Oh, this happened while you were in your interview. I was like, when did this happen? Because the last I saw was that they were, the second I saw that they weren't sure about three charges, like, oh, they're

sending our way. Not guilty on those three. Right. Guilty on the other four. Couldn't have it to a nicer person. One drop of blood.

Can I just say that when we got the last night, our producer, Andy, sent us an email saying, hey, I just before we discuss what's going to be on the show tomorrow, here's just the biggest stories that happened over the holidays. And she might as well have just driven a flaming bag of shit to each of our houses and put it on the front door. Metaphorically. Yeah, metaphor. It was like, wow, we are fucking back.

Here we are. Tommy did text me this morning and said, I don't know that I can talk about Build Back Better and Joe Manchin on the first pod of the new year. I was trying to prime the pump here. And I said, I got you covered. Let's not do it. Look, there's no update there, guys. get back into it at some point we're not going to talk about it still annoying all right let's get to the other news one year ago this week we saw president trump's plan to overturn the 2020 election end with an attack on the u.s capitol by a mob of extremists who tried to stop congress from certifying the results at least seven people died dozens more were injured and a year later we're still grappling with the fallout. A bipartisan committee in the House that's investigating the attack will start holding public hearings in a few weeks. Democrats announced on Monday that they will try to change the Senate's filibuster rules to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, and Trump announced he'll be holding a press conference where he says he'll talk about how, quote, the real insurrection took place on November 3rd, and it was the protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th. Great stuff. Here's how 1-6 Committee co-chair Liz Cheney responded on Face the Nation Sunday.

He left office as any indication. Former President Trump is likely again this week to make the same false claims about the election that he knows to be false and the same false claims about the election that he knows caused violence on January 6th.

You've raised in the past the possibility of

criminal culpability for the president. Is that the consensus view of the committee? The

committee has firsthand testimony that President Trump was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office watching on television as the Capitol was assaulted, as the violence occurred. We know that that is clearly a supreme dereliction of duty. One of the things that the committee is looking at from the perspective of our legislative purpose is whether we need enhanced penalties that kind of dereliction of duty. It

was Trump in the dining room with the remote. You

know, just eating a rock hard fucking hockey puck of a burger, watching democracy

fall apart. Diet Coke. Well done steak. Yeah, it's that little dining room right off the Oval, right? Like it's attached to the hallway. Of course that's what he was doing. Of course, that's what

he was. I'm surprised he didn't have

a TV in the Oval Office. But I guess optically, it looks bad. I

mean, so let's start with the committee here, which is still deciding whether they subpoena Republican members of Congress like Jim Jordan, former Vice President Mike Pence, who many Trump supporters said that they wanted to hang that day. And Trump himself, the Democratic co-chair, Benny Thompson, also refused to rule out making criminal referrals to the Justice Department if warranted. What do you guys think of the subpoenas and the criminal referrals? Good idea? Bad idea? Tommy?

Fire away. Yeah, we're bringing swagger back to this subpoena process. We're bringing swagger back to this podcast. Okay, we've

got Eric Adams here.

I mean, they're very separate questions. Subpoena, criminal referral. Yes. I'll take criminal referral first. I mean, the most obvious point in the world is that whether or not they should make a criminal referral depends on what they find. If they find clear illegal conduct, they can refer it over to DOJ. That doesn't mean the DOJ will bring charges. It just means there might be political pressure on them to bring charges. The committee's reportedly looking into whether the fundraising around the Stop the Steal effort constituted wire fraud. Again, back to our friend Elizabeth Holmes, that just got her in some trouble. And whether there was obstruction of Congress and whether there's a criminal charge there. We have no idea what they'll find. Liz Cheney is clearly suggesting that Meadows is in contempt of Congress. But when it comes to Trump, she keeps saying this dereliction of duty line. She won't say something that is illegal. I wonder what she means by that, what the

statute is on dereliction of duty. Because what they seem to be getting at is that Trump could have done something to stop the violence and potentially

chose not to. And it's part of a conspiracy to obstruct the proceedings of Congress, which is what would make it against the law. Got it.

Yeah, I mean, look, if they are not cooperating, you should subpoena them. And if you find evidence of broken laws, you should tell the Department of Justice, smoke them while you got them. We got this power for a little bit while, a little while longer. Every time it's a peanuts in front of a Republican judge, like we're thinking maybe after the Olympics we can we can work on this. But yeah, I mean, the subpoenas. I agree. The subpoenas are an easy one. Subpoena all of them. Yeah. I wonder what the calculus is there. that Trump committed a crime by not doing something, I imagine, is a kind of creative legal argument. And I think they are looking for kind of they're putting together a kind of a record of what happened and whether or not that rises to level of crime. Some crimes will be very clear. Some will be debatable. Some won't be crimes.

He's directly coordinating. He's saying you get your ass in that building and you stop this count and you burn the like yes sure that that is obstruction of congress but it does feel like uh we all should step back like during the Mueller investigation and realize that we're probably not going to find that kind of smoking gun and this is going to be a political diamond in a political case we did learn that Ivanka went into the dining room a couple times and tried to get dad to stop well which made me wonder like do you think it was like hey dad a couple things you know like Jared wants to get dinner Friday Eric is there's an attack on the Capitol trapped in the bathroom again you might want to also do something about

that let's

also keep in mind that Don Jr. is texting Mark Meadows to pass on the message and Ivanka just goes right into the little uh into the feedlot I made

a joke about that on the last pod with Dan that I bet Ivanka had a direct line to him and sure enough she did no I mean look I think on the subpoena question right they have to decide just to subpoena Donald Trump or not I don't see the downside right because either he says yes, which seems unlikely, and then you hear Trump dissemble in front of Congress for a while. Under oath. Under oath. Or he refuses, which is most likely. And then what happens? Trump refuses. You go to court. Maybe he gets tied up in court for a while. But if Trump, like, quote unquote, wins that and just delays and delays and delays by refusing the subpoena and, you know, like, who cares? Yeah. You might as well try.

Yeah. It's not a question. What happens? Oh, no. The conservative press are going to say it's overreach.

What are we doing here? The shit hits the fan if there is a criminal referral to the Justice Department. And then Joe Biden's Justice Department has to make a decision whether to bring charges against a former president. That's when you'll see the. That'll be interesting. And that'll be a thing and

the same logic look there'll be a lot of if we were to end up in that situation there will be so much the the the air will be thick with the stench of bullshit and it'll be very hard to figure out what's going on a lot of red

hand alerts there a lot of so

much a lot of nonsense

but the same argument did it but the same argument will be will i think be right which is if he broke the law he should be indicted because he's just a fucking person and everything else will just be the same kind of bullshit he's not he's not president anymore that was the whole thing that he's you know used to protect himself during the

muller investigation and you know he was president all this guy's privilege he's not president anymore but

the most important thing is uh would that we lived in that world where that's what we're going to be debating. You know, totally. Do not wait for the justice system to save us from these people. It will not happen. Don't order a bunch of Liz

Cheney bobblehead dolls to replace your Bob Mueller bobblehead dolls. You can't take that sweater that says Cuomo sexual and have the Cuomo part replaced with Cheney. That's a good idea. Like

when people change a tattoo from a girlfriend they broke up with.

It's some good resistance. I do think like Tommy was saying, it's useful to step back and ask what is the most useful realistic goal for this committee, right? Because I think that we, at least the three of us, have sort of lowered expectations about what it can achieve based on the Mueller investigation and the two impeachment hearings. But we have the committee. It's happening. So what's a useful goal? And I think it is persuading the public or some members of the public that the people who try to overturn the election and incite an insurrection shouldn't hold office again, particularly Donald Trump. And as you do that, I think one thing we've learned from the previous investigations is even if you tell the story in a compelling and dramatic way, that works for the people who are watching these hearings unfold on TV, which I have to tell you is just all of us political junkies. But the thing that breaks through and that the media will cover is sort of new revelations, bombshells, or even like new details, right? They don't even have to be bombshells like this Ivanka Trump thing. So I do think as you're the committee, you have to figure out like, we need to get new information out there to keep getting this covered and not just like great speeches in Congress.

Right. And also, by the way, we're all just watching replays because we watched this insurrection happen in real time. There's nothing could possibly be more dramatic. No hearing, no revelation, no anything than what we all witnessed and watched on television. And the fact that he waited hours and hours before going out and saying something and trying to calm his white nationalist mob tells us everything we need to know, or at least should. But hopefully we can, you know, hang some details on that story.

Yeah. And we're going to talk about how this relates to the fight for voter protections that are potentially about to be once again attempted in this Congress. But I do think even before you get to that, like there was a poll that came out that said 68 percent of Democrats say January 6th had a major impact on their worldview. Only 35 percent of independents and 24 percent of Republicans agree. And I do think we just all have to be honest that we have not succeeded in persuading people that democracy is under attack, that January 6th represented as some kind of existential threat to society. There is, I think, an internal, engaged, progressive conversation that takes a lot of this as fact and understood and shared. It just isn't. It just isn't. Yeah.

I

think it is understood. I think

the question is, how much is it top of mind for people? I think there's a difference. Are people persuaded that it was bad and that Trump was responsible? Or do they just forget because the world moves on and we forget what happened a week ago? We'll get into some of the polling numbers, but I don't know that it's clear which is true.

And it doesn't really matter. Is it important to you right now?

We're not going to hold these hearings like the day before the election.

Right, and so as we think about what it means to fight for voting rights, as it thinks what it means to debate, to figure out what a message will be against Trump, I think we should just recognize that our collective understanding that democracy is under siege, which I think is absolutely true, is not something on the top of mind for a lot of people. These hearings are a way that you can bring it back to people's minds in a way that may be as sustainable as it. I was going to say, the big

question is for how long? For how long? Of course. I mean, look,

people have a two-week memory. That is the world that we are in. Generous. Generous. So it's tough uh how much attention do you guys think the trump's uh press conference should

get on thursday big press conference i mean i think it should be covered it should not be live streamed um what he says will matter in terms of what gets covered i expect it will be the same old lies and bullshit i mean basically previewed what we all expect him to say in the statement announcing that he's going to do this press conference. So I think the story should be the fact that he's doing this, not necessarily the lies he regurgitates. And I think hopefully that means that, you know, the AP won't throw out a bulletin that's like Trump says election's stolen, right? I mean, we don't need any of that shit. We need to learn from the mistake of the live stream podium and the mindlessly regurgitating the words of a well-known liar and the endless tortured use of false statement versus like we should hopefully this is covered extensively because i think people should see this and it's juxtaposed with the very solemn very sad moments in the capital and the testimony from the cops who got the shit kicked out of them and the lawmakers who were scared for their lives. Right. I mean, that to me is the story.