 The David Feldman radio program is made possible by listeners like you. You sad pathetic cums. Is this really happening? President Obama, you're really going to leave office and let this creep and take over? I guess so. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman, DavidFeldmanshow.com. Laugh, listen, learn. That's our show. We listen and we learn. On today's program, two great comedy writers lighten the load for me, Dave Cyrus. You might have seen his work on Saturday Night Live and Triumph the Incelcomic Dog. Bob Powers comes by, brilliant, brilliant comedy writer, Bob Powers. And then later in the show, I'm going to play you two clips from my radio show. One is a conversation with Jenny Rowland. She is a research advocate and writer over at the Center for American Progress where you should go every day. Her most recent piece there is entitled How Exxon Won the 2016 Election. I'll link to it on the website, but you should definitely check out americanprogress.org. And we're going to look at Trump's cabinet through the prism of Exxon Mobile. Pretty edifying. There will be that Rex Tillerson, who I call Rex Spillerson, who Trump wants to be Secretary of State. He's the former CEO of Exxon Mobile. People are shocked that we would put the head of Exxon Mobile over at State, especially since the State Department is in charge of things like the Keystone Pipeline in order to have pipelines that run from Canada to America or from Russia to Turkey. You need a Secretary of State to approve all these pipelines and sign treaties and it's very interesting that the head of Exxon Mobile is Trump's pick for State. But what you'll learn from my conversation with Jenny Rowland is that Rex Spillerson may be a red herring. There are a lot more Exxon Mobile moles being planted within the Trump administration. Good chance that Rex Spillerson may not even get confirmed, but there are a lot of people who are on the take in bed with Exxon Mobile and are about to serve in Mr. Trump's cabinet. This will be very edifying and you'll look at his cabinet a lot differently after you hear this interview. And then we're going to talk about Mad Dog Mattis, Trump's, some would say surprisingly good pick for Secretary of Defense compared to everybody else. He's surprisingly good. Mattifyus Schwartz is a national security reporter for the Intercept. He writes for the New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker and he's going to talk to us about Mr. Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense, General Mattis and why maybe it may not be as bad as we think it might be. So a little optimism. Stay with us. We have a great show. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman. DavidFeldmanShow.com. Please friend me on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. Alex Brazel. We're coming to you from Showbrist Studios and my producer wants this to be a short show. But this is the week that Mr. Trump takes over, right? And we're saying goodbye to Mr. Obama. Yeah. Leaving with dignity. Leaving with dignity. Best president of my lifetime. Maybe, well anyway, let me tell you, this show's going to go a little long, Alex. So you're going to keep giving me the finger because we have a woman from American Progress who's going to filter the Trump cabinet through the prism of ExxonMobil and it's going to blow you away. I just finished that interview. Rex Spillerson, the new secretary of state. Yeah. Spillerson. Oh, yeah. Rex Spillers from ExxonMobil. Red Herring may not even get to state. They are using him to distract from all the other cabinet picks who are in the pocket of ExxonMobil and what they're about to do to the planet, what they're about to do. Listen to this interview. It's going to come on after our roundtable, our week in review. It's a visual joke, but Tillerson literally looks like a Thomas Nass drawing of a banker. Who was Thomas Nass? He was the greatest political cartoonist ever. He looks like a, Tillerson looks like a... Did he draw a boss tweed? Yeah. He was the guy who invented what Santa Claus looks like, did all those horrible anti-Irish cartoons of the early 20th century. Every banker he ever drew is what Rex Tillerson looks like, when those giant necked guys with like a sack of money. Right. Google Lee Raymond. Not right now. Oh, okay. Lee Raymond was the head of ExxonMobil before Rex Spillerson and the guy... There's no face. It's just a big gel. It's just one... Not two gels. It's just... His face is a gel. It's like Jabba the Hutt. And you look at them and you know they... You know, it's like Roger Ailes, the head of Fox. They can't get it up. The only way they can get it up is through kind of rape. You know? It's kind of... It's like a power thing. It's not making love. It's fisting with Viagra. They're using their penis as a fist. That would make less sense to me if I hadn't recently read all the Roger Ailes, the ways that he was sued for and how he was harassing women and it was all power based. And just when you picture what Roger Ailes looks like, it's so much harder to read. Yeah. That's how you filter your politics. When you're ugly, when you're fat, bald, ugly, you smell bad. Roger Ailes smells bad. He's rotting inside from the stake and the idea... He's smart enough to know that no woman would ever bed him unless it was... That's why it has to be a power thing. That's why it has to be your Roger's whores. Right. And that's not love. That's not sex. That's rape. I feel like he left the concept of true love behind a long time ago. Anyway... Let's start it up. No, no, but here's the point I want to make. And I want to introduce the show and we're going to talk about what's going to happen this week and where we're at. And I have dyslexia, not real dyslexia, but I'm a lefty, left-handed and I don't watch TV news. So I don't know what you... Because you watch TV news. I get all my information by reading and I realize in conversations it's a form of dyslexia because everybody else is on the same page because they're getting the official propaganda. The boys on the bus, literally, these reporters are all on the same bus and they're creating a narrative that everybody jumps on. I don't accept that narrative. So the more I read, the less I know what's going on. And here's the point I'm making. I'm going to read to you from Ralph Waldo Emerson. And this is the mission of my show. I'm going to read this. This is what Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. And this is going to be the mission of my show this year. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, there are 850,000 volumes in the Imperial Library at Paris. If a man were to read industriously from dawn to dark for 60 years, he would die in the first alcove. Would that, would that means it would be great if some charitable soul, after losing a great deal of time among the false books and delighting upon a few true ones, which made him happy and wise, would name those books which have been bridges or ships to carry him safely over dark morasses and barren oceans into the heart of sacred cities, into palaces and temples. Emerson's wish is that it's impossible. This was pre-internet. This was the 19th century. And he was complaining about the 850,000 volumes in the Paris Library that make him feel stupid. And he said, wouldn't it be great if somebody could read all those books and tell me what to read? That is the purpose of this show. I can't read the entire internet, but I will only surround myself with people who do. Like you, Dave Cyrus, great comedy writer, SNL, oh thank you, Trumpian cell comic dog, great stand-up comic, you're undefeated, gross battle. You don't get on this show unless you're reading and you have insight. The only way we're going to survive the Trump administration is if people put down the clutter, put down the noise and focus on what's really important. Stop with the Facebook, stop with the video games, stop with the Star Wars and three broke girls, stop watching television. We're about, this is the inflection point right here. Trump is a gift. I'm a big moon guy, Apollo guy that's, I'm obsessed with Apollo. And Gene Krantz said or maybe was Deke Slayton, when Apollo 13 was dying, when the Aquarius was dying and we were going to lose the crew of Apollo 13, he said, I think this will be NASA's greatest moment. And what do we remember? With all the moonwalkers, who do we remember? We remember Apollo 11 and Apollo 13. In fact, more people know the story of Apollo 13's better story. It's a better story and it was NASA's greatest moment. They didn't make it to the moon. They didn't make it to the moon and I think this is an opportunity, it's a gift. Trump is a gift. This can be America's finest moment where we finally pay attention to democracy even if our president won't. Well, it's finally something akin to Vietnam for the Liberals to gather around because Liberals when they don't have a common enemy, turn on each other. Turn on each other so fast that it's infuriating. Trump could be the only thing that is so horrifying that they actually wisen up and act like a team and start fighting. Now one of the reasons I have people like Dave Cyrus on it, Bob Powers is late but we're going to start anyway because Alex Brazil and I feel a fight coming on with my producer today. I just feel it. There's tension in the air and I know he's going to tell me to shut up. I know it. The mission of this show is to tell you what's important, what to pay attention to. That's the mission of this show. Don't let them throw dirt in your face because that's what Trump is great at. Steve Bannon, these guys are going to be overwhelming you with little things to get you upset so you don't pay attention to the important stuff, the real stuff that's going on. I'll be quiet in a second but I'm pretty consumed and I have a mission and I apologize for sounding insane but I am insane. We're not going to pay attention to the red herrings. We're going to focus on what they're doing in Washington, D.C. Which is what Hillary should have done her at. Which I think she wanted to. I think that people saw what she was doing as making sense using the logic that up until this election worked that people care about personality not policy and people don't care about policy in this country. The people who care about policy are looked at like dinosaurs because we actually paid attention to what's going to happen if which person wins and it's amazing because people think that they can look at someone and decide who's going to be a better president based on character, based on looks but if you think that that's what you should vote for you automatically aren't qualified to judge anyone's character because it means you're too lazy to really look into who they are. You're making a snap judgment on someone saying who would I rather hang out with. Well you know what if you're the average American any president who would want to hang out with you really shouldn't be president. Well you know there's- Nor does Trump actually want to hang out with these people. That's what they're so delusional about. You know I saw this the Curtis documentary on the BBC called hypernormalization have you seen it? No. Marin recommended it. Come on in Bob. Marin recommended it. Hey we just started. Hypernormal. Bob Powers great comedy writer and feel free to- I have a fantasy about Bob Powers. Yeah. Should I step out? No. I'm going to tell you what my fantasy is about Bob Powers in a second. Can I tell you mine after? Yeah. Who I think you are and I've decided it's going to- You're going to throw away who I am and stick with your fantasy. I prefer that. I saw hypernormalization Mark Marin represented it represented it yeah he said to watch us on the BBC it's this guy Curtis who does these documentaries they're polemical I love it it's mostly style over substance it's great it's BBC and it's mind boggling and it's the guy read five books and he found a connective tissue but it sticks with you because it's art and this illusion of the thrust of this hypernormalization is that we were manipulated into retreating into ourselves after the 60s and focus on self-improvement Jane Fonda he says it's great Jane Fonda went from trying to stop the war in Vietnam to building your body properly and getting into shape and we're all now you know face down in Facebook and Twitter and we have all these tools to express ourselves meanwhile the financial industry Wall Street is stealing our government has stolen our government that's one of the messages and I just want to say to the people listening you've been given a lot of tools you've been given Facebook you're a publisher on Facebook everyone's a publisher now everyone on Twitter can make their voice heard it's a really good argument to bring back elitism not elitism in no no no it's it's an it's to it's an argument to stop expressing yourself stopping an artist shut up listen and learn yeah which I think of as honestly elitism because elitism was the idea that only certain people were smart enough to do these things and people really resent that and that's a big part of why people voted for Trump they reject not even the elitism of intelligence the elitism of knowledge the elitism of education they believe that basically anyone who wants to be at a certain level should be and that this idea that you're smarter is an artificial construct mm-hmm yeah there are people I'm an idiot all my life I've been an idiot and I look at Bill O'Reilly it to me it starts with Bill O'Reilly he couldn't cut it at CBS News so they created a network for him Fox News but he's an idiot hello Bob Powers I did how are you hi Dave hi we met Neil deGrasse I am late that's right yes we met Neil deGrasse Tyson what an idiot am I right when I could do what he can do when you meet somebody who is so obviously better and brilliant than you there is that instinct to you know want to crush crush a skull you don't need the cans I don't need the cans you don't need the cans there's a there's a you want to crush a skull or you can just go or Slurp Slurp the insides out Slurp the insides out you can ingest intelligence now what is your reaction when you meet somebody who is so odd we're adjusting a microphone here and I'm getting some chiropractor my reaction when I meet someone who's incredibly more brilliant than you do on me somebody like Dave you're saying you want me to know I was going to go there okay my reaction is generally to go to listen to what they're saying let it just sort of wash past me not understanding a word of it and occasionally go oh wow because I know I can't I'm not going to engage in this conversation in any like meaningful way that they're going to remember so I'm just gonna occasionally make a noise I just realized how bad a person I must be for the fact that I can't immediately think of a time that's happening what I'm like oh my god I have a serious narcissism problem you've never met anybody who you go oh my god this person no much no no I actually I I honestly felt that when I met Robert because I just because one of those things where you when you grow up loving you know loving Robert Smigel yeah yeah to be honest I hate to say that you know because I want to hear that but but yeah no I did feel that and I didn't I don't really feel it with anyone I worked with at other jobs you know even though the people I absolutely respected there's no one I ever had that look wow I'm I'm getting to work with this guy you know that's true yeah I've never had that before Robert really I don't think well I mean we're all equal but all of us have our own gifts I have a gift of LaGaria diarrhea of the mouth that's my gift Neil deGrasse Tyson who we hung out with is an astrophysicist and I and you have to so you both bring something to the table right and yeah I don't know maybe it's a function of age where you meet somebody who's truly brilliant and you just go okay I'm gonna listen well he does he never met anybody like that Robert I mean I I mean I had to say so I mean if I met Neil deGrasse Tyson I would be very impressed with him like I think he's him and like Bill Nye are people who do so much important work for the society it's they are like two people who are just holding up this crumbling dam of logic and there are so many people who want to replace what they do with just emotion yeah we know who those people are yeah I mean Obama I think that the problem that he confronted is he's just better than everybody yeah and the Republicans could I think I mean I had made this with Trump I had my thought was that everyone who voted for him they've or a lot of people voted for him were sick of presidents being smarter than them yeah exactly and I think with Obama there's a lot of resentment people and you know that's a great line because I'm actually not insulting the voters I'm saying that they are smarter than the man that they voted for even though I'm still calling them stupid well they don't know that yet with hair I mean with with Bush at least you could say well he's got you know he's not really stupid he just came across that way which is maybe bad at that job whereas Palin was someone who people were openly celebrating her stupidity right they were saying what what do you mean it's bad that she shoots wolves and rides snowmobiles I do that never reads yeah and people would say that like I do that it's like do you think you could be president oh my god like they really think it these are people who think the job of president is to yell they think that like there will be more jobs if they just went to the congressional Florence Florence said make it already or I'm gonna punch you in the face like these people think that's the entirety of the complexity of this job the will the strength of will to make it happen yeah and that is frigging terrifying the strength of will yes I did I did choose those words specifically you know I feel like as a Jew there are certain terms that I have full license to use that they only we should use that's why I like when the primaries were half after the primaries ended in Hillary became the nominee and I felt in reference to people who were not on board with with her you know because you know after she won the primary I often use the term it's time to pull out the long knives because as a Jew I have a right to use every Nazi term well Bob what do you think we need to be doing because I said before you got here that then I think putting more Nazi terms into back into the public discourse is definitely is it Godwin's law that Godwin's law is the minute you bring up Adolf Hitler you've lost the argument that any any conversation will eventually Godwin I don't know but I just it's Godwin's law that some Nazi any time you get get around if you have a conversation and somebody will eventually say it's Nazi Germany and then you've lost the argument I think that used to be irrelevant that used to be now it's argument now it's like we really got to make sure this is a Nazi Germany guys yeah I mean why has just let's be watchful about why have you been saying never again my whole life if we're gonna if when it happens again we're just gonna say okay you know what just let it when someone's just using the playbook it's okay to make some comparisons now you know we're not saying he is he's not yet much more of a Mussolini than a Hitler ever well let's give Hitler some credit he didn't have nuclear weapons at his disposal Donald Trump does and Hitler knew how government worked yes and he served in the military popular and he understood architecture yes the thing I'm clinging to with like all of my hope a lot of times dictators are popular Putin is like 70 80% pop popularity popularity and even when they do research to be like alright how much of that is bullshit how much is you know he really does say that he that they don't like him it dropped from 80 percent to 70 percent when they discount like people who are who feel pressured to say yes he's good Trump is that 37% like it's I know polls we're not supposed to trust them anymore but there are numbers that you know if they can manipulate everything else so where is then they can manipulate the alt right was the second line hang on for one second let me ask you where is Trump in popularity versus every other incoming president yeah half he's every other unpopularity is double the normal and like normally when a president comes into office they're at 25% unpopular Trump is over 50% unpopular and that is yeah he's not enjoying the let me just let me just if you don't mind I think I have I'm not going to correct you but there's a misconception about Adolf Hitler when he came to power his popularity was at an ebb that the Nazis were much more popular in the mid to late 20s they did much better in the right dog yes and they were waning and he did not come in with the majority was up against von poppen and he was running for chancellor the Nazis did worse but they had their brown shirts come out and they were thuggish and they intimidated Hindenburg who was reputed of president of the Mar Republic and he kind of compromised Hindenburg kind of compromised and allowed Hitler to be chancellor he won but not by the margin that and the and the point of that is you have a minority president Donald Trump and people actually believe majority rules the same way we believed in 2001 that Bush was a minority president and he can be restrained because he doesn't have the will of the people behind him but what happens is they get so intimidated Trump and George W. Bush that it there's this nagging thing in the back of their head that I don't have the will of the people that they seize it oh yeah yes that's frightening but I think that the differences Bush wanted to be a good president I think oh my god I think I don't think he was but I think he wanted to be yeah but the people who surrounded him wanted what to dominate the earth yeah they wanted to have it they want they wanted to basically have a pox americana they wanted to have any in a truly they wanted to basically bring back the America of the time of the Spanish American War they wanted to bring back the time when America was just colonizing everything we could get our hands on yeah but do you think I'm sorry no you are but do you think because we're getting nostalgic now for Bush and Cheney oh sure who's at least he was hiring people who knew how government works yes I mean that and actually not to keep bringing him up but Robert brought this up that he he is the only one who constantly is like sort of finding the bright side of this or try or the hopeful side that right maybe Trump will like ruin everything in Washington so they'll have to rebuild and things will not that he obviously we know his politics but the one thing that he kept bringing up was Bush and Cheney like Cheney was in there thinking I know how to recreate the planet you know I know how to I know where the oil needs to come from where it needs to go and and everything has to do that and Trump does not necessarily have anyone like that in his cabinet well Mattis is seems to be pretty he's solid Mattis mad dog Mattis he's a certainly a competent general well read travels with yes apparently anti-terror or anti-torture and stuff I don't know I really don't I haven't had a torture but his but the new head of the CIA is not the head of the CIA is someone who has been very vocally in favor of torture up until his up until his hearing Pompeii yeah Pompeo Pompeo right yeah he up until his hearing he was on those he was on the Senate floor talking about or congressional for talking about how important it is that we torture and only now that he has to get confirmed as he suddenly switched his position on it which is frigging terrifying he's a congressman yeah and and Jeff Sessions the racist pick for mm-hmm just he believes that waterboarding is torture correct he yes I believe well everyone getting confirmed it now believes it's yeah they're also there they're all this kind of but Pompeo only got it is only getting the CIA position because he previously defended torture right by the way at the end of this roundtable we're running two interviews one is about mad dog Mattis and the Mattis waiver and the other one is about Rex Spillerson and the cabinet filtered through the prism of Exxon mobile so you think that Trump that's not he meant to say he knows it's Tillerson that's a pun no you're saying late were you saying what's coming up later yes okay and my lunch it's coming up later yeah who's dumber Trump or George Bush sorry I answer before you finish the question but I don't think it's even close you think Trump is dumber than George W. Bush significantly I mean I think that people think Trump is a genius but it's like Trump's manipulating that not exactly the geniuses of the country either I think that they like him because they identify with him for a very bad reason I think Bush was bad at his job was very very bad at the job of being president but could have been good at other jobs and I think Bush literally met well I think he did what he thought was best for the country he was just incorrect about that I think Trump is only doing what he thinks is best to make him look good and that is the only goal he has I think the difference is Trump would take a 70-30 shot at looking great versus killing us all and Bush would not what's going on Bob Powers you you said something at your party great Christmas party by the way thank you very interesting people Dave hasn't said it's great yet it was a great it was a great party he was he said it was okay he thinks it's an okay time no it was it was an absolutely adequate party yeah well you and I were off in the corner writing bills yeah jokes to slam Dixon for the roast battle the man was it are you and you're undefeated right yeah so eventually you have to go huh just three yeah three or three and oh yeah Dixon's five and oh yeah but pet Dixon's people like you you saw I'm kidding you see you you said something that just you just said something that just stuck with me since the party you said get your hands off my wife's bottom I think you misheard I said put you said what a nice lady you said the country's going through a mass psychosis and I just can't let that go yeah I mean it feels that way to me all of a sudden everybody is saying like they're just behaving in a way that I don't think that they were behaving as early as nine months ago I think everybody is happy to parrot things that they don't believe in order to just that's exactly a shout what they in order to shout the opposition down there was a group think delusion going on yeah they think it's fine to like when people are like he didn't imitate a disabled reporter he didn't do that it's like I know like I read a few more of your tweets you're able to form a sentence I know you don't believe that you are just fine with saying like something that is not true and like for a purpose that you're not like that is illusory because you're not changing anything you're not you're just simply engaging with someone who you've never met and you're willing to get behind something that's a lie that's fake have you seen the excuse they make for the articles that say they have proof that he wasn't making fun of the guy I did that I that's what it was so hilarious like you're really seeing so 10,000 words yes it's like 10,000 words in order to be like look he just circulated in this video too and in that video he's like he's moving his arms around what he's not doing is bending his wrists and pinning them to his chest to mimic being what you would call like a spastic in the old days and then they're not doing that and then find a video of that reporter can't remember his name now a surge I can't remember yeah he's a celebrated was a poor Balesky it might be yes it's near time yeah he's like a award-winning reporter but they find video of him where you don't see his arms so they're like see he doesn't do that in interviews it's like well they said he doesn't shake his arms are stationary like see if Trump was making fun of him he would have held them stationary not shake because that's the that's the big point Trump would never inaccurately mock someone for being to say you don't exaggerate something like that the way you make fun of a handicapped person listen I've done it all the time you make fun of a handicapped person we've all been you exaggerate their handicap yeah we've all been children we know how you make fun of someone for being handicapped someone has a list you exaggerate their list but don't do that with my list by the way you have a list well it's a true gay he said you should see this poor guy he said you should you should see this poor why is he a poor guy then if you're not talking about his disability what's so poor about this man who's attacking you I just want to tell them like it's you don't like you you're wasting so much time like you could you could be looking for work you're wasting so much time doing like spending like creating these blog posts it's like can't you just be like yeah he made fun of a handicapped person I voted for him anyway just live with that like yeah yeah so I was at the beginning of the show I talked about the mission statement for 2017 which is to get above the noise get above the clutter and I think you just isolated it we have to save the planet there's a serious problem with climate change let the conservatives worry about whether or not he mocked a disabled reporter I think we need to do what the Republicans do which is focus on the important stuff the Republicans focus on money they know what they want they want money and power right I mean shouldn't people I definitely think it's a waste of time to get into any of those arguments and also arguing with anyone who is behaving that way like I feel like instantly just like walk away because it's a total waste of time okay Jeffrey lords yes people who are willing people Kelly and Conway who are willing to you know they're lying you know that they know they're lying they are they are just they are just changing subjects and saying things that are crazy because and they're just gonna keep speaking and speaking until you get bored and let them move on yeah I saw it can just say one thing I saw Jeffrey lords say yesterday about John Lewis he representative John Lewis said Trump is an illegitimate president because of the election tampering so tell us who John Lewis John Lewis is he was beaten for being a civil rights as a very young man he marched Martin Luther King was beaten by the police he is the greatest one of the greatest living civil rights probably maybe the best alive in terms of civil rights activists and he now is representative he's been a congressman for many years and he said that Trump was not a legitimate president which is it which is not a crazy thing to say based on what on all the stuff that Russia did and Jeffrey Lord said on a news Jeffrey every Lord I'm sorry yes he is a lawyer who is represents Trump he's been one of those guys who goes on TV shows and defends Trump like Kellyanne for you know since his entire presidency when it looks like like like cold miser like you dropped him up at him bleach yes yeah he was one of the two on CNN all the time who was defending he looks like someone shrunk a head but only the skull and just left the skin on it yes yeah he does look like one of those Christmas characters yeah but definitely when you're supposed to hate yes so he said I think it's hypocritical of John Lewis to call Trump a illegitimate president because John Lewis was beaten by racists in the 60s because they didn't think his skin color was legitimate wow and that wow is right and what made me so mad is the fact that the CNN reporter just said okay and then went to the African-American liberal who is the counterpoint and asked a question and it was like how are you letting that sit there and get into people's brains as if that's not a crazy thing to say alright so here is what I want to do and I want to spend five minutes talking about this and let's stay focused on it okay and this is exactly what you brought up I want to stay focused on this topic focus focus we need to focus on what's important I started this show talking about Ralph Waldo Emerson talking about the 750,000 books in the Paris library and we need people to read those books and tell us what's in them and isolate the important books you too are brilliant my listeners need to be informed they're not getting it from CNN and every time I watch CNN I say you know what a waste of my time I'm getting no information why would you focus on that why do you focus on CNN when in fact maybe 200,000 people out of 350 million Americans are watching that I mean honestly it's because I'm watching it not because I respected I'm literally looking for jokes I'm looking to talk about I'm looking for what's going on I'm trying to just get every piece of information how many hours do you spend watching CNN MSNBC Fox News per day maybe two but it's like you know while I'm doing other stuff I'm just trying to get that information you have it on the back how many hours do you spend I don't usually I watch it when there's an event going on if there's a debate then I will watch their pre game and their post game if there's an event like the other day with the hearings in the Trump press conference yeah I had it on but I definitely don't tune in regularly I will see I will watch the clips if they're if they become relevant or if they become viral enough like the Anderson Cooper with Kelly Conway to do on the other day you know that was wonderful what was that it was Anderson Cooper not allowing it was she was she was finally sputtering trying to steer trying to pivot away Anderson Cooper would not allow her to conflate CNN's release or CNN's reporting of the Trump report the intelligence on Trump with BuzzFeed's release of that two-page dossier and they were trying to do that to discount CNN's reporting and he just would it went on for about 12 minutes of she was not letting her she kept saying it was a Russian it was a Russian who got the information is like no it's not yeah that information number no one has said that till you said that just now and she kept saying it she was well I there are people saying it it's like you don't get to do that okay and my objection to this and and we're gonna have Mr. Rosen on he's an NYU professor he writes think press he talks about journalism Kellyanne Conway is a shiny bobble a distraction because CNN MSNBC and Fox CBS the new they don't want to do the heavy lifting of real reporting every Sunday they have Kelly on Conway face the nation meet the press and we all it's Charlie I hate to use the Charlie Brown and Lucy in the football this week we're gonna get her this week you know do you think they're even thinking we're gonna get her why don't you know yeah why doesn't John Dickerson why doesn't George Stephanopoulos do a reporting on Sunday instead of going you know being proud that you have access yeah to Kellyanne Conway why don't you do some reporting you worthless toads here's a thought that I've had on that which is with Kellyanne and with Trump like they report Trump's lies you know when Trump says I didn't say that they report it and then they're like down in two columns and or then they or on TV they have to ask other people did he say it you know we all just saw well they we don't it doesn't need to be reported they report Kelly ends lies if you're a reporter and you have a source and you've used a source and that source lot you found out that source lied and then you use it again you found out that source like at what point eventually a reporter who just has an informant will stop using that in that source if they if all the information they feed them is lies at what point like will one of these news organizations just say we are no longer reporting what Kelly and Conway or Donald Trump says because we don't use inaccurate sources you know at what point do you all what do you keep having to say this guy didn't tell at the CIA who I use like everything he's told me is wrong and has come out wrong but I keep using it like that would never happen if it wasn't an official for the president so can't someone just eventually say we will no longer like report unless unless the lie itself is the story but they don't make the Jim Acosta that's his name the guy from CNN okay everybody wants to be a White House reporter and that's a BS job being you're a stenographer if you're a White House reporter you are just repeating what the president or his spokesman says and you're you're fighting for access to get their narrative that's not a reporter do some real reporting if Trump doesn't want to give you access to Macosta don't go to the press conference don't ask the questions roll up your sleeves and and do some reporting there there are thousands of people in the CIA and in the in the agencies who can give you actual documents about conflicts of interest that would require you to read and write and report yeah but so I don't believe it huh would people believe it at all we have would people believe it we have such a deep more than half well in this country more than a half will and less than a half won we have an extreme gullibility issue in this country that is building I think it started I've been talking about conspiracy theorists for years they are a cancer on our society they are eroding the ability to parse information and that's what we saw this year this explosion of fake news and this the gullibility specifically of the right because that's where fake news is focused because they buy these things much much more often I think that's what this is I well I think you the discussion that we have to have with the other side is are there two sides to education certainly they believe that creationism should be taught in our in our schools it's not just fake news it's really fake education are there truths yes of course and and and no and also the other side when you say the other side that paints the entire other side I would say I wonder how many people even think creationism needs to be taught in this country right now it's gone up how much to what I would say a majority of people voted for Trump believe that oh the majority majority who voted for yes yes more than 50% of the people voted for Trump think creationism should be taught in schools I firmly believe that oh it's a fact so that would be 20 more than 25% of or more than 24 whatever percent of voters in this country yeah believe in creationism I think a lot more than that I've never read on it I've never I think it's more like 40% of the country 40% of the entire country believe in creative and I think the United States is creationist no yes yes I'm up it's gone up it wasn't it started it started right I just watched this Bill Moyers did an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson about three years ago so I know this it's and they the story that Bill Moyers told was that ever since George W. Bush became president the number of people believing in creationism versus evolution has gone up fewer people now I think more people believe in evolution but it's like 60 40 and 15 years ago nobody believed in creationism yeah I don't know no I mean I've read I've done over I've I've read I can specifically read times and I've read over 100 million people in America I think believe in a young earth 10,000 years old yeah so back to the topic focus focus focus my goal people say why do you have pat Dixon on the show well first of all he's brilliant big big problem with him politically but he's brilliant and funny big problem with him politically my goal is to win his vote there's an election coming up in two years get his vote I don't care who he is what do you think how do you get his vote is it best for us to focus when we go on Facebook and Twitter to attack my question is if we're the pacifists if liberals don't believe in first strike and hitting out why are we so eager to fight and argue and attack the other side you talk about you talk about mr. Lewis congressman Lewis on the pettus bridge getting his skull cracked open on the march to Selma passive resistance if we're liberals and we're Democrats and we're we believe that we're better than the other side shouldn't we be exercising passive resistance on Twitter and Facebook no no well first of all it doesn't matter what we're doing on Twitter and Facebook I honestly I kind of want all of us I kind of want all of us to leave Twitter it wants Twitter was so wants to become 4chan just let it like there will be some or whatever takes its place I don't I don't think any I don't think we're going to change any of the minds that are yelling their bullshit their fake who are subscribed who are believing what comes to them on Facebook and and Twitter I don't those arguments are just anger they're just the reason we like the reason I might reply to someone I generally don't the reason I might it's just because I hate you and you're wrong and you said something that was patently false yeah and I want to say it's patently false just to I don't think online matters anymore I think what will if if he does not get kicked out of office for if the intelligence community doesn't save us if the GOP doesn't decide he's over I think what will have what has to happen is the the classic I think this like streets activism and what happened in North Korea or excuse me South Korea where they a million people stood in the streets until she resigned well I I have actually won I don't like to do it but I have actually won some arguments on Twitter and Facebook I swear to God through proper messaging you know you read George Lakoff and and you need to know how to message and its focus you have to be focused on one speth specific thing when people attack you on Twitter and Facebook and you have to remain on point and ask for hyperlinks we live in this magnificent time when you can ask for proof you can ask for evidence and I'm gonna contain my hatred for these people I'm just gonna say this calmly when you ask them for proof they send you illegitimate new sources with illegitimate facts and figures that are just patently patently patently and false all you can do is educate all you can do with the other side at Thanksgiving is listen and stay on point and the point is to win their vote we want their vote how do you get their vote and you're not gonna get it by fighting and arguing with them I think these are just people who need to go back to not voting at all people who need to realize that their ideas are impossible to implement which they are going to see now that was the one good thing about Trump winning to me I wanted Trump to win for one reason while he was running which was I want these people to see what actually happens when when that when they get that their way I want them to see how this actually works cuz clearly they're delusional about it well tell me what's going on let's move on and let's talk about ACA versus Obamacare from what I understand they've gotten rid of obama I'm being funny here because there's a bit yeah the thing about that people think that those are two different things is that true of course it is tell me what's going on here you are drastically underestimated the stupidity of this country there was one that was really viral that I thought was fake but I think it's real and I do think that one was fake sorry man I keep moving away from the mic I do think that one was fake but like Sam Levine the other day was saying that he there's a website or a tumblr or whatever with like thousands of these Sam Sam Levine from freaks and geeks we we run in a very rarefied crowd and they he said that there is that they've gathered like tons and tons of screen caps of people tell me what to tell me tell me what this is about what people misconstrue that people who are on Obamacare thought that Obamacare was something else this evil shadow organization and they're like no I'm on the Affordable Care Act I love my health care it's Obamacare it's terrible because they're only processing just sort of half-hearing things on the news and they just hear Obamacare bad but they love this Affordable Care Act so they just they never like they just never bothered to learn enough about it to realize oh that's just the name the Republicans put on it like when Chris Christie said oh Obamacare he named his thing after himself no we didn't what the hell is wrong with you nobody's on Obamacare they're forced to get health insurance yep that's it you are you have to get health when you're on Obamacare if you're using the government subsidized one which is great a lot of a lot of people I know personally had their lives practically sick and explain that's me when its government subsidized that means it's Medicaid well it's not Medicaid it's like Medicaid it could have in my opinion it could have easily just been called an expansion of Medicaid but people wouldn't like that because Medicaid is for poor people so that's not popular but yes it's essentially that if you make a certain amount of money the government pays for part of your health insurance if you make a certain amount of money the government pays for all of it like if you're in California it's not the federal government paying it's the state that's paying it yes but the federal government subsidizing it right if they accept it right so some states aren't accepting well that's true yes Medicaid my experience with it is only in California which is obviously right where it works where a lot of people very happy with it right so a lot of states have rejected the the money which goes to their Medicaid fund Medicaid is a state run it's like a block grant from the federal government right for just poor people to keep them from you know dying in the streets well yeah they're not just for poor people Medicaid isn't Medicaid specifically for the poor well for and also just like disabled oh yeah yeah yeah keep yes but the plan is it is to keep people from dying in the streets right absolutely no other recourse Lyndon Lyndon Johnson created two programs that have saved I don't know billions of Americans lives Medicare which the Republicans opposed Medicare is so that people over the age of 65 have socialized medicine and it works and you find me one Republican today who's against it plenty oh really trying oh they they're trying to try to private private well privatized but ever I mean they still that no one wants to get rid of it because that's there they do that's that that's what I missed then I'm mistaken I thought it was a thing where they just wanted to you know obviously like private that they would never say like they'll say just let's just stop helping the poor they would never say let's stop providing health care to old people when they get alone and they're on record saying they want to get rid of Medicare and they want to get rid of the minimum wage oh sure that's what so Medicaid so Lyndon Johnson set up Medicare so that no person over the age of 65 could worry or go broke because they couldn't afford health care and then he set up Medicaid which was a block grant to all 50 states to provide health care to people who were below the poverty line it was part of his war on poverty and believe it or not when Obamacare was passed in 2010 it went to the courts it was and the law said that every state has to accept these block grants for Medicaid to subsidize poor people who cannot afford health care and there are states that say no we don't want more money we don't want more Medicaid and the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare was legal but it was against the Constitution for a law to force the states to accept money for Medicaid so some states are accepting the Medicaid block grants and others are not where it works where they're accepting the Medicaid I know a lot of people on Medicaid and it's saving their lives and you know Medicaid used to like food stamps used to be something that we associated with poor people and you can call them poor people I call them my friends I cannot tell you the number of friends I have who are on food stamps well you've been doing comedy a long time well and Medicaid and what was once deemed something oh you know you've run into some bad luck and you're on Medicaid and food stamps there are a lot of people who are on food stamps and Medicaid they won't tell you they won't tell you but a lot of people are suffering in this country a lot of them voted for Trump a lot of them did because not because they're well I mean because they're delusional about what he's going to do and they don't listen they're not listening to what he wants to do they're just looking at him it's like you know John Mulaney has a good joke about how Trump is like a hobo's idea of a millionaire and that's what they see him as they trust him because it's like I they look at Trump and they say I get this guy I get it and he and that means that he must get me and that is not true right and and I want to get to to the the issue of winning their vote because to me the the human being on Medicaid and food stamps who says you know I want the government to stay out of my social security yeah those those idiots and we call them idiots but I want their vote I want their vote I want their vote and I find myself I catch myself sounding like the mortgage brokers who take advantage of immigrants and stupid people who give them these you know subprime loans and then you go well if they're too stupid to figure out a mortgage they deserve to lose everything and I and I sense in all of us and liberals and the Democrats a little delight in the fact that people are about to die because they were too stupid and they voted for Trump we're kind of like the guys who were pushing subprime mortgages I think that's inevitable look that's that that's the eggs that have to be broken for this omelette they made this bed there is no saving these people the only way we're getting those people's votes back the only we're getting those votes back is if we go back in time to 1981 and put a lot more money in the education system in this country we've been complaining about education for 30 years well this is what happened that's all it is to me I think we need to go back to a time when these people realize they have no goddamn idea what they're talking about and they stop voting for anything besides American Idol you're looking like Lena Dunham hey hey hey you're making me feel stupid I'm not trying to tell you many is making you hard yeah Lena Dunham I there's a mean lean and Dunham is you have contempt so you're a Hollywood liberal with contempt for you have contempt for these people yeah but not just them I've contempt for most of the people on my side of this on my side to I contempt for people you know most liberal Hollywood comedy writers stand ups people in the music industry people who work in town I mean it's not just them they're just the ones I feel the most important for me to attack right now and that's why we lost or we won but we lost I don't think that's why I think we lost because of gullibility stemming from the conspiracy culture of this country and it's a general sense of people losing touch with reality we didn't know someone like Trump could pull this off we didn't know what it's like to have a demagogue run and win or we didn't know he could win we didn't know that demonizing like specific groups could work out for you we thought that that would damn you and it immediately we thought making fun we didn't know we were naive about what they what what what could we what people would roll with we greatly exaggerated the common decency of this country and we did not realize that we are now half international and yes exactly and also with in terms of voting against themselves their own interests demonizing people everyone on like when you're saying no ever everyone is on public assistance no one wants to admit it I think that everyone in this in that vein everyone in this country wants to say I wouldn't need a handout if you stopped giving those people handouts you know yeah like even though you're all you all need it they if you stopped giving those Mexicans and these refugees a handout I wouldn't need a handout I would be fine but you do because that's what Trump told them it was a despicable and a lie yeah well it's a part of brainwashing and so do you hate the victim because again I want to get back to how do we get their vote Bernie got it Bernie had their vote and they went to Trump so they were a lot of them I don't know what the exact numbers are those are the people who wanted to vote for a rebel independent of what they believed anyone who went from Bernie to Trump never really paid attention to what Bernie was talking about but he got there just hate the government and they wanted someone who they thought other government people would hate okay so I agree with you that we have a an education problem in this country I agree with you that there's a problem with fake news you're smart you're well read you need to be a teacher you need to teach the other side I would get fired so far my friends of her I talked about this with my friends before and they said if you were a teacher you'd be a really good teacher and then it would take a matter of weeks before you said something that we would all think is hilarious but would end your career and that's true I wouldn't be able to stop see I think there's a there's a part of Obamacare ACA that's brilliant and it should be extended into our electoral process with Obamacare you all have to get health insurance or you get fined in Australia if you don't vote you get fined everybody has to vote in Australia if you make it mandatory that everybody has to vote the emotions which are just plaguing our electoral system will evaporate the problem with American democracy is everybody has to energize their base to get them to go to the polls right you got to get them angry see the only the only that you have to get scared and you have to get angry in order to get these people to vote and we make it so hard to vote in this country that you have to be so pissed off on election day yeah to take time off from work and that's why Fox News and AM radio everybody's getting they rev you up well if you made it mandatory if everybody had a vote people would calm down they know they're gonna vote and they pay attention intellectually to what's going on instead we're in a constant state of fury because that's the only way you can get people to vote when people demand to be people said this like they demand to be excited by a candidate and it's like you know maybe the president shouldn't be someone exciting maybe they should just be competent and keep things and make things well run the idea that you need someone who's a giant bombastic showman is really frigging dangerous and could you imagine choosing your dentist on who was the most exciting imagine picking it like you know picking a contractor based on who made you angriest at other people mm-hmm well I was gonna bring bagels and cream cheese to the show today but you didn't tonight you can go ahead and eat your bagel and turn your microwave so I around the corner this is always my reaction I've had this reaction since I moved that's all right remember when Smigel did the show he was like we bought bagels and cream cheese you were on that show no I did a round table and I heard it yeah comedy writers get to talk to Robert Smigel I made the mistake of giving him bagels and cream cheese so he's eating these creams anyway well what does he know he doesn't have a podcast right and so this is my reaction that I've had since I moved to San Francisco in 1982 I walk into this bagel shop Alex they were lined I swear to you they were lined huh yeah that was an atomic yeah they were lined up and my first reaction is the same reaction I had when I lived in San Francisco I looked at all these young kids and I used to be a young kid in San Francisco and I wanted to scream how can you afford this where is your money coming from who are you why are you lined up around the block for these overpriced cappuccinos and bagels who are where's this money coming from and probably their parents there's this great transfer of wealth that's going on the greatest generation is dying off and parents are leaving money to their unemployed middle-aged children and their millennial grandchildren who don't God for this well let me tell you this is AP reports this is from the advocacy group Young Invincibles Millennials earn a median household income of forty thousand five hundred and eighty one dollars a year or twenty percent less than baby boomers that's median household that doesn't mean individuals are earning forty thousand dollars a year they the household collectively is earning forty thousand also less likely to be a two-income household mm-hmm but are they also less likely to be a two-income house there could be a two-income household and that these are roommates with household or roommates family and it could be three people collectively earning forty thousand dollars I know people like six to a house that are probably gonna total of forty thousand dollars they calculate roommates yeah household median household this is our household this is where they I don't think roommates count as a household do they not on taxes but maybe on this on a census who lives here yeah what do you all census yeah okay median household income of forty thousand dollars that's twenty percent less than baby boomers even though millennials are better educated okay so and this is based on federal reserve data we keep hearing politicians say I fear that one day our children will not be able to outperform us that's the whole American dream of our children will do better than their parents folks it's over it's over and when when we say well you know how did Trump get elected president because as you said we're in a little bubble and we didn't realize the pain that I would say ninety nine percent of Americans are in ninety nine percent of Americans are in pain financially and if they're not in pain they're lying to themselves they're lining up for bagels and coffee that they can't afford and this has been going on since I moved to San Francisco and Reagan became president everybody is struggling financially but you know the millennials are better educated than their parents but they're doing poorly financially this technology it's technology but they don't perceive when you bring up Medicaid and food stamps they're on Medicaid they're on food stamps they're living below the poverty line they have college degrees they're smart they don't identify with people who are below the poverty line they identify with the richest 1% because they went to college so they're lying to themselves 99% of America 99% of America is in a financial crisis whether they realize it or not and that's why Trump or Bernie the people who voted for Trump for those reasons are people who believe that we could simply return to the industrial revolution while the rest of the world destroys us technologically there's the people who think we should just go back to mining coal and let the rest of the world work on solar and nuclear power that is a delusion that is a childish wishful thinking that Trump you know he wants to encourage people to believe things that aren't true that's one of them the idea that you could just bring back these jobs the the fact we're manufacturing in America or our manufacturing is fine we're manufacturing fine compared to the rest of the world it's just we don't need as many human beings to do that anymore it's not that these jobs went somewhere else the job stopped existing and technology does not give a rat's ass about poverty yet we cannot stop technology from creating poverty because if we do we lose we either there's only two options you can either be the technological head of your world and hope the jobs follow and just create the jobs the new jobs around that or you can do the much harder thing that no one wants to really talk about but it's going to happen we can really globalize and we can actually be a one-world government which I'm not saying we should do but are we gonna really I think there's a choice besides that I love you Dave Cyrus I do I want you on the show as much as possible and Dave Powers but you lost my vote yeah what you just said I just kept seeing Lena Dunham's tattoos I kept seeing Rob Reiner's big fat face you don't care no I just I I just left I thought of Rob Reiner's face yeah I just I think that's realistic your bit but you're not putting I just said to you I look I'm not fighting with you yeah I'm not trying to be rude yeah I just said to you that we need their vote and there's a serious problem in this country and you're intellectualizing it away and that is not going to solve the problem and it's not going to get our side votes but if I can interrupt Bob Powers and by the way you should like Bob Powers because he's not a Jew go ahead they could hear that in my voice and the light and the apparent lightness of my he had an interesting child you're gonna tell me the name Bob Powers doesn't this doesn't imply some kind of escaping from the Nazis going name that they won't think twice about Bob power like go ahead Bob oh what well I don't think he's completely just not caring I think the he's acknowledging that there is no solution to get those knowledge Dave over there but there is a solution well I what I hate to use the term solution in front of me what I think another one problem with the idea of yes there are technology has rendered a lot of jobs obsolete and a lot of need for the for in for these employees obsolete and they have to we have to find some other way to get them employed but one huge illusion about America like a side yes we all the American dream is children will always do better than their parents hasn't always been the case and also another illusion is that we should all have a job that we can like everyone should have access to a job that they can retire with you know you start at the plant at 22 or whatever and then you retire at 65 or 55 there was a tiny window of America yes World War two yes when you when that one little tiny generation could walk into a plant after World War two and keep making cars and till about 1978 and then never again and but we've all clung to this idea that that is in the Constitution apparently that we're supposed to have the same job for 40 years it's all it only happened for like a handful of guys right who were born at one specific time right and died at one specific time but there are people who started working in 1958 or 64 who got laid off in in the late 70s or early 80s and even then even when we talk about that that one window I think seems so great how come every time I watch a movie from the 60s everyone seems desperately poor it takes place in the 60s it's always like 30 people in one apartment and they're trying to like scheme to get dinner that night like I don't think people were ever doing as good as we remember well yeah and the other thing is it was a great time for the rights yes for right man yes you the people who weren't yeah you saw nice lives boring as fuck lives for people who were white you know you saw their little their little house in the middle of Ohio or whatever and you know so you assumed that guy went to the plant and came home and his wife made him dinner but just on the other side of town people were absolutely living in just uttering humanity yeah that's why people need to really adjust their understanding of the economy we need to have in terms of the education about the way the economy works we need to have a national sort of let's say night of broken glass where we all really change what are miss our perception inside this now are you talking about a crystal knocked I mean I speak English I don't know why you're saying that some other language there are like nine other podcasts that we don't listen to where someone just said no you're right I mean the idea of this to cut it was an aberration yes yeah it was because we just beat the entire world at something and we made a we bombed a country we built bomb two cities and hundreds hundreds of thousands of men yes died died for it so they were in America so there's a shortage of labor yes we didn't hire blacks or women basically so they're the supply of labor was essentially ancient Rome where people were really happy because they were mostly slaves of the people who weren't slaves had really great lives and even even bigots who want to say well let's then let's go back to that let's not hire black exactly what they are saying they can't even that it won't even work then yeah fucks too much there's too many white men here now like we can't even support that we have we have a glut of bad ideas in this country antiquated ideas and we have the only thing we can do is take those ideas and put them all together on a train to a secluded part of the countryside where they can be systematically and humanely exterminated and replaced with superior ideas by the way that is bring back the gas industry the vapor people do want natural gas jobs so that's a good point Bob yes so think about this is let me just circle back to this is because it's kind of interesting it's kind of mind-boggling the civil rights movement of the 60s which gave more jobs to African Americans and eventually women basically if you believe in conspiracy theories the richest 1% said you know I hate black people I really do I don't want them in my office and I hate women I think they're really second-class citizens women but if we let them into the job market it'll really bring down the price of labor you know what let's do it so that's that's what happened and that's honestly that's how that's how things get better in this country when there's money to be made off of yeah that's where racism gets better because when there's a dollar to be made that's how environmentalism really only gets traction where there's some kind of profit people can make it can it's never gonna be just sacrifice so the civil rights act of 64 right was passed in 64 and 65 by 74 we were losing to the Japanese exactly the civil rights act was at most a temporary solution well what I'm saying is the civil rights act 10 years later 10 years later it destroyed they once again black people were viewed as a cheap source of labor yeah well that's that's why they passed this I bet Lyndon Johnson got the industrialist to get behind the civil rights movement by saying once we allow more people into the job market there'll be labor will be cheaper well I mean we had a labor problem we needed people to get into we needed people to get into we had a we had a serious problem with too many Americans simply not creating not working we needed to get them out of their you know you know everyone sitting around drinking instead of working we need to get them we need to push them out of their beer halls and by the way as long as you're talking history bought powers we should stop with the Nazis sorry that's all the terms I can think of so I think I'm certain that's the Bernie Donald Trump coin the people who voted for Bernie went to Donald Trump went to Donald Trump the history of populism in this country is I remember because I was alive in the 19th century populism started the progressive movement started because farmers were going broke from deflation and industrialization and they kind of joined together in Wisconsin and Minnesota and became part of this progressive movement that was racist that that that these strains of populism very contemptuous of African Americans and so it makes sense for people to go back and forth between Bernie and Donald Trump I think I'm not sure why Bernie and Donald Trump because the original strains of the populist movement were racist so it's people who are downtrodden who cling together but only they're kind right and attended that the populist movement came out of Wisconsin Minnesota and those people tended to be white well do you think Bernie applies Bernie was a Bernie was applying scapegoating about the rich the way that Trump was blaming the poor yeah and I think I don't think either of those are entirely accurate I think one is much closer to accurate I think I don't I don't think this blanket hatred of the rich as if they're this foreign body that's invading our country is exactly an accurate thing but it's certainly a lot closer to the truth than saying that it's Mexicans especially when you look at the actual rates of how many Mexicans are entering this country illegally compared to what the fabricated ideas that they're that Trump put out there they tried to just scare people the original populists hated immigrants because they were taking you know they hated they were taking our jobs but using the word original and I don't know if that's really an accurate use of the term because when you talk about original populists in America because the original populists in America hated the rich when it was called the king and before that you know liberal and conservative goes back to monarchist and populist and people who reject the idea of centralized power and just you know and which is another way of looking at wealth it's just a sort of way of telling people which are you scared of are you scared of the the throngs of the poor or are you scared of the king and that's sort of what liberal conservative has been in every country well let me push back on that because the 1776 that revolution was replacing a king with a with crony capitalism these were white slave holders who were millionaires George Washington was the wealthiest man in America and they didn't want to pay taxes to the king is what that was about and the Boston Tea Party was a revolt against paying being forced only by tea from the king and not from Holland these were guys who were all about money and the the fear of the minority this Madisonian ideal of we have to protect the minority from the majority he that was a Virginia plantation owner's fear of a mass uprising from slaves and the poor when they talk about we have isn't it great in America how we protect the minority from the majority he's talking about the richest one percent yeah the analogy you could use is what's more popular right now vampires or zombies because those are both allegories vampires stories are allegory of the victimization by the rich and zombies are about people the fear of the poor and people a lot more into zombies I mean that could just be a storytelling yeah they're just more fun I don't think it really means but but yeah but those that's what those both mean you know a vampire is a perfect example of an aristocrat true yeah and zombies are home invaders home invaders yeah they're uh mindless they're people wandering onto your land and how do I you know how do I protect myself mindless starving uh you know low class the lowest of low class is how vampires literally suck your blood yeah and so we can we can actually you talk about the rich but we can go with you I mean we suck your blood comes in we have to wrap it up uh but before we I got to be anti-Semitic right what are you saying what he was he was saying vampires can either be referred to as the rich or Jews it works either way oh I see because I worked in bloodsucker in there so uh so our show is on every Tuesday and Friday that's when we're dropping thanks to Alex we've decided from now on every show is dropped on Tuesday and Friday so we may be a little late with some news that happened on Tuesday morning uh before we wrap it up I want to ask the listeners to do something on Twitter now I just said don't fight don't argue don't attack but there's a guy named bill crystal not billy crystal bill crystal the funny one bill crystal is the publisher of the weekly standard and he invented the invasion of Iraq he was behind the invasion of Iraq is a horrible human being am I am I correct actually you're educating me so it was once a liberal right no he wants a liberal his father again yeah okay what what okay listen he's one of the few backed Sarah Palin right unilaterally like he actually maybe he's responsible for Sarah Palin I remember that he he created okay so the weekly standard is this neoconservative right wing magazine it's an alternative to the national review the national review comes from Bill Buckley in the 50s the weekly standard was invented around the 90s and it was funded by Rupert Murdoch and they preach let the market decide the free market the free market except when it comes to the weekly standard there's no way that could make money on the free market so it's going to be subsidized by the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch and bill crystal who is the son of Irving Crystal Irving Crystal was a Trotskyite was a left leaning intellectual wrote for commentary and under the Reagan administration he became a Reagan Democrat neoconservative they're a new branch of the conservative movement he had a change of heart and his son Bill Crystal went with it Bill Crystal this piece of dung uh became the publisher of the weekly standard he was Dan Quayle's chief of staff he advised Bob Dole to fight Hillary care every step of the way back in 1994 Bill Crystal said and there's a memo you can look it up Bill Crystal said to Bob Dole who is the senate majority leader whatever you do do not allow Hillary care to pass because the American people will fall in love with Hillary care yeah and there's no turning back it will be a disaster for the Republicans they will love Hillary care the same way they love Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security fight her tooth and nail that's part of his legacy then Bill Crystal in the 90s helped found this this organization called PNAC neoconservative right wing people who wanted the overthrow of Iraq so that America could establish a beachhead of democracy in Iraq and that democracy would spread throughout the Middle East but first we have to overthrow Saddam Hussein and PNAC started in the 90s Bill Crystal was behind this David from and when 9-11 happened Bill Crystal stepped in and you know Richard Pearl and David from Wolfowitz the whole Cheney Bill Clinton was part of PNAC too hey there's an opportunity for us 9-11 let's link Saddam Hussein to 9-11 this was the plan from PNAC look it up will invade Iraq now establish a beachhead in Iraq and spread democracy through the Middle East he was the biggest champion Bill Crystal was the biggest champion of the war in Iraq right and he's still allowed on ABC Sunday morning with George Stephanopoulos he's still allowed on Fox News still telling us to attack Iran he is responsible for the deaths of two million Iraqis that invasion of Iraq according to Lancet the British publication the medical publication Lancet is like the New England Journal of Medicine two million Iraqis died from the invasion three quarters of Iraq has been displaced because of what America did to the Iraqi people and Bill Crystal if you want to isolate who is behind the invasion of Iraq who invented it who is the champion of it it was Bill Crystal from the weekly standard and when it went when it turned into genocide he didn't back down he just said we're making mistakes we're not executing this war properly and now he's trying to expiate his sins by attacking Trump and all of a sudden really smart people are thinking that Bill Crystal is a good guy without blood on his hands and he needs to be reminded that he has blood on his hands because of Iraq he has to live with Iraq and I'm being muted by him on Twitter because I'm asking my listeners to do the following look up Bill Crystal go to Wikipedia find out who Bill Crystal was it's with a K and we're gonna have a crystal knocked I want my listeners to follow him on Twitter and every time he posts something remind him that he has the blood of two million Iraqis on his hands and he doesn't get to clean himself by being against Trump there are a lot of bad Republicans out there who are who are attacking Trump and a lot of liberals are going oh this must be a good guy he's a bad guy Bill Crystal the same way Ariana Huffington is a bad person and the comedians sucked these are that's a different bill sorry these are bad people follow Bill Crystal on Twitter and every time he tweets remind him that he has the blood of two million Iraqis on his hands let's plug some gigs I just want to say one thing just we've been talking about all night as a liberal who wants to save this I'm talking about saving this country I'm not talking about defeating our enemies I want to save this country the only thing we can do is be better the all seriousness we have to be better we have to be smarter we have to be more ready we have to be more prepared we have to simply be the better I like to I prefer the term ubermench we have to be the better people to win we have to simply be above above the ones we we need to change the minds of why I would say passive resistance and if you're going to attack as I just suggested if you're going to use social media to attack attack the right people don't attack the the guy who's about to lose his health insurance and doesn't know the difference between Obamacare and ACA go after Bill Crystal those of you know pick your battles don't fight with potential voters just go after Bill Crystal that's all you need to do channel all your rage at Bill Crystal find out who Bill Crystal is 700 Sundays going after yes Bill Crystal attack the banks not the azalea banks though she's terrible it's all right the show continues stay with us coming up my conversation with matthias Schwartz from the intercept about general madis and my conversation with Jenny Rowland from American Progress she wrote a brilliant article entitled how Exxon won the 2016 election it'll really change the way you look at Trump's cabinet you'll just see it as nothing more than a windfall for Exxon mobile want to remind you to subscribe to the show on iTunes or Stitcher if you're listening to the show and you're laughing listening and learning please give us a good review it's especially important right now with what's going on but if you learned something from my show please copy the link forward it to all your friends pass it around share the knowledge you're not going to get this stuff on CNN yeah you're you're you're just not going to get it anywhere else there are very few places where you can hear this kind of stuff because we're not trafficking in sound bites these are paragraphs people are talking in paragraphs friend me on Facebook follow me on Twitter thank you for all your notes I love hearing from my listeners I appreciate the criticism I love the compliments but I do appreciate criticism and I take all the criticism to heart we're trying to make this show better and it is getting better okay let's get on with the show yeah we're uh we're rolling by the way but I just want to tell you one thing that I was with uh before we start I was talking to some friends last night who were really anti-trump and they were saying well you know when once they start impeachment proceedings and you know they get Pence in there and that's what the senate really wants and I'm thinking I've had this conversation every month for the past 16 months how Trump is not going to be president you know or he's going to be president for a week now and they're going to impeach him he's not going away is he yeah I haven't it doesn't seem like either house of congress is making any moves in that direction yes something else we'll get to the show in a second but something else is going on that I can't quite figure out you know somebody somebody is behind this or a group of people are behind this and propping him up and they want him to be president no matter what something this is I I guess so I hope so I think I'm not sure all right that's better or worse yeah yeah all right this was for the podcast this is the long-form version that we treat my listeners to now we'll get to the radio show welcome to the broadcast who really won last november's election obviously hillary did but who really really wanted today's guest says it was exxon mobile on today's show we're going to look at trump's new cabinet through the prism of how they benefit exxon mobile jenny rollin is research and advocacy associate for public lands at the center for american progress and I contacted her after reading a piece she wrote entitled how exxon won the 2016 election I'll link to that article over at my website but you should instead go to american progress dot org and read the piece over there she joins us today from washington jenny how big is exxon mobile it's been described as its very own nation exxon mobile is one of the largest companies it is actually the largest publicly traded oil company in the u.s. and is I think the eighth largest company in the world and they as far as energy development is concerned today kind of have their hands in everything oil natural gas tar sands you name it and that's you know kind of the largest of this company is is why we felt like they were really the ones that won the 2016 election I see their ads all the time they're they're all about clean energy and alternative energy the corn the ads they're good people they ran into some problems about two years ago the price of their stock went down why was exxon mobile in danger during the lead up to the election quote-unquote of donald trump so in 2014 their security and exchange commission their sec filing showed that they they might be in a little bit of trouble and primarily that has to do with the fact that the price of oil was falling well below $100 per barrel that's primarily how the company makes money and so with that falling that low they had predicted that for every dollar it fell below $100 per barrel they would lose $150 million in earnings so that's probably the you know the biggest reason that they were feeling you know in some trouble then president obama was also making some moves on some environmental regulations which they had been fighting against they were in a little bit of some hot water for investigations into what they knew about climate change that really were just starting to get going but primarily it is the the price of oil and their price split i think about 17 percent over over two years and was that across the board for the entire sector or was it specifically exxon mobile were other energy stocks in trouble yes overall energy stocks were specifically oil natural gas and the us was doing pretty well if the price of oil goes down that means exxon can't charge as much for it but if we open up drilling rights offshore drilling rights are up in the Arctic doesn't that increase the supply so if there's an increase in supply wouldn't the price go further down it would also drive up demand though here there's a number of things that could happen to drive up demand and that's kind of how they they make their money and when oil prices are high then they make more money right so more drilling actually increases demand yes okay that's for another show that's that's one of the reasons my listeners hate me is i go off the beaten path and ask a stupid question that was irrelevant jenny the former ceo of exxon mobile is trump's choice for secretary of state i call him rex spillerson in reading your article i realize there's more to the story than what happens when the former ceo of exxon become secretary of state in fact he may not even get confirmed marco rubio was grilling him last week on russia and a lepo and suggested he may not even vote for him but who knows what that's really about he might have been grand standing but i'll get to rex spillerson becoming secretary of state and how it's a windfall for exxon and a disaster for our planet in a few minutes by the time this interview is over his name may have been withdrawn let's first tackle the justice department the epa and the department of interior i want to first get to the epa but let me read what you wrote this is what you and your colleagues wrote in how exxon won the 2016 election which you can read over at american progress dot org you should go there every day this is what you wrote at no time in recent us history has one company been at the brink of attaining so much power and influence over us policy both domestic and foreign if the senate confirms most or all of the five cabinet nominees whose backgrounds and positions would most benefit exxon the company will have acquired substantial direct and indirect control over the regulatory law enforcement law making and diplomatic powers of the american government wow so you know i think rex spillerson is a almost a distraction from all the other guys i want to talk about the epa the pick for epa scott pruitt but first the rockefeller family announced they are divesting themselves of all their holdings and exxon tell my audience why they're divesting themselves of their holdings and they'll better understand scott pruitt some of the hot water that i talked about earlier that they've been in for denying climate change science and kind of high even hiding the fact that they knew that they've known about the dangers of climate change for years and have been hiding that are some of the reasons they think they are divesting as they don't want to be associated with that kind of name and that those issues there they've had some kind of publicly they've said that they you know would support the paris climate agreement things like that that they the company believes that climate change is real but you know more secretively and covertly really they've been funding climate science denial groups and different scientists contrarian scientists that that will basically say that the dangers aren't real and that it's not happening and so that's not something that that big names like the rockefellers want to be assisted with i read their letter the rockefeller family wrote an official letter it was published in the new york review of books one of the things i came to understand is that exxon mobile for the past 40 years hired the top climate scientists in the world you know you always think nasa has the top client scientists but it was really exxon and about 40 years ago they realized they were heating up the planet and knew there was a problem and like the cigarette companies they chose to bury that information and the rockefeller family is their fortune was built from exxon mobile and they're walking away from it there are two attorney generals state attorney generals investigating exxon mobile's role in hiding climate science there is an attorney general from oklahoma who trump is nominated to be the new epa administrator his name is scott pruitt who was scott pruitt and what has he done for or against exxon mobile as attorney general of oklahoma yeah so as he said he is the attorney general of oklahoma he has been nominated by trump to be to head the environmental protection agency environmental protection is not exactly something that he's known for he's sued the epa a number of times in his career as ag of oklahoma but in regards to exxon as ag he's gotten a number of campaign donations from the oil and gas industry including more than six thousand dollars from exxon specifically and then you mentioned he wrote a letter defending exxon actually against these charges that they had funded fraudulent climate science that they have been denying the dangers of climate change that they have known about for decades about 40 years so he's come to their defense time and time again and not necessarily surprisingly because uh they're funding his campaign the epa is a more recent cabinet position i think it came about during the nixon administration and there's a lot of presidential power associated with the epa president obama has has proven that that with the pen without consulting congress he can do many things what are some of the things that trump could reverse over at epa that would benefit exxon mobile so i think the first thing would be the climate rule the clean power plan right now that's in the courts and so that that might not be directly under epa right now but that's where it came out of and it could definitely go back there and prove it could that's one of the things that he has sued to get rid of so presumably he would get rid of any attempts to curb carbon pollution a couple of other things that are might be in danger with a prudent nomination all is the epa methane rule methane is a lot stronger than carbon dioxide but causes the same issues with global warming just in a more concentrated amount and epa has recently made a rule that we would have to capture that it's it's natural gas that can be burned just like other natural gas and sold but when it's just let to vent it causes a lot of pollution so that's one of the things that would be in danger the ozone rule ground level ozone is a bad for people's health common in cities that's another thing that would probably be targeted and lastly the clean water rule and the exxon has publicly opposed all three of these rules they've lobbied against them and put out statements that that they would hurt their businesses and they so presumably getting rid of them would help their business what is exxon's role in fracking they definitely participate in fracking i think one of their biggest businesses within the u.s. it's been growing and you can drill for both oil and natural gas using fracking you wrote that they're one of the largest holders of natural gas in america right they are one of the largest holders of natural gas as well as one of the largest holders of canadian tar sands right which is another fuel source yes right and fracking involves water shooting water deep below the earth's surface and the runoff we are told poisons wells poisons ground water at first the epa said it didn't pose any harm to our drinking water they've since reversed that right recently the epa said no this this could be bad for the drinking water so so we don't have good drinking water in america anymore we have infrastructure problems and it's not in exxon mobiles best interest for us to be able to use tap water anymore okay for attorney general we go to jeff sessions from i believe alabama it looks like he's going to be our attorney general that the senate has been very kind to him because he's a senator they tend to take care of their own has he been a friend of exxon mobile he has he's been really a long time friend of exxon mobile also has as a senator has gotten many political contributions from exxon up to i think ten thousand dollars from exxon mobile and then even more when you count kind of the entire oil and gas industry at large and similar to scott fruit he's also written letters in support of exxon mobile this is specifically in relation to the investigations going on by the state attorney generals in massachusetts and new york the investigation that we discussed earlier and he wrote a letter to the department of justice which it looks like he'll be running soon asking them to basically quash any investigation into exxon on their knowledge of climate the risks of climate change which would just be a windfall for exxon mobile to their bottom line it would be like saying when the state attorney generals were ganging up on the tobacco industry a couple decades ago and there was this amazing settlement that supposedly went to to state states to help with health care to pay to pay damages for for cigarettes it would be the equivalent of an attorney general in a justice department trying to stop the tobacco companies from being sued by state attorney generals for hiding the evidence that they were manipulating nicotine levels and that they knew cigarettes were cancers before the public did exactly yeah this is go ahead i was just gonna say and there's there's a lot of parallels between this investigation and the settlement reached with the tobacco industry about you know it's kind of fundamentally misleading the public about the harms of its products um carbon pollution being for exxon mobile another thing that uh settlement recent settlement very recent that we compare this to is the Volkswagen case where they were polluting and and cheating the system basically on their pollution and they just settled for 14.7 billion dollars now it's relying about polluting over seven years and so if you kind of multiply that by the 40 years the exxon it has allegedly lied about the knowledge of climate change then that's a pretty hefty sum for them we really give the obama administration enough time eight years wasn't enough there was something beginning to happen that started under holder and then lynch at the justice department where they began to prosecute corporations you know they put the private colleges they didn't necessarily put them out of business but they put a lot of private universities out of business they're kind of putting private prisons out of business and i was getting really optimistic that if hillary became president this would continue and we'd see something that we really have not seen for decades i don't even think we saw that under the clinton administration where the justice department began to say okay if corporations are people then the people in those corporations are well not going to go to prison but they're going to be fined we're going to go after them we were beginning we were beginning to see that recently weren't we yeah yeah absolutely and and we're not going to see that now this is a new he's basically putting people in charge of cabinet positions that they want eliminated for example rick perry the former governor of texas the longest serving governor of texas he's been nominated to run the department of energy that's the department he couldn't remember he had three departments he wanted to eliminate during his 2012 debate oops moment so it's always good for exxon when a mouth breather is running energy why is it especially good for exxon if this specific intellectual light weight rick perry is running energy yes running running energy and and our nuclear weapons as well a lot of what nuclear energy is what they they work on a lot there so as kind of we've talked about a lot all of all of these nominees and these kind of critical cabinet positions have been funded in their political roles by exxon mobile and rick perry's no different he has taken forty thousand dollars just in his most recent gubernatorial election from exxon mobile and in his role at department of energy if he's confirmed he would be you know over overseeing a lot of research into exxon mobile competitors in alternative fuels and electric vehicles and so that kind of stuff could really go away without funding being directed towards it i read in your article that exxon is against electric vehicles because because the ads that i see there are there championing all these alternative fuel sources and your article says that they they're against electric vehicles in the united kingdom at least they have lobbied pretty hard against electric vehicles there and in their sec reports here they've noted that alternative fuels are a threat to their business so their ads they're not telling the truth in their ads surprise one of the things i do i'm probably gonna get kicked off twitter i keep getting these promoted tweets from exxon on my feed so i tweet back to them you know you're destroying our planet your pathological liars the only government building rec spiller sin should be invited into is a prison cell i have a feeling twitter is good i have i have not been successful on twitter i've been more successful on facebook hey i've turned this conversation it's all about me not the planet it's my twitter followers my number of twitter followers okay this is gonna i'm gonna get to rec spiller sin in a second let's eat our vegetables this is gonna be hard so we're gonna this is i don't know if i'm gonna understand this president like trump's nominee to lead the department of interior is montana congressman ryan zinke this involves the leasing of public lands and royalty rates my eyes glaze over i it's hard stuff and when it's hard stuff that's when the republicans they insinuate themselves in the the difficult stuff so we don't we can't pay attention and they steal everything from us so we need to know this help me but what is the department of interior do what are what are public lands and royalty rates what's going on here because i know this is where we're gonna wake up one day and find out that's where all of the damage was done absolutely and i you know i work on public lands primarily is what i work on and and i think you're right that some of these things can be very confusing and that's really where they try and get you on it when when it's a little bit too confusing to figure out right away and so one of the things that the department of energy does is they manage all tax to buy your department of interior department of interior apartment interior sorry i misspoke they manage all taxpayer owned natural resources on public lands so public lands most people know national parks national forests things like that wildlife refuges those are all public lands and then there's bureau of land management lands which are also public lands and they're popular for hiking and outdoor recreation but they also are used for oil and gas production for alternative energy production as well is the bureau of land management underneath the department of interior so yes it's part of the department of the interior and so the they lease these lands to companies like exxon mobile to drill and get oil and gas from and we charge royalties on those that go to taxpayers and those royalties are very low and haven't actually been changed in over 30 years exxon mobile is one of the companies that leases lands and they i think a couple of years ago they leased about i don't know almost four billion dollars of taxpayer resources and we get about 12 percent is is what taxpayers get on that and so if those royalty rates are either not changed the department of the interior under obama has been looking to increase those to kind of make it more fair for taxpayers because those numbers are very very low when you compare them to say state or private land leasing and so if those numbers under representative ryan zinke are lowered the royalty rates numbers are lowered or they are left the same then that can put a lot of money back into the pockets of exxon and other oil and gas companies but if you listen to cnn or fox or even msnbc except for rachel maddo when they talk about the department of interior and they talk about the bureau of land management they'll only tell us about the bundy standoff cliven bundy and his grazing rights and sovereign nations and people seceding a great distraction from what's really important which is the pillaging of our natural resources all right thank you for explaining that to me and you know it's just something you have to just stick with it and read read about it every day and some eventually it begins to make sense let's get to rex spillerson i i didn't realize this until i read your article and everybody should read this article it's over at the american progress dot org i realized after reading your article that rex spillerson being named to be secretary of state was a red herring a distraction so people wouldn't notice the the the other exxon mobile puppets who are being installed within the cabinet so rex spillerson if he becomes secretary of state how does that benefit exxon mobile so i think yeah and in the obvious way that he has been a lifelong long exxon employee most recently their ceo he it's tough to believe that maybe he would be looking out for the best interests of everyday americans rather than still holding on to some of his corporate interests and so as secretary of state his relationships with other countries is primarily how he could benefit exxon mobile while he's not there exxon produces oil and gas in 22 countries and i think most recently have had plans to expand that we also know that rex spillerson has close ties to russia that's what during his confirmation hearing that he got questioned on that a lot and there is a lot of oil and gas in russia and a lot of oil and gas that exxon mobile would like to be further producing but haven't been able to right now because of us sanctions against russia we put in sanctions against russia after they seize crimea which maybe they're entitled to some say they they had every right to take crimea and we ended up blocking a pipeline that putin wanted an exxon wanted if he becomes secretary of state pipelines fall under the purview of state like the big pipeline from the canadian tar sands that we're still waiting to hear about right exactly so international pipelines are also under the purview of the secretary of state and the most famous i think that you reference is the keystone xl pipeline that the president-elect trump has talked a lot about as secretary of state tillers and could you know speed up the approval of international pipelines and that would help exxon because they have a lot of stock in the canadian tar sands i think about 35 percent of their holdings most recently were in tar sands so getting those to market could really be a windfall for them so aggravating it really is it is and i think you're right that in some ways you know a little bit of a red herring it seems so obvious that restillerson might help benefit exxon mobile but really trump has seemed to try and stock his cabinet with as many people funded by the oil and gas industry and even exxon mobile in particular that they could really have some impactful decisions for future of the company yeah how do you keep from being overwhelmed by all this information how do you keep your head on straight because it's definitely a concerted effort by trump and bannon and kushner they're really manipulating the public just throwing so much stuff at us it's like a document dump there's so much corruption you can't your head is spinning how do you stay focused and not just how do you get out of bed yeah i well i don't know that i do but i don't know that i have a great answer for that except for that you're completely right i mean this wednesday they had trump's first press hearing and and so long and they had tillers and going and sessions going and congress doing a voter rama trying to repeal obama care but we're seeing almost every single one of these cabinet nominees that i mentioned are having hearings one day after the next they get zanky on tuesday prude on wednesday and rick perry on thursday and so it really is just a you know a document dump that try and get a handle on um and try and pick out what's what's really most important before you go i want to look up haliburton which was dick chainies company i'm going to find out its price performance let me just see for a second this is so haliburton was was uh dick chainies company and he was made vice president uh and he left haliburton all right so when in 2000 in 2000 the price of haliburton stock was 19 dollars and 22 cents when dick chainie on january 18th of 2002 it dropped to five dollars a share by 2005 it was up to 36 dollars it hit a new high by june 27th of 2008 it went up to 52 dollars a share so when he left office when he left office it was worth 52 dollars so he when he took office it was 21 dollars a share when he left it doubled in eight years that's not nothing that's not nothing well and you're not nothing jenny roland is research and advocacy associated for public lands at the center for american progress her recent piece how exxon won the 2016 election is available over at american progress dot org she joined us today from washington thank you for being so generous with your time yeah thank you for having me on coming up my conversation with mattifias schwarz please friend me on facebook follow me on twitter do all your amazon shopping via the david feldman show website don't forget for as little as five dollars a month you can support this show by becoming a monthly subscriber we take all major credit cards when you're a monthly subscriber you get free access to all our premium content donald trump nominated general james and mattis a retired marine for defense secretary calling him the closest america has to a general patent general mattis 66 was a four-store general and as head of the united states central command from 2010 to 2013 he was deemed too hawkish on iran and for that reason was fired by president obama one of the stumbling blocks to mattis running defense is the 1947 national security act mandating that the secretary of defense be appointed from civilian life mattifias schwarz writes for the intercept and he joins us today from capitol hill the senate arm service committee hearings on the mattis waiver are just wrapping up uh very quickly what is the mattis waiver uh so general mattis needs congress to pass a waiver in order to become secretary of defense due to the 1947 law you mentioned uh which says you have to be out of the arm services well initially said 10 years and that was later reduced to the years and mattis has only been up for three three or four years so congress has to pass a new law for him to become secretary of defense and instead of the normal 50 votes 51 votes that a point he would need from the senate he actually needs 60 uh in order to get that law on the books and and clear the way for him to be in charge of the pentagon under trump and that's what the hearings so far have been about uh well this hearing was preliminary mattis was not there uh it was with a couple of academics experts uh one was dr elliott cohen talking about where this law came from and the history of of of civilian control the military in the u.s the other one was cathleen hicks i believe and that's right that's right and these are being chaired by by senator john mccain the senate arm services committee and and he's the chair and and and i believe they were called to the behest of senator reid of road island will the waiver be passed before or after general mattis testifies before the committee uh it's unclear it seems likely that it would be after but you know the senate is in session now uh and it's not it's not all together clear right i will also have to pass for the break that that will make that process i'm sorry you broke it you were breaking up a little say that again please have to bill before the break that the fast process easier senate rules are a little busy and seen so go over that for me first of all i haven't read the constitution recently confirmation is only the purview of the senate when it comes to defense secretary that's right but in order for general mattis to become defense secretary there actually needs to be a new law um sort of setting aside this requirement uh that that the secretary of defense be out of military service for seven years so this would be the 1947 national security act that needs to be rewritten yeah or there needs to be a new law you know that i think the law that they're talking about now would be a very narrowly tailored exception that would say the next person who is appointed secretary of defense who meets these you know criteria this law would not apply to so it would be a one-time exception to the 47 law right now the senate rules require a majority for a secretary of defense that's right that's right in order to pass this law you would need to have 60 votes so the democrats could block it because you need 60 votes to invoke cloture and prevent a filibuster uh now senator jillabrand of new york has said that she's going to oppose the waiver so there does appear to be one senator who potentially would be ready to block it um so they'll need 60 to pass to pass this law and give him the waiver you know one of the reasons a lot of americans don't pay attention is it is complicated so i just want to spell this out if you don't mind in order for the in order for general mattis to be approved by the senate the new rules are just a simple majority that's right but he it's unclear whether he would be constitutionally allowed to assume the office if you were in violation of this 1947 statute requiring that the secretary of defense comes to billion life so there's two things that have to happen one the senate has to confirm him and two congress has to pass a new law granting him a waiver for this 1947 prohibition if they don't pass the law it's unclear whether he'd be able to become secretary of defense legally so just that we're clear here it requires 60 votes to pass the waiver but 51 votes for him to be confirmed as secretary of confirmed as secretary of defense elliott cone he's a professor of strategic studies at johns hopkins university testified today on behalf of the waiver he says that mattis would act as a stabilizing force on trump's watch how much should people who don't like trump trust somebody like general mattis i don't know if that's a good idea to to trust the government trust is a dangerous word i think uh dr kellen does have a point that general mattis is among the more experienced and moderate of trump's appointment so far there have been reports that he actually wanted to make um michelle flornoi who was widely received uh perceived to be hillary clinton's choice for secretary of defense's deputy and that she actually met with the president like to discuss that decided that she didn't want to so uh he he has been um you know nearly as moderate and apolitical as most folks in senior positions in the military are these days far more so than trump's other military appointees michael flinn his national security advisor and john kelly his choice for the department of homeland security well they call him mad dog and when somebody compares a general to patin uh my reading of history is that patin wasn't the sanest of our military yeah i don't you know cohen said that he'd never heard anyone use them in uniform use the mad dog you know appellation um we know that southern books he's written some pretty eloquent emails about the importance of reading if you did want to look at his record the thing to look at would be his conduct of the taking of philugia and in uh in in the early part of the first of the iraq war um he was the marine general who george w discharge were taking back to city and there have been you know a lot of allegations that um that there were you know unnecessary civilian casualties there were you know more than a thousand insurgents hiding out in philugia and you know urban warfare is not a pretty thing but that that would be the one aspect of his record that you know that that that you know if you wanted to push those questions that congress could focus on did torture happen on his watch in iraq not that we know of and he came down pretty hard on a abu gharib which i believe he was he was sort of tangentially connected to in command of course trump has said that mattis has changed his mind at least to some degree on whether waterboarding which is a form of torture should be brought back uh you know he said that to the new york times a few weeks ago which which is part of why people haven't so supportive this sense that he could this sense that he could he could moderate the the president elects views he had a mea kelpa mea kelpa with abu gharib right he called it one of the most embarrassing moments if not the most embarrassing moment of his career right yeah i i i believe that he did i think that is correct he has come out against waterboarding but now president elect boy that's hard to trip off the tongue president elect title trump says that he's changed his mind on waterboarding or has he pretty much remained steadfast opposed to waterboarding uh no no no president like trump said that mattis changed trump minds at least to some trump's mind at least to some degree on waterboarding in his interview with the new york times editorial board he said that he just met with general mattis and that um you know mac a cigarette and a couple cans of beers and with waterboarding if you were interrogating you know and an al-qaeda prisoner and a lot has been made of this remark by trump and people have sort of turned that into a suggestion that trump's own views about torture may be moderating and that mattis could potentially be a stabilizing force on his thinking but that's really all we get from trump is just these kind of like throw away moments and quotes and tweets and little glimpses and i don't think anyone really knows what his opinions about these things are uh and and who will really be part of his inner circle now of course the secretary defense is part of like the national security committee the the secretary defense is one of the principles so if the trump white house looks anything like those before it you know he will be one of the the people in the room when the big decisions get made uh now will trump abide by that precedent he's certainly set many others aside so you know who knows it's all kind of up for grabs at this point mattify as schwarz writes for the intercept you have a great article about the mattis waiver president elect trump went to the military academy as an adolescent but never served in our military he seems to get his information from the shows doesn't read loves the movie patent and we're hoping that he's not really going to be in charge right he's going to kind of play the king and vice president elect pens will be the prime minister and that trump really won't be making the important decisions in the situation room that will be left to the generals is that that's not what our founding fathers wanted and we'll get to that in a second because you write a lot about that but is that what they're hoping for in capitol hill even the republicans that donald trump kind of just tweets in the situation room while the the adults are in charge well that is with the transition that is what trump's campaign report reportedly told uh governor john casick of ohio when they offered him the job of vice president they told him that if trump won he would be the most powerful vice president in history and that trump wasn't really that engaged in day-to-day things i find that hard to believe i think trump's whole identity and brand which is the thing he's most obsessed with his focus solely on him being in charge and i find it i you know i think he'll there'll be things that he aren't he isn't interested in and that that will be an important you know area of his administration to watch but in terms of the big issues i i find it hard to believe that he won't be putting his personal stamp on all of them and and and letting everyone know that that he's the boss that seems to be what his whole life is about well you write some really leading questions in the intercept about this mutiny and the need for generals to follow the orders of their president in the intercept you write that the senate armed services committee needs to ask general madis what his stance is on mutiny and whether or not a general is obligated to follow the orders of our president this sort of issue of muscle memory um with you know if he served in the military will he see a president and a sort of colleague in whose cabinet he's serving in and who constitutionally he's going to give advice to or will he see a commander in chief to take orders from now one thing i didn't say in this story that's important to note is that there's a difference in the oath that enlisted men in the military take in the oath that officers take and listen men swear in oath to follow the orders of command simply taking oath to uphold the constitution they don't actually swear enough to follow orders so they do have a different culture and there is uh a larger degree of of independence and republicanism that runs through the officer corps and and i think madis has done enough reading uh to to know that but it is something that the congress needs to keep an eye on yeah i i want to i hate to use the term unpack but i do want to unpack this during the oliver north contragate hearings i remember oliver north being told that after the nuremberg trials it was enshrined in the military that you are not supposed to obey orders if they're illegal because after world war two a lot of the the nazi general say i was just following orders and the takeaway from that experience was that american soldiers were not allowed to just follow orders if those orders were deemed illegal what is the difference between mutiny and not following orders that you deemed illegal well the problematic word in that question is illegal because there's a lot of awful things that president trump could do uh under certain readings of executive authority that are perfectly legal such as launch a quote unquote preemptive nuclear strike against someone who he needs to be a threat or such as torture uh you know we've seen the memos from the office of legal counsel written during the term of president george w bush by john you explaining white white torture white water warning is not torture even though we all know that it is and multiple independent bodies have found that it is so that the president to a great extent is capable of making his own law principally through the you know the office of legal counsel so so the question is not so much whether mattis would follow you know illegal orders but but just whether the extent to which he'd be able to to flex his own judgment uh and and change the actions you know flowing from an office whose powers have grown tremendously i mean we saw you know sort of a great wave of executive power that got curtailed in watergate and then there was a second wave that got curtailed you know during the iran contra affair and now we're at the crest of a third wave and it still hasn't been pushed back and you can look at some of the precedents that president obama has said uh with his own olc findings and and some of them are quite frightening under rumsfeld he kind of ran the military as his own little country he dismissed the republican guard in iraq president bush didn't even know that the the greatest mistake that was made the reason isis uh rose up is because who's saying who's saying his army was dismissed in iraq and president bush found out about that ex post facto uh right is that what mattis is just going to do he's just i mean is he just gonna not consult trump or i mean what go back to mutiny what constitutes mutiny in the constitution well this is just the the reading the commander-in-chief clause is that acting as commander-in-chief you know the president has authority on service that doesn't apply to the secretary of defense it is a civilian role and it is part of the president's cabinet um so there's no requirement that mattis obey the president in terms of what rumsfeld did with bush that i'm sorry you said i'm sorry you said there is no what that he obeys the president there's no there's no constitutional requirement that as secretary defense he he carry out the president's orders now if he doesn't the president can dismiss him of course but it's not it's not illegal for him to to not follow orders in the same way that it would be for like an enlisted soldier because he will be serving in a civilian role even though he is a former general well that's really important it is not he's not constitutionally mandated to follow the commander-in-chief's orders because he's a civilian not a member of the military so legally if he doesn't follow the president's orders the worst that can happen to him as he gets fired yeah that's right yeah that's his job it's his job to carry out the president's policies but it's it's a but it's no different from the secretary of health and and human services or the the secretary of labor it's a it's a purely civilian relationship between the secretary of defense and the president and it's not something that he could be court-martialed for it's not a violation of of the uniform code of military justice even though he is a retired general as secretary defense he'll be there it'll be a civilian job as secretary of defense will remain a civilian job and that's baked into the federalist papers you write what did our founding fathers believe when it came to civilian rule of the military they were afraid of standing armies that was one of their big complaints against the english english rule is these big standing armies that were kept everywhere they felt that was a threat to republicanism and they wanted a small volunteer army that would expand in times of crisis now we kind of set that aside after world war two we never really demilitarized demilitarized after world war two uh you know we've been you know trying to run at least half the world since then uh so a little some of these concepts are a little bit antique the one that isn't is that the military is not autonomous it it's controlled by the president and um to a lesser degree lately by congress which can only appropriate budgets to the military for two years at the most that's in the constitution so the military takes direction from uh two branches of government the executive and the legislative and uh it is not autonomous it is not it's not capable of giving itself orders those those orders flow down uh mostly mostly from the president we've been talking with matthias schwarz uh you are a reporter for the intercept and do you specialize in military what are you specializing over there i'm a national security reporter for the intercept uh i contribute to the new york or in the new york times magazine as well great thank you so much for your time i'll let you get back to the hearings i hope you'll come back real soon yeah yeah i'd love to thank you it's a pleasure thanks for getting down into the nuts and bolts thank you want to thank jenny roland from american progress matthias schwarz from the intercept bob powers and davis cyrus two great comedy writers you all made this a perfect show thank you again if you enjoyed any portion of this show please copy and paste the link and post it to dig stumble upon facebook twitter send it to your friends your relatives share the information share the knowledge become a monthly subscriber for as little as five dollars a month you can gain access to our premium content for five dollars a month did i 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