Coffee with Katie Phang, Joyce Vance, and Me!

JOYCE

Did you see yesterday Pete Hegseth had this supposed Christian nationalist pastor to offer Christian prayer at the Pentagon? This is a guy who’s on record saying that the constitutional amendment that guarantees the three of us, all women, the right to vote it should be repealed. So, my coffee cup this morning says, “Votes for women.”

MARY

Beautiful. We should get one of those.

KATIE

This is my coffee cup dedicated Pete Hegseth. [raises middle finger] Thank you.

MARY

That’s my favorite one.

KATIE

It’s special.

JOYCE

Hanging out with y’all gets me in trouble. I try so hard not to swear publicly because I have four children and I just don’t want them to catch me at it. And you guys are already pushing the buttons.

MARY

But Joyce, there’s a reason we call her Katie Phucking Phang.

KATIE

That’s p-h-u-c-k-i-n-g.

MARY

Of course!

JOYCE

That morning when we were sitting around at your place, Mary, it was right when Katie got her MSNBC show, and we were talking about what the name of the show should be and somebody, and it might’ve been E. Jean, said The

Katie Phucking Phang Show, which is what I called it in my head for all those years.

MARY

Me, too. In fact, E. Jean responded to your post last night and called us the Holy Trinity,

MARY

Joyce Vance, Mary Trump, and Katie Phucking Phang.

KATIE

The Unholy Trinity

JOYCE

Well, you guys, there’s not much going on in the news. What are we going to talk about?

MARY

Cats sleeping on keyboards.

JOYCE

Dingus left for me this morning. Did y’all see I had Dingus? He started out on the floor with Bella, my German Shepherd.

Okay. I know y’all didn’t come here for cat talk.

KATIE

This is literally how we are when we’re together. This is our group chat personified, and then when we’re physically in the same room, it’s even crazier. I will not lie. So, in full confession mode. Yes, that’s exactly what’s happening.

JOYCE

Like Mary’s mug says, this is where fake news goes to die.

There are a lot of people from Minneapolis joining us. I continue to be really inspired by the folks in Minneapolis and the way they’re sort of leading the way right now.

MARY

It’s a reminder that, window dressing aside, things are still very bad there. And the damage wrought by the Trump regime and ICE and CBP, it’s going to take a very long time to recover, not just psychically and emotionally, but economically. An official in Minneapolis said that the economic toll was worse than COVID on local businesses.

KATIE

I believe it. When I was there, people were just hiding out. They can’t leave. But that was also a testament to their community organization where they were buckling down and taking care of each other and just offering help to total strangers. I interviewed a woman on Friday who is a mutual aid worker, and she explained it’s an incredibly elaborate system that they have created wherein she gets the money donations. She goes and she buys the food and the goods. They go to a specific distribution location, which changes all the time to avoid ICE and CBP. And then the people that are the ones that deliver the goods and food, they are clean—meaning they never have any interaction with ICE. They are not observers. They do not follow, they do not video. They do nothing so that they’re not on that radar and they’re switching them out all of the time, which is a huge demand because this is a volunteer effort, right?

Nobody’s getting compensated to do this. And then when I was in Minneapolis St. Paul a few weeks ago, I went to Smitten Kitten, which was one of the central locations for collections and donations, and I was so happy to hear they’ve actually now exceeded the need for coats and physical kind of donations. They’ve moved to rent assistance because a lot of people haven’t been able to leave their homes to go to their jobs, but they still have to pay their rent and their mortgages. Even though the kids get escorted and the food gets delivered, you still have to be able to pay your bills as they come due and it is still cold. So, they’re definitely taking care of each other there. A hundred percent.

JOYCE

Can I tell y’all though, what worries me about this? I wrote a piece about this on Cafe where Prett Bharara and I hang out for our podcast. Two Americans were executed on the streets of Minneapolis, and I think this administration hopes that we will all just forget about that. They have Homan, and in case anybody’s forgotten, Homan, the Border Tsar, is the guy who was credibly accused of taking a $50,000 bribe. A $50,000 bribe from wealthy businessmen who wanted him to steer government contracts to them after the Trump administration came back in. That investigation was just shelved. It was canceled. It’s not like they zeroed it out, they just quit investigating. So, this is the guy who’s in Minneapolis saying, “We’re doing a drawdown.” I’m really bad at math, it’s why I went to law school. But I saw that the number of federal agents who were stationed in Minneapolis during operation Metro Surge was about 3,200 to 3,500. Homan said that a thousand of them were going home. That still leaves an outsized number of federal agents on the ground in Minneapolis.

They’ve imported JAG lawyers into the US Attorney’s office, which was so decimated by resignations that they needed new lawyers. I am not here to denigrate JAG lawyers but they’re not federal prosecutors, they’re trained in military law. They don’t do the same sorts of cases that we do in US attorney’s offices. And if you don’t think that that’s deeply disturbing, I don’t know what to say. We can’t let the administration walk away as if nothing ever happened. Governments that kill their own citizens openly on the streets with no consequence—that doesn’t happen in this century. That’s Nazi Germany. Even in Russia, Putin, was linked to people that were being pushed out of windows, but he wasn’t that brazen about it. I’m so worried that we’re just going to give the administration a pass like we always do.

MARY

And it’s important to remember not only is Homan corrupt, he’s as much of a Nazi as the guy he replaced Greg Bovino. So that was just more window dressing. And they’re not just brazenly murdering American citizens, they’re also blaming the victims. They’re slandering them, defaming them by calling them domestic terrorists.

The question now is what do we do when the things that the government is doing to distract us from the thing they don’t want to be held accountable for is just as consequential. We’re dealing with ICE in Minneapolis; we’re dealing with the murder of American citizens with total impunity; the Epstein files; the dismantling of the post-World War II order; the fact that the United States of America is murdering people in the Caribbean Sea without due process; the kidnapping by the U.S. government of the president of Venezuela. All of it just goes under the radar. How do we negotiate that, stay focused on the most salient things and get to this point where there is some kind of accountability? Because, Joyce, I think you’re right. There’s so much awful going on, but murdering American citizens, bragging about it, blaming them, and then just turning the page while Donald Trump’s name is in the Epstein files a million times. It’s scary.

KATIE

I think we’re doing a pretty good job though of shining the spotlight. We’re not always just reactive to what’s going on in terms of the newsy headlines. And I will say something that we’re doing well is we’re starting to connect the dots in ways that show the through-lines, which is the corruption and the grift. Corrupt doesn’t always mean financial grift. It can be corrupting the process to go after political opponents by using the Department of Justice; seizing ballots from Fulton County so you can try to control the outcome of the November 26th election; seizing voter rolls that you were otherwise unable to get previously. And I think that what we’re all doing in our own respective ways, especially in independent media, is highlighting these things and showing that it’s not random. There is some merit to Steve Bannon’s idea to flood the zone with bullshit.

But this is not bullshit when you’re killing people in the street. This is not bullshit when you’re declaring Antifa tp be a domestic terrorist organization.

Something I’m incredibly proud of is that next Tuesday we’re doing counter programming to the State of the Union. We’re calling it the People’s State of the Union. We have members of Congress that are meeting with regular everyday Americans that have been canned from their jobs as federal workers and they don’t have health insurance; whose families have been impacted by the immigration enforcement plans; who are impacted by the Epstein files. That’s the kind of stuff I think we have to be doing. And I’m proud that it’s subversive and disruptive and it’s highlighting the things that are incredibly important.

JOYCE

I’m looking forward to that too. I’m sad I won’t get to be with y’all in person because I actually have a book event in Montgomery, Alabama that was planned a long time ago. Bob and I were up in Maine for Valentine’s Day weekend taking a rare break, and I taped something right after we had come in from this massive snowshoeing adventure. It’s so funny. I’m in full on Maine mode with no makeup. What you see is what you get. But I mean, honestly, is Donald Trump really going to stand up on Tuesday and claim that the state of our union is strong with a straight face?

MARY

Yes of course. He doesn’t have a choice. I mean, the entire strategy right now of his regime is to gaslight the American people and to convince enough of them that they should not trust their own lived experience. You say prices are going up because your paycheck doesn’t stretch as far as it used to. You’re wrong. Prices are down; inflation is down. Whatever it is, whether it’s the economy or foreign policy, or the polls. He claims he’s doing better in the polls that any president in the history of the universe ever has. And it’s insane on the face of it.

But as Katie was saying earlier, the reason independent media is so important is because information is increasingly siloed in this country. So the people listening to him don’t get any alternative versions.

They don’t get the actual facts. I bet there are tens of millions of people in this country who do not know that Donald was indicted on 91 counts; that he’s an adjudicated defamer and rapist. They don’t know that he stole government documents. I used to give people a pass because they’re getting lied to all the time. But if you are somebody who supports him and you hear what he says on the world stage and you see what his administration is doing, separate and apart from all those other horrors we know about, that should be enough information. There are too many people out there who still think that Donald is their guy. He will lie to our faces and many people will believe him. That’s why the kind of counterprogramming you guys are doing is so important.

JOYCE

We’ve talked about this from really, I think the earliest days of our friendship. Donald Trump is now down to a hardcore of supporters who are afraid of change. They are afraid of a multicultural, multiracial America where everybody has equal opportunity based on merit. And I go back to the Jeff Session days in Alabama where it really did come down to that, this fear of having to compete in a marketplace full of other people and the need to maintain some sort of superiority. Now that [Donald] has been exposed for who he is—losing Marjorie Taylor Green, right? When you’ve lost Marjorie Taylor Green, man, you are in trouble.

And the question is in large part, and I don’t mean that we should assume this burden by the way, but the question is how do we make it possible for people who really want to abandon [Donald] at this point now that he’s been exposed the killings in Minneapolis, the ICE detentions, the attacks on the boats in open waters in violation of international and US law, how do we make it possible for those people to feel safe coming over?

Because it’s hard to confess when you’ve made a mistake. They’ve obviously, in many cases, made tragic mistakes. And there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to be super welcoming, but I recognize that with the midterms looming, it’s more important than ever to create a still bigger circle that folks can stand on. What are y’all doing?

KATIE

You’re way more gracious than I’m, I’m not gracious. I’m just pragmatic.

JOYCE

We desperately need massive majorities in this election, sort of fraud proof majorities, if you will.

KATIE

I’m going to cite to somebody who I don’t have any respect for and that I loathe, but I will cite to him because he is respected in MAGA, which is Nick Fuentes. He went on a rant a couple of days ago where he said, “Fuck Maga, fuck Trump. We elected him in November of 2024. He had the entire 2025 to do what he promised to do. He screwed it all up. He can’t blame people around him,” and he’s actually telling his followers and others to sit out and not vote in November of 2026. For what it’s worth though, to Joyce’s question, they’re kind of doing it for themselves too,

In some ways, he and others in that space are having these kind of come to Jesus—well, no, because Jesus was a Jew and Nick Fuentes doesn’t like the Jews. But they’re having these self-realizations. In some way, Joyce, they’re doing their own work.

But I have this conversation all the time with people. If you’re a triple Trumper, I’m never going to be able to penetrate that bubble. And I cannot waste my energy trying to continue to convert you. Clearly what I am doing, something is working if you are as a triple Trumper, realizing that he fucked you over. So you know what? I’m going to keep my eye on the ball and I want to win. I don’t think winning means that I have to convert a triple Trumper to voting for a Democrat. I just don’t think that that’s what I have to do.

MARY

I agree. I think it’s a waste of time. There are a few things. First of all, Joyc’s, point that people hate to be wrong, that is a psychological phenomenon, and it is very difficult to overcome. It doesn’t make sense to berate people for having been wrong because they’ll just dig in their heels. I’m sort of with Katie. I don’t forgive these people. I don’t want to understand them. But as Katie said, Donald is his own worst enemy. His people, aren’t going to vote for us ever, but they may stay home. Just as the Republicans are trying to suppress our vote through legislation,

KATIE

The SAVE act.

MARY

Yeah, exactly. They’re also suppressing their own voters. Now, to the point of speaking to people who are waking up? I have a problem with appealing to people’s self-interest. Suddenly, it’s affecting you and it matters, but it didn’t matter when we were separating children from their parents; killing people with COVID; and murdering American citizens on American streets. Now because the economy’s bad and it’s affecting you directly? But we have to accept that as a reality. But I also think, Joyce, you have more of an in than Katie and I do. There are certain people in this country who’re not going to listen to a word I say.

Ronda and I went to Ohio to a very red county to talk to the Madison County Dems. The people we spoke to who live there, who have as their neighbors, the people who voted for Donald two or three times, they can make a difference. They can have those conversations. What we need to do and what we, should all plan to do is keep those Democrats in those very red counties motivated and energized and make them feel supported so that they can go out and keep having those conversations. Because there are some counties in this country that will never vote for a Democrat for Congress. It could change the statewide vote, however. We could have more Democratic governors and senators than we might otherwise.

JOYCE

I like that. I think that’s the point, right? This might be a rare moment where I disagree with you, but it’s the other races on the ballot, especially at the midterms. We have a friend, lifelong Republican, voted for Trump in 2016, and by 2024, he actively voted for Democrat for the first time in his life. But in 2020 he stayed home.

And I think that’s important to empower people to stay home if they’re not going to vote for a Democrat, but they’re really struggling, tell them sometimes it’s okay to sit one out, but it’s possible to influence people at the margins, and that means down ballot races. Doug Jones is on the ballot to be governor in Alabama, and I think maybe if people want to express their distaste for Trump by voting for a Doug Jones or voting for Janet Mills for the senator or whoever comes out of the Texas Democratic primary, I agree with you, Katie. I feel your frustration. There’s nothing that I can say to these people that are okay with what Donald Trump has been doing to this country. At the same time, I just think that we have an opportunity to rebuild guardrails in this election, and I worry about what will happen if we don’t. So I’m trying to put on the proverbial big girl panties and figure out the ways that we can influence that without doing injustice to our own personal beliefs. Because look, we were all here from the get-go, but then again, for a variety of reasons, maybe people weren’t there and didn’t see what we saw in Donald Trump. Maybe they didn’t have access to news sources that we did. I just want to be thoughtful about getting this right.

MARY

Can I just say something really quickly, because I’m not at all suggesting that we alienate these people. I’m just saying that there are a lot of people who I can’t reach anyway. But I’m very curious to know what you guys think of this. This is one of the things we talked about in Ohio. Instead of trying to change people’s minds about policy or about whether they regret voting for Donald or what have you, or making them feel bad about it, maybe just have this kind of conversation. What is okay with you? Is it okay with you that people on American soil really no longer have a right to due process? Is it okay with you that governmental agencies are murdering American citizens in our cities? Is it okay with you that 700,000 people, most of them children are dead now because we stopped funding a vital agency?

JOYCE

I think that’s the right approach to ask questions as opposed to telling people things just to ask questions. Well, why do you think this is okay? Or what do you like about this administration, this regime?

KATIE

One thing that I have learned that is a just north star for most people is that all politics is truly local. Because once you turn off your TV or you turn off your computer or your smartphone and you’re not exposed to the nationalized politics or the federalization of these issues, it’s all like, is that pothole getting fixed? Does my kid have a good education? Is my community safe? These are the things that people focus on more than anything, and understandably so because that’s what’s kind of preeminently in their face. But I think a good happy medium between what you’re talking about, Joyce which I think is noble, but I’m not sure it’s pragmatic because I don’t want to lose my humanity, but there is an entire group of people that don’t believe that other people have the right to an existence.

JOYCE

That’s right. Like the “illegal aliens” label. It’s just terribly dehumanizing.

KATIE

It’s not just immigration. They don’t believe that LGBTQ plus people have the right to exist.

MARY

Especially trans people.

KATIE

It’s not like, “I don’t like your green shirt, Katie.” It’s, “I don’t think that you deserve to breathe.” That is how some of these people think. S I was reading some of the comments. I agree there are some people that are so fucking far off the spectrum on this that we’ll never be able to reach them, but maybe there are the “moderates.” Although Joyce, you say this all the time, so I’m going to impeach you with your own words: the Overton window has shifted so damn far over.

That’s why when you propose something that should be just basic humanity, people are like, that’s so fucking progressive. It’s really not. It’s because the window of normalcy has shifted so far that we have programmed ourselves to think that this is where we are, where we really should not be. But I think, Mary, one thing you said, which I thought was just this huge epiphany for me, is if all policies is local and there are people that we shouldn’t crucify for making bad decisions previously, like Joyce says, then what we should do is empower people that are their neighbors.

They’re not going to trust the carpet bag or Katie Fang from Miami who’s loud and obnoxious and profane and doesn’t give a fuck, but they may trust the incredibly genteel, polite, and smart, but sassy Joyce Vance, who’s their neighbor, who could influence the way that they think about these issues. I just think that maybe that’s how we get to people.

But to Mary’s Point, Joyce, there are people that are intentionally living in these bubbles of disinformation because it makes them feel good about their life choices. And then you look at the guy who called into C-Span who was like, “I’m a triple Trumper, but I hate him because,” and he’s wheezing on the call and he clearly needs his Affordable Care Act tax subsidy. And he was like, “Oh, I feel duped by voting for him. And I’m like, “Sorry. If the economy was good for you and you had your tax subsidies, you wouldn’t care. You wouldn’t care what was happening in Minneapolis. You wouldn’t care that children are getting fucking killed in detention facilities.

MARY

Like law enforcement. They don’t wear masks.

JOYCE

Law enforcement agents do not wear masks while they’re doing their jobs.

KATIE

So, what are we negotiating with, right?

JOYCE

Yeah. Katie, I just want to say this about your point, because I mean, I agree with you. I’m fighting against my own instincts on this one. I think the answer to my original question about what do we do, how do we make it possible for the Triple Trumpers or the people who were questioning earlier than that to vote democratic or at least not vote in the midterm elections? I think Mary has the answer. It’s provide good solid information to their democratic leaning neighbors. They’re not going to listen to me. They’re too busy leaving death threats on my phone at work. People increasingly feel free to be graphic. I’ve even noticed this in airports, the number of men that are willing to bump into you or shove past you. It’s like there’s this general diminishment of civility in the American community.

KATIE

Because the president of the United States says it’s okay to treat women like shit.

JOYCE

Educating people, giving people the arguments to make it their family dinner tables at neighborhood potlucks because your neighbors are the people that you’re going to have conversations with and trust. I think that’s our answer here.

KATIE

I like that. I think it’s a happy medium. And I think that’s what Mary’s saying too. We can empower people with the information so that they can go into those conversations with people. My Republican neighbors are still kind of polite to me, but if we’re outside walking our dogs together, they’ll be more inclined to have a conversation with me than a total stranger. And so maybe there’s something that I can say that will make them feel like, “Oh, well, Katie doesn’t have three horns. She just has two.” So that’s a little bit better.

See, Mary, I always make you laugh.

JOYCE

You guys, so can we talk actually about a little bit of good news? I was awake when this happened, which speaks to how poorly I think we’re all sleeping these days.

KATIE

No kidding.

JOYCE

Happy 66th birthday to the former Prince Andrew, who’s in custody in the United Kingdom on his birthday. They arrested him on suspicion of passing confidential information to Jeffrey Epstein while he was the British Trade Envoy, the first member of the royal family to face arrest. I had a child trafficking case many years ago where my defendant was first put into custody in England, and I was delighted to learn that their system was a little bit different than ours in that they could hold this guy for 30 days while they compiled evidence against him.

But I understand from a friend who’s a barrister in Britain that this is a little bit different, that Andrew’s potentially on a 72-hour hold. He’ll probably be released within eight to 12 hours. But nonetheless, this is the third person, adjacent to the British government who’s facing serious consequences for involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. I feel like maybe the king is actually showing us the way, right? The king is showing us that no man is above the law by, but clearly King Charles was aware that his brother was about to be arrested when this happened.

KATIE

The BBC is reporting that the palace was not informed prior to the arrest.

JOYCE

Yeah, sure, Jan.

KATIE

But still, you know what the refreshing takeaway is, even if they were, they didn’t get involved,

KATIE

The Prime Minister has said, the Deputy Prime Minister says no one is above the law. And so they really mean that in England versus the lip service we get from SCOTUS here in the United States.

MARY

Charles said, The law must take its course as this process continues, it would not be right for me to comment further.” The full, fair, and proper process should be followed. So yeah, I think on the one hand, Joyce, you’re right. This is really good news. It’s a long time coming. On the other hand, it just underscores how far we have fallen here, and how many people in the administration, at least six, have been named many, many times in the files. Howard Lutnick should be in prison. And the White House is like, yeah, whatever. And that’s because why? Because Donald is mentioned more than anybody else and is implicated in much more serious things. They can’t go after anybody else because then that would expose him. And here we are with a totally compromised DOJ protecting the predators and endangering the victims.

JOYCE

Can we just be clear about the fact that the Justice Department where I spent 25 years, and I’m still deeply committed to it as a legitimate institution, no longer is. This is now Donald Trump’s law firm occupying the Kennedy Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, doing Donald Trump’s bidding. He is directing his attorney general about who to indict in accidentally posted social media messaging. We can only imagine the direct orders that he’s giving her when they are, in fact in private.

I think in this moment, and this brings us full circle to Minneapolis, the whole notion is to live, to fight another day, to restore the Justice Department as an agency that will begin to hold people accountable. No president wants to prosecute their predecessor, but we are in a moment where we understand the consequences of not doing that, not doing it promptly, not doing it in a way in which the objective facts are presented to the American people. We are going to need a Nuremberg style accountability at the end of this administration. I don’t love that conclusion. I think it’s a sad moment. But Jill Wine-Banks, my podcast co-host, who was the only woman on the Watergate team, loves to say that the original sin in our democracy was the failure to hold Richard Nixon accountable. We let him fade off and did the easy thing.

MARY

Get rehabilitated.

JOYCE

Totally rehabilitated. Was it Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter who said, “The moment is upon us when we will have to choose between doing the easy thing and the right thing.” We are past that moment, but we do have to understand that we need a justice department that will do its job in a very objective fashion. And that, I regret to say, does not mean stacking it in a bipartisan fashion. That means putting in people who are committed to the rule of law, who will do their jobs.

KATIE

Joyce Vance, Attorney General of the United States.

JOYCE

Oh, no, no, no, not this girl. I’m a little bit too old for that. The good news is there is in many ways a justice department in exile, right? There are great people younger than me who understand the institution and what it should be, and are willing not just to restore it, but in many ways to revitalize it, to create the justice department that we all want to have.

MARY

And I think we’re at this very critical moment in our history, which we have an opportunity if we can make it through this year, not, as you said, to reform around the edges, but to reimagine, re-envision and create for the very first time the kind of democracy we desperately need and all of us deserve.

KATIE

Not rebuild, reform—that’s what we need to do. We don’t go back to what we had. We have to build something new and better.

MARY

Start from scratch,

JOYCE

Keep moving forward. I mean, it’s the moment that we’re in, Hey, it’s why I wrote that book called Giving Up is Unforgivable.

MARY

That’s right. Everybody read it. If you haven’t already, go buy it right now.

JOYCE

I was rereading it for an interview I have to do later this week, and I was thinking, it really is true. The whole bottom line of what we’re doing right now is refusing to give up with every fiber of our being. No matter what they do. We just have to stand up for the right thing.

And March 28 is the next No Kings March. My sign is just going to say, “Renee Good, Alex Pretti,” because that’s what I’m carrying forward in this moment

KATIE

I see red yarn. Are you knitting me my red beanie for when I go back to Minneapolis?

JOYCE

I’m getting ready to cast on red beanies. For those of you who don’t know, knitters are knitting red hats as a nod to Norway during World War II where they were a form of protest against the Nazis. I’ve been getting people to send me pictures of their hats, and I have even become shameless about approaching people in airports where I’ve been spending way too much time lately because knitters are sitting in airport waiting areas, knitting red hats. It’s like this quiet form of protest. When you see so many people doing that, you know that something important is happening.

KATIE

I’m ready for my red hat.

JOYCE

I’ll see how fast I can knit you guys. This has been so lovely seeing y’all, and thank you so much to the Wow, more than 4,000 people who have joined us. Amazing. So happy. This is how we do it—in community.

MARY

Thanks for hanging out with us, everybody.

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