The MAGA Rift Over War in Iran
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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, we'll talk about Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard falling out of favor with Trump, masked federal agents arresting more Democratic politicians, Senate Republicans making even deeper Medicaid cuts, and more drama at the DNC. Then later, you'll hear Tommy's conversation with Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell, who stopped by the studio this week.

But let's start with the war between Israel and Iran, which Donald Trump has not yet decided to join. As of this recording late Thursday, the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Trump has approved final attack plans that would likely involve a U.S. strike on Iran's underground nuclear enrichment site, which Israeli weapons can't reach.

But the president still hasn't decided if he'll order the strike. Axios reports that Trump is pressing his advisers on how confident they are that American bunker buster bombs could fully destroy the site at Fordow. Ever the game show host, Trump seems content to build suspense, keep everyone guessing as he muses publicly about the decision. The White House did say on Thursday that he'll make his final decision within the next two weeks.

which is a longer timeframe than reports have suggested. They also suggested that there might be a possibility for diplomacy, so potentially some good news there. But here's some of what Trump himself has been saying about this. Now I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm gonna do. I can tell you this, that Iran's got a lot of trouble.

Just wonderful. Wise, wise words. So we should note that the Israeli government seems intent on destroying not just Iran's nuclear program, but the regime itself. The AP reports that more than 600 people have already been killed in Iran and more than 2,000 wounded, nearly all of them civilians who have nothing to do with Iran's nuclear program. The numbers are going up in Israel, too, where 24 people have been killed and hundreds more injured, including in an Israeli hospital that was just hit by an Iranian missile.

Dan, what are your thoughts on where we are and the prospect of America joining another regime change war in the Middle East? The whole experience of this past week has felt so surreal for people like you and I who are of an advanced age, and I know I'm of a more advanced age, blah, blah, blah, who were around in politics in 2003 when we marched stupidly into a war in Iraq where we, as a country, decided to invade the wrong country after 9-11. And it just feels like...

A large portion of Washington and the press and the people who talk about and work in foreign policy have gotten amnesia. Like this just seems so dumb and so poorly thought out. Like let's just say hypothetically the U.S. does get involved and they do launch the bunker buster bomb on this site and they damage it or destroy it.

That does not end Iran's nuclear ambitions. It just delays them. So a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, we're right back in the same place, which is why there are two choices then. If the goal is to make sure that Iran is not nuclear open, as people in both parties have said, but if that's the goal, your choice is diplomacy.

to have a deal with Iran to allow them to have civilian nuclear power but not a nuclear weapon, like the deal that President Obama had with them during his presidency that Trump got out of, or do what Israel wants, which is to engage in regime change in Iran, a country that is twice the size of Iraq.

And we know how well that went in Iraq. And so that it seems like that would drag the United States into a conflict that would be more deadly, more dangerous, and last longer and be more expensive, most likely than what happened in Iraq. And that's where we're headed. It just seems like none of the people who are cheerleading this have thought this through beyond the excitement they're going to get when CNN broadcasts the footage of the bunker buster bomb hitting in Iran.

Yeah, I think the proponents of military action have this view that, you know, the U.S. conducts a strike, the nuclear facility is destroyed, and then we're all done. And then the U.S. is done and we can just walk away from this.

And first of all, there's no guarantee at all that the strike succeeds. It might not completely destroy the nuclear site underground at Fordow, which reportedly is one reason why Donald Trump is going back and forth on this, because there's no guarantee that even if the strike hits the facility that it will destroy all of it. Also, it's very possible that the Iranians could have moved some of the components to different parts of the country, could have other nuclear sites that we don't know about. So like we...

There's just no guarantee there. It's like, of course they're moving them. We've been promising to bomb them for days now. And now Trump told him they got maybe two weeks to do it. Like, obviously. And then even if for some reason we do that and then the regime falls either because of Israel or because of it just, you know, because of popular uprising or whatever, it's

There is also no guarantee, and it doesn't even seem likely, that a new regime would either be friendly to either of the countries that just tried to destroy their country and kill a lot of their people, nor is it likely that the new regime will not try to get another nuclear weapon. And in fact, if a new regime or the same regime, even if the nuclear program is completely destroyed,

Estimates are that Iran could reconstitute the nuclear program and get a nuclear weapon within 10 to 15 years, right, which was the original timeframe of the Iran deal back in 2015. So no one is thinking through the second, third, fourth order consequences of

of what happens when you try to launch a US military strike on a regime to try to get rid of a nuclear weapon while Israel is launching a full out war against this regime. And you know, people making the argument, well,

the Iranian regime is at its weakest right now and their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas are damaged. And so they don't have as much power and Russia's occupied with the war in Ukraine. And so this is the right moment and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's like, it's not a question of whether or not it's the right moment to launch a military strike. It's the question of whether the best way to deal with a regime that wants to acquire a nuclear weapon is with military force or diplomacy.

And you don't pick diplomacy just because you're like a pacifist who doesn't want war. You pick diplomacy because that is very likely the more effective way to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. So it's fucking insane. And also, you know, all the polls out so far show that people do not want this war. They do not want a U.S. military action. You know, you can I was talking to Tommy about this.

Some of these polls, you can like word the question so that it's, you know, do you support the United States supporting Israel in trying to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon, prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and then you get more support than you do otherwise. But

The closer the question is to do you actually support a U.S. military strike in Iran, the more opposition you get. And it's not just opposition from Democrats. It's not just opposition from independents. It's the opposition from a good chunk of the Republican base as well. It's less than 20 percent of Trump voters support the idea.

Yeah. And again, like you can because I saw, you know, Echelon had a poll out where people were more supportive of supporting Israel on this. But it all depends on how you work, as you know. Right. This all depends on how you were to question. And especially when you're dealing with matters of foreign policy and war like Israel.

Most voters aren't equipped to know exactly what the context is and what the situation is and what all the details are before they're asked to give a judgment. But the more that you actually lay out what could happen, right, with military force, even if it's not sending U.S. troops in with military strikes, whatever, you know, the more opposed people are. It's like I don't even need a poll for that. Like that's been the core defining aspect of American politics for the last 20 years.

has been a reaction to the failed war in Iraq. It's explains Barack Obama's candidacy, explains Donald Trump's candidacy. It's just between Donald Trump being able to run and win a Republican primary by trashing the Bush family, Republican royalty. It's just, there's, if we have one strike and that's it, is there going to be this massive rebellion and people are going to care? Probably not, but people do not want to be in a war.

Period. In the Middle East, right? That is just as simple. That is, you roar the question however you want. The reality is that it would be massively unpopular if all of a sudden U.S. troops are losing their lives or U.S. tax dollars are being spent in

in another regime change war in the Middle East. Tommy and Ben made this point on Pod Save the World, which of course everyone should go listen to because they do a much better job than us talking about all the implications here. Well, let's finish first before we make any judgments. No, but we attack Iran. We join this war. They're going to try to retaliate against us. And that could be a retaliation against U.S. troops in the Middle East. We have thousands and thousands of troops all over the Middle East. That could be against American civilians.

There's a possibility that they have, you know, sleeper cell agents that they could activate potentially in the United States or just other parts around the world when there are American civilians, tourists, you know, going around, traveling around the world somewhere. There could be a terror attack again.

And as Tommy and Ben pointed out, that doesn't necessarily have to happen right after we launch a strike. It could be a year from now, two years from now. But once we have joined this action, then they're going to try as hard as they can to retaliate against us. And then we'll be forced to retaliate again. Yep, exactly. And this is what happens. Wars are...

they're easier to start than end. Just one more point on this, just so we hammer it, is there is no evidence that anyone's provided that shows that the strikes had to happen now.

No. That Iran was on the cusp of getting a nuclear weapon. Trump's own, we'll get to this, intelligence community says that, the world says, and if Israel had that smoking gun proof, they would be everywhere with it. And so they just thought now was the time for a whole host of reasons, and they went for it. But it is not because there was an imminent threat from a nuclear weapon to Israel or the United States. No, it's because Iran's weaker now than it's been in any time in recent history. That's it. That's the reason.

So the big political subplot here has been the open fighting within Trump's MAGA coalition about what he should do. A lot of administration types have been telling reporters that Trump is leaning toward greenlighting an attack. But the more isolationist wing of MAGA, they're making a lot of noise, too. By now, you've probably seen or heard about the interview where Tucker Carlson absolutely savages Ted Cruz. But let's roll it again anyway. How many people live in Iran, by the way? I don't know the population at all. No, I don't know the population.

You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple? How many people live in Iran? 92 million. Okay. Yeah. How could you not know that? I don't sit around memorizing population tables. Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government. Why is it relevant whether it's 90 million or 80 million or 100 million? Why is that relevant? Because if you don't know anything about the country— I didn't say I don't know anything about the country. Okay, what's the ethnic mix of Iran?

They are Persians and predominantly Shia. OK, this is you don't know anything about Iran. So, OK, I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran. You're a senator who's calling for the overthrow of the government. You're the one who claims you don't know anything about the country. No, you don't know anything about the country. I was taught from the Bible.

Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. So you're quoting a Bible phrase. You don't have context for it. You don't know where in the Bible it is, but that's like your theology? I'm confused. What does that even mean? Tucker.

I'm a Christian. I want to know what you're talking about. In terms of hitmen, their hitmen are not very effective. I do think... So they're hitmen, but not the bad kind, the efficient kind? No, they're just... What are you saying? They're a weak country who is on its knees, and I think we need to... Then why are we so afraid of them? Why are they the biggest threat if they're a weak country that's on its knees? Because they're trying... I'm trying to keep track. They're trying to develop... Be a little less snarky. I know, you're right. That is a problem that I have. I'm sorry.

I'm not suggesting that there should be anything enjoyable about watching Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz debate war in the Middle East, but it's hard not to enjoy that. Of course there's something enjoyable about it. It's hard not to enjoy that. And, you know, it's obviously it's Tucker Carlson. We know, we know. But I don't know. Sure would be nice to hear other journalists and reporters interview people like Ted Cruz with that level of skill and expertise. And look, just...

And just to be fair, part of this is because people like Ted Cruz refuse to sit down with real journalists anymore. They all just go on each other's MAGA-aligned podcasts and Fox News, and that's it. And they rarely sit down with actual journalists. So I guess that's what we get now. What did you make of that exchange? Thoroughly enjoyable. Do I like rooting for Tucker Carlson in a fight? No. Do I think it's totally fair to quiz people on the exact demographic breakdown of a country? Maybe not.

Was it great to watch? Absolutely. It was, I mean, there is just something truly pleasurable about watching Ted Cruz get rhetorically punched in the smug face. I enjoyed it and I don't want to have any, and I know it's, I know it's, it's a serious topic and Tucker Carlson's a terrible human being, but you know what?

We deserve this. Not like you and me, but everyone listening. It's been a tough time. Like, I think we're allowed to enjoy this without any sort of complicated feelings about it. You know, just enjoy it. The one serious part here is that

Tucker Carlson does, through his snarky ways, expose something that is true about Ted Cruz and all the other people who are cheerleading for a war of which they've given very little thought about the context, the consequences, what comes next. And, you know, that's mostly Republicans who are cheerleading them. It's not only Republicans. You know, they're like my take is so far has been that too many Democrats have been too afraid to speak out against this possible war, to speak up for diplomacy. Right.

out of fear of looking weak and Democrats being afraid of looking weak on war is how we ended up in Iraq in the first place. And being against war is not weak. Uh, like swallowing what you truly believe because you're afraid someone's going to run a negative ad against you. If a war goes well, that's weak.

Also, you know, the penchant to use religion, in this case the Jewish religion, to somehow justify every action of the Israeli government, at which, you know, Tucker nails him on because he finally says at one point, he's like, well, it's in the book of Genesis. So Tucker's like, so the first...

Book of Genesis, first book in the Bible in the Old Testament. And the message from God was, you must support Bibi Netanyahu and the government of Israel thousands of years into the future. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? It is so, and just this idea that like, oh, they are so weak and on their knees now. So this is the right time to strike. I thought they were supposed to be big and scary. It's like, uh. Yeah, there is just inherent contradiction after inherent contradiction in the arguments for this war.

Let's talk about this rift more broadly within the mega coalition. You know, Trump himself has downplayed it. He said that Tucker already apologized to him, which I don't really buy. On the other hand, you know, you've got influential Trump supporters like Charlie Kirk, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, all have been highly critical of going to war. Podcasters

Slash comedian Theo Vaughn spoke out on Thursday and Dave Smith, a comedian who's on Rogan a lot, went so far as to apologize for ever supporting Trump and called for his impeachment. More on Dave Smith later. We have a little dessert for you at the end of this of this episode if you stick with us. But Dan, how serious do you think it is and how much does it matter?

You know, we all as Democrats hope that there is like this moment of enlightenment where everyone takes off their MAGA hats, throws them in the garbage and either abandons Trump, you know, becomes a listener to the bull worker, even in, you know, dare I say a Democrat in good standing. And they just they see the light for what we all believe about Trump. That's not a moment that's ever coming.

And I'm sure that a lot of these prominent people whose power and money is tied to being pro-Trump will find a way to rationalize this if we go down the war path. But I think for the average voter, the entirely apocryphal idea that Donald Trump is anti-war is

was an important rationale for why you were okay supporting him despite all of his flaws. And so there are always consequences of some measure when you do something that violates what was your core political identity to one of your constituencies.

And, you know, this politics happens on the margins. And so if there's some number of people who already feel like Donald Trump has maybe abandoned them on the economy, on some of the other things he's promised to do, he said he was going to lower costs, he's raising costs. And then you also do this. That has consequences. And that is going to put more downward pressure on his numbers, I think.

Yeah, what we want here, and I'm thinking about the conversation I had with Erica Chenoweth, is we want defections from the regime here. And the defections aren't always going to be on the same issue or from the same set of people. But that matters less than the fact that you continue to have people peel away from the Trump regime. And either they don't have to necessarily leave and then come out against Trump and join us in the streets.

but they can at least stop participating, right? Like Elon Musk, not part of the government anymore. We're about to talk about Tulsi Gabbard, who's in the administration and also doesn't seem like she's in favor of this war. And then, of course, you have all these voters, right? You have the

Some of the podcasters who supported Trump because they thought he was anti-war. You got some of the people in Silicon Valley who thought that maybe they wouldn't add more to the deficit. Whatever the fucking reason is, you just want to peel more support away from Trump and the regime. And that is a good thing. And that just weakens him and weakens, you know, J.D. Vance or whoever else may try to run and take over for him if he lets that happen. Dissatisfaction at the base matters a lot in the midterms.

where base turnout is much more tied to the outcome than in a presidential election with a much larger electorate. Yes. So there's also some drama within the Trump administration over the Iran decision. Washington Post has a story sourced to current U.S. officials and people close to the White House that says Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are not part of the inner circle on Iran deliberations. One official said, quote,

Nobody is talking to Hegseth. There is no interface operationally between Hegseth and the White House at all. That's tough. As for Gabbard, she testified earlier this year that she didn't think Iran was close to having a nuclear weapon. Trump was asked about that testimony on Air Force One this week. Here's a CNN clip of Tulsi's testimony and Trump's response.

I don't care what she said, his own director of national intelligence.

So, uh, do we think that, uh, why do we think Tulsi and Pete got, uh, kicked off the Iran PC small group signal channel to make room for Jeff Goldberg? Uh, I mean, we should take them separately because I do think there's different reasons for both of them. Yeah. I mean, in this case, Tulsi Gabbard's a dissenting voice. Trump is also reportedly mad at her about a video that she did. Uh, have you seen this video? I have seen the video. Yes. It's very, uh, strange and disturbing. Uh,

Very disturbing. It's a video, by the way. She went to Hiroshima and she made what seems like an educational video about what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and what would happen if there was a nuclear war today and how nuclear weapons today are much bigger. But it's very disturbing. There's like an AI graphic representation of San Francisco being nuked. It's just –

It's disturbing. Disturbing. Somehow Trump thought this was about him. Not really sure why it bothered him, but it did bother him, which is what led him to snap at Tulsa. But he obviously was not at all familiar with her March testimony. And then Hegsath is a different case.

He just is in so far. He's an idiot. Yeah, he's an idiot. He's in so far of his head. No one, maybe in the history of government, has been more in over their head than the weekend cable host being in charge of the Pentagon. Shocking. Yeah. No one could have seen this coming. No one could have seen this coming. Just who knew? And of course, the Hegseth people are pushing back. And they said he was in a cabinet meeting and all that. Oh, he made the same meeting as the small business administrator? Congratulations. Welcome to the inner circle, Pete Hegseth.

Yeah, it's pretty like and you know how Trump is. Trump doesn't want to. Well, especially Trump in the second term. He thinks that like all the firings in the first term went poorly for him or sort of hurt his agenda. He wants loyalty. So he's probably going to not going to do anything to Pete. But, you know, according to all the reports, he's going over him right to like chairman of the Joint Chiefs and generals. And and he seems to be out of the loop. And he's got the true neocons like Marco Rubio and John Ratcliffe by his side. So.

And JD Vance just with his finger in the wind trying to figure out which way this thing is going. Yeah, of course. Of course. Just, you know, trying to bully trans people on blue sky while they're having a sit room meetings on Iran, which is basically what happened on Wednesday.

Just decided to create a blue sky account, got suspended within five minutes because blue sky, and then came back on, wrote about the Supreme Court decision on, you know, upholding Tennessee's ban on gender affirming care for kids, for trans kids, and decided to like write a whole diatribe about that on blue sky, literally while the sit room meeting on Iran was happening. Which

Which does make you wonder about either his true involvement in the inner circle decision-making or his adherence to situation room protocols about locking your phone in a locker before you walk in so that foreign governments can't listen to the meeting. Yeah, well, they take operational security very seriously. As we know. As we know. Famously. He's just going back and forth between Blue Sky and WhatsApp the whole time. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Men today face immense pressure to perform, to provide, to

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Speaking of Pete Hegseth, our man at the Pentagon didn't have the easiest go of it when he testified in front of the Armed Services Committee on Wednesday and got questioned from Senate Democrats about the politicization of the military and deploying active troops to American streets. Here's a sampling. Have you given the order for to be able to shoot at unarmed protesters in any way?

I'm just asking the question. Don't laugh. Like, the whole country, and by the way, my colleagues across the aisle... What is that based on? What evidence would you have that an order like that has ever been given? It is based on Donald Trump giving that order to your predecessor, to a Republican Secretary of Defense, who I give a lot of credit to because he didn't accept the order. He had more guts and balls than you. If the court says this deployment of troops into our cities is not legal, would you follow that court's order?

It's pending in the courts, Senator. Well, when the court decides, would you follow the court's order decision? I don't believe district courts should be determining national security policy. So you will not be following that? When it goes to the Supreme Court, we'll see. How about Alyssa Slotkin saying...

You don't have the balls. Love it. Good job, Alyssa Slotka. That's the energy we need in these hearings. That is the energy we need. So what do you think? Right guy for the job at this moment? Yeah, it doesn't seem like it. As we said, anyone could have predicted this is where this would end up. It's actually, I would say, gone worse than I thought.

And it's like, you know, we can laugh at it because he's a bozo. But I think what Slotkin and Hirono just demonstrated there is if he gets an illegal order, if he gets an order to fire on people, he's going to do it because he's loyal to Donald Trump above all else. Right. So.

There is something just – it's noteworthy that in this administration with this president – now, Pete Hague's not super quick on his feet, so there would have been a better way to do this. But he felt like to say he had not been given an order or would not follow an order to shoot civilians would somehow be disloyal to Trump or that he would not send troops into U.S. cities against a court order to –

To suggest that you would follow the court order would be disloyalty to Trump. And that is a very scary, scary thing about this administration. And when you have people like Hegsath who are weak and sort of – and thirsty now to get back in the inner circle, do we really think he's going to make a stand on principle against some of these things? Of course not. No. No, he's not.

Just so everyone's aware, the U.S. military is still deployed here on the streets of Los Angeles, even though there haven't been protests or arrests for days. The curfew has been lifted, but actually another 2,000 National Guard troops have been deployed to Los Angeles. So we have a total of 4,800 troops roaming around here. I don't actually even know what they're doing at this point. I guess

Though, as we saw last week, the point of the deployment was never just to keep the peace. It was to help support masked ICE agents as they conduct massive immigration raids all over the city and the county, which they are very much still doing.

Last episode, we mentioned Trump's decision to pause immigration raids in the agricultural and hospitality sectors. He posted about this on Truth Social, and then there was a report about an actual memo at DHS with new guidance on this. And this was likely because, you know, politicians and business leaders in red states complained to Donald Trump that they depend on

on these workers, our economy depends on these workers, and Trump's like, "Some of them are just great people who've been here, and we gotta protect them," and all that bullshit. Well, that lasted all of four days. The Department of Homeland Security told staff it was reversing the decision a couple days ago, and that they should continue raids anywhere they want, and that they should arrest anyone they want, even immigrants who are following the law and may have legal status. So that is continuing.

One of those immigrants was arrested in New York City this week as he showed up at immigration court for a routine hearing, just like he was supposed to.

This has been happening a lot, but what made this situation unique is that the man had been accompanied to his hearing by New York City Comptroller and Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander, who's been showing up at court a few times now to help immigrants navigate the legal system, to escort them. Volunteers have been doing this as well. So Brad Lander was acting as one of these volunteers. Lander had his hand on the man's shoulder, said he wouldn't let go until the ICE agents produced a warrant.

Instead of producing a warrant or instead of saying to Lander, sir, sorry, we're taking him away. We have the authority to do this, whatever. They handcuffed Lander. They handcuffed him and detained him. And he was thrown against the wall and he was detained in the building until New York Governor Kathy Hochul had to show up and wait for a couple hours to demand his release.

So federal prosecutors say they're investigating what happened, but haven't said whether they will file charges. And you can check out Lovett interviewed Lander for YouTube just a couple of days ago. So you can check that out on the Pod Save America YouTube channel. What do you make of all this, Dan? Let's start with the Lander situation, which is that ICE is out of control, right? Trump has given that Trump and Stephen Miller and Christina have given them the mandate to do whatever they want. And they are...

Not in uniform in many cases. They are wearing masks. We don't know who they are. They are not adhering to any sort of standard protocol. They are trying to escalate, not deescalate situations like this. Like in a normal world, you do not want to arrest the second highest ranking official in New York City. It's bad business. And so you find ways not to do that.

And they leaned, but they are now doing the opposite of that because that is the kind of conduct that is applauded. This is coming from the top. This is what they have been given and impossible to meet quotas from Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem and Trump. They are doing it. The kind of conduct that is now celebrated by their bosses is doing things like detaining an elected official in New York for essentially no reason, for handcuffing Senator Padilla.

And this, you're seeing this play out of, or like just today, ice was trying to enter Dodger stadium had to be stopped by the Dodgers for reasons. No one can really tell why they were trying to do it other than just to harass people. The department of homeland security said, well, there were a couple of ice vehicles, CBP vehicles, custom and border patrol vehicles, uh,

there, but they weren't, they didn't have to do with any enforcement operations. And so they were there, but they didn't really try to get in. And then ICE tweeted, we were never there. This is just a total lie. So they're all fucking bullshit lying again, because that's all I do is lie at DHS, which is great because it's the Department of Homeland Security. So you really don't need them to be trusted. No, not at all. Not at all. You don't, yeah, you don't need to trust what they say when something goes wrong. But yeah, so the Dodgers told them, no, you can't, you can't come in. You can't come into the stadium.

And then, so now let's talk about the rapid flip-flop on enforcement priorities. I think a couple of things probably went on here. One, Stephen Miller mostly runs the government. Yeah. He is everyone's boss other than maybe Trump's and maybe even Trump's on some occasions. And so he, and Trump just does, he doesn't know the,

issues enough to make like an actual well-reasoned decision. So a bunch of farm work, he talks to the secretary of agriculture, a bunch of business people call, they're complaining about how this is going to destroy the economy. He changes the policy. Stephen Miller gets to him, says, by doing this, you're allowing MS-13 to work in hotels. And so he changes his policy back.

And it's like this is a process that makes no sense with a president who doesn't really know what he's doing. But I think his natural – and I think it's possible, and I don't – this is just my guessing here, that he could take – because the decision to back away from hotels, farms, restaurants, et cetera, was met by blowback in the MAGA base.

So he could take blowback in the MAGA base on immigration. We're going to take blowback in the MAGA base on Iran. But he maybe thought he couldn't take blowback on both. And so he reversed on immigration. I don't know if you caught Governor Newsom tweeted the story about the reversal on the agricultural and hospitality sector raids. And he has a new acrostic, MAGA-based.

actually governs America. That's pretty good. Like, not too bad. That's pretty good. Not too bad. I do think that's what's going on. I also think that

Both of these things, the arrests or handcuffing Lander and Padilla and other Democratic officials and the raids, I do think they're connected. And I do think it's a Stephen Miller thing. He wants the confrontation. There is a – again, there is a way to do immigration enforcement, even really tough immigration enforcement that you or I may not agree with, right, which is like –

You can you know, you can go after people who either have criminal records or recent arrivals. And again, you don't have to get into these confrontations with politicians, with elected officials. ICE just released new guidance that now says that members of Congress can't conduct oversight on ICE facilities, even though that's the federal law.

or they can, but ICE can just basically turn them down or cancel their visits whenever they'd like for no reason. So they want the confrontation with local officials. Tom Homan, the immigration czar, has been saying this. Stephen Miller clearly wants

confrontation with these officials. Kristi Noem, before the moment where Alex Padilla was handcuffed, was talking about how DHS was going to liberate Los Angeles from Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom, liberate us from our elected leaders who we elected.

it. So they want these confrontations with the officials. And just so people will know what's happening in the immigration court. So you get a notice to appear in immigration court if you are here with legal status or without legal status, but you're appealing it, right? So maybe you're waiting for your asylum hearing. Maybe you lost your legal status and you overstayed your visa, but you're appealing. And so you go to immigration court and usually your case gets adjudicated and then either you get deported or you are allowed legal status and that's that. With

What they're doing now is they're having the prosecutors who work for the government go to these hearings and say, actually, we're dismissing all the charges. And which sounds good at first. But what really is happening there is you lose all legal protections once the charges are dismissed. And then as they walk out of court, they have the masked, often masked, plainclothes federal agents there to haul you away and get you into expedited removal, which means you get deported quickly. So immigration activists...

have been sending volunteers to these courts to help escort people out of the building. And they've said, as they train these volunteers, do not engage or impede the work of these officers if they do grab someone. But sometimes if you're walking out with people, if you're escorting a family, then they don't get taken.

Or they just go out of the other elevator, right? Or they get to go live their lives and have their case heard, which is what usually happens. So Brad Lander has been doing that. And people are saying, oh, it's a stunt. It was a stunt. It was a stunt. Well, I think it was like, I think he said it to love it. It was the seventh time he's done this. And he's usually been doing it very quietly. It didn't get a lot of coverage. So he's just been doing this as a volunteer because he's a good person who does this. And as he was escorting someone out, this is what happened.

And again, there's a million ways they could have dealt with this that did not end in Brad Lander getting arrested. Same thing with telling Padilla, please don't interrupt the secretary. You can talk to her afterwards. They could have done that with Padilla. They just they don't want to deescalate because they want the confrontations with cops. And Stephen Miller wants ICE agents to be arresting anyone they want, even without a warrant, even if the person has legal status. Like that is the situation we're in right now. Brad Lander is running for mayor. He's a politician.

Right. Obviously, there is some measure of politics in this, but I've seen politicians try to do stunts, and that's not what he did there. He was not trying to have a confrontation with ICE. He could have pushed it in a way. If his goal was to get arrested, he would have done something very different than what he actually did.

Yep. Also, people have been making this point this week, like the masks thing. And, you know, and they're like, oh, well, attacks and harassment on ICE officers are up 500 percent. And then, you know, you ask DHS about it and they don't provide any evidence for that whatsoever. But so you have plainclothes agents with masks, with guns, sometimes in unmarked vehicles.

What are people supposed to do when someone just grabs you now or grabs someone that you're with? You're not supposed to demand a warrant. You're not supposed to try to stop it. What if it's just some bad guy? What if it's just some criminal who's just going to say that they're from ICE and grab you? Now, that's the country we're living in now where anyone can just be rounded up and grabbed off the street. And now you're not supposed to say anything and not supposed to resist and not supposed to ask for a fucking warrant because it's ICE.

I mean, it's absurd. It's out of control. Out of control.

Out of control. Okay, there's been lots of economic news this week. Not all of it was great. The Fed's latest forecast predicts slower economic growth and higher inflation, which is why they decided to hold interest rates steady again and why Trump responded to the announcement by calling Jerome Powell not a smart person and someone who, quote, hates him. Housing starts also hit a five-year low, and according to Bloomberg, Trump's tariffs are set to raise new car prices by nearly $2,000. That's what people voted for, higher car prices again.

fewer homes, higher interest rates.

That's what we want. But fear not, Dan. The president and Republicans in Congress are coming to the rescue with a bill that will deliver trillions in relief to the nation's millionaires while taking food and health care away from working and middle class families. Congress's own independent scorekeeper, the CBO, says Trump's. See, you know, I love it. They say that Trump's We're All Gonna Die Act. That's Joni Ernst. Thank you, Joni Ernst, for the name for the bill. Will make the bottom 30 percent of American households poorer.

while exploding the deficit by almost $3 trillion over the next decade. And yet somehow, the Senate is making the House bill even worse by making deeper cuts to Medicaid.

Dan, what is going on here? What happened to the Medicaid moderates? I thought the Senate was supposed to maybe make the bill a little bit better. They're making it worse. You know, I know that Josh Hawley and Susan Collins are trying to work something out to help rural hospitals because rural hospitals could now start closing down under the new Medicaid cuts. And so now they're trying to, like, develop a fund to help the rural hospitals who were who were hurt because of their legislation to cut the funding to rural hospitals. What the fuck is this?

I would say I am surprised. My assumption was that the House bill would be terrible, the Senate bill would be slightly less terrible, but still terrible, and the Medicaid cuts would be less onerous, and they would meet somewhere in the middle. So you would get a terrible bill that was somewhat less terrible than the Senate bill, somewhat more terrible than the House bill, and that's where it would be if they were to get a bill at all.

But the Senate instead decided to do something to cut the Medicaid provider tax, which is going to not just bankrupt rural hospitals, but will cost states over the course of the next several years hundreds of billions of dollars in funding, which means that these states are required to balance their budget. And so if you have a significant budget shortfall because of this tax, this cut in the tax that states can levy on hospitals that provide health care services to Medicaid patients, then

It means that these states are going to have two choices. They can either cut services or raise taxes. What do we think is actually going to happen there? And what makes this even more devious is they specifically made this worse for the states that expanded Medicaid to include the Affordable Care Act.

And so this is a – it's not just for – like people are going to lose – rural hospitals will close. And if they come up with some sort of bailout fund for rural hospitals, that will help keep the hospitals open, which would be a good thing. But it's not going to solve the problem of states being forced to cut healthcare services for Medicaid patients. Yeah. Yeah.

So naturally, Republicans want this monstrosity to become law as fast as possible. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is doubling down on Trump's July 4th deadline. Mike Johnson says he's prepared to cancel the House recess to get the job done, which means the rest of us don't have much time to stop this thing. And that is surely by design, since voters who've heard about the bill mostly don't like it, according to just about every poll out there.

But a lot of these polls also show that most voters haven't heard about the bill, or at least a good chunk of voters haven't yet heard about the bill, or they don't know enough about the bill. That's led some liberal commentators to complain that Democrats aren't talking about the bill enough, that we're getting distracted by issues like deportations in Iran and everything else Trump throws at us. I have plenty of thoughts on this, but I will, I'll let you start. Okay, let me start. I was going to let you start, but...

I know you've been chopping at the bit for this for a very long time. You're going to say something more reasonable about this, which is going to help me be more reasonable. I don't think so. I don't think so. It might. It might. I'm going to try to be more explanatory and you can be more angry. What we're getting at here is the fundamental paradox of American politics that's been bedeviling Democrats for a while now.

which is that all of the polling shows that our best issue, the one that voters care most about, is the economy, specifically inflation, cost of living, the tariffs, tax cuts for billionaires, cuts to Medicaid, those sorts of things. But at the same time, those issues in this media environment are like a tree falling in the forest.

They do not drive attention. They do not drive the conversation. I've had stuck in my head for months now this report from one of the super PACs that tests how effective messages are and also tracks content online to see what's resonating. And they basically wrote, essentially, that a message about cutting Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy is one of the most effective messages we've ever tested. It's in like the 99.9th percentile of persuasiveness online.

But only 5% of all of the political content online was about Medicaid tax cuts in the budget. And so we have this problem that the thing that helps us the most does not drive attention, does not get coverage. And I don't mean coverage like it's going to be on CNN or the New York Times, because you're going to be able to find plenty of CNN and New York Times stories that are about this. There are people who cover this every day. It just doesn't break through. And so Democrats in that world have two choices.

We can either find a way to talk about this bill and the economy and the tariffs in a way that breaks through to the people who only pay a little bit of attention to the news and politics, or...

we can find a way to win on the issues that do get attention, that do drive conversation. And those issues, unfortunately for us, are the ones that have historically been less good for us. They are issues around culture and identity. It is immigration. It is LGBTQ plus rights. It is democracy, crime, those sorts of things.

And so the reason why we have to make that choice there is what Democrats are doing right now, too many, not all of them, but many of them are doing is we're ignoring the thing that's getting all the attention to say things that get no attention. So what we appear to most people, it's not like people focus on the economy. We're just silent because they're not hearing what we're saying because we have not figured out a way to get people to hear our message on the economy on this budget bill. Yeah. And I think it's...

It's even trickier, right? Like you have to start with what is the goal here, right? If the goal is to make the bill so unpopular that Republicans in competitive districts and purple states in the Senate feel pressure to vote against it, guess what? It is unpopular, right? And either they feel the pressure or they don't. We don't know yet. If the goal is to make it even more unpopular than that by reaching people who are unaware of the bill,

A big reason that's difficult is everything you just said is true. But additionally, you mentioned this, like the very people we're trying to reach are the people who don't pay much attention to the news, right?

They don't follow the news closely. They are not on Blue Sky. They are not on Twitter. So more tweets from us don't matter. They're not watching cable news. So the random Democrats doing a press conference is not going to matter. They might be watching local news, reading local newspapers if they still have them where they live. So, yeah, like you could do events at a rural hospital or you do local events and maybe get some coverage there to the extent there is coverage. But

Trying to shape the national political debate is trying to shape a debate that's being followed by people who've overwhelmingly made up their minds. And this is like a real challenge because there's all these people like, oh, it's not got enough coverage. But like the coverage, the political coverage that exists

political coverage for people who are mostly partisans who've made up their minds, right? Like we, this is what we, this is, this is the problem we had in the last election where Kamala Harris won by a large margin, all the people who follow the news closely and Donald Trump won by a little bit among people who get their news mostly from social media. And then he won by a lot more among people who don't follow the news at all.

So like it's a bigger problem. I guess why I got frustrated about it is there is this belief among people who are very in the data. And, you know, it's Democratic pollsters and strategists and all those folks. Many of them are friends. And they're like, you know, everyone's talking about the immigration stuff or Trump or this. And what we've got to do is just talk more about Medicaid. But us talking more about Medicaid, we talk about in this podcast, we talk about everywhere. We're just talking to each other.

We're all talking to each other. And like the larger challenge for us is to break out of the bubble of all of us who pay close attention to the news and reach people that way. And again,

Again, there's two goals here. There's one trying to stop the bill or at least make the bill better before it passes. And then there's another goal we can talk about, which is if it does pass because Republicans are like, whatever, I don't care that it's unpopular. I'm just going to do it anyway because Donald Trump told me to. Then it's a question of can we hang this law around their necks in the midterms?

Right. And a very, very unpopular bill that then they have to run on and we can make the midterms about it. And that is a different story because then you get more people paying attention. There's a whole campaign that we can run about this law that they voted for. So like that's a whole different story. And I think that maybe is a little bit easier to get people to care about. But right now, I just don't know what else happens.

I don't know what creative ways to talk about this bill are going to break through to people who don't really follow the news anyway. I don't have the right answer. I don't think anyone does. Because if there are a lot of smart people thinking about it, if they did, we would do that. A couple points where I just differ a little bit, I think, which is it starts as a conversation amongst ourselves.

It always does. But things can reach escape velocity where they break out of the political news bubble to reach everyone else. That happened with tariffs around Liberation Day. All the polling shows it. That's why Donald Trump's numbers dipped then. Some of the immigration stuff has broken out of the bubble. And breaking out of the bubble means that it becomes conversation-based.

in a way that are not just on news sites, right? That people are talking about on TikTok, on Instagram. It's showing up in your family group chats where you're going places where people normally talk about politics and they're bringing this up. There were moments during the campaign where that happened a lot, you know, with Trump's assassination, the,

The they're eating the cats and the dogs. You know, there were moments that would break out. And so the goal is like, how do you get those moments to break out on issues that you that you care about? The danger here is if people don't care about it when it passes, if there's not drama on it when it passes and it doesn't get you like there's then there's no context for when we're making the argument to these people next year.

One of the reasons why Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act were so damaging to Republicans in 2018 was at the moment of John McCain putting his thumb down was a moment that broke through. Now, very different media environment, much easier to break out that many years ago, but that was a moment that broke through. So everyone knew Republicans tried to do that. When you go to people and they don't trust politicians, they don't trust political ads, they don't trust the media, and you tell them that Republicans did this terrible thing of which they are not feeling the impact of yet.

they're less likely to believe you if they weren't paying attention when it happened. And so that is why people are trying so hard to get people to pay attention. There's not an easy answer to do that. Yeah. No, I, I actually, I agree with all of that. It just, I think it also sort of proves my point because like John McCain getting all that attention for what he did, that did not necessarily happen because Democrats figured out a way to break through with the message on the affordable care act. Now,

One thing that did break through was Adi Barkan being on that plane with Jeff Flake. And and, you know, this was the tax bill. But like there was a movement that where people were, you know, conducting sit ins in Congress and there was a big groundswell. It was not getting a ton of coverage. But did it eventually impact John McCain's vote? Yeah, possibly.

But you need a moment, right? Which is why I think like the reason that immigration gets covered, the reason that Liberation Day got covered is because there was a moment it was announced and the stock market crashed, right? And so that's something that's going to break through. The reason some of the ICE stuff and the immigration stuff has break through is because there are these moments that are caught on video, right?

As Congress is debating this bill, there's not these big moments, like a CBO fucking score is not going to break through, right? Now, you're right that as we get closer to the vote, then I think there's much more potential for like a big moment to galvanize people around. It's just really hard to do right now while like Congress is just in the sausage making process. You also just need, you build up to the moment, right? You don't know what the moment's going to be. So you can't just sit around and try to come up with what your slot machine pull is that's going to work.

Yeah, that's true.

I went to a No Kings protest. I took my kids. It was an incredible experience. I felt like as inspired as I felt in a very long time. If those protests had been about Medicaid or taking people off their health care or taking food out of people's mouths, that would have created – you don't have to raise awareness to a certain point where you can then have that moment. And so what we have to be doing right now is trying – how do you start to create some context for it?

to do it. But it's timing too, right? Like I think if those protests were about Medicaid cuts and then we're stuck with another two, three, four weeks until the bill passes, then I don't think it matters as much. Like I do think there should maybe be protests like the weekend before they're going to vote, right? Now it's harder to schedule these things, like you said, around congressional calendars because they just sort of control the floor and they can do whatever last minute. But I do think there's a timing element too.

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All right. Last thing before we get to Tommy's conversation with Eric Swalwell. We talked the other day about how the infighting at the DNC had spilled into the open with that leaked audio of chairman, DNC chairman Ken Martin, saying that Vice Chairman David Hogg's initiative to primary sitting Democrats was making Martin's job impossible. David Hogg has since left the DNC.

And now knives are out for Martin himself. Here's the New York Times headline. The DNC is in chaos and desperate for cash. And here's Politico. Weak, whiny and invisible critics of DNC chair Ken Martin savage his tenure. Yeesh. The pieces detail how the committee is facing a serious cash shortfall and that big donors are pissed that they haven't heard more from Martin. A couple of questions for you. How normal or not normal is this level of dysfunction and how much does it matter?

It is definitely not normal, right? There is always a race for the DNC chair. Usually that race has some level of division in it. It's often a establishment insider against usually a more progressive outsider. Everyone comes together at the end. Remember Keith Ellison then took a role with the DNC after Tom Perez won in 2017. This was an interesting, a unique race in the sense that it was two races.

insiders in a nasty battle against each other. Ken Martin ran a pretty tough race. He accused our friend Ben Wickler of being in the pocket of billionaires like Alex Soros and Reid Hoffman, two people who are, I imagine, huge financial supporters of the DNC.

And it's not usual for you to have a, you have to have repeated vice chair elections. It's not usual for two really like longstanding, powerful, prominent Democrats like union leaders, Randy Weingarten and Lee Saunders to resign from the DNC and protest. Oh, I forgot to mention that part. Yeah, that's a big one. So that is like, it is very unusual. The DNC is having trouble raising money. Their off year is never great, but you would imagine there would be some

desire to defeat Trump, right? People are coming in and do that. And that has not happened. The fact that these owners have not heard from Ken Martin is very concerning. So this is all not great, is what I'd say. Few things.

People, I think, expect too much of the DNC. Oh, yes. 100%. And that's just natural, right? You think of like the Democratic Party and you think of the DNC. DNC raises a bunch of money, comes up with the primary calendar and puts on the convention, right? And people think that it like sort of controls the universe and it really doesn't. So you got to keep expectations low in the first instance. But we just suffered a...

loss against Donald fucking Trump. And so obviously views of the party are going to be like at their lowest right now. And one of the reasons, and again, we, you know, we interviewed Ken Martin and, and Ben Wickler's our friend, obviously. And I, and I'm, I was impressed with Ken Martin. I think by all accounts, even in these stories, people say he's like a very hard worker. He's very good at internal politics. Um,

or sort of like the nuts and bolts operational stuff. He's really good because he's been doing this in Minnesota forever. And so that's all great. One of the reasons, aside from the fact that just we've known him forever, but one of the reasons I've always been so impressed with Ben Wickler is he is a very effective, creative communicator. And this is not to just pick on Ken Martin, but I think the party writ large is just in need of better communicators.

And I think like, yes, there's a whole bunch of duties of the DNC chair and probably going out on TV and being an effective communicator isn't hasn't traditionally been the most important task. I think in this information age, in this media age, like being an excellent communicator who can break through is the task of every Democratic official, right?

And I think that like it's just it's not good enough anymore to be good at one thing or the other thing. Like everyone needs to be able to carry the message in a way that breaks through to voters. And I think that one of the reasons that Ken Martin is having a tough time is because he is not naturally skilled at that, you know, and that's not part of his skill set. I agree.

I think that that is a fair critique of Ken Martin, that he's not a great communicator. And he is not. I don't think I don't think he's a bad communicator. I don't think he did fine in that interview. You did. I thought he was totally fine. Yeah. I don't think I've seen him do any communicating as a chair. But that's not what these problems are. These problems are different than that. You could have a very well run DNC that's raising money and talking to donors. And the chair is not a great communicator.

Like you can, you can, but I do, I think in this environment, in this political context, after that election, you know, we should have picked that person, but the problems in the DNC are much, much bigger than whether Ken Martin is going to take that. That's the point. I think that's the big point here. Now, your second question is, is how much does this matter?

And it's not great. Like, I'm going to say that. But as you point out, everyone thinks the DNC is massively powerful. How many people have told us, like, how can the DNC not get the Democrats on message? Call the DNC. That's not what the DNC does. And in the midterms, the DNC plays a very small role

in terms of the Senate and the House. The midterms are largely about the Senate and House Democratic campaign committees. That's where most of it happens. But the DNC should be building for 2028. The DNC is going to have to manage what I expect to be a quite large primary with a calendar that is still TBD. There's a lot of big decisions that have to be made by the DNC. And if it's not run well and not funded well, and if the

The new nominee who will not be an incumbent president comes in and the DNC is in debt and doesn't have money. That is a problem because the DNC is a very important part of a presidential campaign. Yeah. It's just, you know, what's going to get donors to give?

Well, I mean, this is a problem bigger than the DNC. You talk to anyone in the progressive space right now, it's very hard to raise money from big donors. They feel burned by what happened in 2020. They're mad at Biden. They think the Harris campaign or Future Forward, whoever else did not spend their money correctly.

a lot of their assumptions about how you spend money, like do you give it to super PACs to run TV ads? Does organizing still work? They still have these questions, and they're holding back. And that's fine for now, but we are missing opportunities. And time is the only non-renewable resource in politics. So some of these groups we're going to pin on in 2026 are losing time because they don't have money right now. Yeah, that's true.

Okay, we promised you some fun before we get to Tommy's interview with Eric Swalwell. So we want to bring in the anti-war MAGA isolationist, newest bestie on the left,

Tommy Vitor himself. Hey. So earlier in the show, we talked about Dave Smith, who's a comedian who was for Trump and then on Rogan a lot. And then recently this week, he has said not only is he opposing Trump's rush to war in Iran, but that Trump should be impeached. Then Dave Smith was talking about this on his show and played an incredible clip

from Ben Shapiro's show, where Ben Shapiro attacks us, and especially you. Let's listen. The boys over at Pod Save America are siding with Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. I have a general rule. If the people at Pod Save America are agreeing with you on a major foreign policy issue,

The designers of the JCPOA, you are doing it wrong. Here is Tommy Veeder, former van driver for Barack Obama. Tommy Veeder is the biggest idiot in foreign policy. That dude worked with Ben Rhodes on the JCPOA to set up an Iranian-dominant Middle East that ended with October 7th and wild expansion of terror groups all over the region. That guy. This guy. You fucking idiot.

idiot van driver. Man. You know, I bet there's some people who don't know what it means when these guys call me a van driver. It's such a deep cut. In the 2004 Obama Senate campaign, I was the deputy press secretary. One of the things I did was when we went downstate, I would drive the press van and then I worked my way up to the NSC spokesman at the White House and they think that's like an insult rather than like a cool

thing that happened to me. Look, when I first met you in 2005, you were introduced to me as a van driver. I still call you a van driver. Polish up your resume now. This is my van guy. So Dave Smith plays this clip of Ben Shapiro attacking you mainly.

And then he defended you and us and called Ben Shapiro a big idiot. Yeah, he called him a moron. I have a few thoughts on this that I'd like to share. First, you can tell Ben is very worried that Trump is listening to the anti-war parts of the MAGA coalition. Because I watched the rest of that episode. He spends a lot of it attacking Tucker Carlson. And I think the loser doth protest too much here. Second, Ben's argument basically boils down to

I'm for mindless partisanship, right? We're sitting here saying like people we normally profoundly disagree with on politics, in fact, find offensive it often, are making good points on the merits. We're thinking for ourselves. We're using our brains. Ben is like, Obama bad, Pod Save America bad. He's just like a sad little warmonger NPC.

I thought he was the philosopher king. What do they call him? Fax stealing something? Yeah, I thought he was supposed to be this big intellectual force in the Republican Party and that's all he can muster for an argument about why we should go to war in Iran is because Donald Trump says so and

Pod Save America is against it? Yeah. Is that what we got now? If you're taking public policy advice from us on war, matters of war and peace, like you should look elsewhere no matter what, right? And then finally, I was not at the White House when the Iran nuclear deal got done, but I wish I had been because it was a historic achievement and it worked. Iran shipped 97% of its enriched uranium out of the country. They agreed to a bunch of additional restrictions on the nuclear program, stringent inspections by the IAEA.

To the point where in 2017, Jim Mattis, who was the Secretary of Defense for Donald Trump at the time, testified before Congress that Iran was in compliance with the deal and that it was in our national security interest to stay in the JCPOA. But Donald Trump hates Obama more than he cares about solving things in Iran. So he pulled out, sanctioned Iran. They assassinated Qasem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC in 2020. And then Iran...

drastically ramped up its nuclear activities in support of proxy groups. And that brought us to the brink of war. Like the art of the deal guy was too stupid to stay in the deal, keep the restrictions on Iran in place that prevented them from getting a nuclear weapon, but that renegotiate the parts you don't like and then call it the Trump nuclear deal. I was just going to say, if Barack Obama in that fateful meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval before he left office and Donald Trump took office, if he had just said, hey,

Let's call the deal the Obama-Trump deal. We can call it the Trump-Obama. Trump-Obama deal. The Trump-Obama around nuclear deal. What do you think? I bet we would have still been in the deal. I think he would have had to say, hey, I hate that JCPOA. Yeah, maybe. Can you get rid of it? And then Trump would have stayed in. But like, that's why we're on the brink of war. And by the way, this is what Netanyahu always wanted. And these hawks always wanted. They wanted regime change. They wanted the war.

Well, thanks. Thanks, Dave Smith for, uh, can I read you guys one thing? Yeah, sure. Just, uh, regarding Ben's attack on me personally. I take no offense, uh, judge me by the people. You read a personal statement about this? No, I want to read you a, I wanted Dan, I want to read you a passage from a column Ben Shapiro wrote in August of 2005. So this was years after the U S invaded Iraq and we found no WMD. Uh, the headline is why war in Iraq is right for America, 2005. Uh,

This is why impatient isolationism serves us ill in Iraq. Did Iraq pose an immediate threat to our nation? Perhaps not. But toppling Saddam Hussein and democratizing Iraq prevent his future ascendance and end his material support for future threats globally. The same principle holds true for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, and others. Preemption is the chief weapon of a global empire. No one said empire was easy, but it's right and good, both for Americans and for the world.

Yes, Ben, this empire project in the Middle East is going great. Yeah, no thanks. No thanks to that foreign policy right there. Thanks, buddy.

All right, we're going to take a quick break. But before we do, in the latest episode of Polar Coaster, Dan, you dove into why Trump's disapproval numbers are ticking back up and what polls really tell us about immigration. What else do you guys cover? We went deep into the polling around the war in Iraq. Sorry, around the war in Iran. That's a Freudian slip. And looked at why voters, including Trump voters, are very opposed to this. And Elijah and I did something fun. And we talked a little bit about the NBA Finals.

Oh, nice. Well, if you want access to Polar Coaster, which you should get, you've got to be a Friends of the Pod subscriber. You'll also get access to our Discord community where you can submit questions for Dan and Caroline. Ad-free shows, ad-free Pod Save America, ad-free Pod Save the World, ad-free offline, ad-free love or leave it. Check it out and a whole lot more. Sign up at cricket.com slash friends or on Apple Podcasts. When we come back, you'll hear Tommy's conversation with Eric Swalwell.

Thank you.

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Joining me in studio today is Congressman Eric Swalwell of California's 14th District. Great to see you. Yeah, thanks for having me back. Are you in town for the Antifa guerrilla campaign we're launching tomorrow against ICE? Is that what brings you here? That's right. Orientation, right? Yeah, your parents' side. Starts this afternoon. Yeah, your stick, your night stick, maybe? Yeah, all in. Good. Actually, tomorrow night, I'm doing a town hall in Mission Viejo in the 40th Congressional District. That's

Young Kim's district. It's one of the closest congressional races in the country. If we're going to be in the majority next November, if Hakeem Jeffries is a speaker, we have to win there. And so she won't host a town hall just like most of the Republicans. So I've been on this crusade trying to do two a month in Republican districts. And it's not just that you go and put downward pressure on them, especially as the reconciliation bill

awaits final passage in the house, it's an organizing tool. And it's also a recruiting tool because potential candidates come to these events. They see that there's a support network around them. It helps the locals collect information about who wants to volunteer, who wants to be involved.

And we've been getting actually a lot of Republicans showing up to these events as well. That's great. I went to the one Ro Khanna did like an hour from here a few months back. Are you guys still getting good attendance and energy? We're getting about a thousand people each time that we do this. I went to Anna Paulina Luna's district in Tampa, had about a thousand people. I was in Folsom in Kevin Kiley's district up in the Sacramento suburbs.

Same thing. And we try and create like immediately a permissive environment for Republicans because I don't want people who are Republicans to feel like if they ask a question and say they're a Republican, yeah, that they're going to get jeered. And then you start to see the permissive environment allows them to in their questions say, okay,

I'm a Republican and I don't like this. And so we've learned a lot about what is drawing them out, what's causing them concerns. And this is what you'd imagine. It's threats to health care, Social Security, a lot of veterans who are getting fucked over. I mean, no president has fired more veterans than

than Donald Trump. And a lot of these guys are showing up with their service hats on to like, kind of like proudly like show that they served and now their benefits are at risk. That's great. I'm so glad you guys are doing that. I think it's really important. Also, I screwed something up on a recent mailbag episode that left the country and you actually corrected me. I said that Democrats had a six year term limit on committee chairs. Turns out that was Republicans. Huge error. I wish we did.

Yeah. So you'd be in favor of a reform like that? 100%. Something to get younger members into leadership positions? Yeah. And too many of them, we have so much talent in our Democratic caucus, but the way our rules are set up, I mean, it's very seniority bias. Because of that, a lot of people have either left the private sector or they've run for other offices because they don't see a pathway to leadership. I want to get to some issues of the day. So Politico reported today that

that we're talking on Wednesday, June 18th, that a federal appeals court appears poised to allow Trump to continue to deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles. If that happens, how worried are you about Trump just like having troops in the streets of Los Angeles or other liberal cities in California or anywhere just in perpetuity? Yeah, that's the plan, right? And he's, I see it as, it's kind of like a reverse Uno of January 6th, right? So January 6th,

We needed the troops, and that would have meant the troops going in against his supporters who were violently attacking the Capitol. And so he didn't call them.

The reverse Uno here is that he wants to put the troops there to draw the foul so that his political opponents attack the troops and bring violence and then give him justification to assert more power. And so, of course, we have to keep fighting this in the courts. But I think we have to tell the story of, one, like the shitty conditions that he's having our troops live in. Like they're sleeping on the ground. Yeah. And they're sleeping in squalor. It's not like Afghanistan or Iraq. I mean, this is –

these are big American cities, but the cost as well, $134 million for this exercise in Los Angeles, $40 million for what he did in

you know, at the Capitol last week. And then contrast that with that money could have gone to taking care of the troops in their healthcare, like veterans healthcare, their veterans injury claims that are not being paid out at the rate they need to be paid out. And of course, just like taking care of the, you know, people in our community who count on government. So I think the price tag is eye-popping for a lot of people and we have to keep

you know, raising the alarm on that. Yeah, I agree. I mean, that could be a down payment on taking Greenland. That's right. Come on, let's get creative here. California is proposing a bill to ban face coverings for officers during official duties, unless they're SWAT or disaster response. DHS called the bill despicable,

What's your take? It's weird to me to watch. I mean, I just put myself in the shoes of anybody on the streets of Los Angeles. All of a sudden, you're a bunch of guys in plain clothes run up on you with masks on and then detain you and throw you in an unmarked van. Like that feels like a kidnapping. It's un-American, frankly. If you're standing on the law and justice is on your side, you should have nothing to hide.

And I say that as a former prosecutor, a son of a cop, and a brother to two police officers. And there's no other law enforcement agency in America that routinely is out in the streets with their faces covered.

But one thing that we can do as a caucus, and many of my Democratic colleagues have talked about this, is when we're in the majority and we make reforms to the immigration system and we fund DHS, one of the first things we're going to demand is that they show their faces. It's also a public safety issue, especially for women. You have some unmasked guy coming up to you, you're going to look like...

I'd be terrified.

really get uncomfortable when they see these images of masked agents. Yeah, it's very scary. We're all sitting here anxiously awaiting to see whether President Trump is going to drag the United States into offensive military action against Iran. In the House, you have Thomas Massey, a Republican, Ro Khanna, your colleague in the California delegation, who have put forward a war powers resolution that would prohibit the U.S. from entering into the war unless it's authorized by Congress. Do you support that effort? I support that. You think it's a good idea? Yeah.

You know, it is our duty, you know, to declare war and we need to know, you know, the time, like the length of time as to what the commitment would be. We need to know the number of troops, you know, that would be committed and the terrain covered. So that's the three T's. Maybe a goal. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe like what's the overall goal.

mission here. You know, there's no question that, you know, Iran is a malicious actor that funds terrorism all over the globe. And, you know, in their, you know, founding documents, it is a death to America, death to Israel agenda. And we rightfully, I think, are defending Israel's skies. But

for us to go in militarily against Iran. I mean, we know how this ends. Like, tell me the success story in our lifetime where we went into the Middle East and, you know, a positive outcome was achieved. And I also look at these bases that are at risk right now because of...

what's happening over there. And it just reminds me like, why do we still have that kind of presence in the Middle East? 40,000 troops in the Middle East. Yeah. And the guy who said no more wars, he's actually adding wars, you know, to the globe, which is failed leadership on his part. Completely failed to end the war in Ukraine. In fact, many would argue it's worse. Things in Gaza are worse. And now we're at an

And why wouldn't China right now, as they see us distracted and unable to bring peace where we promised peace, why wouldn't they move on Taiwan at this point? If I was China, I would see the United States and its influence change.

quite weakened, especially if Netanyahu is able to launch these strikes while we were negotiating with Iran, making a president who said he's going to end wars look weak. Why wouldn't China want to do that if the US president looks weak?

Yeah. I mean, every president, including Barack Obama, who I worked for, has said they wanted to pivot from the Middle East to Asia. And yet once again, Trump has taken aircraft carriers out of the Pacific, sending them the Middle East, you know, drawn back in again. I want to play a clip for you. This is a guy named Dave Smith. He's a comedian and podcaster and frequent guest on Joe Rogan show and others with like

so-called manosphere shows. I want you to hear and the audience to hear how he is talking about the war with Iran and Trump's involvement. I supported him this last year. I apologize for doing so. It was a bad calculation. At the time, it seemed like the right one. But he should be impeached and removed for this one. And not on some ridiculous Nancy Pelosi. Of course, the Congress will never do it because they're all a bunch of corrupt hacks. This is the one thing they support. This is like the...

Donald Trump should be impeached and removed for this. All of his supporters should turn on him. It's the absolute betrayal of everything that he ran and campaigned on and everything that he stood for. Okay, so he lost me on the all of Congress's corrupt tax thing, but I'm wondering, like, the sentiment is good, right? It's great to hear these guys kind of

of seeing the reality of who Trump is and what his policies are. How do you think we speak to people like Dave Smith and show him that we as a party are listening and we want to get back to being the anti-war, anti-forever war party? That's right. And this is not what you were promised, right? That you were promised that we would reduce the amount of conflicts in the world, not increase them. And you were right if that's why you supported him. And he's wrong for betraying you. It's the U.S.,

foreign policy goal across administrations that we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. I thought we were best off when President Obama negotiated an agreement and we had the best eyes and insight into Iran as to whether they did. And we saw them going

I agree.

I totally agree. You're a member of the Homeland Security Committee. Are you guys getting briefed on any increased threats from Iran or Iranian proxies because of this war? Is there concern there? We've been told that we're going to get that on Monday when we're back. Obviously, you know, being... And again, Donald Trump...

Sends out one tweet, we have nothing to do with this, and then is saying essentially everyone evacuate Tehran. Also, I could smoke the Supreme Leader if I wanted to. Yeah, I know where he's staying right now. So that certainly brings more threats to the homeland, and I look forward to that brief to see what we can do to reduce that. Again, we were told –

Fewer wars, safer on day one. And people have never been more anxious about their security here or our friends, even in Israel. I mean, they're now incredibly anxious about ballistic missiles raining down on television. This is crazy stuff. Speaking of the security situation over the weekend, there was this horrific politically motivated assassination in Minnesota. We have since learned that

This killer had a list of Democrats in his car, including some of your colleagues. I was talking to Greg Landsman, another Democrat in Congress yesterday. He's a friend of mine. It just sounds beyond terrifying. Have you guys gotten a briefing on what this guy's deal was or other, you know, the general kind of threat for members of Congress generally? Yeah.

We had a briefing, a security briefing yesterday. I learned actually it was just today that I was in the writings, which was separate, I think, from like the list.

We are very, I would say, on edge as a caucus right now. I bet. And in the call that we had yesterday, I mean, there was just a lot of emotion, first, about not feeling like we have enough resources. And personally, I feel like it's inevitable that we're going to lose a member or someone in a member's family because of the high volume of threats and the low amount of resources devoted to this. And that is entirely at the...

at the foot of the Republican Party. They will not fund...

the security that we need to protect members of Congress. And they won't even fund the judges. And in fact, the judges who are also receiving an incredible number of threats, they came to the Judiciary Committee, which I'm also on, and asked for an increase in funding. And Jim Jordan and Chip Roy both publicly said, like, that's not going to happen. And Chip Roy went as far as to say, like, they are bringing this on themselves with some of their rulings. So it's almost like blaming the victim. And so...

The anxiety among my colleagues is that like the threats, what they do is we all have to spend out of our own campaign accounts to protect ourselves and our staff and our family because we don't have the resources from Congress to

And the aim is to make you do fewer town halls so you're not as representative to your constituents, spend more money out of your campaign so you're more vulnerable in your own re-election. And then you have these assholes on the right like Mike Lee who take a

a tragedy like this and blame the Democrats. Yeah, he mocks it and suggests that it was leftists who did it and it's very frustrating right now. Greg told me he's sitting in his house terrified, you know, waiting for them to catch this Minnesota killer who had his name on a list and he's

He could not get out of his head the image of that man in that terrifying mask. And the reason he had seen that image is because someone sent Greg fucking Mike Lee's tweet. You know what I mean? Like that guy literally was terrifying someone who thought he might be a victim in real time. Just awful. Just to dig into this a little bit. Can you help listeners understand like,

What kind of resources are currently available to members of Congress when it comes to security and what things you might like to add? Yeah, so almost zero. I mean, when you're on the campus of the Capitol, thank God the Capitol Police are there. But unless you're in leadership, they get around the clock, like, personal details. Yeah.

Nobody else gets anything like that at all. And so you're really on your own. And so if you're personally wealthy, you can, I guess, pay for personal security. You remember Ben Romney talking about how unbelievably expensive it was for him to protect himself and his family as part of why he retired. Yeah. If you have $80,000 left in student loan debt like me, it's really hard to dip into your personal funds for security. And so you try and manage it with

with your campaign. And so there's not many resources right now at all. And that's a large part of the frustration. But there's also a sense that the antidote to this is bipartisan condemnation of violence. And we often feel like it's a one-sided condemnation and we don't get it from the other side. And

Mike Johnson, by the way, what did he say last week about Gavin Newsom? That he should be tarred and feathered. Tarred and feathered, yeah. Right? Like just one of the most horrible, cruel acts from like a horrible era of American history. And so that's the direction these guys are going. And it's another reason for us to be in the majority. And Hakeem Jeffries has said this to many members who face a lot of threats that like –

when we're in the majority, like we will get this right. But I'm afraid before we get there, we're probably going to see an increase in threats and potentially like a loss of a member. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure Speaker Johnson thought he was being funny, but tar and feathering someone is like the first example I'd think of when it comes to like vigilante justice, right? Like things we shouldn't be for in this country. But I agree with you. I mean, part of the problem with this is

We understandably, I think, default to a conversation about security and like, you know, protecting members and elected officials generally. We should, of course, do that. But there isn't this conversation about just like ratcheting down the tension. And look, more security comes with a cost, right? I mean, I saw this when I was on the Obama campaign and we went from

no secret service is secret service. Like you're suddenly held at more of a distance from the people you represent. Like they can't get close to you. They can't talk to you. There's no like serendipity on a rope line anymore or something, you know? And it's harmful, I think, to like the political process generally. Yeah.

And you can see the direct line of like when the threats started to go up. And it was 2015 when a certain person entered the presidential race. Ted Cruz. Yeah, that's right. And created this –

environment where people felt like, well, if he can tell security to go rough up that journalist, or if he can say a police officer should bang a suspect's head on the doors, he's put him in the car. If he can suggest the press are the enemy of the people, then it's okay for me to talk that way. Pardon January 6th guys. Yeah. And it's not just who he is locking up right now.

And the way he's doing it, you know, with his ice mast agents, it's who he put into our community. And also the signal that sends to those folks that why wouldn't I go out and commit more violence in his name? He's got my back. Right. Right. And he'll pay my lawyer fees. He'll pardon me. I'll do whatever it takes about the kind of congressional business that's happening.

So the House passed Trump's tax cut for billionaires bill by one vote. Sounds like the Senate's making a bunch of changes to it. There are reportedly changes to the state and local tax deductions that helped get a lot of moderate Republicans on board. There's changes to the deductions businesses can make that I think will make the bill way more expensive, and they're not paying for that necessarily. It makes the child tax credit less generous. There are deeper cuts to Medicaid. I think the debt ceiling increase is bigger.

Given what you're seeing, do you think there's a chance that Speaker Johnson won't be able to get that –

revised version through the house? I do. And by the way, your staff generously offered me a LaCroix when I came in to pay for this bill. One of the deductions they took away from small and medium-sized businesses is to provide like food and snacks to your employees. So that was something you could deduct, I think, up to like 50%. And they got rid of that so that the billionaires can have a bigger tax cut. So I guess next time I'll have to come in with my own.

Yeah, I'm going to get you a water bottle. But if you believe the SALT crew, and I know your colleagues, because I listen to the show, they eye roll you when you really want to go into the SALT weeds here. But if you listen to the SALT New York Republicans, and I talk to them, they say that if the Senate touches SALT,

They're gone. So that's about four votes. And again, they passed it by one last time. So they can't lose those four New Yorkers. Now, do the moderates always get rolled? Yes. But those New Yorkers just watched in the last election three of the Republican colleagues get beaten. So they know that we are going for more seats in New York. And we can't be in the majority unless we win more seats in New York.

in New York. And the same thing in California, who also has the SALT issue is a big issue. And there's still Republicans like young Kim, who will be thinking about that. So if the SALT folks stick together, they can kill the bill. Final question for you. So a lot of Democrats feel a little demoralized these days. I think it knows no King's protest

We're an incredibly powerful shot in the arm for anybody who went. But now we're back to like the war, a new war in Iran, ice raids, like God knows what else. What's your advice to Democrats listening who are trying to figure out how to do something to make the country a better place, even though we're a long ways away from the next federal election?

Small victories will bring big victories. We saw that in Wisconsin. And I know Vote Save America engaged there. And a lot of us, through contributions or text messaging, phone banking, engaged there. I certainly did. And we beat Elon's $30 million. And hopefully that's a deterrent to Elon spending a lot of money

in the midterms. New Jersey, Virginia, at the end of this year, if we can win there with Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill, get two Democratic governors, that will make sure that we have equal access to the ballot box in the midterms because we need to pick up seats in both Virginia and New Jersey for the midterms. But it also gives us momentum, right? I think sports is just like politics, like momentum, momentum,

begets momentum. I totally agree. So we end the year with wins in Wisconsin, Virginia, New Jersey. We start to get our confidence back. We are able to recruit good candidates because these wins help us

high caliber candidates make the decision as to whether they want to run or not, right? So in all of these congressional districts that are toss-ups and all the Senate seats that are toss-ups, if you're seeing us collect wins at the ballot box and you're seeing people go to the town squares like we saw over the weekend at the No Kings rallies, you're going to feel like if I get in this, there's a chance for me to win. And the inverse of that is Brian Kemp, right?

high caliber candidates on the Republican side, like Brian Kemp, who was going to run against John Ossoff in Georgia, he's going to take a walk this election. And then I would just say to your viewers, what I'm doing in my own household, whatever you did in the last election cycle, go one rung higher. So just think about what you did and go one rung higher. So if you've never gone to a protest, go to your first protest. If you've never volunteered on a congressional campaign, volunteer on your first congressional campaign. If you've never gone to city hall to speak on a council agenda, go

Go and speak and just find your own agency and fulfillment in doing that. We'll probably have to go a lot of rungs higher by the time we get to the midterms. But for now, just go one rung higher and see how that makes you feel. That's great advice. Congressman Swalwell, thank you so much for coming in. My pleasure. Thanks, Tommy. That's our show for today. Thanks to Eric Swalwell for joining. Love it. Tommy and I will be back on Tuesday with a new show. Everybody have a great weekend. Thank you, J.P. Rowell.

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