Transcript of The Republican Playbook: Democrat Edition with Tim Miller and David Faris

Hey there, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Weekly Show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart. It is October first, Rocktober. It is Wednesday. It's mid-afternoon. The government currently is shut down, and maybe it'll be back this afternoon. Maybe it'll be back next year. I don't even know, other than a shit ton of people losing their jobs, Donald Trump has been basically administering over this country as though there weren't a government. So I don't know in terms of the amount of things that he does. That that will even change, and perhaps he will accelerate it. But I do give the Democrats credit for finally putting up in a moment where they have had zero representation. The one moment of leverage, they two simple things that they would do to keep the government going, and it has to do with health care. I am glad that they are at least taking this stand in this moment, whether they get what they are asking for or whether they don't. It is pleasing to see Chuck Schumer rise with the voice of a powerful old aging, Borschbill comedian, and do that. Meanwhile, the thing still happened so fast and fierce.

I just want to point out just one thing that gets slightly buried in all of this, and that is, just as an aside, Donald Trump thought it might be a good idea for our military to practice military shit on American cities. And it created a little bit of an uproar. Not that much. I just have to cosign the idea. It is so hard to get in real game work. The preseason stuff, it's very difficult to prepare your team for when those first games are going to come down. I absolutely understand. He's going to get us probably into a war. He tried with the bombing of Iran or not being able to really be forceful against Vladimir Putin. And boy, he's making a great case here. These guys got to get in the work. And why not let them get in that work on people that didn't vote for you? That makes total sense. Just some pre-real-world bombings and invasions and such of cities that don't matter. You're New York's, you're Chicago's, you're Baltimore's, you're Philadelphia. You're enemies within. Why not Why not practice on them? I think it's a great learning exercise and couldn't have been a more reasonable comment by a commander-in-chief in front of 800 generals.

I also, obviously, like any good personal, they ended their addresses to the generals with the universal phrase that Sun Tzu first used Many, many centuries ago, no fatties. Anyway, we will continue our discussion of the Democrats that we started with Ken Martin of the DNC. We're going to continue it this week with our guests to discuss even further what we believe might be positive or negative strategies for Democrats to follow. So here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, on this historic and An action-pack day here in the United States of America, we are lucky to be joined by David Farris, Professor of Political Science, Roosevelt University, and he's a contributor writer for the nation. And of course, Tim Miller, host of the Bullwark podcast, Coms Director for Bush in 2016, and Bon Vivant, all around excellent commentator in many different ways. Guys, thank you so much for joining me today as I try to avoid the shadows and sun that are coming through here. This is where we'll start. The Democrats, people who voted for the Democrats, have no representation on a federal level at all. Not in the judiciary, not in the executive, not in the House of Representatives, not in the Senate.

They've got nothing. The Republicans have needed them not to do whatever the fuck they wanted for however, as long as they wanted. This is the one chance where they need 60 votes in the Senate to do it. And the Democrats have drawn on the line to try and get something in your mind, and I've been begging them to do something in your mind, so we'll start with David. Is this the proper use of the one whiff of leverage that they have in this moment?

Yeah, absolutely. I don't think they should have rolled over the last time that Trump needed 60 votes.

Come on, David. Yeah.

Let's It's a fight. I think it's an opportunity to focus the public's attention on a variety of things that Trump is doing, including the lawlessness, which you can shoehorn in through the fight about health care. I do think this is a huge opportunity for the Democrats to use their very limited leverage. I mean, who knows? Maybe they'll nuke the filibuster and it'll all be moot. But I certainly, I think from a strategic perspective, they have to make a stand here because there might not be another opportunity to put the lawlessness the expansion of executive power, the impoundment, all this stuff that Trump has been doing since January. This is a pretty unique opportunity to litigate that and to try to win that public relations battle. Well, of course, keeping in mind that real people's lives are being affected.

Tim, he brings up an interesting There's a interesting point there. Do they have the litigators, not that Chuck Schumer isn't, as his shoulders slowly begin to roll over into his nipples, do they have the litigators to make that case?

Are the nipples growing or just the shoulder is shrinking?

Sir, I don't know. It's the high holidays. I can't comment.

Here's the thing. In a vacuum, I agree that the Democrats should fight. I agree on principle they should fight. I don't think there's any reason that they should be at all complicit in Trump's lawless government. I mean, if Trump felt like he needed Democrats in Congress to do things, then he should have come to them before he put the tariffs in place. He's illegally taxing the country with his tariffs that should have gone through Congress. He has It's not stopped him before to act lawlessly or to act against the norms or the traditions of the Congress who wants to do something. I don't think there's any reason for the Democrats to be part and parcel of it. Here's the problem, though. What's the strategy? What's the end game? How do they get out of it in a way that makes them look strong and not weak again? And listening to David, I start to get nervous because he's like, Well, this is a good opportunity to draw the public's attention to Trump's behavior. It's a good opportunity to win the public relations battle. Do we have the horses to do that? Do we think that Hakeem Jeffrey and Chuck Schumer are capable of winning a public relations battle against Trump?

Part of that is a knock on those guys. Part of it is just that that's Trump's skillset. If Trump is good at anything, it's winning public relations battles. I don't know. That is the part of it that I think that there's not going to be a strategic victory. Trump is not going to retreat, and we're no longer going to have mast ICE agents in the streets, and Congress is going to vote on tariffs or whatever the issue is. He's not going to fund Medicaid. He's not going to retreat on the policy. If you have to win the PR, then you got to figure out how you're going to win the PR. That part, I'm a little skeptical.

Well, that's a good point. Maybe we should tease this out because there's two things going on here. One is, let's draw attention to his lawlessness. I think attention has... I mean, he gave a speech on the day they shut down the government that the United States armies should practice in American cities to get ready for whatever invasions are coming up. You got to work it out somewhere.

Are you in the enemy within that he mentioned?

I would assume so.

When you're not uniformed, he said, We don't know who the enemy within. They're more dangerous than the enemy without. You don't know who they are.

You don't know who they are. But it's important to think about invading Baltimore. It's like an off-Broadway, working on your thing and getting ready for when you want to go there. But I want to draw attention because there are two things here. One is they've drawn attention to health care. They've I said, all this is about is restoring funding into Medicaid and making sure that the subsidies that we're going to go into the Obamacare are going to be put back in here. Here's where I take issue with the Democratic Party, whether it's about winning a PR battle with Trump or doing any of those things, I don't know. But once again, the Democrats are in a position of defending Finding the status quo of policies that most people in the United States think suck. Meanwhile, on the same day, Trump rolls out Trump-Rx. Hey, I'll just threaten Pfizer with 100% tariffs and then just open up a prescription drug outside of the middle managers and sell directly to the public at a discount. It is malpractice for the Democrats, in my mind, and David will with you, to not have the forethought and creativity to think about programs that would fix what Americans hate about things like our healthcare system, but instead decide We have to shut the government down to protect these things that most people think are failing them in the first place.

David.

Right. What you really need here is a time machine, right? And you need a time machine to go back and come up with the popular health care proposals and not be in this position of being like, Our big thing is tax credits, or these little marginal adjustments to health care policy that are not especially popular. So yeah, they're in a pickle in that sense, although I think the polling is there for the ACA in general, is more popular than not. But obviously, the failure to address health care in any systematic way, I think, contributes to the general frustration with our political system. Democrats are just as guilty of that as anybody else. And Jeffrey and Schumer are not the ideal message carriers here. If you look at polling going back to the early 21st century, consistently, the least popular people in the country are congressional leaders. And so I think that you have to be realistic about that.

So isn't that the malpractice, though, of the Democratic Party, David? There is no The fact that you would need a time machine. Democrats forever have been saying what we need. They always run on the audacity of hope. They run on audacity, and they end up governing on the timidity of what they think they might be able to get through. And Tim, haven't we learned now from Trump, how in God's name is he coming up with socialist programs, taking 10% of companies and having the government directly distribute prescription drugs and the Democrats are stuck going, If you just give us more subsidies for the insurance companies who are raising the rates 75% to 80%, won't that be fine? How did we find ourselves here?

Well, we could do a whole podcast on the history of that and the timid democratic leadership. But I'm going to do something really countercultural at first. Boom. I'm going to praise. I'm going to say, Well, Hakeem Jeffrey might have a point on one thing. People are getting their health care premiums right now because they're re-upping for the year and they're going up. It is an opportunity not to defend the system, but to just say, Hey, that cost on your bill that just went up, that's this guy's fault over here. That's another thing that Democrats were not very good at, going back to the Biden administration, because Biden wasn't that good at talking, was that he wasn't that good at saying, I get credit for this. This thing got built in your town. I did that. He never did that. This is an opportunity just to say, simply, not to defend the healthcare system, but to say, your costs are going up right now. It's this guy's fault. The reason why they're going up is because they just passed this bill that's more tax cuts for rich people. The other thing that they're going to do, by the way, is in addition to your healthcare costs going up, the fucking bill at Walmart is going up because of his tariffs.

And he's taking that money and he's using it to bail out Argentina. He's using it to bail out farmers and he's using it to buy Intel. I do think there's a way into that that is potentially resonant if you got the right messengers for it and if you're fucking drilling them on it.

Right. And do we believe, David, that they will have the right messengers? Because what Tim just said, boy, that's a very coherent case. That's something that you will occasionally see, but that does not seem to be well-presented in any a disciplined way.

No. Again, I think we're We have this problem, which is that our Congressional leaders are not our best communicators. They're not our most charismatic people in the party. And yet, nevertheless, they are responsible.

How dare you, sir? I'm going to show you a video of Chuck Schumer holding hands with, I believe, Maxine Waters, shouting, We We will fight.

Yeah. They still want fighting, John. They said they want fighting. I mean, and he said he's fighting. What is your problem?

And he's terrifying. I mean, he's terrifying. Nobody wants to fight Chuck Schumer, right?

Exactly. Every day, the loudest, the most inflammatory takes dominate our attention. And the bigger picture gets lost. It's all just noise and no light. Ground news puts all sides of the story in one place so you can see the context. They provide the light. It starts conversations beyond the noise. They aggregate and organize information just to help readers make their own decisions. Ground News provides users reports that easily compare headlines or reports that give a summarized breakdown of the specific differences in reporting across all the spectrum. It's a great resource. Go to groundnews. Com/stuart and subscribe for 40% off the Unlimited Access Vantage subscription. Brings the price down to about $5 a month. It's groundnews. Com/stuart or scan the QR code on the screen.

I think we have to set our expectations realistically about how much of the public conversation Schumer and Jeffrey's themselves are going to be able to drive. I think it's about setting a party-wide messaging strategy and pointing out it's not just about the ACA subsidies. Everybody's health care costs are going up. My health care costs are going up. It's a nightmare time. And this has been happening for years and years and years where the costs of health care are going up faster than the cost of inflation.

Far beyond the cost of living or inflation or anything.

And if you go back to the Harris campaign, there wasn't any particularly good ideas to systematically address that. That's a party-wide feeling going back many, many years that you can't rectify in the moment here as much as you can try to use this as an opportunity to plug into people's frustrations, their fears that their healthcare costs are going to go up, and try to win some, again, not a strategic victory, but some PR victory where people associate the Democrats with the people who are trying to prevent your healthcare costs from going up.

But guys, we're dancing around something here. We're all talking about if they We could just message it a little better and be a little bit more disciplined and get some people. What I'm saying is the malpractice is Kamala Harris says 107 days. That's not enough time to put together Michael Aaron. Well, that ended in November. It is now almost a year later. How the fuck is the most interesting health care proposal just rolled out on a morning by Donald Trump about the government directly selling prescription drugs to use the leverage of the government? The malpractice here, in my mind, isn't messaging. It's that they don't know where they're messaging us to. They have not created a platform or infrastructure that addresses directly the needs. They are still dancing around the old paradigm. I think that's my point. I think that's- Now, Tim, Tim disagrees. I I do. You at home listening to the podcast, I'm sensing frustration on his face.

I do. Yeah, this is why I never would have been a good White House press secretary. I'm a terrible poker player. Do play poker with me. You know exactly what I'm thinking at all times. Look, man, I agree with you. I don't disagree that the Democrats should have a fucking health care plan and the Democrats should have a vision and a direction and someone should emerge to try to lead them. But that's not actually necessary to be politically successful. I mean, as the former Republican here, may I remind you that Mitch McDonald did pretty good for a few years as the opposition to Barack Obama, just saying, You will do nothing, and I will blame everything that bad happens on you. That's a good point. To me, that's a useful first step. It's is fighting Trump, doing everything you can to slow him down. And then when bad things happen, many of them, Trump is to blame for, so you can credibly say he's to blame for it. But even for some of the other ones, it's like, Sorry, man, buck stops with you. You wanted to be a want to be authoritarian. This bad thing is happening.

We're going to blame it on you, and we're going to do so relentlessly, and we're going to remind people why the current status quo sucks. That's an easier thing to do than what you're asking. I just feel like my suggestion to them might be like a first little baby step towards doing things better.

I think that's actually a fine retort to that. I would agree with you that there is something to meeting in the basement of a steakhouse on the day of the inauguration of Barack Obama and saying, We will deny him everything, and putting that into play, and doing it, and doing it really well, and not getting them Supreme Court justices, and not getting them legislative victories.

And not having a health care plan.

And not having a health care plan within that. David, right now, they're doing neither. So I'm going to say, are you seeing the plan that Tim is talking about slowly starting to coalesce, along with maybe the bubbling up of the thing that I'm talking I wish I saw that, but no, not really. We had an opening for sunshine, David. Yeah.

No, sorry. Going back to the inauguration, Congressional Democrats, one of the first things they did was to help pass legislation that a lot of people on their base didn't like. You set aside the merits of the legislation, the Lake and Reilly Act. I think the instinct of the Democrats from the very beginning was to find ways to cooperate, find ways to moderate, to make it look like they were reasonable people on the theory that Trump had just won this magnificent mandate to govern the country, and we have to accommodate ourselves to that reality. I think what people in the Democratic rank and file have been screaming for months and months and months is that that's not what we want. It's not just that it's not what we want. It's not the path back to power. What Democrats need to be doing here, fundamentally, is making sure that Trump is holding the bag for all the bad things that are about to happen, what Tim was talking about. When you sit down with Republicans and you negotiate good faith compromises, not only can you not trust the President to carry them out, but you're helping the President politically.

I think that they should not be doing that. I think that's what the base has been so animated about, is they want confrontation rather than cooperation. I think that's why people are maybe briefly, momentarily happy right now, because the Democrats do appear to be making a stand. It's just a matter of communicating what that stand is about and then following through that narrative thread. Because this crisis will pass. We're talking about this This is going to be the thing that people remember in '96 to '28.

This crisis will pass probably three hours from now when a new crisis arises. The speed, the circadian rhythm of national crises is so different now than it... The churn of it is what's so dizzying.

That's because the President keeps starting them on purpose. We've never really had a President who's animating principle is like, Let me cause one crisis after another. He wakes up in the morning like, How can I cause a constitutional crisis today? We're all living that. It's very stressful.

It's like second-hand ADHD. He very clearly has... He is the statement President. He likes proclamations. He's not a big fan of follow-through. But we're all getting that second-hand ADHD, and it's discomforting.

Yeah. He's the President. He's made us all realize that we have an unhealthy relationship with our phones because we all want to take the New York Times app off and not have to deal with this. You want to be able to sit down to dinner New York Times app, you dinosaur. Is there something else?

I'm on Discord right now, talking to all my dissatisfied friends. Tim, is it just that it's the churn and we're not able to keep up in a disciplined fashion?

There just really is no precedent for it. I think that you have to think about him in a completely different paradigm from any politician before. One example I always use of this is I I was, back when I was a Republican, 12 years ago now, I was much... It feels like a lifetime. I was on Mitt Romney's campaign. Mitt Romney said something very stupid about how 47% of the country- I remember. Okay, had a private fundraiser. If Donald Trump had said that exact... If you just put that paragraph about 47% of the people being takers in the middle of his rambling speech yesterday to the generals, it wouldn't have even been mentioned. Nobody would even talk about That thing derailed Mitt Romney's campaign. Trump, yesterday, talked again about making Canada the 51st state in front of the generals. No one even mentions that. It didn't even come up in the news coverage because there was so much other crazy shit that him and Heggsat said yesterday. It becomes challenging for media to cover it with the right amount of focus because he benefits from... It's the same way as a hockey team or basketball team that's fouling on every play.

The refs eventually don't want to call every time down the court. It becomes challenging for the media to cover it. It becomes challenging for people to understand what is a real threat, what should I care about? He benefits from that environment. The only way to combat that environment, now I'm mixing metaphors, I've gone from basketball to war, but it's to do asymmetric warfare back at him. And instead, for some fucking reason for 10 years, the Democrats and a lot of the media folks have been using the same playbook while he continues his completely different paradigm.

What Tim is getting to is this unprecedented figure, and it does feel a bit like he's ChatGPT 5. 0, and we're all walking around with AOL floppy disks, and we put them in, and we don't know how to handle this particular. But I think that interpretation, for me, allows the Democrats to to skirt the malpractice that I think has occurred within their party over these last, I'm going to say, 40 years.

Forty?

Well, to the rise of what I would call establishment status quo neoliberalism that allowed them to shift their focus from labor to capital. I mean, there's a larger economic conversation, but Yeah, to me, their policies shifted from helping labor to helping capital and investment and got very comfortable with that class of donor and voter.

We can talk about- Can I ask you if that's true? So maybe that's true.

I don't know. By the way, I don't know if any of this is true. This is just me talking shit.

Yeah, every Democrat I have on, I ask this question. So I come from a place as a capitalist, I'm more I'm more sympathetic to the Democrats. Pivot on that on the merits, but I'm open to the fact that my policy preferences are actually bad politics. That's possible. Is it that or is it culture? Is it economics or is it culture? Because I had Joe Manchin on the pod about a week and a half ago, and I was asking him about this. I was like, West Virginia used to be a Democratic state. You were the last of the Democrats to win there. Why did the Democrats lose West Virginia? And then he goes into your answer. We didn't care enough about we lost focus on the working people, our economic platform changed. I was like, But are you sure? Even if you had whatever populace left economic platform, if you also... Aren't people in West Virginia really mad about the one trans girl that is in the lacrosse team? Isn't the culture and the feeling that the culture left them and that the people that are celebrated are more diverse and live in the big cities?

Isn't that really what underscores all of this? I That's a much more challenging nut for the Democrats to crack than to say, Okay, well, if we just do a little bit more lefty economic stuff, then that'll solve our problems.

I agree with you that that doesn't solve their problems. I do think where that conversation has merit, and David, you can jump in on this. I think if you look at where the Democrats seem to be focusing their efforts, it was in diversity, but not economic diversity. Diversity. I think there's an argument to be made that diversity... I think part of it is in the way that they talk about that, that diversity suddenly became the one trans girl that was playing on the sports team. But what I would say is it's in the way that I think, for instance, there is no such thing in my mind as an entitlement. It's about investment. There is no such thing as diversity. It's about opening up tributaries to areas that have been deserts. As far as opportunity. I think oftentimes we talk about diversity as though it's separate from economics or equity. I'm saying I don't think it's separate. And that if you are forcefully making economic arguments, diversity is included in that. It's just that it seemed like there's diversity and economics within it. I'm saying it's economics, and within that argument is diversity. Does that make any sense to you?

You can walk and chew gum at the same time. You can have a coherent economic message.

We're talking about Chuck Schumer.

Okay, maybe not him. But a lot of people could. I think part of the problem here is that if we're going to come back to culture war issues like trans women in sports, it's like Democrats did not really put up a fight. They had the worst of both worlds where they had... They seemed to have a policy in place that people didn't like, but they also weren't willing to defend it. And the same was true during the Biden administration, I think, various immigration policies where you were doing things that maybe had some bad optics right here and there. And you had the President who was not just incapable of defending those policies on their own terms because he was out of it. It was that the whole party didn't want to. And that allowed the opposition to focus on the- To be fair, he did have shitty immigration policies.

He did, right? And they were exposed Just when they got trolled by the governor of Texas. Right. When he sent busses of people and everyone went, We don't have the resources for this. And they're like, Welcome to our world.

Right. And they rolled over for it, John. They were bussing and flying people to blue states and dumping them in the cities, which was not popular here. And then you had the Biden administration, who was responsible for some of these folks being here, not willing to take action to unlock the various resources that could have fixed at least the perception problem. You had bad policy with bad optics and no one willing to go and even explain to people what was happening. That allowed the Republicans to define the whole issue for us in ways that I think was really damaging, apart from the policy mistakes.

I don't know. I don't know if They're the most compelling messenger defending the most left view on cultural issues that does anything for the Democrats with their problems in a lot of the red states and purple states.

Part of that, though, Tim, is do you really believe that Most Democrats think an important issue is trans participation in sports. I think that was much more the obsession of the right that allowed to find... Because the Democrats are more... Look, it's a question of inclusion versus, I don't know, competitive, whatever you want to call it. I think most Democrats look at it like, How many of these kids are there? They don't really think about it that much, but they allowed the right to define that as a core central tenet of the Democratic Party, when I don't think it was in any way. The reason why they didn't really go to the bat board is probably because they thought, How many of these kids are there? Are they really dominating? What's going on?

I guess that's just a failure of understanding the voters. I sometimes think that we hear a lot from Democratic strategists is, Well, they should really just focus on the kitchen table issues. When they say kitchen table issues, they're talking about finances, they're talking about economics. Again, I think that If the Democrats want to have a more populist economic platform and talk about that, I think that would help them. But people also talked about trans girls in sports at the kitchen table. There might not have been that many trans girls participating in sports. I understand that. It's not a critical issue for most people. But for whatever reason that the Republicans were successful in that because it animated people. People felt like there was a sense of unfairness. It was an interesting question. It tickled something in people's lizard brain that made them want to respond it. You can't then not ignore it. You can't ignore it. You've got to engage on it. And by the way- And they engaged on it poorly. Yeah, they engaged on it poorly. And by the way, this street also works both ways. Trump's not the only one that can play these games.

The Democrats can find random issues to get people talking about them that the Republicans do that are unpopular. And think about things that appeal outside the base around all these issues.

Let me tell you, I think that's exactly true. I don't understand why. Remember that there was a big ad in the presidential campaign, Kamala Harris is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you. I don't know why Democrats don't go, That's right, Donald Trump is for you. If you ran an international sex trafficking ring that didn't and show Ghislaine Maxwell. Donald Trump is for you. If you are a billionaire tech company owner who wants to get out of tariffs, Donald who Trump is for you. And define who you is and use that against him. Hey, folks, I know most people look at me and they think to themselves, Well, That's a fashion plate right there. That dude, he knows what's up. I'm surprised he's even got time to do the podcast knowing that he should be in Milan sitting with Anna Wintour. But actually, you know what I am? Comfortable. You might be thinking, Sure, if you wear the same T-shirt as last week. But do you know where you can find clothing that fits into this? A company that I actually love. It's so comfortable and durable. You wear it nonstop. Quince. Quince has got all the false staples.

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You did a thought experiment on that.

Right. I mean, the thought experiment was like, okay, the Trump administration is obviously operating on this theory that no one will ever get their hands on this Earth-scorching apparatus that they're building out of the White House. I'm not necessarily endorsing a lot of the things that I floated as what we could do, but it would fit into those general categories. And it's like constant culture warring. Rename Reagan National Airport, George Floyd National Airport. You wake up in the morning, you're like, How can I make the other side angry and miserable and deflated?

Can I just say, I think that would probably backfire? I know. Yes. It's not any of my Reagan love coming in.

That one in particular.

There's no bad ideas in a brainstorm, but just throwing that one out there.

No, the point is not that this would make us popular. The point is to highlight the absurdity.

This was the beginning of the contract for America. This is how it started.

Colin Kaepernick National Airport. I don't know. There you go. You could imagine 50 different ways to do this.

Take a knee, International Airport. Right.

But I think the Democrats need to start thinking about if the Supreme Court... The Supreme Court still has not ruled on a lot of the things that Trump is dealing with. They've issued rulings on the emergency docket. But in theory, the ability of Trump to just fire or people on the National Labor Relations Board, for example, that remains to be litigated in a in a decisive fashion. I think Democrats need to start thinking about how can we use... If these principles are allowed to stand, if the next Democratic President takes office under the unitary executive theory, under the the Roberts Court's creation of an imperial presidency, how should we approach that? Are there things that we could do that would be good public policy? And then highlight the things that I think are like, Well, this is ridiculous. You don't to govern in a way that I call it abuse of federalism, where you're picking on blue states, you're highlighting, you're threatening to invade only blue states, you're talking about people in those places like they're subhuman. I live in Chicago, and we're on year 10 of the President of the United States talking about the place that I live, it is like a rat infested hell hole, and it's very exhausting.

I don't recommend that we do that. But I do think it's worth thinking about how could the tables be turned.

See, David, I think I would say, I think I think you have to. I think the way you look at it, Republicans are allowed to decide that they have pocket veto power over how their tax dollars are spent. I'm not spending my money on NPR because that doesn't agree 100% of the time with the things I say. I don't understand why Democrats cannot do the same thing. Look, there are tax exempt. I'm not religious. Why is my tax dollars? I don't know anything about Argentina's economic crisis. Why Where are my tax dollars going? Why doesn't the left use the levers of government power to demonstrate that that shit can't... It's what I used to say about, You want to give me all the money spent on the Iraq war, I will gladly fund a condom distribution, myself. Shouldn't they do that? I've upset Tim again.

You've upset me. Yeah, you have. It just goes against It's my nature. I'm like, I left the Republican Party because these guys are acting like assholes. And now I'm in the whatever, the pro-democracy movement, so-called, and the people around me are like, No, we need to be assholes like that. And I'm like, You're kicking me out, too? I'm going to be on an island? There's part of this that I agree with, I guess. At some point there has to be some de-escalation. This is probably not the right conversation for that. I think there are places for escalation, though, strategically. Going after churches, probably, and naming things after George Floyd. God I love George Floyd, and people should name things after them if they want. I just don't know if those are going to be political winners, per se. I think there's some things that might be, though. If these guys break the law because they're going after American citizens with people with masks. You better watch out because the next DOJ isn't going to be Merrick Garland's DOJ, and we're going to hold accountable the people that broke the law and harassed American citizens and legal residents.

We're going to go after the people that orchestrated it. We're going to go after the people that took 50 grand in a Cava bag and did corruption. We're going to go after people that did crypto corruption and paid this president money and thought that they're going to get something on the back end. If you put six figures into this president's cryptocurrency, the next DOJ, when the Democrats get back in charge, are going to come after you, and you better be worried about that. If you're El Salvador and you're taking people against due process and putting them in a gulag, well, when we're back in charge, we're going to treat you like North Korea. And so I hope that your economy is doing okay because you're not going to be trading with us anymore. I think there are ways to like, butch up and play political hardball that is not just appealing to the basest instincts of the most progressive person in Williamsburg. I think that there are also ways to do it where Joe Rogan might be like, Yeah, I'm for that. Yeah, these guys are making a point.

But see, that's interesting to me because that seems far more tenuous, getting back into crackdowns. I mean, look, the Supreme Court has made it clear, corruption doesn't exist unless somebody writes down, Thank you so much for this $50,000. I will now very specifically carry out. They've made doing all that.

That's true for the President, but the Supreme Court doesn't get a choice when it's just a prosecutor and 12 people on a jury.

No, but think about how that process.

I mean, this administration has turned all of All the prosecutors against immigrants. We could turn all the prosecutors against white collar criminals next time and see how it goes. Good luck.

But think about the grinding wheels of justice and how good lawyers can defer all that for four years or six years or 10 years. I'm talking about things like, and this gets us back into, we keep talking about Republicans and Democrats in Washington. What about federalism? There are block grants that go to states. Trump has been very clear, if If you don't agree with me, I'm going to withhold money. Well, that is something absolutely that can be weaponized in the other direction. But forget about weaponization. David, I want to ask you about this. The Democrats have zero power at the federal level, zero. I don't know that they can even get into the restaurants. I'm not even sure DoorDash delivers to Democrats in Washington, DC. They've got nothing. But there are blue states that still have a modicum of power and modicum of control. And why don't those states find ways to combine that power to put a response to the United States President, threatening their funding if they don't go along with his shenanigans? I think governors and states could be a place where an effective counterweight to Trump could be because they actually have power in those places.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think in terms of DC, don't forget that we run a sex trafficking ring out of a pizza restaurant. We can always get in there. Okay? Right.

Into the basement.

Into the basement, right? Yes. So, yeah, no. This actually is happening, right? So I think democratic governors are among the most important political actors in the country right now because all eyes are on them. For example, there's efforts to create a vaccine collaborative group, right? So when the federal government pulls the funding or pulls the support for the flu vaccine or the COVID vaccine, You have Blue State Health Department willing to step in and fill those gaps. I think that that's absolutely what they should be doing. I don't think that they should stop the vaccines. I think there's all sorts of things that are under threat, like predicting the weather, for example. We've cut the National Weather Service to the bone. I think blue states are going to have to step in there. If they don't want to get hit by a hurricane, then is he coming? Right.

But that's a question of bailing out their own citizens from the irresponsability of this government. I'm talking about something different. Tim, You're going to love this.

Oh, no. You want vengeance. I can see it.

Tim, I so appreciate- I live in Louisiana.

I'm worried about what's happening.

We are now finishing each other's- Am I going to be not allowed to travel to California at the end of this proposal?

I'm a little nervous. I want to go to LA in a couple of weeks.

There has got to be a manner by which, look, a lot of these states are giver states. They send more money to the federal government than they receive in return. There has got to be a way to staunch that flow, even if that means, well, that's not legal. Yeah, none of this is fucking legal. Legal went out the window years and years ago. Let the Supreme Court catch up. And by the way, the Supreme Court makes decisions now, and Trump doesn't even abide by those. So at a certain point, there has to be some coordinated effort to battle the leverage of power that Trump has identified. Wouldn't that make sense, Tim?

Water Wars. We're banning Arizona. We're going to block the water out of Arizona.

No, I don't- Tim, now you're singing my song.

Yeah, you guys are going to get the desert heat. Watch out next summer. Thank you. Look, man, there are elements that I'm with you on. I am for aggressive political pushback. Obviously, everything that Gavin has been doing is great. I think that there are things that Democrats on the Hill- The trolling is the only thing that works.

Yeah.

I think the thing that the Democrats on the Hill could be doing to gum up the works even more, slow them down. Look what Tommy Tupperville did last time. Remember, I can't believe we're complimenting him. He's like, You don't get any promotions in the military until you do. There's shit that one senator can do, and we're not seeing enough of that. I would like to see that. I don't know exactly what levers of power California has now. You should have Gavin on and ask him. The area I think I do agree is projecting, if we get out of this, if the fight is successful, if Trump is made to fail, if the Democrats are good at highlighting how he's ruining people's lives, and he is, including people that voted for him, then the next time they're in charge, the Joe Biden model of, I think the way to win is we're going to build a lot of infrastructure in red states, and eventually people will like us. I think that method is tried and failed. I think that a next Democratic administration thinking about, No, actually, how can we invest in the dynamic parts of the country that are growing, where people are potentially voting for us.

Maybe good luck out there to our friends.

A little bit of to the victor, go the spoils, and a little less what I'm talking about, which is, all right, let's reverse engineer the shit that he's pulling.

You can sell me on that. I want to kick his ass in politics, and I think that little troll stuff they did, the humanity of the immigrant troll that you mentioned earlier, sending people to Martha's Vineyard and then being like, Fuck you. We're going to do ASMR videos of people in chains. That stuff grosses me out. But the concept of, Oh, okay, you're going to have to live with some of your policy choices here. We are going to do PR gimmicks that drive home the unpopulation barbarity and barbarity of some of the things these guys are doing. I'm for that. That's the stuff Gavin is doing, and that's why people are responding to it.

I would almost go the other way. David, this goes to the thing you were doing, which is, boy, we have seen how the country responds maybe just to the idea of action. The idea that the government... I remember in the immigration fight back with Biden, and Langeford in Oklahoma had come up with a plan that was very conservative, and they had done all the bipartisan work, and they'd put it all together. They talked to Joe Biden about the crisis, and he said, It's important that Congress be given a chance to do their job and put together this. It took eight months to a year for them to get it. I think a Democrat from now on will go, I'm fucking shutting the border tonight. I'm doing it. Executive action will be the coin of the realm because I think you're starting to understand. Yeah.

David, you go, yes. I'm talking too much. David talk. I'm objecting my no to this. I don't want Kings. I don't want Magga King. I don't want progressive King. Sorry. Go ahead, David.

For those of you at home, you I couldn't see Tim's reaction. Two big thumbs up and a smile from here to Sacramento. He's so excited about this new plan that I am floating. But David, that is the way. Look, Trump is How can he be out-socialisming Bernie Sanders? But he is.

Well, there's ways we can do this. But again, some of it depends on what are the powers that we inherit when we take power next time. All of them. Is impoundment left to stand? If so, you can just take all the ICE funding and build abortion clinics in federal land all around the country. There's things that you can do. There's things that you have to threaten to do because I don't think that they believe we'll do it.

But you don't even have to do a culture war. You could take that money and you could put it towards not culture war shit, but the things that diagnose what really ails this country, like elder care, child care, like being a mom to kids or being a dad to kids. If you're not working, that's a job. We should be able to subsidize those kinds of... Like doing the actual things, not culture warship, not obviously naming airports after people they hate, but taking money in action that directly... Because one of the reasons the Democrats lost, and I'm convinced of this, whether it's culture or economic or not, is that the government has proven itself to be at a remove from the genuine needs of the people that have voted in those representatives. It is isolated and insulated. And executive action that addresses that in a forthright way, using the full power and weight of the federal government behind it, I'm sorry, I think that would be effective governance.

I agree, but I also think a lot depends on the first six months. So it's like you could do some of the stuff. You could repurpose money that's being spent to support evil people in masks, like abducting people, and you could redirect that spending to address the country's actual social problems. In the long run, though, I agree with Tim in the sense that I do think Democrats are going to have to to spend some energy rolling back the imperial presidency. So we get into power, we do all this stuff, and then we're just going to hand it right back to them. I think that we have to work through Congress to dismantle some of this stuff. You have to pass new legislation. I'm sorry, you have to expand the court so that the court is going to roll back some of these decisions that are absurd, that are destroying our democracy.

John, you're just given up on liberal democracy? My heart is sinking right now. You've just given up on balance of powers, federalism, pluralism, liberal democracy. It's Are you just going to trade dictators back and forth?

Here's what I'm given up on to some extent. A broken system that is being justified as though the checks and balances that are in place are somehow sacrosanct and were brought on high by divine creatures of being. It was a 20-year argument and back and forth. It was a series of zoning board meetings. If it's not serving the needs, and by the way, executive power has always expanded and shrank, and Lord knows, like Donald Trump is creating sovereign wealth funds, and the next Democratic President better understand how to spend it positively than to go back and go, Hey, man, I don't think this is good for me to have. I think we are making a mistake by valuing this model. I'm not talking, do I believe in a constitutional republic? Absa fucking lootly. But I think I did get a thumbs up there just now.

That's just a deep breath.

But I believe that... Can I give you guys an example? This is an experience that I had, and I'll try to make it as short as possible. We were trying to get funding for veterans that had been exposed to burn pits so that they could get health care through the VA, and they were not getting covered. We went down and we had a meeting with Republicans and Democrats in Congress, explained the problem. These folks had been fighting already by that point for 10 years through Iraq and Afghanistan deployments and all that. The congressional leaders went, Oh, my God, this is a terrible problem, but we're really busy. Could you guys write it? I was like, Oh, fuck. So this is why legislation is completely taken over by special interest. But yes. We gathered all the stakeholders, VFW, Wounded Warriors, American Legion, TAPS, all the VSOs of veterans. We got the Congressional Veterans Affairs Committees in the room. Everybody's in the room together, and I say, What would solve this problem? And they say, What would solve the problem? It's pretty much what the Pact Act ended up being. Then for the next 2 hours, they negotiated against themselves out of what would solve the problem to what they thought was possible.

That is the point I am making, that we need to stop doing doing what we're negotiating against ourselves to what is possible and start addressing in a forthright and clear-minded manner in unison what is necessary. And that's the difference. Your thoughts.

I've been saying for a long time, John, Democrats should use the power that they have. They should use the constitutional power that they have. One of those constitutional powers is expanding the Supreme Court, for example, which is a perfectly legal thing that they could do.

But if you're afraid to do The problem isn't the expansion of the Supreme Court. It's the politicization of the process of getting injustices, or maybe it's the lifetime appointments. You'd be setting into play actions that you wouldn't be able to control. You think that that would get you what you want, but it's very likely that it wouldn't.

Well, right. And you have to have one eye on what's the next crew going to do with this power? And I think that's one thing that Republicans are not doing right now. They are clearly behaving as if they do not anticipate Democrats will ever do anything like this. I think that's part of the problem for Democrats is that they are not credible threat makers. Republicans don't ever... They just don't believe that we will counterescalate, and they have pretty good reasons to think that.

A couple of thoughts on this. One, I actually think that's a misunderstanding of Republicans. I think that the Republicans are in a world of misinformation, and they're in a huge bubble, and they think that the Democrats are already acting lawlessly. I think they've convinced themselves that the Biden student loan effort and the effort to steal the election. In some cases, Biden did exceed his powers, but in other cases, they imagine it.

Wait, the Republicans in Washington believe that? Yeah. Or you mean the voters pretty large?

Mike Lee believes that. Ted Cruz believes that. Some of them fake it. Some of them fake it. But There are portions of them that believe that, and that justifies it. I think they're not not worried the Democrats aren't going to do it. They think that we're already there. I think that's irrational. I'm just trying to explain what I think the mindset is of them. As far as the Democrats are concerned, I don't know, John, I heard your pack I thought that was beautiful. That could have been in a Ken Burns documentary or something about how democracy worked. It took too long, and that sucks for the people that suffered. But in the end, there was a resolution. What I want is from the Democrats is to play political hardball, to play political hardball. Not to say, Oh, I'm giving up on the politics of liberal democracy in the Constitutional Republic, but I'm going to play the as hard as they're playing it. And that would be because... You mentioned explaining the Supreme Court. One thing that we had the Bullwark, were arguing for when Biden won was instead of doing a stimulus package, that money is just going to disappear in the air eventually.

You're not going to get any long term credit out of it. Why not use your political capital immediately to make Puerto Rico and DC a state? Now you got three or four senators. Now you've created some structural advantage for you long term. That's just one example, right? Mm-hmm. That could have been a thing that they had pushed for instead of doing some amorphous stuff. I think that part of this is, this is a longer conversation going out there on the internet right now. Democrats should compete hard to figure out how to win in other states and compete harder in Ohio and Iowa and find different types of candidates, try different things. To me, that is what I think where the hard ball comes in. I hear what you're saying. I want them to be responsive to the needs of the people. I just don't want them to be like, Fuck it, because Donald Trump won twice. This whole thing's over, and so now we're just going to act like Trump.

That's what I don't want. It's not, Fuck it. My only response, and Tim, I'm wary that I know you have a hard out and you've got to go catch a plane.

That's so embarrassing that you said that publicly to people.

Did I say plane? I meant he has a cape.

I would never hard out John Stuart, people. He's just making an excuse. He actually has something to do.

He's hard outing me. What I would say is every time I hear people say they've got to figure out how to win in those states, it always feels backwards to me. It always feels like we've got to strategize as opposed to sitting down and being what I think Donald Trump is, a good diagnostician about what's really wrong, and then come up with creative and interesting and actionable plans that can directly affect what's wrong and fix it and know that by doing so, you will then be successful politically. I think to go around and strategize about, We've got to figure out what to do. What What's wrong in fucking rural America? Come up with plans that will address that, and you will improve your chances in those areas. Not, What if we all curse more like regular people? That's what's fucking them up. And by the way, I was on the vanguard of that cursing. I just want to point that out. So who's voting for me? Come on, guys.

I'm interested. You said a couple of concerning things. I think that you're better than some of the names being thrown out I guess, I would say. So creative idea is considered from my standpoint.

Only if you have your own currency, John.

David, any last words from you before Tim, who just really in a very diva-like way said, he just kept, as we're talking, and you can't see this on the podcast, he keeps pointing to a fake watch on his wrist, and he just keeps going.

Like my idol, George H. W. Bush. I'm just checking my watch the whole podcast. When do we get out of here?

Tiktok, motherfucker. David, anything on the end note there?

Yeah. I think if you're trying to think about how to compete in Ohio or a whole Georgia or whatever, I think that's really important. But I think it's less about detailed bullet point policy plans and more about convincing people that Democrats have identified the problem, and we'll do something about it. Who is responsible for the rise in health care costs? Who are the villains here? Republicans are very good at identifying a set of villains and then harping on them and turning people against them. It's not that I think we should play the game exactly that way, but I do think it's important for Democrats to communicate to ordinary working people who are struggling that we know who the problem is and we're going to do something about it. That's not like, I've got a bullet point plan from the Center for American Progress. That's like, These are the villains, we're going to get them, and we will deliver for you. I think that's something that you just don't see that much from Democrats, and I think we need to see more of that.

Boom. Tim, you're cosigning?

I'm okay with villains. There are a lot of villains out there these days, and I don't love bullet plans. There you go. We're all aligned on that.

Ladies and gentlemen, three people who fundamentally agree on most things have come to a fundamental agreement on most things within this podcast. Job well done. David Farris, Professor of Political Science, Roosevelt University, contributing writer of the Nation, and Tim Miller, host of the Bullwork podcast and Travel Influencer. He's off right now. I don't know where he's going, but he's going. Thanks for joining, guys. We'll see you guys.

Thanks for having me.

For those people that were listening at home, they might think to themselves, Well, that episode vibrated at a very high level. I knew that Tim had to get out of there, and I also knew that I really wanted to make sure that David and Tim got everything in there. So I have not taken epinephrine. I I just wanted to make sure. It probably seemed like I was recording that at 78 as opposed to our normal.

If you're listening at 1. 5 speed, go back. Perhaps Is it 0. 5?

If they go 0. 5, they will find an incredibly well-paced, very informative hour and 45-minute podcast, as opposed to what appeared to be like one of those English cheese wheel runs where they throw the wheel and everybody just runs like a motherfucker down the hill. Can I tell you, though, what reasonable fellows.

Yeah, Yes. Butch up, Dems. That's good advice. We got to get- Right. Yeah. I want that on a T-shirt for sure.

Butch up would be a pretty good bumper sticker for the Democrats. Yeah. Anything from either one of those guys that you thought, I thought David would go into it like, Let's name everything after George Floyd, and Tim would just be like, I understand the premise. I'm just saying you might not want to really enrage people.

Yeah. I really like, let's invest in blue states. We have this winter is coming problem with the future census where it's like, we're going to lose all of these seats, these electoral votes to all of these red states because everybody's moving out of blue states. What if we made it materially better to live in blue states? The places that we govern, could we work on that?

I feel like it is.

People don't love paying taxes, but maybe if we made them appreciate where their tax money is going better. Wait, all of a sudden in this state, you have cheaper health care. All of a sudden in this state, you have better roads, you have better schools, you have better... Maybe we could stave off this Apocalypse by just making making life better for people.

You're talking about leading by example.

Yeah. In these states that we already govern, we already have all these people living under democratic rule.

Why not demonstrate competency?

Why not? Killeen for President. Seriously.

Done. Killeen's beer.

Butch up me. Yeah.

I like it. What do we got, Brittany, from this week with our viewers? I don't know if they're- All righty. Everybody's just still shell-shocked. I'm sure everybody's shell shocked. There's so much news.

From the Metz, probably.

Gillian, now, was there any real need?

Funny you should mention that.

I'm in such a voyant mood.

We're going to get there. Just hold your horses.

All right, Brittany, what do we got?

First question. John, they spelled it with an H. How dare they? Strong start.

I'll have them know my family couldn't afford an H.

Given current events, events, what do you think of the strategy of When they go low, we go high?

Oh, God. I really thought you were going Mets. I thought, Given current events, where do you place the Mets 4-0 loss to the Marlins on a scale of the Ukraine-Russia war, and Donald Trump threatening to invade American cities. I don't think that that's an actual democratic strategy. I thought that was a phrase in a speech that Michelle Obama used, who was a remarkable speaker and a remarkable leader. But I don't think in any way the democratic failings can be tied to, We won't do those things. I think they are adrift philosophically, directionally, and policy-wise. It has very little to do with whether or not they would fight dirty. I'm not even sure they know what they'd be fighting for other than preserving certain things that they had fought four years ago. That's what I would say. Meanwhile, the White House every day is unrolling another socialist platform where I'm like, Yeah, why don't we do that?

Yeah. Okay. Why hasn't Trump tried to cancel you like the other 8: 00 night host? Does he not get basic cable?

There's no question there. It is a function of relevance. I don't think we are on the radar. I've had my experience as him with the past, with tweet fights at 2: 00 in the morning. I take great pride in the fact that Donald Trump once at 2: 30 AM just tweeted, I think in all caps, John Stuart is a pussy.

That was the nickname he gave you?

Yeah. If that's Well, that was after I had come up with Fuckface on Clown Stick because he was saying, My real name is Jonathan Leevoitz, and why don't I appreciate my Jewish heritage? I said, Well, he doesn't like people to know, but his real name is Fuckface on Clown Stick. That set off a whole thing. I mean, it's absurd to even think about it, but that's what happened. This is obviously before he was the Commander-in-Chief of the United States. But I think I'm, and I'm very happily, I think. We continue to do what we do, and the hope is that the company that we work for continues to appreciate what it is that we do, and I'm happy to continue doing it for sure.

Preach.

Preach.

All right. All right. Here it is.

Yeah.

So, John?

I expected it. That's the question.

That's the answer. Matt's owner, Steve Cohen, apologized to the fans for the historic collapse. Are you good with that?

Oh, sure. No, as long as... Listen, it's Yom Kippur, as long as there's atonement, as I don't know how long it is that the Mets would have to fast to atone for something along those lines. But no, I am not good with it, but it just goes along with... Met fans are like, Do you ever see an abandoned mall and there's just stuff that's starting to grow? That's what we are. The Mets are a semi-abandoned mall that you drive by the Met fan and you go like, Didn't there used to be a Macy's there? That feeling of a hollowed out should be vibrant, great piece of real estate, but you expect that if you go there, it will be overtaken by mycelium and whatever small woodland rodents are populating again in there. I'm just always excited at the interesting ways that they do it. They've done fast collapses. In 2008, they were in the lead, first place by seven games with 17 to play, and they fucked it up. They have other things like their star power hitter, Ioannis Cespedus, just decides to go bull-roping and tears his complete knee apart in a divot. They find ways to entertainingly collapse.

They keep you on your toes. Thank you. Yeah, that's worth watching for.

Yeah. There's going to be one where they all get mono. They're going to be in first place, and they're going to be hours away from going to the World Series, and they will all go to a make-out party and get I don't know.

My God. That was my favorite. Last year, the Giants went to Mexico City, and the next three games, they were like, So everyone's got food poisoning.

Can I tell you something? That will be the genesis of the next Mets collapse will most likely be explosive diarrhea. Oh, my God. You know what? If that happens, there'll be no need to apologize. We all get it. There you go. I think we'll all understand. Brittany, how do they keep in touch with us on the socials?

Twitter, We are Weekly Show Pod, Instagram threads, TikTok Blue Sky, We are Weekly Show Podcast, and you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart.

Boom. Is that where the question? Do most people question on the YouTube, or is it What do they do it on? Twitter? No.

They're hitting us from everywhere. Instagram. Yeah, YouTube comments. We check them on.

Insta. Do we throw a filter on there? Do I look like the one that Trump is using now for Jeffries? Yes, we could be the Paris. Whatever it is. I want to look golden. Well, I want to thank you guys very much. Once again, a quick shout out. Lauren Walker, who is our lead producer, was not a little under the weather. We're sending out Good vibes out there. She'll be back. Producer Brittany Mamedevik, producer Gillian Speer, video editor and engineer, Rob Vittola, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Bois, and our executive producers, Chris McShane, Katie gray. We will see you next week. Bye-bye. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bustboy Productions. Ount Podcasts.