Pod Save America - "The War on Christmas Trees."

Democrats outsmart Mitch McConnell on the debt limit but are still trying to solve their Joe Manchin problem, former Obama pollster Cornell Belcher offers his read on how to frame Republican extremism ahead of the midterms, and Fox News suffers a critical casualty in the War on Christmas.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.

Duration: 55m
Broadcast on: 09 Dec 2021
Audio Format: other

The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun restrictions in states, overturning Roe vs Wade, and severely threatening our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Litman, and each week on Strix scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw to break down the latest headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes of Strix scrutiny every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to PodSafe America, I'm John Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Right here in studio, our own Dan Pfeiffer. Yeah, I tried to sneak a visit to LA in between variants. I might have been a little too late. Dan was here for our what a year live stream. And it was the first time I've seen you in two years. Yeah, it's been since Super Tuesday was my last visit at this office. It's just amazing. Well, it's good to have you here. It's great to be here. You're here for a show where we talk about how Democrats outsmarted Mitch McConnell in the debt limit, but are still trying to solve their Joe Manchin problem.

Former Obama pollster Cornell Belcher gives us his read on how to frame Republican extremism ahead of the midterms. And Fox News suffers a critical casualty in the war on Christmas. I'm just excited about that one. I'm sorry. All right. But first, a huge thank you to everyone who tuned into Kirkhead's what a year live stream you donated almost $60,000 to no off years, which goes directly to grassroots groups and swing states who are organizing and registering new voters. If you still want to donate, you can help us chip away at our [email protected]/nooffyears. And if you want to watch all of us embarrass ourselves on the live stream, you can check it out at youtube.com/krickett. When is the Kirkhead and Merch Store going to start selling Elon for president, former stickers? Look, there were some great tweets. There were some great heartfelt tweets that we post that we were forced to post. And I love that game. I want to bring that game out on the road when we do our tour. Cringe tweets. Cringe tweets. Okay. Because it's really fun posting your cringe tweet, knowing that you had to be post a cringe tweet and then watching people not get the joke. I've never had a more fun Twitter experience than that. That is great. Which people mad at me, but I knew that I didn't really care. That was a low bar, my friend. Best colonoscopy ever had. I will say people are still mad. Still mad today. Two days later. It's great. It's great. Anyway, also check out the latest episode of Takeline where Jason and Renee talk to Hannah Kaiser of Yahoo Sports about the MLB lockout, the news about Antonio Brown using a fake vaccine card and more new episodes of Takeline drop every Tuesday. All right, let's get to the news. Here's something to feel good about. Democrats have now diffused the Republicans threat to shut down the government as well as their threat to default on our debt and crash the economy. This now clears the deck for the Senate to focus on passing the rest of Joe Biden's agenda. It's great, right? Here's something to feel less good about. Joe Manchin is still a senator and per usual, he's giving interviews to reporters about the bill, back better bill, which don't exactly inspire confidence that he'll support the legislation, especially by Chuck Schumer self-imposed Christmas deadline or ever. But we'll talk about that. And here's something I have no idea how to feel about. Senate Democrats are telling reporters that they may have a plan to pass voting rights and democracy reform with rule changes that don't involve abolishing the filibuster. Help with their smoking. You know, it's pretty. Sounds exciting. That's good. Let's start with the debt ceiling deal. Thanks to an agreement between Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, 14 Republicans voted with 50 Democrats Thursday to allow a complicated procedure where Democrats can vote to raise the debt ceiling on their own. Donald Trump attacked McConnell over this on Hugh Hewitt show. Here's a clip. I know you like your brother. I'd like to bring up. One thing I'd like to bring up is the debt ceiling situation. So Mitch McConnell has the greatest hand. I know you lost your brother. But anyway, what I really want to talk about is the debt ceiling. What a segue. He's a human empath. How was the interview? I woke up this morning and you and Tommy, it seemed like you

Transcription truncated.