Supreme Malarkey

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All right, let's get to the news. Moments after we recorded Tuesday's pod, there was, as always, some breaking news. CNN obtained the audio recording of the 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey. Where Donald Trump tells a few random ghostwriters to look at highly classified war plans that he admits he couldn't declassify. Let's listen, these are bad, sick people.

That was your coup, you know, against you. Well, it started right at the beginning, like when Millie's talking about, Oh, you were going to try to do a coup. They were trying to do that before you even were sworn in. That's right.

Trying.

I have a big pile of papers. This thing just came up, look.

This was him, They presented me this, this is off the record, but they presented me this. This was him, this was the Defense Department and him.

We looked at some. This was him, this wasn't done by me, this was him, all sorts of stuff.

It's pages long. Wait a minute, let's see here.

I just found, isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know? Except it is like, highly confidential, this is secret.

By the way, isn't that incredible? I was just saying because we were talking about it. He said. He wanted to attack Iran. These are the papers this was done by the military given to me.

I think we can probably, right, I don't know. We'll have to see, we'll have to try to figure out. See. As president, I could have de-classified it.

Now I can't. Now we have a problem. Isn't that interesting? It's so cool, look, we heard Ivan.

You probably almost didn't believe me, but now you believe me. No, I believe you. It's incredible, right? Hey, bring some cokes in, please.

It's so awesome listening to it every time. it surpassed all expectations. I was reading about it. I'm like, Well, we finally hear the audio.

What's that going to do? You know what? It's worth it to quote Donald Trump, do you think?

This is one of those examples where sometimes the movie is better than the book because it is so good. There are so many good parts of this. My favorite may be when one of the women speaking feels the need to clarify that the coup she is referring to is not the coup. He did, it was the fake coup against him. She's like, This is a coup.

The coup against you, it's so good, it's honestly perfect, he goes out of his way to admit to.

Look at this, I just found this, this was him, this was the Defense department. Hillary would print out stuff like this all the time.

It's classified, it's secret, it's off the record. I could have declassified it before, but now I didn't look at my secret war plans.

That you're not supposed to see, I mean, it's just, you know, Dan? You might be thinking, Aha, I'd like to see Trump wriggle his way out of this. Well, unfortunately for us. He used his persuasive powers and command of details to put on a master class in crisis communication when he was asked about this. You're not concerned then with.

We had a lot of papers, a lot of papers stacked up. In fact, you could hear the rustle of the paper. And nobody said I did anything wrong other than the fake news, which, of course, is Fox 2. Are there any other recordings that we should be concerned of? I don't know of any recordings that you should be concerned with. Because I don't do things wrong, I do.

There is no one more legitimate.

He then took another swing at this. During an interview aboard his plane with ABC and Semaphore, he said Quote I would say it was bravado. If you want to know the truth, it was bravado. I was talking and just holding up papers and talking about them, but I had no documents.

What do you think will any of these compelling explanations?

While it is almost certainly a boldface lie, Donald Trump's claim that this was bravado might be the most authentically honest thing he's ever said. Because there is truly nothing more Donald Trump, and frankly, believable, than the idea that Donald Trump would lie. To make some people, particularly women, think he was more important than he was, that is a believable thing. Yes, there's a gigantic caveat here that we're about to get to. I'm just saying as a point. He is a man who is driven by a bottomless well of insecurity, and that is what someone like that would do.

He is a man who has a fake time Man of the Year cover in his office to make people think he was Time Man of the Year. This is something he could possibly do, but we can get to the but if you will.

Right? He said, Look at this, look at this paper. So, and then later he said, Oh, he also said in the Semaphore interview, it was nice.

They said, Oh, you said it was plants, you said it was, you said it was planned, and he said, Did I say plans? that's, it's not war plans.

It was building plans. So we are now to believe that. During that meeting, Donald Trump had some papers that he told us were rustling. You could hear the papers. And that what he did was. He showed the two ghostwriters building plans, but pretended that it was classified war plans. And they were like, Yeah, yeah, no, we believe you now. And he also told them, By the way, this is secret.

This is classified, I could have declassified it, but really, it's just a bunch of building plans and some other papers.

And they're just these fucking idiots. Also, do we think that that Jack Smith has built his entire case just on the audio recording that he hasn't interviewed the two ghostwriters? Because when Maggie Haberman and and Jonathan Swan, or whoever she wrote the story with the New York Times reached out to those two writers, they didn't, they didn't respond, which, which probably is because they're fucking witnesses.

There's no reason why he brought this plan to the meeting. He took it out of the box in whatever locked door bathroom where he was keeping it. It came up in conversation and he found it in a pile on his desk, hence the rustling of paper.

So, just the fact that it's not in the indictment does not mean that that document was not in Trump's possession.

We also got some new details about the Bedminster crime scene from both That Times piece and a Washington Post piece that ran this week. Jack Smith's team initially wanted to search Bedminster, but didn't think they had enough evidence to get a warrant. They did, however, successfully subpoena surveillance footage from Bedminster. So, again, Trump's bravado? We're going to see if that holds up once we see the surveillance footage.

They have reportedly asked witnesses a lot of questions about the War Plan incident, and, of course, they view it as one of their strongest pieces of evidence. So it does sound, you know, doesn't sound too good for Trump. No, doesn't seem that way. Also not good is.

Jack Smith just apparently interviewed Rudy Giuliani about trying to overturn the election and is reportedly close to charging decisions in that investigation. You seen any good legal news?

No, I have not, I've looked, it is not, it is not there.

That's the map of the war. That wasn't going very well and he showed it to a PAC representative. That was Susie Wiles, who's currently his top campaign aid. So that makes things a little tricky as well.

We could have Rudy Flipping as well.

Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, did say that colleges can consider how race has affected an applicant's life. But that students quote must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual, not on the basis of race. Justices Jackson and Sotomayor each wrote dissents, with Jackson arguing that quote deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life, and Sotomayor saying quote. The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated. There is plenty of evidence to support her claim. In the nine states that have already banned the use of race-conscious admissions at their public universities, the share of Black and Latino students has dropped.

President Biden spoke out on the decision this morning. Here he is. We cannot let this decision be the last word. We cannot let this decision be the last word. While the court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for.

America is an idea, an idea unique in the world, an idea of hope and opportunity, of possibilities, of giving everyone a fair shot, of leaving no one behind. We've never fully lived up to it, but we've never walked away from it either. We will not walk away from it now. So today, I want to offer some guidance to our nation's colleges as they review their admissions systems. After today's decision, guidance that is consistent with today's decision.

They should not abandon, let me say this again, they should not abandon their commitment to ensure student bodies of diverse backgrounds and experience that reflect all of America. What I propose for consideration is a new standard where colleges take into account the adversity a student has overcome when selecting among qualified applicants. So, not surprising from this court, but still infuriating. Where does this go from here, you know? The president also said he's directing the Department of Education to assess what factors are contributing to more diversity at colleges and what factors are holding back diversity at colleges.

And he also mentioned legacy admissions, which, of course, the court did not say anything about. Alumni who went there, their kids, donors who gave money to the college, their kids, right? The court didn't say anything about preferences there, so Biden did direct the Department of Education to assess those factors. But where do you think this goes from here?

And what's your overall?

And to your point, this is going to have a very real impact in the states that have banned it, it has gone down and precipitously. Michigan banned using race in college admissions in 2006. The percentage of Black students at the University of Michigan has been cut nearly in half since 2006. That is a huge deal.

How is this going to affect the admissions process in general, in terms of interviews and essays and all of that? But there is no question that this is a huge step backwards on the path to try to make America more equitable. It's going to have a real impact on real people's lives.

Robust in making sure that student bodies are more diverse than it was before. This ruling, at least, still continues that mission. I noted with some irony that I got an email from Holy Cross, where I went to college and where Clarence Thomas graduated from college. And the new president of Holy Cross, First Black president of Holy Cross said that he was very much opposed to the decision. And that the college would not be deterred from their mission to make sure that the student body is diverse. So we'll see what can happen there. But not a great ruling, not a great ruling at all.

But we did get some good news from the court earlier in the week, when Roberts also wrote a 6-3 opinion. Rejecting what's known as the independent state legislature theory, which essentially argues that state courts don't have the authority to review voting or election laws passed by state legislatures. Dan There have been differing views from various legal experts on just how good this news is. What do you think did John Roberts save democracy once again?

The state Supreme Court could not weigh in on voting suppression laws like voter ID or poll taxes. Or any of the other things that had previously been subject to constitutional and judicial review. But also in a Supreme Court case of a few years ago. The Supreme Court said that the Supreme Court had no role in rendering judgment on partisan gerrymandering. Racial gerrymandering could still be judged by the court, as they just had in a relatively positive decision pretty recently. But if you stack the deck along party lines, not racial lines, that was up to the state to figure out. The whole point of this case was that a Republican supermajority in North Carolina redrew the districts in a completely absurd and ridiculous way. The state Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional, violating a whole host of equal protection rules. And then they sued, saying they could not do that.

Now, ironically, we have since lost the majority of the Supreme Court in North Carolina, and now that Supreme Court is undoing all the good that was done. And had they passed the independent state legislature, that would have stopped that. But this is protecting a role of the state Supreme Court that's going to matter in 2024 and beyond. The dangerous part here is what essentially John Roberts did. And Rick Hasson, law professor at University of Berkeley, pointed this out is that what they've essentially done is codified. Some of the footnotes from the Bush v. Gore decision, which will give the Supreme Court more aggressive judicial review in federal election cases that occur at the state level. And so there is a potential for, and just a potential. This is better than the alternative. But a potential for them to be more involved in overruling state supreme courts, like they did in the Bush V.

Gore case that stopped the recount in the middle of Al Gore trying to determine who actually won Florida.

I think that potential was always there.

The majority said here that. So basically, it was so ridiculous to put forward a theory that state legislatures could do whatever they wanted without any kind of judicial review whatsoever. To say that that is antithetical to the U.S. Constitution to, like, 200 and something years, it's just wild, it's wild. So basically, the majority said that yes, of course. State courts have a role in reviewing what the state legislature does and interpreting the state constitution, of course, but they do not have free reign to rewrite election laws from scratch. And so basically. There may be instances where the state courts are so wrong in interpreting state legislatures and state constitutions that federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have to step in.

And like, I tried to put out of my head. Whether the Supreme Court is in its current form, a very right wing supreme court, or a liberal court, whether state courts in question are liberal or conservative. Like, I don't think you would want a state court to be all powerful, just as you wouldn't want a state legislature to be all powerful. You would want some option for federal review of a state court's decision. Like, just from a pure partisan perspective. If there was a state legislature, that was like a MAGA legislature, and then there was a MAGA state Court. Basically, like there is in North Carolina now. And they trampled all over the rights of voters, and also the state court decided, yeah, you can have new electors there, you can just basically send your own electors. Wouldn't we want a federal court to step in at that point?

They basically created a new legal doctrine for the sole purpose of stopping the recount and giving the election to Bush. Now. Would Bush have won anyway? Who the hell knows? But they went out of their way to do it, and then they went out of their way to basically say that was a one-off.

It was only in some footnotes that they adopted. It was in one of those footnotes where the independent state legislature theory comes from. And then, in this case, the far right. The people who brought the case took the most radical interpretation of that original independent state legislature theory. What this does is it's going to make it easy. You're not going to have to invent a new legal doctrine to weigh in here now. Does that mean they wouldn't have done it anyway?

Maybe they probably would have, because they did it in 2000 and they could do it again. So I just, this is not to say to panic, to say there is like a secret time bomb here or anything like that. But there is a reality that a repeat of Bush v Gore is at least slightly more likely. Because of the way. This decision was decided. With a 6-3 majority, including appointees from Democratic presidents.

On the bad side, so no shocker there. But as Clarence Thomas criticized the majority in his dissenting opinion on this, he was like, You didn't. There is no standard now of when the federal courts or the Supreme Court should weigh in, and you guys didn't set a standard in this majority opinion. So it's sort of up to a case-by-case basis here, which it was before.

Which I think is, yeah, that's why I feel like it seems more status quo than not. What does this mean for 2024? So this was mostly about the elections clause, not the electors clause. There are two different clauses in the constitution, but the language in the two cases is basically identical. And so it does seem like if a state legislature, after the fact, decided to just send in a new slate of electors, like Trump wanted them to do in 2020. It seems like from this ruling, the Supreme Court would say, of course, the state Supreme Court could say that is blatantly unconstitutional. Based on the state constitution, which, in a lot of these states, says you can't change the law after the election happens and suddenly decide to send fake electors.

So that's good news.

Bidenomics is working. When I took office, the pandemic was raging and our economy was reeling. Supply chains are broken, millions of people unemployed, hundreds of thousands of small businesses on the verge of closing after so many had already closed.

Literally hundreds of thousands on the verge of closing. Today, the U.S. has the highest economic growth rate, leading the world economies since the pandemic, the highest in the world. Now, Republicans are at it again, pushing tax cuts for large corporations and the wealthy, and adding trillions of dollars to the deficit.

Trillions, folks, let me say it as clearly as I can the trickle-down approach failed the middle class, it failed America. Bidenomics is about the future.

Bidenomics is another way of saying restore the American dream because it worked before.

Than Republicans. And that, to me, is a much more useful and effective message than just look at all the good stuff we did. Maybe the economy is better than you think it is. I think we haven't focused on this yet, but it was really smart, I think, how he hit the tax cuts really hard.

That trickle-down economics is Republicans wanting tax cuts for the rich versus Biden's policies, which are focused on better jobs and lower costs. The winner of the election will decide what happens to the Trump tax cuts, which expire at the end of the year. Basically, Biden hit the Republicans in the speech for wanting to pay $2 trillion to keep in place tax cuts that mostly benefit the rich. When we could be spending that money on lower health care costs, lower education costs, investment in infrastructure, that is a great fight to have.

It's a fight with real consequences because you can tell people whoever wins after the election, this is a choice. Do you want more tax cuts for rich people or do you want investments in the middle class? I like that they framed it like this.

Also, I will just note that comparing child tax credit and tax cuts for corporations or investments in X with tax cuts for rich people actually undersells populist sentiment in this country. If you ask people, do you want to give tax cuts to the rich? Or you personally have a root canal, most Americans would pick root canal. That is where populism.

What do you think about the argument they are trying to make here about, you know, the economy doing better? Which is, I should say, empirically correct? According to all of the data, inflation is down, consumer confidence is up, the job market is still churning out jobs. There are good jobs, unemployment is at its lowest. I mean, look, all this stuff is right. But, you know, as we talked about a million times during the midterms, at that point, people weren't feeling the improvement.

Biden folks were in an impossible situation throughout 2022. Inflation was such a dominant and very real and painful issue for so many people. That they could not talk about all the other stuff because people were so mad about inflation and gas prices in particular, we are now in a much more nuanced environment, and on top of the polling that Ben cites. Earlier this week, the consumer confidence measure came out and it is its highest level in 17 months. And the consumer confidence measure is probably the best measure of how people really feel about the economy because it indicates what they want to do going forward. It correlates with buying homes, buying cars, going on vacation, and so if consumer confidence is up, that speaks to a change in the economy. Now, the challenge for President Biden is not just how people feel about the economy, but how they feel about what he is going to do on the economy. Because he still is operating at a fairly historic deficit with Republicans, in terms of who you trust, on the economy, and particularly with Donald Trump. And so this speech, this ensuing public relations campaign, and frankly, the entire presidential campaign is going to be an effort to change that dynamic. To undermine what Republicans are for and build trust in the president. As an economic steward,

An economic steward really means who are you going to fight for? and what are you going to fight for, right? because.

Should he spend more time on issues like Trump or democracy, or abortion, like he did in the midterms, like we have had this conversation before? It is incredibly difficult to get an economic message to break through in a time of Donald Trump. And threats to democracy and abortion bans and everything else, that are serious threats that we are dealing with. How would you run a campaign where you really want to get that economic message to break through?

It is worth remembering that as high as the turnout was in 2022, it is going to be significantly higher in 2024.

There is about 50 million people who voted in, more than 50 million people who are going to vote in 2024, who did not vote in November. And those people will tend to be people who are less politically engaged, therefore they are going to be less motivated by some of the democracy. Trump the sort of more processed arguments about extremism that were effective in 2022. So how do you do this? I think you make a mistake by doing this from an issue perspective.

It is not a recipe, we are not making cookies, we don't need two cups of flour, two cups of democracy, two teaspoons of court reform or whatever. You need a narrative about the differences between President Biden and the Republicans, most notably Donald Trump, who will serve as the avatar for all Republicans, whether he is the nominee or not. What they are going to fight for, what they stand for. And then each individual issue, whether it is abortion or democracy or the economy, is something that undergirds that larger narrative. So you start with narrative, and then issues are the supporting parts of that.

The economy is going to have to be a huge part of that. I suspect it will be a dominant part of paid advertising. Because, to your point, you can't get the press to cover the economy in ways that are, especially with the diminution of local news to get people to really understand how the economy is doing. So, you are going to have to pay to do that, but it is going to have to be a bigger part of the 2024 strategy than 2022. Because you are going to have more economically sensitive voters in this voter pool than we had last time.

Trump also gave us these tax cuts that have increased the deficit and just made rich people richer, and he would do more of that if he comes to office. So we will talk more about all of this with Ben Lebolt, the White House communications director, right after this.

Joining us now, he's been Joe Biden's White House communications director for just about four months. He's also a longtime friend and colleague of ours from the Obama days, and the only person in the world who's lived with me. Tommy and Lovett and worked for Dan Ben Lebolt. Welcome to the pod.

First question Is this the best day of your life?

But growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, President Biden never saw those policies impact his family. It never trickled down to the kitchen table. And so he really believes in reverse engineering that concept and centering economic policies around the middle class from the beginning. That means basically three things number one, we should invest in the United States, we shouldn't reward corporations that are shipping jobs overseas. We should take a look at what industries can be built here in the United States, from clean energy to.

Superconductors, or, I'm sorry, semiconductors, chips industries that were being built overseas in China over the past decades. Even though we invented that technology here in the United States, a lot of people said reviving manufacturing in the U.S. wasn't possible. 800,000 manufacturing jobs have been created under this administration, and that's just the beginning. So that's one piece, the second piece is empowering workers.

We have a tight labor market. 13 million jobs were created under this administration, and unemployment has been lower than 4 for 16 months. That's the longest in decades. And that means workers are empowered, their wages are up, workers are unionizing, even young workers are unionizing in new sectors. And employers have to compete for their talent. And that means that workers are doing well and they're very empowered. And we have the strongest labor force participation rate that we've had in years, and this is impacting everyone. It's particularly impacting workers that were making lower wages. They've seen the most wage growth of anybody else, we've seen the lowest Black and Hispanic unemployment in history under this administration. So it's having a real impact. And it's a result of all of the big pieces of legislation that the president was able to get through Congress over the past couple of years.

But we've got to make sure that people are connecting those things to all of the legislation that the president passed through Congress in the past couple of years. And so that will require the president, the vice president, the first lady, the second gentleman going out on the road to talk about this. Coordinating with members of Congress, coordinating with members of the Cabinet. And we're trying to be on the road, in districts, on conventional media platforms, and to be communicating digitally, it's sort of an all-in communication strategy. To make sure that people are seeing that these economic gains, this progress that they're seeing coming out of the pandemic is related to the policies of this administration.

We know it's a result of passing the Inflation Reduction Act that had the record funding for clean energy in it, for example. And the Chips and Science Act. Which are building these semiconductor plants across the country. And so our view is that.

Ultimately, Americans perceptions of the president will be linked to the performance of the economy. And we believe there's a very strong record here that we need to start communicating forcefully about every day. And so I don't think Bidenomics will just be today and just be the speech, but that's really going to be a key part.

One of the president's favorite lines is Don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. Sure enough, House Republicans started the day with two tweets about Hunter Biden and one celebrating the end of Roe v. Wade. Do you find it easier to convince people that they are better off with Biden's approach versus the Republicans approach? Than it is to convince people that they should feel better about the economy than they might?

At the same time, what are Republicans offering people today? I think that economically, we know what they're offering. They're offering tax cuts to the wealthiest in corporations, which have seemed to be this recycled Republican idea over and over again. That didn't bring manufacturing back to the U.S, didn't create record low unemployment, we know that it doesn't work, and it created record deficits that we're all paying for as well.

Secondly, they've gotten into such an extreme position across the board on so many issues. Another one that I would point out you talked about, Roe. They're really out of step with the public on that, they're certainly out of step with millennials and Gen Z. But this notion of freedom and individual liberties, that used to be something that Republicans liked to go out and talk about. But MAGA Republicans today. If you're a woman who wants to make her own healthcare decisions, if you're a parent that believes that, you should decide what books your kids have access to. Instead of an ideological politician, if you're somebody who cares about gay rights in this country or LGBTQ rights broadly. Republicans are really conducting an assault on freedom and an assault on individual liberties right now. And they're way out of step with the public on that, and I think it really puts them in a vulnerable position. So the president has been a champion to go out and defend these things.

He believes we should codify Roe. He came out after Dobbs and did what he believed was everything he could do. In his executive authority to defend reproductive rights, he made sure that we're defending marriage equality and passed legislation to do so. So, Republicans are just drifting further and further down the MAGA ideological spectrum here and really putting themselves in political peril.

Placing the president's mark on the federal courts has been a big part of this presidency. He's confirmed 136 federal judges to appointments to the federal bench so far. Two-thirds of them have been women. It's been the most diverse slate of judges in history. The president used to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and so every Supreme Court justice that was appointed by a Democratic president. President Biden has played a key role in making sure that they were confirmed.

There just couldn't be a better priority for this administration than making sure that the courts are upholding opportunity and equal justice under the law. And the president's really dedicated his career to that, and so he keeps a very close eye.

Speaking of winning.

So you've worked?

And we're all familiar with one. I think the way things work around here is it's important to prep for prep. President Biden is extremely detail-oriented, he likes to attack policy issues and negotiations from every angle. And to play out every scenario in every possible way along the chessboard that they could play out. And so you better walk into the oval, knowing the answer to every possible question to make sure that he works it through.

I think of it like the law school class I never had, because after I took the LSAT, I just went and worked on campaigns instead.

Socratic method. Anybody in the room should be prepared to speak and answer any question. Devil's Advocate around every issue. To understand both the policy and politics of how something might play out and people across the country might respond to it. That's true on domestic policy, it's true on foreign policy.

I'm in a position where I feel like I'm learning every day, I'm getting my P.h.D. here in the job.

He's just a very, very hands-on president when it comes to both managing the White House, the government apparatus and policy writ large. We asked Saki.

You're never going to get it all done. The executive branch is a massive organization with hundreds of thousands of people. And so, for as many moments as you want to sit here and drive news and plan things perfectly. It's so easy for something to pop up in the news or across the government. That takes your full attention for a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month, where you really have to divert the team and focus on that. So I came in with that perspective this time around, and I'm also inviting myself to more of the events that they host.

Excellent.

Can he win that election? Yeah, he can.

It wasn't like the interviewer. When I first heard about this, I thought maybe the interviewer had grilled him and was like, No, no. Is Donald Trump the strongest candidate? No, he just said, Could he win an election? And then Kevin volunteers.

After this, Politico reports that obviously Trump lost his shit. His people were texting what the fuck to each other and calling McCarthy a moron, like, they're some fucking pod. Save America hosts. Kevin then called Trump to apologize, gave an interview to Breitbart where he said Quote Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016. And then put up a fundraising pitch that said Trump is the strongest opponent to Biden. But that pissed Trump off even more, because apparently you're not allowed to do a fundraising pitch using Trump's name without Trump's explicit sign-off. So then they made McCarthy take down the fundraising pitch that he did to try to correct his fuck-up.

I guess they're also pissed in MAGA world that McCarthy hasn't endorsed Trump yet, which raises the question, Why hasn't he?

Should I actually think that might be true?

In end of June 2015, trial heats were 59, Hillary 34. Trump yikes well, and as we know, the.

Did you hear Ron DESantis answer to a question in a New Hampshire town hall about whether he thinks Donald Trump disrupted the peaceful transfer of power on January 6th? Did you hear that?

So Caitlin Collins of CNN is interviewing Chris Christie last night, I believe, asked him to respond to Ron DESantis answer, and here's what Chris Christie had to say. He wasn't anywhere near Washington. Did he have a TV?

Was he alive that day? Did he see what was going on? I mean, that's one of the most ridiculous answers I've heard in this race so far. You don't have an opinion about January 6th, except to say I didn't particularly enjoy what happened. People were killed.

That's not exactly a strong statement. People were killed, Caitlin, As you know, that day on Capitol Hill, defending the Capitol. We had members of Congress who were running for their lives, we had people trying to hunt down. The vice president of the United States, chanting Hang Mike Pence and Donald Trump. The entire time. Sat outside the Oval Office. In that little dining room of his, eating a well-done cheeseburger and watching TV and doing nothing to stop what was going on. Until it got to the point where even he could no longer stand it. And he finally, at 4-something in the afternoon, put out a video asking people to leave the Capitol.

And Ron DESantis doesn't have any opinion on that. If he asked you that question, how would you answer it? I would say it was one of the most disgraceful days in American history and that the president was principally responsible for it. Not that hard.

I'm sure Trump put out a few angry truths about this. Nothing happened. Is he going to win the Republican nomination? No, are Republican voters going to like that?

Probably not glad he's out there saying it, though. It's a pretty sharp prosecution of Donald Trump.

Typical politician, all the stuff that Donald Trump's running against him for, or Donald Trump's message about him, which is that he's a typical establishment politician. Forget about his positions on issues that make him a typical establishment politician. He sounds like one, he's stiff.

His speeches suck, and I think Donald Trump understands that. Sometimes you just say, What's on your mind? Clearly, but Chris Christie is now doing that, too. We've had plenty of politicians in the Democratic Party who've been successful doing that.

Barack Obama used to do that quite often, where he'd sort of just laugh about the absurdity of politics or the absurdity of his opponents. That's what Chris Christie is doing right now. Chris Christie is full of shit.

I'm not going to place a lot of bet on the rigid, straightforward moral compass of Chris Christie. But he does communicate with authenticity, he does sound like he speaks like a human with strength. That was why he was the first choice of many Republicans to be their nominee in 2012. He missed his moment to at least would have given Obama a tougher shot than Romney did, but it's great.

I will take him on there. I reverse my position where I've been attacking you in private and in public. For being willing to give to Chris Christie to get him on the debate stage. I'm okay with that, I think it's good for the world, I want to see it.

It would be horrible. I don't think he's become a moderate. I think he is genuine in his hatred for Donald Trump, who almost killed him. And I think he was probably. He's genuine in his disgust of what happened on January 6th. I think you can hold all of those things.

I wouldn't be too happy if someone almost killed me. I probably wouldn't support them. I might not accept an invitation to go back into their.

House, Just a thought. Mike Pence, I don't know if he's there again. Someone who was almost killed by Donald Trump.

Okay, that's all we have for today. Thanks to Ben Lebolt for joining Pod Save America. everyone have a great weekend and a great fourth. Oh right, so instead of Pod Save America, on Tuesday, you will hear an episode of Terminally online, our subscriber show that you can get.

If you go to crooked.

Com Slash friends. You can get all the terminally onlines you want. But we're going to put one episode in the PSA feed for Tuesday because we'll be off for the fourth.

My name is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Madeline Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft and Justine Howe for production support.

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