The Briefcase: Mo Brooks, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Jackson?

Mo Brooks makes interesting connects between morality and health. Elizabeth Warren criticizes President Obama. Donald Trump becomes a Civil War historian and Hillary Clinton starts talking. We discuss it all and address listener feedback. 

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In a CNN interview, Representative Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican, said, "It will free healthy people from having to pay the cost of the sick. It will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool that helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy. And right now, those are the people who have done things the right way that are seeing their costs skyrocketing.”

We discuss the morality of healthy, as well as Blue Zones.

Elizabeth Warren critiqued President Obama during an interview with the Guardian

“I think President Obama, like many others in both parties, talks about a set of big national statistics that look shiny and great but increasingly have giant blind spots,” she said. “That GDP, unemployment, no longer reflect the lived experiences of most Americans. And the lived experiences of most Americans is that they are being left behind in this economy. Worse than being left behind, they’re getting kicked in the teeth.”

President Trump, in an interview with Salena Zito, a reporter for The Washington Examiner, on Sirius XM’s “Main Street Meets the Beltway,” Mr. Trump said the following: “Had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart, and he was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, ‘There’s no reason for this.’ ” We have nothing kind to say for this observation, except acknowledging the good point of one of our listeners that he did do Big Block of Cheese Day

Wilbur Ross, speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Monday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross recalled the scene at Mar-a-Lago on April 6, when the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping was interrupted by the strike on Syria.

“Just as dessert was being served, the president explained to Mr. Xi he had something he wanted to tell him, which was the launching of 59 missiles into Syria,” Ross said. “It was in lieu of after-dinner entertainment.” As the crowd laughed, Ross added: “The thing was, it didn’t cost the president anything to have that entertainment.”

Hillary Clinton sat down with moderator Christiane Amanpour, the CNN anchor, at a Women for Women International event in New York. “If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” Clinton said. We talk about the ways in which Clinton is covered are unfair, as well as the perspective this article offered Democrats say they now know exactly why Clinton lost and whether or not it was James Comey

In listener feedback, we addressed Eric: I try to listen to shows that veer away from emotional responses to news as I view that as part of the problem, you don't de-escalate or resolve issues when you are operating on the emotional side of your brain. As an officer we learned to de-escalate a person by asking factual questions and to get them to disengage from their self feeding emotional loop that they are in.

After her blog post, Beth heard from Christopher again and he has some questions:

Now here are a few questions for you.

If not America first then who first?

How is stopping criminal entry to our nation racist?

How is enforcing our law racist?

How is keeping our nation safe from a group that has told us "we will infiltrate our fighters with the refugee population" xenophobic?

We also talk trolling generally, in particular Lindy West's excellent examination in her book Shrill.

If you want a little homework, we'll be discussing the future of the Republican party, including this episode of This American Life on Tuesday.