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Pod Save America - Episode 75

9.5.2017 - “Trump always shoots the hostage.”

“North Korea conducts a nuclear test. Sessions announces the end of DACA with a six month delay. And Jon, Jon, and Tommy are joined by Congressman Adriano Espaillat to discuss potential legislation to protect Dreamers and reform the immigration system. Plus a discussion of a New York Times piece on rising economic inequality.”

0:00:00

Jon Favreau: The presenting sponsor of Pod Save America is Blue Apron. The number one fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the country. Those who spend a lot at restaurants or high end grocery chains can now spend under ten dollars per person for a delicious meal. Blue Apron delivers seasonal recipes along with pre-portioned ingredients to make delicious home cooked meals. Customize your recipes each week based on your preferences. Blue Apron has several delivery options so you can choose what fits your needs. And there’s no weekly commitment, so you only get deliveries when you want them. The ad’s a little longer today. Are you noticing that, Lovett?

Jon Lovett: I didn’t. I was just waiting for my turn to talk.

JF: Blue Apron knows you’re busy, so now they’re offering 30 minute meals. These meals are made with the same flavor and farm fresh ingredients you know and love, and are ready in 30 minutes or less.

JL: Hm.

JF: Check out this week’s menu and get your first three meals free, with free shipping by going to blueapron.com/crooked. That’s blueapron.com/crooked. Blue Apron is a better way to –

JL: Jeff Sessions is the worst.

JF: – cook.

[THEME MUSIC]

0:00:56.1

JF: Pod Save America is also brought to you by ProFlowers.

JL: Oh, we like PloFlowers- [slower] ProFlowers.

JF: Do you wanna talk about a rose bouquet recently sent to you by ProFlowers and your overall impression of it?

JL: Um.

JF: That’s what it asks for right here in the ad copy.

JL: Jon, I’d love to.

JF: Go ahead.

JL: I did not get it. [Laughs]

JF: Oh.

JL: But –

JF: You have before.

JL: I have before.

JF: They lo- ProFlowers and you have a special relationship.

JL: Look, ProFlowers sends me flowers on the regular. Which is not something anybody else can say that they do.

[Both laughing]

JL: And I really enjoy it. You get this box and you open it and it’s sort of like ready to go. And then you just have flowers in your house. And it’s cool. Look, you guys know me. I’m not organized to the point where I, like, in the morning go to the farmers market for farm fresh flowers. That’s not in the cards, and it will never be. Let’s just face it. But, I can have flowers in my house cause ProFlowers sends these like nice things and you just kind of put them in a vase, or a ‘Vahse’ if you’re pretentious, and you’re all set!

JF: And guess what, now we have a special deal –

JL: Oh.

JF: – you can get 20% off any of their unique summer rose bouquet, or any other bouquet, of 29 dollars or more. Their colorful rainbow roses are always a hit if you aren’t sure what to send someone. Okay.

JL: Cool.

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JL: I’ve-

JF: Um.

JL: I’ve never felt such power.

JF: [Laughing] More bloom for your buck. That’s what they say.

JL: More stems for your money?

JF: 20% off summer roses –

JL: They cut that! Cause I asked them to.

JF: No, it’s here.

JL: Oh.

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JL: Don’t wait.

[THEME MUSIC]

0:2:39.7

JF: Welcome to Pod Save America, I’m Jon Favreau.

Tommy Vietor: I’m Tommy Vietor

JL: [breathless] I’m Jon Lovett. [Chuckles] I’m a little bit late.

[Laughter]

JF: Lovett missed the time for today.

JL: I- you know, look. It was a holiday weekend. There’s a lot going on. Did I see an 8:30 calendar invite? Yes. But did I still in my mind make it nine o clock? You bet I did.

JF: [Laughing]

JL: You bet I did. But I drove like the wind, guys.

JF: Tommy’s joining us from Salt Lake City, where we were this weekend. Our friend Shomik Dutta got married so, Tommy’s hanging out there.

JL: You guys officiated.

JF: We did. We did.

TV: Yeah.

JF: Tommy and I officiated the wedding. It went very well.

JL: By the- by the power invested in bros.

[Laughter]

JF: It’s actually “by the power vested in.”

JL: “Power vested.” That’s right.

JF: You know why. Cause I had ‘invested and Tommy corrected it right before the ceremony.

TV: [Laughing]

JF: I would’ve sounded very stupid.

TV: [Still laughing] Critical typo.

JL: That is really- yes and I’m glad you corrected me. I wish it hadn’t been on the podcast but it’s done now. [Laughing]

JF: Well, you know. There you go. Okay, guys. On today’s show, we will have New York Congressman Adriano Espaillat. Who will be talking about Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which just happened within the last hour. Okay, let’s first talk about other pods. Pod Save the People is out today, on Tuesday, DeRay is talking to former Education Secretary, Arne Duncan as well as the candidate for Georgia Governor, Stacey Abrams.

JL: Oh, that’s great. I’m excited about that.

JF: Yeah. I know, me too.

JL: I wanna have her on this podcast, too.

JF: It’s- and it’s out right now. You can download it.

JL: Oh, awesome.

JF: Tommy, who’s on Pod Save the World this week?

TV: Doug Lute, who was- who ran the Iraq and Afghanistan war with President Bush, stayed on for President Obama. We talked about what that was like, what he learned over 35 years in the military, six years in the White House, and two years as the US ambassador to NATO. So, he’s pretty- a person who sees the whole field and understands these issues like- like very few others. You will not wanna miss it.

JF: Excellent. We will all check that out. Okay, so wanna talk about DACA but let’s start with North Korea. Cause we haven’t talked about that yet and Tommy, we have you here so we’re gonna ask you all about it. On Sunday, North Korea tested a hydrogen bomb about seven times stronger than the bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima. It’s the country’s sixth nuclear test. This follows North Korea’s launch of a missile into Japanese airspace on August 29th. There’s also reports that they may fire more intercontinental ballistic missiles soon, as well. Lovely. Tommy, I know we probably can’t pinpoint this exactly, but what do we think Kim Jon-un wants here? What is his game plan? Or at least, what are some of the possibilities of what he’s trying to do here?

TV: Uh literally no one knows.

JF: Yeah.

TV: I mean, there’s a theory that they think having a nuclear weapons program and- and having an ICBM capability where they could actually launch a nuclear tipped ICBM that could strike the United States provides them a deterrent that they think will protect the survival of the regime. There’s others who think that the continued development and tests of these missiles and the nuclear tests are an effort to divide the alliance, divide up the US and the Koreans and Japan, and- and split us up. And try to, you know create diplomatic friction that would, you know help them sort of get what they want which is to get us to stop doing military drills with South Korea or to get the US to pull its troops out of South Korea entirely. So, I mean there’s a whole bunch of different theories. I think the best quote I’ve seen on this is that anyone who claims to know what he’s thinking is probably lying or if they really, really know you’re deep in the bowels of the CIA and you’re probably not going to say anything. But it’s an incredibly dangerous situation.

JF: Yeah, it sounds like it. I was reading in the Times, New York Times that, you know they said the conventional wisdom thus far has been like you just said — it’s a defensive measure it’s to prevent regime change. but then I thought that there’s some people in the Trump Administration are now thinking that its getting a little worse which is. potentially he can use this as blackmail. You know, the worst case there is, ‘Let us invade South Korea or we’ll nuke Los Angeles’ or something. Or at least –

TV: Yeah.

JF: – they’re gonna try to get away with smaller military provocations now, knowing that they have this- this nuclear arsenal if anyone tries to fuck with them.

TV: Right, I mean that’s always been sort of one of the broader concerns about proliferation of these weapons generally, is that you could- you don’t necessarily have to launch a nuclear weapon to use it. You could give it to a terrorist group. You could you know sort of give it to some other bad actor. You could, you know use it as a cudgel that you hang over your- your adversaries and- and take increasingly caustic steps and you know, do things that you might now be able to get away with before. So, like there are a lot of scenarios here, none of them trend in a direction that feels safer.

JF: [Laughs]

TV: All of it- all of it is getting worse. And you know this was their sixth nuclear test but it was by far their most successful one. It’s not clear if it was actually a hydrogen bomb. Some experts think it was a boosted conventional nuclear weapon, which is- it’s still bad. It’s still a very successful test. But you know, the- the hydrogen bomb we tested at Bikini Atoll in the 50s was like a thousand times more powerful than what we dropped on Hiroshima so, you know. They’ve a ways to go before they are truly threatening us like China does or like Russia does. But you know it’s- they’re moving quickly. They’re progressing quickly and that should be worrisome to everyone. It clearly is to the Trump Administration. I mean, when you read General Mattis’ comments, when you read Nikki Haley’s comments, like, people are seized with this. They’re very worried. The problem is that Trump’s response is not helpful. I mean, tweeting criticism of the President of South Korea, essentially calling him weak for wanting to have a conversation is not helpful. Like floating that we’re gonna cut off all trade with anyone that does business with North Korea is not remotely feasible and it’s not helpful. So like, there’s these splits in the alliance that are developing that are direct results of the things he’s saying in response to these actions.

JL: But at the same time, what is helpful? Because we’ve had several presidents who aren’t Donald Trump who, they’ve tried the diplomatic approach. They’ve tried the threatening approach. From the Clinton Administration, the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration, things have progressed. And it seems- like- is there any hope for any kind of a change? It just seems like we’re moving inexorably toward a nuclear armed North Korea as a defense against regime change and they don’t seem bent on stopping and we don’t seem to have the tools to stop them.

TV: Well, I mean, look. How we ultimately resolve this is the hardest problem in all of foreign policy. But I don’t think it’s hard to say that attacking the President of South Korea in the midst of all this is an unhelpful thing to do. I don’t think it’s, you know surprising to say that, like threatening to pull out of the US-South Korea trade agreement in the midst of all this is unhelpful. It’s like what- what has been useful in the past is getting all the relevant actors in these talks and these process on the same page in approaching North Korea with unanimity and going to the UN Security council to get more sanctions in unanimity, and using diplomacy and whatever other tools we have to get you know sanctions or to, you know try to pressure the Chinese to reduce exports of oil or- or stop selling them coal. I mean there’s a whole bunch of additional economic pressure steps that we could take. They get harder when you have a President of the United States that’s seemingly more interested in tweeting criticisms of China or South Korea than like, engaging them in a serious dialogue to try to get them to take the steps we need. That’s sort of what I’m getting at.

JF: Yeah, I mean. It’s- it’s funny because in the outline I have ‘let’s talk about the Trump Administration response’ and then ‘Trump response’ because insanely those two things are different. [Chuckles]

JL: [Chuckling] They’re very, very different.

JF: So, like you- like you were saying, Tommy, like, his- his response was to attack South Korea on Twitter and to suggest cutting off the United States trade relationship with China, which is our biggest trading partner and, like, not just not feasible but like economically catastrophic for the United States.

TV: Right.

JL: It’s like Nikki Haley and Mattis and Kelly have a- have a Snapchat filter that makes Donald Trump, Mitt Romney.

[Laughter]

TV: I, so yeah, but like if North Korea was able to take a bunch of steps that got the US and China into a trade war, that’s a big win for North Korea. [Laughs] That’s a big- it’s a big loss for us. Right?

JF: Right.

TV: Right. I mean, like they’re our biggest trading partner by far. That would create an economic catastrophe. So, we don’t want that.

JF: Yeah. So, the less insane step. Let’s talk about Nikki Haley. She was at the- she said, she was trying to pressure the United Stat- the United Nations Security Council to cut off all oil and other fuels to North Korea. Specifically trying to pressure China. She also said, ‘The time has come for us to exhaust all of our diplomatic means before it’s too late.’ So (a) you know, would this make a difference, cutting all oil and other fuels to North Korea, if China did this? And would China ever go for this?

TV: It’s hard to know. I mean I think 90% of North Korea’s trade basically, and almost all of its imported energy, is from China. China’s overall trade with North was up in the last year or so. So, there’s some questions about whether this would only hurt regular people in North Korea, who need to take a bus from one town or the other, or need energy to heat their homes. Because the military is assumed to have stockpiles of- of energy that will last them a significant period of time. There’s also concern that they may lash out and do more. So, I mean I think those are probably risks you have to take to exert- increase more pressure on North Korea and on their military. But, you know there’s no guarantee that, like Lovett was saying earlier, that any of those things are actually gonna work and solve the overall problem.

JF: So, South Korea’s Defense Minister on Monday said, ‘It was worth reviewing the redeployment of American tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula to guard against the North.’ What does that mean? Is it a good or bad idea? Would that ever happen?

TV: [Chuckling] A tactical nuclear weapon is one that is, in some ways, small enough that it’s seen as being able to be used on the battlefield. So, if there were a big tunnel that was used to get forces from one point to another or, I don’t know, some sort of like route that they were going through that you might be able to take out completely, you could use a taclear- tactical nuke. I think it sorts of sounds insane on its face. I think a lot of these things you want to throw into a bucket of things that are designed to sort of reassure the South Korean government or military or people that we’re on their side, that we’ll help them, that we’ll continue to escalate. But, you know you hear these things that are getting floated like, requesting permission to increase the payload on South Korean missiles so that they can you know use them more effectively against North Korean targets. I mean, all of this is so escalatory in a region that is fraught and tense to being with. I mean, none of it- none of it sounds good. All these things that we’re talking about are military solutions and there’s seemingly no diplomatic track going on. And you have a President tweeting that talks are weak and that, you know talking is not the answer.

JL: You know, one thing I saw people talking about, over the weekend is, the larger context for this kind of diplomacy and people were noting that Libya, Iraq — that these are examples of countries where Kim Jon-un can look at these countries and say, ‘If I don’t have nuclear weapons, this is my fate.’

TV: Yeah.

JL: How much damage to our ability to convince someone like Kim Jon-un that giving up nuclear weapons peaceably is the best step he can take for himself personally, has American policy of regime change caused?

TV: That’s a great question. I think it’s, I mean I think obviously Iraq was seen by most people as a disaster. I think the more and more you step back from Libya and hear the way it’s talked about in scenarios like this, you know with Qaddaffi sort of being literally killed in the streets because he gave up this capability, it does make you step back and wonder and rethink. I mean ultimately that was, you know supposed to be a humanitarian intervention to save, you know several hundred thousand people in Benghazi from getting massacred by Qaddaffi’s troops and forces, and it- and it escalated into a broader NATO mission that ended up toppling the government and leading to regime change. But yeah, I mean, you know look it’s a whole part of the list of unintended consequences that come from these things.

JF: So, for all the shit the Republicans have given Obama over the years about red lines, it seems like with North Korea Trump is sort of drawing and then erasing red lines as this crisis progresses. It seems like the latest is Mattis saying that basically the new line is if we’re threatened with attack. And I was sort of confused, like what does it mean to be threatened with attack. I mean, at what point does it seem likely that we would strike North Korea or take some sort of military action?

TV: Yeah, I’m confused by- I mean it seems like, apparently, we’re now defining ‘red line’ as only when you say, ‘Here’s my red line.’ But- [JF chuckling] but it does appear to be shifting. I was not entirely sure what that meant either. Cause it seems unlikely that they’re gonna say, ‘Hey, here’s the ICBM with the weapon on it. We’re gonna attack you now.’ And then you sort of get a chance to respond…

JF: [Laughing] Right.

JL: Right, I mean, North Korea issues threats against us on a semi-daily basis.

TV: [Laughing] Right. I mean they have the most over the top rhetoric in the history of the world. I mean, at the end of the day, like they- these guys have so much artillery pointed at Seoul where tons of American civilians live, where we have 20,500 US service members serving. And there’s also now apparently, they have the range to hit Guam, the range to hit Japan. So, there’s a lot of [chuckles] a lot of terrible scenarios where military intervention is taken.

JF: Really doesn’t seem like there’s any good outcomes here, huh?

JL: Happy Tuesday, everybody.

TV: No! [Laughing] I mean, like diplomacy won’t necessarily solve every problem, but there was always seemingly some value to having an ongoing diplomatic process. Like talks in the Middle East between the Israelis and Palestinians could sort of calm things. I think, you know that was not necessarily the case in North Korea. Like there were talks, then the North Koreans were cheating behind the scenes and that was incredibly problematic. But, like there has been no diplomatic track that we’ve seen. And I think that has made things worse.

JL: So just like, one last thing on North Korea. Are there any Hail Mary’s, totally out-there policies, totally new approaches, that people are talking about? I mean, normalizing relations, doing something completely unexpected, or you know that had been, whatever, considered unacceptable or not appropriate for a long time because we’re in this desperate situation in which nothing we have done in the past seems to have worked.

TV: The one I saw was, Henry Kissinger’s apparently been pitching an idea where we go to the Chinese and say, we talk about what happens after the North Korean state falls. And we commit to them that we will pull US troops out of South Korea, we will get our guys off the peninsula, so they don’t view this as sort of an American military just creeping north, closer and closer to their territory. That’s sort of the one kind of interesting Hail Mary that I’ve seen. I don’t have an opinion on it, cause what the hell do I know?

JL: Right.

TV: But, yeah. [Laughs] To answer your question.

JL: That would be about convincing China to do what they’ve been afraid to do, which is actually put the economic screws to North Korea to the point where the state would collapse.

TV: Exactly.

JL: It would be a terribly punishing thing for the millions and millions of people there. But that would, because — that’s Henry Kissinger. But that’s one idea for something different.

TV: Yeah, I mean it would be terribly punishing in the short term. I guess, he could maybe argue that in the long term, not having to live under Kim Jon-un –

JL: Right

TV: – is beneficial. But yeah, I mean it’s all about them, their overarching concern being that the North Korean state collapses, millions of refugees go over the border, or the peninsula reunifies and suddenly an American ally is right on their doorstep as opposed to having a buffer of North Korea between the two. But, you know I have no idea if they would listen to that or not.

JF: Yeah, it seems like China has to become more concerned about a nuclear attack launched by North Korea than they are about –

JL: A refugee crisis on their border.

JF: – a refugee crisis or the United States and South Korea sort of being at their border.

TV: Yeah.

JL: Well luckily, we have the dealmaker, the great Trump, able to deftly [JF laughs] navigate these delicate issues.

JF: [Laughing] Wonderful. When we come back we will talk about another happy topic: Jeff Sessions’ announcement that Donald Trump will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. We will cover that as soon as we’re back.

[THEME MUSIC]

00:19:07.4

JF: Pod Save America is brought to you by Sonos.

JL: Oh, we love Sonos.

JF: I mean, I love Sonos. Sonos is now in our new house. There is another speaker. We put it in the kitchen. We have a couple different ones. It was surround sound, it was easy- it was the easiest thing to set up in my house.

JL: I treated myself, this Labor Day weekend, there was- I literally drove to the eyeglasses store to get eyeglasses so that I could play videogames. [Laughs]

JF: Where does the Sonos come in? [Laughs]

JL: So, I’m playing a game called Prey, which is awesome. And it’s over the Sonos, I have the play base so my TV’s on that and there’s a speaker in the dining room. So anyway, we were talking about, Taylor Swift put out a minute of her song and Ronan played it over the sound system.

JF: Did you like the new one?

JL: I’m not sure yet, the jury’s out. I’m not sure what Taylor Swift is putting out these days, however.

JF: However.

JL: I will say, it’s not Sonos’ fault.

JF: [Laughs]

JL: It’s not Sonos’ fault that the melody’s not where I want it to be.

[Laughing]

JL: Cause it was- you know you switch it over, we’re playing music and I was like, ‘You know what, enough music.’ And then just with a click inside the app all of a sudden, I’m hearing my videogame again and I’m battling the Typhon and it’s all working out.

JF: Sonos is offering listeners of Pod Save America 10% off one order of 2500 dollars or less –

JL: [Laughing] I like an immersive sim, that’s the kind of game I like.

JF: – for any product on sonos.com. This offer’s available for a limited time only and cannot be combined with other discounts or promotions.

JL: Cause you- you tell the story –

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JF: – “PSA10”. Capital “P-S-A-1-0” at sonos.com to receive this exclusive offer.

JL: The game doesn’t tell me when to go the bridge, I go to the bridge when I want.

[THEME MUSIC]

00:20:36.4

JF: Okay, Attorney General Jeff Sessions made an annoucement just now that Donald Trump will be ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program in six months. If you are currently a DACA recipient, you can renew your permit for another two years so.

JL: As long as your renewal is within the six months.

JF: Correct. But no new requests for permits will be acted upon. Trump was too much of a politically weak coward [JL snorts] to say this himself, and Sessions refused to answer any questions about a decision that may lead to the deportation of 800 thousand young people who have lived in America for most of their lives. Just to review, so everyone knows what a DACA recipient is: the average age they came to the United States was six years old, the average age of them right now is 26, 91% are employed, 100% — 100% — have no criminal record, they pay 500 dollars to renew this permit every two years, and that gives them opportunity to work in the United States and pay Social Security and other taxes. I would say this is probably the cruelest decision that Donald Trump has made since becoming President.

JL: Yes. I think ending DACA is the cruelest thing that Donald Trump could do. It is true that he put a six-month window on it. And because it’s Trump, we can’t trust them to do anything about it, to successfully pursue a legislative strategy to fix it. But at the same time, clearly, he could’ve ended it outright today if he wanted to. So –

JF: Well, here’s why that’s bullshit. I know that was a lot of the reporting leading up to this. I know there’s all the, White House sources have said that Trump is not sure and I know Maggie Haberman at the New York Times and people at Politico also believe this, that at the end of six months, perhaps he just quietly extends it because, you know he didn’t really wanna end it. I think if that was the case, you would not have — Jeff Sessions came out today, that statement said it is being rescinded. There was a letter sent, the program is being phased out. It is done. So, they are giving a transition period but it did not appear by any means today that Jeff Sessions- the way that he made that announcement, what he actually said at the press conference is that he was leaving room for this. We don’t know if Trump would sign legislation that passes Congress to protect this program.

JL: Right.

JF: So, there’s no indication that that would happen.

JL: I mean, yeah. so, this is the problem — one of the many problems in the Trump Administration — you know, he consistently tries to use his innate cruelty as leverage but is too incompetent and undisciplined to successfully do that. He’s doing that with the ObamaCare exchanges and trying to sabotage them, now to no end whatsoever given that the legislation is dead. He is now threatening 800 thousand young people with DACA, who now are panicked and terrified because they have no idea if they’re status will continue beyond this renewal period. Now- but at the same time you can see how this is- this is Trump as a worse and crueler version of where the Republican Party is, where Jeff Sessions is, where Tom Cotton is. You could imagine another Republican president announcing a plan to phase out DACA as part of a strategy to get something outta Congress. To get border funding, to get a comprehensive bill. Now, because it’s Trump, there is no strategy. There’s no one competent, you know there’s a general overseeing a bunch of goons who have no ability to work with Congress. If anything, Donald Trump has been a hindrance when it comes to working with Congress, so it’s terrifying because he’s playing chicken with people’s lives but he has no idea how to work the machine. So, it’s horrible on that front. That being said we have a six-month period in which Congress can protect these young people. You know I see Democrats today saying, ‘Okay, you want- Paul Ryan, you say this should be left up to Congress. Jeff Sessions you think this should be left up to Congress. You know, we can talk about the Constitutional issues and whether or not it’s legal and you know the vast majority of- of sort of the legal scholars say yes, but it’s an extension of presidential power.” You wanna debate that, fine. Put it through Congress as a clean bill. Or you wanna talk about comprehensive reform, this is your big play for immigration reform even though you’ve not talked about that and you’ve said tax reform is the next thing, fine. But like, clearly Donald Trump didn’t want to go out in front of the podium and appease his base and end this thing. And that is a glimmer of hope on this issue.

JF: Tommy?

TV: Yeah, I mean, I second everything you guys said about the cruelty. Like, it also seems just pretty un-American to punish a kid for something their parents did when they were four or five years old. God help all of us if that was the law in this country. I find myself increasingly confused by the politics to the issue because you see polling where this, like 64-65% of Americans support DACA but- but Trump is throwing this bank into a Republican Congress and asking them to fix it when nearly all of them voted against the Dream Act in 2010. So, it doesn’t- it doesn’t seem like there’s a ton of hope there because there’s so much anti-immigration sentiment in the Republican base. So, I mean in a weird way, you know you’re seeing these soundings from members of Congress who are talking about their, you know how concerned they are about this choice. I just wonder if any of them will muster the political will to do something about it. I’m not hopeful.

JF: I’m not too hopeful, either. And you’re right. I actually saw a poll this morning that said something like, 86% supported people who were- came here when they were five years old staying and when you get to teenage years it’s like 83%. So, you’re right, it’s overwhelming.

TV: Yeah.

JF: I think, Tommy, that the politics on this has actually changed in a very short time because back in 2010 when Obama tried to pass this legislation, you not only had a bunch of Republican, or almost all Republicans, voting against it. John Tester voted against it in the Senate, Joe Manchin wasn’t there for the vote but said he would’ve opposed it. So, you had some Democrats even opposing this as well. I don’t think you’d find any Democrats today who would oppose this. I think the politics has shifted. And you had Paul Ryan, Orin Hatch, some others, say, ‘We should fix- President Trump should not do this and we should fix this legislatively in the Congress’. But whether they’ll be able to do that or not is, you know we don’t know. As Lovett said, there’s a six-month window. I think that six-month window is probably- that’s up to us, to activists, to everyone else, to put enormous pressure on Congress to do something about this.

JL: Jon, what do you think Democrats should be doing right now? What should our position be?

JL: Our position should be introducing another version of the Dream Act or whatever the- there’s- we were saying this on Thursday, there’s a version of the Dream Act that Dick Durbin and Lindsay Graham introduced, a bipartisan bill. It’s a very good piece of legislation. It would protect all these 800 thousand young people. And they should introduce it and Democrats should be pounding the pavement on it every single day.

JL: So –

JF: I mean, it should- that should be- they should demand it. They should scream it from the rooftops.

JL: Yeah, I agree with that. At the same time, right, the politics have changed. It’s- Democrats have shifted to the left. There was this video circulating over the weekend which showed George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan debating basically this issue. And –

TV: I saw that.

JL: – both of them were bending over backwards to show they were more compassionate, which was a totally reasonable and, you know- reasonable thing to see. And these are not [chuckling] these not two people who I think were particularly compassionate in their policies as President, but there you have it. It seems like the Republicans in a lot of way have shifted to the right. Democrats have shifted a lot of ways to the left on this issue. Okay, so we’re gonna say, ‘Give us a way to make these kids- let them stay. You have a six-month window, let them stay.’ And then if Republicans haven’t gone for that before, Paul Ryan says ‘Let’s have a legislative solution.’ Of course, he voted against the legislative solution when he had the chance.

JF: Right.

JL: So, Trump and the Republicans come back and say, ‘We want border security, we want a wall.’ I mean what- what do we say to that? Do we say, ‘We’ll be for that as long as the kids are protected? We’ll be for that as long as you do something for these kids and the other millions of people who are here?’ I mean, is this- do we give into this wall nonsense in order to try to get something through Congress?

TV: That’s where I think the politics are so strange from the White House. It’s because you have- keeping DACA is a very popular program. Funding a wall that people increasingly believe will not work in [chuckling] any way, is not as popular a program anymore. So, I feel like he’s thrusting Republicans into a very tough political situation, whereas Democrats can just push for a straight- a straight Dream Act legislative type fix, right?

JF: Yeah, well, I mean, exactly, Tommy. Because, Lovett, what you’re saying is- it’s so hypothetical right now because there is no unified Republican plan. There is no plan at all.

JL: Right.

JF: There’s a few Republicans who said, ‘Maybe we get a wall down payment and then pass a version of the Dream Act.’ But not every Republican is on board with that. Not even a majority of Republicans are on board with that. Tom Cotton is saying he’ll only do it — pass the Dream Act — if you curb legal immigration and lower immigration levels like, in the plan that Stephen Miller wrote. But that’s only Tom Cotton. There’s some people who would just do a straight Dream Act bill like Lindsay Graham. So, you don’t have a unified Republican position on this. So, Democrats- there’s no reason Democrats should start negotiating against themselves already when there has not been- the Republican party broke this and now the Republican party has to offer a plan to fix it. That’s where we should start right now.

JL: Okay. I agree with that. Yeah, I- this is the Trump problem because- you know, Ben Smith wrote something in Buzzfeed over the weekend which I thought was good. He said, ‘Donald Trump always shoots the hostage.’

JF: Right. [Laughs]

JL: That he has this leverage, right. On ObamaCare he had leverage over the exchanges. On DACA he has leverage over these young people. He has leverage. And he spends it in this capricious and undisciplined way without any strategy because there’s no one good around him who has the ability to do this. And he himself has absolutely no idea what he’s doing and lacks the discipline, resolve, or values to care enough to see anything through. The man wants a wall. If he went out there today and said ‘I believe the DACA program is illegal and unconstitutional. I don’t believe we should be kicking out these kids, but we have this huge problem of illegal immigration and we’ve allowed this to go on 30 years. Give me border security and we can figure out the immigration thing together.’ If he was some kind –

JF: Right.

JL: If he wanted to use this, he could do it. But there’s no impetus, there’s no goals to any of this. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

JF: Well, Lovett, see that- you just made the point where, like that’s why your original point about how, like –

JL: Thinking out loud, thinking it through!

JF: Well no, but like there’s like [JL laughs] a glimmer of hope and all this stuff that he didn’t really wanna end it. No, that’s all fucking bullshit. If he really didn’t want to end it, you don’t send Jeff Sessions out — who’s the biggest opponent of this and says, ‘It is over. It is done.’ Jeff Sessions did not urge Congress to pass a solution, he didn’t do anything.

JL: Right.

JF: So, there is no –

JL: You signal to your base.

JF: There is no public –

JL: With Jeff Sessions.

JF: There is no public statement from the administration today that they actually want Congress to fix it and they’re gonna sign it. Zero. So, if Trump really wanted to fix it he would’ve done exactly what you just said, Lovett.

JL: Right, but at the same time, he is worried about his base and he doesn’t want to seem like he’s appeasing these people to his base. So, you sent out the most hardliner to say, ‘I’m ending this thing.’ But that itself is not necessarily a single he do- signal he doesn’t want a legislative fix. Again, we know nothing and the answer is unknowable.

JF: Yeah.

JL: Because Donald Trump wants nothing.

JF: Right. That’s right.

JL: But just because he sends his most hardline person doesn’t mean that a legislative fix is impossible

JF: That’s right. Tommy?

TV: But it’s just so fun- like [chuckles] you have this very hard immigration problem. And seemingly the only solution being floated is a very expensive wall that no one thinks will work. And we’re throwing this into the mix in the middle of a month where you have a debt ceiling fight, and you’re gonna have a massive piece of legislation coming up to fund Harvey relief efforts, and you have a category five hurricane Irma barreling down on Miami. It’s like, what are they doing? The- there is no chance in my mind that Congress is gonna be able to take on something this large and fraught and challenging? Which I guess just speaks to the fact that the Stephen Millers and Jeff Sessions of the world know that by pushing this now, it will end DACA and that’s what ultimately they want.

JL: I mean, look- yeah –

TV: And they don’t care if the process is messy.

JF: And we should keep in mind that for, there will be a lot of talk today about how Trump is cruel, Trump did a bad thing, Trump is incompetent. But this is a bigger problem of like Trump era here where we only focus on Trump and not any other parts of the politics that are broken. If the Republican Congress does not fix this program, every single member of that Congress is as guilty as Donald Trump –

JL: Absolutely.

JF: – on DACA. They are- it’s not like they rubber stamp Donald Trump’s agenda or blah, blah, blah. Like no, no, no, no. Paul Ryan and Orin Hatch and all the- and Lindsay Graham and all the rest of them. If they cannot pass this, they are just as guilty and cruel as Donald Trump on DACA.

JL: And every one of them has made this argument about the legality. You can concede that this is an extension of presidential author- like you can even be uncomfortable with the fact that in an extraordinary situation we have this, basically [chuckles] huge extra-legal population of people that aren’t Americans because they weren’t born here but have lived in this country all their life and you could say, ‘The president did something extraordinary. It’s an extension of Presidential power. I don’t support it. That’s why Congress should act.’ So, do it! You’ll have every Democratic vote, it can pass. But Paul- but Paul Ryan is afraid to do it because he’s afraid of the same people Donald Trump is afraid of, which is why he sends Jeff Sessions out to do his dirty work.

JF: Which, by the way they’re afraid because they don’t want to make a very simple case, right. Like they know that the Breitbarts, and Fox News’, and everyone of the world is gonna say, ‘They let a bunch of illegals in here and illegals stay here and blah, blah, blah.’ And they’re ignoring the fact that these people are American. They are American in every single way but their pap- and it’s almost weird that we call, that we talk about them as DACA recipients. We use this fucking weird acronym like we do with everything else.

TV: I know. I hate it.

JF: And we- we talk about them like there’s a separate group of people. They are just like you and I. They have been here since six years old. They don’t have another country to go home to because they don’t know- many of them don’t have families in the countries they came from. They’ve never lived there, they’ve never been there. They’ve grown up in Los Angeles, and Miami, and all over the country. And they work here, and they pay taxes, and they study, and they defend this country, and they’re in the military. It is unconscionable that we are going to expel these people from their home country for no reason. It is a made-up crisis.

JL: [Laughs] It’s a made-up crisis. You know, we talk- Ruby Martinez who works at, I believe UCLA, she was on Lovett or Leave It talking about this. And she’s a DACA recipient and she just talked about how terrifying it is, and how heartbreaking it is and how DACA finally gave people legal status. Not just sort of the technical paperwork so they could legally get a job, but a feeling like they could plan for their futures –

JF: Yeah.

JL: – and think about their futures because they knew that they weren’t going to be deported in the middle of the night. And now all that fear comes rushing back.

JF: Yeah. And one of these young Americans is a paramedic who worked six straight days rescuing Harvey victims. And we found out that one was killed, trying to rescue others during Harvey. And the government won’t even give his mother a humanitarian visa to come to Houston so she can bury her son. So, these are the stories we’re dealing with. We should tell everyone if you wanna stop this, obviously call your Congressmen, call your Senator’s office. I think we should, you know, start up everything we did during the fight to save the Affordable Care Act. And if we could- I know there are activists that are holding rallies, and they’re protesting and they’re standing outside the Capitol today. United We Dream is a good place to go to find out what you can do to take action on this. And- and we’ll be telling you guys a lot of other places to go and to go help over the coming days and weeks.

JL: There was one thing we forgot which is that, Jared and Ivanka are against the end of DACA.

JF: Yeah. And I’m glad you didn’t make that point because I’m sick of talking about those two because they’re useless fucking people.

JL: They are useless.

JF: They’re useless. All the fucking moderates in the White House are useless. I don’t wanna hear about them. I don’t wanna think about them. I don’t care about them. Fuck them all.

JL: Cool.

JF: [Laughing] Okay, when we come back we will talk to New York Congressman Adriano Espaillat about this DACA decision.

[THEME MUSIC]

00:36:34.7

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[THEME MUSIC]

00:38:29.4

JF: On the Pod today, we are very lucky to be joined by New York Congressman, Adriano Espaillat. Congressman, you were the first Dominican-American to serve in Congress, you’re also the first member of Congress to have been undocumented as an immigrant when you were a child. Tell us a little bit about your background and what it was like to be undocumented in America.

Adriano Espaillat: Well, I came here at the age of nine. I came with my parents on a visitor’s visa and we overstayed our visa and then we have to go back to the DR and get my legal residency. So that’s the status of how we got here. But you know for some time we were without our documentation and we were able to finally get our green card and the rest is history.

JF: So, you wrote a letter to Donald Trump recently asking him to save the Deferred Action program. Obviously today, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said it’s illegal and that they’ll be rescinding the program in six months. What’s your response?

AE: I think that he lied to the Dreamers and he lied to the American people when he said that they should let rest easy. And so again we see today how he turned his back on them, the American people and it’s really a troubling time in America when the President says one thing and does another.

JL: He’s put the six-month window on this thing. Are you hopeful that Congress can act in the next six months to protect these young people?

AE: Well, you know we have a lot on our table. Harvey, Texas, and money to that, we have a lot of initiatives that must be addressed. But I see nothing that has more- that should have more priority than this.

JF: So, what do you think the prospects for passage of a Dream Act in Congress are right now? How do you go about getting some of your Republican colleagues on board?

AE: Well there are some Republican colleagues that seem to wanna assist the Dreamers. In fact, even Paul Ryan has said that- instructed or asked the President not to dismantle the program. There’s Senators, several Republican Senators that also support the Dreamers and even one of the attorney generals that was involved in the litigation and threatening to include the DACA students in the current litigation they have on immigration, dropped out of the lawsuit. So, there is some sentiment out there in support of them. And I am hopeful that this item will take priority when we get back today to DC.

JL: So, as you said you have- Congress has a lot on its table. From Harvey to the debt ceiling to keeping the government running to, obviously, tax reform has been something they claim that they’re gonna do next. What legislative steps do you think are taking now? Is it worth holding up government funding as much as we can in the Senate? How far should we push to get these DACA recipients saved in the next six months?

AE: Well, there’s two pieces of legislation. One introduced by Congressman Gutierrez, the American Hope Act, and the other by Senator Durbin, the Bridge Act, which seem to want to address this particular issue. I think we should begin discussions around these two legislative proposals and try to bring closure and a solution to them as quickly as possible. Certainly, what we don’t want is for this DACA discussion to be linked to funding the building of the wall or throwing another monkey wrench in the way of these 800 thousand young people — 60% of which are working, 48% of which already have a bank account, and it seems some level of increase in their salary, 30% of them already have a credit card. So, it’s not only inhumane to disconnect them from their experience as an American, this is economic malpractice as well. And so, I ask that this be- that it’s a priority and that we will begin the discussion of these two pieces of legislation that have gained bipartisan support. And we could make this a priority when we get back to DC today.

JF: What would sensible immigration reform look like? If we were doing sort of a comprehensive type of immigration reform right now, cause obviously what we need to fix the system goes far beyond protecting these young Americans.

AE: Well you know, a comprehensive immigration reform will create- bring a pathway to, first a- a legal residency, a conditional legal residency, permanent legal residency, and ultimately citizenship. And so, this is what most countries that engage in a comprehensive immigration reform system or initiative, this is what they put forward and it should not be any different in America. So, we must bring some level of process in which undocumented people become- get a conditional legal residency that will then become permanent legal residency, a green card if you may. With the ultimate goal that they may have a pathway to citizenship down the road if they abide and play by the rules. If they work and they pay their taxes, why not make them American?

JL: So, as part of comprehensive reform, there’s always been a border security component of it. Would you support that? Having border security and restrictions on legal immigration as part of a comprehensive plan that includes helping the dreamers?

AE: Well, I think we should strengthen our borders. I don’t believe in building a wall. We can put more border patrol, we could deal with technology that’s available right now to secure the- the border better. I think the wall is a bad symbol. It doesn’t help security in- in no way, shape, or form. And it’s really costly and it sends a bad message across the world that America’s now a- you know, a closed society that it is a- a closed society to people for- to outsiders, if you may. And so, there is no objection from me in strengthening border protection, although I would not support the building of the wall.

JL: But so, the wall is like a dumb thing Donald Trump backed into because it got applause at his rallies.

AE: Yes, it is a bad idea and perhaps to get, you know he heard the applause and saw that, you know he will get some political cheap shot plummet [?] and boost his- his ratings and now he’s- he’s sort of like committed to it. But I don’t see how it works. It will be costly. How can you take money to build a wall when we really gotta rebuild Houston right now? And taxes. So, this is where we’re at right now.

JF: Congressman, what are you telling your constituents who may be affected by the Trump administration rescinding DACA?

AE: Well, first and foremost I’m telling them to be serene and- and to be waiting for our- the legal interpretation, the correct legal interpretation of what all of this means. We’re looking to see how we will counteract this, both politically and socially. But most importantly, each person should feel reassured that we have the social service safety net of legal services that will be able to interpret what this means to each and every one of them because every case of course may be- may have different circumstances.

JF: Congressman, thank you so much for joining us, and coming –

AE: Thank you, I appreciate that.

JF: Absolutely, have a good day. Take care.

[THEME MUSIC]

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[THEME MUSIC]

00:49:41.3

JF: So, Lovett, there’s a great story in the New York Times by Neil Irwin, it was on Sunday, that I would encourage everyone to read. It tells a story of two janitors making comparable pay. Gale Evans who worked for Kodak in the 1980s and Marta Ramos who works for Apple today. Here’s the big difference. Evans was a full-time employee with four weeks paid vacation. Kodak reimbursed a portion of her college tuition, she was mentored and trained by the people in the company and she ultimately became Chief Technology Officer at Kodak. Ramos on the other hand is a paid contractor, hasn’t taken a vacation in years, can’t afford college, hasn’t received any bonuses, and has no opportunity for advancement at Apple.

JL: Yeah and what’s interesting is, they roughly make the same.

JF: Yeah.

JL: Even counting for inflation. Basically, they have the same income, but just one of the jobs is upwardly mobile and the other is not.

JF: And it’s basically the story of how companies are driving inequality today by paying middle and lower wage employees less than they used to, and outsourcing work to cheaper part time contractors. I thought it was interesting in the context of the tax reform debate that we’re having today. Trump is meeting with his two White House aides who are former Goldman Sachs executives, as well as Republican congressional leaders to talk about tax reform. And the main plank of reform is bringing the corporate rate down from 35%. Trump wants 15%, Congress wants 20, 25. Whatever, they’re gonna pay for this — pay for some of it — cause they might not pay for all of it, might just blow up the deficit. But they wanna pay for some of it by possibly taxing workers’ 401(k) contributions, cutting home mortgage deductions, penalizing voters in the highest tax states like California and New York.

JL: By getting rid of the local and state deduction.

JF: Correct.

JL: So, I can’t believe that this dream team of- of Mnuchin, Cohn, Ryan, and McConnell landed on reducing corporate tax rates by increasing taxes on everybody else. The thing about this is so outrageous is, it actually also goes to their Medicaid cuts too. It is- it is so ideological to the point of being self-defeating. We actually do have a corporate tax rate problem in this country. I don’t care where the rate lands. But we have a jury-rigged Rube Goldberg contraption of lobbyist, financed tax breaks and loopholes that riddle the corporate tax rate, to the point where, even though we have a internationally high corporate tax rate, on average companies pay less, and then some companies pay zero, some companies pay the same rate. It’s really, really unfair. So, you wanna reform the corporate tax rate, that’s something that makes you really excited, more power to you. There is no reason whatsoever to pay for reduction in the corporate tax rate with money taken from the individual earners in this country. You wanna cut loopholes? Go crazy! Have a good time! But then you’re gonna pay for it by making people pay more taxes on their houses or pay more taxes on their retirement savings. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

JF: Seems like there’s a bigger issue here, which is the defining challenge of our time — that we have not been able- political challenge, economic challenge is that we do not have an economy that is providing for average workers. We have not figured out how to respond to globalization as a country. And what to do about companies that are outsourcing jobs, that are using automation technology, we’ve talked on Pod Save America a million times. We’re very comfortable saying that in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton did not break through with an economic message that would’ve meant something for working people, right? And we sort of now, I read this story and I’m like, we sort of lose sight of the economic challenge at the heart of all of our political problems, with all these other Trump fights that we’re having right now. And for the longest time, the Republican party’s answer to that story about those two workers in different times working at Kodak and Apple is, ‘Everyone’s being strangled with regulations and high taxes and if we only lower regulation- cut regulations and lower taxes, everything will be fine.” We saw through the 2000s that’s not true, right? That didn’t work and the Bush administration –

JL: Yeah, they’ve- they’ve said growth would solve every problem and it doesn’t.

JF: And it didn’t. And there was always also a wink and a nod for the Republican party to, ‘Oh and by the way maybe immigrants are taking your jobs, too.’ Right? That was always the subtext. Now, that is the primary plank of Donald Trump’s campaign and administration, right? Donald Trump’s answer to that story, that New York Times story is, ‘Immigrants are taking your jobs and foreign workers are taking them when companies are outsourcing.’ That’s- that’s his- now, his prompt. But he still has this Republican party with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and his Goldman crew who are saying, ‘No, no, no, no, cut the corporate tax rate.’

JL: They- fundamentally, I think that the Republican party just does not recognize economic inequality as one of the great challenges in the economy. They- they view it as a problem, but they view it as a problem you can solve, again, with deregulation and growth. Except for Donald Trump, who ran on this nationalist platform. But at the same time, the Democratic party’s answers are- have been insufficient. You know, that was what I was thinking as I was reading this story and I actually was thinking of another story that came out over the weekend which is, the fact that on college campuses.

JF: Um hm.

JL: Most colleges now are employing huge numbers of adjunct professors, who are not full time, who don’t make as much as money, who are not on tenure track. And I found myself making a connection between the contracted janitors at Apple HQ and a young grad student who can’t get a job as a professor and people driving for ride-sharing companies, and then you look at what Democrats are offering and it- it’s at the kind of the end of this structural inequality, right? It’s- it’s earned income tax credits, and raising the minimum wage, and shifting to a more progressive tax system. Now, those are all really smart things to do. If you look at an economy that all the gains and all the rewards are going to the top- to the top earners and to the corporate, and to corporations like companies like Apple, sitting on tens of billions of dollars, trillions not invested in the economy. If you look at that and you say, ‘What we need to do is cut corporate taxes and- and widen the base, so you shift the burden of the- of taxes on to middle class people. That’s insane.’ But at the same time our answer is at the kind of mouth of the river. Like we’re not at the problem, which is what we do about the fact that a technologically sophisticated, globalized economy has left working people without the leverage that they used to have. And I was also, you know, the decline of unions is a part of this. The fact that we’re now- I think it’s down to 6.7% of – it was Labor Day — 6.7% of the private sector is now unionized. The lowest rate that it’s been in a hundred years. You can make a connection between rising economic inequality and the decline of unions in the private sector. So, we have these big structural forces: consolidation of- of companies into these behemoths that are not responsive either to their workers or to consumers, to automation that has made people more productive which means you need fewer employees. So, you know when the center left and the center right are failing to offer solutions to these fundamental problems, you have people like Donald Trump who can emerge from the wreckage and say, ‘All of your mistrust, all your anger, it’s fair. Here’s who you can point to with that.’

JF: So, what should Democrats do then? What’s the plan?

JL: You know, that’s a great question, Jon.

JF: [Laughing] There you go.

JL: Well no but- no but we’ve been talking, look we- you know you and I and Tommy we’ve- we’ve started this company and- and it’s- gave us this platform and we’re talking to people. People that we can sit down and have conversations with, and we put this question to a lot of different kinds of people. And the answers aren’t great. There’s a- you know, it’s- it’s really, really hard, but so it’s actually just something, you know, I am fascinated by this question because I think that- that answering this question is fundamentally the answer to how we can win in our politics but also just actually help people.

JF: I mean, seems like there’s only three — well as Democrats or people on the left in general — seems like we would say there’s three different components to fixing this problem. One is: making sure there are jobs that pay well for people, right? That seems to be almost the trickiest thing to legislate or to create a policy around. The second plank would be making sure that people have the skills and education to get the jobs that pay well. Now, I did some digging into the good old, ‘better deal’ plan. Which, again, part of the problem with ‘better deal’ is, you lead with the slogan, no one knows what’s in the deal. Everyone only knows there was an argument about the slogan. But if you look in there, they have tax incentives for employers that invest in work force training and education, apprenticeship for workers. Now, we can certainly argue over like, do tax incentives really make a difference? Or should we require apprenticeships and skills training and stuff like that. Whatever, we can have that debate. But it seems like you need some sort of robust program in this country where employers, or the government, or wherever, are offering people apprenticeships, training skills, just like- I mean that’s how that women at Kodak was able to become Chief Technology Officer. She got all these apprentice programs and skill training program. And the people that do succeed at some companies today are getting all those kinds of skills-based training. And then the third bucket of things is, making sure, and you know that you have all of- sort of, the safety net and the- and the benefits too, you know. Whether it’s vacation, child care, living wage, retirement, and perhaps we should be talking about our robust program for contractors, independent workers, part time employees so that they’re getting the same kind of benefits and guarantees that full time workers are getting in this country.

JL: Yeah, that- that’s interesting, yeah. So- so, stepping back from like- yeah, let’s look at those pieces. So, yes, you know, and this is why I think Bernie campaigning on universal college –

JF: Right.

JL: – was important- an important thing to happen for the Democratic debate. So, whether it’s apprenticeship programs that are funded by the government or that we make incentives for companies to do it themselves, you’re right, sort of training, universal higher education available to people.

JF: Um hm.

JL: I think that’s part of it. One other piece of this, by the way is immigration reform. Because getting people out of the shadows and legal is one of the ways you make sure that people aren’t being paid under the table- less. And you can see wages start to rise because pressure on wages at the bottom is a piece of this. The other part of it is consolidation of big companies.

JF: Big one. And that was in the better deal thing, too.

JL: That is in the better deal.

JF: And even people on the left applauded that as well. And I- and I do think consolidation is a huge- I mean, automation’s a tough one and we have not found any good answers on [laughing] the automation challenge.

JL: [Laughing] No, but we’re asking, we’re asking.

JF: But consolidation of companies is something the government can do something about and, in fact, many on the left, including our-us, would argue that government exists to do something about it.

JL: And this is one of those places where the left critique of the donor class having too much influence is really important because certain things become impossible to imagine, right? The breaking up of big companies that treat consumers like shit and don’t pay their employees enough because they’re monopolies, or monopolistic, or part of like a, you know trio of companies that are setting prices together and dividing up in the country into feudal manors, seems impossible when you’re raising money from all of these places. But I think we need to sort of widen the scope of what’s possible.

JF: Yeah.

JL: Yeah, and by- and you know, the union questions I think is a really hard one because the decline of private sector unions has- has had an impact. You know, you think about this you know, contractor who isn’t in charge of their hours and, by the way, this extends beyond sort of contractors to big companies. This is a problem for a lot of people — from Walmart, to Starbucks, to a lot of you know a lot of service economy jobs. You know it’s not just that they’re not making enough and the minimum wage isn’t high enough, people can’t count on their hours, they can’t count on a promotion. It does no- you know you can’t build a life when your shift is gonna be moved around. So, figuring out ways to protect people, and- and that can’t always come from the government. It’s very difficult for the government to regulate how a company sets its hours. I mean you can tell, you can maybe, I think Elizabeth Warren has a bill about making sure that there’s notice when people’s hours are shifted, I don’t really know the details honestly. But, that is about unions, that’s what unions used to do.

JF: Yeah.

JL: To make sure people got paid when they were- when they showed up to work, and that they could count on a reasonable day and a reasonable wage. So, you know these are really hard questions, and –

JF: Yeah.

JL: Donald Trump lying to people doesn’t fix them.

JF: Yeah. No, I mean, I brought up the story because this is the central challenge of our time. It is what is on voters’ minds, whether you voted for Trump or Clinton — or at least some people that voted for Trump, [Laughing] some people that voted for Clinton. It is a top issue on voters’ minds, what to do about the challenges of globalization? Donald Trump, we have said a million times, it’s no secret that we think he has no good and practical answers to this. We do not believe the Republican party, the establishment Republican party, has any good or practical answers for this.

JL: If anything, they make this- they make matters worse.

JF: And- and Democrats must find an answer in 2018, 2020, and beyond to this question. They need to think about Marta Ramos working at Apple and what we can do for her — why she would vote for a Democrat. You know, that’s what we need to think about. And we don’t spend enough time talking about it, so we started here. But we should- and you know every time we ask a Democrat who we have on the show, politician they say- they do the front end — automation, this is a problem, here’s the problems we have and we need good answers on that and so far, you know I think some of the- the roots of some of the answers are there. As we just went over. But I think we have not, we haven’t gotten there yet.

JL: Yeah, it’s- it’s…

JF: The be- seeds are there to start.

JL: Right, like- like this isn’t, like we’re not, I don’t think the answer to all these questions is gonna be some unknown giant single solution. It’s gonna be a collection of- it’s similar actually to climate change in that it seems insurmountable but then you look and you realize, actually it’s a collection of steps. Each one is possible and reasonable. But taken together makes a massive difference in people’s lives. And I think- I think that the better deal, for all the criticism that it got, was an important first step. I wonder how big of a deal we can make about monopolies and consolidation, how I- I have a ques- you know, I don’t know how much that will appeal to people. I know that everybody hates their cable company. And I know that everybody hates the airlines.

JF: Yeah.

JL: But I don’t know if that- if people can grab onto that. Because you know anyone who claims to think this is easy or that they are confident in their way to address these problems or even talk about these problems is not being honest.

JF: Yeah, well, hopefully we can have a good faith debate about this.

JL: I think, you know what, Jon, I think we already have started on.

JF: Let’s, let’s do- [laughing] now let’s go, now let’s go back to Twitter.

JL: [Inaudible] hashtag jobs.

[Laughter]

[THEME MUSIC IN BACKGROUND]

1:03:14.3

JF: Alright, that’s all the time we have for today.

JL: Is it?

JF: It is.

JL: That’s a shame.

JF: Yeah, we’ve gone on a little while now. Anyway, that’s all. Anything in the outro you wanna say?

JL I talked to Chuck D and Tom Morello on Lovett or Leave It.

JF: That was great! I loved the episode. I listened to it on the flight home yesterday.

JL: Lovett or Leave It’s coming along, guys. If you ever tracked it out in the wild [inaudible].

JF: [Laughter] It’s coming along.

JL: No, it wouldn’t- you don’t- look, you launch a show, you try, you learn. You know, I’ve never hosted a political chat show at a comedy club once a week and now I have and I like it.

JF: Okay.

JL: Jon, how are you?

JF: I’m great.

JL: The music is going. We’re in the outro.

JF: [Laughing] Are we?

JL: This is me procrastinating from going to work.

JF: Well, we have to go do some ads, now.

JL: Oh, yeah.

JF: Alright, we’re gonna go do ads. Bye, guys!

JL: End of show.

[Laughing]

01:03:54.6

#podsa #September 2017 #cm transcripts

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thomdunn · 8 years ago

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On “Hamilton,” Brexit, and Irish Independence

In June 2016, my wife and I headed to Ireland for a week-long vacation. It was my first time on Emerald soil, despite my unabashed affection for my cultural heritage. While I certainly wish I’d had the chance to visit earlier, there was also something poetic about making the trip during the centennial celebration of the Easter Rising, the first major conflict in the struggle for Irish Independence.

For those who don’t know their Irish history, the Easter Rising was actually kind of a massive failure. But that horrible defeat is also what made the rest of the soon-to-be-Republic wake up and realize that their sovereignty was no longer optional. In a way, it was also the beginning of the end of the British Empire — Ireland was the first major colony since the United States to fight for its freedom, and over the next half-century or so, the crown would its relinquish its rule on pretty much everywhere else.

(Admittedly, Ireland is still not entirely free, but that’s a whole other complicated topic. Tiocfaidh ár lá, as they say.)

My wife and I did not intentionally plan our trip around this centennial celebration, but it did add a certain heft of historical importance to the whole thing.

On that same note, we didn’t expect to hop on a plane to Ireland the day after the Brexit vote, either.

Ireland is now comfortably a part of the European Union, of course, so Brexit didn’t impact most of the people we met on our journey across the southern half of the island; indeed, most of them heard our American accents and immediately asked, “Are yourselves from the States? Sure, sure. What the fuck is up with Donald Trump?” to which we both replied with eyerolls, shrugs, sighs, and “I’m gonna need another pint for this.”

But the talk radio and newspaper headlines told a different story: Brexit had the potential to radically change the relationship between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, since they share the only physical land border between the UK and the EU. See, while the fight for Irish Independence began in 1916, the battle wasn’t over until 1923, and the conflict between the the Republic and the British-controlled North raged through 90s (though there are some who are still fighting war today). The border there was heavily militarized until 1998, when the Good Fridayagreement was signed, marking an endpoint to a long and complicated peace process —in which, coincidentally, the Clintons played a small but not unsubstantial role.

Also coincidentally, that trip to Ireland was the first time I listened to “Hamilton.”

We spent 2+ hours in the car every day, alternating between “Hamilton” and The Pogues because relationships are built on compromise (but it was mostly “Hamilton” because I understand and accept that Shane MacGowan’s toothless drunken ramblings don’t appeal to everyone in the same way).

Between “Hamilton,” Brexit, the Easter Rising centennial, and all of the other stunning history we saw as we made our way across the Irish countryside, this got me thinking about politics and revolution, and the roots of where we today—which of course is the kind of stuff I tend to think about anyway, but especially as we enter the third month of Donald Trump’s presidency and celebrate Irish heritage along with St. Pádraig’s Day here in the United States.

As someone who has spent their life in liberal New England, “State’s Rights” had always seemed like something the South made up in order to pretend the Civil War wasn’t about slavery (it was).

More recently, “state’s rights” have been used to block any efforts to curb gun violence, and also to punish trans* people for having to poop (yet somehow not weed?). But listening to the story of our nation’s founding as so eloquently rapped by Lin-Manuel Miranda while driving around Ireland, I came to realize that perhaps the original intention of “state’s rights” was to essentially create 13 separate countries on American soil that had pre-established trade, border, and immigration agreements.

In that context, states like Massachusetts and North Carolina could be as radically different as Germany and France, each with their own unique culture and language or dialect. State identity would not just be an arbitrary moniker; Rhode Islanders and Virginians would almost be separate nationalities, with their shared label of “American” being almost as vague and non-committal as it is on, well, any other continent. The United States would be less of a “country,” in the sense that we know it now, and more of an economic union.

The US then would have been what the EU is today.

An EU citizen can live, work, or travel in any EU nation. They share the same currency, and observe the same charter of fundamental human rights, but other than that, each country is pretty much free to do what it’s going to do, with culture and traditions and other specifics of living that remain unique to them and them alone.

That’s pretty much what Thomas Jefferson argues for in “Hamilton” when the eponymous immigrant first tries to establish the national bank. But it’s not at all what happened — for better, or for worse. Our governors today are not at all comparable to European Presidents, and the power that is currently yielded by Donald Trump is vastly different from Donald Tusk’s authority and influence.

The question of state’s rights could have changed our trajectory 250 years ago. But that didn’t happen.

If the United States had actually been setup to recognize the cultural autonomy of each individual nation-state, we probably wouldn’t be where we are today. We probably wouldn’t have grown as fast as we did (also for better or for worse; remember, our early growth and success was also intrinsically tied to slavery), and the distribution of our wealth and economy would be even more radical than it is right now, reshaping the domino chain of events that we currently know to be the foundational moments in the story of our nation.

Because of this, it’s almost impossible to imagine what this alternate history version of the US would be like today, with 50 separate nation-states working together while also forging their own paths (assuming that we still “collected” those nation-states the way we’ve done with our current spread of states, which may or may not have happened).

And that’s the thing: that divisive tension of potentially-50 different countries, and the fractured state of our collective national identity, are intrinsic parts of America. When Trump supporters opine that we need to “come together as country,” they’re willfully ignoring the fact that we’ve never been together as a country. And that fact has shaped everything about the United States. (To be fair, Trump supporters tend to willfully ignore all facts in general. Ba-dum-tisch!)

How much time, energy, and resources have we spent trying to define and lock down a singular vision of “America the Beautiful Abstract Concept?”

Guns. Religion. Marriage equality. Whiteness and race in general. Immigration, and the overall influx of Spanish language and culture. Taxes. Welfare. Healthcare. Crime, Free Speech, and Policing. Education and “choice.” Basic science. Environmental issues. Land rights. Public or private services? Innovation! Are we a society that looks out for each other, and the individual choice embodiment of everyman-for-himself? Do laws exist to protect the people, or to serve businesses? What would my personal sense of abstract identity be then, as a Nutmegger by birth and a Masshole by choice (and soon-to-be-New Yorker)?

American identity is intrinsically fractured, because it’s always been fractured, because that’s how our country was formed, regardless of the original intention. By this point, we’re too large and unwieldy to steer ourselves smoothly as we bumble towards the future. And so these divisive socio-political issues are trapped in a constant state of tug-of-war, and it’s only made worse by the fact that our cultural obsession with binary thinking (perhaps the only thing we’re unified on) has forced us all to conform to one choice, or the other, jerking back and forth forever. Whichever side you’re on is socially expected to dictate your concept of American identity for you.

There are two ironies to this situation that both stand to sting the most adamant Trump supporters:

According to that traditionally reductive left-right spectrum of America, liberals are the ones who are supposed to favor centralized or “big” government. This is demonstrably untrue, but I digress. Because now under President 45, Blue States are finally reaping the residual benefits of the same state’s rights that we once found futile, for perhaps the first significant time in US history.

I’m still not sure how I feel about that, though it certainly makes me appreciate the Devil’s Advocate arguments I’d been hearing from my Libertarian friends for years. For the most part, I’ve always thought that those who most adamantly insist on flying the standard of “state’s rights” were fighting a losing battle, and only ever using it to hold onto power. I certainly don’t think US states will ever enjoy the same autonomy as the countries of the European Union; but I still think it’s something worth noticing, and thinking about.

The other irony is of course the overlap of Brexit and Trump campaign in their shared appeals to economic strife and xenophobic philosophy. Despite the fact that the British Empire literally ruled the majority of the world—and thus, that any immigration or cultural mix that they might be facing in the UK is their own doing—Nigel Farage and company were somehow still able to convince people that the European Union (and by extension, all countries outside of the British Isles) were bad, evil things.

Trumpers share a disdain with their Brexit Brethren for “The Establishment” and “New World Order,” as embodied by NATO, I guess, and the UN as a whole (and also Muslims, and false flag psyops, or something). And yet, for Trumpers, particularly in the South and Midwest, the autonomy of the European Union actually represents everything they’d supposedly desired for years: cultural autonomy. Except that the EU also expects all of its member-nations to uphold the same respectful standards of equality for all people regardless of race, religion, gender, creed, or sexual orientation—which, sadly, is not an agreement that half the US would be willing to uphold.

This is not to say that all Trumpers and Brexiteers are homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic jerks, of course; just that the politicians at the forefront of their respective campaigns capitalized on these qualities and fears, and that even in the absence of any conscious intent of discrimination, it’s not hard to follow the path from all their other rhetorical arguments and end up right smack in the middle of Bigotry Road.

(Best case scenario, it was an appeal to their basest, animalistic instincts to preserve the self at the sake of others, and they all fell for it.)

And that brings me back to 1916 Ireland.

Pádraig Pearse was among the men who fought and died in the Easter Rising. He was a poet and a thinker, who believed in democratic socialism and feminism, and who struggled to retain his indigenous tongue in the face of colonial oppression.

He also had a gun. (It didn’t help him, but still.)

Hamilton had a gun, too. So did George Washington. Hercules Mulligan had pants and some dopeass rhymes, and presumably a gun as well.

As we drove through Ireland last June, I was reminded of how these revolutionary leaders were all philosophers, sensitive souls who still fought physically for freedom because they saw it as their only choice. It’s not unlike the great Sioux leaders such as Sitting Bull, who walked with a chanunpa in one hand and a skullcracker in the other, always offering the peace pipe first, but keeping his club handy, just in case.

And yet, in the modern day United States, guns and militarization have been almost exclusively associated with right-wing culture and violent white extremism…until now.

Suddenly we’re debating whether it’s okay to punch Nazis. Antifa is starting to get the same news coverage as the alt-right, and gun sales are up among liberal women and minorities, but down across the rest of the country (it’s almost like…all those right-wing gun sales were previously driven by irrational fears of crime and racial paranoia?).

Now the same people who used to tout their Second Amendment rights are more upset about property damage than human rights violations. Now they’re willing to outlaw the rights of the people to assemble and subject citizens to arbitrary purity tests before those same people are allowed to defend themselves from violence, all because they think it helps to uphold some semblance of “order”—or at least, order as it serves them.

The implicit message here is that our American exceptionalism is the central rule of the land.

It’s as if to say that the fight for Civil Rights was won some 50 years ago, and now things are totally different and will still that way forever so every historical example of self-defense or armed insurgence is irrelevant. It’s okay for “real” Americans to stand their ground, but everyone else is just disrupting the “natural” order of things, just like they have at every other point in history.

Except that sense of status quo order has only ever worked to keep a chosen few people in power. Or, as Sinclair Lewis once prophetically said, “It can’t happen here.”

But it can happen here. The only thing exceptional about America is that it hasn’t happened recently in our collective cultural memory.

Europeans understand the serious dangers of fascism, violence, and war, because they’re constantly surrounded by reminders of its horrors. In the United States, anything that predates World War II is practically ancient history. Our American grandparents went off to fight in Europe, then came back to unprecedented levels of prosperity—because Europe was ravaged, and not for the first time, either. By the time the US was born, most European countries had seen their centuries-old landmarks ransacked and destroyed several times over.

Barring a few horrifically tragic but isolated attacks, the US has not.

So what seems so distant to us is a natural part of their lives. The ruined remnants of feudal castles dot the Irish landscape with little preservation or oversight, for example; the woman we stayed with outside of Dublin had a grandfather who was killed in the Easter Rising, and kept a photo of him hanging over the stairs next to a copy of Forógra na Poblachta.

Sure, we have American Civil War re-enactors. But that’s all about false sense of nostalgia (a distinctly American psychosis, to be sure). In Europe, on the other hand, the wounds are genuinely more fresh, the historical damage all within eyesight.

Yet for some reason, here in the States, we think history is settled; that any seemingly-important moment will be remembered and preserved forever, even though we can barely remember what happened when our parents were teenagers. Our political system is great and all, but that doesn’t make it the One True Way that perseveres without question or conflict.

The only thing exceptional about America is our size, and that we’ve had the same identity crisis for 250 years, taking two steps forward and one step back.

Our insistence on being so “exceptional”—on being naive enough to think that we’ve somehow evolved to the point that we’re immune to the same failings of every empire and revolution that came before—is exactly what prevents us from seeing the patterns of history staring back at us.

But “The past isn’t past; it isn’t even over;” “As above, so below;” “This has all happened before;” et cetera, et cetera. Basically this is all a long-winded way of quoting a 30-year old Billy Bragg song:

“The cities of Europe have burned before, and they may yet burn again. But if they do, I hope you’ll understand that Washington will burn with them; Omaha will burn with them; Los Alamos will burn with them.”

None of this is to say that I’m condoning (or condemning) insurrection of any kind. This is all just to say that we should not ignore history.

Let us not conserve or recreate the past, but learn from its lessons, and expect that we’re all inclined to fall back into its worst patterns — then do everything we can to make sure we don’t make those mistakes.

#political discourse #politics #history #america #American history #irish #ireland #hamilton #state's rights #civil war #gun violence #guns #revolution #independence day #brexit

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