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Home , Danielle Pletka, First Things, Joe Manchin, Marc Thiessen, Ron Klain

WTH is going on with President Biden? John 100 days in office

Episode #86 | January 20, 2021 | , , and

Danielle Pletka: Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka.

Marc Thiessen: And I'm Marc Thiessen.

Danielle Pletka: Welcome to our podcast, What the Hell is Going On? Marc, what the hell is going on?

Marc Thiessen: Well, first, what the hell is going on is, you may have noticed, we have a little change in our intro. We've got a new president, and so we've got a new litany of what the hells to greet you when we start the podcast. And kudos to our producer Alexa for finding them all. In case you didn't recognize all the names, the first one is , then we have , Devin Nunes, Joe Biden again, , Joe Biden again, AOC, , and finally Joe Biden. What I find shocking is just how many people are asking the same question we are Dany, what the hell is going on?

Danielle Pletka: I kind of still love to think that these people have the answers, but what is increasingly evident is that like us, they have no freaking clue what the hell is going on.

Marc Thiessen: Well, speak for yourself. I know what the hell is going on.

Danielle Pletka: Yes. Well, we'll let our listeners decide that. So it's a big day today.

Marc Thiessen: Yep. It's Inauguration Day.

Danielle Pletka: Yep. Reliably every four years, it's Inauguration Day. I'm going out of town.

Marc Thiessen: I flew in yesterday on a flight from Florida and there were TSA agents at the gate doing additional screening on all the flights. And Pam was on a different flight, my wife, and had the same thing. They were screening everybody getting on a plane for Washington. It was really kind of creepy.

Danielle Pletka: Well, given what happened last week, I think that's to be expected and regrettable. For those of you who listen to us who don't live in Washington, I'm sure you've heard the streets in Washington are closed. We've got more troops in DC than we have in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is, I feel kind of ridiculous, but

2 again, you can't be too careful.

Marc Thiessen: No, absolutely. And look, as you said, after what happened on the Capitol, we need to have security. We need to make sure that this transfer of power is... I guess it's no longer a peaceful transfer of power after what happened to the Capitol, but no more violence for sure.

Danielle Pletka: Well, let's hope not. So in honor of our new president and, hopefully a slightly different time and tone in Washington, we invited Democratic power player, veteran of multiple White Houses, John Podesta, to join us for the podcast. And he was nice enough to spend a little time with me while Marc was on a plane. So we're going play that interview for you in just a bit. But Marc, one of the things that we talked about was just how Joe Biden is going to handle the first 100 days. And I started out being kind of enthusiastic and by the end I was a little bit worried.

Marc Thiessen: You think?

Danielle Pletka: I worry because look, you are one of the people who pointed this out. It's one thing to have a coronavirus relief bill, and it's another to have a coronavirus relief bill that is like the proverbial Christmas tree with every liberal agenda item on the face of the earth on it.

Marc Thiessen: First of all, John Podesta is a Clinton Democrat, which means he is a centrist Democrat. He was 's chief of staff. He was the senior counselor to . But he's not part of the , Ocasio-Cortez wing of the Democratic Party. And the reality is, that's not the wing of the party that's ascendant right now. Joe Biden is an anomaly. He is an old school liberal, and that means he's a liberal, but he is not a socialist progressive. And he doesn't really represent where the Democratic Party is today. He represents an era where Republicans and Democrats didn't hate each other, where they actually got along and liked each other and agreed to disagree agreeably as our old boss, used to say, when talking about how he worked with Joe Biden and other Democrats and tried to find a compromise where they could. And weren't crazy leftists who were trying to spend trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars and do all sorts of radical things.

Marc Thiessen: And so he is very out of step with his party, and his party is going to be pushing him to be basically their figurehead, the auto pen that signs their bills. And there's no check on him right now. I'm not worried about Joe Biden, the person. I'm not worried about Joe Biden's temperament. I'm worried that he is not strong enough to stand up to the left wing of his party going forward.

Danielle Pletka: No, listen that is my biggest concern. I worry that Joe Biden isn't going to be a very strong leader internally. We already all are hearing in Washington that his chief of staff, Ron Klain, is basically the prime minister. I think that even though we can reassure ourselves that Joe Biden is a guy who likes to agree to disagree agreeably, in fact, his party is not that party. And the problem is I think that the slippery slope from issues where we can all agree faster rollout of the COVID vaccine, more relief to businesses and individuals, more employment incentives all of those things that I think Republicans and Democrats can agree

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3 on. I mean again, they'll disagree on the margins, will quickly morph into single payer health care, into a , into a $15 everywhere. And those are things where there's going to be a growing divide.

Danielle Pletka: Now, again, I'm not even worried about that growing divide. What I'm worried about is because the Senate is so closely divided, they are going to actually end up getting rid of the filibuster. And then we really are going to be moving towards two years of dictatorship.

Marc Thiessen: So a couple of thoughts on that. First of all, when I was in the White House, I worked for George W. Bush. And one of the first things that George W. Bush did when he was elected president was reach out to Ted Kennedy, the most liberal member of the Senate and say, "Let's work together on ." And the result was the No Child Left Behind Act, which was bipartisan. It was something that both sides agreed on, brought left and right together, and was a unifying act by finding something that he could compromise with on and actually advance a policy goal together with the most liberal member of the . When John Podesta was chief of staff of the White House, and Bill Clinton was elected, one of the first things Bill Clinton did as president was reach out to all of his former Republican and Democratic predecessors, invite them to the White House and push for NAFTA, which was a trade agreement that was opposed by many in his own party, but had bipartisan support on the center right and center left.

Marc Thiessen: And both Barack Obama and Donald Trump did not do that when they came into office. Barack Obama came into office and when they started doing the economic relief package, rather than reach out to Republicans and say, "Hey, let's include some of your priorities. Let's include some of our priorities and we need to unite behind reviving the American economy." He told Republicans elections have consequences, and I won and he rammed it through in a partisan vote. He rammed through Obamacare on a party line vote. All of the major priorities he passed were largely done on party line votes. And then Donald Trump came in and of course the Democrats declared themselves a resistance and wouldn't work with him on anything. And he didn't really try and so it got even worse.

Marc Thiessen: And so here we are, Joe Biden is the president who, if he has any mandate at all Dany, it's to unite the country, because he said, "I'm not a socialist, I beat the socialist. I'm going to restore unity. I'm going to bring the country together." And where are we starting? We're starting with a two trillion dollar COVID relief package on top of the almost one trillion we just passed a few weeks ago. And it includes all sorts of extraneous things like a $15 minimum wage that are divisive. Why wouldn't Joe Biden come in and say to the Republicans, "Okay, let's do something that includes your priorities. Here's $500 billion, I'll take $500 billion. You do some sort of tax incentives. We'll do something else. And we'll do this together."

Marc Thiessen: There's no effort to do that. He has no equivalent right now that we have seen on his opening agenda of the No Child Left Behind Act. He's not reaching out to Mitch McConnell or anybody else and saying, "Let's work on this together." So I'm sort of disappointed by where we are in terms of the start, when it comes to

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4 trying to unify the country.

Danielle Pletka: Yeah. Look, it's worrisome. And one of the things that I think that everybody appreciates about their own party, but doesn't appreciate about the other party is that it is increasingly difficult for the elderly leaders of both the GOP and the Democratic Party to manage their... Not just their constituents, but also other younger members of their own party. Mitch McConnell doesn't speak for , that seems absolutely clear. And I don't think that Joe Biden or frankly, speaks for or AOC or Rashida Tlaib or any of those adjective deleted folks. And part of the challenge is, Biden's going to want to come in and maybe he wants to compromise, but he's not going to be allowed to compromise by any of these guys because they don't want that. They've got the majority, they hated being under Donald Trump's thumb and damn it they're going to do what they need to do and they've been promising.

Danielle Pletka: I think for Republicans who are hoping to take back the House and the Senate in the next election in 2022, they're going to be equally leery of working with those creeps who, as much as he may have deserved it, impeached Donald Trump twice. And so this dysfunction is really serious. And I see no way out of it. What you talked about, I think would have been a great thing to do. I just suspect that internal politicking in these political parties isn't going to enable that sort of thing. And none of these individuals, none of them are big enough to defy their party.

Marc Thiessen: The other big problem we have is, in light of what happened in the Capitol and you and I have discussed Donald Trump's responsibility for inciting the assault on the Capitol and all the rest of it. The Democrats are right now in a position of self- assumed moral superiority. That Donald Trump was the cancer that divided us and now it's Republican's responsibility to come around and compromise. But the reality is, it was the Democrats who... As soon as Donald Trump was elected said, "Impeach him." Even before he took office, who declared themselves... They were no longer the opposition, they were the resistance. And the cry went up on the left, not my president. And they spent two years pursuing this conspiracy theory that somehow he had conspired with Russia to steal the election, which they hoped to impeach him for. And then when the Mueller report came out and basically cleared him of collusion charges, they impeached him anyway. He gave him a pretext, but they did it.

Marc Thiessen: They've just been on a non-stop crusade to destroy Donald Trump from the first day he took office. Donald Trump did more than his fair share to cooperate with those efforts, to give them pretext to do it, he's his own worst enemy. But then Joe Biden comes up and he gives his speech at his victory rally and he says, "It's time to put aside partisan bickering and let's give each other a chance and let's unite the country." And a lot of Republicans say, "Oh, now you want unity after spending four years trying to destroy the president elected by 70 million Americans. Now you suddenly want unity, no thanks." And so I think they have to take some ownership of the divisions that we have in our country. Joe Biden has to take some ownership of the divisions we have in our country and he's the president, he needs to lead and he needs to unite us. He needs to be the one who reaches out to the Republicans and says, "Here's my outstretched hand. Let's work on something together." And if they slap it away, then shame on

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5 them. But he's the president, they have some responsibility and he's got the leadership responsibility to do it.

Danielle Pletka: I am just worried that we don't have the caliber of leader that we need in this country today at this moment to actually do the kind of things that aren't better for the Democratic Party or better for the Republican Party, but are better for the country. And we're going to press before Biden's inaugural speech, so I hope that he takes Marc Thiessen's advice and that he does actually offer a hand. I think that George Bush and Bill Clinton were right. The problem is number one, we don't have a political leader who's big enough to do that these days. And two, I think our public isn't going to reward it as much, perhaps as they would have in those days.

Danielle Pletka: Look, shame on them, shame on us, but also... I look at these divisions and ask myself how the public is intended to bridge these gaps as well? Certainly you and I have tried with our inaugural podcast of the Biden administration. We've gone to Mr. Democrat. And it says a lot about him that he was willing to make the time in one of the busiest weeks of his year to sit down and chat. For all 14 of you who don't know who John Podesta is, he actually worked on at the same time that you and I did, Marc, I didn't know him that well. And then he entered the Clinton administration. He was deputy chief of staff, he was staff secretary, he was chief of staff. And then he ran Hillary Clinton's campaign. He ran Barack Obama's transition. He's now the chair and counselor of the Center for American Progress, which is a think tank that AEI does a lot of work with and here's our interview.

Danielle Pletka: John Podesta, thank you so much for joining us in a pretty big week for Washington, DC, for the Democratic Party, and for Joe Biden and .

John Podesta: A locked down city and an excellent inauguration.

Danielle Pletka: Well, it's going to be different from any other in the past. But that's probably true for pretty much everything we talk about.

Danielle Pletka: Let me start with something pretty straightforward. Joe Biden has, as all previous presidents have, talked about his first 100 days. We've seen a pretty big bill and pretty big proposal among his priorities. Where do you see his first 100 days emphasis being?

John Podesta: Well, you know, I ran the Obama/Biden transition in 2008. And my experience is that people try to live up to the promises they made during the campaign. So the best guidepost to see what Biden and Harris are trying to do is to go back to what they promised during the course of the campaign. And in that context, the president-elect referred constantly to these four interrelated crises.

John Podesta: The COVID crisis, obviously, that's front and center, that's top of mind. The resulting economic crisis, the racial justice crisis that was exposed, not just by the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, but also by the differential impact that we saw from COVID. And the climate crisis, which I think that he drew into that conversation and said, we're deep into this COVID crisis right now, but in the future, we have to come to grips with this climate crisis.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

6 John Podesta: And he put forward a program about how he was going to deal with that. How he's going to get on top of COVID, and then how he was going to turn his attention to building a recovery that was addressing all those issues.

John Podesta: And I think what you've seen to date is his making good on that. First and foremost, with a big infusion of funds to really provide relief to people who are being super hard hit by COVID, try to get people back to work, try to get schools open, try to get the vaccine properly distributed. The economy can't function if we don't get on top of COVID. He knows that, and that's priority number one. But then he's coming behind that with a big investment package. And that'll happen probably in two or three weeks.

Danielle Pletka: So we want to come to that investment package, but one of the words that has been really on the President-elect's lips basically since November, since he won, is this word, healing. And I think that that's something that resonates with a lot of people who watched what happened at the Capitol, but also have watched the violence of the last year, and really cry for their country, and for the comity that there should be between Americans, no matter what their political stripe. Do you think that's going to be an important element of his first 100 days as well? And how?

John Podesta: Well, first of all, let me take a step back and say, as we all remain stunned really, by the assault on the Capitol and on our democracy that occurred on January 6th, and the fallout that's resulted from that, including the impeachment for a second time to Donald Trump, I think the President-elect and the Vice President-elect have remained very disciplined in their approach to what their job needs to be.

John Podesta: They've focused on what they need to do come January 20th. They've built an impressive team that's highly experienced. I think they've put a premium on people who can kind of get the job done, and people who come to the White House or to the Cabinet with a great depth of experience. And I think that the Vice President from, really the moment he launched his campaign... I got to get used to calling him the President. President Biden, from the moment he launched this campaign, and his reference to Charlottesville in those very early days, I think he saw the country coming apart.

John Podesta: And I think he saw his mission as trying to pull it back together. And that his appeal was largely a personal appeal to his own decency, his own sense of recovery from deep pain, and the ability to move forward. And I think that's what people found attractive about his candidacy. That's why he won the nomination, first of all, and that's why he was elected president.

John Podesta: So I think that remains an important mission for him, but I think that it will be in the contents of doing the work, of getting people vaccinated, of getting kids back in school, of getting people to try to reach out and find some common ground, to get the economy going again, to pay attention to the economic pain that people have felt. Whether they would have been evicted, but for the moratorium he plans to extend, or the unemployment benefits that may have run out.

John Podesta: He's right there with the people, trying to say, I understand you, this depth of pain, 400,000 people now dead from COVID, and get the country back to work.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

7 And by putting you back to work, I think we could bring the country back together.

John Podesta: So I'm sure he's going to reflect on the moment in his inaugural address, and try to reach out to people who didn't vote for him as well as to people who did. But I think that whether he can wave a magic wand and reduce the level of partisanship, I think that's unlikely, and we shouldn't hold them to that kind of standard, because that division is deeply ingrained, not only in our , but now in our .

Danielle Pletka: from Marc: Is Joe Biden making a mistake by starting out his presidency with a COVID package that's just like the Heroes Act? That includes all sorts of funding for things that have nothing to do with COVID, like a $15 minimum wage? If this is his first big initiative, and his first effort at restoring unity, shouldn't he be including Republican priorities, or trying to limit it to things that are just COVID-specific, rather than loading it up with progressive policy prescriptions that don't have a lot to do with the pandemic?

John Podesta: Well, I think this is a pretty focused package, and is focused on the pandemic. And it's focused on the pain that people are experiencing during the pandemic. So the fact that people with low wages have no safety net, that they're pressured when they lose days of work, when they're extremely vulnerable, means that he's done things like included paid family leave, but paid family leave targeted at the reason that people have to stay home.

John Podesta: He's put his finger on the ways in which the COVID crisis has essentially cascaded on people, particularly working people's lives, and tried to address that with more unemployment insurance, with direct payments to individuals, and with money to state and local governments, which have hemorrhaged revenue as a result of so many people being unemployed.

John Podesta: But I think all in the service of one thing, which is, get on top of the pandemic, get people vaccinated, get control of a pandemic that got out of control because of the mishandling by the previous administration. And then get the economy working again by putting people back in employment.

John Podesta: So I guess I would disagree with Marc, in the sense that this is not a COVID- focused package. I think you could make the argument that the next package will be Democratic priorities about tackling climate change, what a decent economy looks like. But I think what he's put forward as the first package, I think, is pretty highly focused on addressing the pandemic and addressing the pain that the pandemic has cost.

Danielle Pletka: I think Marc would join me in asking, we both know Joe Biden from our days working with him on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He doesn't hate Republicans as Republicans. He believes in . We did tons of stuff with Senator Biden when he was chairman, when he was ranking, with his staff. But this is a Joe Biden who got in trouble with his party when he said, "I worked with Strom Thurmond, I work with Mitch McConnell." People were shocked. And shouldn't we be a little bit nervous that the rest of the Democratic Party isn't actually going to share that view, that they're going to sort of pursue a revenge

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8 agenda? If the Democrats control the Senate, there's not going to be a lot of check on the progressive wing of the Party and that's going to be hard on Biden, isn't it?

John Podesta: Well, look. I don't think that Joe Biden ran for president to exact revenge, and I don't think that that will be a top of the mind instinct for him. And I think he'll probably, to the extent he's able to, argue that while there should be accountability, the country is not well-served by revenge. And it just ends up in a continuous cycle of bitterness. And what we really need to do is try to change that dynamic, but he did run on a very progressive platform. And I think that is more probably progressive than you would have seen him run on previous times he's run for president. That, I think, reflects a couple of things, not just the changing nature of the Democratic Party, but a changing analysis about what has happened in our and in our economy and the great split that's occurred between the top and the middle and working people.

John Podesta: And that it is, I think, consistent with now mainstream Democratic thinking that there needs to be more intervention to produce a stronger economy, which is built on greater fairness. You raised earlier the question about the $15 an hour minimum wage. And I think that, again, is an understanding, first of all, that there's tremendous amount of academic research that says raising the minimum wage including in comparative studies that look at jurisdictions that are right next to each other, where one jurisdiction has raised it and the other hasn't that there is not job loss, job effect from raising the minimum wage. And it's a way of lifting people at the bottom up a little bit and letting them participate in the fruits of a very strong economy. We've decoupled productivity from wage growth. And I think he's actually trying to attack some of the growing inequality in the economy that actually is, I think, and more and more research indicates, is a burden on growth, not an accelerant to growth.

John Podesta: So I think he's trying to come up with an economic program that supports high worker participation. That's his emphasis on paid family leave and other issues, childcare, and other issues like that. But he's also trying to focus on the fairness in the economy. And then finally, and I think this is where his big investments will be, on the need to get on with the project of transforming our energy system from one of dirty -based energy to clean and renewable energy. So the big emphasis on climate change is also part of the understanding that the economy, human security, national security are going to be upended by the effects of a warming world unless we don't get in and begin to address that.

Danielle Pletka: Okay. So I want to get to some of the national security questions. I wish I had Mike Strain, our director of economic studies who's a labor economist sitting next to me, so he could argue about the effects of the $15 wage. But in the sense that we have fights about ideas, that's a great place for all us to be. I would love for us to be fighting about ideas and not with-

John Podesta: I agree with that, Dany. I agree with that. I think that's the way politics used to work, where you had honest disagreement about what was going to be best for the economy? What was going to be best for workers? And I think that's devolved into kind of conspiracy, name calling, and the democracy will not work if we can't kind of break that cycle and get back to discussion. But I would note,

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

9 by the way, that the voters of Florida, Donald Trump's new home state, put a $15 minimum wage on the ballot. So at least they thought it was going to help improve the lives of workers in that state. And you've seen that happen across the country as well, without any real connection between job creation or job loss and raising the minimum wage.

Danielle Pletka: All right, I'm going to link some of Mike Strain's work in our transcript for this, but what interests me when you talk is that I hear you speaking from a liberal perspective that reminds me a little... I guess I would call it old school. So your friends and mine, John Halpin and Brian Katulis, and others have a new blog, I guess, that they call The Liberal Patriot. There was a piece up by John Halpin that about just those issues that you just laid out, which have alienated the working class from the Democratic Party in many ways, all that package that you're talking about is about rebuilding that relationship. And in taking those voters back, surprising numbers of whom went over to the Republican Party and kind of divorcing the party from these elite battles about who could use what bathroom and what pronoun you want to use. Philosophically, that's obviously where Joe Biden is going to be, no matter what the platform says. How far apart is he going to be from his party?

John Podesta: I think if you had to give Biden credit in this campaign for one thing, other than staying power, because he suffered those early defeats in the primaries, and he just hung in there. He knew he had a strategy. He knew if he could get to South Carolina and get to the South, that that voters would stick with him, and particularly, African-American voters would come to him. And that proved to be a brilliant strategy. But the other thing he did was he did his politics right. He kept the party together. Now, with the threat of Donald Trump, maybe you say that's pretty easy to do, but I don't think so.

John Podesta: And Bernie helped to some extent, or maybe more than some extent, by basically being willing to get out early, by willing to kind of find some common ground with them in these working groups that they set up and then in a platform that reflected Biden's priorities, but that progressives could find something to love in. But he did his politics pretty well.

John Podesta: And I think his team is not just experienced in governing, if you will, but they're experienced in politics and keeping what is a big tent coalition together. A lot of my friends, because I spend so much of my time on climate change and look to the investments that we talked about earlier, and whether they can get done through budget reconciliation. And I remind them that given the narrow margin in the House and the 50/50 nature of the Senate, I think we can get a large investment package done, and we can get people to work doing the work that needs to be done, but we have to find common ground between Joe Manchin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They both have to be able to vote for that package.

John Podesta: Reconciliation's kind of inherently a partisan process. But I think that for the most part, you've got to be able to have the skill to bring together, I think where Biden and Biden's political team have been really kind of remarkably successful. They've done a very good job of bridging that breadth of that big tent.

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10 Danielle Pletka: This is really interesting to hear you talk about the shrewd politics because, again, politics is so much easier when Donald Trump is on the other side. You said I would say it, and you were right. But one of the things that a lot of us have talked about in our concern about one-party governance, about a Democrat in the House, the Senate and the White House is getting rid of the filibuster. That first and foremost, but increasing the size of the Court. And you mentioned Joe Manchin. He said, "No way, no, how, not me." Do you see those as being issues that are going to be front and center as it becomes very hard with very small majorities to move forward with a Biden agenda?

John Podesta: Well, in general, I think that democracies that adopt a parliamentary system, where every vote is a vote of no confidence and you'd require a supermajority vote, don't function very well. What we've seen in the last many years is a breakdown of the ability to find honest compromise and everything becomes hyper-partisanized. And then when you have a supermajority requirement on top of that, it's sort of a recipe for doing nothing. I think that particularly given the 50/50 nature of this Senate, I would be surprised if there's early move to get rid of the filibuster.

John Podesta: But I think that some extent, I agree with, President Obama's recently talked about this, I think that the filibuster is probably on its way out. And where I think in this Congress you're going to see, going back to Biden's early years in the Senate, get restored or are we still stuck in where we were when Mitch McConnell said, "My number one job is to make sure Barack Obama is a one- term president." I mean, those are the kind of extremes. Here's what I would predict. The House is going to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act reform bill. They're going to pass things like DACA, maybe, like DC statehood. And I think if those things get beat on a filibuster in the Senate, they are largely popular across the public, then I think the movement towards saying we can't live under the system is going to grow and grow. But I don't see that happening out of the gates.

John Podesta: I do think they will utilize, in the budget world, the authorities they have available to them through budget reconciliation, which requires, as you know, a majority vote. But that is a limited set of issues around spending and taxes. We all grieved when John Lewis died. Now, the question is, what are we going to do about it? I had the honor of working with him in the Carter administration quite closely. He and I were friends for nearly 50 years. And we could honor him by Republicans

returned to where they have been, then I think that pressure to get rid of the filibuster is going to mount at least on these questions.

John Podesta: It's been a bad run for the Senate and a bad run for the Congress and its inability to find common solutions. And I'm a creature of the Senate. I worked in the Senate for nearly 10 years, most of that time for Pat Leahy. I had Republican friends and we worked across the aisle, and there was regular order, and you had conference committees, and you found compromises, and you pass bills, and you allowed amendments on the floor. And the Senate was, in fact, a place where there were great debates and sometimes you won and sometimes you lost, but that's really fundamentally changed.

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11 Danielle Pletka: So let me try a little lightning round because I'm getting to the end of your time. Given everything you just said, is it a mistake to see the Senate start its first action of the Biden presidency on impeachment?

John Podesta: handed to them on January 6th. They would have preferred, I think that he at least just shut his mouth, if not admit that he had been defeated as a normal politician would have done. But he riled up that crowd. It resulted in an assault on the Capitol. More and more evidence is coming to light that people felt like he had charged them with going up to the Hill. He sat in the office, he couldn't understand why people weren't as exhilarated as he was by what was happening at the Capitol. I mean, if there was any grounds for impeachment, I think inciting sedition is probably it. So I don't think the Senate would have preferred to be doing this, but I think it is the direct result of Trump's action post-election, but particularly on January 6th.

Danielle Pletka: Given all the priorities you laid out, if I think about them, climate, healing the nation, fixing our economy, COVID, 100 million vaccines, 100 days. I look at China, I look at Iran, the threats out there, how big do you think Iran is going to loom on his priority list? They just arrested and imprisoned and sentenced another American. They're not going to make it easy for him. Do you think it's going to be as front and center as maybe some of my friends hope?

John Podesta: I think he will and he has indicated and his team has indicated and his selection of personnel has indicated, with Wendy Sherman going back as deputy secretary of state and as national security advisor that they're going to try to deal with the Iranian nuclear program in a manner in which they get back to restraint through negotiation. I don't think there's any question about that.

John Podesta: I think it will be difficult, there's a lot of water under the bridge as a result of Trump's decision to pull out of the JCPOA and then the kind of escalating antagonism. So, I don't think that'll be easy. I don't think it's something you could just say, "Okay, well now forget about him, let's just start where we left." That will be a challenging diplomatic effort. I think our biggest challenge is going to be China and doing a full 360 strategic review of all the issues, those where we're in a confrontational posture, where we're in a competitive posture and where we need some level of cooperation on global issues like climate change.

John Podesta: But I think you have to start from both a strategic theory of the case, and then the individual elements, whether it's human rights and challenging democratic rights in Hong Kong, the provocations against Taiwan, the security incursions in the South China Sea, global health, climate change, tech, trade. There's just so much there. And it's the most important thing to get right, that I think they have to have an overall strategic framework by which they can manage the individual files.

John Podesta: And I think some, they may choose to try to create lanes that are somewhat protected from the influence of the others, whether that's trying to, for example, pressure working with our other allies and probably starting with agreements with South Korea and Japan to stop overseas development financing of coal fire power is probably an area where they might begin, where I'm sure that Secretary

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

12 Kerry will want to engage his Chinese colleagues.

John Podesta: But I think that the big questions what's our overall posture? We're in a place that it's not just been the effect of Donald Trump and his sort of chaotic approach to dealing with both our traditional treaty allies, as well as DPRK, China, et cetera. But it's the direct actions of President Xi, the deep consolidation of power, the abuse of democratic rights, the threatening of Taiwan. Those are all things that Trump didn't produce, I think Xi felt maybe he had more room because of where the United States was. But in the end of the day, we're in for a period of trying to develop an overall strategic approach that is not just the United States, but includes our allies, both in Europe and in the Asia Pacific that can get to a place where we can begin to kind of manage the challenges and the disagreements. And keep China from activities that are just antithetical to things that we value and believe in.

Danielle Pletka: Amen. All right. Exit question. Piece in New York Magazine says, according to him, the him being you, John Podesta, failing to get government files declassified on UFO's was one of your, "Biggest failures" in advising Barack Obama. What don't we know and why don't we know it?

John Podesta: Well, I have to say, this has sort of been a cause of mine for the last little while, 20 years maybe. Since kind of the end of Clinton up until now. I do think that the public has a real interest in what is in classified files, what the government does know about unexplained aerial phenomena. We've seen some recent disclosure and I credit that, for both pushing the Pentagon to fund a program, but also to push them to basically make more information available. The historic files, which I've been involved with trying to get declassified, still are for the most part unavailable. Now they're kind of lost to history to some extent, because usually if you don't want to declassify something after a very long time, you just manage to lose it.

Danielle Pletka: So, wait. Are there aliens out there?

John Podesta: Well, don't you think there are? Wouldn't it stand to reason that there are?

Danielle Pletka: Absolutely. The longer I live in Washington, the more I believe it. Listen, thank you so much for taking the time. We're really grateful, especially given the holiday and the week. Thank you. And I hope you'll come back at some point and join us again.

John Podesta: And I wish you and Marc a good inauguration.

Marc Thiessen: So Dany, that was a terrific interview you did with him. And thank you for asking some of my questions. The most troubling thing for me was how casually certain he was that the filibuster is on its way out. And that's coming from, as you pointed out at the beginning, a creature of the Senate. He worked for Pat Leahy, he spent years up there. Joe Biden is probably the first president we've had since Lyndon Johnson, who was truly a man of the Senate. Barack Obama was a senator for about two minutes. Joe Biden was a senator since 1972 and understands the institution, understands the importance of the rights of the minority. The idea that on Joe Biden's watch, we're going to see the filibuster go

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

13 is really shocking. And we're all sitting here, those of us who understand the consequences of that. Everyone talks about the damage that Donald Trump did to our institutions. No, the damage to our institution would be permanently changing the Senate to a majoritarian institution remade in the image of the House of Representatives. If you like the House of Representatives, you're going to love the new United States Senate, with no minority rights whatsoever.

Marc Thiessen: And we're sitting here counting on Joe Manchin to save us? Joe Manchin is going to side with Mitch McConnell and against Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, when the Republicans try to stop one of Biden's priorities? Not happening. So I'm very worried about this.

Danielle Pletka: So a few things, first of all, for those who are not familiar with how the House of Representatives works, and that is surprisingly a lot of people. The House is a tyranny of the majority. No House bill goes to the floor before it goes through the rules committee, which is controlled 100% by the Speaker of the House. What I don't get, and I guess I didn't press hard enough because I was so eager to get to my question about UFOs. Because you got to admit, ending any interview with the line, aliens are out there. Well, don't you think so? is pretty epic, but look-

Marc Thiessen: You go, crazy lady.

Danielle Pletka: What I don't get is, why there is not a sense that what goes around comes around? You and I have talked about this when we talked about the filibuster. This is an issue that was started by the Democrats when they got rid of the judicial filibuster. And that was just... Guys, I mean, do you really not see where this is going? They opened the flood gates, they opened Pandora's box. And that was Harry Reid, the former of the Senate. And of course, it resulted in ending the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees, which Mitch McConnell did. But as you and I have noted repeatedly, Donald Trump asked McConnell to get rid of the filibuster in order to ram his agenda through the Senate when the Republicans were in control of the Senate and Mitch McConnell said, "No."

Danielle Pletka: Now again, John, I think rightly said at the beginning, this won't happen. But I think the issue here is that what the Democrats have come to believe is moderate and therefore should be acceptable to everybody, is in fact, not at all moderate. A national minimum wage that is in some cases twice what it is around the country, business destroying taxes, a business destroying environmental agenda. All of those sorts of things are not as mainstream as the Dems think they are. And if in fact, in order to further that agenda, that agenda that they believe is mainstream, they get rid of the filibuster. We are well down the Banana Republic path, in which our foreign policy and our national domestic policy swings from one pole to the other with each election. That is disastrous.

Marc Thiessen: You're absolutely right. So here's what's going to happen, the House is going to pass some Biden priority. I don't know what it's going to be. It's going to be on environment. It's going to be climate. It's going to be health care. Some version of Medicaid For All, and the Republicans are going to block it. Just as, by the way, the Democrats blocked police reform and lawsuit reform and the border wall and any number of Trump priorities, vigorously exercise their rights in the

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14 Senate as the minority to just kill stuff, not just even slow it down and force compromise, but actually kill Trump priorities. As soon as Mitch McConnell starts killing a Biden priority, they're going to say, "How dare you, we're not going to let the vanquished Republican minority block President Joe Biden's agenda."

Marc Thiessen: And so the pressure's going to be on Joe Manchin. Is Joe Manchin going to sit there and be the one who says, "Nope, we're going to block it. Sorry, Joe Biden, your priority doesn't get done." And then what's going to happen is, as you say, you predict this very well Dan they're going to regret it because what'll happen is they will start passing increasingly radical and unmoderated priorities. Because the whole point of the 60 votes is to require bipartisanship, to moderate legislation, you have to get buy-in from the minority, if you want to get anything done. And they will start passing things with Kamala Harris as the deciding vote and 50 votes. And that will cause more and more of a backlash in the American people. And the odds are right now, already, even before this, that the Republicans are going to take back the House and they could very well take back the Senate. And then all of a sudden it'll be Republicans who have the filibuster approved majority in the Senate and the House and two years later could get back the presidency. And then all of a sudden the shoe's on the other foot.

Marc Thiessen: If you're a liberal, not smart, not good for our country. I just don't understand this willingness to just destroy institutions that have kept our country centrist and moderate for more than a century. To just throw them out in order to push through a radical agenda. It just makes no sense to me.

Danielle Pletka: Yeah, it makes no sense to me either. One thing that I didn't notice in the conversation I had with John, and I don't know if you caught it, I only saw it in the transcript. Was that he also referred to bringing the District of Columbia as a state into the union as a mainstream issue. And maybe I misread it, but I got to say, if that happens, you are going to start to see efforts within the states, states like California, states like Illinois, to start splitting those states up in order to have sectors that are more representative. We had this conversation, a great conversation about the electoral college with Allen Guelzo. And that I think is what we're going to start to see. If this looked like civil war, it is only going to get worse.

Marc Thiessen: And here's the thing, it becomes a cycle because so what will happen is, they'll start passing more and more radical legislation, which will create a backlash. And so in order to keep the Senate, they're going to add senators from Democratic leaning places by 50 votes plus Kamala Harris to make it harder for Republicans to gain back power, and then it becomes all or nothing in all of these elections. The big problem we have with our elections right now is, that the consequences seem so dire. It used to be, "Okay, we had George H. W. Bush, now we'll have Bill Clinton for awhile, then we'll have George W. Bush." The fate of the republic didn't hinge on whether one party was in power or not. And now it seems like everybody is so radical and the institutions that kept us centrist are being taken away. That every election, the consequences become so dire that it becomes literally life and death for people. And it shouldn't be that way. And we can never work together if we have that.

Danielle Pletka: Amen, to that. Marc-

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

15 Marc Thiessen: A-women, don't forget a-women.

Danielle Pletka: Yes. God help us, really in the department of self-parody. A-women indeed. A- women to you Marc. Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while. Folks, thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us. Send us ideas, compliments to me, hate mail to Marc and of course the usual technical questions to our Alexa. Thanks a ton for being with us.

Marc Thiessen: Take care.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org