Indictment (Georgia's Version)

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm unindicted. Co-conspirator Jon Leavitt.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

On today's show, Republican presidential candidates descend on the Iowa State Fair. Merrick Garland gives special counsel status to the U.

I make decisions in this office based on the facts and the law. The law is completely nonpartisan. That's how decisions are made in every case. To date, this office has indicted, since I've been sitting as a district attorney, over 12,000 cases. This is the 11th Rico indictment.

All right, and with us, to walk through this indictment is strict scrutinies. Melissa Murray welcome.

Thanks for having me up late.

Up very late. So now that we're all rico experts now, because it's been a couple hours perusing Twitter. Can you tell us what the Rico law is? And sort of how Fannie Willis sort of combined all of these charges and all these offenses under the Rico law?

Well, let me preface this with I'm not a rico expert. Much of what I know about Rico comes from my obsessive watching of the sopranos for much of the early 2000s. But Rico, as you said, is a racketeering statute, so it's meant to sort of get at questions of organized criminal syndicates.

The other important point, I think, is that these are state charges and they can't be pardoned by Trump if he wins the election. So to your point about all the people who could flip on Trump? Were they to face real jail time? He can't make them any promises.

Right, and I should also correct this because I misstated this on MSNBC last week. Georgia is one of the states where the governor doesn't actually have direct clemency privileges, which is to say the governor does not grant pardons. In Georgia. There's actually, since the 1940s, a state Board of Pardons and Paroles that makes recommendations as to pardons.

Were you surprised just in reading it? I, you know, I've never seen an indictment document of a former president of trying to overturn an election in Georgia before. So this is the first time I've read one like this.

In Georgia was the critical point there.

But were you surprised by how sweeping the acts defining the criminal enterprise were that? How far afield from Fulton County, Fannie Willis is going?

Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of other jurisdictions involved here, some that are not necessarily even in the state of Georgia. So Coffey County, which is in Georgia, as mentioned, but also outside of Georgia. And she was asked during her press conference whether or not that was going to be an issue, and she spoke to this question. And again, because they connect back to the effort to overturn the election in Georgia. They are properly, in her view, within the scope of this Georgia Rico charge.

Was there anything just skimming through the indictment that surprised you, and what do you think of the strength of the overall case, just from perusing the indictment?

I was definitely surprised that Rudolph Giuliani has two middle names, was not expecting that.

Yeah, I didn't know that either.

Also appreciated how at her press conference, she identified every defendant by their full names. Like, very, very big school, marm energy, that was great.

One other piece of it, just to your point, about the impact on people in Georgia, is the lengths they were going to try to intimidate. Ruby Freeman. A lot of detail about going to the neighbor's house, saying we're going to help you. Hey, we're here to help you, you need to be. I mean, it just sounds so much like mob shit. Like, Hey, it'd be a shame if something would have happened to you, if something nasty would have come your way.

Well, and some of the charges sort of have that kind of gangster shit feeling to it too, like forgery, impersonating an officer. It's not like everything here is a high-minded criminal conspiracy. Some of it just seems like really petty criminal mind stuff that you would see corner boys doing. That's sort of the level of it. This was like brass knuckles tactics to try and overturn an election.

She got asked at the press conference if she's going to try all 19 defendants together, and she said, yes. What's the significance of that and is that going to be? Is that normal? How does that usually work?

It can be normal, I mean, often, in some of these big cases. The most common analog I can think of from my own experience was like a large multi-defendant drug trial, where all of the defendants were on trial at the same time. It's not unusual, it's not unorthodox, it is unwieldy, though.

I think we all remember when District Attorney Harvey Dent indicted the Falcone Crime Syndicate and the impact that had on the city. And the way it did help stem the tide of that enterprise.

There's a lot of talk.

She does want a trial very quickly that, again, I think, is consistent with criminal trials. The whole idea of a speedy trial is that the government doesn't get to keep you on a rotisserie spit indefinitely. If they make these charges against you, they have to either prove them or you're free and you're innocent. That's not a surprise.

I'm sure one of the first moves from Trump's legal team will be to try to get this case moved from state court to federal court. Do you think that's likely to succeed, or what would you put the chances of that?

I mean, again, generally, the standard for federal court removal really requires the presence of significant federal questions or significant overlap. There is some overlap with Jack Smith's case. But there's also a lot that's quite distinct and that is very specific to Georgia and Georgia's own body of laws. And so I think that might give a federal judge pause in hearing a request to remove this to federal court, to be clear, even if it were removed to federal court. There's a lot here that I think is really needy for a jury to get into, whether it's a state jury or a federal jury. But I think, at most, and most pressingly, for Donald Trump, any effort to remove this to federal court is nothing more than a delay tactic. First and foremost, to slow this down.

If they were to try to move this to federal court, would that make it a federal rico case? Is that how that would work? Because then can't they take his stuff?

I think that's one of the reasons why there's so much Georgia-specific stuff here. The Georgia Rico Statute is different from the Federal Rico Statute, and it's not clear that it's easily translatable. So when I say, I think there's enough here, that is very specific to Georgia. That would require it to be heard in a Georgia tribunal, as opposed to a federal tribunal. That's what I'm talking about. But I don't think that they would translate as easily to a federal Rico. So I don't think it's like you moved to federal court and now it's a federal Rico case.

If you were coordinating the global defense for Donald Trump, of all these cases, is there one that you would be most worried about now, having seen all of them?

In terms of all of these indictments.

Yeah, on the Mar-a-Lago documents cases, we have photos of fucking top secret documents sitting next to the toilet. And he's deleting footage from the tapes, or at least attempting to. It seems like he's dead to rights there. This case is the state-based case. It's a broad, sweeping rico.

If I were running the four seasons legal team, the elite strike force, what would I be most concerned about?

The fact that you're indicted in this document.

The fact that we have an indictment for every year of this guy's presidency is notable.

Of this, all of these ducks in a row, a real crime buffet, yeah. Speaking of lawyers, many of them are indicted in this document. You have Rudy's all over this thing.

Profession Every time one of these indictments drops, I think we say on strict scrutiny, it's been a pretty bad day for the profession. It's not a great look for lawyers.

This guy, Melissa Murray, thank you as always for hopping on pod Save America, especially so late and walking us through this indictment. Thanks for having me. That was worth the wait. We'll tell you all what happened here.

Our dear listener, to not say, Oh, yeah, we'll give you an indictment bonus. We wanted to get into it, we thought, all right, we'll give it an hour for this thing. I don't know how long it takes them to PDF down there in Georgia, but two and a half hours just get the thing uploaded.

That's quite a long time. I thought the judge was going to read some names, but the judge did not read the names. He just had a look on his face, though it was like, Oh, there's a former president on here, look at that.

Well, one thing that Fannie Wells has said is that she likes Rico. she's a fan of Rico.

I'm a fan of Rico. I've told people that the reason that I am a fan of Rico is. I think jurors are very, very intelligent. But they want to know the whole story, they want to know what happened, they want to make an accurate decision about someone's life.

We love Rico, we love rico. Don't we, folks? Don't we love Rico?

We love beautiful, fabulous Rico. But she talks about the fact that she likes it, in part because it gives her the ability. That when you have a jury, they want to understand the whole story, they want to understand the whole story of what the crime was. Not just the very specifics, but the larger narrative of what people were up to. And that Rico gives her the ability to do that. It's still jarring to see, just in an indictment, the connection between the public statements and the private planning, and then the criminal acts that took place later. Seeing it all weave together, not just in Georgia, from state to state to state. And to see it said so plainly. That when Trump was going on television and saying that the election was stolen, that we should look what's happening in Georgia, that dead people were voting in Michigan, whatever he was saying. That in those statements themselves might not have been a crime, but they were in furtherance of a conspiracy to overturn the election and part of a criminal enterprise.

Pretty bad.

To one point that Melissa made, and she talked about how some of these were just like they weren't all like high-minded crimes. Right? When you read the D.C. indictment for overturning the election, the Jack Smith case, a lot of it is it's violation of the constitution and conspiracy. I was struck by some of the acts here in Georgia. Members of the enterprise stole data, including ballot images, voting equipment, software and personal voter information. To talk about this, we can put the legal stuff aside, but just to talk about this from a political standpoint. In persuading people that, yeah, Donald Trump breaks the law and is part of a criminal enterprise. Stuff like that, like hacking into voting machines, stealing data.

It'll be complicated because they're going to say this election official gave us a letter and invited us. Blah, blah, blah. But I agree with you, that is sort of easy to understand also.

It's like, Yeah, we've seen that one before.

Creating fake documents, harassing election officials, creating and distributing false Electoral College documents, the way they phrase it. As part of this broader Rico case, which is a criminal enterprise with Donald Trump at the helm, it does make it all make.

More sense and feel more salient. Also, it takes it out of the political context too, and puts it in a law and order. TV fucking crime context. Of these were forgeries, these were, catch me. If you can fake fucking electors, then you might end up with Ruby Freeman on the stand saying my family was terrified.

She did with her daughter during the January 6th hearings. Very powerful.

And she's going to be back on the stand. Telling that story is really powerful to see, not in a congressional hearing, not with politicians around, but on the witness stand in a trial.

Well, and you say powerful to see, that's the other big thing here in terms of the politics. Which is if this case does stay in a state court, if it's not moved to federal court. This judge has already ruled that there will be cameras in the courtroom. And this will be the trial of Donald Trump that we see every day on television. Which is going to be much different than getting reports about it when it's like the Jack Smith case.

No puppet show system. Yeah, Elijah said. When Elijah heard that the thing was going to be televised, he shouted, Let's go. He hit a half court three.

Wondering where's Mark Meadows? Where's Mark Meadows? Mark Meadows is in this document? He's got the counts of the RiCo statute, and he's charged with solicitation of violation of both.

By public officers, it's going to be, and cameras allowed in the courtroom. The sheriff has already said that he will be getting a mugshot of Donald Trump. That they won't be doing anything different than for anyone else. Otherwise, how will we know who it is?

If he escapes, we have to put something out. We're going to get ourselves a mugshot. Also. By the way, we don't know individuals one through 30, we don't know if any of those.

People have already cooperated. Yeah, I know there's some. We were recording a couple of minutes after this broke, but there was some speculation that someone high up has probably flipped. Who was one of the unindicted co-conspirators? That was part of the Oval meeting, where they were talking about accessing voter data.

You know, Mark Meadows on the phone, with his lawyer being like, you tell them I will say whatever they need to say. Get me the fuck out of this, you get me out of this tomorrow, I will.

Tell them whatever they want. Six months, she said. That brings us to February, March, that is like, March is the Alvin Bragg case Jack Smith wants early January.

Look, we're not legal experts. No way this happens in six months, though. Yeah, no way it's going to be. So it sounds so complicated with this many people.

I think that is the drawback with 19 defendants, because they're all if you don't, and I think a judge can step in and sever the case if they want. But she definitely wants to try them all.

They have until August, was it August 25th to surrender?

August 25th to surrender. I like that phrasing.

Yeah, God, please don't.

Before we do, Tommy, you're a State Fair veteran. Thanks. What's the deal with this event? Why do candidates feel the need to go, and what are these campaigns trying to get out of it?

So it's a couple of parts, it's like tradition, it's fun, and it's a chance to talk to voters directly. The traditions are, you go to the pork tent to flip pork chops on the grill and seem like a regular guy. You go check out the butter cow 600 pound cow made of butter, you check out the giant steer that's sitting in some Ag tent.

I hate that.

It has a terrible-.

Do you get it? I know it took me a couple of minutes, though, and I was like, Oh, fair side.

It hurts your ears, it hurts your ears, it's not great, it's a tronc, it's a tronc.

Basically, she lobs softball questions at candidates in front of an audience. And so, look, part of your job is to have a good time. You go eat some deep fried twinkies. Barack Obama went on the bumper cars with Sasha back in 2007, They went on some other rides and stuff.

You see, Meatball did that too.

Yeah, he played some of the rigged games you play where you shoot water into a thing so you get a prize.

Hey, we're not rigged.

I think I've been twice and the fried stuff is the best.

Delicious look. Success is. Did you get some press coverage? did you talk to some voters? Did you come off looking like a normal human being who actually has fun at things like a fair? Yes?

Gave her the $20 he promised, and they went home.

On his shoulders, I think some of these people, the voters, are like, Oh, that's a cute family.

If you've got a better way to come up with how we pick who's in charge of Medicare, I'd like to hear.

It, I don't think we've covered this enough. It's deep fried snickers, deep fried oreos pickles, deep fried pickles, deep fried twinkies.

Butter.

Butter.

Deep fried butter.

Oh, I didn't know that that's tough.

Look, I love, as you know, I love fair food. It's something that and people don't realize this. You don't need to be at the State Fair to eat like you're at the State Fair, which is something I. That's. I put that on my tombstone.

I was not there for this, but in 2004, I guess it would have been 2003, John Kerry went to the Iowa State Fair and ordered a strawberry smoothie.

It didn't go well.

That did not go well, so David Wade, or someone immediately tried to get him a corn dog. get a corn dog in his hand.

What do you think? What do you think this is John Kerry? You think he has an ass day in Hollywood? You're in the Iowa State Fair.

Oh man, that's a reference. Oh boy.

Yeah, that's right, six Barry's instructors get that one. I like the human, weird interactions. Someone handed Mike Pence a toothbrush and said, Keep smiling. Like, I think that's not ever going to happen in six months because he won't be a candidate.

So Trump's visit was pretty quick. He didn't grill, he didn't sit down for the fair side chat with Kim Reynolds. Probably because he's been attacking her for a month. He rolled in with a bunch of Florida politicians, presumably to troll Ron DESantis, and he was gone by 2pm on Saturday. But not before a quick speech where he was introduced by Matt Gaetz, and then he was shouted some questions that he answered.

We love standing with you, but we know that only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington, D.

Yes, the answer is, the answer is yes, sure, did. What do you think he meant by that? Because I sometimes I can't tell if he's, you know, he goes through phases where he's proud. He's like, Yes, I did try to overturn the election because the election was rigged. Sometimes, he admits it.

I think he's saying, you know, my answer to that question is the election was stolen and I was trying to get the right person, who, you know, he's just.

And you heard, Gaetz, you got to make change through force. That's what they were doing on January 6th.

The force of our personalities.

That's what they were doing outside the Capitol.

In the same way that he's now claiming that if you come after me, I'm coming after you. Was actually about political action committees.

Yeah, right, it was like, Yeah, he doesn't like Pacs. So the DESantis people are accusing Trump of snubbing Iowa, they said. He's acting like he's entitled to the nomination. How much do you think any of this matters to Trump? Tommy?

I think it can matter on the margins, like the Iowa Caucus. Goers are a little bit pampered. They're used to being catered to, and I think if they feel snubbed, maybe that'll be effective.

What's up with that? Also, he's in his suit and his cufflinks and everything.

He's a star, you think he's going to do a cattle call?

I think you're right.

And it's tough.

Also, these people will caucus for him. If he's sitting in jail, they're probably going to be upset that he missed the butter cow.

First of all, I think it is tough. I think it's tough to make the argument that Trump is snubbing Iowa while he's in Iowa. He was in Iowa at the time. And yeah, he's not doing these events, these cattle call events like he didn't do. The one where Tucker Carlson ripped Pence into one.

And dijoniers.

Yeah, he didn't do the roast and ride, one roast and ride.

I couldn't remember what it was called.

You know, he just seems bigger than all these people sitting down for these things.

So it may end up.

Well, I just think that he does his own events. He doesn't go and sit down in the same seat that Pence sat in, the same seat that Vivek Ramaswamy sits in. He doesn't do that shit anymore.

I would argue that his attempt to troll Pence was probably more important than his visit. Because I think this whole primary, it's a unique circumstance. Trump Is this known quantity? The vast majority of Republican voters they know, Donald Trump?

Yeah, that's probably right. I just think if you're going to fly your ass to Iowa, you might as well stay for more than two hours and do some of the stuff routinely. Continually snubbing the very popular Republican governor of Iowa is just stupid.

Well, I think that's different. That's a case of just like. Even now, his own campaign advisors are saying that it was stupid to go this hard after Kim Ronalds.

But I mean, that's what the context that this was asked of. Ron DESantis, and yeah. Trump's campaign advisor said the two biggest mistakes he's made are snubbing Kim Reynolds and having dinner with Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi with Kanye West.

I just think, like.

Like New York Times, poll was 44 Trump, 20 desantis, and then about half of Trump supporters said they would consider other candidates. So is his strategy? Is snubbing Iowa going to hurt him? I kind of doubt it, but like, he's not running hard to gain more support.

So DeSantis did spend the weekend getting mocked by the Trump campaign. They interrupted his interview with Kim Reynolds by flying a plane overhead with a banner that read Be likeable, Ron.

That's funny.

You know what? Every so often a campaign that's like, you have an opponent and you just you got their number, you know, and it just becomes really fun. It was like us and Romney in 12, It was like, Fetterman and Oz, I mean, the Trump people, they are in his head.

Be likeable. It's such a funny command.

And this is the response that DESantis got from the crowd while he was flipping pork chops.

But you know, it's not like when, when, when, when, like someone shouts something like this. At Pence or at DeSantis, they have some funny, charming quip to come back at them with. They're just like, they just sort of like, glumly. Yeah, well, that's the, I would say. That's, I think, a deeper issue.

The thing I want to know is, look, this. This trolling certainly influenced the Twitter conversation and a lot of the national coverage. I would love to know what was on, like the KCCI, the local TV. I bet you, it was a lot of b-roll of Ron DeSantis and all these candidates. Having fun and talking from the soapbox and carrying their kids around.

Well, so, on that note, DeSantis team told has been telling reporters. They told Political Playbook this that they think he's in a. Despite all all the shenanigans from the weekend, they think he's in a better position than Trump to win Iowa, they said. He is further ahead than Ted Cruz was at this point in 2016, when Cruz beat Trump. That he's in the middle of visiting all 99 counties, he's already got 10,000 caucus commitments. What do you think of their argument, Tommy? Is it just just spin, or do they have a point here?

I mean, 10,000 supporter cards at this point is not nothing. But, uh. Ted Cruz won Iowa with 51,000 votes, so he has a long way to go. It is interesting that the guy running DESantis Super PAC is named Jeff Rowe, and he was also Ted Cruz's consigliere back in the day. The things DESantis has going for him, he's, he's buds with Kim Reynolds, the governor.

Well, not like, not like, Ted Cruz is winning any, uh, miscongeniality awards. But but I, yeah, I do wonder, too. It's like, every every four years this gets worse, like the race being more national people already having a sense of desantis. You know, Cruz kind of coming from behind to win Iowa at the time was. It was a lot about Trump, too.

I mean, I feel like that was a theme of your the limited series. You did, uh, in 2020 when you went out to Iowa. That like the changing nature of sort of the nationalized race versus local, like, what did you? Uh, how? Where do you think we are right now in that?

Um, it's, I think, that the race is incredibly nationalized. I mean, we talked about that. Tucker Carlson was asking questions at a big Iowa Republican fundraiser. That's about as nationalized as it gets. I think, like, I heard from a bunch of reporters this weekend that the sort of Desantis disaster narrative maybe had bottomed out. And that he was starting to do better. Uh, than you would expect.

Cause you can, you can, maybe if you stretch. See a scenario where Trump wins Iowa, DESantis gets a close second, and then New Hampshire does what New Hampshire does and rejects Iowa's choice, and DESantis wins New Hampshire somehow. And then. But then you're right, you get to South Carolina, and it's an extremely conservative electorate, where Donald Trump is way out in the lead. So our friend Tim Miller was in Iowa for the State Fair, and I was listening to him on the next level, his Bulwark podcast. And he said that DESantis super PAC. People were telling him that they have started to think about a strategy.

That's the same exact that is that is also. That's also what Chris Christie has been telling had telling people about his sort of like, what he thinks could potentially happen. This is madness.

What in the Muller Time fan fiction are you people talking about?

Pretty straightforward from here brokered convention where everybody gets behind their favorite person. Ron DeSantis.

Also, there there will be a couple of contests. And then the pressure Trump will put on everyone else to drop out will be so intense. That'll be his whole message Drop out. We need to work together and beat Joe Biden.

Which also Trump's electability argument. Then is going to be, Uh, if it's not me, I'm going to burn down the whole fucking party. So good luck, good luck beating Joe Biden without me and my supporters. Who? You're going to piss off and you're going to take it away from me, even though I'm in jail or whatever he is. I mean, it seems to be a few missing steps there, but the whole point of it is it does sound like fan fiction. But it is a little alarming, if you're a DESantis supporter, that people in a Super PAC are laying out that possibility now.

Yes, your if your strategy is to to to lose, but hang around probably says something about the state of your, uh, your hopes and dreams.

So, uh, here's a Politico headline from the weekend. Pence is having a moment.

Uh, I want to. So the the person who said, I appreciate what you did, this is how this person is described, a man in cutoff t-shirt, shorts and hiking boots told him. And I think it is a real disservice by that reporter to not let us know if that's a country style or gay style, right? Like, what am I picturing? I picturing? Is there a beer?

You know, let's let's take a let's take an educated guess.

I'm not going to sit here and guess based on a cutoff. a lot of people wear cutoffs. We don't know, I don't know, I don't, I can't picture the cutoffs.

Which a lot of people wear cutoffs and then talk to Mike Pence.

Uh, the other, the guy that yelled, uh, the guy that yelled, I'm glad they didn't hang you. He was in an Iowa City Yacht Club t-shirt, which made me laugh, because how could there be a yacht club? It's Iowa, there's no water, it's famously landlocked.

What do you think? do you think he's Mike Pence is having a moment?

Are we asking about the cutoffs? I don't think I don't, I don't know if he's gay either. Um, here's an actual Pence line from one of his speeches that day. Somebody did tell me the other day, they said, I get the feeling you've got a little bias.

That may well be true.

Yeah, Indiana, Iowa, that's his, that was one of his big applause lines.

Holy shit.

He is negative charisma, negative like I, it's okay politico.

I know you have a lot of, I mean, I guess he's having a moment and websites to feed.

But come on.

Good for him for like, going out there and leaning into the criticism of Donald Trump, stuff like, it's not going to win him the Republican nomination. Because those people like, what?

Happened? If he could have one-on-one conversations with every voter, he might be able to explain his constitutional duties on January 6th. But I don't know that he's got the time.

I don't think he'd make it through all the voters, cause one of them would hang him.

Yeah.

The Titanic is having a moment.

Uh, I want to read you as just after the Iceberg.

Yeah, it's just like, Look, everyone's talking about the Titanic.

This is from the Atlantic. So Pence's flipping burgers, and a reporter heard someone crowd whisper the following Look at him, sweat. Someone behind me said, He's a Dweeb, and so is Desantis. A young man from Cedar Rapids named Jacob, who declined to give his last name, told me You just want to take their lunch money. It's instinct.

Uh, so, Pence will have to contend with not only Trump and DESantis, but first time candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. A 38 year old businessman who's vowed to spend a hundred million dollars of his own money on the race. Two new polls now show him edging out DESantis for second place nationally. Uh, he's getting decent crowds in Iowa, and and that is despite doing this at the state Fair.

It hurts so much.

It hurts.

He's done it so many times.

He loves it.

What's going on with this guy? what's, uh, what's the appeal? What do you guys think the appeal is for Vivek?

I don't know what the fucking appeal is of this guy, I do, I think part of it, I think what I what I was. First of all, there was some, there was some look at like his polling success. And some of it is based on, like, sick. Certain internet polls where he's sort of like, doing a little bit better. And those are polls where they're kind of preselected to be part of this sample.

So someone just sent me an onion headline that says, Ah, pissing, I love to piss, says Ron DeSantis, attempting to strip a conversation with a voter.

Horrendous. It's funny you said that you think he's doing, like the more optimistic or the optimistic message, better than Tim Scott. I thought he's like the version of Ron DESantis that the All In podcast wanted, like, he's very. Because in that story that you're referencing a little bit about the polling, you know? The other theory there is that he's doing well with high information, high interest Republican voters. College educated. They are paying more attention to the millions and millions of dollars he's already spent on digital and TV ads.

And I do think that there's a little bit of like, there's a. There's a reason that, like Elon has appealed to the right. There's a kind of like, it's actually the same reason that Trump appealed to a lot of people. Which is, he has this business background, he talks about it, he has a kind of he has that tech technocratic way of speaking that seems smart and feels.

Modern and less creepy.

He's an outsider.

An outsider, and especially inside of the Republican Party, which is how, you know, he is interesting and different in that he's talking about these policies. But doing it with this sort of like, you know, Silicon Valley spin.

He's also, I think, unemployed, He's putting a lot of time and effort in, He's been doing bus tours for weeks. I think over time, you know, there's some fruit.

Yeah, all right, let's talk about the guy these Republicans are trying to replace. Joe Biden and his cabinet are barnstorming the country this week to celebrate the one year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act. Happy anniversary, guys.

Thank you.

But the president got some annoying news on Friday when Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that he's giving U.S. Attorney David Weiss special counsel status for his investigation of Hunter Biden, whose plea deal with Weiss fell apart after the government refused to guarantee immunity for future charges, Republicans, who had previously demanded that Weiss get special counsel status, reacted by accusing Garland and Biden of doing this to somehow protect Hunter, which makes no sense whatsoever. But Politico reported that people inside the White House are worried that this will hang over Biden's reelection. What do you guys think? How worried are you?

Yeah, I don't know. I think one of the challenges is that like, they've already done everything that you're supposed to do to keep keep it separate from the White House. They're saying all the things you're supposed to say, not saying really anything, when they shouldn't be saying anything. I think part of the challenge, right? Is that, like Merrick Garland has, I think, always kind of he, he really kind of takes in this idea. That, like, you have to seem impartial. And that if you're being accused of being politicized and you have to go even further to try to prove that you're not being politicized. And that's sort of been his MO for the entire time.

Yeah, I mean, just politically, I'm pretty worried about this, I think it's going to dog them for a while. I think reporters are going to feel pressure to cover Hunter's trial like it's a Trump trial, because they don't want to be called bias. It'll be a huge distraction and I think that. So far, Republicans on the Hill, despite having nothing to work with, have just been straight up lying and saying that, oh, there's a connection to Joe Biden, that he's somehow profiting off of whatever Hunter Biden was doing.

Well, particularly because the actions that Joe Biden has taken, or that his Department of Justice has taken, are like, over and above. What you're supposed to do here, right? Like, again, Joe Biden and Merrick Garland allowed a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, who began this investigation under Donald Trump, to continue his job. And then allowed him to have whatever powers he needed. And then he just said he wanted special counsel status, and they gave him that.

I think there's like, I think so, I think that's the sort of the like. The political legal argument, along with making clear that all of this is tied back to Hunter Biden, not to Joe Biden. But then there, I think there's also this like a human argument to what Tommy was saying, which is, I think that there is like. And this is not something that, like, Biden would be saying, but I do think it's something Democrats could be saying, which is something like, I think a lot of Americans know what it's like to love someone in your family who's struggled with addiction, made terrible mistakes with in their lives. And and struggled with how to make sure you show that person love while understanding that they've done the wrong thing, right? And I think that, like that piece of it, is something that I think people, I think people have been. A lot of people just find this whole story just hard to know what to say. And not wanting to give into it and just wanting to go away. But I think you need that piece of it.

And I think where Republicans are trying to go with this is not necessarily they know that that's coming, so I think what they're trying to do is. You know, the two I.R.S agents that testified that were like, Well, the Department of Justice slow walked this, now, the Department of Justice that their contention is, the Department of Justice slow walked it. Starting in the Trump administration, so that doesn't really make all that much sense, but that's out there.

It's not, it's that the right wing ecosystem. Joe Biden is a criminal, it is the Biden crime family. He is complicit in his son's crime. That's done. They're trying to get it into the into the mainstream, and they don't have the goods to get it.

Well, they want to subpoena, like the whole family's bank records and all this.

Yeah, they don't have the goods. I do think they've gotten into the mainstream a considerable amount, considering how it is. I fundamentally agree, though. I think if this is a story about corruption and Joe Biden seems to be defensively defending his son, that's a loser for them.

Finally, we got yet another weird story about RFK Jr, the anti-Vax conspiracy theorist who is, for some reason, attempting to run in the Democratic primary. Uh, at the Iowa State Fair. He said he would support a national abortion ban after the first three months of pregnancy. Was asked multiple times by Allie Vitale at NBC News about this, like, gave him an opportunity to clarify. He kept saying, Yes, no, this is what I want. And then later his campaign said he misunderstood the question. What do you guys think happened here?

I'll tell you what I thought when I saw the transcript, which is he sounded, he reminds. He sounds like some rich malibu whack job asshole who sits at some dinner party and is just like, this abortion thing. It's actually solvable. I actually have the answer, and I just don't understand why people don't get how simple this is. That's what I, which is like a kind of, just like a political imbecile who thinks he's so brilliant and so smart that he's like, has all these answers.

Yeah, I look, I think the question initially was phrased a little bit confusingly, but Kennedy then specifically says. I believe that a decision to abort a child should be up to the woman during the first three months. And then, he says that states have the right to limit abortion access once a child is viable outside of the room. So he wasn't saying yes or no to a confusing question, he was affirmatively stating his views in his own words.

That was my first reaction. Because you've been saying this, Tommy, that he's like, not just a conspiracy theorist, he's a liar. And this is a perfect example of his campaign. Just lying, straight out, lying. Before we get to Tommy's interview with Ruben Gallego, a few quick housekeeping notes if you want to chat about the Republican debate in a place that isn't the platform formerly known as Twitter. You can join friends of the pod to chat with us and your fellow listeners on Discord. So we can suffer through the debates together.

Congressman Ruben Gallego represents Arizona's third congressional district, and he's running for the United States Senate. Congressman, good to see you here.

Thanks for having me, Tommy.

Thanks for being in L.A. First thing, most important question, You just had a little baby girl? yeah, is she traveling with you? or did you actually get sleep last night?

She's traveling with me, she's at my mother-in-law's with my wife in Orange County, and I was feeding her last night. And then went to sleep and woke up. Got in the car at 5 a..m and made my way up here.

That's a good night's sleep.

It's a good night's sleep, five hours straight, absolutely.

Yeah, that's nice. I saw you release a statement announcing you were taking paternity leave. Obviously that makes sense to do because your constituents in the press are going to say, why is he missing votes? They want to know where you're at and stuff. But it did read a little bit like you felt like you needed to defend the decision.

Oh, absolutely, I mean, you hear it all the time. You saw. Secretary Buttigieg got a lot of bad remarks, especially from conservatives, that he was taking paternity leave. I think that it is important that we take it number one. It's good for the child for them to actually bond with the father, with the parent, which is good for your spouse.

Yeah, and you're not getting a ton of feedback. I mean, look, I have an eight-month-old and the first three months it's sort of like you feed him, you change him, you burp him. That's about all you're getting.

But yeah, but you're trying to figure out. Also, like, read the tea leaves, what are they feeling? what's going on? Do you need to poop? Are you gassy?

Yeah, yeah, it's also just fun to be around. It's a meaningful time, speaking of our kids in the future that we're going to hand over to them. Phoenix just endured a month of temperatures, I think at 110 degrees or hotter. I read about people getting third-degree burns from the sidewalk.

Yeah, and this is a long-term problem, but it needs short-term mitigation. And the problem when it comes to this type of extreme heat is it affects poor people the most. Yeah, and what does that mean? Like, if you are in Arizona, the way you could deal with heat is you turn down your air conditioning.

Yeah, and just so people know, I mean, the impact isn't like people are uncomfortable, it's death, death, absolutely. I saw a stat that the 2022 heat wave in Europe killed led to like 60,000 excess mortalities.

It's our most vulnerable people, it's your elderly, it's your people in poverty, It's your people that are unfortunately addicted to drugs, it's your unhoused people.

Yeah, you mentioned earlier, you served in the Marine Corps. Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville is single-handedly blocking every single military promotion in the armed forces because he's mad that the Pentagon provides support to....

Because he's a shithead, yeah.

Because he's a terrible person, and because he's upset. The Pentagon provides support to women and families in need of abortion services. You call this a selfish political stunt, you said. It hurts military readiness, it endangers national security.

Well, very simple. Women that need abortion care and if they're in a state that doesn't provide that are now not going to be able to take. Paid time off. Which is, we are giving them paid time off that they've earned. To be able to travel to a state to receive that abortion care for whatever reason it is.

Yeah, what do you think? These? Not just Tommy Tuberville, it's Rhonda Santus is always whining about the woke military, just like constantly running down the military and all these ridiculous crowds. What do you think that kind of language means for recruiting and people's desire to join an organization that's constantly getting attacked or has become the NDAA? The defense Authorization bill got loaded up on the House side with all these crazy culture war bills like, what does that tell people?

Well, I think it's tough to recruit, I think. First of all the Rhonda Santus. Where all these people think the military people you recruit in the military entirely different than actually it. The military right now has to be diverse because the population of the country is diverse, right? The young population that you want to recruit is not 80, white and southern, it is very, very multicultural.

Yeah, people like Ted Cruz love to retweet these Russian propaganda videos and criticize the military.

Yeah, half the guys in those Russian propaganda videos are dead already, right right? Probably taken out by some, you know, millennial. Like hitting a button on a high Mars and laughing the whole time.

Yeah, exactly. Sticking with the issue of abortion, I mean, Democrats have been running and winning on restoring abortion access ever since. Roe versus Wade was struck down. You recently tweeted, I'm running for U.s Senate to codify Roe. Can you explain what that means and how we can accomplish it? And like, how you think the issue is gonna factor into your campaign generally?

Well, number one, it factors in because Arizona is a pro-choice state, you know, Planned Parenthood Arizona was started by Peggy Goldwater, one of the famous Goldwater families. It's still somewhat of libertarian state. And they want people to keep their hands off our bodies and to make sure that women have liberty and autonomy over their bodies. So number one, I think that is a salient campaign issue that people are gonna vote on, especially women, especially young Latinos and Latinas. It's gonna be on the ballot.

When you talk about the need to modify the filibuster, do you mean getting rid of it in instances like codifying Roe? Is that something you're talking about?

Yeah, like I would say, at a minimum in terms of instance of codifying rights, right to have a very illiberal means of governance. That's not found in the Constitution of the United States. To Stop the Rights of Individuals with Voting Rights Act, for example, is another one. You know, Enda is another one, as well as, you know, abortion rights, I think, is another one. We should, at minimum, have the ability to reform the filibuster for that, at a minimum.

Another issue that is likely to dominate the campaign going forward is Donald Trump's various crimes in court cases. We're sitting here, waiting for. -.

Something?

Something to happen in Georgia, you know, it hasn't. Yet. There's a lot of debate about how much Democrats should or should not talk about these criminal trials in the upcoming campaign. Is this something you're hearing about on the trail and do you think it's going to be something you talk about?

I'm not hearing about it on the trail, to be honest. I mean, look, it's a sad situation we're in. The fact that a president of the United States has put himself in this situation and he did it on his own. But it's still sad that the country has to go through this.

To have the rule of law.

And to, you know, execute on that, no matter who you are, and nobody's above that.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes we talk about the need to protect democracy, and it seems sort of obvious, but kind of ill-defined. Is this like an anxiety that you hear and come up when you're talking to voters?

I do, and it's enough. It's not an everyday conversation, but enough that people care about. And I remember, in 2022, I, actually, I was running a political organization. We polled on it and the pollster came back and said, like, it's not an issue you should run on. And I said, I just don't, I think you're wrong. I just in my gut knew that that was wrong. And I talked to a lot of the candidates I was helping out. I told them like, this is something you should be talking about.

Yeah, another issue that I'm almost certain will be a big part of your campaign, and the presidential, is immigration. The situation, the border, the sort of narrative around. It was crisis levels at the end of last year. Then there was a big anxiety about the repeal of Title 42. Which was this Trump era policy that allowed the government basically to kick out everybody seeking asylum under health reasons? But surprisingly, there hasn't been a surge. The Biden administration put in place a bunch of ad hoc asylum policies based on specific countries.

Look, I think he's done a decent job, I think there's more to be done. Number one, I think we have to make the border communities whole, and what I mean by that? It's like, not all border communities are the same. But a lot of border communities are dealing with the influx of asylum seekers and taking on the toll of dealing with it. That means higher calls for emergencies, hospitalizations, police efforts, humanitarian efforts.

The Republican conversation on the 2024 primary about immigration has gotten so extreme. You've got Trump saying we should shoot border crossers in the knees. You've got Ron DESAntis saying he'll take direct, lethal action, maybe even drone strikes against drug traffickers. Now, he doesn't explain how you will differentiate a drug trafficker from a pregnant woman. With a backpack full of her baby's stuff, right? He just says, Oh, we figured it out in Iraq.

We did not figure it out in Iraq.

Yeah, it seems like there were some real challenges there. What do you make of where this debate has gone? Are those arguments working in a place like Arizona that is on the front lines?

No, I mean, those arguments work more in the Midwest than they do in Arizona. We're used to the border, We have cross borders all the time, Arizonans go to Mexico all the time. A lot of us own condos.

Yeah, not Ted Cruz with a Fox News camera crew. But to your point, like every election, right? There's a new caravan that's come in. Absolutely, yeah. And this year everyone has Ebola, and this year it's full of ISIS members. You're saying, like, those arguments don't really fly.

They don't fly as hard, they don't hit as hard in Arizona as they do other places now. It doesn't mean it's not an issue, as in the fact that we should deal with this, but do it in a realistic and mature manner, right? Let's try to figure out how to make this a more predictable way for people to come to the United States, transparent way. Let's try to figure out how to weed out the good guys from the bad guys.

So there are reports back to your Senate race, some reports out now, that failed gubernatorial candidate and bonafide lunatic. I would say Carrie Lake is gearing up to announce she'll be running for Senate in 2024. That means the race could be you running as a Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema as an independent, and then Carrie Lake as a Republican. How worried should we all be that Kyrsten Sinema could be the spoiler who sends Carrie Lake to the U.S?

So all the polling that we have seen, all the polling that we have conducted ourselves and outside people shows us the opposite. Kyrsten Sinema takes more from the Republicans. If you want more information, go to our website www..gallegoforarizona..com, also a great place to donate. Just throwing that out there and it will tell you, we'll show you exactly what's happening.

Do you expect the party to get behind you, the DSCC and others, and put money into the race?

I think at the end of the day, if you look at the fundamentals of this and you see who is the strongest candidate who can hold the seat for Democrats. There's no way that you don't end up supporting this race. There's a reason why we have more than 100,000 individual donations, right? We have 100,000 people that have given, on average, 28 bucks through our website gallego4arizona..com consistently. And we are out-raising them. We have the money and the excitement to really go the long way and raise what we need to do to win this.

I think a lot of people just look at Kyrsten Sinema and they're just like, what is going through her head? Like, I would love to intern on a vineyard too someday, but not when I'm a United States senator. Like, that's a weird thing to do when you're a senator is to head off to a vineyard and be an intern. Like. She went from a Green Party member to voting to protect hedge funds and pharma. Like, I don't know.

Well, I don't know, but first of all, like I grew up working on a ranch I'm not going to get interned to. That's like a slide back for me, right? Which is like, it's like doing like, leave, like, you know, Charity for Labor, it just doesn't, that's not a thing.

So, I mean, you mentioned the Carrie Lake and the kind of madness of 2020.

I think Biden has a really good chance in Arizona. I think we need to focus on our successes, you know, Arizona is a booming state. Because a lot of the actions that the Democrats have taken, and you know, what are we looking at? For example, infrastructure law, has been great.

Yeah, well, I'm a donor to your campaign. I think we all wish you the best of luck. We want to see you win and good luck out there. Thanks for coming in.

Thank you so much, thanks for having me back.

Thanks Ruben Gallego for joining and we'll talk to you Thursday. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.