Political Violence Shocks Washington

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with SimplySafe to offer an exclusive discount to our listeners. Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting SimplySafe.com/curricid. That's half off. It's SimplySafe.com/curricid. There's no safe like SimplySafe. Welcome to Plotsafe America. I'm John Favre. I'm John Levitt. I'm Tommy Guitar. On today's show, we're going to talk about the awful shooting at the White House Correspondent

Center and the predictably idiotic discourse that's ensued. Republicans blaming Democrats Trump trying to get Jimmy Kimmel fired conspiracies about the whole thing being a setup. We'll also check in on the stalemate in Iran. White talks have fallen apart and what the options are from here. Uh, then love it, talks to Katie Porter, who stopped by the studio, former member of Congress and one of the leading Democrats in the race for Governor of California. Uh, before we get to the

news, two big announcements. Love it. Love to leave it. Uh, he's going to two days a week. There's too much news. And we have to cover two quickly. So we're going to get more episodes out. More quickly. And we're going to be shooting it in a studio with a live studio audience for

the first time. You have a bunch of amazing guests lined up, including Alyssa Etherich, Ron

Funches, Beck Bennett, Kyle Mooney, Ginger Mitch, and more we're doing a show as part of the Netflix as a joke festival too. If you're in LA, come see our new studio at crickad.com/events. Awesome. Uh, and also, as you may have heard in the Friday show, or on love or leave it, crickad.com is coming back. We've got three days of events right after the midterms, November 5th through the 7th in Washington, DC. There's going to be live shows, tons of panels,

new ways to connect with other political sickos like us. Uh, head to crickad.com and sign up for updates, including ticket release dates, line up announcements, and a lot more. All right. So as you all know by now, on Saturday night, a gunman charged the entrance to the White House Correspondence Center and shot an officer before being subdued and taken into custody. Uh, he's now been charged with attempting to assassinate the president. Trump and other senior officials

were rushed out of the dinner by the secret service while other attendees hit under the tables. The rest of the dinner was canceled. And then the president held a briefing at the White House right after where he talked about unity and was somewhat complimentary toward the media. By the time he sat down for an interview with Nora O'Donnell of 60 minutes, the next day, however, uh, that changed. I was looking forward to making a speech and would have been a lot

different. I said, I can't make that speech. I was going to, uh, pretty, uh, tell me. Ripper Lawrence, uh, I won't go into the total details, but no, I was going to hit people really hard with humor. It's so much the press. It's the press plus the Democrats because they're almost one in the same. It's like the craziest thing. I do think that the hate speech of the Democrats

“much more so is, is very dangerous. I really think it's very dangerous to the country. The reason”

you have people like that is you have people doing no kings. I'm not a king. What I am, if I was a king, I wouldn't be dealing with you. He also wrote this. I'm no longer willing to permit a pedophile rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. What's your reaction? Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you're, you're horrible people. I'm, I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody. Uh, no, you're not a pedophile. I think you

was for free speech. I'm not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let's say, Epstein or other

things. I'm not any of those things. Mr. President, I was never against any. Excuse me. You shouldn't

be reading that on 16 minutes. You were disgraced, but go ahead. Let's finish the interview.

what happened and how Trump is talking about it? I mean, for the billionth time, political violence is bad. It is bad. And not the way to solve problems in this country. And it's a crash political

matter. It does seem like it's always backfiring. It does seem like the most likely I'll come

“from this intended as Donald Trump gets a little rally around the flag effect. And I think he would”

probably agree that that's probably what's going to happen because you don't scramble to pull together 60 minutes interview last minute unless you think it's beneficial for you to talk about this stuff. So thank God, no one was killed. Thank God that, um, you know, our political debates are afraid, but they're holding. That won't always be the case. It sucks. The Donald Trump is now blaming Democrats for this. It sucks that they're once again, you know, making this about political

rhetoric or jokes or criticism, uh, and we're not talking about, you know, the combination of mental health problems and guns or access to guns feels like that would be more worthwhile conversation if we want to curtail violence in this country. But here we are now in this stupid

defensive crutch for a while because of this bad faith attack about political rhetoric always gains

currency and becomes the conversation. Yeah. Yeah, but I was in the air, flying back to LA, and the wife I was down. And so by the time I landed, this was already about building the ballroom. And it was already about like funding DHS. It moved beyond just condemning political violence and having that be a unifying thing. To be honest, like I really like, Nora Donald, I understand why she read that. And I obviously don't think Trump's response is correct. But, uh, I do think when

you're reading the text from someone who tried to kill the president to the president, you are sharing something that you are only sharing because someone attempted to do terrible political violence. And there's a delicate balance to me between understanding the motivations of people that would do this and trying to understand what the underlying conditions are in our politics and our society and our rhetoric that might be contributing to it without elevating the specific motivations

of any one person unless it was directly incited by someone in our political system. Because

the reality is what unites mass shooters, people trying to do political violence. Sometimes they

have ordinary beliefs, sometimes they have unhinged crazy beliefs. But what unites them is this desire to take control, go out in a blaze of glory. It is a contagious idea online. That is what we are grappling with. And the less we make it about the specific political fights we were already

“having, I think the better. Yeah. One thing that has changed, I think, in assassination attempts”

and even violence like this that we've seen is it, since the advent of the internet and especially social media, like you have seen a lot more of these people be radicalized online and, you know, someone ended up finding the shooters Twitter account and then he moved over to blue sky. So they found this blue sky account. And it is just a bunch of crazy shit. And in the difference between, you know, that shooter and anyone else is like Tommy said, he's probably

had a mental break and there's easy access to guns. But yeah, political violence is always wrong and the idea that you are somehow a hero, you can solve any fucking problem with violence is crazy and it's kind of productive and it never works and it only makes more problems and anyone who thinks that political violence is somehow okay or justified if, you know, the person that you're committing it against is more powerful or more evil or whatever, it's just, it's just wrong and it's

“stupid. I was thinking about the, what had happened to the people, I think this is one of the”

situations where the people outside of the Hilton, the Washington Hilton probably knew that everything was okay more quickly than a lot of the people inside the Hilton. Part of that's because and we've been there before, there's fucking no service in that ballroom, the Wi-Fi is always bad. And I think if, you know, I think if you were the president or one of the people who was rushed out, you probably knew that the shooter had been taken down was okay. But if you were one of the like

2500 attendees there and you were under the table, that had to be pretty fucking scary before, like for a little while, at least before you knew that the shooter was subdued. And so that was like one of my first, my first thoughts. Plus by the time the chicken came out, had to be just absolutely just bulge in room temperature. Starving. You know, it's cold. I do, I, I, I think what Trump said to Noreo Donald response was weird, but if someone tried to shoot me and then their words are

read to me that I was a pedophile rapist in a traitor, I'd be pretty pissed off too. Yeah. It's like, it's an interesting journalistic question of when you read a manifesto like that and why and to his face like that if it's antagonistic on perfect. I'm not trying to like knit picker, but yeah, I'd be pissed too. We, again, because it gets sort of put through the lens of politics and it is a different thing than a mass shooting. There's all these different motivations,

but I do think the more we see people that are being radicalized online, they have access to guns, they may have a mental break, they do see a lot of crazy shit on their phones and on their screens.

a lot of ways to deal with it. One of them is mental health. One of them is addressing like where and how people are radicalizing and other one of them is the guns, but one lesson we've learned whether

“it's in mass shootings or in suicide being contagious. It is that you have to be really careful how”

you share and talk about the motivations and the methods that these people use and that is delicate right because it is of journalistic value and that getting his responses of journalistic value. It's not an easy call, but I think you'll be taken outside of this. I think you start to see it more as part of a broader pattern. Yeah. I wonder if he had if the shooter had named Trump in the manifesto if she would have asked that same question because then she would have gotten the name. I don't know.

It is like who else could he? That was her being like, oh you think that was you? Of course he's oh that's part. Yeah for sure. But she was funny because she did ask a question before that that was like why do you think people are trying to hurts? This is the third time. I'm glad you're okay, but why do you think people are trying to hurt you? You really could have just asked that I guess and not done that but anyway. There's been a lot of reporting already about the security protocols

at the event and how they seem to have been lower than at other comparable events. What did you guys make of those stories and the security in general? How it went both this time and in general

“the security of those events? In general I think the secret service is far more of a nest in the”

disaster than its public image would suggest and that's been the case for a long time but I think in this instance like the secret service protection is about protecting the president and other designated protectees and from that perspective I would argue that the system worked basically. I mean they will review their protocols, they will maybe decide to create like a better bigger

perimeter, put the metal detectors further out in the future but Trump was never really in danger.

Some criticisms that are worth considering are like this guy certainly found and exploited a flaw in their planning by staying at the hotel. Maybe a secret service needs to think harder about the totality of senior officials in a room and then adjust. But like the dude sprinted at a security checkpoint got off one shot, maybe got what a couple dozen feet within it and then was taken out and he never got close to Trump and he never really got close to more officials.

So you can always have more security. The uncomfortable reality I think is that someone who's willing to die is always going to be able to do some really bad stuff. If this guy had done what he did 30 minutes earlier, yeah I probably would have been a lot worse but like you know ultimately

“I think the process worked the way it was supposed to largely. Yes so people know what it's like”

there it's where they got him. He was running towards probably the escalators that would have gone down one flight and then you would have had the doors into the ballroom because the dinner had started. Once it started, those doors to the ballroom were closed and they were guarded. So even if the shooter had gotten past that security checkpoint and hadn't been shot there, would have gone down stairs, would have faced another several secret service agents,

would have had to get through the doors at that point. There would have been others at the surface. So Trump will open a raise stage. They can put them back stage up. But in general, I do think I think the Hilton is a is a bad location for this and I think part of it is because

the guests in the hotel should never have been able to get close to the ballroom if you're not

part of the event or the pre-dinner receptions. A lot of other people could have been heard for aside from the president who was I think well protected and like you said to me about the senior senior officials in one place. What if someone had brought explosives? I mean this is I don't only go into all the different things that could have gone wrong but if you were a guest at the hotel even if you weren't that guy with those weapons if you had like worst weapons or something

but you were still a guest you could have probably done a lot more damage. I don't agree with that. Like there's a lot that suddenly because this one crazy person ran at the door there we should be things to learn but like maybe they have to do something different with gas change the protocols in a certain way but then all of a sudden this this location is no longer possible for a dinner that's been happening there for four decades like the well service said that.

I mean service was saying to people in the record that like or on on background at least that you know we now have a convention center in DC that is much easier to protect. They are they

can still hold the same number of people they've never liked the Hilton they said it's always an

uphill challenge you're always working against stuff. The person was also shot outside that building right and they've still been doing the dinner there I'm sure that maybe there's better places do but the point I'm making is only in the we have been taking our fucking shoes off at the airport because of one crazy guy for ten years we can't have liquids in our suitcase because of one crazy guy and the wake of things like this there is always effort like there must be like

me I hope they fix their protocols and learn things from this but the answer to some security reach by one random person can't constantly be that the perimeter gets bigger the security gets more the our our government becomes more militarized fewer of our officials can be I know you're not saying that but I do think that is the that is the reaction the second something like this happens there's an effort to like there's got to be something we can do

and once if somebody it's going to try something like this they got it they can be stopped this

person was stopped the system hopefully worked but like I think what's been revealed over the last year or two is that secret service is pretty bad at its job like Butler there was a guy in a raised position with a rifle with a scope aimed at the president and shot him in like it's insane yeah there wasn't like more changes in turnover and I think it's the totality of the events that

“lead me to questions secret service even if I think this incident was like not right really an issue”

there's a there's a lot of space between like we must live in a militarized society and there's you know what are we we're just going to keep adding more you know protection and people it's like with then just maybe expand the perimeter a little bit get a better place have make make sure that's your services and fucking out more you know like there's little things you can do to for sure I agree you can't you can't solve it but you can improve a little stuff fair fair enough

I think I need to stock up again I feel like there's a lot of events coming up to the end of this copy yeah and because I can't I can't skip zbiotics anymore because I did a couple nights ago and it was just tough just feel worth it just feel terrible yeah zbiotics pre alcohol

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refund your money no questions asked remember to head to zbiotics.com slash cricket and use the code crooked a checkout for 15% off. Positive America is brought to you by the Obama foundation America it's time to bring change home the Obama presidential center is opening this summer and tickets go on sale starting May 6th in despair while address president Obama asked Americans to believe gotten his ability to create change but in their own now the Obama presidential center is opening

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be among the first to visit this new American landmark when it opens his June tickets are available beginning May 6th visit obama.org to play in your visit the Obama presidential center bring change home let's go through some of the reactions to the shooting starting with what I think might be the strangest just hours after it happened Trump the acting attorney general and dozens of pro Trump influencers essentially made the argument that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun

is with a rich guy with a ballroom the government is now asking the court to dismiss a lawsuit

filed by preservationist to block the president's $400 million ballroom because they say it's essential

to quote ensure the safety and security of the president for decades to come and prevent future assassination attempts on the president at the Washington Hilton who would like to point out some of the issues with this line of reasoning I just like this is so dumb that I kind of can't believe that this is how they're harnessing this assassination attempt for political game like I know it's like was hard to believe why why did the mindless mega influencer jump up like is the argument that the

president will never leave the white house again and just to events at this one ballroom what about like is every event in the future going to be de facto government hosted or government sponsored what about the president to the state to do campaign events and rallies and fundraiser it's it's ridiculous just foreign trips there's overseas speeches like even on like the narrow point of like the the Hilton and the White House correspondent association they would absolutely refuse to host

a press association speech at the White House on government property so it's not even solving that so Donald Trump gets to control the invite it's not his fucking event it's crazy and then now

yeah so now every time the president doesn't event in DC the president's like no I just don't leave my house you have become to me because I have this net this also the White House has been breached plenty of times either by intruders who jump over the fence or by the shlaw he's into that so we live in a free society that even when the secret service is talking about the the Hilton

ballroom like there's always in the safest place the president could be is to never leave the White House

again but you do and you figure out you do the best you can you try to secure places you figure out compromises so that the president can go where he or she needs to go host campaign events do OTRs where they stop at random places because they don't think anybody knows there's all kinds of steps and layers of security that are about the balance between the the president being in a fortress and us being in a democracy no the answer to the Hilton ballroom being kind of stalked by

one fucking asshole is not that the president only hosts from this point this point on game night only at his house is also like built your fucking ballroom if you want man just do it legally that's all we're saying it's like Lindsey Graham's putting for to build to fund it with taxpayer dollars then not blame right like if you want him to see him in the grinder party but it's another problem

“but here's the thing that no one is like the ballroom problem is that he decided to”

build those the east wing without going through any kind of process if you want to build your ballroom do it legally like go through the pipes go through the proper channels you know David Farron holds the times just had a piece today or a couple days ago that the they gave a Trump administration

basically is building this thing with a secret no bid contract after inflating its value by three times

and the government is paying also not just fucking private donors so like there's a lot of problems that's not just like oh no one will let him build anything it's like you want to just want you to build it illegally yeah I don't want to build it all but yeah no I'll legally be right legally you would be down he has the power to do and it's legal then he didn't do it we can all complain about right but but the ballroom doesn't become less illegal because this horrible thing happened at

the hill that way exactly right uh Republicans are also using the shootings of blamed democrats for not funding dhs which oversees the secret service whose employees won't be able to get paid after this week because they've been getting paid through Trump's executive order then only as so much money attached to it um only as she there is that democrats and republicans in the Senate did already unanimously pass a bill to fund dhs a few weeks ago it's the house that hasn't

done anything with it because they're mad about ice funding you guys think that attack will fly they're all doing this today they're blaming senate republicans senator republicans and senate democrats have a bill they sent it over and by the way we're in the midst of what's supposed to be a process by which they pass that specific bill because they have another vehicle for the ice

“funding I think they just don't trust each other enough or they don't they can't seem to get their”

shit together the group funded right now republicans paid right now and by the way on our path to as much as we tried to stop it republicans in the house and senate with 50 votes in the Senate funding ice anyway so there's no real excuse for this other than house republicans can't get their shit together again in moments of uh scaring us in tragedy you got to pick your one cynical way you're trying to exploit the thing you can't start with the ballroom and then go to

Jimmy Kimmel and now you can sort of back to dhs funding I would have started at dhs funding and just hit that and try to get a vote on it and got some funding whether you know it's on the merits or not but no this the entire conversation is about political rhetoric not dhs funding but they have but this is the problem they they have they do have the votes they're the reason the the only like there's no other did the only path to funding dhs is through a vote in the house that is

the next thing there's nothing on the table in the Senate that's it does it doesn't make any sense

“I get blaming Jimmy Kimmel yeah that's what we should start with that let's talk about that guys”

one of once it became clear from the shooters manifesto and social media presence that he was motivated by opposition to Trump the focus of the right wing reaction moved from the ballroom to the rhetoric on the left ballroom actually it's kind of died down now right we've moved past the ballroom now now we're big into the the rhetoric on the left the ballroom blitz is over yeah just to give you a a flavor of how understate the criticism has been a senator Rick Scott of Florida said quote

Democrats want president Trump and Republicans murdered all across this country normal the latest round of this discourse are reached its inevitable climax on Monday morning when Melania Trump tweeted out a condemnation of quote hateful and violent rhetoric from Jimmy Kimmel apparently a reference to a joke made last Thursday night days before the dinner

were Kimmel delivered a mock address to an imagined correspondence dinner here's what the joke

which no one had been talking about until after the dinner sounded like in context I do have to ask though why do you hate windmill so much is it because they can still get turned on by being blown Marco knows that I'm talking about he's been there but I do want to praise the poet is so

jet out a teeter burrow but you worked hard you stayed friends you shared some wonderful

“secrets and because of that you're able to fly on that plane seven more times dreams really do come”

for us our first lady Melania is here look at more so beautiful Mrs Trump you have a glow like an expectant widow you know Melania's birthday is on Sunday that's right she's planning to celebrate

at home same way she always does looking out a window and whispering what have I done so shortly

after Melania posted her husband jumped in referring to the sketches a quote call to violence that's pretty clear that's quote beyond the pale and demanding that Kimmel be fired you guys think the Trump's latest attempt to fire Kimmel for a joke is going to work so the joke is that Melania doesn't like her husband and that and that he's quite old I was good yeah and her anger at the bulwark he was like yeah so the trophy wife who won't be crushed when her rich old husband kicks

the bucket trope is older than dirt and I was like yeah that's sort of what it was but I also think there's another line in there that is what really bothered her because there's a joke in there

“about Epstein introducing Melania to Trump and it's like man you're taking another run at canceling”

Jimmy Kimmel like dude open the fucking straight or most you know I mean like what were you doing here

cancel homine yeah so Kimmel just for more context Kimmel did the fake speech because there's no comedian this year because Trump is scared of comedy or jokes about himself that owes the mentalist yeah what are you doing big with yeah didn't call this shot on this one but he he doesn't predict the future he can read your mind in real time he does just not really on him yeah well he's not he's on a future see him like there's a guest in room right that's true I guess he could have

read that guy's mind but just like again this is it's all just so bad faith it's like self evidently bad for a few weeks ago Trump tweeted that he was glad the Bob Mueller was dead because quote he can no longer hurt innocent people that feels totally off and Trump has made a similar

joke to what Kimmel just said they're a glass December he did an event for members of Congress

Steve Scalisse was there Trump talked about going to visit Steve Scalisse in the hospital after his police was shot he said Steve I want you to know your wife was crying or eyes out which means she really loves you and then he goes I know many wives that wouldn't be crying literally the same joke no same bush belt like you got hardy hard you got him secretly hates the husband and so like okay you're really offended by this but again like I

if I'm Kimmel I'm a little worried because your fate is determined by some executive then maybe he's working on a merger and Disney or some shit and like decides at some point that your you're not worth it you knew who gets to complain about that joke is uh the person anyone who is complaining about it after he made it before the dinner like a few friends no one

“no one raised any objections afterwards and remember Donald Trump was still there was still two”

attempted assassinations uh when he made the joke so it's not like anyone drew a connection because probably because the two assassination attempts were like 600 days before he made the joke but like no one said anything when he made it and someone just you know someone found the clip after the thing picked up and they're like alright a thing to be angry about let's do it let's go yeah there's uh there's a real um in the wake of these things there's this like

nobody the internet we've all like we were such a like kind of navel gazing and kind of like we have such like an image shirt about us that like we're not allowed to have any kind of uncomfortable feeling like like this is just bad or that like it's more pleasant to be mad than to be scared or to be to be upset whatever it is and so people just go casting about for like the thing to kind of make them feel the normal feeling they feel in politics which is just and typically towards their

political opponents like you know we went through this of course when Charlie Kirk was assassinated and they all did the like we have to take the temperature down and the left violent rhetoric stuff like that and let's say at that point you wanted to give them because okay maybe they've all maybe they want to bring the rhetoric down to right and maybe maybe this is a good faith that just bear with me maybe this is like a good faith objection here and they're going to

they're going to really try after that president called for members of Congress uh to be tried for treason put to death amplified calls for their execution literally said they should be hung this was over the video of the illegal orders video from George Washington would have hung them celebrate the deaths of Rob Reiner and Bob Mueller Steven Miller told ICE agents they have full immunity to whatever they want to of them a couple of them killed to Americans then the

administration multiple people the administration smeared them knowingly false charred that they were domestic terrorists and then Donald Trump said threatened to annihilate an entire civilization and also even at Charlie Kirk's own funeral, Erica Kirk like like forgave his end the shooter and Trump was like I don't I hate my opponents I hate my enemies it's like you know effort to take their tone it rhetoric down and it's just just rhetoric either like he be pardoned violent criminals he

has not even apologized or anything about that I mean it's just like the the president and his party and the administration have done and continue to do uh awful evil monstrous things and that has led to like countless death and sufferings and we get to say that we also get to say that they should be removed from power through purely peaceful illegal means like you can say both

those things we have the right to say the first thing we have an obligation to say the second thing

both those things can live together yeah like fundamentally political violence is wrong and it's wrong because it doesn't just silence the person that they're trying to kill it silences the entire society it silences democracy it is an authoritarian act even even when people claim they're doing it for whatever their justifications maybe it's an authoritarian act and by the same token the motivations of one shooter cannot be a way to silence the people who may share those views because there's

not their fault that some random asshole on the internet decided to take a shot at the president is especially going to have them claiming that the left is responsible for all of this rhetoric

“when they I remember when this time around I was like I can't even take it seriously for”

a second because you people are so fucking phony after the Charlie card thing after everything you

did since then like it's so phony I remember when Donald Trump was first running in 2016 I

remember seeing this speech live and he said Hillary wants to essentially abolish the second amendment and if she gets to pick her judges nothing you can do folks although the second amendment people maybe there is I don't know and because this was new and we were young and naive I remember being so fucking like gutted to see this person say that and see how many people apologize for it said it wasn't what he meant made all kinds of excuses for him you could draw a straight line

to him from that all the way to the insurrection and I feel like we have we have been to this we have been consistent political violence is a poor and wrong and is wrong on the right it is wrong on the left it is stupid when people think it is justified it is embarrassing and wrong when people apologize for it or try to justify it or become anthropologist for it and it is wrong when the president of the United States especially is someone who has encouraged political violence for

years in the fact that there are a lot of Republicans who would like to point the finger if I can Chris Murphy or whoever else for telling the truth about Donald Trump I can't look in their own house is part of why we got here I just like just one person on the right I would take seriously if they said you know what like there's some pretty bad writer coming out of Donald Trump smile in this administration and Donald Trump has been pretty bad on some of this and also there's some

“incendiary rhetoric on the left as well and I think we you know even if one person said that I”

would maybe take them seriously but none of them even try none of them even even address the fact that Donald Trump says any of that shit so whatever Mike Johnson sort of just gave up the game today I don't know if you saw that quote in his interview today on Fox when he was talking about this and then he said I hope voters remember this in the fall you've got to keep the grown ups in charge and that's the Republicans basically I don't want to say hey we're doing this

because we think maybe this can help us win the midterm so I just want you to know. I definitely hope that the assassin loses his congressional race. Yeah me too. Pantheon America is brought to you by aura frames looking to upgrade your Mother's Day gift beyond the usual flowers look no further than aura frames I got my parents in aura frame for Christmas they absolutely love it it is so easy with the app to just upload pictures that

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every gift is matched doubling your impact for families donate at un refugies dot org slash pod save to help save lives your donation will be matched help the millions of displaced people around the world this giving day donate at un refugies dot org slash pod save one reaction that was notable if unfortunately not surprising was the absolute explosion of conspiracy theories about quote what really happened our DC correspondent a crooked matburg got a hold of data showing that

there were 450 thousand twitter posts containing the words conspiracy hoax staged or false flag in the 24 hours after the shooting which is almost as many as right after butler um is this just the new normal and why do you guys think so many people want to entertain the notion that this may

“have somehow been staged i think it's the old normal too i mean there's something in america's”

DNA that just makes us distrustful government in constricted power and prone to believing conspiracy

theories i think it's a it is a feature not a bug of american life the the founders of our country believed in conspiracy theories about like british plots to do things there was uh nasonic temples the catholic conspiracy theories were around forever and also like as you come back on top of the they're coming back the u_s_ government is given people uh ample reason to question official narratives from the g_f_k_ assassination to uh the lies about Vietnam to quintile pro to the

Iraq war and then more recently you have q_n_n_ which is obviously bullshit and crazy and has a thousand offsuits that are insane but the jf_reft in scandal i think made people feel like huh maybe they weren't so wrong and so um you take that american DNA you sprinkle on some social media

algorithms and some news outlets that make money off this stuff and are like seating at all uh

“and it just feels inevitable and so i think on a human level a conspiracy theory makes you feel like”

you have a unified theory to explain why bad things happen that isn't the world is chaotic and out of our control and that's just the way it is and and like it just makes you feel like oh that's the one thing okay like now i have i have some sort of control over this when you really don't yeah and i was thinking it's like instead of trying to it's to frame it as either i should believe conspiracy theories or i shouldn't or i should trust the government i shouldn't

just take like each one as it is it's like i'm just trying to think about staging this fake assassination attempt like how does it work what is the and also like what is the benefit here like he gets uh he gets a five point bump in the polls that goes away in a few weeks for that or in the the judge in the in the ballroom case feels bad and then dismisses the lawsuit and that's that's worth risking his own life and the lives of the people around him i just i'm not sure

the juices worth the squeeze no on this one on the station the attempt also i'm not not sure quite how you do it the guys from california he's been posting uh things about opposition to Trump for like a couple years now see that's a long i was gonna say that's a long it's a long game

“it's a long game yeah man the the like i think everything to me said is right but as with”

everything else like people are more isolated they are like that the out when you start seeing one conspiracy theory you start to see others and it just feeds that world view and there's not enough natural kind of checks against it whether is people seeing the news on their television just happen upon it and people having tighter social circles people having more friends so i just think there is this conspiratorial kind of the internet is conspiratorial social media is fundamentally

conspiratorial it's why it rewards the right more than it does the left it feeds a kind of anger and an animosity and a loneliness and a paranoia and a sense that everything is happening to you and that you have no place in it so long will ever talk about this on the sunday pod we do with like people are now in focus groups saying well i'm a big conspiracy person it's not like a thing you're ashamed of or like you know kind of like walking on eggshells around it's like oh

people like i love conspiratoria it's like it's like part of their identity now right then i guess i would just say for folks who believe that on this one to think about it this way and a couple other people have made this point so it's not new but um uh Donald Trump would he have rather than night gone how it did or um would he rather have gotten to give his speech where he had the press captive for a full hour and was going to just tear into them so that everyone could hear and make all those

jokes you know like he really he was really excited to do what he was excited to this album is probably more beneficial well he wants he's he's he's he's already wants to he wants to re- uh reschedule it for 30 days so we can go give this speech yeah i just i think i don't know if this is the this is the best outcome um before we move on uh we should address the other incident of attempted political violence in DC on Saturday night um at an after party hosted by sub-deck independent journalist Michael

who's reporting broke open the Epstein scandal uh speaking of conspiracies not Julie Brown but the Epstein scandal afterward uh Tracy tweeted quote Jim Acosta threatened to fight me tonight at the sub-deck party to which Acosta replied that's because you are trash um Tracy then posted maybe one of the greatest tweets of all time quote still have no idea whatever went on with trump tonight just know Jim at Acosta threw a fucking hissy fit pussy Jim meet me in front of the hampton in

and he posted a picture of the hampton in no first of the hampton in no first the address including

the uh the area code and the country okay then he called up with the photo and the like facade and then the caption was Jim I'm literally waiting for you right now you piece of shit so then Julie Julie Kay Brown posted that Jim Acosta was a total gentleman uh yes so it does sound like uh I mean Michael Tracy sounds like he's a piece of shit so that Julie Brown she said the Michael Tracy she's like tweeted criticism of him before uh she said he was he asked or wondered

“aloud on twitter if he was paid to harass and similar abstinence survivors so I think he asked her”

about that but Tracy is also attacked her reporting and the cues are fabricating quotes so a lot of the like the underlying dispute is about the reliability of claims made by some of the victims

especially virginity fray so I don't god knows what they were talking about but uh Julie Brown

says the Tracy was harassing her Jim Acosta steps in to try to get him to calm down and that led to what I think are some of the funniest tweets in the history of twitter like me you know high-o style I'm waiting for you outside the Hampton Inn is so funny to me yeah also like on that just get a while everyone it's everything else is so serious that going on like it's just just a constant stream I don't know what's going on with trump tonight but you are trash you pussy meet me

really and then later Olivia Giuliano is like a 23-year-old woman political activist she feels like hey since you like pick it on women so much why don't you pick on me next time and Michael Tracy responded to her okay let's do it you want to meet up somewhere tonight like he was trying to fight her so now this guy's threatening to beat up this jensey woman then he later said who are you sending in your stead at Olivia Giuliano I would have loved to give you the nice beat down you requested

no holds barred do you think he's still at the Hampton Inn right now just waiting for anyone to show up who might have a substack or he's just waiting for an influencer to walk by you know I will say I used to be like oh how do people get radicalized and do crazy things I don't know yeah we got to follow the figure out what what how do we get Tracy how to get Tracy off the Hampton Inn pipeline but yeah like I remember when we like we were working on dinner back at the

day it was like it's a little bit weird like all the presses there it feels a little too chummy like art you know it feels like it's politics just a show and now all these years later it's like you know what it had its problems but like there was something good about people being able to be in one space

“but then I think you know what we were really missing that like 1960s 70s 80s coked out”

people who don't have internet so the only time they finally get to fight each other as in person

and there's like and like Gorvadal's getting slugged in the face of a mob now it mailers they're making a little quip like that no that come on let's get back to that yeah again it doesn't like the in person portion of this fight seemed much more boring than what we got online so even that like it seems like there was a little altercation in person but the the Hampton don't want to fight anybody right because it's like that but this this no one would be talking about this without the

the beautiful Hampton in posting yeah I do absolutely it's worth saying that the fact that yes like what a confrontation it seems like based on whatever one was saying that that Tracy like wouldn't let Julie K. Brown walk away from him so he's basically like kind of like yelling at a at a woman at a party about the abstine files yeah wild it like also you guys don't want to fight anybody like best case you win the fight and then you go to jail worst case you lose the fight

and then you're like severely injured none of you will like to stop it not be hitting your fighting

“anybody like you're adults movies make punches seem like movies and punches i think give”

people a bad impression of punches yes but what happened is you'll throw one punch then you'll grapple and then you'll be exhausted and you'll fall in the floor you know in the cops will arrest you yeah have fun all right well there are other things happening in the world believe it or not um as Trump's interviewers over the weekend try to remind the president here's his answer to Fox News is Jackie Heinrich in a phone interview about why he called off Steve Whitcoff and Jared

Kushner's trip to Pakistan for a new round of around talks and where things stand right now we're not doing this anymore we have all the cards if they want to talk they can come to us or they can call us you know there is a telephone we have nice secure lines we've wiped out largely wiped out the opposition if we ever had to keep going would wipe them out very quickly

know they have they have no cohesion and their leadership is very very strange

“we get sometimes you don't have any idea what are you dealing with so uh in a separate interview with”

Fox uh Marco Rubio echo that last point saying quote unfortunately the hardliners within a pocket-laptic vision of the future have the ultimate power in that country seeming to indicate that the new iotola and his loyalists are stopping the more moderate block from offering any concessions on around's nuclear program the state of play right now american official says that Iran is offering to reopen the straight-of-war moves in exchange for an end to our block

ahead of their ports and punting the issue of Iran's nuclear dust uh there's notice the more than nine hundred pounds of highly enriched uranium to a later date um German chancellor um Frederick merch set on monday that Iran is quote humiliating the united states with how it's

approached the negotiations have to disagree uh Tommy where's this leave us.

Frederick merch uh yeah this makes me triggered on a lot of levels uh back in the day we would talk about how they were politics and Iran and a diversity of opinion and moderates and hardliners

“and republicans would be like you're so naive they all chant death to america they all hate you”

and now it's like rubios whining about the hardliners killing off hopes of a nuclear deal with the moderates like yeah buddy well maybe because trump pulled out of the jcpo a in 2018 and then you started bombing them with the Israelis and you bombed them during talks and then you killed the supreme leader and you killed the ali larjani who was one of the negotiators um and now the ior gc the military is grabbing more power just like literally everyone predicted

so now it sounds like we're left trying to negotiate a deal that is just about a straight

of four moves which is now closed but was opened before the war started and uh all the nuclear

issues are unresolved the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium is just sitting there uh the Iranian military has lots of ballistic missiles they're repairing the launchers that they used to fire them um and the u.s. is like kind of relatively uh protected from the economic fallout like our gas has gone up but not a lot but let you know factories are shutting down in asia uh buothanda

“cancelled 20,000 flights because fuel shortages this summer yet countries rationing energy and if”

this is keeps going there's going to be recessions in asia europe the golf you could see higher food prices down the road in africa um if not shortages so like yes this is humiliating for the u.s. as mart says not just though because jd vans is sitting on a tarback and is lumbabad but because Trump has started a war and he has no ability to end it for losing it. I noticed uh in reading some of the pieces about this that the u.s. or that the Trump administration

officials and Trump himself have not yet rejected this plan from Iran on like opening the straight of four moves for an end in the blockade and then kicking the nuclear negotiations down the road and I I was starting to wonder like I could see an outcome knowing Trump where he they make that deal he opens the truth opens the straight and then says and we got our eyes on the nuclear dust anyway and we're going to we're going to get trying to deal with that dust

they don't even know what's going to happen we got all the cards and we're going to negotiate real strongly later and you know what we've destroyed the regime regime change we've destroyed all their missiles not true uh we've done all this stuff and we're going to and now they made a big deal they because the blockade hurt them so much they couldn't deal anymore and now we control the straight and the straight's open and we want it's a lesson from Donald Trump for German Chancellor

Friedrich Mertz which is no one can humiliate you without your consent it is uh yeah I think you're going to try to walk away from this thing yeah that's like I could see that happen although I guess it it also part of the deal was that Iran was like if the straight of four moves opens in this deal they're still going to charge the tolls open for them means you go on the route we tell you to go and you pay us a fee which is so it's actually worse than it was before

everything will be worse than it was before they will have more revenue to rebuild all their nuclear infrastructure and all their military infrastructure and by the way like there's some reports today that Iran retains two-thirds of its air force uh the bulk of its even that or like you know it's just on that even that was bullshit all right when we come back love it talks to California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter positive America is brought to you by him's ED is way more common

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NFL is the generic version of Viagra Viagra is a registered trademark of the actress specialty LLC hymns is not affiliated with or endorsed by the actress she's a former member of congress from orange county and a candidate for governor real single mom of orange county Katie Porter welcome back to the show great to be back so i want you to know something

i'm an undecided voter so this is an interview but i'm also a constituent first of all

what have you learned on the campaign trail that it surprised you so far i would say how just kind of demoralized people are about politics the biggest opponent in this race and there's been a lot of speculation about who's gonna win and who's winning and who's not winning actually the biggest opponent in this race has been apathy until a couple weeks ago people would stop me and say like you're running for governor you're great but like i like Gavin and i would be like hey guess what

“like i'm not running against Gavin and Gavin's term limited even now i think people feel like”

they look toward politics what they often see is what's coming out of Washington and that is upsetting and so then they don't want to think about politics at all but from the standpoint of a

California and this is a huge decision for our state and so one of the things i think that surprise

me is having someone who's been in a swing district year after you know every two years swing district like voter statewide are not as tuned in to we need to make decisions it's okay to vet and choose among candidates and so i've been a little surprise orange county everyone's like i don't know it's you're they're i'm not sure like it's you're the Republicans persuade me and it's statewide it feels a little bit more like tell me what to do and i think like we need to

flex our political muscles and look at candidates and listen to them and think about what the moment calls for and make choices and i think California's are a little bit out of practice about yeah if you're like there's two big reasons one is trump sucks up all the oxygen and the other is

the problems that are california base are actually not bought about by a republicans is a

democratic state with a democratic legislator we've got a democratic governor our cities are run by democrats so let's let's talk about each part of it let's start with trump governor new some told mark leavey witch that he would encourage his successor to meet with trump and build a relationship because it starts out interpersonal and that trump might really want that relationship to stick it to new some what do you think about that would you uh would you had to head to

head to dc hate take one of those smiling pictures like mom donny and care and best well i would definitely head to dc and one of the things i would head there for is not just trump but to meet with the congressional delegation because i've saw this one i was in congress our state government whether that's the governor or the legislature in california needs a much tighter partnership with our congressional delegation because our biggest problems here like housing are not the

biggest priorities of our congressional delegation that's a mismatch so definitely go to dc in terms of trump like think you all be starting out i've not done a lot of doors in hunting to beach and i would approach trump the same way i approach to hunting to beach voter hi i'm kd porter and see where it goes from there because if you can have a productive relationship i'm not real confident it's gonna last given what trump's doing but if i took governor new

some's advice here to be get a positive thing going for as long as you possibly can and maybe we can make some progress on things like aid for fire victims that we have been waiting too long on that said it's pretty likely that trump is going to hurt californians and you are going to have to be ready to punch back so there's been a few different approaches by different democratic

“governors you have new some i think has been the most publicly pugnicious you have a”

pritzker that has i think done similarly but also i think had a loss suit and kind of focusing a bit more on the courts you've had others that like aggression with mur that have at least publicly tried to be more conciliatory is there a model that you think looks the best that works the best i don't think you can have an answer to that because you have a president who's main characteristic is wild unpredictability so i think most of us get up every day and be like

what are we getting today so i think you can't know for sure but i will say my time in congress i think i really showed all of the ability to have all of those different responses so there were Republican members of the delegation like duglamalpha who passed away not long ago that i did two bills with dug and passed them through the house there were other Republicans darele i so like i just can't get along with that guy and i don't want to don't feel bad about that just can't

can't find that can't find that opening space so i think you have to kind of be willing to

minute so let's talk about uh some of your proposals you uh pitched getting rid of income taxes for california's making up to a hundred thousand dollars now for reasons that people outside of california may not know we have a proposition system uh property taxes are limited away the governor can't change and what that's meant is because we have progressive taxes here year to year there's huge swings in how much revenue the state has boom and bust boom and bust wouldn't

narrowing the tax base make that problem much worse the opposite actually i think so first let's talk about progressive taxes we have progressive income taxes in california but we actually because of prop 13 have absolutely not progressive property tax in fact if you buy something and then it appreciates wildly you get the same benefit as somebody who buys something and it stays flat so we we're not progressive there but more importantly when i'm really interested in is the fact that we

do not have a progressive corporate tax if you're a corporation in california and you make a

dollar and harder and profit you pay 8.84 percent on that dollar if you're a corporation and you

make five hundred million dollars in profit you pay 8.84 percent so we could actually adjust that just slightly and actually provide some tax relief for those really corporations that are struggling some are big some are small but they're they're they're struggling and in the most profitable years we could say to corporations you had the you had a banger of a year you're going to pay just a little

“bit more because that's what we say to californians you got a big bonus you got more income you're”

going to pay a little bit more so that's the first thing the second thing is almost all of the volatility in our revenue system comes from the tippy tippy top it comes from capital gains not from variation in the income but the the reliable part is the income part there's going to be the we will have the taxes will be applying more so we get over a hundred million dollars in income tax every year the people paying under a hundred thousand dollars generate about eight billion of that so it's

it's not a huge huge fraction and I think we can safely say we are going to have corporations that

make a profit every year I mean I I pretty much never seen all corporations lose money and so I

think that's about it but the bigger reason to do it is look there's everybody's talking about affordability to which I say welcome this is really been my life's work families in bankruptcy people victims of predatory lending family spacing poor closure pharmaceutical prices all of the work I've done my whole career but a lot of what I see candidates doing not not just in this race but across the country is describing the problem to voters voters know they are already having trouble

making ends meet so affordability might be like a new talking point for some politicians but it's been in people's lives for a long time and the second thing is pointing the finger at everybody else for affordability it's the fault of pharma it's the fault of fossil fuel it's the fault of now look if you see me with her without a whiteboard you know I'm all about holding those people to account but government also can take a big step to give people more money and so

if we think it takes a hundred thousand dollars to have a to support a family in California

“if we think that's what it takes then government can give people more of their money and be”

part of solving that affordability crisis right but aren't are we just downstream of the problem

like California had an income tax when we were we were always an expensive state but when the

state was more affordable as of right now if we keep on the introductory housing's getting more expensive schools getting more expensive I know you have policies for all of that but the reason California is on affordable is not because we have a broad tax base in which everybody pays into the system it's because California has a whole bunch of other problems some caused by the state that are long that that hit long before you get to the tax code aren't we are we like kind of just

sort of well shipped California is way too expensive nobody likes taxes let's get rid of taxes I don't think that's right I think and I think we're actually agreeing here which is that it's not one or the other you the biggest problem California's have is the cost of housing that is the

“biggest slice of virtually everyone's budget that's why housing has been my number one issue not”

only in this race for more than a year but in the Senate race I'm focusing on child care cost why because if housing isn't your biggest expense it's probably because you've got little kids and you've got child care I'm focusing on college tuition that's a really big piece so you can't nibble around the edges of affordability but look we are also facing population loss we are not retaining our own working age people our state is kind of demographically aging pretty rapidly if you look at the

10 cities in the United States that have the most wrapped that are most aging most rapidly like six or seven of them are in California and there are big cities so we do need to say to people who are

the job stay here stay here because we're gonna let you and they're often earlier in their earnings

they're often those below 100,000 people they've got a lot of student loan debt they've got a lot of child care expense they they're the ones who are suffering on housing right so it's not an

“either or I think it's an all of the above but I do think it's really important for government to own”

directly some of what we put on families if you're making fifty thousand dollars a year in California and your mom a single mom with a kid let me go back to my GP Morgan Chase Jamie Diamond example from the whiteboard from years ago you need every penny and so the state should should do that should help you have what it takes to live and so it's not to take away from all those other problems it's just to say like we need all the above and we need to really get out California's

reputation as a place that supports the next generation of workers the next generation of California's come here for a better future if you've gone every proposal you have put forward through would the California State government be collecting more revenue or less revenue so on the free two-free years of college which is one of my proposals so we have two-free years of community college under Gavin News some big shout out to him on that I think it's I someone who's a parent of

a 17-year-old with a lot of be minuses transformative okay to know that I have that option for my my kid so I would do two tuition free years at a CSU a UC or a Cal Poly and then the no taxes on families earning less than a hundred thousand those two I can make up and have left over with a little touch up from 8.84 to maybe nine and a half or 10 on the best the most profitable years on our corporations the child care is a little different the child care is going to be something

that is bigger it's longer term it's probably going to come through a mix of tax revenue it could be a small payroll tax it could be partly through corporation taxes but let me be clear free child care is not something I'm doing for kids it's not something I'm even doing for parents or grandparents who are trying tired of being the free child care child care grows our economy

“and that's what California needs yeah well that's the reason I asked that is look I”

I love California and you can tax the fuck out of me I'm happy to pay it I'm not leaving I like you and Tom Styer yeah yeah yeah yeah or apparently not because he said he said mean out paying tax me paying more taxes is not the solution so so here's the right but here's the problem right because the politics of this are good old fashion people don't like taxes and they don't like billionaires but right now California we collect more per person than every state besides New York we

have the highest tax top marginal rate of any state highest gas tax it's $10 every time people fill up their tank we have the worst roads in the country highest sales tax in the country we're losing population to places like Texas if you look at that you say you know what this state doesn't have a revenue problem and that may be kind of something that doesn't play well with certain parts of

the democratic base but the reality is what we have is a deeper structural issue with how

our government is run and where the money is going and that to me is what we need the next governor to focus on and to be honest watching that debate uh the two Republicans who would be a fucking disaster seem more excited about that and more energized about that than the democrat so let me tell you where I got because I think I'm known as a straight shooter so let me be really straight with everyone do you know where I got the idea of knowing no California state income taxes

on people earning less than $100,000. Where'd you get it? Steve Hilton so what I mean as I tell you that is like many things Steve Scott crazy pants ideas come on out of his mouth most of the time but I'm looking for good ideas and the fact that Steve said it I thought about what that would have meant for me early in my career I thought about the person who's working as a cashier at my Albert sense and what it would mean for them to not feel like they're paying in to a state that

right now they don't feel like they're getting what they need out of so I also think that's part

“of it is like you're saying you have to be willing to look at spending you have to make spending”

decisions period like and we have been sort of when Gavin knew some ran in 2018 and really it he gave me so much help on the campaign trail he came to campaign for me but look it was a

different moment and he basically said we'll have this we'll have that we'll have x we'll have y we'll

have q you can have a free pony like everybody can have everything that's not where we are right now so I am absolutely willing to make tough decisions one of the things I've said is for example on homelessness we've got to put more money into prevention why because homelessness prevention programs take about six thousand dollars to prevent someone from losing a home permanent supportive housing after someone's been on the streets for six months that's eight hundred and fifty thousand

dollars so I'm absolutely looking at where do we need to shift our spending to give tax payers more bang for a buck when I ran in range county I don't think I've ever seen a range county

because they're like you can't be a taxpayer advocate you're a Democrat but we should all be

“taxpayer advocates people should feel like they're getting bang for their buck and Democrats should”

own that and lean into that and it doesn't mean you're taking services away from people it's the contrary you're saying is this spending actually doing what we wanted to and so if it's not we got to redirect it to somewhere it is so let's talk about how we like our roads California roads they're the worst roads in the country we also have the highest gas tax in the country we spend 2.5 times per mile than the average state what do you think explains that

what would you do to fix that like let's I want to talk about the reform aspect of what we need the next governor do so I did not support the gas tax in 2018 and so as we hear everybody

sort of say like this is all Democrats fault it's like I didn't support that gas tax and the

reason I didn't support it back in 2018 that extra 12 cents was it's deeply regressive it hurts low-income people who have to make long commutes with with older cars you know I got the 2010

“Sienna it's not getting good good mileage so I don't I think we have to be careful about”

doubling down on that approach this is a question of what do you do with your general fund what are your priorities California roads also have improved in many parts of California I don't think that people in Los Angeles feel like they've improved but I will tell you my roads in Orange County are great and we've seen lots of projects and lots of improvements so so there's also like it's a it's a big state we've got a lot of places that are doing things

that are different and so I think one of the things I also bring to the races like I'm not running to be the governor of Los Angeles or the governor of the Bay Area Orange County's the six most populous county in the United States San Diego counties the fifth most populous county in the United States and these places get treated like political backwater so to Californians in every part in pocket of the state you've got to look everywhere and when you have one city that's not

getting it done on any given issue sometimes it's the city and you've got to think about how to have those conversations and figure out what's going wrong there on education again another area where California is spending a ton for people we've got there's been improvement over the years not a totally bad story but we're clearly still not getting the value we should be in our system part of that as we have again a very convoluted bureaucratic system governor new some in January

put forward a set of reforms that have been on the table for literally decades the board of education and the Department of Education are separate and go up to different places this is a proposal that would have more authority and accountability flow up to the governor do you support that proposal I definitely support figuring out sort of having one place where the buck stops but why don't you want to stop with you why don't I yeah let's have stop with the governor so

I don't have any problem with it stopping from me but I do think that the governor needs to decide if they're going to do this and this may be a decision the next governor doesn't get to make right because new sums made the proposal will see if it gets through is the governor has to set more steady educational policy this is one argument for it being with the governor yeah because one of the things we see with educational policy being diffused through those different agencies

you mentioned plus the legislature right plus the governor is we change educational policy every two years so and I've seen this as a public school parent first it's two years of phonics then it's

never mind it's common core math then it's never mind it's remedial this then never mind it's

textbook reform then never mind it's class size one of the things I want to do as governor is decide what we're going to try for eight years and then really decide at the outset how do we

“measure this and I think states that have made progress on education have done that I think there's”

a lot to be said about looking at the state level at where do we lose people and we can never get them back so if you're not reading fluently by age seven or eight we we never get you there that's just about brain development if you don't make that jump from algebra one to algebra two you are not going to be have any of those stem engineering even a lot of the building trades careers are not going to be open to you and that's a place where the state could really concentrate

its resources we change things up with the local control funding formula several years ago what we haven't done is go back and seeing whether it's worked or not so but isn't this an easy one like I what is the reason to not just say how yeah I did stupid how we do it I don't want to have the all the accountability diffused like we we have a bunch of laws in California that distribute responsibility haphazardly it's true in our city we have this particular city and county it's true

in our I want to I want a governor who's maybe like I need this authority because I have a limited amount of time like these are great reforms I'd go further like I don't I don't understand the hedge no it's it's just a matter of saying to yourself like you have to realize that when the

it's something you're 11 aiming you are not dealing with the the school local school boards

“they still have a lot of authority so I just want to be very clear you can and I think”

probably should consolidate at all at the state level with the governor but let me be very clear what happens in local school boards much less what happens in every classroom that is that is also in the mix so if the governor had a stronger authority you have one entity to do that negotiation I think that's probably a good reform so there means a chance right now the Democrats are going to be shut out of the general election because of our jungle primary system

so that we just had this debate it was you and three of your opponents in the Democratic side and two Republicans should the other Democrats who didn't qualify for that debate dropout well look the ballot is set we have 62 people on the ballot 62 and I just want to remind everyone that's not totally uncommon for California for governor's races when new simmering in 18 there

were dozens and dozens of people on the ballot then too there's always the person whose name is like

“IP freely right who has to be at the ballot I think I think everybody is starting to consolidate”

I think we see this typically happen right around the time ballots go out I think it's it is important for groups that are hosting events whether it's a forum whether it's a debate don't don't platform people if you're concerned about this problem if you're concerned that we're gonna end up with too many Republicans don't don't put the candidate with one percent on stage like let's act like grown-ups about this and so but I also think that there's been a push to

and we saw this with Eric's wall well there was a huge push that everyone but Eric should drop out aren't we glad we didn't do that yeah that would have been a real botch so we so I do think you know when we ran in 18 we had new some we had Villagarosa this is Villagarosa governor part two run we had Villagarosa we had John Chun and we had a lesser polling candidate Delavisden but that those were going to be a three pretty high polling candidates maybe a fourth one hanging out there

and that worked out just fine so do we want to have eight candidates all duking it on the democratic side I don't think so should we have three or four so people have some choice or two or three yes I think we should so let's talk about the other people in the race why would you be a better governor than Navier Bacer yeah so I have shown a willingness to go toe to toe with corporate America and a willingness to shake up the status quo like you just said this

yourself John the status quo isn't so hot you started this with a litany of things about

California that are frustrating Navier Bacer first entered office when I was in like middle school

or high school and I'm you know I'm 52 like I've had Botox a couple of times and people keep telling me on social media I need it again I don't disagree so you need your faith that's your that your faith is your instrument so I think you know we need someone we're in a moment of California where more of the same is not going to cut it we need to change we need to recognize that we can't just pet on ourselves on the back and say we're California we're the biggest

we got to say to ourselves what's holding us back from being better and so I think that taking on the status quo being willing to do things a little differently not just going along

“to get along I think that's an important quality right now I also think I'm someone who has”

it came into politics because of Donald Trump so like Abigail Spemberg or like Mikey Cheryl like Deb Hall and like this whole next batch of governors that we have in our electing these are my classmates these are my generational peers in terms of when we came into politics and we have a different vision of how states should work together than I think we have traditionally seen and so I think that's really important and then the other thing I would say is I'm rolling

out real policies so I am rolling out concrete things that people can count on and so things like two years of college nobody's confused about what two-free years of college means housing number one priority better our biggest problem I think that's different than what we've seen in terms of all get her done I think people need a different level of specificity and they need to know that you have led with a different level of accountability so when I was questioning the CDC

director early early in the COVID pandemic and and I asked and will you make COVID testing free I wasn't content when he said y'all work on it I said will you today make COVID testing free and and he did and people got it and I think that is the willingness to kind of reimagine government accountability that I think this moment calls for and so and then same question on styer but my you know a lot of the knock on styer which I think is a very reasonable thing to

knock him on is when in his you know he put his wealth into things like private prisons and and detention centers and I think that's gross and he's had to explain that but I'm curious just as a

forward why would you do a better job than Tom star yeah let me let me tell a story about being in a caucus meeting full of Democrats and they were talking about gas prices and they were like you know gas prices they're high this this is true by the way this is years ago a couple years ago gas prices they're high and everybody you know got in line and wanted to talk about gas prices and I raised my hand and I said you know what I want to talk about grocery prices

because that is the number one thing that has been going up early rapidly like I am seeing boxes a serial for $10 I am seeing eggs I am seeing bacon I am seeing blueberries that are eight bucks this people are like wow who knew John I knew because I pushed the shopping cart in my family

as a single parent I'm parenting three kids who are 13 17 and 20 so basically three teenagers

“God help me I really think about what's what's it going to mean for them if we don't”

bring down the cost of housing what it's what is it going to mean for them if we don't bravely tackle AI with all respect to Tom his kids are going to be set they're trust fun kids and it's a different context so when we talk about like kitchen table economic issues you hear politicians say that we should talk more about kitchen table economic issues that stuff happens every night at my kitchen table and so I think that it's as much a question about

are you really awake and attuned to what it's like for California families in a way that I just don't think a billionaire can be so you've been asked to explain for years old videos where you lost your temper too many times and I don't want to do that but I had this feeling when I was watching you in the debate and what I thought was where's that energy from Katie Porter telling

someone get the fuck out of her shot like you think Tom Stier is buying this race but $120 million

in just to get his name up there you've been fighting us on the street you think how we ever desire did a terrible job at HHS you think he's super vague has no idea what he's doing

“and won't be able to get anything done that's what I think you think but I think there's like a”

part of you that is like I don't know like we're right now where is that part of that and I and I worry that like you've been hit with this attack and you you should treat people well and I believe you do or you've apologized for for this in the past but like like sometimes I'm like I don't want to direct it at your staff in the room and I don't think this person deserves to be yelled at but I would like to see that get out of my fucking shot energy on the campaign

trail and I wonder if you feel that tension as a as a woman as a candidate.

I mean look there is California's never elected a woman governor let's just put it out there

and the last time Democrats had a woman nominee do you know well trivia life trivia do do do do I don't know 1994 I was a sophomore in college and a lot of voters weren't born at that point it was died and it was it was Kathleen Brown it was Kathleen Brown and you know the sister of the governor the daughter of the governor so there is real people can have a hard time believing something they haven't seen I have a new appreciation in this race for what it

means to go first and a lot of my life I wasn't necessarily a first I wasn't the first woman even elected to represent my district in Rinch County I was the first Democrat in a long time but I beat a woman to get there in the Senate race I was running with Barberley right and I kind of woman and so the dynamics were they think the gender dynamic and the discussion was different I also think people are really sad that we have Donald Trump's president and are trying to assign

kind of why that might be and how to understand that you're seeing that pop up in discussions of who the 28 nominee should be but nobody should make any mistakes like I'm tough as hell and that hasn't changed and I'm running my campaign and taking on policy issues that are tough we just had a back and forth about taxes in which you know you asked tough questions and I explained

“to you why I think you're wrong I'm running my campaign not taking corporate money believe”

you me in a state like California where quote that can't be done quote I'm I'm showing that it can be done and I'm willing to be tough and say that I don't think our next governor should be bought and paid for by Chevron or befunding their campaign with fossil fuel money that was a crazy quote by Perseira by the way about having what do you need Chevron who needs Chevron do I need Chevron? Well do you need Chevron? Have you ever said I should not need Chevron just to be

clear like we right now need gas for cars in California but no politician needs to be bought and paid for that's a choice that every one of us makes and I've made a different choice and I think that is one of the reasons Californians can trust me back to kind of the debate stage look like

I was the only one who punched hard at Chad Bianco for telling California that get over racism

and I said without missing any words racism is not something you get over racism is something you fight and you Mr Bianco are unfit to lead a state with that's diverse as California which are saying to black and brown Californians to immigrant Californians is unacceptable but this is also a moment where people want to know your tough but they also want to feel like they can trust you

“and I think you're always having to balance that and so you're going to see that our first TV ads”

they have me they're up on air they have me with the you know the whiteboard warrior i'm taking these people to task you know diamond trump's appointees Ben Carson and then you're going to see some ads that are more about like what we just talked about like hearing him a mom don't want my kid to live on my couch and frankly like staring that down with these three teenagers are they ever

going to be able to live on their own and so I think you always want to have a balance on that

but I don't I don't think I've changed I think it's just like when you're doing an oversight hearing you're there to do some oversight that that's things in a debate you're trying to show people different kinds of sides of you all in a one-hour format and we've also got more debates to come so make no mistake like people who are not being truthful and not taking accountability for their own mistakes as you said I've taken accountability for yelling at that stuff for four years ago

five years ago and that's appropriate but that doesn't mean that how the air beseir I shouldn't

have to take accountability for losing 80,000 unaccompanied children he should and I'll help I'll hold

him to that account last question you said you're watching heated rivalry um uh ever on a plane it's a tough show to watch on a plane none of my plane worse worse than on a plane I was sitting there I was on episode two and my two teenagers come home 13 and 17 and Betsy walks in and she's 13 and she says clock it because she's apparently unbeknownst to me

“watched he did rivalry and loved it okay so and Paul says to me you 17 why do you have to watch”

porn in the living room right and then we had an interesting discussion about would you feel like this if this was porn if this were heterosexual sex um an interesting discussion but like I am enjoying it I have one episode to go and actually I I wanted to ask you something can I ask you one thing yeah love this book so I want to pitch something I am not a paid influencer I'm not a paid influencer I am not a paid influencer would working what a working James did you guys

publish this book we did okay so I didn't know that until yesterday that you guys had a publishing house everybody who is interested in understanding what it's like to be a trans person and where different trans people can be in their journey and how people can help them and hurt them love this book woodworking not being paid by crooked media but just telling everybody this is my library copy highly recommend wow shout out to woodworking and I have like 30 pages left so don't

blow it you're not gonna knock out no spoilers no spoilers well uh Katie Porter good luck on the campaign trail thanks for talking to me really great senior thank you that's our show for today thanks to Katie Porter for coming on I'll be gone for Friday's show but Dan and our buddy Alex Wagner

“will be back with a new show on Friday if you want to listen to Pilate of America ad free”

and get access to exclusive podcast go to crick a dot com slash friends to subscribe on supercast sub-stack youtube or apple podcast also please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at crick a. Pods of America is a cricketed media production our producer is Saul Rubin our associate producer is phara safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer re-churnland is our executive editor Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Jordan Cantor is our

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