Miami Metro catches killers, and they say it takes a village to race one. Anyone knows how powerful urges can be, it's me. Catch Dexter Morgan in a new serial killer origin story. It's hunger inside of you. It needs a master. Featuring Patrick Gibson, Christian Slater, special guest star, Sarah Michelle Geller, with Patrick Denzey and Michael C. Hall as Dexter's inner voice. I wasn't born a killer. I was made. Dexter: Original Sin. New series now streaming on the Paramount Plus with Showtime Plan. Go to paramountplus. Com to try it free. Terms apply. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, welcome to the Weekly Show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart. That was welcoming and open as I could possibly muster. We are shooting this. This is the Tuesday after the Super Bowl. I don't know when this is going to be airing in your earphones. God knows how much the world is going to change between the time that we are talking right now and recording it and the time that are going to be absorbing and consuming it. But coming off the Super Bowl, I had this feeling, how do I draw the parallels between the game we saw, the things that we saw during the Super Bowl in the current moment?

Isn't that clever? To draw a line between the Super Bowl and our current moment and what the Democrats are. And I'll say this, I am a Giants fan, New York football Giants. The New York football Giants have experienced a really interesting year in that we sucked and shit the bed a bit. When I say we, I don't mean we, I mean they, but I'm a fan, so I'm going to throw myself into the mix. We won three games, Decisions that we made were terrible. But there was one decision in particular, which was the letting go of a running back by the name of Saquon Barkley. Saquon Barkley is a unbelievable, not just talent, athletics, but as a human being, to really the indefinable aspects of his personality that make him an incredible teammate and an incredible leader. The Giants were recorded over the summer saying, Yeah, we're not going to pay that guy. Why would we pay that guy, the most talented running pack and human ever maybe to have graced this locker room? No, he's out. The owner of the Giants said, Well, as long as he doesn't go to the Eagles, Well, guess what?

He went to the Eagles. It was the personnel decision equivalent of the butt fumble, which is the famous New York Jets, Mark Sanchez running into the ass of his own offensive lineman and losing a And the reason I bring it up is, boy, to the giants, feel like the Democratic Party in that the personnel decisions that they're... Everything that they are doing could not work out more humiliatingly and continues to do so. I don't know what a draft pick the Democrats are going to get this year. I don't even know if there's a draft lottery in politics or any of those kinds of things. But boy, they better clean their shit up if they want to compete because the ass-kicking that's been laid upon them in all aspects sometimes feels like a permanent state. But damn, hope springs eternal. So who knows? Maybe the Democrats draft their Shador Sanders or their... I don't know. This is probably too sporty for everybody who even listens to this. But more importantly, we are going to get to discussions about the Democratic Party with someone who is well-versed in all aspects of it, having served as a White House press secretary, having served in the Obama administration, having worked at the State Department.

We're just going to get to our guest today. We're going to break down what we believe are the positives, the negatives, what can be done for this New York football Democratic Party. Let's just get to it. Getting right to it. Delighted to be joined today. Host of MSNBC's Inside with Jen Saki in the new MSNBC podcast, The Blueprint with Jen Saki, former White House Press Secretary under Joseph Robinette Biden, and joins us now, Jen Saki.

Great to be here. I loved how you said Robinette there, first of all. I'll just note that.

I like to give the presidents their full due with all the names that God has graced them with. Yes. Jen Saki. Let me begin with a rather intemperate question.

Okay, I'm ready.

What the fuck is going on here?

I was hoping you were going to tell me.

I'm sorry. Let Let me check my notes. You were pressed. You were inside the guts of a White House. You saw how the sausage is made inside the White House. You saw the pace of newsmaking. You saw the pace of executive actions. Tell us, cadence-wise, tempo-wise, what are you seeing as the differences between this president's first... How long has he been president? Ten years now, Trump?

How long has this been? Ten and a half years to three weeks, somewhere between three weeks to 10 and a half years.

It's been three weeks. What are you seeing about just purely on pace? What are we dealing with?

Well, by pace, I think the amount of activity and movement is a lot, but it's that movement. I think what is very different, to state the obvious, is the absolute gutting of agencies and civil servants and people who have worked in government for decades. That's not something, obviously, we did or any Democratic or Republican administration has done.

The premise right now is democracy was on the ballot for this election. And so if that's the case, democracy got its ass kicked, ironically, by the very thing that it said was on the ballot, democracy. He won the election. He got the popular vote. They kept the Senate, they kept the House. So The idea right now that I'm hearing the most from the Democrats is he is eroding our democracy. There are procedural ways by which he is doing that, not honoring separation of powers. My argument is also that democracy is eroded by the people not feeling that it's agile or responding to your needs. Is that what has How did he put us in this situation? Did people vote on democracy being too analog in this digital world, not responding agile enough? And now, by going through this real executive unitary reordering of constitutional powers? Is he doing the people's bidding? Is he doing this thing that will make democracy? How do you process that?

Well, one of the ways I process it is that I feel like when Democrats, and including people who are on television in a variety of ways, we're saying things like, authoritarianism is under threat and democracy is on the ballot, I think we were speaking in a manner that was so academic an Ivory Tower, it wasn't talking about a lot of the things people actually care about. I don't know that people voted against democracy. I think they voted in some ways against protection of status quo and the disconnected academic Ivory Tower elite language that is too often used by Democrats, sometimes on cable television. What? I'm just being honest. How dare you? I'm being honest. No, that was one of my takeaways after the election was cross-authoritarianism and oligarchy out of every script. Nobody talks this way. I I don't think that's the only thing, but I do think looking back at the election, one of the outcomes, I hope people who are not thrilled by the Trump administration, which is a whole lot of people take away, is that Democrats and people running weren't talking to a large swath of the country. They were talking to a small group of people, progressives.

They were talking to people who were primarily focused on things that were, in my view, more academic than they were were real issues.

What part in your mind was academic? I want to get, is it they were talking civics when they should have been talking something that was more directly impacting people's lives?

Yes. I think the threat of fascism is a huge issue. The threat of authoritarianism, huge issue. This guy is an aspiring dictator. His words, not mine. All of those are huge issues. I I also think Liz Cheney is very heroic.

Wait, what? Where did that come from?

Here we are. What the? Here we are. But I don't think closing the campaign with a message about fighting democracy with a former Republican member of Congress was the right strategy. I'm not saying that's why they lost. No. What I'm saying is there were millions of people who didn't turn out to vote, many of whom have in the past leaned toward democratic issues, toward democratic candidates. And Trump somehow massively won on issues like the economy, even though his primary position is that he wants to lower tax cuts for corporations and the highest income Americans. That reality means maybe something isn't going well.

Obviously, he would not say that that's his primary position. But could it be said that the lived experience of Americans is that, look, Ronald Reagan had it in the '80s. What's the scariest thing that can happen? It's somebody from the government coming to your house and going, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. The idea being that Democrats are the party of the government.

And institutions.

And institutions.

And status quo.

And the status quo. I don't view that in any way as progressives. So when we talk about, oh, it's the elites and progressives and things like that.

You're right. Maybe progressives is not... You're right. That is not the right way progressives to describe it. It's elites is the right way to describe it.

Now we're talking. Now, this is the conversation that press secretaries have. Is this how press secret... When you're in the back room- I just acknowledged I was wrong in one of the things I said. But how much is messaging about arguments over the right word to choose versus the impact of policy? Have the Democrats lost themselves in message speak and lost sight of that broader goal?

Well, I think the democratic message speak still needs a lot of work. But I think, just to go back to the original part of your question on the press secretary job, I think the people who do it best or try to do it the best are the ones who are focused on the policy and understanding it so that you could answer the 18th question. You're not worried about exactly every word. You're not trying to like, I'm going to say this thing and it's going to be a zinger and go viral. You don't think like that. You think about understanding the policy so that you can push the system internally and provide more information publicly. That's not always how people think it works, but that's how it should work and how I think it worked or tried to make it work when I was in the job.

I wonder if this idea now, when I'm watching the cable news now and the Democratic messaging about what Elon is doing and Doge and all those other things, the point that you made oligarchy and civics and separation of powers, maybe not being where... Not that they're not concerns, but that's not where the messaging should be. It feels like that message hasn't gotten through because I'm hearing an awful lot about separation of powers and very little about defending USAID or defending... I'm not hearing a lot about, Here's the specific program that is so valuable, And by not funding that, this is what we lose. To be fair, there's been some attempts at that, but the overwhelming majority has been, we are sleepwalking into a constitutional crisis, again, taking the bait of the larger thing and not defending the efficiency or value of the programs.

I would take it just one step farther. I worked at the State Department. I think USAID is a tremendous institution. I don't think it should be a front and center top messaging argument. Should people in Congress defend and use every lever of their power to prevent the Trump administration from gutting it? Yes, because they play a pivotal role around the world, cracking down on corruption, defending a free press a million things. But I guess when it comes to how the Democrats are communicating with the public, the things that the Trump administration are doing that they should be talking about more, in my view, are getting access to people's personnel information, their social security data, anybody who's applied for a government job, that's millions of people. Halting programs, which a judge this week said they haven't actually put back in place all of the halting of the funding that they said they had. Those are the things that if you are not really, if you think government is... Government is not popular, as you all know. Congress is not popular.

Why would that be?

Right, I don't know. Institution is not popular. If you're trying to reach people who are like, government, Washington, then talk about how this program that's being cut off is helping your kids have early childhood education. It's helping you get Medicaid access. It's helping you farmers have subsidies.

But that seems obvious, Jen. Yes, it is. So why are they not doing it?

I wish I knew the answer to that question.

That is the most painful sigh I have ever I've heard.

I've retired from the world of democratic messaging in some ways. I think some people do it better than others. I think it is easy to get caught up in the, we're in a constitutional crisis, and we very well may be. I'm not trying to downplay that reality. When you have a president, which seems to be what's happening, and an administration who are defying a court order that is ignoring the one branch of government. That is technically, I think as lawyers would define it, constitutional crisis.

Right. Well, then through an appeal, we got a little way- Through it could be. A little bit down the road, but yes.

A road to a constitutional crisis. How's that? That's what a press secretary does. See?

The road to constitutional crisis. We smooth it. Boy, if that's not a title of a Rachel Maddow special, I don't know what is.

Well, there may be. And then you're like, How did she incorporate cigarettes, girafes, Zimbabwe? It's like some- A beautiful mom. Brain genius that my brain doesn't function that way. Yeah, I think some people do it better than others. I think there is an ease in using some of this rhetoric that is applauded by people who are very loud on social media platforms when it's like, It is an oligarchy, or it is Yesterday, last night on my show, I talked about what a constitutional crisis actually is because people came throwing on constitutional crisis, constitutional crisis. I'm like, Does everybody know what that means? Maybe they do. But I was like, This is what it is. People were messaging me on social Media platform is always dangerous when you look that up and they're like, We know what it is. Stop explaining it to us. It's like, Well, okay.

Stop explaining things, news person.

Sorry. But I think there is a following the soccer ball of everybody's calling it a tech oligarchy. We're all talking about fascism. It's not that they're not issues. It's just that that message was not connecting with a majority of the public. And so that's where I think there needs to be a re-addressing.

All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. And we're back. Okay, so What do you think are the important things? I have my own opinion about what I would like to understand. What are the important things if you're the news? Here's what I would like to see focused on.

Yeah, let's hear it.

What are the mechanics of this audit? How is this audit being conducted? It seems awfully quick. I've never heard of an audit that goes in in two days later and like, this is a criminal operation. Like they've uncovered a cartel. It's very easy to go in and pick a program They'll say, they're spending $15 million a year on condoms for the Taliban. And you're like, I'm pretty sure the Taliban don't fuck that much. I just can't- That's one way to look at it, but probably true. Right.

Yeah.

So What they've done is they've taken the mantle of efficiency, which I think a lot of people feel like is long overdue in government, uncovering waste and fraud and abuse. But it seems like it's a Trojan horse for an ideological reordering. So I would love to know what the mechanics of this are, and I haven't seen much of it.

I would also like to know, how do they know they've destroyed the data that they pulled out when they had access to it. I'd also like to know what can Congress exactly do? I mean, if we're calling on them to do things and Democrats are in the minority, they have limited power. What should they push to do? I mean, should there be a push to subpoena people from DOGE? I think so. I mean, these are some of the things, yes, I've lived in Washington and worked here on and off for a long time, but we've never been in this exact scenario before. So the piece that I'm most interested in is what now, right? What What are the levers that can be used? Obviously, the courts have been active. How many of these cases could go to the Supreme Court? They're only going to probably pick maybe a few. I don't know, but that's what legal experts say. Which ones and what does that mean for executive power? These are the questions I also have that I think to me, one of the wake up, I don't know if it was a wake up call, but one of the things I've thought a lot about since the election was if we're out there every day and screaming fascism, constitutional crisis, the When the world is ending, it's not answering people's questions.

If they're ending the show and that's all I'm screaming at them, what did they learn or what did they gain from the experience of watching the show? And now, as you know, sometimes you have people on and you ask them these questions and they don't answer them or they can't answer them or they don't have the information, and that's fine. But in this moment, as it's so fast moving, I also feel this interest, but also responsibility to try to pull out What are the levers that can be done? What are the checks on power that can still be utilized?

Do you think this is a punishment that the voters in the country, because right now it's still broadly popular.

On all of us, is the punishment on?

In some ways, is it a punishment on what they think was the Democrats inability to effectively improve their everyday lives? And What I'm interested in is a triage for the Democrats of seeing that there's an understanding of how they ended up in this position. I don't see that yet, and I don't know if your experience is different.

I don't see that yet. I either. That is not to go back to plug my own podcast, and I'm not really trying to do that, but I'm going to do it for a second.

Hey, what the? Well, listen.

This was actually one of the things in the weeks after the election where I It wasn't that I was shocked out of my mind that Trump won. I mean, I've been in politics. I've traveled around the country. But how did this happen and why did this happen and what can be learned from it, which I think is pivotal to understanding in order to figure out how to move forward, which I think is the part of what I'm hearing from what you're saying. I don't think there's one answer. I know that there are efforts in different places to explore that question. I I think the DNC is doing one. I don't know what will come out of that. I'm keeping my expectations low. But that's to me, it is a multitude of things. It is how the Democrats are communicating about issues, but it's also maybe it's a policy question, too. And let's not all just call it a messaging issue because it may not just be a messaging issue. It's misinformation and disinformation. And that's not just everybody shorthands this as, If Democrats only appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast. I'm like, I'm not sure. I don't know that he's inviting many, maybe he is, but that it's not the only answer.

I think there's a lot of layers of it. It's also the candidates people run. That's not a hack on Kamal Harris. I mean, in different races as well. Sometimes there have been purity tests in the Democratic Party that aren't particularly constructive. The purity test should be, can you win? And will you be a part of the caucus? Because the majority helps make things happen. I don't have an answer yet, but this is the thing that I want to explore.

Do you think the Democratic Party is principled.

I do think. Sometimes, I don't want to say too principled because that is not a good thing to say. But I think principled, yes. The Democratic Party, writ large, are defenders of institutions that make the country run the rule of law. This is part of the problem, right? They are believers in the separation of government.

Here's where we're getting into it. I think other people would say that's a veneer and that what Donald Trump is doing is exposing. He's actually explicitly exposing the dark heart of how the world actually works. Sort of that idea of, Hey, man, It's corrupt. I know how to run a corrupt system of quid pro quo. I mean, look, this is the final boss battle in some ways of Citizens United, where they're basically saying money talks, bullshit walks, and that's how things are done. I mean, they're making it so that United States companies can't get in trouble for bribing foreign leaders. When he said that he was draining the swamp, right? I understood that as where I understand that phrase as, We are going to crack down on corruption. I think what he's saying is, That's not how the world works. So I am going to exploit corruption because we're the biggest bullies on the planet, and it's time that we swing our thing and make that happen and say things like, Hey, Canada.

I mean, why are you going to- Why Canada?

But is he basically exposing how the world and how business actually works?

First of all, now I'm going to I'm thinking about Donald Trump swinging his thing, which is a phrase you just- Please don't do that. You just used.

I apologize for that. It was in the rip. It was a Teddy Roosevelt- It was in the rip. Big stick thing, and I fucked it all up.

I got it. All right. Okay. I think what it is exposing is how he thinks the world should work, right? And how he thinks business, to your point, should work.

But does it work that way, Jen?

I don't think that actually government does work that way.

Really?

I think there are corrupt people in both parties. We know that for... Look, Eric Adams, well, I guess who knows what's happening with him next. Menendez, they're corrupt people. But I think that for the most part, the people who have been leading the Democratic Party, at least in recent years, have been trying to do good in more of a way of protecting rule of law, of trying to stand up for people in this country than what we have seen from what has become Trump's Republican Party. It's not the party of Mitt Romney or John McCain anymore from what that version of the Republican Party is.

But that party was ineffective to a large. That's what I'm saying. The world doesn't work that way. When we say we're promoting democracy and goodness throughout the world, and yet we bomb the shit out of two countries for 20 years, create untold instability in a region because of our own interests. What he's saying is, I don't want to give money to Ukraine unless they're going to give us rare materials, rare earth materials, according to that value.

But that may be giving him too much credit.

No, I think he said it literally.

I understand that. But also he loves Vladimir Putin and loves his dictatorial nature. And I think he also might be inclined to just say, You know what? You take whatever land you want and we'll end this whole thing, and then I can say, I ended this war. I don't know that he's actually going to stick to what said about Ukraine and who knows? But he says all sorts of things. I hear what you're saying. I think the history of the country led by Democrats and Republicans is imperfect. There's many moments, even before Afghanistan, even before Iraq, etc. But what I'm getting at, I think, is that Trump, I mean, what he is rebuilding the government as is in the model of loyalty to him, right?

No question there.

No question there. And that is not what I think leaders from other parties I mean, Republicans, too, have ever tried to do in modern history.

It's old school. It's old school patronage. It's what civil service was. The swamp was created to remove that aspect of patronage. But I wonder sometimes how far have we really come from the model? And this is not about the administrative state. How far have we come from the model of searching the globe for cheaper materials and cheaper labor. When we pretend that we're doing it for moral value and freedom, are we kidding ourselves?

Maybe at times. I mean, and there are times- I mean, mostly. Well, look, I think there are also realities of... I worked at the State Department for a couple of years, and you'd go to meetings and you would do a readout of the meeting, and oftentimes it was like, Oh, we have to mention that we raised human rights. The human rights mention would have been five seconds of a two-hour meeting. That is a truth because there are... I'm acknowledging.

Look at the difference between the defense budget and the State Department budget. What's the defense budget? $850 billion. What's the State Department? Minimal. Fifty?

It is. Right. And if you don't cut the Defense Department budget, you're not going to make the cuts. Anyway, that's a setting aside. I do think, though, just to go back to... I do think most people who run for president, and I know there are exceptions in history, and we can talk about them, They do it because they want to make the country a better place. They want to defend people and represent people in the country. I don't think they do it necessarily because they want to have cheaper labor. Nobody runs, and that's not what they have in their mind.

But making it a better place means, look, capitalism is a system that is a profit-driven system, and it rewards growth and profit and distribution of capital. It seeks its lowest... It's why when we talk about globalization, destroying the inner manufacturing nature of our country, we also have that race to the bottom in the United States. Mexico is to America as South Carolina is to New York. They're always competing for that, that lower thing. So I think you can't separate when presidents say, I want to make it better, you can't separate it from the system that we operate that makes makes it better. Does that make sense?

Yes, I know what you're saying. However, I do think that the current situation we're dealing with is a very different destruct from internal- Or is it just a more explicit expression of that? I think it's different. Okay. And I think it's far more destructive. We've already talked, I know, about the getting into the payment systems, which is concerning. We've already talked about stopping programs that are benefiting people across the country. Then there's also now this loyalty test for people applying to work in intelligence and law enforcement. These are things that are rebuilding the government infrastructure in the model of Donald Trump. And that model across all of those branches or across all of those elements is based on pure loyalty to him and embracing, as you said, the corrupt approach to governing that he thinks is okay.

But don't you think we're talking about two separate things? Those are two separate things.

That may be.

One has set the environment up for the other. The weakness of our government to be responsive in those ways to the lives of the people has set up. That idea of globalization and retraining people instead of giving them the idea that Walmart can pay its people to the point where they have to go on food The systems that we've set up that we're defending, that our status quo, we subsidize pharmaceutical companies, we subsidize oil companies, yet we pay the highest drug prices. All those things have added up to this. The systems that we've created, were Democrats not urgent enough in the alarm bells going off about the corruption within our so-called status quo system?

Yes. I think that part of that was not addressing and listening to the core people who should have been the base and who are the base, I think, of the Democratic Party, which is a lot of working people who are impacted by exactly those policies you just outlined. So yes, it is different things. And part of it is also there are things that on its surface that Trump has said are... I mean, government is bloated. It is inefficient. And there are reasons why that should be addressed. The way to do that is not to have Elon Musk target people who have attended DEI trainings, right? Totally understand.

You're exactly right. But what did Kennedy say? If you make peaceful evolution impossible, you make revolution inevitable. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We shall be right back. We are back. Okay. My point is, and I'll be perfectly frank, I lean towards the Bernie and the Elizabeth Warren and all those sites economically. I've been shocked by how undemocratic the Democratic Party can be.

Tell me, what do you mean? I don't disagree with you necessarily, but what do you mean by that?

By putting their foot on the scales to make sure that Hillary Clinton comes out of the thing or make sure that they're listening to that anger about the way that even the ACA, quite frankly, struck me as a very conservative- You mean because it didn't have a public option in it?

Correct.

That it didn't address the very thing that was causing the foundational upset. If I were to break this down narrative, what I think the Democrats Let's have forgotten is government may not be perfect, but it's the only thing large enough to offset multinational corporate exploitation and corruption. If we don't act like that, it's urgent and that affects people's lives, then yeah. So if the big policies that we make are billions more dollars to insurance companies that we think are fucking people over left and right. So isn't that part of why people lost It's faith.

Yes. I think we're saying, well, I'm trying to say something similar, which is this, which is Democrats just lost everything. They control nothing. They control... I mean, they don't control the House, they don't control the Senate, they don't control the White House, and they don't control the Supreme Court. So now is the time to break some shit and break some China.

They do control the email list that continue to ask for money. They still have that.

Well, that's right. I don't even... It's like an overwhelming It's overwhelming. I hear the public option. Look, I worked for Obama. He would have been for the public option. He didn't think it could get through. Was he wrong? Maybe he was wrong.

But that's the point. It's the audacity of hope with the governance of the possible. And that's the point. Donald Trump is nothing, if not audacious. He manifestsists this way. Isn't there some part of you that believes- Yeah, but what does he produce, though?

Even if he sees tariffs as a success, it's not going to be, but he even had to pull back from that. It's like, what are the outcomes of his success of his grand proclamations?

Well, he accomplished them. He got the tax cuts that he wanted.

Okay.

I mean, he basically got the cabinet members that he wanted I mean, as you said, he's got- Well, he controls the Republican Party, so that is what he wanted. Right.

So he got some things he wanted. What I'm getting at is like, yes, the Affordable Care Act, imperfect. But it would have been that or nothing. That's how I think people at the time felt. And you disagree.

I completely disagree because look, this is a 50 to 60-year project that the Republicans have been on. They wanted abortion gone.

Yes.

So what did they do? They- Stack the courts. They stack the courts. They have a goal, and they go and they work for decades to achieve that goal. They stack the courts or they make regulations that make it It's impossible for small physicians' offices to provide the health care for women that would be necessary for those kinds of things, or they work through other measures. They don't go, Well, we'll never get that done. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to make sure that within planned parenthood, there is also an office of adoption, and that's what we're going to do. Then we're going to tout that as a victory. That's what I meant by principled. I disagree with it.

I would dispute this notion of the principles, and maybe this isn't what you're saying. So tell me if it's not. Please. Let's just take Russia, okay? Wait, what? I know.

How the... Hey, what?

Hello, Putin, if you're listening.

All right.

When I was working for Barack Obama, a number of... Most of the Republican Senate and caucus would say that he didn't arm the Ukrainians. He didn't provide the type of assistance persons that should have been done in 2014 and 2015. That was their argument. He's too soft on Russia. That was the court. Mitt Romney said, The biggest threat is Russia. Now they've turned around. They have not stuck by that principle, and they're confirming this person who lead the intelligence agency who befriended Putin, who's defended Putin, who's used the talking points, et cetera. Their principles are very flexible.

No, they're not. I disagree. I think that's very consistent with their principles.

Which is what? However they can win or whatever the dear leader says?

No. They view Putin and Hungary as allies in their- But they didn't used to. Not that. The Trump wing has always viewed them in that way, I think. The Trump wing That has viewed them as ideological allies. I should put it that way. Pro-christianity, defenders of what they consider to be Western values. The old battle was capitalism versus communism. Economic systems at play within the world and a world order and rules. I think the battle now is woke versus unwoke. In that battle, they view Hungary, Putin, and all those countries as aligned. They are natural allies to that group. The Republicans have been praising Putin for, as far as I can see, a couple of decades. There's some that view Russia as that, but at least in the media, there's always been a, he's really strong and Look, they are allied with those countries ideologically.

Okay, we can agree to disagree. This is democracy. What the heck? But not in the era of John McCain and Mitt Romney leading the party and what they thought the party stood for and what the party stood for. That's not the party anymore. But that was the party not that long ago, is my point. And some of the same people who were in that party are now blindly following Trump down the Russia's great, Putin's great rabbit hole.

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say they're saying they're great, and I understand what you're saying, but this whole principle thing on their end is power. Like, Mitch McDonald is the poster boy for not having... Even just now when they confirmed to Pete Hegzeth and three Republicans voted against it, oh, my God, now JD Vance has to come and break the tie. It's all theater.

Yeah.

But my point is it's a realignment of principle with woke versus unwoke being... They've said, the greatest danger of all is that. I think the Democrats have an incredible opportunity to be actual economic populace, not the bullshit populism that the right is putting out there as they're gutting OSHA and they're making it so that you can't regulate not really anything that possibly could affect workers in a bad way, but they have not embraced that with the fervor and directness that I think they need to.

I agree 100% with you. I think this is the issue where there was not a clear digestible message. Maybe there were policy issues underneath there, too. I don't want to undervalue that issue as well. To your point, it's like you got Got to be bold if people are going to feel like you're addressing their issue. The example, Harris talked about the opportunity agenda, which sounds like a poll-tested thing, and nobody knows what it means. That's right. There were very good things in there. Deep things in there. But that is the place where... Governor Westmore, Maryland. I was talking to him last week about this, and he said he used to run a poverty organization.

Robin hood. He was the head of Robin hood Foundation.

You know Robin hood? Yes. I don't know if everybody does, so I shorthanded it there.

Robin hood Foundation is a foundation where Wall Street people gather once a year to try to give money to offset them going to hell.

Okay, there you go. But they also give money.

And it doesn't... There's no level.

They also They don't get money.

That is the general.

Here's my point of the story.

They do great work, by the way. It's a fabulous organization.

They do great work, and they get money from all sorts of places. Point is, when he was running for governor, they were like, people, posters, people advising him were like, Don't use the word poverty. Don't use the word poverty. This is my point. There is a knee jerk. We have to talk about things in a poll-tested... It sounds like, and I know I keep using the word academic, and maybe that's not the best phrasing, but a way that feels like we're defending a PhD dissertation about the economy. Instead of talking about health care should be affordable, man, the minimum wage is not as high as it should be. We should be fighting for that. We're all in the sandwich generation. I'm in the sandwich generation. What does that sound like and feel like? It is a moment we're figuring out the messaging around that, and not just the messaging, but the messengers, because the messenger is the message. Who is delivering this, and are they talking about in a way that's accessible and real and authentic and passionate? And I don't think we know who that is yet, but that is part of it. And I think, yes, a big opportunity for the Democrats, but one, they got to figure out.

But I still think that the message and the messenger are tertiary. I wouldn't even say they're secondary.

What's secondary then? If primary is the policy.

Primary is the diagnosis. Here's what makes it so difficult. Trump's diagnosis about this world is not I think, insane or far off. I actually agree with a lot of what he says about the system is rigged.

Yeah, and that's how a lot of people feel.

I believe that to my core. The first part is diagnosis. Second is remedy. Third part is message. Remedy being principle based on diagnosis. I don't think they've diagnosed this well. I certainly don't think they've created remedy. Sure as shit, then the tertiary part of it, which is messaging, won't align. But the problem that I see is they're still fucking tied up in messaging.

It's not just that they're tied up. I agree with you. Tertiary? Okay, I'm down with the tertiary order of events here. Order of events, tertiary. What I mean... Well, I'm going to put the messenger in tertiary as well, and I think you did that, too. Just because what I mean by that is if you have somebody who's like, I am for an opportunity agenda. It's like people who are like, I can't pay for my health care are going to recognize they're not feeling it in the same way. That's what I mean. But the far too often is it's a messaging problem. It's a communications problem. Then, therefore, you skip over the things that are harder questions to answer, which is what should be the policy basis of what you're running on, which I think is what you're saying is the primary and secondary. I agree. And I don't know exactly what the basis of that, what that is right now for the Democratic Party.

Well, I remember it was during Clinton's term, and you were probably... By the way, Jen Saki and I, we went to the same college, the College of William Marion, Williamsburg, Virginia. Jen, when did you graduate?

2000.

So I just missed you.

Barely.

Just barely by just a couple of decades.

Just barely.

But so you graduated in 2000. So this is pre that. But in the Clinton era, I can't remember which year it was where he faced Newt Gingrich and the contract with America. It was one of the midterms, and I can't remember if it was the first one, second one. They had a contract with America. It was 94, maybe. Is that correct? Yeah. But they had laid out. And basically, the policy prescriptions were designed by the Heritage Foundation, and it was all laid out, but it was wildly effective. They took control of the Senate and the House, and they were able to execute certain things. But it was also a brilliant piece of policy. Who's writing that? Who even knows what that is? Look, government is... When we talk about checks and balances, the founders were brilliant. Oh, Congress and the executive and the judiciary, what they didn't count on is corporate power. The Democrats have to effectively counter because that's where we can get value. We subsidize pharmaceutical companies and pay the highest fucking pill prices in forever. $20 billion a year, apparently, to oil and gas. What are we fucking doing?

Yeah. Look, and there are some people you've mentioned, like Elizabeth Warren, who do talk about this stuff. I'm not saying she's writing the plans. Yeah, who's writing the plans?

I'll tell you who's writing the plans.

Who is it?

The corporations and the lobbyists. I thought it was like, who is it? Jen, I'm going to tell you a story.

I understand what you're saying. I thought you were going to tell me some insightful plan you'd seen from somebody who's going to run for something. I was excited for a moment. Go ahead.

You know these people better than I do. I don't know these people.

I may. But I thought you were going to be like, I saw this great plan. I'm like, great.

Here's what's so interesting. On the Republican side, the synchronicity between the think tanks and the politicians and the billionaire donors and the media arm, they work together. It is the circle of life. It is the Lion King. They understand that. Who's Simba? Simba is Rupert Murdoch, unfortunately.

Oh, I didn't say Mike Johnson.

Could be. He's a little sweet-face boy. Donald Trump was giving a press conference, Rupert Murdoch was sitting next to him and he's like, Hey, the Wall Street Journal wrote some shit about me, but we'll take care of that. Rupert Murdoch said in a meeting, it was released in those documents after the Fox lawsuit, We need to do everything we can to help Donald Trump. This is absolute corrupt. It gets us back to the thing of like, this is how the fucking world works. And yet somehow you're connected. You are the press secretary in Biden's thing. You worked for Obama. You worked at the State Department. You understand that. You're now at MSNBC. None of these people are talking to each other and working together in any way.

Well, yeah, because we think the other side has really messed up. But it's also how the world is working, which I think is a huge problem that Democrats need to be clear and aware of. I mean, Hannity was meeting with the Republican caucus. There's more and more and more examples of what you're talking about.

Yes. It seems very effective, but also effective in that they're creating policies. Now, I don't like a lot of them, and I think they're lying about a lot of them, but they've certainly created a machine, and nobody is building that machine as far as I can tell. Even within the media, Rupert Murdoch and then Roger Ailes, and now I don't know who's running, but they run it with a really clear mandate. You're at MSNBC. Do they come to you every day and go, Here's what we think is important to preserve and fight for whatever.

No. Everybody gets a zillion press releases and pitch calls, but no.

No, I'm talking about the head of it.

Oh, no. You determine, we determine, each of us for our shows, here's what I'm going to cover today, and here's what I'm going to talk about, and here's what I think is important, which there is an independence-ish of that. And there also is you're not waiting to told what to say about anything. You're going to say what you think. So people can trust that, and that is a good thing.

I disagree with that. I think it's not that you're able to be independent, it's that you're then a prisoner purely to the minute by minute.

You mean in terms of ratings?

The ratings, incentives, and all those other things. If you don't have the ideological component, then you don't have a governing authority of editorial authority. The greatest trick Roger Ailes ever played was He delegitimized editorial authority while exercising absolute steel trap door editorial authority.

The greatest thing he did because it led them to be an armpiece, a mouthpiece of the right wing.

It led them to be exactly what he wanted it to be, which is an effective expression of his worldview.

And MSNBC, I am unburdened by not having... I can share whatever I think. I have obviously worked in Democratic politics for 20 years. I don't hide anything about that. It is a progressive leaning network, but nobody is, to the frustration at times of many elected Democrats, it is not a mouthpiece of the Democratic Party.

I don't want it to be a mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, but I do think it can stand for something more coherent and be more effective in its execution of that by doing so.

What do you think that should be?

That it should be a check on the excesses that it should be muck raking in the best sense of the word. But effective muck raking needs organization and a leader. It can't just be left to everybody's random show. I watch these shows all the time, I find them to be wildly redundant and not really have a macro view. If you don't have a macro... I mean, this is... I don't know. I'm just saying it makes it less effective or interesting.

Well, here's the thing with a macro view, though. A macro view where every show does the same thing. And maybe you're saying you think- No. You're not saying that.

Okay. A macro view of, is this the direction that the nighttime shows should not be divorced from the daytime show. Fucking four hours of Joe Scarborough shouldn't be allowed in this country. And then, Rachel Maddow, it's schizophrenic at Yeah, I do think there should be some semblance of an idea that, look, they're kicking progressive ass right now. If progressives don't organize their media, their think tanks, and all that, it's going to continue to happen. It's chaos.

Well, I will say, broadly speaking, I don't think it's Democrats. I'm going to say people on the left do not do that the right does very well is support within the system, each other. What I mean by this is this, right? Theo Vaughn appears on Joe Rogan's show. He promotes what Joe Rogan's doing. But they all promote all of the things each other are doing and what the elected officials, I guess, are doing, too. The left is a little bit more discombobulated in terms of supporting the different entities on the left. There is not a a left ecosystem that matches the right ecosystem.

But Ailes didn't do that either. It was the principle, the ideological principles, not the party. He and Murdoch the same way. They're promoting an ideological worldview that they believe is correct. Theo Vaughn and Joe Rogan, I think, are different animals than any of this. I wouldn't say they're... I don't think they're part of any machine.

Don't you think they're the... But But they are still in the right wing ecosystem, wouldn't you agree?

No, I would think they're in. No? No. I would consider them in a more probably libertarian comedic complex. More along the lines of, and if you watch or listen to their shows, A, a lot of times it's just pure like goofing off.

Has nothing to do with politics, and oftentimes, but they are- Almost entirely. But they are supportive of the Trump enterprise is what I mean. So maybe I'm loosely putting them in that category.

I think they are supportive, but they are not relentless in the Trump enterprise. They are not Charlie Kirk. They are not Ben Shapier. They are very different animals. They are not invested in... Now, the shit that you get picked up and go to the headlines of media, yeah. But on balance, that's not what their shows are about. On balance, Ailes never took his foot off the gas. Never. It was like there was not a wasted moment. And did it still with an eye towards producing very watchable television. That's missing. I think it's missing from the media is a sense of... How many times have you heard, Jen, our job is to call balls and strikes. No, you're not a fucking... You're Upton Sinclair, so get on it.

I don't say that. I don't think MS... Most of the people on MS... I know what you're I mean, look, this moment of the last three weeks has exposed exactly that issue. This notion that, and I think a lot of the media is guilty of this, is we have to be equal and down the middle. And look at how reasonable what Mike Johnson just said. You're like, Is it reasonable because it's less crazy than what Tom Cotton says? That doesn't make it reasonable, right? It's this rank order of things because we have to be fair and give everybody equal consideration.

What was the most frustrating What's the most frustrating thing about the media when you were on the other side? When you were the press secretary, what did you find most objectionable about the media at that time?

Well, I know you're a big fan of the briefing room and how it operates I want that removed. I'm just kidding. Remove. Look, I think the thing that was frustrating about the media, two things, a couple of things. This is a therapy session, but I'll be short. One is there is is a performative nature, something I know you've talked about and everybody knows about the briefing room. That was created by television, largely. What it means is that if you're in the briefing room and you watch a whole briefing, which most people don't, even if they're consuming the briefing, it is extremely repetitive. So six people asking the same questions because they need the clip for their package. Are you moving the story forward? Is that hard when you're the press secretary? No. It's hard only because by question seven, you're annoyed, and then you can't be annoyed. You have to be. That is a challenge. The twisting yourself into pretzels in order to seem equal and balanced is driving me up the wall currently. The third thing is, I think the responsibility of a press secretary, whether in warehouse or anywhere, is to be extremely informed on the policy and the substance.

That's what it is. Actually, most of the job is not edgy, and it's not arguing with Peter Ducey. It is spending... I mean, that was fun. But it's spending hours in your office explaining the nuclear deal, explaining whatever may be happening in negotiations with Congress. That is not the sexiest part of the job, but that's the majority of the job. It's true for reporters, too. The best reporters who cover the White House are experts and super substantive and informed about the policies they're asking about, which is why when I was the press secretary, not to pick on Peter Jussi, we had a good relationship Sure. But I was never concerned about answering his questions. It was when I would see David Sanger, who's a New York Times reporter who's covered nuclear issues for 30 years in the room, and I was like, Shit, he's going to have a hard question. But what I have seen happen, and I blame this on the first Trump administration, is this addiction to trending from some of these reporters, not all of them. There's a lot of good ones in there where they literally would complain when I was the press secretary on background, meaning not with their name, that it was just too boring because it was returning to too many policy briefings.

It's like, Welcome, everybody. That's what we do here. If you want to cover something sexy, go cover Hollywood. I don't know. We're nerdy. I don't know. I just gave you a very long answer, but a couple of things that I think make the system to state the obvious, it's outdated. That was what I was going to- It's not how people consume Zoom information. It is also when I was leaving, I was Obama's communications director, and when I was leaving, we thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. So there's that. Obviously, that didn't happen. I would have told them, and I don't want to speak for Josh, but I think he would have said the same thing, change and modernize what you're doing in there. Do it twice a week and do one day that's just regional press. Bring people in on a screen. To Sean Spicer's credit, I know he wasn't the success measure of this job, but he at brought in a screen of people who didn't live in Washington. There's a million things you can do and modernize it. The reason that we didn't do that when I started is because we were coming in at a point where there was such a trampling on the freedom of press.

We felt like we needed to return to a very traditional approach. Maybe that was the right approach, maybe it wasn't, but meaning you call on AP first, you have a briefing every day, you allow them to ask their questions. But yes, it's overdue for modernization for sure.

It's difficult, I think, when the modes of media are changing as rapidly as they are to adjust. It really does. These kinds of changes create spasms when radio first happened, when TV first When TV first happened, Kennedy went on the debate and Nixon was like, I don't need makeup. I look great. And that completely fucked him up.

You didn't look great, Nixon.

But I do think at some level, we all operate tower records. I feel like I host a television program where I sit in a studio and we do it and we work all day on the thing. And it does feel a little bit like, Hey, kids, come in and see the newest CDs from Columbia Records.

Well, okay, I know this is your podcast and not mine.

No, please.

I was going to ask you because I have found this in my brief array into podcasting is that the conversations are just a lot more flowing in a different way than when you're on... There's something about being on a You've done this a lot longer than me. But being on a television set where it's like you have to deliver your monolog or your script in a certain way, and you can't just sit there and be like, Hey, I'm Jen. What's up? Because that would seem weird on TV, but on a podcast or a different conversation you can.

This will evolve and the practitioners of it that do more. The one thing I would say is trust your discomfort. Trust your discomfort about some of this shit. When you said this has to change, That's what I'm talking about. And I mean that writ large within the status quo of how we govern and the way that we create policy that battles corporate interests or battles a media industrial complex or any of those other fucking things. The discomfort that you feel in those systems is your gut telling you, this isn't the way to execute my intention at its highest level. And I mean that for everything, and I feel like Democrats haven't listened to that voice. And Trump is that voice without any other filter around it. Like I said, I think his diagnosis is oftentimes correct. I really disagree with his remedies and the way that they're executing them.

I think I agree with that. I mean, it is people feel that the system is broken and working against them. That is something that I I think, and I'm not that many Democrats might understand and agree with, but don't articulate that and don't connect with people about how broken they feel the system is. I also think the policy solutions don't feel always bold enough. Sometimes they are.

And are over complicated by the corporate lobbyists and interests that get around. Poor people aren't the ones who made the tax code, eight million pages.

That's true. I also think they're overcomplicated by, and this is the tertiary example, just to come back, but the packaging of them.

And the bureaucracy of them. And the progressives and Democrats shoot themselves in the foot with regulations that actually make solving the problems they care most about nearly impossible.

That is true. Now, some regulations are good. We like clean air and water. Yes. Of course.

But again, there is a clear, a message from the election is clearly people feel disappointed and pissed off with government.

It's like, what are you going to do about it now? Now, I am scared for what Trump... Because in three weeks in, I'm already feeling like I need to lay down. But I'm not going to lay down. But I'm concerned. I try very hard not to project fear. I'm not fearful as a person. I'm concerned about what he could do in this period of time. But there's a a huge opportunity here on the political front for Democrats.

Now you're talking.

Yeah, because he's not going to implement it the right way. He doesn't know how to address the things he's saying are the problem.

And you can't just say, Turn away from this disaster. You have to give people the place that you want it to go. You have to paint that picture of what it should be. I'm delighted. And Jen Saki, I'm glad that we had a chance to sit down and talk about it in a lovely conversation. It's a pleasure to get a chance to do that with I thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

All right. Host of MSNBC's Inside with Jen Saki in the new MSNBC podcast, The Blueprint with Jen Saki, former White House Press Secretary, Jen Saki.

Thanks for having me.

Gen Saki. Do you ever have the instinct to say Pasaki?

Yes, every time. Yes.

That's two people who probably broadly agree, I would think, on principle issues. But I think there's very much a tension in that conversation now.

Yeah, I think that's the conversation all Democrats are having amongst themselves right now, and there's that tension, and hopefully, they'll move towards something eventually.

Yeah.

I mean, you talked about how the Democrats need to have principles. At the end of the conversation, she mentioned how maybe their policy positions haven't been bold enough. I don't know if the Democrats should have drawn a line for the public option when they were fighting for the ACA back in 2010. But I do know that many of them seem to still be resting on the laurels of that achievement. Even though the ACA doesn't seem to be working for a lot of people, and they can't even seem to unify behind the ideal of universal health care as a goal, even if they don't think they can achieve it.

Well, even when they say, Well, it might not be possible, and you're like, Well, do you believe that it's right? If you believe that it's right, then we have to move. But maybe there's something even beyond that. Now, let Let me ask you guys this, because I think the job even before that is to regain the confidence of people that government can effectively manage any of this.

This is a bit tangential to what you're saying, but it really stood out to me, and it follows this path, which is just that the Democrats need to rebuild confidence. But I think you said something along the lines of one administration has set things up for the other. I was thinking about this constitutional crisis we're all discussing whether it's occurring or not. The foundation of it is that, at least from what I'm reading, is that the Trump administration has not unfrozen funds that a court has told them they must unfreeze. I can't help but thinking during my time as a national security reporter, how many times I had sat in a courtroom and listened to a situation where the Obama administration, let's say, was not following a court order. One example I can think of is with torture pictures, people think of like, all the grave images. When they're ordered to release them, they'll be like, Oh, well, we'll put them in groupings and we'll put a representative picture because for national security, we can't. Then it was just this understanding that this is the process of courts. That's where we are right now as everyone decides where we're at.

It's like, Well, this is the process of courts.

That's not a constitutional crisis. That's That's just how it- Of course, I don't want to downplay this moment. That's a fabulous point.

I don't want to downplay this moment, and it's a very different situation. Understood. But one administration does set up things for the next.

Even when there was extrajudicial killings, there was drone things. There's a process in the court's order and injunction, but that is the truth. Rubber meets the road. It all depends on what the priority is. Certainly, he's operating more as a wrecking ball than anybody else. But it's not an unheard... It's just like everything else with him, it's all as they would say in Spinal Tap, turned up to 11. Everything is just fucking turned up to 11. But what I thought was most interesting is we can't identify the infrastructure that would make these adjustments. Nobody can do it.

Nobody can do it. Yeah. It's the Spider-Man meme of just people pointing to each other. You go through a list and nobody stands out.

Nobody his hands out. Gillian, I can always count on you to tell me what the young people are thinking. Meanwhile, I couldn't even get my fucking email to open. And by the way, terrible apologies for a twisted sports analogy in the top.

I know that many people- Yeah, went right over my head. I don't do sports ball. I apologize. I even skipped the Super Bowl and went to a Broadway show.

What? I thought Broadway was dark. How dare they? I just feel bad that John was watching the Super Bowl and thinking, this reminds me a lot of what's happening in the party right He will never be free. It reminded me of that because Saquon Barkley and the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl, and I was watching him. To tie it all around to Broadway, I just began to sing, It used to be mine. I'm a terrible voice. Waitress. That's it. What else we got?

We got some listener questions.

Yeah, let's do that. John, do you think there's anything good that could come out of Trump's second term? I'm sure. Again, nothing has ever completely black and white. Like I say, some of the diagnosis that he has about the rig system, I completely agree with. I'm sure there will be something that occurs, or at least hopefully. I mean, I hope so. Christ, I live here. There better be something good that comes I'm glad of this.

I thought you were going to say the pendulum swing.

I think we're so beyond pendulums at this point. I don't know. I think it's different forms of matter. I think it goes now from gas to solid to plasma. I have no fucking idea. We are in a joint custody where the two parents have just so divorced from each other, and it's such completely different. But I really hope. Yeah, I live here. I really hope something good happens.

He could at least be the one to get rid of daylight savings. Give me five minutes on the phone with him. I feel like I can make this happen. I like the idea that Gillian just wants five minutes on the phone with Trump, and all she wants to discuss is daylight savings time.

By the way, that is how things are done now. You get five minutes with him. Eric Adams spends five minutes with him and he's like, Tell the Justice Department. It's fine. He's a good guy. It'll be fine. He meant well. He meant well. Why not? All right. Brittany, as always, how do people get in touch with us?

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

All right, very good. Very pleased for the program today. As always, our lead producer, Lauren Walker, producer, Brittany Mamedevik, video editor and engineer, Rob Metola, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Bois, researcher and associate producer, Gillian Spears, and as always executive producer is Chris McShane, Katie gray. Thank you guys so much. Are we doing a show next week or no? We don't have a show.

We're off next week.

There is no show next week, so you will be spared from my ramblings. But I'm excited to rejoin Where's that? End of February, I guess? Yeah. Beautiful. All right, guys. Good stuff. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bustboy Productions. Ount Podcasts.