Politics Chat, November 10, 2026

[0:04] hey folks uh the train was delayed as i should have expected because that happens more often than not [0:12] and i am just through the door here in the hotel but i do have information i'm going to be somewhat [0:17] low energy it's been a long day um but welcome here from greenville michigan it's great right [0:22] now we have zero people as far as oh now there's 4500 all right um oxford ohio laramie wyoming [0:29] okay so i spent last night with my college roommate who spent her summers as a kid in laramie [0:36] wyoming because that's where her parents met in i'm gonna go with the 1950s um so actually there [0:44] was laramie wyoming stuff all over the house um san francisco and kristen's here from facebook so i [0:52] won't go through the rest of the names because it is late here i still haven't eaten and you all [0:56] probably want to know what's going on so i had stuff to do yesterday so i didn't spend a great [1:01] deal of time looking at the news and when i looked this morning it was the most bizarre thing because [1:07] it looked like the whole country had changed it was and i have done nothing today um except [1:14] write at read the news and write and tonight's letter is almost four pages long and i could make [1:19] it another four pages without a problem because everything is in the mix right now so let me tell [1:27] you what i mean by that i want to start with the fact that the the the momentum of the country has [1:35] changed so one of the things that you're starting to see all through the media and you're starting to [1:41] see on social media and so on is the number of democrats who are out there right now saying we're going [1:49] to hold the trump administration accountable for any laws that may have broken and we're going to [1:57] throttle back everything they did and change the rules of this country so that every american can [2:05] afford to eat and and have housing and so on so this idea of both accountability and affordability which [2:12] are not different things this is a weird conversation people are having when they talk [2:17] about how it's got to be one or the other they're the same thing you can't have an affordable nation [2:23] when people are breaking the laws to do things like collude on prices or create monopolies or hurt their [2:31] workers and so on so you're seeing all this stuff on the one hand and i can't even list all the speeches [2:39] that people have been giving for the last couple of days but i can give you some highlights um not of [2:45] the speeches themselves there have been some very good ones not least from the re-elected secretary of [2:50] state from arizona who was great today or it was published today on a tv show but john ossoff of course [2:58] has been out there jamie raskin um melanie stansbury elizabeth warren you know they're they're just a lot of [3:05] them out there saying exactly what i just said to you but um but now that everybody you know the congress went back [3:12] into session yesterday and it's just like everybody is full on the gas right so on the democratic side [3:19] um you know they're doing everything from announcing and i think this is so important symbolically but [3:26] also as a sign of what just happened the democrats have said that they are going to move the january [3:32] 6th plaque honoring the law enforcement officers who protected the capitol and congress on january 6th [3:39] 2021 the congress then passed a resolution that there would be a plaque thanking the law enforcement [3:45] officers and um by the time the plaque was completed was finished the house and senate had changed to [3:55] republican control and house speaker mike johnson simply said i'm not going to put it up and the house [4:02] the senate republicans who are less mega than the house republicans said oh we're going to put it up [4:10] but we're going to put it in the basement so it's hanging in the senate base or in the basement of [4:14] the u.s capitol right now and the right of the box of democrats said we're going to move it upstairs [4:20] where people can actually see it and that's that symbol of saying we're going to hold the line for [4:28] what has actually happened in this country over the last 10 years was a really big deal the other place [4:32] you saw a big change today was yesterday i think it was trump post i'm sorry i mean to laugh it's not [4:39] funny it's been a long day trump posted on social media that um the suggesting the election was stolen [4:47] and have you seen how little traction that's gotten and megan kelly who is that right-wing [4:52] personality uh in the media actually on x posted over that just stop right so so there is the whole [5:03] change here um that the as i say the democrats are just getting media attention and saying all sorts [5:12] of stuff and um they um again remember they're going to be in the minority until january so they can't [5:20] push things through legally they can't push through laws but they can certainly lay down markers which is [5:27] what they are doing so yesterday 16 democratic senators 16 democratic senators um the minute [5:36] they got back to washington sent a letter to the the republican currently heads of um the senate finance [5:44] committee and the senate majority leader john thune a republican of south dakota saying they are intending [5:53] to get rid of all the cuts that were in the one big beautiful bill act that budget reconciliation bill [5:59] of july 2025 that the republicans pushed through had dramatic cuts in to medicaid and that is one of [6:07] the reasons as everybody freaking predicted i can remember being on the phone on a walk with a friend [6:14] going you know and the person going we're we're gonna lose our hospitals because that's what keeps [6:19] things like birthing centers open and i don't know if you live near a closed birthing center but i sure [6:24] do and anyway they want to reverse those cuts entirely but of course until they can can get back and [6:31] do that they have asked the republicans to put a two-year hold on the work requirements that they have [6:39] added to getting medicaid and the people who study medicaid and health care say that work requirements [6:49] don't actually put people into the workforce what they do is they create so much paperwork people [6:53] fall off of medicaid so they've asked for a two-year extension to that right out of the bat um and [6:59] really putting the republicans on notice that they're going to go piece by piece over these cuts [7:04] that the republicans have made and take them in front of the american people so they did that and that [7:11] that excuse me to to also in the account on the affordability side of things and and you've got [7:16] people like andy kim the democratic senator from new jersey pushing his um medic kids idea which [7:25] again i i want to be very clear going forward in all of these things i am not a specialist in health [7:31] care for example i'm a specialist in politics so i can tell you what people introduce and i'm also i [7:37] hope a specialist in democracy so i have a pretty clear idea about the large picture of things i cannot [7:43] sit here and tell you what is the best way to make sure everybody has um medical coverage although [7:49] to an outsider anyway medicaid sounds like a great idea um but he's out there pushing that again and [7:56] elizabeth warren today jumped who's the um democratic senator from massachusetts and in line to become [8:04] the next chair of the senate banking committee and that's absolutely putting the fear of god into [8:11] financial institutions including cryptocurrency because she's very smart and she is very much [8:18] a populist on the um concentration of money for example and on holding people accountable to the [8:25] law so she was out there today in a speech in which she called for a higher federal minimum wage getting [8:31] rid of congressional stock trading which honestly is a no-brainer i i'd be surprised if that doesn't happen [8:37] in the in short order and also surveillance pricing i don't know if you're aware of surveillance pricing [8:43] but it means that what a company will do is it will um because they have so much access to who we are [8:52] that they will offer one price to one person and a different price to somebody else for the same [8:58] item and you can see this if you're ever traveling with somebody and um or sitting i actually sat next to [9:05] somebody and we were both trying to buy the same thing and there was a differential in price of um [9:12] a significant amount between what was showing up on his laptop and what was showing up on my laptop [9:16] for the exact same thing and that's i mean that just is something that the biden administration [9:23] wanted to get rid of and that um that other administrations are pushing back on state [9:29] administrations are pushing back on and elizabeth warren was like we got to get rid of this and again [9:34] it's a little hard for me to imagine anybody in the united states who isn't somebody who's taking [9:40] advantage of that system saying um um anything other than um they want to get rid of that that [9:49] just seems to me to be a no-brainer so she's talked about that as well and about oversight as i [9:55] say of the financial committees and so on and then there was a report today out of the washington post [10:01] i'm sorry out of the wall street journal that the democrats from a number of committees have already [10:07] asked the businesses the corporations that have cut deals with trump to make sure they have provided [10:14] certain records by january 4th the day that the democrats take office which honestly um i just to [10:21] me that's my idea of absolute heaven is to have a whole pile of records to go through the minute you get [10:27] to work so the point of the wall street journal article was that a lot of these corporations are [10:33] already trying to pull this material together and are very nervous about what that's going to look like [10:38] and you can see that in the fact that um already people are trying to distance themselves from the [10:45] trump administration in a number of different ways and i won't go through them all but it was really [10:49] notable today that secretary of state marco rubio actually seemed to put daylight between himself [10:57] and the president over the issue of the chief executive officer of nvidia i don't know if you [11:04] caught this blockbuster story because it was in the middle of the election brouhaha but um his name [11:10] is jensen wang and it turns out he's been having an affair with a chinese spy oopsie poopsie that's not [11:16] a good thing to do um especially when you're the head of nvidia which produces chips that the [11:25] u.s intelligence services consider important for u.s national security and there are a number of [11:31] pieces of information that are not supposed to go to china and apparently this spy was reported [11:36] directly to beijing and uh you know another aspect of this of course is that huang is married and this [11:45] is getting more and more embarrassing on any number of levels but the one that most closely in involves [11:52] people like you and me is the fact that we have this issue of nvidia which is this major major [11:58] corporation the ce it is very closely identified with quang who is a close advisor to donald trump [12:07] and he's been having an affair with with a chinese spy so trump has been insisting he didn't know [12:13] anything about this even though i believe it was the new york times that reported first although i might be [12:18] wrong about that it might have been the wall street journal but i think it was the times reported that [12:23] in fact he had been told that um that that this was an issue that uh that you know a long time ago uh [12:31] almost a year ago it was the times almost a year ago that that that he was involved with a spy and he [12:39] didn't do anything about it and then in may he actually took wang with him on a on his trip to china [12:45] in may and so when he was asked about that yesterday he said to the reporters that he [12:49] didn't know he hadn't been told well today uh there was a story in the new york times and remember i [12:55] told you always keep an eye out when there's a whole bunch of bylines because that means it's a really big [13:00] story doesn't mean that it's it can a single person can have a big story too but if they've put that [13:05] much that many resources into a story you know it's a big story and um they reported today a whole [13:13] bunch of new york times reporters uh led by maddie haberman and jonathan swan uh reported today that [13:21] um that sources told them that in fact marco rubio had told him before the that may trip to china [13:33] about um huang and his relationship with this spy and um and that he had that somebody had told trump [13:41] that at least once before that was at least the second time he had been told well that of course [13:47] is an attempt to sort of say hey don't look at me i i gave him this information so you saw that [13:53] happening um and then uh and and there interestingly enough of course this speaks to just how much we may [14:02] learn now or going forward about trump's utter disregard for national security secrets which we [14:09] knew about because of his retention of classified documents after he left office the first time [14:14] but that uh investigation of course got stymied by a republican i mean i'm sorry a trump appointed judge [14:21] um so you know that's something that may get reopened and at some point we will learn more about [14:26] that case but a grand jury uh charged trump with um a number of felonies related to his retention of [14:36] classified documents in that case is one of those that um that eileen can installed and then killed [14:42] so is one of those that got killed she's she's the one who killed that one didn't kill it uh put it [14:48] into a coma for until trump gets back out of office anyway so um so then the other thing that uh has been [14:56] in the news now is this um um impeachment effort against pete hegseth defense secretary terry pete hegseth [15:10] and that's really interesting as well because republican thomas massey is one who's been pushing [15:14] that and of course remember republicans still control the house and the senate so he's been [15:19] pushing it and he got it to the floor um yeah today um i'll tell you more about that in a minute um [15:28] and but what was interesting about it is he went after defense secretary pete hegseth on eight counts [15:35] there are eight articles of impeachment in his um in his document and the the first three have to do [15:43] with the war powers act that um that i mean quite frankly hegseth has and and trump have run roughshod [15:51] over it in which they said uh the the first three say that he violated the war powers act first of all by [15:59] declaring that an attack from iran was imminent that that it wasn't imminent and that um the idea [16:05] of going to war without the consent of congress requires an imminent threat and you know i've been [16:09] writing about this since the beginning and then also that they did not get congressional authorization [16:15] after the time limit had run out um to operate without consent of congress under the concept of [16:22] an imminent threat so there was that there was um the extrajudicial killings of the people at least [16:30] 221 people in the small boats in uh the caribbean and in the eastern pacific there was uh going uh going [16:40] after um using the weaponizing the government against senator uh mark kelly um and violating his free [16:49] speech there was um not trying to stop uh civilian deaths breaking laws about preventing civilian deaths [16:57] in iran especially with the bombing of the of the school and there was um um um the uh the attack on [17:09] again the war powers act and the attack on yemen um earlier in the second administration so um so [17:17] after the the those impeachment articles went forward hegseth gave a uh his first press conference in more [17:26] than six or in about six months today didn't mention the war at all i mean they're just not telling us [17:33] anything about that and only call first of all he threatened the his people threatened the reporters [17:38] in the room that they would be physically removed if they didn't act um if they acted out in any way [17:44] but then they wouldn't explain what that meant and then he would only call on people from far-right [17:49] networks for questions but in this press conference it was all about him said that the impeachment was [17:56] political and that he tried to associate himself with trump but he very clearly said anything that [18:04] i have done have been at the orders of the commander in chief so basically he passed the buck to trump [18:09] said this everything that i did was trump's responsibility really interesting nonetheless trump came out [18:15] and said he had done an a plus plus plus job or something like that um so you can see this like [18:23] the accountability is first of all the the democrats focus on affordability is gonna gonna create real [18:31] clashes with the republicans in the next few weeks but then they're really gonna hit the ground running [18:38] on that but this emphasis on accountability has made a lot of people really concerned there's a lot of [18:43] articles i'm not talking about because like i say there's too much going on where people are saying [18:48] oh it was a mistake for us to cozy up too much to trump and there are many of us trying not to say [18:52] you think um anyway um so well well that is all happening there's a number of ways in which the [19:02] administration is sort of madly trying to get through as much of trump's stuff as they can and you [19:08] can really see this in they're madly trying to push through his legacy projects this arch and the [19:14] golf course and they're trying to redo the uh reef the um base in the title basin by the jefferson [19:21] memorial and at a start of a whole bunch of statues and they're trying to push the stuff through as [19:26] quickly as possible but whistleblowers have already told members of congress democratic members of [19:32] congress especially the um ranking the top democrat on the house natural resources committee guy [19:39] named jared huffman from california that republicans are or officials from the administration are [19:45] destroying documents they're already destroying documents according to this whistleblower and so [19:50] he's out there saying you know that's crime you might not want to do that and that is obviously going [19:55] to be another big deal going forward so well while all that is happening on the democratic side and [20:02] i didn't give you any other sort of inspirational stuff they've been talking about because that to [20:08] me strikes me as being a trajectory like this is that's that's going to play out over the next [20:15] you know years um for a number of reasons because people are running for president because um you know [20:21] there are new coalitions being formed lots of new people to watch and so on um and i mean the the pictures [20:28] today of the all the new democratic senators um there was a comment on threads that i couldn't verify [20:36] elsewhere so i didn't um pursue it much but that um the democrats had to actually move to a bigger room [20:44] for lunch because the room that they were used to meeting in uh is was not big enough and of course [20:49] right now it looks as though scott colomb the democrat who ran in mississippi is for senate in mississippi [20:56] is he's more than 2500 votes ahead in his race against the republicans cindy hyde smith and in [21:04] alaska mary peltola is also ahead alaska counts very very slowly because of how big a uh state it is [21:11] and but but again playing the other side of the table trump keeps posting that all of the votes [21:17] in alaska that were not given to um peltola should all go to his candidate and then then he would win [21:26] and that's the way it should be done which is like just not how it's done it's a rank choice voting [21:31] state um so if once they start you know once they get to a certain point the if if neither peltola or [21:37] sullivan get more than 50 percent then they will start going from the the person who get got the [21:42] least votes and and putting them into the mix but we're a long way from that so um so those both of [21:50] those races are looking quite good as well so that's a trajectory that's that's there's going [21:55] to be plenty to say about the democrats going forward but what's really interesting right now to me is [22:01] what's happening to the republicans the ones who just got shellacked on tuesday and this was the [22:06] historic i mean i can't emphasize enough what a historic election that was and um even things like [22:16] scott galome said i think it was today very recently that you know he had a really hard [22:22] time raising money not least because the very well-known and very well-regarded cook political [22:28] report kept saying that a republican there was going to win and he's like you know clearly you missed [22:35] the story here because he is ahead um even now uh and it looks like he's going to win and so if you [22:42] think about the people who were walking uphill because of the uh understanding of the way american [22:48] politics works which by the way i think has changed and i will i i have not talked about that publicly [22:55] but i probably will very soon um uh it was just an absolute it was a blowout right so um so what are [23:04] the republicans going to do and what's really interesting here to me is that um trump is falling apart [23:13] i mean the if you think about trump as the leader of maga you know they all hitch their wagon to that [23:19] star and it's funny because i can remember using that language years ago saying this is not a good [23:24] place it's not a good star to which you should hitch your wagon because he is so uh you know he was he was [23:30] so unreliable and so you know kind of bonkers from the start right as i've been saying for years if you [23:37] compare the way he has sounded even since 2016 to the way he sounded in the 1980s it was clear he [23:43] had lost many miles off his fastball right now he's just gone so the other day you know he he called [23:52] for on true social i don't remember what day it was he called for uh dana white who's the um chief [23:59] executive officer of the ultimate fighting championship to be the press secretary which was you know he said he's [24:07] a fighter and he should bring all his fighters with him and on and on and then it turned out that [24:12] apparently that somebody probably susie wiles had compiled a list of people that seemed like they [24:21] might be good potentially potentially be good as press secretaries after um the the loss of trump's last [24:30] you know person who lasted less than a week and on that list was somebody named dana white um who was a [24:37] press i'm sorry a spokesperson for the pentagon at one point but uh as a black woman probably was [24:43] never going to be named by trump but having made this error they actually sort of fabricated a press [24:52] conference for uh yesterday i think it was in which trump brought in the ufc promoter and offered him [25:04] the job and sort of made it into this big promotion thing and the guy turned it down and it was like [25:09] it was almost like the white house as tv channel which as you remember there still is a white house [25:15] tv channel not that anybody's watching it um and um it was just absolutely bizarre it was like this man [25:22] so needed to have his ego protected that they couldn't let it go they had to create this weird [25:30] thing and everybody was kind of like what's going on here and then um today um um i'm sorry i'm still [25:44] back on how absolutely bizarre that was but today um what did he do today today um he called into a [25:52] television show this morning and there was a woman laughing in the background at the beginning of it and [25:58] it wasn't melania and then he went on and just sort of went through all his greatest hits and you know [26:03] his fantasy world and finally the the newscaster on it was on c-span the newscaster was like thank you [26:11] you can call it anytime you want thank you thank you and to get him off the line and it was just like [26:16] he's not well and in the midst of all this so if you're a republican what are you going to do [26:22] and some of them are sort of backing away but mega it appears is doubling down on mega the same [26:31] ideology and the same policies that the american people just completely rejected last tuesday [26:43] which is a decision i guess but it's a decision that we have seen really dramatically in um sorry but [26:53] in 1880 and the rejection completely upended all of american politics which i'm not going to go into [27:00] right now but it's how we get the progressive era um i will go into it at some point but anyway what [27:05] i mean by doubling down is first of all trump clearly is keeping around him the people who he [27:11] who make him feel comfortable and that's going to be um pete hegseth of course um it's going to be um [27:22] russell vote at office of management and budget and it's going to be pete heg i'm sorry i said pete [27:27] pete hegseth it's going to be steven miller and he has replaced suzy wiles with steven miller and as [27:36] chief of staff and i said to you the other day that you know miller's been making a lot of decisions [27:40] anyway and jack hopkins who has a newspaper called um jack hopkins now said you know people who think [27:47] there's not going to be a difference um from what happened before and now are completely missing the [27:52] picture and i'm convinced he pointed out that suzy wiles has talked often about the fact that her [27:59] father was an alcoholic and she learned to restrain him by creating guard rails and and and managing [28:08] the space around him and she has described trump as an alcoholic's personality i mean he doesn't drink [28:15] but he's got an alcoholic personality and by that she said she meant that he um didn't there was he [28:22] believed he could do anything and that she managed that by i'm sorry hopkins suggested she managed that in [28:29] the white house by controlling who got to see him and by making sure that you know she was in the [28:34] always in the room and always sort of containing his worst impulses compared to steven miller who is [28:43] the opposite he never he exacerbates trump's worst impulses because it gets him attention and he has [28:50] learned through his life that and if you don't know the history of steven miller now's not the time to go [28:57] into it but he's always been a provocateur it gets him a lot of attention and that has enabled him to [29:02] rise through the ranks and so you know he's the probably the guy who wrote most of the american [29:07] carnage speech he's the guy behind the deportations he's the guy who goes out on tv all the time and [29:12] talks about the most extreme things and so on and so the shift from wiles to miller will probably [29:20] exacerbate those worst trump's worst impulses and again his his impulses are impulsive now and and [29:30] calling into a c-span when there's a woman laughing in your in your room and you know is is a choice [29:39] right so i thought that was a really um a really important um recognition of the rising strength of [29:52] mega and that's extremist mega in the white house in the not necessarily in the whole republican party [29:59] but in the white house and trump went on 60 minutes yesterday or at least it was aired yesterday [30:06] and when asked about his miller's policies of deportations which americans hate um he said yeah [30:16] maybe we were too tough and maybe we should have amnesty for people who've been here for all these [30:21] years and the only thing they did wrong was to come in without documentation which is a really [30:28] what americans thought he meant when even though people were holding up mass deportation now they [30:35] convinced themselves that when he said he was going to get rid of criminals he only meant rapists and [30:39] murderers but the trump administration since the the first term in the second term it didn't the first [30:46] time but it's also doing it in the second term defines the um misdemeanor of coming in without [30:53] documentation it's not a felony as being a criminal act so that meant every single person even if they'd [31:01] been here 30 years whatever and and someday i'll tell you about the the how the um immigration laws [31:07] changed to make it um really to really increase the number of undocumented people here but um but they [31:15] considered all of them criminals and so trump went on 60 minutes and he said you know maybe we should [31:20] think about um he didn't say amnesty but about having a route you know not going after those people [31:26] and the white nationalists just went just went nuts just just started off going no no no that's not [31:37] at all the direction we should go you can't um you can't uh back off on um on your deportation plans [31:48] now and on um uh right-wing channel the um one american news um the media matters which is this [31:59] fabulous organization that watches all the right-wing channels and you know i don't know how they do it [32:04] but they do they're really worth following they're the ones who find all this stuff and on one of the [32:11] on an oan channel on a um a program in which former representative from florida matt gates the republican [32:22] who the house house ethics committee the republican house ethics committee said had paid a minor for sex [32:29] and was taking illicit drugs while he was a congressperson um anyway in a conversation with him [32:37] paul gans who was the head of project 2025 said no no no no this is central to our plans and um that [32:48] you know the last thing that maga should do is drive away those white men who voted for them in 2024 [32:56] with this in his mind promised to get rid of brown americans and black americans and he went on to [33:03] say we have to let young white men take the wheel again of the american economy that's the way out of [33:12] this and they need hope this is their birthright their country and it's time to put america and americans [33:19] first so they're doubling down on that white christian nationalism also interestingly i think i mentioned [33:26] to you last thursday and maybe i didn't but um personality um russell brand who uh has become a major [33:38] spokesperson for the make america healthy again or maha movement was just found guilty in the united [33:46] kingdom of rape and sexual assault and was sentenced yesterday to 10 and a half years in jail [33:53] and the main newsletter for the maha the make america healthy again movement came out today with this [34:01] long screed um it's called back of the um of the trial that the whole thing was political and um and [34:19] you know basically back you know this is maha backing russell brand after he's just been convicted of rape [34:27] and sexual assault and sent to prison for 10 and a half years and then this afternoon don jr did the [34:32] same thing he cut a video or at least he published the video today in which he said they went after [34:38] him because he was embracing con conservative ideas and that the whole thing was politically motivated [34:45] and to make matters worse um don jr was apparently high as a kite i mean it just was a really bizarre [34:52] video you can find it if you're anyway interested but um um so across the board these people who've [35:00] bought in are are there they're going to do they're going to push forward with with magus so todd blanche [35:07] the attorney general today said he was going to continue to push um um he was going to continue to [35:19] um uh consider criminal charges against democrats who were talking about accountability [35:26] um the um agriculture department is pushing is pushing through a rule that are not pushing through [35:35] pushing forward a rule that was outlined in project 2025 that would throw um about that would um change the [35:45] get rid of mo many of the supplemental nutrition assistance programs for 6.3 million americans in [35:53] the fiscal year 2029 so they're taking more food away from people um the department of justice recognizing [36:01] that the um texas attorney general has uh ken paxton um is lost his senates his senate bid and the texas [36:12] attorney general uh the texas just elected a new attorney general a democratic attorney general so texas had [36:19] signed signed on to a big case against planned parenthood that was designed to bankrupt planned [36:25] parenthood with this concept that what planned parenthood does is abortions and it does in a [36:33] perform abortions in some states but it's overwhelmingly a place where americans of both [36:40] sexes get screened for cancer stds reproductive health essentially and um the department of justice [36:50] is uh signing on to the federal department of justice is signing on to that lawsuit recognizing [36:57] that texas under a democratic attorney general will probably not continue with that so they're going [37:02] to keep on going with that as well and then today in the house the uh house republicans elected [37:10] jim jordan a trump loyalist a keen trump loyalist whose relationship to january 6th has always [37:19] interested me a lot um because he used to get very flustered if anybody talked to him asked him [37:26] about his phone calls with donald trump in the morning of january 6th he was happy to talk about [37:32] his previous calls with trump or his calls after the the um the insurrection but not about that morning [37:42] watch the videos of that i i something something something is funny he's very close to trump there [37:49] but um but he's he's really he has never advanced legislation in any meaningful way i'm not sure [37:56] he's ever gotten anything through congress but what he's known for is being a firebrand and over talking [38:02] over witnesses and screaming at people and um using mega rhetoric and um and then of course uh overlooking [38:12] the um he's been accused of overlooking the uh sexual assault of wrestlers at ohio state by a team [38:20] doctor when he was working there um with that team so they decided that rather than trying to moderate [38:27] anything that they were going to go full mega with who they put in charge of their conference uh which [38:33] is remember the democrats have a caucus and the republicans have a conference it's the same thing i don't know [38:37] why there's a difference and i've asked people if anybody knows drop it in the note in the comments [38:41] but um so they did that and then tonight in the vote on massey's impeachment um proposals [38:53] the republicans stood behind exit 100 of them stood behind exit except massey who voted um it was a [39:00] procedural vote to whether or not to send it to the judiciary committee where the republicans will [39:05] kill it and 11 democrats did not vote um and it's unclear why not although one of the ones who didn't [39:13] vote went on social media immediately and said there was a traffic incident outside the capital and we [39:20] couldn't get to the building and they shut off the vote before we could get there so we'll see how [39:24] that plays out there's also of course the fact that that keeps the issue open in the future for hearings [39:31] or maybe they just screwed up but the um the interesting thing there is given the opportunity to [39:37] throw out hegseth whom who's really unpopular on the hill they chose not to do it so um we have this [39:48] weird like the american people made a really strong statement and the democrats are running with it [39:58] in a really big way and the um and the republicans some are distancing themselves from it but at least [40:08] the ones that are currently in congress are doubling down on mega and it's just gonna be i mean it's it's [40:18] just absolutely fascinating to watch this split happen in real time like this um and so you know [40:26] that's kind of where we are right now i um a couple other things you asked me about um once again about [40:35] leadership in the house and senate and and i will reiterate um as far as i'm concerned our job is to [40:41] demand the legislation we want and it's their job to figure out how to do it but just to be clear [40:47] the the role of those leadership positions is to a couple of things it's to um to to keep the caucus [41:00] together and it's to and and i'll tell you why that matters in a minute and it's to make sure you get [41:08] the votes for things and it's to set the agenda and in order to get make those things happen in order to [41:14] get things over the finish line the place where they tend they tend not to make public statements [41:20] but the place where they tend to to talk and when they make public statements is they tend to focus [41:27] on the the wobbly part of the conference so what that means is you don't want i'm sorry the caucus so [41:35] what that means is you don't want to say something in public that will lose you votes in that squishy [41:42] part of wherever the vote is and so those people tend always to piss people off basically is the [41:50] bottom line so you notice the difference between these what what i'm saying here when um nancy pelosi [41:58] never lost a vote i mean she is she will she has gone down in the annals of the speakership she has [42:03] never lost a vote because she wouldn't take it to the floor unless she had all the votes for it which [42:09] is not easy to do and you don't want to you don't want to mess that up because if you start to bring [42:15] stuff to the floor and it doesn't get the votes you start to look weak and people start to break away [42:19] case in point mike johnson mike johnson repeatedly would bring stuff to the floor and say oh the votes [42:25] are there and then they weren't and he would look terrible and he would end up sending uh congress home [42:31] because he couldn't deal with fact he couldn't get his votes so in terms of um of the leadership of the [42:38] house and the senate as i say i'm an agnostic it i i want them to elect whoever it is that's going to [42:44] get the legislation i want across the finish line and um just a reminder the senate republic uh parties [42:53] elect their own leaders in the house the speaker is elected by everybody and um so that that puts them [43:01] in a slightly different position i will point out as as people are fighting madly over this right now [43:07] hakeem jeffries and chuck schumer do not have challengers so the the sheer fury of the fight here [43:17] um it might be misplaced i will say that you're what a lot of what you're going to see now and going [43:24] forward is jockeying so um the the pressure especially on chuck schumer is probably at least in part [43:37] looking forward that is um uh you know he did just preside over this huge election and whether [43:46] or not you think he was responsible for it he was the guy in the seat when it happened and he's got a [43:51] lot of a lot of good shits in that and a lot of stuff that you know other people think that maybe he was [43:56] not responsible for um but but it seems pretty likely uh at least to me that there is that he is moving [44:07] off stage that there you know and and one of the issues for replacing him right now is one of the [44:12] key players for that um uh is is ill right now so um or is a husband else so um like i say that's [44:21] going to play out we will know but until there's a challenger um it's this is what what people are [44:32] what people in the congress are saying when they are not challenging leadership is that right now we [44:39] think that these are the people who have the best chance of getting our legislation over the [44:44] finish line and again as far as i'm concerned my job is to say these are the things i want you figure [44:50] out how to happen how to make them happen and if you if you're not doing it you're doing something [44:55] wrong um but i got nothing i don't really have anything more to say about that um i wish i could [45:01] give you some great magic answer but it will play out where you remember that none of this happens [45:06] until january anyway so this is this will all play out then um other than that i think that is uh most [45:14] of what you asked about um one of the other big things you asked about are whether things in the [45:21] budget reconciliation bill the one big beautiful bill act can be rolled back 100 they can be rolled [45:26] back um you asked about getting rid of citizens united there are there's both the montana slash hawaii plan [45:34] to get rid of it at the state level there's also an attempt to get rid of it by amending the [45:39] constitution i'm in for anything i think we got to get rid of that um people have asked about rolling [45:46] back snap cuts same you know any of this can be done if we put our if we take the power that we [45:55] constructed to win as much as we did in 2026 and carry it forward for 2028 because once there is a [46:04] democratic president in there lots of things can happen it's going to be harder until there is uh [46:10] an executive branch that is also in the hands of those of us who want to protect democracy [46:15] but we got two years to build and two years to make people who are not on board with things like [46:22] getting rid of the snap cuts and getting rid of the medicaid cuts and you know and who don't want to [46:27] extend the um subsidies for the affordable care act marketplace to make their lives really [46:35] uncomfortable um because i i i to me these are part of protecting democracy making sure that americans [46:43] have a fair shot at being able to you know eat and have a roof over their heads and get an education and [46:49] have health care and those are just kind of government 101 as far as i'm concerned and and again [46:55] um somebody asked if i really meant it that i cared about accountability and you know i'm still mad [47:02] about the confederacy to be honest you know we have to reinstate the rule of law and those are all things [47:07] that we can continue to demand going forward and if you're feeling despair because you think we have [47:14] to accept everything that's happened until now not a freaking chance the the i was just saying to [47:20] somebody the other day stacy abrams i just did a podcast with her yesterday but um you know there [47:28] was a supreme court at the turn of the last century it was under a guy named melville fuller who looked [47:32] a lot like mark twain and it was often mistaken for him on the street um unfortunately he was for maine [47:39] but he was the um they were the the the fuller court um most people don't know that reference because [47:47] we call it the lochner court the lochner era court but the the fuller court passed all kinds of pro [47:53] business legislation uh including plessy ferguson which is about a railroad um and that's the one [47:59] that says separate is equal um they said that the in pollock p farmer's loan they said that the [48:06] government wasn't strong enough to um pass an income tax to to have an income tax and they turned [48:13] right around and said but in in ray debs but it was strong enough to um uh go after a single person [48:23] um in the case of eugene debs of indiana and um all of i could just go on and on about all the [48:30] decisions from that court and all but one of them one of the major cases has been overturned either by [48:38] statute or by constitutional amendment so we absolutely can change all of that stuff [48:45] if we just keep pushing uh for the things that we care about so don't despair i mean this is this is [48:51] the um i hate to say the fun part of the work because it would be more fun to live in a country [48:59] where we didn't have to do this kind of work that it was already here but this is the building part [49:04] this is the part where we and our friends and the friends that we will make along the way get to say [49:09] hey i really care about funding education and i'm going to do everything i can to get rid of [49:14] vouchers uh that's something that i personally feel incredibly strongly about or saying you know how [49:21] can we possibly um look ourselves in the face as a democratic country when we're taking away people's [49:26] health care i mean why don't we have universal health care and all of those things and that's [49:31] going to be frustrating because people are not going to agree with us about how best to do it and [49:36] every once in a while somebody's going to screw up and do something we don't like and so on but um [49:42] but yeah we can we get to build the country however we want it and one of the things that [49:46] i find so exciting about what happened last tuesday is if you listen to me you know i have [49:50] been preaching at you preaching at you for years now saying it's your country you have the agency to [49:58] change it and what tuesday really said to me is people believed it believed not not me but believed [50:07] that they could change the future in a way that they haven't for a very long time and that belief [50:13] that you can change the future makes all the difference you know um i was thinking the other [50:19] day about norton juster's the phantom toll booth if you don't know that book you should you should go out [50:23] and read it tonight and if you know that book and i i think this is a spoiler so if you haven't read it [50:30] you should sign off now um but the the main character in the book does something that um [50:39] does something the whole book is about the voyage to do something and um he is told at the beginning [50:45] of it that there's something about that quest that he can't know until after he's done it and after he's [50:52] done it he says well what was it that i wasn't supposed to know and the person who said that to [50:57] him says that it was impossible um the the the task that you accomplished was impossible and you know [51:08] that whole idea that it's only impossible until you've done it is i think kind of a lesson of where we [51:16] are today um and so there in terms of going forward um you know pick your lane and and throw yourself [51:28] into it and again it's gonna building is frustrating because you're not going to agree with people and [51:35] so on and so forth but then you stand back and look at again look at this last election think of how [51:41] many times you were so angry and so frustrated and then as those returns kept coming in thinking wow we [51:48] really did it and with any luck in the next four years not just these two years because you need [51:56] to have a democratic president in office to do things like pass universal health care um in the [52:03] next four years we may be able to look back and say hey look what we did uh it was only impossible until [52:10] we did it um all right i gotta go have some dinner and um and i just got a text telling me that scott [52:20] cologne's numbers in mississippi have gone up yet again so see it's only impossible until you do it [52:27] thank you for being here and i will see you again i think on thursday