not give a shit about the future of the Republican Party, does not give a shit about JD Vance. This is a political smash and grab job for him, his cronies, his family to make as much money as possible and then do things to burnish his legacy. There's just no other explanation for why uh you would talk like that, for why you'd build the ballroom, like the monument to himself in Virginia, uh start a war with Iran that sends oil prices to the moon, and then do it all before the midterms. And it's politically, like he's not even trying. Like he didn't CPAC, but that because he said he was too busy, but that week he went to the Saudi investment conference down in Miami. Hmm. I know. Over the long run. So like that I heard that foolish quote and my and my brain went to every single attack ad I would run linking members of Congress to the war in Iran, the kick off with that quote, and then it's just like image after image of death and destruction and, you know, skyrocketing energy prices, et cetera. We we are like running out of Trump quotes to fit in a sixty second ad, because we just i I feel like uh like once every couple episodes now we're like this is the this is the line that's gonna be in all the midterm ads and I and I still think they're all very ripe for this. I mean we the Easter remember the Easter uh lunch that we can't afford Medicare, we have a war to pay for. Yeah, right. We had that just last week and there's just do you think I do you think this is gonna ruin the affordability tour? Do you think you still damper once a week for Susie Wiles that she wants him to do that to sell his economic agenda? Eggs only, omelets only, because he's proud of those, that price. Yeah, I will say the the one thing you can also take away though from what he's saying there is he believes there is political pressure to get out of this, right? Like his version of I need to end this war and declare victory is the American people want me to win quickly and leave. Now, American people don't want to be in this conflict, but they certainly don't want boots on the ground over us to invade Iran to take the oil and he does seem cognizant of that. I think the I think what there's a kind of story they're telling themselves, which is this is still short. We will get this quickly. The effects will receive Aaron Powell Yeah. And unless then they bomb all the power plants and and everything else. He's he's probably looking for some kind of face saving thing where you can say like I threatened them. Yes. They decided to give me this, which d they probably didn't give him whatever he's gonna say they gave him. Totally possible that in the like w while we're recording this, he says we got a deal. Iran says we don't have a deal, but but there's some some some uh r story about how much they've given and the gifts they've given and the fact that he's not gonna do the bombing this week, but he could do it next week. Like that is so possible. And I genuinely like, like, fuck this guy and fuck these people. But man, I really hope that they can pretend, like, pretend they have some kind of a win because this neck, what they are prom ising and what comes after, like it it just it it's it's so clear that they're being cavalier, but but I like I would rather Trump be able to walk out in the Rose Garden tomorrow and say, I did it. I achieved everything I said I was. I everyone was wrong about me, then have him go through with this. I really don't know. Not me. I want him to go through it. Who's arguing the other side of the man? No, I want a catastrophic war. No, I'm not saying you do. I'm not saying you do, but I'm saying you do. But I would rather be I'd rather me personally be wrong. I want him the best outcomes end this war tomorrow for sure. And it's gonna involve him spinning some bullshit. I just think that the the chances of that are so much less than they are with all the other bullshit he's done, right? I keep thinking and making this comparison, it's like the tariffs, you know, and you're like, well, the tariffs you ever did the taco thing, you're like, oh, he backed off, it's fine, and then it's saving face, because it's a treaty about fucking tariffs, you know? Like this is you're dealing with like I think that the people on the other side of this are maybe if if if they get a vote. Yeah. They get a vote and they're crazy too. They're I'm not gonna say that they're completely crazy because I'm sure they're doing Right. All that much. They care about the regime and the regime survival. They're like you're dealing with people who aren't fucking Trump wants to end this to get like to deal with the near term political challenges. The Iranians don't want to get bombed again in six months or twelve months or eighteen months, right? They're they're thinking longer term. They want a deal where the US can force the Israelis not to keep bombing them too. Like they're playing a longer game here. Yeah. They apparently might want the end to the war in Lebanon as They want the end of the war on all th all the fronts, which then also includes Iraq. PodSave America is brought to you by Article. Article makes it effortless to build a home that lasts without the boutique markup. Their curated collections of mid-century coastal and scandy furniture are designed to mix and match perfectly, so you can create a cohesive designer look that will stand the test of time. Uh we've got a ton of article furniture here at the office. It looks really great. We've had it for years now. It's all held up well. Looks, you know, like the same day we got it. Showed up fast. Uh there's no long shipping time or wait. Um, they have a just a lot of great products that are worth checking out. They offer fast and affordable shipping across the US and Canada with options for professional assembly if you prefer a hands-off experience. 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That was another one I was like, Tommy should be here to yell about Jamie Dying. What is he he was an asshole? Went out of his way too. What a what a like what a kiss didn't need to appear on Fox. Didn't he was like, hello to all the Fox viewers. I'm Jamie Diamond and I'm here to say that like uh the the Iranians A love war with Iran in a major way. It was basically like the Iranians caused uh October 7th and Americans died and it was just the w he sounded like fucking Netanyahu's. Oh. Bizarre . So he he warned in his annual letter to shareholders, 'cause that's that's important to him, uh that there could be more oil price shocks in the coming months and that the war could keep inflation and interest rates high. But you know, the American people might have to pay more. He said this on people might have to pay more, but you know, it's uh the economy is resilient. Thank you, Jamie Down. Right now people feel worse about the economy and inflation that at any time since the post COVID inflation surge. I just saw that uh gas prices have now uh surpassed uh in in triple a records like the gas prices and tracks the gas prices higher than at any time since right during COVID with the supply shock for COVID in history. So that that's where we are with gas prices now. Um I am having a hard time imagining that people don't feel worse about the economy than they do today on election day. Like I don't know how this I I don't I I don't think this gets better by election day at this point. I think we've pa even if the war ends today, I think we've passed the point of no return about things getting worse in the next couple months. But I don't know. Does anyone disagree? No. I mean I like so you're right. Gas prices are what, like four twelve today is the national average. I think that goes up before it goes up down and it could go up dramatically. Similarly, natural gas prices, especially in Europe, are up and will be up for a while, especially as they go into the winter. So that energy shock is like the initial uh thing we're feeling, but it's far from the only implication because fertilizer prices are way up, right? That's gonna lead to higher prices, lower yields, potentially food shortages. Um, countries in Asia are rationing fuel, they're shutting down factories. So like the economic impact is across the economy. Yes, and like like flights are grounded, like people can't get jet fuel. And then so it's like developing countries are getting hit now. Then it hits major economies in India and Japan and South Korea. They start to slow down. You guys talked about helium apparently and and ripped some helium on an episode, right? We did. We did some whippets here. That would impact semiconductor uh manufacturing, which you know that that's happens to be propping up the entire uh US artificial intelligence bubble, the availability of all these semiconductors. The Gulf is going to take like a multi-hundred billion dollar hit to GDP. And all the various industries, their gigantic sovereign wealth runs are propping up, will be impacted. So like I just there's a way this will ripple out in ways we are not seeing now. It will last for a long time. None of it is good. What I the fact that Jamie Diamond can like be blase about this is cra zy to me. Yeah. Trump has failed to address people's concerns about prices before he started this war in Iran. Everything he's done, tariffs have made matters worse. He's rested on the resilience of the American economy to protect him from the bad policies he's pursuing. But gas prices will be going up as we head into the summer. Even if there's some recovery months from now, people will have experienced months and months of the economy uh of pri ces going up uh by the time you get to November, that will be additive, that will aggregate and as people kind of come to their conclusions as we head towards November. And we'll get to it in a minute, but it's not as though Trump is out there doing his affordability tour. We've just gotten a window into his uh uh priorities for next year, and I don't think they're gonna kind of answer the mail. Yeah. So the the the budget's out, um and uh less anyone thought that the uh what he said at the Easterly The states are gonna have to raise taxes if we want childcare, then he added Medicaid and Medicare, because the federal government is busy, quote, fighting wars and quote, we have to take care of one thing, one thing, military protection. So then they released the budget. For uh 2027, they're asking for $1.5 trillion for the Department of Defense. That is an increase of $400 billion . And that doesn't include the rumored $200 billion supplemental for the war. Trump propos es paying for all this new war spending with huge cuts to just about everything else, health programs, medical research, education funding. One big exception, uh, White House renovations. The budget says there were three hundred and seventy seven million dollars in improvements last year. Uh and they're estimating another one hundred and seventy four million dollars in spending for next year, which includes both the ballroom and other renovations. Apparently they told political tech companies all paying for the ballroom with the bright ballroom Some some White House official anonymously told Politico like some of the private money is included, but like that doesn't really add up, so I don't what the hell they're talking about there. Axios muse that uh quote, the most powerful populist of this century is at risk of becoming what he ran against a deficit spending interventionist asking working class Americans to shoulder the cost of war. Perhaps a sign that maybe he was never actually a populist in the first place. I don't know. Wow. I'm just Perhaps he's a hypocrite. Yeah, I just can't think of anything uh uh uh like just uh on a Democrat ic consultant's ketamine journey, I don't think you'd come up with something better than not just a one point five trillion dollar defense budget to cut health care and other social spending, but also uh about you know, f north of five hundred million on a Trump home reno. Like that is an extraordinary uh message for us. Frothing at the these d these consultants, these strategies could be frothing at the mouth. And then they look at the news and everyone's like Hassan Piker . Let's relitigate Gaza. Look at our poll. Look at this. We've been showing this pretend this pretend message for a decade that they wanna they wanna cut your health care to pay for tax cuts for the rich and his ballroom and this fucking war that no one wants, and now it's happening in real life. I want a third way summit on streamers. Um it's just like it is so clear that the least America first policy platform you could design. Like I like voters are not stupid. They know that Trump promised to invest at home, to take care of Americans first, to avoid foreign wars. And is this the thing he said last week when he said he bragged about telling his OMB director , we're fighting wars, we can't take care of daycare. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's a bad quote. That's Medicare and Medicaid. He throws those in at the end. He didn't know the cameras, he didn't know it was being live streamed. Yeah, being streamed everything. And and before so the one point five trillion dollar Pentagon proposal, uh budget proposal was floated before the Iran War. And afterwards, there was a Washington Post story about how the Pentagon literally couldn't figure out how to spend all the extra money. They were like, what bullshit weapon systems do we need to acquire with? Like they don't know who's ask who's paying who's asking for this then? I don't know. Nobody was. And so now like I guess you could uh fill that need with all the interceptor missile stockpiles and shit we'll sound like we're plenish. But that will that's not a a money problem. That's a supply problem. That will take decades to fix. So it's just I all of this again makes me think this guy does not care about politics anymore. Just doesn't give a shit. It's also great. They make a lot of money. There's every every every dollar in the defense budget goes to some district. This is saying yes to everybody. Every Republican member who he needs, every contractor, every every every executive coming through, this is money that gets to their pockets one way or another. Aaron Powell Although I I did see that some Republicans already in Congress are like, uh, I don't know about this budget. But then of course they can't have like a like a full throated uh you know, critique of the budget. You got I think Susan Collins' quote was like, uh Well, Congress does have the power of the purse. Oh, really, Susan Collins. Go ahead. I d Iare dare you you to vo tote for this. Yeah. It's it's it's funny to think like when we first started having the conversation about a supplemental funding request coming down the pike to pay for the Iran war, initially the reports were it was gonna be like maybe fifty billion, then it was 200 billion. And the framing was, oh no, what a tough vote for Democrats. They could be accused of being, you know, not supporting the troops. And now it's like, oh, this is the most politically devastating thing for Republicans I could possibly draw up in my brain if I tried. Yeah, Marjorie Taylor Green's out there calling him evil. Right. And everyone's like, oh, are we going to support the troops with the budget? Nancy Macy's like, I'm hell no on this stupid budget Lauren Boebert. Yeah. A 40% increase in the largest Pentagon budget in history, as time points out, that they don't know how to spend. But that is not enough to do the kind of military conflicts he wants to do. So really they need one point two trillion this year, go up to one point four trillion next year to w but in part by the way. Well because Cuba's on the backburner now. So we gotta next. But one lesson they've learned, right, is that if Donald Trump is going to become a a a an interventionalist uh regime changer, you need a bigger baseline because you can't go back to Congress to ask for more money. But and like a lot of it, I think is, for the Golden Dome missile defense system, which is like probably doesn't work. You know, I think he thinks it's magic force field around America. Yeah, I mean he thinks it's it's he's trying to make a play on the Iron Dome system, which is Israel's short range rocket system, which works very well, but those are like little like Katusha rockets that are flying in from Lebanon, not intercontinental ballistic missiles where you're hitting a you know, something going Mach seven with bullets, basically. Yeah, I don't yeah, I do think if we start to face um uh uh missile barrages from like Quebec and Toronto, I think we've got bigger fish to fry. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Whether you are navigating anxiety, depression, relationship hurdles, or financial stress, or just need an objective professional to help manage daily stresses, BetterHelp connects you with the right support. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. 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And with Squarespace email campaigns, all the tools you need to engage clients, promote your services, and grow your businesses are built in. I heard that Don Lemon told Alex Wagner on our Sunday episode of Potzi America that he might run for president. That's why I'm squatting on Don for America. Don Don Lemon for America. When life hands you lemons, things get better. That's what I say. I work for Don Lemon now. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash crooked to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain that's squarespace.com slash crooked let's talk about immigration and mass deportations. So no, Lewandowski, Bovino have all been fired, ICE and CBP uh have drawn down from Minneapolis and other cities, and the DHS shutdown will likely end uh when Congress gets back without Democrats having voted for any new funding for immigration enforcement. Uh and yet, there was a big story in the Times this weekend about how the only lesson Stephen Miller has learned from all this is to pursue his purge of immigrants, including those who are here legally, more quietly. Uh sure enough, the Times also had an absolutely heartbreaking story about Annie R amos, a dreamer who just got married to an active duty Army staff sergeant who is preparing for deployment. So she's been in America since she was almost two years old. She's 22 now, a few months away from getting her college degree . She teaches Sunday school at her church. And she just showed up with her new husband at his Army base with her birth certificate, passport, marriage license, so she could get her green card. And then when they got there, IC shoEwed up, shackled her, took her away, and now she's facing deportation. And this is all after the wife of another army reservist was finally released from ICE custody last week after four months in detention. I want to get your takeaways from both the the Miller piece, very long piece about Stephen Miller, but had a lot in it about sort of the im uh the Trump administration's larger immigration strategy and and the Ramos story um just in terms of like where all this is headed. Yeah. Because they say uh uh basically uh she tried to enter a military base and she has a lawful deportation order and it's like with her husband and that forms. And that order and that order was from when she was a baby. It's an order from when she was a literal twenty two months old child. So uh that's who they're going after and uh everyone acknowledges this is the like under no previous administration, under no one's understanding of how the law should be applied was a person like this ever gone after in the past. Nope, there's just simply no justification for it whatsoever. But I think it does speak to the larger point about what Stephen Miller is trying to do here because he is not uh uh look humbled at all. He has the same mission and the same goals. They're trying to just do it more quietly. And the two things that jumped out about to me in the Miller piece about what they're trying to do next. One was talking about how to go after immigrants who apply for credit cards. And the other was his work with local legislators in Tennessee to require state or local officials to report people who receive services at hospitals , social service agencies, and some public schools, despite uh being in the country illegally. And so it is more of an effort to weaponize financial system, the the information we gather about people, the way people have to access services and care to try to do more with a scalpel what uh drew such attention when they did it with like an axe. Yeah. Those things jumped out at me too. And then the only other one was um they're trying to uh for legal immigrants, any legal immigrant here who happens to ever get public assistance, Medicaid, anything like that, he wants the they he and and the new frauds are JD Vance and the rest of them want to go after that and try to prove that they somehow illegally obtain their benefits, not so they can just take the benefits away, but like then deport the legal immigrant. Militarily it was one of the best Easter. Um yeah the the time piece of Stephen Miller uh It's my favorite kind of story in that it validated my priors. Oh. Uh which is he's calling the shots. He Trump has outsourced immigration policy to him. Um he's the worst of the worst when it comes to pushing cruel racist policy ideas, but he's better at playing politics than the other goons, the Bovinos or the Christy Nomes or the Lewandowski's. Probably because he's closest to Trump and can whisper to him and blame others for when he gets in trouble and step away. Right right. Ye?ah I, blame all of them. Um the other thing that was really important about that Stephen Miller story that relates to the other uh articles you mentioned was it just showed that the ICE and CBP abuses in Minnesota had a huge political impact. Yes. And the community's pushback brushed back Trump and Stephen Miller in a significant way. And I think it just shows you the power I mean, obviously like ICE murdering, CBP murdering someone on camera is like horrific in ways that I hope will never be repeated. But stories like these, you know, the anecdotal evidence of these innocent people caught up in a cruel system, treated in a cruel, bureaucratic, heartless way, and punished for something they when they did nothing wrong, I think like people react to that strong ly and and it uh shows the importance of lifting up these examples and like just speaking to people's humanity. And I think why it's important to keep up that pressure and not to see the firings and the drawdown of ice in the cities and everything else is like all right, we won this chapter, on to the next fight, you know, because uh all this is like we just be seeing that with Any Ramos um and all these other stories. I just saw CBS too interviewed um Liam Ramos. Remember the five-year-old in Minnesota and his dad, and they're they're still um being threatened with deportation. There's this part in the story where Liam is now, you know, he's a five-year-old kid. He's now seeing a psychologist because he's like dealing with such trauma and all you know it's a five-year-old boy and he's like I'm more than anything I'm just scared of ice I'm scared of immigration I'm scared of what might happen and like yes that's Liam but think of how many children out there are in the exact same spot. Think of how many children are in detention right now. Right. Like they're if you've been in detention, if you're still there, like the the trauma that like it's just fucking up these kids' lives. And and Miller is the uh the other thing from the story, Miller's focused on ramping up deportations of non citizens to faraway countries with the hopes of encouraging immigrants still in the United States to leave voluntarily. So that is a, you know, a nice way of saying that like he wants to send them to third countries that they've never been to. Yes. So to not for any other reason but to send a message to other immigrants, to leave now yourself, or we are going to send you to somewhere where you're probably going to die or just be trapped. Yeah, exactly. It also it does an evil person. It does connect, I think, too, to like what we're seeing with how they're conducting the war in Iran. It connects to like oh you know, people try to say, oh, you know, don't you know Trump says crazy things online, he says terrible things about whatever, Rob Reiner, his enemies and their and and and their and their spouses who died. But it's all a lack of proportionality, all of it, right? Like there there is no there's there's no empathy. It's there's no like there's no like recognizing of someone's humanity and how they're conducting these policies. It is just zero forbearance, like all attack, do as much damage as you can, regardless of the consequences, to like achieve whatever ends you've set out. And so, like, when they try to dismiss Trump when he's like ranting and raving online, like no, that's the person making these policies. That's the connection between the threat to bomb a power plant in Iran and willing to go after our military spouse in the U.S. Like these people lack character and it will affect and it will it will Aaron Powell That reminded me of just the the one other nugget in that story is uh again, we could talk about confirming your prior, something I had suspected, but I think it was it was news in the story. Remember that like a long time ago, I think it was last September, there was that video of um uh in a New York City immigration courthouse, and that ICE officer tackled that woman who was just there for her husband, and like shocking ly the next day ice was like oh that person's been fired and I was like wow that's like they've they finally backed off and says in the story that the state that Ice doing that like fucking made Ste Mpheniller so angry that he like got involved, reversed it, and then made them hire the guy back. And it's just goes to show like exactly like this is it's it is all like from the top from Stephen Miller to try to send like he's using he is using like torture and cruelty to send a message to immigrants. That is the whole thing. Yeah, you're unleashed. It's fucking awful. All right. One last thing before we get to Levitt's conversation with Sarah McBride. Donald Trump decided to do Democrats a huge favor uh in the California governor's race. Don't don't say he's never done anything. Easter miracle. Yeah, resurrected the California Democratic Party. So as we've discussed, because of the so called jungle primary format here, um we have been in danger of seeing two Republicans advance to the runoff because so many Democrats are in the race, it's splitting the vote. So you have all these polls with with Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, the two Republicans as one and two, which means that the Democrats would be locked out of the general election. Well, on Monday morning , Trump took to Truth Social to endorse Republican Steve Hilton. And I'll just quote politico here, quote, dealing a potentially fatal blow to GOP rival Chad Bianco's campaign and to Republicans' hopes of locking Democrats out of the runoff. It's so funny. Look, I think you and I talked about this, and I was like, how have other Democratic campaigns not elevated one of the two Republicans by now? Because that's the way Schiff got it done, that's the way Newsome got it done before and like no one's done that yet. Turns out they didn't need to. Trump did it for them. Well, and they were they were planning to. And by the way you do that is by spending like tens of millions of ads supporting Republicans. So that was the position they were about to be in. Like every every California par like Democratic Party activist or uh operative I know are just ecstatic and they literally can't believe it's happening to the point where they're all looking for conspiracy theories. Because like he do you think he's too stupid to know this was a political disaster for California? Or like he just doesn't care? He wanted to do a favor for Steve Hilton. Steve Hilton said he didn't. Steve Hilton said he never talked about the race with Trump. He didn't ask an endorsement. Like maybe Trump is so delusional that he believes his own bullshit about like if not for the illegal votes that he would have won. One other theory I heard is that Trump wants Hilton in the race because he's actually a good spokesman and will spend six months attacking Gavin Newsom in California and like softened Gavin up. I like I don't know interesting theory, but I think Occam's razor that he's a dumb lazy asshole and he just did something stupid. Occam's razor is he like saw some segment on Fox News. Exactly. Yeah. And just say something. And by the way, that word Hilton, that's a good that's a that's a hotel word for him. But yeah, look, I Democrats have wanted to elevate a Republican so that there would be just one Republican so that they didn't have to face a Democrat. Right. In the current situation, Democrats need to elevate one Republican so that it's not just two Republicans, which is like a different kind of a problem. I think the truth is, like it is a genuine risk that uh Democrats uh could be shut out of having a candidate in the uh uh in the general if more people don't drop out and the thing doesn't coalesce. But even if both of the two Republicans were were sort of not we' sprelitting the vote more evenly, any kind of coalescing will probably result in one Democrat getting above the other. So it I think like it's a little too cute by half to think that Donald Trump that Donald Trump's action is going to result in something that is likely different than what would have happened anyway. But you think so? Why? Because I think it is still likely even if the two Republicans were splitting the vote that there will be a coalescing among the Democrats and one would rise to the top. Like I oh on the Democrats. No, no, not on the Republicans. I'm saying that like if the two Republicans continue to split the vote, right? What is more likely? Is it more likely that Democrats truly remain completely divided and those two move on? Or is it that two Republicans splitting the vote might keep their numbers low enough that two democrats could get through. I think it's right now, I think it it would probably be more likely that two Democrats would would get through. And so you might like if you were thinking about this in terms of all right, they're gonna Democrats are going to start dropping out, you would want one Republican to rise to the top if you want a Republican to be in the general. I think that's another that that is, I think, a reasonable way to think about it. Aaron Powell I think the reason that uh everyone was so freaked out about this is like whether or not the the party establishment uh coal finally coalesces around one Democrat, California's just a big fucking state and there's so many voters and it's been so hard to get attention for this race because we're all talking about Trump all the time and everything's nationalized, that like you could see, I mean we're getting down to it. You could see towards the end, even like, you know, important political figures deciding to back one candidate or the other and then the voters are just sort of like, I don't know and just going into it. And it's just like of all the political figures who could make a statement in this race, like we've been thinking, well Newsom and Dorse or Kamala or even Barack Obama or someone like that, it's like, no, actually, the the person, the political figure who could make the biggest difference is Donald Trump. Yeah. By endorsing one of the Republicans. Yeah. I still think that like one of those we've talked about this before, but like Steyer, uh, Porter or Swalwell , like those are probably your th one of those three candidates is going to end up being governor. Yeah, very likely. I I still think look, candidates have a a week or two and then I think they need to decide to drop out and endorse other people. If you're not at five percent in the polls by like April fifteenth, when ballots are getting mailed to people, when this thing is really getting into the the final stages, like you're not gonna win. Yeah. Early vote starts what, May 4th? Yeah. Is that right? Early vote is soon. Everyone needs to be big boys and big girls and realize that like if you're still at five percent or less a month before the primary, you're you're it it's not happening for you. So get out of the race, endorse someone else, like do something good for the party here, because my God, if if there were some version of this where two Republicans make it through and we are locked out of the general election, that is a catastrophic disaster. Especially now, now that we had Donald Trump help us out here. Yes. I I did see that um you see CNN's doing a debate, a whole other debate for this, and it's gonna be in May May 5th, I think. Um it is weird to me that their criteria is uh you have to hit three percent and two polls. I would have I would have made that a little tougher. They're probably avoiding some of the political challenges that USC got to Yeah, but the but but the other problem here too is la yes, some of these candidates that are polling really low, uh they need to drop out. But if we still are getting close to uh uh like mid-May and you have three Democrats that are kind of can all claim to be something like the front runner, kind of vaguely evenly splitting, like that is when it actually Trump jumping in as being helpful because then you could still end up with two Republicans. But the harder challenge, right, is what happens when we need one of those three to decide but like like when they're splitting all the votes and they each have a justified reason for being in the race and we're heading towards the election. Trevor Burrus And then you go to the tribal council and it's like who's gonna Yeah and I know a thing or two about about unjust results at a tribal council. You're like I've been home for five weeks. Yeah. Oh anyway. So that was uh you know, ending on ending on some good news too. Yeah, yeah, like that. Thank you, Donald Trump. Thanks for your help, buddy. Uh when we come back, Sarah McBride. Pod Save America is brought to you by Built. 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Two , I know very deeply the stakes of this moment and the cowardice of many of my Republican colleagues , most of my Republican colleagues, almost all of my Republican colleagues, to obviously the stakes of the administration. But you know, actually one thing that is interesting that I know we talked about last time that I have come to realize over the last year. I know we talked about the reality TV show nature of Congress. And I used to think that the antics we saw from folks in Congress who were taking up a lot of oxygen was politics of reality TV in pursuit of a rational goal. Attention for the sake of power, for the sake of influence, what I have come to realize over the last year is that for many of the folks that you see taking up oxygen on the other side of the aisle in particular, it's not in pursuit of a rational goal. It's actually an addiction. Interesting. And I think that's one of the things we actually don't talk a lot about . It's not pursuit of attention to win the competitive attention economy , one of the things you most frequently hear about these people when they get to Congress is they were so normal when they got there. And granted, they're people who ran for office, so I doubt they were that normal, but by congressional standards that they were relatively normal. And then what happens is, with all of the best intentions , they go viral ones . And they're not doing it in pursuit of that, but they just find themselves going viral for something they've done. And we know that social media is addictive. And when someone posts a picture online and it gets a couple hundred more likes than usual, it's a dopamine hit. It's a puff of a cigarette. But when you go viral nationally , it is like the most instantly addictive drug. And I don't mean that as a a a trite throwaway line. I don't mean that as a metaphor. I mean literally. It is addictive. And one of the things that we don't talk a lot about is that much of the behavior you're seeing in Congress is from people who are struggling themselves , they find themselves going viral. And as is the case with many addictions, they will debase themselves and inflict collateral damage on anyone else in pursuit of that next tie. And it's the same strategy that I employed before, but it's a different understanding because in the context of people coming after me early on, my job was not to take the bait. It was not to give them the response that they want . And in this case, it's to be essentially a clogged bong, like just to not give them the high that they want so that they will go and chase it elsewhere. But in so doing, what I don't think I realized was just how much opportunity that would unlock for me in not taking the bait. I knew it was what I needed to do to get them off of me. I knew I think it's what I needed to do on behalf of my constituents . But what happened after those first few months when I didn't take the bait, when I wasn't that effective high, was I had a number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle come up to me and not only say , Welcome to Congress, not only say, I'm so sorry with what they're doing, it's not very Christian , but to have a number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle come up to me and say, let's find opportunities to work together to show people that not everyone here is like that. Because they saw that I was willing to work across disagreement. They saw that I was willing to be a serious substantive legislat or, not someone who was simply there to chase the high of attention. And it's now resulted in me being able to introduce more bipartisan legislation than any other freshman this Congress. So you make lemonade out of lemons. Aaron Powell It's interesting. Because on the other side of that, specifically, your time in Congress began with Nancy Mason, Lauren Boebert, you know, chasing you around the Capitol in case uh you had a bill in the chamber, as it were. Uh uh and they've both you know Lauren Bobert has had a series of of public humiliations. Nancy Mace had that incident at the airport and is uh largely despised, it seems, by her colleagues and and it also reportedly members of her staff. Is there something about the way those people treated you and what has happened to them sort of publicly, politically, that that kind of fits in this analogy of uh I I would say it's actually more like, you know, uh I don't know if it's about a bong thing. It feels more like a stronger drug they're hitting. But much stronger. Is there a connection you think between the ways in which they've unraveled and the ways in which they went after you? Aaron Powell Yes. I mean I I think that goes directly back to what I was saying. And I think it's particularly true for some of the folks, which is that , as is the case with any addiction, if you are someone with real pain or trauma, if you're someone who's not well , you are more likely to fall into addictive behavior and fall prey to addiction. And I think that that is what we saw from some of the folks who come came after me. They were not doing well. And in the case of Nancy Mace, I wish her well in her campaign, all the best in her campaign for governor. I think it's time that Republican voters in South Carolina choose someone who came into Congress standing up to Donald Trump, um denouncing the insurrection, someone who came into Congress and proclaimed their support for not only gay rights, but trans rights. I think that's the type of person that Republican primary voters in South Carolina should choose to be their next governor. Trevor Burrus. Such an important point. So Lauren Boebert actually has come out against in a pretty strong way Trump's proposed supplemental. He's out there seeking a $200 billion supplemental. A lot of Democrats have come out against it. You're part of the congressional progressive caucus that has come out against it. At the same time, there are some Democrats in the Senate, including uh Delaware's Chris Coons , uh, who have not been who have been more equivocal on whether to suppl to support funding the military because of the Iran War than a Republican like Lauren Boebird. Is that disappointing to you? Do you wish that that all Democrats were more emphatic in saying that we will not vote to provide military funding to kind of in effect go back and authorize the war? Well, I think m my understanding is that one comment maybe got taken out of context and he came back and I think was pretty clear and unequivocal. Clearer. For sure. Yes. Um and my sense is that every pretty much every Democrat in Congress understands that a supplemental to fund this war would be both in perception, but also probably in reality, a validation retroactively of the administration's reckless and illegal war in Iran, which is clearer today than than ever, but was always clear that it was going to be a failure. And I don't anticipate any Any Democrat, but maybe one obvious one in the Senate, and I I don't know about any in the House, voting in favor of of a supplemental, no matter whether it's fifty million dollars, a hundred million dollars, or two hundred million dollars. And I think this is a moment where we should be absolutely clear and unequivocal that we will not give one dime to this president's war, not just because of the process that he didn't go through, but because this war is stupid, it is dumb and it is making us less safe. Um we are more than a month into this war. I think the president's going through different stages of grief right now. I think the press conference we just saw from him is a mix of of negotiation and denial in the process of grief because a month and a week in , we have a new supreme leader who's by all accounts more extreme and more pro-nuclear than before. Everything we have destroyed can be rebuilt and can probably be rebuilt with the billions of dollars that Iran now has because of the easing of sanctions and their closing of the Strait of Four moves, which was entirely predictable and predicted, but the president thought we would have won long before they would have the chance to do it. And now our adversaries in Russia and China. Russia is swimming in revenues that they didn't have, which will make peace in Ukraine that much harder. And China is not only accessing oil in a way that much of the rest of the world is not. They also now understand our military and operational capabilities far better today than they did two months ago, which means they would be pr better prepared to potentially invade Taiwan. All at the same time, we're further alienating our allies in Europe and costs, including the cost of gas, are going up here. So I I I don't anticipate any Democrat save for maybe one voting for such an ill-thought out war by validating through the appropriations process $200 million to continue down this path. Aaron Powell As someone who's tried to find places to reach out to Republicans, I I talked about this with Tim Miller from the bull work about why and his point was that Trump is in terrible political territory. This war is uh was a a war of choice that we should never have pursued. Gas prices are through the roof. Most of the countries against this. We should be on offense. And that includes trying to talk to Republicans, whether it's on television, on Fox News, or or to your colleagues in the House, to to try to get as big of a coalition together that opposes uh the war, funding the war, supporting the war. Are you talking to are is there a conversation between Democrats and Republicans about making sure that that that there isn't a supplemental that gets through? Because they don't have a lot of margin and, a bunch of Republicans have expressed, if not outright opposition, skepticism. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yes, there are absolutely conversations going on. There are conversations routinely. I was on the bipartisan bicameral delegation that went to Denmark during the height of the Greenland crisis. We came back and the first thing many of us did is we went to our Republican colleagues. I think in that instance, as is the case in in many instances, we do find opposition to this president among our Republican colleagues, but either a hesitation to push back publicly for fear of the political ramifications, or a hope that the situation will resolve itself by the president's own actions. I mean, I think they they will often say to us, he'll stand down, he'll pull back, it's rhetoric, it's bluster. Um but when you're talking about war when you're talking about a president as unhing ed and divorced from the reality of what's going on as he is, a president who cannot handle things going well and respond rationally , it's incredibly dangerous and irresponsible for any Republican who does oppose this war to not meet that belief with any kind of public action or even rhetoric. I will say too, to your point, this is a moment where I think we have to reinforce that if you are a Republican voter and you are watching what's going on and you don't like what you are seeing, if you are a Republican voter who voted for this president because you thought, well, the Democrats talked a lot about democracy and we survived his first term and prices were lower, and you feel like he has broken either one or both of those sort of promises that democracy will be fine and costs would be would be lower. If you feel like he's broken his prom ises, welcome to our coalition, welcome to our cause. You don't have to agree with us on 100% of things, but join us to stop forever wars and to bring down costs. So uh I wanted to talk to you about the ways in which you've been working with Republicans in the House. You know, in December, the House passed that Marjorie Taylor-Green bill that was her swan song, criminalizing certain kinds of medical treatment for transminors. The vote was along party lines, except you were part of an effort to get four Republicans to join you in voting no, which they did. One Republican who opposed the bill, Brian Fitz Fitzpatrick, said the same theory could be used to say that if parents don't vaccinate their kids, they could be committing a crime. So the parent-child relationship, doctor-physician relationship, we have to always presume that these are sacred . It it feels like that is the strong that argument of just freedom. Freedom between, you know, parents to to make decisions about their families, for for doctors to be able to provide what care they think is best is our strongest argument. But at times it also seems like on the left, let's say when the Supreme Court rules that parents have a right to be notified if their kid socially transitions, or if a law in Colorado providing conversion therapy violates, uh potentially violates the First Amendment. I think liberals, in part because they don't trust this court, their first reaction is to go to the outcome of that, which are policies we might not necessarily agree with. Uh but is their value in simply saying when the court is doing these kinds of things, it's actually standing up for a principle we believe in, even if it's applied in a way where we don't like the outcome? Absolutely. I mean, I think in this moment with the stakes as high as they are, not just for trans people, but in in so many instances, one, we have to recognize the way well-intended policies or rhetoric that we have done in the past could be used against us in the future. I think the last year and a half have brought that possibility into stark relief for us. And I think it's something that we have to be mindful of moving forward. what do you mean by that? For it's harder to say government shouldn't interfere with the healthcare decisions of a parent and their child when there was a spate of efforts to ban what is bad abusive, quite frankly, healthcare in the form of conversion therapy , that 's being used as a precedent here. And I think that I'm not saying that I don't think those bills or ideas are wrong, but I do think we have to be cognizant of how the right can co-opt precedent in order to do really harmful things on a wide scale. And I think we do have to keep the main thing the main thing in the fight for equality for LGBTQ people. I think there was a after marriage, there was sort of a search for what's the what more can we do, what more can we do, what more can we do? And there was a lot of basic necessities that we had not actually protected for portions of our community, including the trans community. And I think that we are seeing that sort of chasing of the next best idea on gay rights m maybe resulted in us taking our eye off the ball for trans people to some degree. But I also think that that sometimes freedom means, sometimes democracy means that people make choices that we don't like. Families make choices that we don't like. And I think right now in this moment we have to be clear that the best place for decisions to be made around the healthcare of a child is between the parent , the child, and their provider. And that is not always going to result in parents making the decisions that we would make for our own children , but it also means government doesn't get to come in to those individual decisions and stop parents from making decisions that we believe are in the best interest of their child. And so I do think that we have to be firm in that conviction, and that means taking some of the not so good with the the good. Yeah. Well it's it's there I would say that if you got some sort of like uh uh sort of right-wing activists and like really press them, right? I think they there is a sincere belief that the L that that not even just on uh LGBT issues or trans issues, but across the board, that what liberals had argued for was something about freedom and access, but actually became rules that everybody had to live by or else. And let me just be clear- Again, I'm not saying that conversion therapy bans are bad. I just think that we should be cognizant of precedents that are established that can be used against us when we are in power, just to be clear too. Trevor Burrus Right. No, of course. And by the way, like you know, uh uh uh conversion therapy as sort of free speech versus medical care that we are allowed to regulate, they're like technical and important distinctions to be made between sort of freedom of speech and what medical what a medical provider can can can offer. Like those are distinctions to be made. But just a lot of and there's a difference between using I mean there were some FTC ideas that people were pushing in the Biden administration or people were thinking about in the Biden administration as it relates to conversion therapy that the right is now trying to use around gender-affirming care. So I mean there's just there's also the way you go about it and the way you do it. And that also makes a difference in terms of precedent, too. Aaron Powell Right. Well, like in the case of California, uh both the right-wing judges and the liberal justice judges seem to acknowledge that parents have some rights, but uh children should be protected from harm and from abuse. But the law in California was written as if the Supreme Court didn't really exist and certainly wasn't right wing . And uh I can't tell if what we're talking about here is an effort just to save some ground because we're under attack from right-wing judges or are we trying to assert a principle? Aaron Ross Powell I I I I think it's I think I think it's a a principle. I mean I think I think look there are strategies , tactics, policies that I might have thought were great ideas ten years ago, and over time I've since evolved on or learned well, it's a well intended policy, but it could have it could lay the precedent or the foundation for this kind of policy that I don't like. And I I think that that the politics of backlash that we are experiencing right now, I think should sob er all of us to that potential, to that risk. And it doesn't mean changing your positions all the time. It does mean one, being more cognizant of of that. And and I do think that's that a principle, right? I mean, I think there are a lot of things in a liberal democratic society that some people on our side would want to forbid, but if you forbid it in this context, it means that they can forbid it in that context. And I and I just think that there is a return to an understanding and appreciation of freedom and that means taking the good with the bad, that I think all of us have learned some hard lessons on over the last couple of years. Um, but I think was an understandable and well intended um approach a decade ago that was in part a byproduct of sort of perhaps an arrogance or or a sense sense of unending cultural momentum that we didn't have to grapple with that messiness of liberal democracy and freedom that we could across different issues sort of tamp down different approaches because we didn't like them, when I think that that's one , perhaps a violation of the principle of freedom, but two, I think just counterproductive in a modern digital society where you can't suppress differing thought and approaches as much as you may disagree with them and often seeking to suppress them only makes them more attractive and only gives some degree of credibility among people that maybe there's a truth in them because you're trying to suppress it. And I think all of us would do well on our side to learn both of those lessons, both the practical and the principled lesson of the last couple years. Aaron Powell I wanted to ask you about the Democratic Party and what we are trying to do now to signal to people in the midterms and beyond that we're not just a party that opposes Trump, but we have a real kind of mission around the kind of economy we want to build. Specifically, there have been a series of proposals. I talked to Senator Corey Booker last week about one that he introduced. Senator uh Chris Van Hellen has another. Katie Porter here in California has one that's about kind of just basically raising the standard deduction, getting income tax off of as many people 's plates as possible because the economy is so stacked against working people. And I'm wondering what your I feel like you have thoughts about that. I have no doubt that those proposals pull well. And I have no doubt that there are people who would benefit from a change to the standard deduction or a holistic change to the tax code, and I do think that we should make our tax system fairer and more progressive . I think that as a matter of both principle and frankly practicality , that we do better by creating solutions that actually solve the source of the problem that families are facing . I think out of principle, one, we should address the problem, right? We should address the the housing shortage and the cost of housing that is a byproduct of that. We should make sure that people have access to childcare that is capped at $10 or $15 a day. We should have a higher minimum wage in this country nationwide. We should have paid family and medical leave nationwide. And I think that those are the right solutions, one, because I think they changed the structures of our economy that even if we change the tax code , the preexisting inequities in our economic structures will persist and will be so poor that they will still find ways to create inequ ities even if you change the tax code . And so I think one, you need to solve the problem as a matter of principle . Two, as a matter of principle, I do think that making sure that all of us feel a sense of buy-in, that all of us feel a sense of ownership in our society, in the policies of government is a good thing. But then from a practical standpoint, even if in the short term the tax changes that people have been proposing pull really well , I just don't think people remember that two, three, four years after, right People don't remember . I'm not saying we shouldn't do a tax cut, but people don't remember who created the standard deduction at 30,000, right? They do remember who created Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, who created the Affordable Care Act. When there is a tangible policy, a program that people are interacting with, that's not just good politics on the front end. I think it's better politics in the long term as well, because people will see our party as the party that's not just lowering costs, not just making the American dream more affordable and accessible for them, they'll know when they access that ten to fifteen dollar childcare. They'll know when they take paid family and medical leave. They'll know when they're able to buy in to Medicare . That individual action was made possible by Democrats. On the other side of this, we have Donald Trump. He said this last week, at the end of last week that seemed like quite a um uh revelation here. United States can't take care of dayc are. That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We've got fifty states . We have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. You gotta let a state take care of daycare and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They have to raise their taxes. But they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up for but we it's not possible for us to take care of daycare. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, they can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a Federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country. So Trump just put out his 2027 budget. It has a massive boost to military spending, 10 percent cuts to uh domestic policies like public health and scientific research, housing education. He also uh has uh proposed $377 million this year for a White House renovation and $174 million for next year. I I can't think of worse politics than cutting social spending to fund the war and do a a gut reno. How do Democrats make the most of this? And do Republicans understand how bad the politics of this is? I mean, you you'll have to ask them as to whether they understand how bad the politics are. I mean, Donald Trump , it's no it's it's it's no wonder that the White House deleted that video . When I I saw it, I immediately pushed it out. I mean, that should be part of our ads and our message in the midterms. And he's just saying the the quiet part out loud. I mean everyone knows from the policies of the last year and a half that this was the Republican agenda. That the Republican agenda was a massive increase in spending for forever war s and massive tax breaks for Donald Trump's wealthy donors , and everyone else has to pay the price in cuts to health care , or in the failure of the federal government to address the very issues you and I were just talking about, like childcare. I mean, there is always money, it seems, from Republicans to cut taxes for the wealthiest and to invade other countries, and yet they clutch their pearls when a Democrat proposes paid family medical leave or universal child care, paid for, mind you, not even adding to the deficit by making the tax system fairer and increasing taxes on the wealthiest. So I think we not only should be elevating that message, but we also have to have a very clear agenda runs contrary to that. It's why I think whether it's a $15 or $20 minimum wage nationwide, universal childcare, paid family medical leave, I think that should be at the heart of our agenda because I know how much it meets the needs of my constituents. I know how popular it was in Delaware when we passed many of those policies during my time in the state senate. And I know how necessary it is for our nation to compete globally. I mean, there is a reason why every other industrialized nation has past paid family and medical leave and provides meaningful support for families who are trying to send their kid to child care. It's because they know it's not just compassionate policy, but competitive policy. We have a 1950s care infrastructure for a 2026 workforce . And if we are going to tap the potential and skills of everyone, no matter their gender or family situation, we need to have policies that allow them to start a family, to have kids, to fulfill their obligations to their own health and to their family without having to sacrifice their job or their income. It's a good place to leave it. Congresswoman Sarah McBride, thank you so much. And you were telling me before we started that' um youre you're training uh uh in the breathstroke for the twenty twenty eight Olympics. Yes. Yes. I'm I'm I think A little controversial, but I think exciting I'm I I want to be the face of trans participation in sports because I know you'll sink like a stone. Exactly. I always say if you want to prove trans women don't have a competitive advantage in sports, throw me in. But you know what I'm really focused on my diamond. I'm focused on recruiting you uh for traitors. Oh I yes. I would look I think if you think that I perform poorly on Survivor, boy, Survivor with food, I could probably only do better. I I mean I think you'll be like a season four Durinda, not a season three Durinda. You'll make it about halfway. For the next season of traders, celebrity or non-celebrity. They can pick. Right, yeah. No, I see why. And I and I appreciate that. And I appreciate that. So I'm I'm leading that effort right now. Wow. And that means the world to me because you know what? You build coalitions, you can get things done, you know, defy expectations. Uh and uh that's that's why we love talking to you. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. That's our show for today. Thanks to Sarah McBride for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday . If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to Cricut.com slash friends to subscribe on supercast, substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. PodSave America is a Crooked Media production. Our producer is Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Faris Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Chirlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engine er with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production, Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant, and thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Carol Pelaviv, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.