Transcript:
Daniella Gibbs Léger: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to “The Tent,” your place for politics, policy, and progress. I’m Daniella Gibbs Léger.
Colin Seeberger: And I’m Colin Seeberger. Before we get into today’s episode, I just want to take a moment to send our best to the victims of the vicious antisemitic attack in Colorado over the weekend. These attacks are unfortunately becoming too common in this country, and we all must do everything that we can to root out the scourge of antisemitism in this country and all over the world.
Gibbs Léger: Well said, Colin. Extremism and hate have no place in our society, and it’s important for everyone to speak out against it.
Seeberger: Hundred percent. Well, switching gears, it’s now June, and you know what that means? It’s Pride Month, Daniella!
Seeberger: How are you celebrating?
Gibbs Léger: By attending all the things in my neighborhood and also enjoying people who are celebrating by decorating their houses. I don’t know. I’m old. I really like to look at people’s yards and how they decorate things. And a lot of people have been doing these really colorful Pride flags, but like ribbons?
Seeberger: Yes, the streamers?
Gibbs Léger: Oh my god, my child loves them. He’s like, “Ooh.” And I’m like, “Don’t touch it. You can just look at it.”
Seeberger: You’ve got to get it.
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. How about you?
Seeberger: Well I am definitely going to take in the parade. We do it as a family every year. And I also may have to hit Jane Jane, which is a local cocktail bar. And I saw they put up their Pride memorabilia and whatnot yesterday, and they included— their saying, I guess their theme this year is, “Be gayer.” So I will definitely be ordering as many of the most flamboyant cocktails as I possibly can.
Gibbs Léger: Okay, I love it. You must report back. I love a cocktail, and a flamboyant cocktail sounds even more amazing.
Gibbs Léger: Well I also heard to celebrate Pride Month that you had a chance to talk with a trailblazer in the LGBTQI+ community.
Seeberger: That I did. I sat down with Congressman Mark Takano (D) of California, and we had a great conversation about Pride Month and pushing back against the Trump administration’s efforts to rip away protections for LGBTQI+ people. Here’s what he said about it.
Rep. Mark Takano: They also see trans as a particularly vulnerable minority that they can stigmatize. It’s in the nature of an authoritarian, strongman personality to look for scapegoats. And so I don’t see it as much as about fear as it is about opportunism, a very perverse opportunism.
Gibbs Léger: That sounds awesome, and I’m excited to hear more. But before we get there, let’s catch up on the news.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah. So last week, Congress was out of town, and several senators held some town halls in their home states. And one of those senators was Joni Ernst (R-IA).
Seeberger: Hmm. How’d that go for her?
Gibbs Léger: Oh, let’s just see. Here’s what she said in response to one of her constituents who was worried about cuts to Medicaid putting people’s lives at risk.
Sen. Joni Ernst: They are not eligible, so they will be coming off. So people are not—well, we all are going to die.
Seeberger: Excuse me? How much more heartless can it get?
Gibbs Léger: Not much more than that.
Seeberger: No. Truly, truly. I mean, she’s trying to slap on work requirements instead of helping her constituents. This bill [the One Big Beautiful Bill Act] would lead to more than 15 million people losing coverage by 2034 when coupled with the changes Republicans are trying to make to the Affordable Care Act, and it would take away access to food for hungry families to the tune of $300 billion.
But then Republicans came back to town and—turns out, that wasn’t actually the worst of their problems for the week. It has been a doozy, Daniella, in every sense. They came back to town, and on Tuesday of this week, Elon Musk has come out full bore against the package. He has said that the, quote, “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” is a “massive, outrageous,” and “pork-filled […] disgusting abomination.”
Gibbs Léger: He’s not wrong.
Seeberger: No, he’s not. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), mind you, was happy to point that out yesterday. Republican senators are raising concern after concern. We’ve heard even from members of the House who voted for this package, like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), come out and say that, well, she would never have voted for it if she had actually read the bill and found out some of the provisions that were in this thing. And she’s not even the only one who said this same thing this week.
Gibbs Léger: It’s so ridiculous that these people will vote on something that affects the lives of millions and millions of people, but like, “Oops, I didn’t read that! Didn’t what was in there!”
Seeberger: It’s literally their job, right?
Seeberger: Like, you have one job.
Gibbs Léger: Literally have one job. Geez Louise. And what boggles my mind is that Republicans, they want to take away people’s health care, and then in the same sentence say they’re in favor of increasing the deficit. There are no savings here.
Gibbs Léger: That is the whole ruse about this whole thing. It is just heartless cuts to vital programs and tax breaks for billionaires. That’s it. That’s the bottom line. And according to the CBO’s [Congressional Budget Office] updated numbers, budget deficits would increase by more than $2.4 trillion—with a T—over 10 years under this bill. So they’re cutting health care, they’re cutting SNAP [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], and they’re cutting funding for clean energy.
Seeberger: That’s right, Daniella. Trump and his MAGA Republican colleagues have been on a tear against anything to do with stopping climate change and boosting American energy independence through clean renewable sources. They’re playing the “pretend-it’s-not-real” game, and it turns out they’re losing.
Gibbs Léger: They sure are. And here to help break it down for us is Lucero Marquez, associate director for Federal Climate Policy at the Center of American Progress.
Lucero, welcome to “The Tent.”
Lucero Marquez: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
Gibbs Léger: So as part of Republicans’ disastrous reconciliation bill, they’re trying to roll back clean energy tax cuts. Can you break down exactly what this means and why they want to do this?
Marquez: One hundred percent. Let me set the foundation first really quickly. So the story begins in August 2022. Congress passes the Inflation Reduction Act, which has a lot of incentives meant to spur domestic manufacturing and to bring renewable clean energy projects online, like wind and solar. And so these are known as the clean energy tax credits.
And over the last few years, we have actually seen a manufacturing renaissance and a jump to our clean energy additions to the grid. So I have some stats here: In the past two years, companies have invested over $100 billion in clean energy and vehicle technology manufacturing projects, which is nearly quadruple the $26 billion invested over the previous two years before that.
Marquez: Yeah. And then clean energy installations in the U.S. hit a record in 2024, with the country adding almost 47 percent more capacity than the year before. So we’re adding. We’re doing great. We’re investing.
Seeberger: Moving in the right direction.
Marquez: Moving exactly in the right direction.
Gibbs Léger: Building things. That’s wonderful.
Marquez: And on top of this, this also translates to jobs. Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, there have been over 300,000 jobs added because of it, spurred by it.
So now we fast forward to today. As you’ve mentioned, the main point of the reconciliation bill is to pay for these tax giveaways to ultrabillionaires, the ultrawealthy, the rich. So on one hand, congressional Republicans have to figure out a way to pay for that. And on the other hand, they have their fossil fuel donors.
And so you add all this together, and what’s at risk are these clean energy incentives, right? And with the House-passed version, they’re gutted. They’re repealed, right?
Marquez: So the consequences of that are extremely high. For the first time in years—in, I think, over a decade—domestic energy demand is actually increasing. It’s been pretty stagnant for a while, and now it’s increasing. So it’s demonstrating the need that we need to have more energy on the grid, not less.
Marquez: And because the energy demand is increasing, what this translates to for ordinary day-to-day Americans—this means higher costs for them. This means higher costs for your electricity bill. In some states, you can see over a $200 increase in your annual bill—
Marquez: —by next year, 2026.
Seeberger: Because the tariffs weren’t enough fun for everyone.
Marquez: Right, of course.
Gibbs Léger: Have some more. Awesome.
Marquez: Yeah. And for gas prices, too, it can increase up to 37 cents per gallon, which does translate to costs each year.
Marquez: And yeah, there’s a lot at stake here.
Seeberger: So I’m curious to get your take on what does this actually mean in terms of the climate, if these tax credits are repealed? But I’m also curious to get your take on—you talked about, hundreds of thousands of jobs being at stake here, right?
Seeberger: If we just completely abdicate any sort of leadership on developing clean energy sources, somebody’s going to do it. China’s going to do it, right? And I’ve heard a lot from this president talking about how this is an “America first” administration. How do you reconcile those two things, Lucero?
Marquez: Exactly, exactly. It doesn’t make sense. There’s a lot of conflicting things here that just irks me as an individual. But yeah, to get to your first point about climate, the Inflation Reduction Act was the climate bill. It is the most climate-forward bill that the U.S. has passed, ever.
I think the stat is that it would get us 40 percent below reduction of 2005 emissions, which gets us closer to our climate goals, right? We don’t want to meet terrible thresholds of warming, which has implications in extreme weather, in changes of precipitation, things like that. We feel it, right? We feel humidity and things like that.
So the Inflation Reduction Act did this in many multiple ways to try to help with climate. One of them were these clean energy incentives. You are incentivizing the energy field to invest in nonemitting—they don’t emit greenhouse gases, which is how we lead to climate change, to invest in these resources. So that’s one avenue.
Another avenue, it actually gave grants to a lot of different communities to reduce pollution, both air pollution but also climate pollution in their communities. And a lot of those funds were actually also rescinded in the House-passed version of the bill.
And then the last big bucket, too, is the transportation sector is a big emitter of greenhouse gas emissions.
Marquez: And this bill incentivizes that transition to electric vehicles and gives consumers that choice of, “You want to have a cleaner vehicle? A vehicle that saves you money in the long run? Here’s a credit for you to do that.”
So all of this translates to: If this bill gets passed as it is, as it passed in the House, it has grave climate consequences for us, which is very, very upsetting. And then the other aspect to you is that jobs piece of this. As I’ve mentioned, we’ve already spurred a lot of different types of jobs, and there are good, high-quality, paying jobs.
And as you’ve mentioned, these incentives really try to onshore a lot of those manufacturing capabilities domestically. And so without these incentives, a lot of companies have actually said in surveys or on the record that they might have to go offshore.
And so that means that we’re going to lose a lot of these jobs. I think the statistic is repealing the tax credits will lead to nearly almost 800,000 jobs lost by 2030. Terrible statistics. Again, there’s a lot of competing factors here that we want energy security, we want good, home-based, domestic, high-quality, paying jobs.
Marquez: This does that, and we’re going against it.
Seeberger: It does that—I will just say—it does that predominantly in states that Donald Trump won.
Seeberger: Right? I mean—
Gibbs Léger: So what are y’all doing?
Seeberger: I think over 80 percent of the jobs that have been—
Seeberger: —created, or will be created, under this plan are in congressional districts that are held by Republican members of Congress.
Marquez: One hundred percent.
Seeberger: So we’re talking about not just hurting the climate, not just hurting our economy, we’re talking about Republican members of Congress hurting their own constituents.
Marquez: Exactly. And a couple of senators do realize this.
Marquez: There have been a couple of senators that have released a letter to the majority leader saying, “Hey, we want these tax credits to be given due diligence. These bring jobs. These bring domestic manufacturing onshore.” We all know that they do, and they recognize this. And hopefully they’ll maybe do something, right?
Seeberger: Yeah, we will be awaiting their advocacy with bated breath—
Gibbs Léger: We will see.
Seeberger: —awaiting a much better proposal coming out of the Senate, right?
Gibbs Léger: Yes, we will definitely see how that goes. So last week, Elon Musk and President Trump held a press conference to announce that Musk was leaving the White House, and now—
Gibbs Léger: I know. So sad. And now, Tesla and Musk are criticizing the White House and congressional Republicans for cutting those clean energy tax credits.
On Tuesday, Elon called the bill a “disgusting abomination,” as Colin mentioned earlier. So, I think we all know the answer to this, but why the flip, Elon? And how are Tesla and other electric car manufacturers going to be hurt by this bill?
Marquez: One hundred percent. I don’t know, it feels like Elon really knew all along that this was really the one big disastrous bill, and cutting ties with the White House gave him maybe that potential ability to actually say something about it. Because we do know it’s a disastrous bill. So, not quite sure about that.
Seeberger: Elon didn’t discuss this with you, Lucero?
Seeberger: Like, you guys are not trading—
Marquez: He doesn’t have me on speed dial, thank goodness.
Seeberger: —3 a.m. DMs on Twitter?
Marquez: No, I can debunk that right here, right now.
Gibbs Léger: That’s X, Colin.
Marquez: Right here and right now, debunked. But one of the clear implications of this is that the 30D clean vehicles tax credit for consumers to purchase new and used electric vehicles—that, right now, in the House-passed reconciliation bill, is gutted. That’s repealed and terminated.
And so a clear implication there with any domestic EV [electric vehicle] companies who want to get online and want to give more opportunities for their consumers to buy their products—that’s gone. And so EVs again are a great tool to help our transportation sector decarbonize and mitigate a lot of these climate impacts that we’re trying not to get to. And they’re also a great alternative to gas-powered cars because, in the long run, they cost a lot less.
Seeberger: But also the cars that China is making a lot of, right—
Seeberger: —if we want to have a competitive American auto industry for decades to come—
Seeberger: —we need to be making these cars here, right?
Marquez: Exactly. And that’s the other aspect that I feel is maybe discussed a little bit less—but still very prominent—is that the Inflation Reduction Act, again, has those incentives to do domestic manufacturing and to increase competitiveness through, you know, their critical mineral build-out and battery incentives and things like that.
And so gutting that means exactly what you’re saying is that we are at risk to lose any chance of being competitive on a global market, and that’s going to hurt our domestic companies, EVs included.
Gibbs Léger: Well hopefully the Senate will listen to this podcast.
Gibbs Léger: Listen to your words. Exactly. Don’t do it.
Gibbs Léger: Well, Lucero, thank you so much for joining us on “The Tent.”
Marquez: Thank you for having me. Appreciate y’all.
Gibbs Léger: And that’s all the time we have for today. If there’s anything else you’d like us to cover on the pod, please be sure to hit us up on Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads @TheTentPod. That’s @TheTentPod.
Seeberger: And stick around for my interview with Congressman Mark Takano in just a beat.
Seeberger: Mark Takano represents California’s 39th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2012, Mark became the first openly gay person of color to be elected to Congress. A former public school teacher, he serves as ranking member on the House Committee of Veterans Affairs and also serves on the Education and the Workforce Committee.
It’s my distinct honor to welcome Congressman Mark Takano to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us.
Takano: Oh, you’re welcome. Great to be here, always.
Seeberger: Well, congressman, it sure has been a long four months of the Trump administration. I think I’ve earned myself a few gray hairs.
But we have finally reached Pride Month, which is something that we at the Center for American Progress Action Fund are always excited to celebrate. And this year, D.C. is actually hosting both World Pride for the first time and marking 50 years of Pride celebrations here in the district.
Can you talk about what Pride Month means to you?
Takano: Well, Pride Month means for those of us who identify as LGBTQI+ as a celebration, a commemoration of the Stonewall riots. I think we can trace the origins of Pride to that event. And the Stonewall riots themselves were a kind of stand that people took that they were not going to continue to be subjected to arbitrary state police—in this case, city authority—based on just who they were. I mean, the idea that you’re going to be treated in a humiliating way by the police—that power structure was all premised on the idea that it was not okay to be who you were.
And so the idea of Pride as opposed to being ashamed, those are the two rival—
Takano: Yeah, rival forces: pride versus shame. Pride versus suffering humiliation. Standing up for yourself. And I think adopt a pose of thankfulness and gratitude.
And thankfulness and gratitude are a much different sort of—I mean, I see them as more responsible. You can be more responsive to the world that way. You can carefully assess your strengths and weaknesses and respond accordingly. And that’s another way of thinking about responsibility, is how responsive you can be to your environment, to society, and everybody else. You embrace everything you have and, ultimately, see yourself, see what you’ve been given in life, as a gift.
Seeberger: Well you’ve certainly done that as a history-making congressman yourself. You are the former chair of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. You are now ranking member.
First, I want to ask you about the trans military ban. Last month, it was actually reinstated by the Supreme Court, leading to the removal of nearly a thousand trans veterans—people who have dedicated their lives to protecting and serving us all.
What’s the point here, congressman? Are Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth—do they have something right that they should be scared of? Or what’s driving this?
Takano: I don’t think it’s fear that’s driving Pete Hegseth or Donald Trump. I don’t think they’re afraid of trans people. I think they need a coalition to buttress their power, that built that coalition based on, in part, extreme religious views, extreme conservative religious views.
If you look at what’s embedded in the executive order—I mean, it’s an extraordinary executive order, which says there are only two sexes. And it says terrible things about how trans people inherently can’t be trusted. And these are the judgements of a particular slice of extreme conservatism.
Takano: And it certainly doesn’t bear any connectedness to the conservatism which is libertarian, for example. It’s a bit more objective. So they’ve made some moral judgments about trans people. And they’ve also relied heavily on a segment of their base which believes all this.
And so they also see trans as a particularly vulnerable minority that they can stigmatize. It’s in the nature of an authoritarian, strongman personality to look for scapegoats.
Takano: And so I don’t see it as much as about fear as it is about opportunism—a very perverse opportunism. Now the other part—but I don’t want to leave it there because the other part of it—so look, they’re going to say, “Well, the taxpayers shouldn’t pay for gender-affirming care.”
And by the way, gender-affirming care, when looked at in terms of the total amount that’s spent on military health care, is a pittance. It’s a tiny amount of money. At the same time, someone like Commander Emily Shilling, who is a litigant in the case—millions of dollars have been spent training her as a naval pilot to operate hugely expensive machines.
Takano: She was a competent pilot, objectively. I mean, she’s received glowing reviews by her superiors. In order to enhance his power—or their power—Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump are willing to sacrifice those millions and millions of dollars spent on training her in exchange for a pittance of what they say the taxpayer really cares about, which is supporting their gender-affirming care, health care. This is absurd and ridiculous, and we can probably find many, many other examples of very, very competent trans service members who contribute mightily to our nation’s national defense. And for no good reason, we’re going to discriminate against them.
I’m reminded about a very powerful and moving phrase that came from the Clinton administration when Bill Clinton said, “We don’t have a person to waste.” I always love that line. “We don’t have a person to waste in our country.” I almost want to imitate his voice. “We don’t have a person to waste. We don’t have a person to waste in our country.” And I think that’s true. I think, well, we need everybody in this country, including trans people.
Seeberger: That’s exactly right. I know that you are joining us fresh back from the Memorial Day recess. And just before you left, the House of Representatives voted on a bill that would make the largest cut to Medicaid in American history. This is really building off of a long, long paper trail from the Trump administration’s attacks on Americans’ health care.
Not only are they proposing to make those massive cuts to Medicaid that would take health care away from millions and millions of people, but they’re also slashing funding for programs dedicated to finding cures for diseases. Last week, the administration announced that they’re ending a $258 million grant to the National Institutes of Health effort to find a vaccine for HIV.
How do we push back against these harmful cuts? And what are you thinking about as a Democratic leader? How should the party be making plans to build these programs back up when you’re in the majority again?
Takano: Well I do think that when we are in the wilderness, that we don’t have the majority and we don’t have the gavel, that we do need to be making plans. It’s a good time to be planning and strategizing. And we need our own Project 2026 and Project 2028. And we need to make, I think, both a specific and more general case, a specific case on HIV vaccines, vaccine research being defunded as a plea to the public about their own self-interest.
The idea that a vaccine could be widely used and enormously useful in preventing the spread and the mutation of HIV/AIDS would be an incredible contribution to humanity, incredible contribution to the health and safety of Americans.
And it’s more than head scratching. It’s a perverse, diabolical shortsightedness, right? But this administration’s hostile not just to HIV/AIDS vaccines; it’s hostile to scientific research in general.
Takano: Right? Or anything to do with—they’re hostile to medical science, medical breakthroughs. They’re willing to use the cudgel of denying federal research dollars to Harvard if it doesn’t kowtow to what the administration wants. It’s willing to sacrifice cancer cures in order to get Harvard to do what they want to do. They’re downsizing, slashing EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] budgets. They’re really indifferent to and hostile to climate science. The whole scientific enterprise is something that they seem willing to be able to dispense with in order to conform to their ideology.
Takano: I think that needs to be taken on head-on. It’s economically damaging to us, the scientific preeminence of the United States. The preeminence of scientific research in the United States is connected to our innovative capacity. And that’s led to our economic preeminence around the world.
This is—all that’s endangered, and I think the American people can grasp this. And we need to make the arguments in many different ways. But this is a huge, huge issue and a huge topic, and it’s about our economic viability in the future.
Seeberger: Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely not lost on me that this is the same president who likes to run around talking about “America first” at the same time he is willing to sacrifice what is a huge opportunity, right, in biomedical innovation, as well as to being able to not just help address chronic diseases, but market these products all over the world. It really is a pocketbook issue.
Congressman, I’m curious: There’s a lot of LGBTQI+ people who are young in this country who are looking at this new federal government that’s really, I think, sending a stark signal that they’re not welcome, right? And I am curious to get your take on: What would you say to a teenager who is living in Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama—some of these red states that we’ve seen really crack down on any sort of inclusivity of LGBTQI + people, rubber-stamped by the federal government—what would you say to them, and why should they have hope for the future?
Takano: We are dealing with, I think, one of the last gasps of the extreme far right to reverse the changes in our culture that evolved. And why do those changes evolve? Because people like you, the young person in a red state, made the decision to be yourself. And you’re on a journey with others to be yourselves. And hundreds of thousands, millions of people across the country, young and older, decided that they were going to possess themselves, be free from the stigma of shame, and just be contributing Americans.
And culture did change, remarkably quickly. And I don’t really think that this latest blip or expression of extreme, right-wing conservatism is going to reverse all of that. It’s not going to be comfortable. I won’t bullshit you.
Takano: I won’t bullshit you. This is not going to be pretty. But this, too, shall pass, I think. But it’s going to take effort from all of us. And so you can’t just sit around doing nothing or hoping it’s all going to go away. You’ve got to figure out what you’re going to do for yourself, what you’re going to do for your own freedom and for your own dignity.
But don’t slink away. There are now 12 people like me in Congress, and we’re poised to elect more, even in spite of this moment. In fact, tomorrow night I’ll be presiding over a 625-person fundraiser, including I think about 100 members of Congress attending. It’s the Equality PAC fundraiser. We’ve elected 12 members of the House, and we’re going to elect two members of the Senate who are gay and lesbian. We’re going to, I think, increase our numbers.
So I think you should, as a young person in a red state, see all of that as evidence that the world is continuing to move forward. Donald Trump and his cabal of extreme, right-wing people are on the wrong side of history. But you out there in those red states, you are on the right side, but you need to get involved.
Seeberger: We’ve got to keep fighting. And on that note, Congressman Mark Takano, thanks so much for joining us on “The Tent.”
Gibbs Léger: Well that’s going to do it for us today. Please be sure to go back and listen to previous episodes. Before we go, Colin, is there something that you’re waiting for today?
Seeberger: Oh my gosh, Daniella, I have not been able to stop thinking about it ever since I saw earlier this week that it’s coming out on Wednesday, but the “Wicked: For Good” trailer. I’m so excited.
Gibbs Léger: I’m so excited. I cannot wait. I hope it has a lot of Jonathan Bailey, obviously. I’m really excited. When is it coming out? Thanksgiving?
Seeberger: It’s coming out, like, mid-November.
Seeberger: So it’ll be out for Thanksgiving.
Seeberger: I’ve just been kind of glued to my timeline ever since I saw that it was coming out today. And then just constantly checking: Is it out? Is it out? Is it out? And so I think my algorithm is like totally juicing “Wicked” content for me.
Gibbs Léger: Which is great.
Seeberger: Yes, totally love this. I saw that Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo will both have new original songs—
Seeberger: —yeah, that were not part of the stage production in the movie. So they were written by Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the musical. So I’m very excited to go see the movie. And my daughter has been—so she saw “Wicked,” and she just thought, “Oh, it’s just ‘Wicked.’” Yesterday, I broke the news on our car ride home from daycare that “Wicked 2” is coming out—is what I had to call—“Wicked 2” is coming out, and that’s how she could get that I was talking about a new “Wicked” movie.
Seeberger: And so I started like playing some of the songs for her and she was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so excited to see ‘Wicked 2.’” So tonight I’ll have to show her the trailer.
Gibbs Léger: That is hilarious. So my child has said that he wanted to see “Wicked,” but he also gets scared at things that I don’t think are scary, but I’m not 8. So I think maybe we will, we’ll try to watch it over the summer.
Seeberger: You’ll hold space?
Gibbs Léger: Yes, I will hold space for “Wicked” for my child, and then maybe I will allow him to accompany me to go see it in November.
Seeberger: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s pretty good family fun.
Seeberger: If you got to cover your eyes for a moment here and there—
Gibbs Léger: He’ll be fine.
Seeberger: He’ll be fine.
Seeberger: Although, the second act—so “Wicked: For Good”—is a lot more intense than the first one.
Seeberger: So maybe start with that first one and see how that goes.
Gibbs Léger: Maybe we will just wait until he’s older for the second one.
Gibbs Léger: In any case, switching gears: basketball. So, as we all know, my beloved Knicks could not beat the very hated-by-me Indiana Pacers, and then they fired their coach.
Gibbs Léger: So at first I was like, well—
Seeberger: The Knicks that just went to the—
Gibbs Léger: Eastern Conference finals.
Seeberger: —Eastern Conference Finals?
Gibbs Léger: For the first time in—
Seeberger: Sounds weird to me, but, okay.
Gibbs Léger: So yes, to me, it was as well. But then I was schooled by some folks.
Gibbs Léger: Including one of my friends who is a diehard Knicks fan. And I think I agree with this take. Like, Thibs [Tom Thibodeau] got them as far as he was going to get them.
Seeberger: I don’t know, Daniella.
Gibbs Léger: I think we just need a different energy. We need a different coach. We need maybe some different—
Seeberger: Are you spinning on me? Are you spinning me?
Gibbs Léger: I mean, of course I am. But I’m just saying, this is what I’m buying, is that they need some new energy on the coach’s bench, and that he got us this far, and now we need somebody else to help take us over the finish line.
Seeberger: Well, folks, this is me just spinning that ball in response.
Seeberger: Well I guess we’ll see how this plays out.
Gibbs Léger: We sure will.
Seeberger: Yeah. Just a few months away, and we got a new season.
Gibbs Léger: All right. Let’s not like go that fast. All right? We got football season to get through first.
Gibbs Léger: Oh my god. Oh, the in-season hard knocks is going to kill me, Colin.
Seeberger: It’s going to be awesome.
Gibbs Léger: It’s going to be terrible.
Seeberger: I feel like, yes, it’s going to be terrible. Also, I’m so sorry for our listeners, since we are both NFC East fans.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, sorry guys.
Seeberger: Yeah. It’s going to be rough.
Gibbs Léger: It’s going to be rough for y’all.
Gibbs Léger: On that note. All right. Take care of yourselves. It’s like almost summer, so—
Seeberger: Yeah, have a better week than Republicans trying to pass a reconciliation bill, right?
Gibbs Léger: And we will talk to you next week.
Gibbs Léger: “The Tent” is a podcast from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s hosted by me, Daniella Gibbs Léger, and co-hosted by Colin Seeberger. Kelly McCoy is our supervising producer, Mishka Espey is our booking producer, and Muggs Leone is our digital producer. Jacob Jordan is our writer. Hai Phan, Olivia Mowry and Toni Pandolfo are our video team.
Views expressed by guests of “The Tent” are their own, and interviews are not endorsements of a guest’s perspectives. You can find us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.