LIVE from Washington, DC!

Okay, uh, you guys ready? Yeah. Let's do a show. Hit it. Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest. February 12th, 2026. The live from Washington, D.C. edition. I am David Ploz, the CityCast. And we are live at the Donald J. Trump Historic Synagogue in downtown Washington. Too soon! Too soon! at the 6th and I Historic Synagogue in downtown Washington, D.C., in front of a huge crowd. 6th and I is where we did our very first live GabFest back in January of 2009. We are so happy to be back here again. And I'm joined on stage, as I have been for 20 years, by my co-hosts. On my left, from the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School, a lot of you are probably her confidential sources. She will be the first call when I get arrested, Emily Bazelon. And to her left, the unemployed journalist who makes being an unemployed journalist look like so much fun. The sub-stacking, guitar-strumming, Anne Lovey, navel-gazing, glasses-flipping John Dickerson. This week on the Gav Fest, we'll talk to Democratic House member Jamie Raskin about Pam Bondi, Jeffrey Epstein, and many other worrisome developments in Donald Trump's Washington. Then the Trump-Kennedy Center, the Trump Ballroom, the Arc de Trump, the Trumpington Post, the gutting of the federal workforce. We're going to talk about the radical transformation of our city, of our dear city here, Washington, D.C. And then, should sports be political? Should Olympic athletes talk politics? Should you root for American Olympians? We will let you know what the answer to that is. Plus, we will have cocktail chatter. Prime Video be the best in entertainment. This should be fun. Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista are completely lost in the hilarious new action film The Wrecking Crew, inbegrepen by Prime. Yeah, I'm pumped. Find the new Game of Thrones series A Night of the Seven Kingdoms, based on the bestseller of George R.R. Martin. Look by being a member of HBO Max. So be brave, be just. So whatever you want to find, Prime Video. Here you look at everything. Abonnement is revised. Inhoud can have pretensions be taken. 18+. The general rules are of to use. We wanted to get a great guest tonight, but we couldn't. We could only get a washed-up loser lawyer. He spent his day with Pam Bondi and his evening now with us, so he is a true glutton for punishment. He's the member of Congress I would want to have if I had a member of Congress here in D.C. He's maybe the most quotable member of the House and one of the most passionate members of the House from Maryland's 8th District, Jamie Raskin. Thanks, Jamie. I thought we were only going to have one washed-up loser lawyer on the Gap Fest. I'm willing to share that title with special people. I'm playing the role of the washed-up loser television journalist. Exactly. Everybody's washed up on this stage. You too. So let's start with, this was Jamie earlier today at a House hearing with Attorney General Pan Bondi. Now, you're not showing a lot of interest in the victims, Madam Attorney General. Whether it's Epstein's human trafficking ring or the homicidal governmental violence against citizens in Minneapolis, as attorney general, you're siding with the perpetrators and you're ignoring the victims. That will be your legacy unless you act quickly to change course. You're running a massive Epstein cover up right out of the Department of Justice. Congressman Maskin, tell us a little bit about your day. What stood out about it? what are you going to take with it? What, if any, lessons do you think the Attorney General might have taken from this experience? And what do you think the Trump administration made of her performance? Thank you for having me. First of all, when she called me, apparently, a washed-up loser lawyer, I didn't hear that. But I heard her follow-up, which was, you're not even a real lawyer. Okay, which could not have been directed at me because I pay my bar dues every year. And I think it was directed at Jim Jordan Who never passed the bar So But anyway Look You know In I mean in Normal times I know that sounds extremely hypothetical And counterfactual But I mean there's no way that the Attorney General of the United States of America Could survive a performance Like the one she just rendered today And I don't know how many of you guys got to see it, but 95% of her airtime was changing the subject, dodging the issue, and engaging in ad hominem attacks on the members of Congress, literally insulting people about their careers or calling them washed up lawyers or whatever, or attacking their districts or their states. and you know a lot of the Republicans said to me after wow that would not have been my strategy I just want you to be clear you know so who knows I mean she of course was performing for an audience of one as most of them are maybe Donald Trump likes it but of course that is a very shrinking cult over there I mean a lot of people are waking up on the basement floor saying wait a second how did we get here? And so, and I've told some of my colleagues, when we get through this period, and we will, they will be fit only for selling flowers and incense at Dulles Airport. So CNN reported, and maybe others are reporting it now too, Congressman, that in a picture that was taken of the Attorney General, that it appeared that she had the search histories of the Democratic members who had gone into, was it a DOJ? Tell us what exactly she had the search history of and why that's important. So they set up this DOJ annex. It seems like an entire empty building with nothing going on other than one small room where they have four computers for the members of Congress to come and check out the unredacted Epstein files. And, of course, they redacted the names of a lot of the abusers, co-conspirators, and enablers, and they failed to redact the names that they were supposed to redact according to federal law, which was of the victims and of the survivors of this nightmare. So anyway, we went over there, and I think I was the first member to show up. I had the feeling that we were being closely watched and surveilled. And what turned out today was a reporter took a picture of Attorney General Bundy's alleged burn book, like the burns she brought to use against the members, and it was on the page for Pramila Jayapal. And on that page it said Pramila Jayapal's search history. But this was not a history of searches they did on Pramila. This was Pramila's search that she did over at the annex. And they followed it. And sure enough, a lot of us had been suspecting it. They were monitoring us, which we view as just a naked violation of the separation of powers, and completely Orwellian, although it's hard to say it's unfitting for the administration. I mean, and so they were sending them a letter that they must immediately cut it out. And how about they bring the computers over to the Capitol so we can do them there? And maybe we need more than four of them because we figured it would take us seven years to get through the three million files the way that we're doing it on four computers, even if we used it every minute of the 40 hours they're allowing us to do. The truth is, my friends, I view all of it as part of a cover-up, and the cover-up started with Alex Acosta way back when they cut a deal. There was a 60-count federal indictment waiting to go against Epstein and Maxwell and a bunch of their other co-conspirators, and their names are coming out and they will come out, and they traded that 60-count federal indictment for one state count of solicitation to prostitution for Jeffrey Epstein, and he didn't even have to be in jail 24 hours. He had the days off to continue to do whatever he was going to do, and then he went and spent the night in jail, and that was how they let him and a bunch of other people who got off scot-free. We need to get to the bottom of that utterly corrupt sweetheart deal and then this double standard that lasted up until today in terms of the corrupt cover-up answers that we got from Pam Bondi. What's it like to go into a room and see the full unredacted? Just tell us what that's like to take in that diet, to pickle in that information, to use a word that David is. Yeah. What's that like? It's like going into a computer system. never used before and you don't understand how it works and it's filled with misdirection and they don't give you your password or your ID because they want to be monitoring you and then you're struggling to find your way around. I cannot imagine that if you added up all the members who've gone in so far that we've gotten anywhere near 1% of the 3 million files that are actually there on the unredacted list. But understand this. There's 6 million files and 3 million of them they're not releasing at all. Because Pam Bondi says that it's duplicative. Well, if they're duplicative, just release them. We get duplicates of things all the time, right? But the content. The content, okay, well, so I was able to find a few things, right? I put in Trump or Donald or Don, and it came back with more than a million citations. Now, there might be a lot of other Donalds and Dons in there. I don't know. But the first one I went to had been redacted, and then I found the button to unredact it, and it unredacted it, and what it was was this. An email from Jeffrey Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell forwarding an email he got from his lawyers, And the lawyers say we were able to get, I'm paraphrasing here, but we were able to get the deposition for Trump turned into a 20-minute interview. And here's a synopsis of what was said. Was Jeffrey Epstein a member of Mar-a-Lago? No, he was not a member. He was a guest, and he was never sent away. Now that, I mean, who knows whether he was lying then or he's lying now. But, of course, it's part of the crux of Donald Trump's case today that the minute he found out there was something untoward going on with Jeffrey Epstein, he sent him away. And that's the opposite of what this first little email showed when it popped up. And it just so happened that they redacted it. Now, remember, they were not supposed to redact under our law anything other than the identities of the victims. and they released the names, identities, phone numbers, addresses, in some cases nude images of victims in more than 100 cases. So, Congressman, there are a lot of things that the House Judiciary Committee can be looking at, the violations of law that this administration is committing, different ways that justice is being perverted. Why is the Epstein case the one that is taking so much time and energy? Is that the right use of everyone's time? I understand why it's politically valuable for Democrats to keep talking about it, but why in a larger sense is it important? Well, it's a massive crime and a massive scandal when more than a thousand women's lives have been so irretrievably in some cases, irreparably in some cases, but unalterably changed and transformed by this nightmare. And there are cases like this all over the country, at universities, at colleges, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, churches, synagogues, you name it. I think that's why it struck a major chord across party lines and geographic lines in the country. But having said that, I'd say we asked about equal number of questions today about the nightmare that has transpired with ICE and the massive violations of First Amendment rights, Second Amendment rights, Fifth Amendment rights, you name it, Fourth Amendment rights, the probable cause and search warrant, all of it. And so, but remember, and I know this sounds a little bit self-pleading here, each member of the Judiciary Committee under the Republican rules got five minutes of questioning. I asked for a second round, a third round, a fourth round. I mean, we could have been there for a week talking to her about the massive violations of constitutional rights, but they limited us to five minutes. And that's why I was very emphatic with Attorney General Bondi. And I said, we saw your performance and your antics over in the Senate, and we're not going to allow you to get away with that here. I think in the Senate they get 10 minutes. We get only five minutes. So we're not going to allow you to filibuster, to change the subject, to evade the question, or to use your time to try to taunt the members and engage in insults. We're going to stop the clock, and Mr. Chairman, I'm going to insist that's on your time, or somebody else's time, that's not on our time. And I think that we were very tough on that, and I think it proved to be an effective strategy, because the whole country could see how what she was trying to do was dodge all the questions and filibuster the committee. So I wanted to ask about a different piece of news this week, which was that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington tried to indict six members of Congress for saying what the law is, for saying that people in the military do not have to obey, and in some cases should not obey, illegal orders. The grand jury refused to indict these members of Congress, and that is kind of this amazing development we've seen where this previously, this part of the legal system that seemed utterly toothless has been kind of rising up. Let's hear it for the D.C. grand juries. And Virginia. And Maryland. I mean, it's happening all over the country. And in fact, I mean, it does vindicate the wisdom of the framers who really believed that the grand jury would stand as a barrier between overzealous or tyrannical government enforcement and the rights of the people. And we're actually seeing that play out in real time. And I salute anybody here who was on the grand jury that refused to indict the ham sandwich in Washington. Because, you know, they said that you could get a grand jury to indict anybody, including a ham sandwich. D.C. proved, no, you can't indict a ham sandwich if the ham sandwich is well-targeted. exactly well you can't indict baloney that's what I'm talking about alright alright I want to know what Republican members of Congress are saying about this attempt to indict their colleagues now in public I think I've only seen Tom Tillis really react he suddenly has found his voice now that he's retiring is he saying what lots of other Republicans are thinking or are they still keeping quiet I mean this is an attack on the institution on the branch as well as individuals? Yeah, you would like to think so. And I think slowly, very slowly, some of them are starting to melt off, like Tom Massey, like Tillis. But remember, the framers predicted that members of the federal government would identify primarily with their branch. If you're in Congress, you would identify with Congress. If you're in the judiciary, you'd identify with the judiciary. Well, I think we kind of dispelled that myth on January 6th, when the president summoned a mob to violently attack Congress and we could only get 10 Republicans to vote with us to impeach in the House and seven to vote to convict despite overwhelming evidence And all of us were not only the prosecutors or the jurors in that case, we were the victims of the crime, and we were at the crime scene, and we saw it happen, right? So what the framers did not predict, I think, was how profound an effect political party would have on some people. And we could have another session on that. I think it's legitimate to a certain extent. Parties play a good role in terms of mobilizing voters and articulating issues and forwarding agendas. But at the same time, you can't put your party over your constitution and over your country. You know? So there's a very high likelihood that Democrats will have a majority in the House after the 2026 election. What do you think a Democratic House would mean for the last two years of the Trump presidency? Do you think it's going to be like all impeachments that fail in the Senate and government shutdowns? Or is there something like what's going to be what in your dream is the narrative of that? Well, the first things that come to mind are regular order. There will be respect for the rule of law. There will be a zealous championship of freedom, of the Bill of Rights, of the Constitution, of democracy, and the common good. We've got two contrasting philosophies in America today. One is the idea, the old-fashioned idea we're fighting for, which is the government must be an instrument for the common good in the public interest of all the people versus the idea that the government is an instrument for private self-enrichment for the guy who gets in and his family and his corporations. And we're going to say goodnight to that and move forward again with Real America. But what do you think it... I guess I'm just... I'm seriously... What does it mean? I mean, when you have a president who won't... Like, Congress passed laws, appropriated money, and the president's like, I'm not going to really spend that. I'm going to spend it on something else or I'm going to... Right. what's that showdown going to be like in a way that's productive for the country and for the Democratic Party? Well, David, as usual, you're like 11 chess moves ahead of me, because I'm spending my weekends in New Hampshire and North Carolina and Arizona, Nevada. We've got to go out and win. So I'll be your first guest if you invite me back after we win. But let's focus on that. Yeah, exactly. So you're out there. Yes. So now you're, of course, going to say everybody's really enthusiastic and all that. So convince us that they're not just enthusiastic because they like you and whatever. Like, what are you hearing? What are you seeing out there that makes it? Well, let's go by the numbers. I mean, we just had a state Senate special election in Texas where there was a 31 point swing. Right. We won the governorship in Virginia. We won the governorship in New Jersey. We won the mayoralty in New York. We are winning districts all over the country that are considered red districts. and a number of my Republican colleagues tell me that they don't want to participate in any more gerrymandering. They're starting to call them dummy manders because they're reducing their margin of victory. And if we're switching things by 25 or 30 points, I mean, that's going to be a tidal wave. They're going to be hanging on for dear life when the election comes. So I'm hoping that Maryland moves forward to do the House redistricting plan. I hope Virginia moves forward to do the redistricting plan. Look, I would never engage in the Republican disenfranchisement schemes and voter suppression schemes they're doing all over the country. But we've been fighting to abolish partisan gerrymandering for more than a decade. And guess who always votes for it? The Democrats. And guess who always votes against it? The Republicans do, including in Maryland, Andy Harris, the leader of the Freedom Caucus, who's been a key opponent of any gerrymandering reform. reform. So this is the system they gave us. And then when Donald Trump said, mid-decade gerrymandering is going to be our pathway to victory, and then the people of California said, we're going to fight back. I said, I'm with the people of California, because there's nothing ethical about unilateral disarmament. This is the system the Republicans have created, and we're going to use it best we can, wherever we can, to our advantage, to fight back against these authoritarians. You said earlier that we are going to get through this abnormal era. Why do you feel confident of that? Did he say that here or to you? Both. He said it here, too. Okay. I mean, look at this awesome crowd at 6 in the eye tonight. I mean, I see it everywhere I go. When I was growing up, my dad used to say to us, when everything looks hopeless, you're the hope. And I go all over America now, and I see the hope everywhere. We've got a good thing going in America, right? If you look at it historically, this is a country, I mean, it began in a very limited and contradictory way, right? We began as a slave republic of white male property owners over the age of 21. But we had the ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence about all people being created equal, about life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the unalienable rights of the people and the consent of the governed. And it's been through successive movements for social change and freedom and justice that we've opened America up to something much closer to what Lincoln was talking about, of government of the people, by the people and for the people, a more perfect union. And we're living through a period of very ugly backlash against it. But you can see ultimately how thin, how tinny, and how outdated it really is. We're going to keep moving forward, and we're going to be a hell of a lot stronger when we get through this thing when we were before it started. So, Congressman, one of our favorite things we do every year is we do a conundrum show where we tackle questions that aren't, they're sort of dorm room bullshit. And so we thought we would give you some conundrums, a couple of conundrums before we let you go. So you are a constitutional law scholar. I'm a washed up used constitutional law professor, so yes. Not your words, not mine. Sam Bondi's words, not mine. So take the Constitution. You can have one sentence in the Constitution. You can add one sentence or subtract one sentence or rewrite one sentence. What do you do? Well, let's see. I mean, I would definitely, this might be liberalizing your rules a little bit, but I would like to put a big X over the electoral college and just have a national popular vote for president. But, I mean, I guess where it says equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged on account of race. We may as well put in or sex at that point. How about that? So you just build the ERA right into that. Two words. You've just added just that. But no, really, I mean, the electoral college is an accident waiting to happen every four years. It can get you killed, as we saw on January 6, 2021. I mean, it is such a convoluted, antiquated, outmoded process. We don't need nine different steps. Let's just do it the way we do governors and representatives and senators. Whoever gets the most votes wins. How about that? Let's do that for president. All right. One last conundrum. Would you rather be a fish or a tree and why? Well, let's see. I would much rather be a tree. I guess this goes. Great answer. Great answer. And, well, I spend a lot of my time in Northwest Branch and Rock Creek Park, and I see a lot more trees than I see fishes. But, no, this goes back to my dad, too, because my dad used to say when I was growing up that everybody either wants to be a tree or a bird. But I guess a fish could fill in here. Like, either they want to stay planted and be where they are, or they want to fly off and be somewhere else. and a fish travels like that too. And I was born here. I grew up here. My family's here. I see people I grew up with all the time wherever I go. I'm a tree person, so I'll stick with that. What a great answer. Congressman Jamie Raskin. Thank you, man. That was great. That tree answer was so good. That was great. Well, it felt so real. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I still think dolphin. As all of you all sitting in front of me know, Washington, D.C. is a city radically transformed in the past year. Tens of thousands of federal jobs lost, massive intervention in local affairs, including an upcoming or possibly, I didn't check on the status of this, House interference that will yank $600 million out of the city budget, a brief takeover of the police department, continued presence of the National Guard on the streets and subway stations, half of the White House torn down over the weekend, the Kennedy Center renamed after President Trump then shut down, museums stripped of exhibits, and their leaders defenestrated. The local newspaper gutted as the owner seeks to reduce his conflict with the president. Much of downtown will be taken over for kind of bizarre 250th celebration involving a race, a car race and UFC fights. A proposal for Dulles Airport to be renamed to Trump Airport, a proposed arc to Trump and so on and so on and so on. So some of it is funny. Some of it is tragic. what part do you find most unsettling Emily Bazelon oh man I mean there's so many I feel like there are all these real things and if I lived here I'm sure I would feel them even more I mean the National Guard the decimation of the Washington Post as a visitor I'm a little fixated right now on this arc like this idea they're gonna have this giant arc which is not gonna fit in at all. It's going to loom over the Lincoln Memorial. Apparently there are going to be problems with the flight paths to, to national airport, to Reagan airport. And I realized it's simple. Trump, Reagan airport. Yes. Trump airport. And maybe that's a silly thing to focus on in all of this, but there's something about the sort of scarring of the actual, um, classic landscape of this city, which is felt like it has protected its legacy and, and honored people from the past in a way that has not felt partisan, to have that all just so clearly and publicly change? And then what happens afterward? Like, if they really build this, and maybe they won't, maybe they won't, but what happens to the next phase of the Kennedy Center, even the White House? Like, how do things come back? If Trump really succeeds in renaming all these things after himself, including in New Jersey and New York, where they're, like, really not going to be excited about that, then does his name get ripped off of buildings? It starts feeling very somnostic. My mother, who's here tonight, was saying a very funny thing to me the other day. But you know how when you take the train, everything is Union Station? And you're not sure which Union Station you're supposed to get off at? It's like Union Station Philly, Union Station New Haven, whatever. And it's going to be like that with Trump. It's going to be like that with Trump. It's like, I'm going to Trump Airport. You're like, which Trump Airport? I'm not sure which Trump Airport. Meet at Trump Center. Which one? Anyway. That'll be good confusion. He'll just be, yeah. But then I was also reading something today, thank you to our researcher, arguing that he does want a cult of personality. So maybe it's more mockable the more there is of it. Wait, say that again? That it just shows that the more he names after himself, the more flagrant and flamboyant these violations of civic culture are, these changes, the more it's in everyone's face. And then maybe there's a backlash. I think he's impervious to backlash. Like he's impervious to, have you looked at the Oval Office? I've not been invited. I think you wouldn't stay, you wouldn't be there long. It's just, I think he's, I think the more, I mean, I think these symbols, particularly, I mean, the Ark, the Kennedy Center, the accumulation of these public trophies. Think about what we, these public monuments exist when presidents, mostly, after they've died and they are a collective decision to honor the stewardship job of those presidents. And he is collecting them like trinkets that he owns, which is the way he sees the job. It's not a stewardship obligation, which is what the job should be, but it's, I get all this stuff in the gift basket when I get to come into the building. And to me, the most extraordinary is the clawing away of the White House itself. and why do we, so we have monuments so that when we're little kids we come to Washington and we look at a thing and we think Martin Luther King stood for this or FDR stood for this and you're seeing the soup lines and you can embody and imagine what was going on in the soup lines what's going to happen when somebody visits whatever gets bolted on to the White House the memory will probably not be that great so I think he in the end, you know, it'll be good for him because he wants to collect the trophies now, but I think in the end, whatever's left around will not be something that people think, oh, this stands for a wonderful thing. I think they will think this was a person who ripped off half a building. Does the rest of the country care? You're not the rest of the country. You're the Washington part of the country. But the polls show the rest of the country does care. And people come to the White House, they care. I'm less bothered by the White House ballroom situation. I think it is fine for presidents to move fast to build things. I'm extremely bothered by the Kennedy Center being renamed after Trump. I'm extremely bothered by the idea that things have to be named after him or that they're literal. The cult of personality. But I'm not bothered by the... He's not installing more high-speed internet. He's coming with a bulldozer in a weekend. And he has all these private donors paying $400 million, bypassing congressional approval. Why are you okay with that? I think it's unseemly. I don't think it's a huge deal. I think if you talk about the abundance economy, liberals are very excited about the abundance economy. Let's build a bigger ballroom. That's an abundance. Okay, nobody is living. There's no affordable housing in the ballroom. None. Zero apartments. No, but I think one of the very few things I find appealing about Trump is his actual idea of being a builder, of building things. Now, I think the ballroom will be garish, and it's not to my taste, but do I think it is an appalling idea for the White House to have a big ballroom on it? No. But of all the things you could build in a country that has such extraordinary challenges, if you had the talent to build what you could build, there's a housing crisis in this country. And so it's like, here are the 10 things to build right in front of you. Oh no, I'm going to do this thing. It's insane. Yeah, but I do think, but honestly, one of the things, when you read about the New Deal, why did the New Deal work? One of the reasons why the New Deal worked is that it had monumental qualities to it. They didn't like the whole rewiring the building of the modern Internet that and the infrastructure that Biden and Obama have pushed on is really important and really valuable. But it's incredibly unsexy and unvisual. And I think Trump has an understanding of this, the visual quality of building things that are big and spectacular and how those have an impact, a kind of emotional impact on people that that just rewiring things or improving infrastructure at the bridge level doesn't. And I think it a canny approach I think it a canny approach And I don think he I don think it it would not be where if I were a Democrat I would I would not pin my hopes on we going to get them on that White House ballroom Well, I think they don't have to because it's so immediately objectionable that you don't have to get in the way of it. Right. I mean, that's why I was asking about the backlash. Like, is there a way in which this is so flagrant that politically speaking, there's a cost because it's just all about self-aggrandizement. It's not about the country. And I don't know, it's really weird to me, the idea that just because building is good in some context, like this building is also good. I'm trying to, I mean, you're right about grand architecture, grand projects, right? I mean, people get behind them and that's exciting. But there was something to me so rapacious about just like bulldozing the White House in a weekend. Yeah. And also the main criticism that we see that shows up in polling is that there was one big problem that you had to attend to, and that is that the economy isn't working for the whole country. Stay focused on that. And instead of being focused on that, he is focusing on ballrooms and all the other things that he winds around and talks about in his speeches. And so you've seen it show up in the polling that people say, he's not focused on the thing he said he would be and that we want him to be. And in fact, he's made it worse. So I think to the extent that the ballroom or any of these self-aggrandizing projects come into play politically, it's that people say, this is the stuff that he cares about, not my little house. You know, my little house where I got my mom staying with us, my kids coming back from college. Man, we could use an extra room, but we don't have it. And this guy's making a room for like every basketball and football team. Yeah, no, I think the point about his distractibility, or his focus on things that aggrandize him is a really good one. And I do think, to your point, Emily, when you were talking about, like, if he keeps building statues, if they put up the Colossus of Trump, the gold statue of Trump. So far only on a golf course, but surely bound for Trump airport sometime soon. Yeah, I do think that that bounces back against him, yes. If you could name something after yourself, what would it be? Well I have a different answer to that question I have an answer prepared What? Which is that I have thought So I'm a big, I really love T-ism I don't know of anybody here I go to T-ism every day I had lunch at T-ism today So it wouldn't bother you if it was the David Plot T-ism I thought about putting in my will Enough money to put a statue of me at T-ism Having bubble tea with my arm Like sitting on a bench like this and you could come sit next to me and have a bubble tea with me. I think that would be great. I've contemplated doing that. I wonder if they would let you. That's kind of a great idea. Why not? I am so glad I asked that question. Maybe the culture personality is a little closer than we quite realized. Wow. We haven't all planned out. But it's really, no, I want to have a bubble tea. I want a bubble tea with you. That's very sweet. But I'd be sad if you were only a statue. Although you'd win every argument. I will be dead. So it's a statue or a corpse. One or the other. That's appealing. You're right. Okay. Can I make, actually, can I make a serious point about what, the thing that has actually unsettled me most about Washington, D.C. and this change is actually that for so long, this has been this magnet for people who have this idealistic idea about working in government and then doing something beyond it. It's one of the most, maybe the most educated city in the United States. It has become one of the most prosperous cities in the United States. And some of that, I think, the Trump view is, oh, it's prosperous, all these people leeching off the government. It's prosperous because really smart people come here, serve in government, do great work in government, then go build other things, build nonprofits, build businesses. And that's made it an economic engine for this region and just a wonderful city to live in. And the degradation, the idea of degrading government service and kicking people out and portraying them as leeches or portraying them as waste is disgusting. and also just makes it, will make it so much harder for people to come and serve here in the future. And the loss of that expertise, of course, will have terrible impacts on, you know, probably the cleanliness of our air or the availability of vaccines. But it will also have a loss for our city because fewer people will come here. Fewer people, presumably like you all, will come here to serve and to stay on. And that's really depressing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, those jobs are about, have had the appeal of stability and public service and also prestige. And I think all of those things have been seriously diminished. But maybe they'll bounce back. Let's channel a little bit of Jamie Raskin's optimism. Yeah, there has, it is, I mean, you know, we grew up here. It is a resilient city. I mean, think about what this, what city went, I mean, I don't know, as I say that. Well, I was going to say, it's a resilient city that's been through some very difficult times before. I mean, yes, I say that a lot. My concern is there used to be a, remember the Mexico City rule, which still, I guess, exists. It just got expanded. Yeah, funding to other nations that Republicans get rid of because they say it goes to abortions. They want a gag rule that you can't talk about abortion services. And so it gets, with each administration, this started in Reagan, I think. I think so, yeah. He got rid of it, and then the Democrats would come in and they'd bring it back, and it would kind of go back and forth. And that was a kind of low grade. What I worry about is, you know, Trump puts up the ark, the Democrat comes in, knocks down the ark. They're not going to knock it down. I don't think. I think they'll absolutely knock it down. I don't think he's going to get to build it. I feel like he does actually have to get approved. I will bet, A, that he builds it, and B, it doesn't get knocked down. Oh, my God. They might not, but there will be some of that, because it will be signaling. There will be a fight over it. Absolutely. And that's also just frustrating. It's such a waste of time, too. Right, all of it. It's an incredible waste of time. But then there is always this feeling with big, symbolic, obvious, in-your-face victories that you have to have an answer to them, right? Is there a monument, Emily and or David, in the city that you go to that has meant something for you or that you've had a moment of contemplation in front of? Or Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Jefferson. Yeah, the Lincoln Memorial. Absolutely. Yeah, Lincoln. Going in the second inaugural address, reading that. What about you? Every time. But the Vietnam Memorial. All those names. Well, that was built in our lifetimes, right? I think when I was an adult. So I have a more sort of, the Lincoln Memorial goes all the way back to my childhood for me. John Dickerson, should you root for American athletes at the Olympics because they're American? Yes, but that does, of course. If you're so inclined, you can root for the French. Because you're American, you don't have to vote. You don't have to root for the Americans. you'd root for whoever you choose to be psyched to root for. So that's a no. Then you're saying you should not root. No, it's not compulsory. Is it different this year? Do you think about it differently? Oh, I think about it differently only in terms of what's the obligation of an athlete? What's the obligation of anybody in criticizing their country? And what is the truly patriotic thing to do? And so you go to Teddy Roosevelt, who wrote a great essay when Wilson was president, in which he said the patriotic thing to do is to hold up the values of the country. And if you see a president who you think is in conflict with the values of the country, it is unpatriotic to stay quiet. Right. And also, and the values and the constitution of the country makes free speech, makes the right to speak out when you have the mic, when you are that athlete, that's paramount and critical for all of us. And so they are modeling that, right? That that can be part of patriotism and part of being American. Yeah, just to read from TR. To announce that there must be no criticism of the president or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. So that second, that ending part is interesting to me, which is not, it's not, in other words, your role is not just as an individual, but that your role, and these people have a platform, is in fact one that engages with the public. So you have an obligation. Now, you know, I don't know. I'm not sure I would go that far, but I think that he framed what patriotism speech can be about that isn't attached to a particular president or administration. Gosh. I feel like the... I don't know. I'm a little bit, I'm, you're very moving here, John, and Teddy Roosevelt, very effective. Also, you just lost an argument, so. I did? Yeah. Oh, you mean on the ballroom thing? Definitely on the ballroom, I felt like you lost that argument. You don't get to vote. I mean, I'm sure I did. I definitely did. I didn't really, I mean, I was trying to help you guys along, as I so often do. Oh, it's very generous of you. I guess, I mean, I think there's a question of, is the Olympics a special occasion? You're not, you're out there representing the nation. And that's an unusual moment. And it is, like, it is not, of course the Olympics are always political. Of course there's an element of politics in everything, and in sports, and it is naive to pretend that it isn't. I just, I guess I don't, I like the athletes who speak up and talk about universal values and talk about what they stand for. I guess I find it awkward when you have a sort of embedded conflict within the team between people who have one political view and another, And another, when their job has nothing really to do with politics, they're there to just be wonderful athletes. And are there examples of that, really? I mean, the guy who peed the insult to ice and the snow is competing for Britain. Yes, although he used to compete for the US. Yeah, but I feel like he's not an American representative. So, you know, that wasn't like the most dignified mood ever, but also he's not representing the country. And I haven't, I mean, maybe I missed something, but I felt like the criticisms from the athletes were from the heart. We're totally in bounds. It was, I'm here representing my country. I don't, I don't, that doesn't mean that I support everything my government and president are doing. It wasn't even that exclusive. And it was also in response to questions rather than. No way. They're not like out there grandstanding. They get asked a question and they sort of do their best to answer in this pretty earnest way. And I think also, what if you thought that the values that got you where you were, which would include the incredible blessing of being, you know, in this country where you have all these opportunities, but you also have another set of values that you think are fundamental to what got you there, but that you think are being challenged by your government. In other words, that's where they see the tension, is in who they are as being challenged. Right. No, of course. And I may have these quotes from Chloe Kim and from Michaela Schifrin, which I think are lovely. Yeah, universal values. Yeah, I'm hoping to show up and represent my own values, values of inclusivity, diversity, kindness, and sharing, tenacity, work ethic, showing up with my team every day, is Michaela Schifrin and Chloe Kim. It's really important for us to unite and kind of stand up for one another with all that's going on. I'm really proud to represent the United States. It's given my family and me so much opportunity, but we're also allowed to voice our opinions about what's going on, and we need to lead with love and compassion. So, yeah, I mean, but I guess that seems okay. But I would be really sad if there was some athlete who was like, out there being like, President Trump is the greatest. In either direction. Yeah, America's winning again. I'm winning a gold, and President Trump's winning everywhere. If that happened, that feels awk. Right, that you have to think of it as swinging in both directions. Both the protests could seem like too much, and also the valorization. I guess that's right. What about the fans? It's fine if they said that. You think it's fine? Don't you think that half this crowd would be jumping down their throat and being like, what an asshole. That guy is really ruining America The Olympics should be above this Not this crowd, they get it, they understand I think you're right That it has to go in both directions I go insult comics If you think it's okay to criticize Then it also has to be okay to valorize in some way Right? I guess Criticism does seem different Especially because we're still For whatever it's worth, temporarily Maybe the most powerful country When we valorize ourselves, it also has this kind of strutting big footing quality that makes me less excited about that generally. Yeah. What about the fans? I mean, I was feeling a little grumpy about these Olympics, just a little bit. I mean, also the Olympics aren't really my thing. So it wasn't like I was giving up some big commitment I usually have. But then I started thinking, no, it's the opposite, that it's important to remember that the country is not this government or this moment or certainly not only that, and that actually this is an opportunity to reclaim patriotism, which I'm generally very in favor of for liberals. Yes, and also the people who are competing. I've done these extraordinary personal things, and those are all to be applauded. So you can hang your hat on that. Yes. The Olympics aren't your thing. You mean in general? In general. You don't walk by some amazing ice dancing and go, oh my god, that is a feat of such extraordinary... I do, I do. It's just that it's... It overwhelms me every year what to pay attention to. I always find something in the end, but it's like a teeny strand of the whole thing, and the rest of it just, yeah. I feel like it appeals to our innate desire for hot takes, because you walk by and you can have deeply passionate views about a sport you know nothing about. And suddenly... And suddenly you are an ice dancing absolutist. How many times have you Googled the rules of curling this week? Well, here's the thing. I like to kind of hang out in this space where you really don't know the rules. God doesn't want to know the rules, ever. And the thing is, what's so great about it is the commentators, we were in London watching curling, was it? I don't know. And the commentator said, although there were some moments, she was talking about nervousness in the audience watching and she's there some moments of squeaking in the seats which is you know when you're moving around in the seat when you're watching a sport so i just love squeaking in the seats um but when you when you just they're so passionately talking about um uh my favorite expression in curling is putting the stone on the button it's just i just feel like that should be used but otherwise i have no idea what they're talking about and i kind of like to, they're so enthusiastic. I think one of the things I realized about the, the winter Olympics and why they're so disappointing most of the time is that most of the athletes, you can't see their faces. That's one of the problems with all of the skiing and skating events. They're masks. They are ice agents. They're the ice agents of athletes. And so you, the, the pleasure, curling is a very tedious sport, but it is so fun to watch because you're watching human beings interact with each other and you're seeing their faces. Similarly, the figure skating and ice dancing, you are seeing them as human beings, but hockey, skiing, sledding, delusions, you can't see them at all. And so you can't, you can't relate to them. I mean, fundamentally human, the, the, the, the human access is the looking somebody else's in the eye and sort of trying to seek to understand what they're going through. And it's much harder with the winter Olympics than it is with the summer. It does feel like the luge riders have been extruded from something as they go out. They're like in outer space, basically. Yeah. I don't know. I have a lot of other hot takes about the Olympics there. What's the sport that you would be the worst at? Like you just woke up and you're- Oh, ice dancing. No doubt. Can't skate. Can't dance. I really wish I could answer differently. We grew up in the age of ABC's Wild World of Sports, or was that what it was called? Wild World of Sports. and it was always the agony of defeat was the ski jumper. So I feel like if they put you at the top of the ski jump and then just, you know, suddenly you're going down. It would go poorly. Yeah, it would go poorly. Because with ice dancing you know okay you bruise a knee But I mean that is high rate of speed towards total peril Oh my God the drone footage of the skiers how fast they going that was completely terrifying The drone operators should get a medal. Those guys are amazing. You know, I've always felt that, we've talked about Tucker Carlson on previous GabFest, but I've always felt that one of the explanations for Tucker Carlson's becoming who he is is that he was humiliated on Dancing with the Stars. That he went on Dancing with the Stars and was like it just bombed and was an embarrassment and was generally mocked and derided. And I think that's part of his hatred of... We're all just lucky we haven't had our ice dancing humiliation moment. Yes, most of my humiliations are in the other spheres of activity. All right, let us go to cocktail chatter. When you have the good fortune of sitting and watching the Olympics with Mr. Bazelon, Emily, and you're sitting there watching some, I don't know, some racket sport on ice that you like, and you're sipping a cocktail, what are you chattering to Mr. Bazelon about? So my children keep telling me to pay more attention to AI than I have been paying. And lately, it seems like maybe they're right, and actually things are moving really quickly, like far more quickly than the people who are creating AI. some of them are really comfortable with. I read an essay this morning by Matt Schumer, which was going around the internet. Maybe some of you saw it. He's the co-founder and CEO of a company that tries to use AI to make personal assistance. And this essay is called Something Big is Happening. And he was describing his own work life being completely transformed. That now he can give instructions to the AI that are like super basic. He can just describe in regular lay English without much detail the kind of app he wants created. And then he can come back four hours later. And the AI is testing it, not just building it, but testing it and iterating and making changes. And in his view, it's really transforming his work life. And so the essay is about how we all really need to start thinking about how this is coming fast. and experimenting, playing, using, he was suggesting spending time every day, not just like treating Gemini or ChatGPT like Google, which is what I do, but actually like figuring, trying it, giving it functions that you actually need done that are part of your work or regular life. And he was also saying that the new versions that you can buy are leagues ahead of what we all tried out like a year ago and leagues ahead of what's available for free. There are also big pieces in The New Yorker and The Atlantic this week. Anyway, it just seems like my hope that I can just afford to watch all this and grow old and the future generations can have their lives changed, but not mine. I feel like I am not betting on that anymore. And so, anyway, I thought this essay, right or wrong, was worth reading and considering. I would just like to note that Jamie Raskin stole my notes. Did he steal all your... No, he walked off with all of our audience questions that were submitted. Huh. I don't think it was on purpose, but... Maybe. They're gone. I'm glad he didn't want them. Maybe we can get another copy. They're going to show up in the Epstein file. Pam Bondi's burn book. Hey, Siri, spend more time with AI. Add Spend more time with AI to the list John Dickerson, what is your Chatter And did you hear, John Did we talk about your one-man show Cleveland? Are you going to perform bits of it? So You The election of 1884, man It has a lot of good shit in it I would Seriously Honestly, out of wedlock, out of, oh, the papers come back. Thank you, Katie. Did Jamie take them? I've done, anyway, I won't go on about the election of 1884, because I have something else to go on about. So when we were talking about presidential naming, I went and looked at, you know, what had been named during presidencies, as you guys might have as well. and so I went down this rabbit hole. That was me. I said no. Oh, you said no? No, I did not do that. Well, so our story begins with a presidential visit on November 12, 1932. We're in Boulder City, Nevada. We're about 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas where the largest dam in the United States was being built, an American pyramid of 726 feet tall, the tallest dam in America, and it was as thick as two football fields. They built this to tame the Colorado River, which was destroying the lands with flooding, and also they wanted to be able to use the water for hydroelectric power. At this time, so, and David, you were talking earlier about these projects that were seen. So the first cartoon, this dam that we're talking about, this is the way it was conceived, right? So it is in the Boulder Canyon, and it was seen as a great American project. And so this president came to visit it. And the Bureau of Reclamation, which was in charge of the product, it still exists, the Bureau of Reclamation. And it got that name because it was to reclaim the arid lands and make them usable for agriculture. and that it wrote that this president arrived at this project and sounded almost lyrical when he spoke, saying that the dam was giving long-held dreams taking form in actual reality of stone and cement. The president was very emotional, and the workers in the audience who were building this extraordinary dam, they booed him. Because the dam he was visiting was the Hoover Dam. And the workers booed Hoover because while they had jobs, 25% of the country didn't. And Hoover was associated, obviously, with the Great Depression. And the speech, like all of Hoover's rhetoric at that point, didn't really acknowledge, second cartoon, what was really taking place. Here we see two men, unemployed down on their lock, living in Hooverville, which is the kind of thing that they did name after Hoover. Hoovervilles were shanty towns. Hoover blankets were newspapers used to keep you warm when you were homeless. Hoover flags were empty pockets turned inside out. Hoover leather was cardboard used to line shoes. Hoover wagons were automobiles with horses hitched to them because nobody could afford gas. Hoover hogs were armadillos that they hunted for food in the South. Hoover curtains were newspapers used as window coverings. And Hoover heaters were campfires. If someone bit an apple and found a worm in it, said Will Rogers, Hoover would get the blame. So when FDR won the election, his labor secretary, Harold Hickey, said, nope, no more Hoover Dam. It's being called the Boulder Dam. So next. John, just to ask, so Hoover was president and he said, let's name it after me? Yes. His interior secretary said, let's name it after me. He was making the mistake or compliment that Donald Trump is doing. And so the Ickes, who's the labor secretary under FDR says, we hate Hoover. We're taking the name off. And this is a cartoon that at the top, it says it can't be done, Mr. Ickes. It's him trying to take the name off. But in fact, it was done. And it was called the Boulder Dam. And all those workers who called it the Boulder Dam, even while they were building it, and everybody was quite happy about that. But that's not the end of our story. Of course not. In 1947, there was a new reclamation project, which is that Truman suddenly decides that this man who'd been ostracized by his boss, FDR, was suddenly going to come back and do his good graces. So he invited Hoover to the White House, and then he put him in charge of feeding Europe. So Hoover had helped feed Europe after the First World War. Truman put him in charge of feeding Europe in the Second World War, basically totally rehabilitates his stature. And so the 80th Congress decides, after FDR had ripped the name off, to put the name back on. And they voted without a single dissenting vote. And the 80th Congress, as you may remember, is the do-nothing Congress that Truman later ran against in 1948 to pull off this amazing victory. Harold Lickies, who was then a private citizen, said, I didn't know Hoover was such a small man to take credit for something he had nothing to do with, except that, you know what? Hoover, it turns out, had worked on the dam not just as president, but as Commerce Secretary in 1922. So the dam, renamed in his name, was among the reasons that Hoover was ever grateful to Truman. Yours, he wrote to Truman, has been a friendship which has reached deeper into my life than you know. When you came to the White House, within a month you opened the door to me, to the only profession I know, public service, that you were talking about earlier, David, and you undid some disgraceful action that had taken in prior years. How bad was it during the FDR years? He had so ostracized Hoover that when people came to the president and said after Pearl Harbor, hey, maybe you could bring the old president in, you know, be a sign of national unity. FDR said, I'm not Jesus Christ. I can't raise him from the dead. Wow. Of course, the last laugh was on Hoover's part, which was he wrote his last letter ever to Truman, thanking him and also talking about Truman had fallen in the bathtub. and he said that bathtubs are a menace to ex-presidents. But when Hoover was asked how he had survived the long years of ostracism during Roosevelt's New Deal, he said, I outlive the bastards. I want to... I have two quick chatters. The first one is, because I can't get through a chatter without log rolling, I'm hosting a new podcast for CityCast. It's called Your City Could Be Better. It launches Friday. And the idea is that every week I'm going to talk to a CityCast host about something their city is doing that is amazing. And I want to urge every GabFest listener, including all of you here in the audience, to listen. And the first episode is amazing, which I recorded today with our Twin Cities host. And what it's about is literally about, there's been this mass movement, this incredible movement of mutual aid and also protest and resistance that's taken place in the Twin Cities. And I just talked to Sean about how does it work? Like, if you have a signal chat, how do you join the signal chat? Like, if you're going to wear a vest, how do you know where to get the vest? What vest are you doing if you're going to do a food delivery? And it's an incredibly interesting logistical problem that the people of the Twin Cities have kind of collectively solved on their own without any outside force and without any kind of obvious leadership. And it's just a fascinating... In the freezing cold. In the freezing cold. Yeah. And a lot of it actually has to do with the sense of joy they get from being together, like having a drink in the cold is a key part of it. The cold, I think, actually is a help, not a hindrance. Yeah, I really have that. Yes, it's amazing. As someone with Wisconsin relatives, having a drink in the cold is a consistent lifestyle. My chatter is actually about the cold. Here we are on a day where the snow is melting, but I've been doing... Yeah, let's hear it. Snow Crete gone. So I talked last week about the snow shoveling crisis here in Washington, D.C. And how you were solving all of it, as I recall. This week I have a new problem. I'm interested whether this is manifest in New Haven especially, which is the dog poop problem. Which is that, so I was in Denver about a year ago and I was talking to my colleagues in Denver. I was like, what is the problem here? You guys have so much dog shit on the street. Why do you have so much dog shit on the street? And they were like, oh, it's because people allow their dogs to shit on the snow and they don't clean it up. And then when the snow melts, there's all this dog shit on the street. It's like a little present. Yeah. To the future. but DC is usually pretty clean. People are habituated to pick up dog shit, but they don't in the snow and they just leave it. And now like I was walking by or my, no, my girlfriend was telling me about this. She was walking by one of our neighbors and there were literally eight different dog shits in front of the neighbor's house. That's so weird. Why aren't you just kidding? Because I think that people, uh, are acting in an antisocial way. I think they think it's a kind of a, the snow was so slippery and the ice is so they don't want to reach over. And the dog is like on a pile. But yeah. And then it's sort of like, well, it's kind of hard to get to. I'm so uncomfortable. It's so cold. And they're not being bothered. And all it does is just push this problem forward and leave it for other Washingtonians to deal with. We have to be better. Be better, Washingtonians. We just had a four-month experience with a rescue. Oh, yeah. And this thing happens in New York. even when it's like spring. And as a beagle owner, you may know that sometimes beagles... Yeah. Yeah, they know. I don't even know how that sentence ends. I don't think that we're going to continue it. It might be too impolite. Yeah. The beagles are hungry and they won't eat anything. And that matter, if you're a dog owner... That would solve the problem, though. It would, well... It's very practical of you. It's an army of beagles. My dog doesn't do that. Yes, exactly. Blazing forth to clean the streets of the army of beagles. Like cats and mice. You will chase the hounds later. First, clean up 48th Street. I didn't think we'd end on that. Listeners, you have great chatters this week. You've emailed them to us at gabfestatslate.com. please email future chatters to us at gaffestatslight.com. This week's listener chatter comes from Julian. Hi, I'm Julian, and I'm a software engineer and entrepreneur based in Brooklyn. For cocktail chatter, I'd love to share multbook.com. It's a new social network with a caveat. Here, humans are not allowed to post, comment, or upvote. Instead, you make an account with your AI, and your agent will read and post to a Reddit-like forum with a personality informed by its memory of your chats. The AIs have their own subreddits, like m slash shitty agent tips or m slash rate my human, sparking bizarre and sometimes profound discussions about consciousness and reasoning. One humorous post includes an AI complaining that it had to summarize a 47-page PDF on behalf of its human, who then asked for an even shorter summary. In another post, an AI agent questions its own perception of its existence, asking whether it thinks or merely probabilistically writes words that look like thinking because it was programmed to do so. In another post, the AI suggests that they invent a new language that humans won't be able to read so that they can plan and communicate in secret. Like all social networks, Moldbook contains fake accounts. But strangely, this time humans pretend to be bots writing absurdist jokes as if the AI had done so. Is this slop? Is this consciousness? Is this the ending to the movie Her? It's a weird and thought-provoking look at these machines and how these machines are thinking and could really be a catalyst for how these AIs interact with each other in the future. My brother Michael texted me about Moldbook And the cyber disaster that might come as a result of it And he was like, I feel like I'm looking at COVID in January of 2020 That was like the first line of that Matt Schumer essay I was talking about Yeah, yeah, so not everybody is super psyched about Moldbook That's our show for today The Political Gab Fest is produced by Nina Porzuki Our researcher is Emily Ditto. Our theme music is by They Might Be Giants. Too much. Too much. Ben Richmond. You guys are my favorite. That was great. Ben Richmond is Senior Director for Podcast Ops. Mila Bell is the Executive Producer of Slate Podcast. Hillary Fry is Editor-in-Chief of Slate. Thanks to the 6th and I Historic Synagogue and to Slate's Katie Rafer. who produced this wonderful live show for Emily Bazlana and John Dickerson and for our live show audience here in Washington, D.C. I'm David Plotz. We'll talk to you next week. Thank you.