No Evidence, No Problem: GOP Votes To Impeach (Live from San Jose!)

Hey everybody.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Tommy Vithor.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Jon Lovett.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Jon Favreau can't be here tonight because he and his wife Emily are expecting a baby any day now, which is very exciting. We're excited for him, Of course we'll miss him, but we have a great show for you guys. We are so excited to have Adesu joining us tonight, Adesu.

Yeah, so you guys can applaud while you try to pretend you don't have your fucking day jobs.

But first, after a year-long investigation into vague and unfounded claims, House Republicans voted today to formally launch an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Boo. For that, it was a party-line vote, all Republicans voted yes, all Democrats voted no. You get the concept.

I have no evidence of it and I'm going to just follow the facts where they are. And the facts haven't taken me to that point where I can say that the president's guilty of anything.

They got him, guys. In related news, Hunter Biden was subpoenaed by Republicans who demanded he appear today in front of the House Oversight Committee hearing in a closed-door deposition. Instead, Hunter defied that subpoena and held his own press conference outside the Capitol, where he said he would only testify publicly so Republicans can't cherry-pick and leak his testimony. So, Dan, it's tempting to treat this impeachment inquiry as a joke because the process is so clearly politicized. But let's talk about what happens next and the political risk here for Biden.

I would just note that everyone here just cheered the defiance of a subpoena.

No, this was the show we did in San Jose. In 2019 was the opening of Trump's first impeachment inquiry.

Nice.

And you guys had a much different take.

So I think this impeachment inquiry, like so much Republican politics over the last decade or so, it was just like one really unfunny joke. But if I was in the White House, I don't know that I would be worried about this, I might be excited about it. I think if I was sitting in my old office, what I would try to convince the president to do? And I understand why he would not do this, because this is obviously very personal to him, this is about his son.

Well, said. Speaking of gifts, let's watch a clip of CNN's Jake Tapper interviewing the Republican House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer.

And my concern is that Weiss may have indicted Hunter Biden to protect him from having to be deposed. Yes in the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

He indicted him to protect him, yes.

The classic rubric.

He indicted him to protect him. I got it.

Well, look, this whole, this Jake, this whole thing's been about a cover up, you know, you've got two.

That's why he indicted him, to protect him, to cover it up.

I love Jake man. wow, I love not having to deal with Jake as a flack. love it. So, you know, it's not that CNN wants to get impeached, but history suggests that the political impact of impeachment is not necessarily a given right.

Yeah, I mean, look, the crimes are supposed to lead to the impeachment, the impeachment isn't supposed to lead to the crimes. So they fucked that up, they got the order wrong.

We finally found the joke.

He's not ready to tell.

Here's what I would say, look, I would say to Hunter Biden the same thing I would say to George W. Bush or Hitler, which is stick to painting.

Leaving space to cut that piece of this, it's like, purely financial, right? And then there's the piece of this. That's about Hunter Biden's addictions, and he's been very honest about his struggles with addiction.

Well, first, I will concede that nobody wants to get impeached, but I'm not going to concede that this impeachment is actually going to happen. You know, we only need three or four Republicans to realize it's political suicide to vote for this. For them. To the articles never to actually come to fruition. So this inquiry is going to take place. I think, to your point, Dan, there. Actually, there will be a moment for the president to stand up there in the state of the union. Whenever it comes towards the beginning of the year. But I'm not sure it's actually going to happen.

Yeah, there's, there's just no doubt that like.

And yet they all fucking voted for it today, including Ken Buck, who wrote that.

The ink was not dry on that op-ed when he turned around and voted for the thing that he said he was not going to vote for in the Washington Post.

But maybe it is actually very believable.

Yeah, it's very believable. You forgot about my guy, Dusty Johnson, from South Dakota, who said there's not evidence to impeach. I don't like the stonewalling the administration has done, but listen, if we don't have the receipts, then that should constrain what the house does. You guys know, I've been hard on Dusty Johnson in the past, but that's a pretty solid quote.

I just wait for my turn to talk. I just think that's a funny name.

All right, love it. So Hunter Biden is refusing to sit for this private deposition. He's instead demanding that he be allowed to testify publicly. During a press conference Wednesday, he said Quote Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry or hear what I have to say.

Here's what I think. I think he's making a lot of good points, I'd like someone else to make those points like this. This idea that we're heading to, like a big confrontation where Hunter Biden's going to clear his name, that's not how this goes.

I think it's worth talking for a second about why they're doing this, right, like, how did? Like? There are, as Tommy and Levin just mentioned, 18 Republicans who are in districts that Joe Biden won. And that number is actually probably going to go up. Because New York, there's a court case in New York, and New York is going to redraw its districts. So a bunch of these we have cheered subpoena, defiance and gerrymandering.

My health, democracy, or else?

The short term political imperative for why they're doing this is there's a. The law of Republican physics is if you do one sane thing, which is what the Republicans did when they voted. To prevent the government from shutting down, you have to do one much bigger, much more insane thing, and that is this impeachment. Now there's not like it was right.

BenghaZi Yeah, and the Bill Clinton impeachment grew out of a decade older investigation out of Whitewater. The other thing, too, just part of the reason they've pursued this specific investigation is. Donald Trump ran an incredibly corrupt White House where his family members profited off the administration. Where people who were working for him were doing shady, fucking shit. To position themselves to get, say, two billion dollars from the Saudis after they lost office? This is also about neutralizing a critique of Donald Trump. To try to stir up something that seems to have the contours of the kind of corruption that actually took place when Donald Trump was president.

And I and I know the only thing I would add is obviously we're talking about this because this happened today on Capitol Hill. It's it's news, but one of the things for the listeners, for the folks in the audience. Like, they want us to keep talking about this because it takes up space from all the other things we could be talking about. Not just about things that President Biden and Democrats have done in Washington or elsewhere, but the things that Trump did in the past and will potentially do if he becomes president again. And so some of this is just about taking up oxygen and and making sure that you know where they, well, they did it to Trump.

I don't know, I mean, yes. I don't think we want to spend the next six months on this, but I think they are going to want to have this vote. They did very little press on the vote, they're not going to talk, they did it.

Yeah, maybe it's about not debating the facts. Oh yes, yes, exactly.

That is exactly right.

The facts of the matter are not.

Yeah, no, what, the voters? If you ask an open-ended question to voters, what are the most important issues facing the U.S? It's inflation, immigration, democracy. Those are the things they want us to focus on.

I think Republican congressmen are more afraid of Donald Trump and the MAGA base than they are of anything else. And when the rubber meets the road, that's where they go. Luckily, next November we're going to have a chance in those 17 districts, or 18, or however many there'll be, to show them the opposite. But I also think that the idea that the Republican Party hasn't been wholly taken over by the MAGA extreme right is just not true. There are a couple, sure that hopefully those couple that end up voting or intending to vote against articles of impeachment. Thus, it never moves forward, but the super majority of Republican Congress is now MAGA Republicans. And we just have to acknowledge that. And I know all of us, myself included, for the good of the country, for the good of the world. Wish that there was a sane opposition on the other side, but it does not exist, and I don't think it will exist as long as Donald Trump is still in politics. It's why I still am in politics, because I said the day after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, Until that fucker is gone, I'm not going anywhere.

And the rest of them have resigned. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, you'll hear from California State Rep. Alex Lee.

Every day.

Well, now, now you do. Today, Dan's brand new series, Polar Coaster, drops its first ever episode. Plus, Dan and Alyssa team up in the second monthly installment of Inside 2024, dropping next Wednesday, the 20th. In light of the Trump versus Biden campaigns, the two will be exploring the strategy behind running an incumbent campaign. To listen to both of these Dan-infused episodes, head to Crooked.com Slash Friends to sign up now.

Please welcome to the stage your own state Representative, Alex Lee.

Hello.

These are your people.

I know this is my home city, too, so it's really awesome. you're ending the tour in San Jose, it's awesome.

All right, you were 25 when you ran for the seat and won.

I was 23 when I ran, Oh, there you go, I was sworn in at 25. Okay, there you go, I was sworn in at 25..

So you were 23 when you started to run, I know what I was doing when I was 23..

Running for office, too?

No, no, absolutely not.

Yeah, so I'm 28 now, so it's three years into office now.

So you're basically old now.

Yes, I'm very old, if you ask my very young staff, they'll say I'm at death's door. Now. I'm basically 30, but three years in, it feels like I've been in office for three decades. Frankly, I started during the pandemic.

So you're like, Joe Biden in that way.

I think so, too. I think we were both leaders in our own time, like that, too. I mean, hey, Joe Biden started very early, too. I don't know if I could be president at his age too, but frankly....

We'll get to that.

We'll see, we'll see, right? But you know what? One thing that really motivated me to run for office, and I was a legislative staffer before I ran for office, is that I was frankly tired. That we had a Democratic supermajority in California who had democratic control of all the executive office, and yet we were surrendering to fucking incrementalism. We have some of the worst problems in the entire country, and people rightfully sometimes lapoon us for it. But we have to be really innovative in how we tackle these problems.

And how have your new, older colleagues taken to your non-incrementalism message?

I think at first a lot of people were taken aback by my approach. You know, frankly, I've been a legislative staffer. I understood that a lot of things were a true compromise, right? But it was really nibbling away at the edges of so many things. But I am excited as we constantly have a refresh of new members, we are more and more bracing of new ideas. And frankly, it's also because how dire the consequences are, or dire the issues are now.

What was the thing you said you were right on?

It was this year. We actually investigated the gas, the gouging prices by gasoline companies. And I proposed last year a windfall profits tax. And then we had a special session to do just that, so we adopted that proposal. It changed along the way, but I was really happy to work with Governor Gavin Newsom on this issue, too.

All right, as you mentioned, and I think this is probably your signature. Legislative effort has been introducing legislation to increase taxes on the wealthiest Californians, people with a net worth of $15 million or more. Apologies if any of those people are in this audience tonight. Can you walk us a little bit through that legislation and why you introduced it?

Yeah, so very much like Senator Elizabeth Warren's proposal to tax mega millionaires and billionaires just 1 of every dollar of their mega fortune. That proposal at the time when we created it, and we worked with a lot of smart academics and people who worked in policy who worked on. Senator Warren's proposal, too, would have generated $22 billion a year, $22 billion a year. And you know, the funny thing about that is it unequally skewed towards billionaires, even amongst super rich people, the very, very rich people we're paying. And we're talking about the Jeff Bezoses, the Mark Zuckerbergs, the Elon Musks of the world, which I know you're going to talk about later. But those are the people that will be paying an enormous amount of money. And I want to highlight to you why a wealth tax, an asset tax, is so important. Because our taxation system, even in California and in the country, is very good at taxing. You. If you make a paycheck, but once you no longer make a paycheck. Especially the very rich people we know as household names today. When you own everything, and which is the most classical and ancient form of power, is ownership.

Now, California has a lot of very politically active, rich people. How? And we're going to talk about some of them later. Some of them are quite conservative, but many of them are huge supporters of Democratic politics in the state. What has been the response to your proposal in Sacramento?

I think, you know, you have a lot of people who are very scared of the T word. And I encourage my fellow party members, the Democrats, to obviously always talk about taxes, because we and you talked about this in the previous segment. We have to be the responsible adults in the room, we have to have a true fiscal responsible conversation. If we want the best schools in the world, actual healthcare system that serves people, we have to talk about how we're going to pay for it. Republicans always say there's no such thing as free lunch, I agree.

One of the critiques that people have had to your proposal is that it would cause trigger an exodus of wealthy people from California. And that that would diminish the tax base during a time of, as you say, a budget crunch, what's your response to that?

The reality is two things is that the migration, the outbound migration of Californians, tends to be among working class Californians. People that can pay the premiums in California, whether or not they bitch and moan about California, they pay the premium, they stay here, frankly, because you can pay the premium. It's people who are squeezed in the middle and squeezed at the bottom who have no other options but to leave the state.

Let's talk a little about housing.

Right, that's my favorite.

It is every conversation you have with people all across the country, frankly, is about housing. But particularly as it relates to here in California. What have you been working on to try to address the lack of affordable housing in the state?

Absolutely so. When I ran in 2020 and just a small plug, is that no one thought I was going to win in 2020, including myself. Okay, because I had $32,000 in a half a million people district to just knock on doors. But the most pressing issue that I talked to other people is housing affordability. I've shared this often.

This is probably not fair. I don't mean to make you the spokesperson for your entire generation. But one of the biggest challenges....

Well, often my colleagues do.

That's right, that's right.

But one of the biggest political challenges for President Biden and Democrats, frankly, across the country right now, was that. The young voters who propelled our election victories in 2018 and 2020 are becoming more disengaged, more disengaged from the Democratic Party, not necessarily disengaged from issues frustrated with President Biden, that's probably the group within his coalition where his approval ratings have gone down.

The most.

What would your advice be to Democrats about how they win back and re-engage the younger voters who are so critical to any Democratic victory?

Yeah, I don't.

Well, I think that's a great place to end it.

Please give it up for Alex Lee.

Thank you.

All right, since we're in San Jose, a city that is sometimes referred to as the city that's an hour south of the capital, Silicon Valley. Just kidding, I'm just, it's fine. We thought we'd spend the rest of the show talking about the intersection of tech and politics. And to help us sound smart for once, we are joined by Zoe Schiffer.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's wonderful to have you, okay?

So wait before, can we just get a gauge of the audience so we know who we're dealing with here? How many of you are current Twitter users? Can you raise your hands? No shame, and how many of you pay for X Premium?

Applaud if you do okay, we're among friends.

We can go on.

Does any one person in this room pay for X Premium?

If so, please leave.

Wow.

Zoe will escort you out.

Gentlemen, I have to go. Yeah, I just want to be clear about my position. I'm super pro-human, and I mean, all human, uh, you know, humans in America, humans in Africa, Asia and everywhere else. Somebody's got their phone open in the bathroom.

Yeah, that's Vivek, that's your phone, Vivek, I'm not able to mute you, Vivek.

Um, sorry about that.

So, um.

Yeah, I mean, none of this is an accident. I think that there is a legitimate attack on free speech happening, but it's not the attack that most people think. There's an effort from conservatives to make the work of content moderation seem dangerous and downright illegal, and this is the culmination of that plan.

Have any tech companies done a good job with content moderation that you've seen?

I mean, X has now set the bar pretty low, so I would say anything above. Having Alex Jones of the background of Swami Peeing on air is is pretty good at this point.

How's LinkedIn doing? Are they crushing it?

The uh, well, like, like, uh, Republicans in Missouri, I believe, are now going after media matters, right? So like, they claim to be for free speech, but then basically they target people who just simply want accountability, or to hold people accountable for their speech.

Yeah, the thing about free speech on these platforms is it doesn't mean that all speech is allowed. Because what happens when you allow all speech is that most people actually cannot speak. Because they're brutally harassed. And so you need some level of content moderation, and there's a real effort right now to make that seem politicized when it's honestly not.

Yeah, so D.C. I mean. Democrats in particular have gone back and forth on whether we should be on these platforms and fighting it out, whether we should starve them of users and revenue. I guess where do you land at this point?

Yeah, maybe an unpopular position for the room. But I actually, I'm not paying for premium, that's for damn sure. But but uh, you know, our job in campaigns to win elections at some level is to take the world as it is. And if people are using a medium, it's very hard to just take yourself out of the game of talking to the people who are either getting their information, political or otherwise, from that medium. And so I had, I had a couple of debates.

It's interesting, though, like I, I have no disagreements at all. But the the like. The debate that Elon Musk and these sort of guys want to have is one about kind of like abstractions and ethics. Which kind of makes sense. Because they're the worst people at college, right? Like, that's that's what this group is like, the worst people you met in college, grown up. Uh, but like, from a business perspective, and just from a user perspective, yes.

Yeah, I mean, you can have a platform that has Alex Jones, or you can have a platform that makes money from advertising. you can't have both, yeah.

I mean, there's a reason that content moderation on these platforms generally always ends up at the same place. You start out saying, you're a free speech absolutist, and then a foreign government says that you're going to be booted out of the entire country. Unless you take down speech. And so if you're Elon Musk, you take that down real, real fast, and this keeps coming from every angle. Is child sexual exploitation allowed?

And then one day, an impulsive man-child buys your company for $45 billion, and this is where you are.

I mean, when you talk to people who work at other tech companies, the Metas, the YouTubes, are they like, Thank God, Elon bought Twitter. This is the best thing that's ever happened to us. No one talks about us anymore.

They don't say that, but I would think that that is the general feeling because the bar has been set at the absolute ground level at this point.

If I worked at Facebook Comms, I would buy that man a drink, I don't know.

I mean, Mark Zuckerberg, can we talk about his reputation like he looks incredible? He's had a summer of all summers. I mean, the PR team there is like,....

Tybo and Terenace yells, and no one cares.

He's popular now.

It's like, you know, he's like an ex-boyfriend, and it's not that he's better. He wasn't a better boyfriend. In hindsight. It's just that the boyfriend after him was so awful. It's like, yeah.

You're like, he looked really good, actually.

What?

So Republicans in conservative media like to attack the Bay Area in the tech industry as this like lefty liberal paradise. And while it's certainly true that a lot of tech company employees are progressive, their bosses and their investors are often more right-wing. Or assholes like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel or David Sachs, the list goes on and on. Even Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, in between yoga retreats, endorsed RFK Jr. for president. So, I mean, Zoe, do you have a sense of...?

Are you people surprised or disappointed or both?

Both disgusted.

Disgusted. That's the right response.

I heard a disgusted, all right.

Do you have a sense of which candidates the kind of like big money players in Silicon Valley are supporting? I feel like they've been kind of dabbling in a few along the way.

I mean, yeah, I think we can watch like the David Sachses of the world, and they seem to be trending towards the VEC and RFK Jr.

I mean, Peter Thiel, I guess, has decided to sit out this election and not donate to any more candidates in 2024.

Yeah, it's a weird move.

I mean, if you were to tell me that. If I did an 18-hour interview with the New Yorker and I would never get another fundraising text in my life, I would do that.

That does sound pretty good, you know what?

Dan, You raise a really important point. We're in San Jose, I'll do my pitch again. It's called Democrat. Plus, you pay a monthly fee and then you never get a text again.

The sound of those cheers means you just raised $30 million.

Hell yeah, got it, it's happening, it's happening, it's already vaporware.

I mean, this is a hard question, but, like, is there a political ethos in Silicon Valley?

Really.

This guy says no.

That drone said No.

I feel like there's, I mean, I think there's a big difference between, like you said before, the people who have money, who are supporting the Vivecs, the Rondesantas of the world. And then the people who are like, on the ground, working at these companies and are pushing for more progressive policies. But I think Silicon Valley kind of has its own ideology and it's like industry first in a lot of ways. But that's, I wouldn't say that's reflected in the rank and file employees.

There's also a weird amount of paranoia, and I can't tell if the paranoia comes with the industry. Or the paranoia comes when you have lots of money and you're worried about losing it. For example, in that same New Yorker story about Peter Thiel, Sam Altman is quoted the CEO, on again, off again CEO of OpenAI. And he said that in a global catastrophe, he and Peter Thiel were going to wait it out together in Peter Thiel's sheep ranch in New Zealand.

Oh yeah, the prepper community. Are you new to this?

Why are there so many preppers here? Tell us more about the prepper community.

I don't really know, yeah, I think it's from what I can tell. It's like an exciting ideology that men in this industry, this is a generalization. But it's what I've seen seem to feel like. If the end of the world is nigh, then that's a very energizing way to go through life and it justifies a lot of decision-making along the way.

I also, there's a little bit of something where I feel like some of these wealthy tech people feel as though they got away with a heist. You know, they feel like they got away with something. So it feels a little ill-gotten. And so psychologically, it's about to go. It's like they're like mobsters putting cash in their like, it's like the money that's buried with Ivana on the golf course. You know, you know, Trump put valuables down there because on some level, he knows it can all go away because it's ill-gotten. And if he got it the wrong way, it can go just as quickly. And I feel like there's that there's some little broken part of that brain where it's just like I got away with something. And at some point, the world is going to catch wise. Which is why part of the End of the world is trying to figure out how to get their super soldiers to wear the neck brace. That'll explode if they don't follow orders, if money doesn't work, you know what I mean?

I mean, I hear you, I do.

It's very polite of you to pretend you know what he means, so.

You guys remember that story that the billionaires didn't know what to do when their money stopped working. So they figured out they'll put little brace, they'll put things around the neck so that the guys keep listening. I think they're, I think they got to go outside.

Bring us back, Tavi, good luck.

I'm here. The last few years haven't been the best for some parts of the tech community yet. Higher interest rates making it harder for venture capitalists to raise money for the next round of whatever.

That's what that parade is about. We're going to do that walk-a-thon for them.

Yes, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, you had these major crypto exchanges going bankrupt. You have leading figures like Sam Bankman freed, potentially doing jail time. But now, all of a sudden, the price of bitcoin is back up. The New York Times just wrote an article about a 27-year-old who raised nearly $20 million to build a crypto city in the Mediterranean. I'm sure that'll pan out.

I mean, have you heard of artificial intelligence?

Tell me more, tell me everything.

Yeah, I think we have a new bubble.

You have a new bubble and it's AI.

I mean, I think the tech. There's a lot of money in Silicon Valley still. And we will find ways to funnel, and we I'm not part of this, they will find ways to funnel it into various projects. And I think artificial intelligence has more legitimacy, I would say, than crypto, but definitely it's where the money is at now.

I mean, it does feel like there's this real urgency because there hasn't been a new thing since a smartphone was invented. So we're at 15 years from now, so it's like we're waiting for the thing that's going to create all this new wealth. And crypto was supposed to be that thing, and then it wasn't, and so now it's AI. And so if you just put like, there are all these. I mean, you've written many of these stories about these people who just basically put AI in a deck and people are throwing millions of dollars at them. It's like, it's AI for dog food, and you're like, AI-powered dog food, take my money.

Well, the alternative is that Apple's like, now the phone has four cameras and you're like, why?

It's like, Hey people, I don't know how much time you spent on your Alexa recently, but I think I'm going to be smarter in 15 years.

I want to read you an email I received from my friend Samir on May 30th, 2011.

Adisu, you're still in politics.

That's real.

You're working on campaigns, you're cutting ads.

Or you were before tonight?

The like hope and the anxiety. And the Democratic Party is all about the impact of AI potentially on campaigns. Are you seeing any of this play out in this cycle?

Yeah, if I'm not mistaken yesterday in a Pennsylvania House race, don't ask me why I know this. AI was used to phone bank for the first time, really like a conversation with a voter via a robot, basically.

In 2020, it was Covid.

That stuck around for a while. But I'm not sure if this is going to be the AI cycle or another one. But I do think it's coming because I actually think it can be potentially very helpful to our industry. I also think it's very dangerous. Because, you know, when it comes to jobs. And you know, you usually have human beings making phone calls, for example. And if AI gets really good at phone calls, goodbye field organizing, right? It becomes a lot cheaper to do that, et cetera. So we're not there yet.

I do worry, though. We see with, you know, artificial images that the threat isn't. People thinking fake things are real, well, that is a threat, but just as big as the threat that people start seeing real things as fake. That you start to doubt whatever you see and whatever you hear already.

The intersection of politics and AI is incredibly fascinating, right? There's all the dangers of deep fake videos and all of that. And I think Lovett raised a really important point, which is, I'm sure you've seen this. But people are so skeptical right now of politicians and political ads that the only ads that really work are the ones that use a politician in their own unedited voice. Where it's just like footage of Donald Trump saying something, or a voter making a case, a regular person who's not a politician. Explaining why it would be bad to take the Affordable Care Act away, the Biden campaign ads and I add up like that right now. And AI actually has the potential to render the first one, not actual AI, but the prospect of AI. Donald Trump has already said that a very legitimate video of his was a deep fake. And he's going to do that throughout this campaign, and so that's a big thing.

ZOe Interestingly, like, for all the anxiety about AI and Deepfakes and things ahead of us. It does seem like a lot of people have been driven off Twitter recently. Not because of deepfakes. But because of like, people surfacing old videos and saying that they were from Gaza, when really, they were like, Syria in 2015.

Yeah, I mean. Elon Musk has promoted a crowdsourced fact-checking tool as the first line of defense between telling fact from fiction on his platform. And I think we've seen more recently that that's woefully inadequate in times of crisis. We need a multi-pronged approach, especially during an election. And that's going to take human content moderators, and it's going to take AI, and it's going to take sophisticated tools. And the trust and safety team at X is a shadow of its former self. They've really devalued and underinvested in all of these things, and I think that's going to be an enormous problem in the coming election.

I hate the community notes thing, it's obviously a ridiculous thing, but I will say that. Someone attacked Taylor Swift when she was named the Time Woman of the year, saying How could this billionaire person who could end the war in Gaza? With one Instagram post, you know, get this award? And the Community notes thing was traditionally, Instagram posts have not ended century-old conflicts.

That was truly a great one.

What a ridiculous thing to think Taylor Swift could do. That's not what she could do. What she could do is solve a lot of unsolved murders.

On Tuesday, a jury in San Francisco ruled in favor of Fortnite maker Epic Games. In their lawsuit against Google, Epic Games claimed that Google had an illegal monopoly in the Google Play Store. After the win, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney told The Verge Quote It's a great day for all developers to see that the Sherman Antitrust Act works in the new era of tech monopolies. How big a deal do you think this decision is, and do you think it's going to impact other antitrust cases going forward?

Yeah, I mean, it's a really big deal, although I will say we're a few years out from knowing exactly what the final answer to this is. Google has already said that it's going to appeal if the ruling stands. Then I think we can expect to see a more robust app ecosystem, where smaller developers are able to circumvent Google's in-app fees, which are 30 right now. And we might see multiple app stores. And all of that is very good for consumers, but I do think it's a little early to know what this could mean for Apple and other big.

Tech companies because Epic lost the same suit against Apple, right? Because Apple makes the phones, so they had a different set of rules, is that right?

Yeah, and also Google won a similar case that was decided by a judge last year. And so I think it's still a total question mark. This was a jury trial which ended up being quite important.

This is also a case where I think President Biden has gotten a lot of credit for. Putting in place. Regulators who have a track record of writing and thinking and saying things that I think are a lot tougher on tech monopolies. Do you think the toughness of those appointees has played out in practice in terms of I don't know behavior in Silicon Valley?

I don't know. I mean, when we think of the FTC, we certainly have a much stronger FTC and more aggressive FTC than we have in the past at the same time. LENA KahN There have been a lot of losses and I think that was part of the strategy. You all might know better than me, but my understanding of her approach was. We're going to take really big swings and there will be a lot of losses along the way. But we have to take a stand for consumers and change the definition of what the F.T.C is really here to do.

It's interesting because Donald Trump likes to pretend he's like this big populist. But there are a lot of these tech companies who are basically putting on pause. The idea of merging or acquiring someone to see what happens in the election. Because if Donald Trump gets in, that'd be much better in their view, for big tech monopolies. That's actually, I think that's not the exact argument, but it's part of the overall populist case. That Biden can make is that Donald Trump is going to that. They're rooting for him because it is better for monopolies and big, huge companies under Trump. Because they're scared that Joe Biden's going to enforce antitrust laws.

Yeah, I also do think sometimes this debate, like the risks posed by these companies being so big and having monopolies, that creates one set of very big challenges. And I think it's really important that we have aggressive antitrust laws and regulations. But I also think it sometimes is a quick thing for, I think, politicians, to say, to kind of wave off. Some of the issues that actually don't have as much to do with the size of these companies, like issues of misinformation, privacy issues. I think the fact that these companies are so enormous and have so much power impacts the ways in which they don't have to respect consumer privacy, consumer rights. They don't have to worry about regulation, in part because of their influence and their lobbying. But regardless of whether they break Amazon in half or spin off, you know, allowing WhatsApp to be under.

Yeah, 100%.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back we're going to play a game.

And we're back.

Thank you all for joining us this evening.

Yes, born ready.

Question First, we'll start.

Do we have to buzz or something? No, okay.

We'll alternate, don't worry, I got this.

Okay, I believe you, ish.

Your question If it was Ken Jennings, you would just trust him?

Craxis is this.

Yeah, that's the current one. His name is Dryden Brown.

That is correct, I was going to give you multiple choice. No, no, no.

Shout out to Santa Barbara, he's from my hometown, So.

We are screwed, Tommy and Deesu.

We're so fucked. Built in the blank. One of the internal slides revealed by the Wall Street Journal's Facebook files is a slide titled User Experience of Blank is exacerbated by our platform. Complete with a graph outlining how teen girls experience severe negative mental health outcomes by using Instagram. What is that user experience?

Is this multiple choice?

No.

Their experience of blank.

I'd like to phone a friend, Do you want to steal? that friend? is Zoe?

Is it filters?

No, no, no, no, no, it's an emotional experience. Wait, wait.

Sorry, can you read that just one more time?

The user's experience of Blank is exacerbated by our platform, and it's about teen girls experiencing negative mental health outcomes.

Something to do with B.

I heard body dysmorphia, you're in the ballpark, oh okay, body image. It was just downward spiral.

I feel like we need to work on the mad libs.

Yikes.

That's sad, but hard to guess, yeah.

Okay.

Elon Musk.

Elon Musk.

Starting a nearly uninterrupted four-year string of being awesome.

I'll read my book to find out.

Which startup launched by Jeffrey Katzenberg is considered one of the biggest failed startups in history? Yep, you got it.

They were in our building.

They were in our building. Tommy and Adisu. Juicero, a famous flop, sold a $400 Wi-fi-connected juice press that used proprietary packets of pre-mangled fruits.

I remember this story well because I was a little drift in my career at the time and I had a meeting with a really smart, really nice person. I actually think Dan connected me with the life of the story. We talked about a bunch of different interesting things happening in Silicon Valley. I lived in San Francisco at the time and Juicero came up.

You could just squeeze the juice out of them.

You didn't need the $400 timed release system that sat in your kitchen to squeeze the pack.

Insane, remember, it was end-user license agreement fucked with? So that if your juice packet was past a certain date, the machine wouldn't squeeze it for you, but your hands still could. The machine would be like, No, no, this juice is not for you, get other juice.

Are the other answers incorrect, or is that one just super correct? Because I think you can just eat some fucking fruit.

Oh yeah, that's a good point, that's a good point.

You got the right answer, I don't know why you're arguing.

Take the points.

I'll take the points.

I didn't think of that.

Sam Bankman-Fried.

That is correct. His lawyer said that to Bloomberg.

Is he in jail currently or is he on home arrest?

Wait, I thought he was in jail, but I'm hearing home arrest. But I'm not a crypto gal.

I think he got sent to jail for doing too much internet.

Yeah.

He was talking to Michael Lewis like 500 times.

That is accurate.

It's a good Democrat you're talking about, all right?

Like the weights, that kind of pull on it.

So that's your first thought, What's your second thought?

Yeah, nope giggles.

I feel like it's all them.

Anybody out there want to guess?

That one's a lie, right?

Yeah, it's got to be.

Well, they're all, which is the lie? She didn't tell. Oh, okay, it's such a confusing question, she told. It's like jazz.

Afghanistan.

No, because she would do no. The Afghanistan one, I think, is real because that was part of their they had Jim Mattis on the board.

Yeah.

Oh, there you go, okay, so Afghanistan?

Defense Secretary I think it's the that they worked with people overseas, is my guess.

Yeah, let's go with that one.

Incorrect. It was the border. I thought we had to steal it. Did you know the answer?

Border Patrol, obviously.

We're going to get that right.

You got it?

I believe you.

You're trusty, you have a trustworthy face.

It was a point.

Dan and Zoe. Which of these unfortunately named failed apps is a real, unfortunately named failed app? In other words, one of these is real a Hitler. No vowels.

What do you think?

I'm really, I'm between fascism and blow me, which I don't like to be, but.

You're always stuck between fascism and blow me.

Let's go with fascism.

Yeah.

You got it, what?

Of course they did.

And finally, and anybody can take it. Who wrote this tweet? I just gave a squirrel, a piece of bread, and it straight smashed, you got it.

Zoe got it.

It was Travis Kelsey. I just gave a squirrel, a piece of bread, every word spelled wrong.

That's actually how we spell squirrel now, though. He decided it then, and that's the correct.

I not before e a piece of bread and it straight smashed all of it. I had no idea they ate bread like that. Ha ha. Hashtag crazy. That was Travis Kelsey.

Yeah, I think so, yeah, they did.

Congratulations, you've won two tickets to Praxis.

Cool.

It's like I always say, inside every techno-libertarian millionaire is a tiny little fascist waiting to pop out like an alien through John Hurt's abdomen.

Before we go, we thought it would be fun to take a couple questions or maybe hear a couple tech horror stories.

We're just going to open up.

Did you work at Hitler? That was a fake one.

Did you work at fascism?

We want to know, Did you work at Jucero?

Tom, you pronounced the e.

Do we have a mic out there, by any chance?

I think Austin's out there, we can bring the lights out, Austin out there.

Longer.

Early 2017.

I don't remember before this, I've always been here, I'll always be here. Here's my question, but thank you.

I remember that first meeting when Tommy just wrote on a cocktail napkin, San Jose.

Here's what I'd say when we were doing the podcast, that was on the ringer. And we decided to do Pod Save America and try to launch a company around it. We were protected by just how little we knew. We had the confidence of ignorance, true, true ignorance, and that gave us, I think, the freedom to believe that this could work.

Didn't that almost happen?

It did almost happen. That's my other fucking path.

She got canceled, right? Yeah. We sat in Jon Favreau's kitchen for months, which Emily did not like. And we created a medium website, which we barely knew how to do, announced it and called it a company.

You bet we had to use the website Getcrookedmedia.com because Crooked Media and Crooked..com. There was a guy in Prescott, Arizona. His career was in porn, but his passion was taking on the liberal media, so eventually we had to remember that.

Oh man, what else we got?

My question is actually for Dan, I'm sorry, it's not a tech question either. I was just reading some of the bios. And in yours, it stated that you are banned from going to Russia because of Putin. I sat back and I'm like, Is that really true? and if it's really true, what the hell did you do to Dan?

Dan dated his daughter in the early aughts.

Ugly breakups.

Messy.

It is true, and the reason I am banned to this day from traveling to Russia is when Russia invaded Ukraine the first time in 2014. I was previously scheduled to go on Meet the Press to do an interview about something else, because no one sends me on TV to talk about major foreign policy. But it happened basically after I was already scheduled. So our friend Ben Rhodes, whose time is a lot of Rhodes here.

Wow, great, very observant reading of the bio, well done.

Okay, I have a question about relational organizing versus AI.

Let's hear it.

Do you want applause for the topic?

Well, okay.

So the question is.

Do you think that relational organizing is going to become more important, like walking out and canvassing in person, versus the phone calls and texts?

Wow, that may be a question for me, it's a great question, it is a really good question. I actually haven't really thought about the implications of AI with it, but that's really interesting. For those of you who don't know, relational organizing is really just, you know, in the old days, like five years ago, you would get a list of your neighbors, or what have you? Or you'd walk into a campaign office and they'd give you a list of voters. And you'd go knock the doors and you'd talk to them about your candidate.

All right.

Well, listen, thank you San Jose, thank you Adisu, thank you Zoe. Thanks Alex Lee for being here. great to see you.

Good night everybody.

If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod Subscription community at Crooked.

Hey, give us a review.

Give us your takes on our takes.