Pod Save America

It's kind of cliche, but I saw Obama on Oprah and I went and purchased both of his books and read them.

I think what did it for me is I read Dreams from My Father over the Christmas break before I actually interviewed with him and I thought that book was so honest and he wrote so honestly I thought like you know if a politician is gonna try to be that honest on the national stage I want to stick around and see and see if he can pull it off and I think I think he did.

I read when he started running for president I read the book and dreams my father and I had the same feeling that it was so honest and authentic

Chuck Rocha is president of Solidarity Strategies and Nuestro PAC. He was also a senior advisor to Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign and the author of the book, Tio Bernie, the inside story of how Bernie Sanders brought Latinos into the political revolution.

Chuck Rocha is president of Solidarity Strategies and Nuestro PAC. He was also a senior advisor to Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign and the author of the book, Tio Bernie, the inside story of how Bernie Sanders brought Latinos into the political revolution.

Two books.

and the author of two books coming out on Super Tuesday, A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump and Ripples of Hope, Your Guide to Electing a New President.

They Said This Day Would Never Come it's an oral history of the Iowa campaign the general election stories Like the worst moments the best moments all rolled into one

Not a lot of people do oral history projects these days.

I wanted to talk to people who had been a part of that Starting at the time when it was really unlikely right and who saw it go from this long shot thing to him becoming The most successful politician of the last 50 years, right?

The whole was greater than the sum of the parts

He would literally say over and over again. Like I just can't let these organizers down

Those couple nights before the caucuses were the coldest nights of the year. And we got inside, and it was just this sea of people.

Every age, different backgrounds. You had farmers in overalls and seed hats, and you had young African-American kids, Latino moms.

The fact that people had brought their kids, and there were a lot of families who had shown up, gave it this festive feeling.

I still remember there was a guy who looked like Gandalf. He was dressed in this white robe, and he had this long white beard, and he had this white staff.

And at the top of the staff, he had jerry-rigged this little video screen that was playing my JJ speech looped over and over again.

Who's the number one bestselling author on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list this week?

I sure do, Dan, because sadly, I read Twitter too much and I saw that Yashar tweeted that it was Donald Trump Jr. and his book Triggered, which is just one of the 30,000 things a day that makes me want to throw my phone across the room.

And in that is a parable of the difference between conservative authors, progressive authors, conservative politics. Progressive politics is these conservative authors are often propped up by people like the RNC buying tens of thousands of copies of Donald Trump's book.

So it's sort of, whose side are you on there? I mean, it was the only good news of the whole weekend. Right, that's true. Watching him just lash Paul Ryan one last time, it was a treat. It was a treat. Alien versus Predator, whoever wins, we lose.

Later in the pod, my conversation with Politico's Tim Alberta, whose new book about the Republican Party and the Trump era triggered the President to lash out at former House Speaker Paul Ryan.

And the rise of President Trump Tim thanks for joining hey this is as good as it gets I've done a lot of media this week but nothing cooler than this thanks for having me oh well you're so welcome um so a couple of months ago Joe Biden kicked off a debate among Democrats when he said that history will treat this administration's time as an aberration and that the fever in the Republican party will break once Trump is gone um other people say that Trump is a symptom of a broader rot within the GOP what did your reporting for this book tell you about this debate you know it's that's a really foundational question actually at the heart of the book you know we see all of this polarization and disunity in the country right now and I think it's fair for some people to sort of instinctively reflexively want to lay it all at Trump's doorstep and I do think that's a mistake just to the extent that I think what Trump really did effectively was that he saw some of these things building long before anybody else in the Republican party did he he saw this angst uh he saw some of this nativism rearing its ugly head he saw this disgust with the political class and a lot of people feeling left behind by politicians of all stripes and he really tapped into it and weaponized it and exploited it in a way that nobody else was able to and I do think that look for all the attention on Trump and every day he gives us cause to to have these you know really existential conversations about you know where we are as a country and as a culture and and in government but I do think we we have to think beyond Trump because he's going to come and go it is a transient office he won't be president forever but I do think that these same forces that sort of propelled him into office this wave that he wrote into office is still going to be here when he's gone and I do understand what Joe Biden was trying to say what the Vice President was trying to say which is that you know these these Republicans in Washington have you know got themselves a case of Stockholm syndrome and and they're so scared of this guy that that they're unwilling to speak out and that has sort of um tainted the party as a whole and and he has remade the party in his own image in this fell swoop and that once he's gone they'll return to normal but I also do think it's pretty naive because I think that Trump has you know sort of sent all of us through the looking glass here and I think the political system itself is now so vulnerable to disruption and you're beginning to see a little bit of it on the left not to compare anybody on the Democratic side to Trump but you're seeing some of that same asymmetrical warfare now and so I think there's a big big question for everybody uh well after Trump is gone which is how do we get a lid on this thing how do we sort of bring some normalcy back to politics and how do we restore some of the just basic conventions and institutions that made government stable.

whose new book about the Republican Party and the Trump era triggered the President to lash out at former House Speaker Paul Ryan.

the author of the new book American Carnage on the front lines of the republican civil war and the rise of president trump

i think that trump really did effectively was that he saw some of these things building long before anybody else in the republican party did he he saw this angst uh he saw some of this nativism rearing its ugly head he saw this disgust with the political class and a lot of people feeling left behind by politicians of all stripes and he really tapped into it and weaponized it and exploited it in a way that nobody else was able to

i do think that look for all the attention on trump and every day he gives us cause to to have these you know really existential conversations about you know where we are as a country and as a culture and and in government but i do think we we have to think beyond trump because he's going to come and go it is a transient office he won't be president forever but i do think that these same forces that sort of propelled him into office this wave that he wrote into office is still going to be here when he's gone

Our guest today is Stacey Abrams. She's the former Georgia House Minority Leader, founder of Fair Fight Action and author of the amazing book Lead from the Outside.

Being a black woman from the deep south informs the way I run my campaign

And I mean it in this way, you know, I wrote this book called Minority Leader and yes available

it had been basically I read this book his new book Team of Vipers which is about his time working in the White House and the sort of portrait that he puts forward of the president and his administration was interesting to me

one of the things The Sims book which one of the things I chose to raise in the interview with him is that you know I think sort of Trump inherently I mean you do have these figures like Christie and Giuliani but you do have these other figures who I think are basically out to make a quick buck they've joined the White House because they want some sort of outside business deal

Sims' book is very critical of people around Trump but it's not really critical of the president himself he basically still respects the president he doesn't agree with everything President Trump says he says you know sometimes he's kind of uncouth with his words but basically he likes him and he thinks he's been misserved by his staff

Sims has been rumored to wanting to have a political career as a Republican in Alabama where he's from I think that they're trying to walk this line which is you want to sell a book or you want to do something that makes money and you know get to a certain amount of attention so you have to have some criticisms in there but you also want to stay on the president's good side and so you kind of have to tiptoe around what you say about him

in Sims' case it doesn't seem to have worked because apparently Trump is angry about the book and tweeting about it even though Sims himself is pretty complimentary to Trump

At one point Miller said, I don't care if another refugee ever steps in steps foot into the United States.

Omarosa and her scorched earth book tour is shaping our politics, a topic that's getting more inspirational by the day.

Omarosa, who was the most prominent and possibly only African American official in Trump's West Wing writes in Unhinged that the president is a quote racist, misogynist and bigot and has made shifting claims about Trump using the N word.

And then this Wednesday, my Crooked Conversation with Jane Mayer, the author of the book Dark Money, which I've mentioned 600,000 times, is out.

We've got Tommy and Jane Mayer.

Sorry, I've been reading too much of Jane Mayer's fantastic book.

So we were treated to another excerpt yesterday that said that Brazile contemplated replacing Hillary with Biden because she had pneumonia, which is insulting, crazy, and not something that she actually had the power to do.

And then when she gave an interview, after two days of all this, Donna Brazile said she found no evidence that the primary was rigged for Clinton, which is like maybe we could have done this at the very beginning.

If you don't want to read the story, don't buy the book.

I have a problem with doing this five days before an incredibly important election.

I agree that it's important to hear from her, especially if there are parts of how the DNC operated in the primaries that needs to be fixed for the future to make sure it's transparent and not trustworthy in the future.

Donna Brazile has a new book out where she says that when she became interim chair of the DNC in 2016...

She discovered an agreement that gave the Clinton campaign a measure of undue influence over staffing and strategy at the DNC in August of 2015, which was right at the beginning of the primary campaign.

Brazile said that it was not illegal, but in her view, it compromised the party's integrity.

And so, I just think what's fair is fair. And I feel sort of sympathetic to the people who might be taken up on Bernie's part because I feel like we were kind of Bernie in 2007.

Bernie found out about this from Donna Brazile before the election, but he kept it under his hat because he cared about the future of the country.

And I started listening to the audio book of the novel Oil by Upton Sinclair.

And but so the main character of Oil, the novel is named Bunny. He's a boy and he starts out as like a young, like a tween or teenager and he's like a little oil scion and he follows his father around and watches as he like buys up oil leases and then he meets like a noble socialist who kind of teaches him about, you know, workers in the oil fields and it just sort of follows him for like hundreds of pages.

And I started listening to the audio book of the novel Oil by Upton Sinclair.

That's What There Will Be Blood is based on, although they have like almost nothing in common.

I think he used like the first 30 pages and then just like threw away the rest of the book I optioned it, that's kind of expensive.

And but so the main character of Oil, the novel is named Bunny. He's a boy and he starts out as like a young, like a tween or teenager and he's like a little oil scion and he follows his father around and watches as he like buys up oil leases and then he meets like a noble socialist who kind of teaches him about, you know, workers in the oil fields and it just sort of follows him for like hundreds of pages.

I learned in prepping for the show that Roger Stone dedicated his 2015 book to impart the branch Davidians who died at Mount Carmel.

I learned in prepping for the show that Roger Stone dedicated his 2015 book to impart the branch Davidians who died at Mount Carmel.

America's Deadliest Election, the cautionary tale of the most violent election in American history.

It is on sale now.

America's Deadliest Election, the cautionary tale of the most violent election in American history.

It is on sale now. Go check it out. Fascinating history.

I'm halfway through George Packer's novel, The Emergency.

I'm halfway through George Packer's novel, The Emergency. I interviewed him on offline and told him I was going to read the book and I started it.

All right. With all this End of the Republic stuff happening, we haven't gotten the chance yet to talk about Kamala Harris's new book, 107 Days. It's out Tuesday. More excerpts are making the rounds, including one where the New York Times has both a book review and a piece that sort of gives some of the highlights, some of the excerpt highlights.

Minutes before she was to step on stage at a presidential debate in September of 2024, she received a call from Mr. Biden... And then this is what Harris writes, quote, I just couldn't understand why he would call me right now and make it all about himself, distracting me with worry about hostile power brokers in the biggest city of the most important swing state right before she was about to go on stage for a debate with Donald Trump.

Her fraught relationship with Biden forms the undercurrent of the book. Quote, my feelings for him are grounded in warmth and loyalty, but they had become complicated over time with hurt and disappointment.

Just over a year ago, I launched my campaign for president of the United States. 107 Days. She's got a book... In essence, writing a journal that is this book, 107 Days.

It was reported that she worked with PulitzerPrize novelist Geraldine Brooks on it.

I have written two books, one called United, one called Stan. So together, Stan's United.