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Pod Save America

Trump's Versailles on the Potomac

05 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 15.436 Unknown

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15.476 - 31.364 Unknown

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31.384 - 44.911 Unknown

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44.971 - 56.903 Unknown

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0

79.664 - 81.569 Jon Favreau

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

81.609 - 82.771 Alex Wagner

And I'm Alex Wagner.

82.992 - 84.395 Jon Favreau

In studio in LA.

84.496 - 87.924 Alex Wagner

I came to cast my ballot. Just kidding. I'm here.

87.944 - 88.665 Jon Favreau

We'll still take it.

Chapter 2: What is the significance of the Trump Promenade announcement?

200.926 - 207.175 Jon Favreau

And you know what? If you do like ads, there's a lot of other benefits, too. There's subscriber-only shows like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer.

0

207.335 - 208.457 Alex Wagner

That's a must listen.

0

208.437 - 212.965 Jon Favreau

Our special extra secret episode of Pod Save America called Pod Save America Only Friends.

0

212.985 - 215.991 Alex Wagner

Oh, I mean, and it is really an inside scoop.

0

216.011 - 225.788 Jon Favreau

It's an inside scoop. And lots of Substack newsletters these days. And you get to support an independent, proudly pro-democracy media company that Barry Weiss can't murder.

225.768 - 227.891 Alex Wagner

And Scott Pelley is soon to join the roster, right?

227.911 - 229.033 Jon Favreau

That's right. That's right.

229.053 - 232.638 Alex Wagner

It's called 153 Minutes. That's the name of his podcast.

232.658 - 249.042 Jon Favreau

That is quite long. Crooked.com slash friends. Check it out. All right, Alex. The Republican Congress has been hard at work this week trying to shovel another $70 billion of our money to Donald Trump so that ICE can keep rounding up immigrants and locking them away in barbaric detention camps.

Chapter 3: What are the implications of Todd Blanche's promotion to Attorney General?

393.547 - 418.838 Alex Wagner

It's a sort of, I mean, it's legacy by way of phallic imagery. I think it's just an obsession with size. It is inversely proportional to his approval ratings, right? So as he sinks in the polls, he needs to erect or claim the erection. I'm sorry I keep saying these sort of penile vocabulary, but it is all, I mean, it's all intermingled.

0

418.818 - 426.268 Alex Wagner

And it's the only way he believes he'll have a legacy is brick and mortar. And even if it's not his own brick and mortar, I mean, he's destroyed.

0

Chapter 4: How are the recent primaries affecting Democratic candidates?

426.549 - 442.531 Alex Wagner

He is destroying the country. He's lost the faith of maybe his even his own party in Congress or is losing it. He has a colossal, a bloodletting ahead of him in November, which is going to leave him even more castrated. And so what's his recourse?

0

Chapter 5: What controversies surround Graham Platner's candidacy?

442.831 - 446.496 Alex Wagner

I guess reflecting his big penis. Yeah. Big penis. Cool.

0

446.476 - 449.605 Jon Favreau

Now we're doing a promenade around the Lincoln Memorial?

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449.625 - 451.109 Alex Wagner

I mean, are we, though?

0

451.249 - 456.765 Jon Favreau

Are we going to get those Mar-a-Lago yellow umbrellas like we have in what used to be the Rose Garden RIP?

0

457.226 - 461.498 Alex Wagner

I don't know that any of this is going to come to pass. I mean, truly.

Chapter 6: How does the UFC event at the White House illustrate political connections?

461.478 - 480.86 Alex Wagner

First of all, he's over budget and and over over time and all the projects that are already underway. The Republicans in Congress have gotten very fatigued of, I think, the ego and the vanity projects. And, you know, they're not giving him a billion for the ballroom. I just I think this is all, first of all, a distraction from what's really happening.

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480.88 - 492.372 Alex Wagner

And we should talk about what's unfolding in Congress right now. But like, I don't know. How fast can you build a promenade? The thing they're doing in the reflecting pool isn't even fixing the leaks. It's going to be covered in mold in like a year or a couple months.

0

492.532 - 493.914 Jon Favreau

And the arch. Don't forget about the arch.

0

494.094 - 511.212 Alex Wagner

I don't know. I don't know. I just hope all of them become intake processing centers for newly arrived migrants. Like that's just the only good. Drain the pool and let me make it, you know, put bedding down, let people sleep there, like just make it something useful for this increasingly poor and destitute country that he's running into the ground.

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511.327 - 521.177 Jon Favreau

I absolutely loved the John Ossoff line from over the weekend about all this where he said, yeah, he's building all these monuments to himself because after he's gone, no one else will.

521.657 - 523.339 Alex Wagner

Yeah, that is absolutely true.

523.359 - 523.939 Jon Favreau

Devastating.

524.26 - 534.21 Alex Wagner

And Ossoff has been so good on reinforcing the narrative that this is all kind of Louis XIV style corruption and self-service.

534.29 - 535.15 Jon Favreau

Versailles on the Potomac.

Chapter 7: What happened during Scott Pelley's departure from CBS's 60 Minutes?

677.525 - 688.275 Jon Favreau

And Schumer offered the amendment and they got Collins and they got Dan Sullivan in Alaska, who's Mary Paltola is running against.

0

688.296 - 690.778 Alex Wagner

Who sees the chips falling where they may.

0

690.758 - 693.721 Jon Favreau

And John Husted. Husted? Husted. Husted?

0

693.861 - 694.181 Alex Wagner

Husted.

0

694.201 - 706.993 Jon Favreau

Who knew? Exactly. Anyway, he's the guy that Sherrod Brown's running against in Ohio. Fox News poll came out yesterday that shows him trailing Sherrod Brown by eight. Sherrod's best poll. Awesome. But anyway, those three, just coincidentally, voted.

707.013 - 707.493 Unknown

They have in common.

707.513 - 725.473 Jon Favreau

Yeah, they voted to kill it as Republicans. But you're right. Cassidy and Tillis thought they would be cutesy. And they decided not to vote for that amendment. They introduced their own, which was to say, you can't use the slush fund. Then the way that Trump wants to use it, it has to be used for the anti-fraud initiative that J.D.

725.513 - 743.344 Jon Favreau

Vance is running, which is basically like, you know, robbing states of Medicaid funding. If they find someone committing fraud somewhere, they just sort of collective punishment for the rest of the people who are on Medicaid. So they introduced that amendment. And obviously, Democrats weren't going to support that because it's crazy. And the anti-fraud initiative is bullshit.

743.324 - 753.486 Jon Favreau

So they got like, I don't know, seven, eight, nine Republicans on that one. But that one didn't pass either. So now we have no language. We have no language to kill the fund.

Chapter 8: What are the challenges facing the Democratic Party in California?

759.799 - 772.482 Alex Wagner

I should stop. talking. And that's how I feel about Republicans in Congress. It's like I can't believe I'm even still fucking entertaining the idea that they'll do the right thing on this, that they'll actually deliver on something they say they're so against, which is the slush fund.

0

772.983 - 783.962 Alex Wagner

But I stupidly hold out hope that Bill Cassidy will get something done, that Tom Tillis will find a backbone and that Susan Collins, Susan Collins, for whom there's a specific place.

0

783.942 - 795.08 Jon Favreau

And you know what? Like, it doesn't count what Susan Collins and who said and Sullivan did, because if it really counted and they really didn't want the fund, they could vote against the final bill. They could vote against the final bill.

0

795.1 - 803.875 Alex Wagner

They're all on their way out. Tom Tillis and Bill Cassidy are out. It's a joke. It's a fucking joke. At the same time, it's really important that this get done.

0

803.855 - 804.175 Unknown

I know.

804.235 - 819.271 Alex Wagner

Because we cannot have a two billion dollar taxpayer slush fund given to insurrectionists like that is not. So someone I mean, I don't know. I don't know. So I am outraged. I'm incensed by the existence of Bill Cassidy. And I, you know, I look for redemption. I hope there is some for them.

819.832 - 838.002 Jon Favreau

What's your level of concern that there hasn't been more drama around the ICE funding itself, which is sort of not even being talked about as much, partly because I think it was baked in that it was going to pass way back when You know, the government shutdown happened or the DHS shutdown happened. I know you covered ICE detention centers on Runaway Country this week.

838.623 - 862.457 Jon Favreau

I interviewed Andy Kim on Tuesday's pod, senator from New Jersey, about the horrific conditions at the detention center in Newark. I mean, this is one that has been like making me quietly sick every time I see more stories because it's like... I'm very aware that we finished the episode of Trump's America where there was the battle of Minneapolis and then Kristi Noem was fired.

862.818 - 872.674 Jon Favreau

And then they pulled back and Stephen Miller was sort of like, you know, had to go back in his cave for a little bit. And so everyone moved on and thinks, OK, now things are good and things are not good.

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