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“Joe Biden, Antifa General.” · Pod Save America

0:20
Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
0:22
Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
0:24
Speaker 1: On today's pod, we'll talk about how Donald Trump celebrated
0:26
Speaker 1: the 4th of July with a racist speech at Mount Rushmore,
0:29
Speaker 1: how Joe Biden is responding, what can be done about
0:31
Speaker 1: the record number of new COVID cases, and we'll check
0:34
Speaker 1: in on the most competitive Senate races ahead of November. First, Lovett,
0:39
Speaker 1: how was the show this weekend?
0:40
Speaker 2: Great episode. Emily Heller back for the 4th. Hari Kondabalu
0:45
Speaker 2: came by. You know, he has that film, uh, the
0:47
Speaker 2: problem with Apu, but he talked about all of this
0:50
Speaker 2: sort of Hollywood reckoning around who portrays cartoon characters, diversity,
0:55
Speaker 2: hacky standup. It was a good conversation.
0:57
Speaker 3: Dr.
0:58
Speaker 2: Anne Ramoyne on what's happening in terms of COVID coming
1:02
Speaker 2: back or never having left. It was a great episode.
1:05
Speaker 4: That's it.
1:06
Speaker 1: That's great. Also great. What a day is back after
1:10
Speaker 1: a much deserved break. Akilah and Gideon are rested and
1:12
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1:14
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1:18
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1:21
Speaker 1: you haven't subscribed yet, I don't know. You're missing a lot.
1:25
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1:26
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1:31
Speaker 1: two of the most wonderful people, Akilah and Gideon. You know,
1:35
Speaker 1: check it out. Everyone's listening. So go for it.
1:39
Speaker 2: It's a great dog walking length.
1:40
Speaker 1: It is a great dog walking or any kind of walk,
1:42
Speaker 1: you know. Also, I did not even realize until I
1:45
Speaker 1: saw this in the prep that there's a brand new
1:47
Speaker 1: Wind of Change bonus episode out today. Check it out.
1:50
Speaker 1: Exclusive to Spotify, Patrick talks to Joanna Stingray, the daughter
1:54
Speaker 1: of an anti-communist who smuggled music in and out of
1:57
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. There's an international love triangle, high fashion,
2:00
Speaker 1: and an explosive ending. How about that, guys?
2:04
Speaker 2: Great names on Wind of Change.
2:06
Speaker 3: The Joanna Stingray episode could have been an entire series
2:09
Speaker 3: in and of itself.
2:10
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it. I'm excited for this.
2:13
Speaker 5: All right.
2:14
Speaker 1: Let's get to the news. I'm not sure why I
2:17
Speaker 1: chose to punish myself by watching Donald Trump's speech at
2:21
Speaker 1: Mount Rushmore on Friday night, but there I was watching Fox.
2:27
Speaker 1: It really made me long for the times when he
2:29
Speaker 1: doesn't use a prompter, which is saying a lot. So
2:33
Speaker 1: the speech actually began somewhat normal. Here's a clip.
2:38
Speaker 4: As we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger
2:42
Speaker 4: that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled,
2:49
Speaker 4: they bled to secure.
2:52
Speaker 1: So what could he be talking about? Is it the
2:55
Speaker 1: pandemic that's killed 125,000 Americans? Is it double-digit unemployment? Is
2:59
Speaker 1: it police brutality, systemic racism? Let's find out.
3:03
Speaker 4: Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out
3:06
Speaker 4: our history, to fame our heroes, erase our values, and
3:12
Speaker 4: indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down
3:24
Speaker 4: statues of our founders to face our most sacred memorials
3:30
Speaker 4: and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.
3:34
Speaker 1: So that's it, guys. That's the growing danger. He went
3:38
Speaker 1: on to talk about cancel culture as well. Love it.
3:43
Speaker 1: Since you were a presidential speechwriter in your past life,
3:46
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to you for analysis about the
3:48
Speaker 1: speech itself.
3:49
Speaker 2: Why not?
3:49
Speaker 1: What do you think? What do you think?
3:53
Speaker 2: There's been this debate for a long time as to like, oh,
3:56
Speaker 2: when are we going to call Trump a fascist? Is
3:58
Speaker 2: he a fascist? Is it too far to call him
3:59
Speaker 2: a fascist? How far down the fascism line of reasoning
4:02
Speaker 2: do you have to be before it's okay to use
4:04
Speaker 2: the term? And I don't really care about that debate
4:07
Speaker 2: in this context, just because whatever Donald Trump's authoritarian leanings
4:11
Speaker 2: may be, his sort of like improv authoritarianism, all rooted
4:15
Speaker 2: in his own ego and all the rest, what is
4:18
Speaker 2: clear is that his speechwriters are definitely natural fascistic thinkers.
4:23
Speaker 2: That is where they go. When people like Stephen Miller,
4:27
Speaker 2: C plus Santa Monica fascist, try to write a speech,
4:30
Speaker 2: they try to do big, soaring, sweeping language because an
4:35
Speaker 2: impression of the kind of thing they think they're supposed
4:38
Speaker 2: to do in these jobs. These are not talented people.
4:40
Speaker 2: These are not particularly bright people. These are the dregs
4:42
Speaker 2: of Republican politics. ideologues and just some of the worst
4:46
Speaker 2: human beings to ever walk through that building. And when
4:48
Speaker 2: they try to do patriotism, when they try to do sweeping,
4:51
Speaker 2: what comes out is just sort of proto-fascistic garbage because
4:55
Speaker 2: nationalism is just patriotism for assholes. But even putting aside
4:59
Speaker 2: the terribleness of the words themselves, what is so striking
5:02
Speaker 2: about this is Donald Trump's brand of white nationalism and
5:08
Speaker 2: fomenting of division and chaos and hatred is It is
5:12
Speaker 2: a luxury for a better time. It is the kind
5:16
Speaker 2: of TV-based riling up of people if they weren't in
5:20
Speaker 2: a state of crisis, if we weren't in the midst
5:22
Speaker 2: of a pandemic, if there wasn't actual genuine need for
5:26
Speaker 2: actual genuine leadership. And so I do think it would
5:29
Speaker 2: be more frightening if Donald Trump's polling was better, if
5:32
Speaker 2: he were in a better position politically. But because he
5:36
Speaker 2: is in such a bad way and because the words
5:39
Speaker 2: are falling, I think, on deaf ears and he is
5:41
Speaker 2: in the process of losing the country, it just comes
5:44
Speaker 2: off as this disgraceful display for the last vestiges of
5:49
Speaker 2: his supporters.
5:51
Speaker 1: Tell me, what did you think? Unfortunately, both of us
5:53
Speaker 1: were texting during the speech, so I know that you
5:56
Speaker 1: watched it as well.
5:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
5:57
Speaker 3: I mean, that's a sad commentary on my life, but
6:00
Speaker 3: that's a different question. I mean, so the content was
6:02
Speaker 3: a moral abomination. It was racist.
6:04
Speaker 1: It was divisive.
6:06
Speaker 3: But I also just think it's so divorced from the
6:07
Speaker 3: reality of people who are trapped in their own because
6:10
Speaker 3: of the pandemic or out of work. It's also completely discordant.
6:13
Speaker 3: I mean, holidays are supposed to be fun. You guys
6:16
Speaker 3: have written remarks for presidents about like Christmas, Thanksgiving, July 4th.
6:20
Speaker 3: And usually presidents try to lift people up or make
6:23
Speaker 3: it in some way joyful.
6:25
Speaker 1: This was none of that.
6:26
Speaker 3: And the delivery on these teleprompter speeches is usually so
6:29
Speaker 3: bad and monotone that it's hard for me not to
6:32
Speaker 3: get caught up in that and frustrated by that. I
6:35
Speaker 3: do try to check myself in these moments because obviously
6:38
Speaker 3: I don't like Trump, as listeners might know. But authoritarianism
6:42
Speaker 3: can work. And I wonder if there's a method to
6:44
Speaker 3: the madness. But like, I don't know. I don't think
6:49
Speaker 3: there's a strategy here. But there was a recent Quinnipiac
6:51
Speaker 3: poll that found. 52% of voters support removing Confederate statues
6:56
Speaker 3: from public spaces. And that was a 19-point swing since
7:00
Speaker 3: August of 2017. They were about evenly split on renaming
7:03
Speaker 3: military bases. There are other polls that show the issue
7:07
Speaker 3: in a worse place, slightly underwater. But all the polling
7:11
Speaker 3: I've seen have shown the numbers consistently moving towards support
7:16
Speaker 3: for taking down Confederate monuments and frustration with naming anything
7:20
Speaker 3: after traitors. And so I think sometimes Democrats and pundits,
7:26
Speaker 3: we obsessively read the news and watch Twitter and cable
7:29
Speaker 3: and we miss the big story. In this case, I
7:31
Speaker 3: think it's the exact opposite. I think Fox News coverage
7:34
Speaker 3: and right wing outlets are distorting Trump's view of what
7:37
Speaker 3: people actually care about. If you watch the pre show
7:40
Speaker 3: on the for the big Fourth of July speech on
7:43
Speaker 3: Fox News, there was no discussion of the coronavirus. It
7:46
Speaker 3: was all media grievance. It's all Tucker Carlson and Hannity
7:50
Speaker 3: focused on the culture war. And Jonathan Swan at Axios
7:54
Speaker 3: actually did a little side by side of things Tucker
7:56
Speaker 3: Carlson has said compared to Trump's speech. And it's nearly identical.
7:58
Speaker 3: So just like mainlining Fox News. Trump's aides told The
8:02
Speaker 3: New York Times they think some people are lying to
8:04
Speaker 3: pollsters about their support for the protests.
8:07
Speaker 1: I think that's a bad bet.
8:08
Speaker 3: You're also seeing background quotes from Trump staff who want
8:10
Speaker 3: him to move on from the racially divisive topics that
8:13
Speaker 3: he prefers to talk about. So I just I can't
8:16
Speaker 3: see a scenario where that speech helped him politically in
8:19
Speaker 3: any way, shape or form.
8:23
Speaker 1: Like I'm no pollster. I just, I find it hard
8:26
Speaker 1: to believe that the election might turn on statues of
8:29
Speaker 1: dead people. Like I just, it is talk about missing
8:34
Speaker 1: the mark. Like to me, it just seemed like a
8:35
Speaker 1: really pathetic sort of display. Like they clearly decided that,
8:40
Speaker 1: you know, Tulsa was bad because the president like went
8:44
Speaker 1: off prompter the whole time and just like did his
8:46
Speaker 1: usual crazy routine. He's talking about the ramp for 15
8:49
Speaker 1: minutes and all that. So they try to get him,
8:52
Speaker 1: On prompter, this is like not just something that like
8:55
Speaker 1: Trump decided to tweet. This is a strategy of the
8:58
Speaker 1: campaign right now, a broader strategy. Trump is reportedly upset
9:02
Speaker 1: with Jared Kushner for pushing him to talk about issues
9:04
Speaker 1: like criminal justice reform and policing reform. Trump and his
9:09
Speaker 1: advisers think that statues is a winning issue, which is
9:12
Speaker 1: why he also announced during the speech that he's signing
9:15
Speaker 1: an executive order to create a, quote, National Garden of
9:17
Speaker 1: American Heroes campaign. that will include statues of historically significant Americans. Like,
9:23
Speaker 1: I just, I mean, like you said, even in the
9:25
Speaker 1: best of times, right? In 2018, in the midterms, before
9:29
Speaker 1: we had a pandemic or a terrible recession, you guys
9:32
Speaker 1: will remember he made the last month the campaign about
9:36
Speaker 1: this immigrant caravan. It did not work then, right? He
9:40
Speaker 1: always needs an imaginary enemy. So he made it about
9:42
Speaker 1: the caravan in 2018. It didn't really work. Now we
9:45
Speaker 1: are in the midst of a pandemic. You see polls
9:47
Speaker 1: everywhere showing people are more afraid of the pandemic as
9:49
Speaker 1: the days go on and the infections rise. People are
9:53
Speaker 1: worried about their jobs. People are very concerned about systemic
9:57
Speaker 1: racism and police brutality. Trump is not on the right
10:00
Speaker 1: side of that issue with the majority of the public either.
10:03
Speaker 1: So these are all the concerns facing the American people.
10:07
Speaker 1: And he's going to go up there and talk about statues,
10:09
Speaker 1: even if you say that, like, he's not with the
10:12
Speaker 1: American people on Confederate statues. Most Americans want Confederate statues down.
10:16
Speaker 1: So then the campaign, even if then they say, like, well,
10:18
Speaker 1: it's about Washington and Jefferson and other statues. These issues
10:23
Speaker 1: are just not fucking driving people's vote choice in the
10:27
Speaker 1: midst of a national crisis. It seems so crazy to me.
10:32
Speaker 2: It's also, you know, there were sort of two things
10:34
Speaker 2: that I thought were interesting about this over the weekend
10:37
Speaker 2: and then today. One is that there was this Gallup
10:41
Speaker 2: poll that came out that showed Donald Trump is now
10:44
Speaker 2: losing independence. He's at 33%. Obviously, he's in single digit
10:47
Speaker 2: with Democrats, but he retains 91% approval amongst Republicans, right?
10:51
Speaker 2: That capture continues, which is better than George W. Bush
10:54
Speaker 2: did when he lost the country, an extreme difference between
10:58
Speaker 2: what independents and Democrats say and what Republicans say. So
11:01
Speaker 2: there's this conversation going on just amongst Republicans in which
11:04
Speaker 2: he feels this strength. At the same time, Trump has
11:07
Speaker 2: now threatened to veto a big defense bill over fucking statues, right?
11:13
Speaker 2: It's a big, giant defense bill with a raise for
11:17
Speaker 2: service members and includes Elizabeth Warren's amendment around renaming Confederate
11:22
Speaker 2: bases that are currently named after Confederate generals and traitors,
11:25
Speaker 2: and he's threatened to veto it. And what you've seen
11:27
Speaker 2: now is a bunch of Republicans in Congress basically ignore
11:30
Speaker 2: it under the presumption that that veto may be overturned,
11:33
Speaker 2: that they'll be able to pass this thing with a
11:35
Speaker 2: veto-proof majority. So, I mean, compare it to 2018. Donald
11:39
Speaker 2: Trump starts fomenting about the caravan, about the caravan. He
11:41
Speaker 2: has a bunch of willing participants in that. That's not
11:44
Speaker 2: really what's happening now.
11:46
Speaker 1: Yeah.
11:46
Speaker 3: I mean, threatening to veto a $ 740 billion with a
11:52
Speaker 3: B defense funding bill because Elizabeth Warren wants to change
11:56
Speaker 3: the name of 10 military bases from Confederate traitors to
12:01
Speaker 3: something else, I think is the perfect anecdote that speaks
12:04
Speaker 3: to how divorced from reality their political strategy is. And
12:07
Speaker 3: And lest you think that they were trying to, you know,
12:09
Speaker 3: sort of narrowly slice this issue and make it about,
12:13
Speaker 3: you know, people trying to pull down a statue of
12:14
Speaker 3: Lincoln or Washington as opposed to Confederates. No, this morning
12:18
Speaker 3: he's tweeting his rage about the Washington Redskins potentially changing
12:22
Speaker 3: their name or he's attacking Bubba Wallace, a NASCAR driver
12:26
Speaker 3: who found a noose in the in the stall where
12:30
Speaker 3: he was working out of. And he's attacking him and
12:33
Speaker 3: calling it a hoax. in saying that and the flag
12:35
Speaker 3: decision has caused the lowest ratings ever in NASCAR. The
12:38
Speaker 3: flag decision there was about banning the Confederate flag from
12:41
Speaker 3: NASCAR events. So he is going for the maximalist racist
12:45
Speaker 3: portion of this debate, and he's doing it on purpose.
12:50
Speaker 6: Yeah.
12:51
Speaker 1: It's not even working for sort of the other Republicans
12:54
Speaker 1: who are following this strategy too, trying to make Democrats
12:57
Speaker 1: have to be like Antifa lovers. And that's partly because
13:01
Speaker 1: of who the opponent is, who Trump's opponent is, Joe Biden,
13:05
Speaker 1: there's this interesting Twitter exchange over the weekend where Ted
13:08
Speaker 1: Cruz tweets, Dems support the riots, the vandals, the anarchists.
13:13
Speaker 1: And AOC quote tweets him and says, yes, that is
13:16
Speaker 1: precisely why the party nominated Joe Biden. That's very funny.
13:23
Speaker 1: But I thought that sort of encapsulated the entire party's problem,
13:27
Speaker 1: like heading into this November with the strategy of the
13:32
Speaker 1: Democrats are standing with the radical left and all they
13:35
Speaker 1: care about is mobs and burning things down and statues
13:38
Speaker 1: like that. It just doesn't comport with the reality of
13:40
Speaker 1: how most voters either view the Democratic Party or view
13:43
Speaker 1: the issues that are sort of driving the conversation.
13:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, Biden can't be a grandpa hiding in the basement
13:51
Speaker 2: and an Antifa. He can't be both. You have to
13:53
Speaker 2: really make a choice there.
13:55
Speaker 4: Yep.
13:57
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about Joe Biden's message, which he's been
13:59
Speaker 1: delivering in a series of new ads that focus on
14:01
Speaker 1: his biography and his positive vision. Here's one of them
14:04
Speaker 1: that just started airing called Taught Me.
14:07
Speaker 6: It's the values we pass around the kitchen table that
14:10
Speaker 6: we remember all our lives. The values that Joe Biden
14:13
Speaker 6: has fought for all his life, he learned around his
14:17
Speaker 6: own family's kitchen table. His parents taught him about the
14:20
Speaker 6: dignity of work, that when you're knocked down, you get
14:23
Speaker 6: back up. That success means looking at your child and
14:27
Speaker 6: realizing they turned out better than you. These are the
14:31
Speaker 6: values that built this country. They help us push for
14:34
Speaker 6: progress and bring us hope. in our darkest moments. Today,
14:40
Speaker 6: people are hurting, scared, and angry. But to heal this
14:45
Speaker 6: kind of suffering doesn't take brute force. It takes empathy
14:50
Speaker 6: and understanding, a belief in dignity, resilience, and the American dream.
14:56
Speaker 6: That's what Joe Biden's family taught him all those years ago.
15:00
Speaker 6: And it's why he'll fight as hard for your family
15:03
Speaker 6: as he does for his own.
15:06
Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think the Biden folks are trying
15:07
Speaker 1: to do with that ad? And do you think they
15:09
Speaker 1: accomplished it?
15:10
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that there's been a lot of
15:12
Speaker 3: polling that's shown us that people don't really know that
15:15
Speaker 3: much about Joe Biden. It can be hard to believe
15:18
Speaker 3: when you're, you know, obsessed about politics like we are.
15:22
Speaker 3: But I think there's a lot of people that know
15:24
Speaker 3: him as Obama's vice president. They don't even know the
15:28
Speaker 3: story that we all used to know of him as
15:30
Speaker 3: like middle class Joe from Scranton, the guy who was
15:32
Speaker 3: in the Senate forever, right? So they're doing some basic
15:36
Speaker 3: foundational education that I think is valuable and important. There's
15:40
Speaker 3: another ad that talks about being the father of a
15:44
Speaker 3: young man deployed to the military that talks about his son, Beau.
15:48
Speaker 3: I think sort of understanding that piece of Biden's biography
15:52
Speaker 3: helps you understand, for example, his outrage about the Russia
15:55
Speaker 3: bounty story and how it can be driven by that experience.
15:58
Speaker 3: So I think it's probably sort of phase one of
16:03
Speaker 3: telling Joe Biden's story I think that phase two is
16:06
Speaker 3: likely to focus more on how Biden managed the recovery act, uh,
16:10
Speaker 3: and hopefully have some sort of details about his plan
16:13
Speaker 3: to help pull the country out of the depths of
16:15
Speaker 3: a recession if he's elected president. But I, I think
16:18
Speaker 3: laying down this stuff early is important. Um, and so
16:22
Speaker 3: I was glad to see that they put out these spots.
16:26
Speaker 6: Love it.
16:26
Speaker 1: What'd you think?
16:27
Speaker 2: They're great ads. I watched them. They work on me.
16:30
Speaker 2: I am a, I am a reset. I was receptive
16:32
Speaker 2: to them. Uh, I will say, uh, uh, dignity, empathy, resilience. Um,
16:38
Speaker 2: I felt you can see them on the PowerPoint that
16:42
Speaker 2: led to the creation of the ad, which I respect.
16:44
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just pretty direct, like dignity, empathy, resilience.
16:48
Speaker 2: These are words, uh, that are kind of great to
16:52
Speaker 2: describe what Joe Biden's trying to project about his campaign
16:55
Speaker 2: in opposition to Donald Trump, who obviously lacks empathy. Uh,
16:59
Speaker 2: I don't believe he has seen dignity in quite some time,
17:01
Speaker 2: wouldn't know it if he met it. And, um, Donald
17:06
Speaker 2: Trump has not been obviously projecting resilience in how he
17:08
Speaker 2: has managed this crisis. So clearly, they are trying. It
17:12
Speaker 2: is actually a really difficult task. I mean, obviously, Trump
17:15
Speaker 2: has been hurting himself a lot, but it's a difficult
17:17
Speaker 2: task to think through the complexities about how you message
17:21
Speaker 2: your campaign in this moment. It's a unique moment. There's
17:24
Speaker 2: not a lot of corollaries you can draw. You can
17:26
Speaker 2: look at the financial crisis in 2008, for example. You
17:29
Speaker 2: can look at other moments of crisis in our history, but,
17:34
Speaker 2: you know, a massive economic crisis, a period of protest
17:37
Speaker 2: and tumult, this health crisis. So it creates a set
17:42
Speaker 2: of challenges, and I think they're navigating that really well.
17:44
Speaker 2: I just, I like the ads.
17:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting, those words that you pointed out, dignity, empathy, resilience,
17:50
Speaker 1: like there's another universe where they can be parodied as
17:55
Speaker 1: sort of political cliches, They work and are meaningful because
17:59
Speaker 1: they sort of meet the moment that we're in. And,
18:02
Speaker 1: you know, I think the best kind of ad and
18:04
Speaker 1: the best kind of message will both set forth your
18:07
Speaker 1: own positive vision, but then have an implicit contrast or
18:10
Speaker 1: even an explicit contrast with your opponent. And, you know,
18:13
Speaker 1: we just talked about how Trump and the biggest one
18:17
Speaker 1: of the biggest problems with his speeches lately and his
18:19
Speaker 1: like obsession with the statue issue is. is that it
18:22
Speaker 1: completely misses the moment and misses the reality that most
18:25
Speaker 1: people are living in right now. And I think what
18:27
Speaker 1: Biden's doing is he's not just doing bio ads about like,
18:31
Speaker 1: here's how I grew up and here's everything about my past.
18:33
Speaker 1: Like halfway through that ad, he starts talking about how
18:36
Speaker 1: today people are angry and they're afraid and they're scared and,
18:40
Speaker 1: you know, and they're hurting. And so he sort of
18:42
Speaker 1: acknowledges both the fear and the anger and the pain
18:45
Speaker 1: that's out there right now, and then says, we can
18:48
Speaker 1: sort of move to a better place as a country.
18:51
Speaker 1: And it's only striking because you get none of that
18:55
Speaker 1: from Donald Trump, from the guy who's the president of
18:57
Speaker 1: the United States. And we're just not, I mean, like,
19:00
Speaker 1: you know, we're used to presidents, especially incumbent presidents during crises,
19:04
Speaker 1: whether it's Barack Obama or George Bush, someone we didn't
19:07
Speaker 1: agree with at all, at least trying to win reelection
19:10
Speaker 1: by saying, we're going to move this, we're going to
19:13
Speaker 1: keep fighting and move this country to a better place.
19:15
Speaker 1: You just don't even get any of that from Donald
19:17
Speaker 1: Trump right now.
19:18
Speaker 4: Yeah.
19:18
Speaker 2: One other, just about the message, you know, there was
19:20
Speaker 2: another ad that was, that felt actually more like a, uh,
19:23
Speaker 2: like a beer commercial, but the beer was Joe Biden
19:26
Speaker 2: with this sort of music. And like, obviously that ad-
19:28
Speaker 2: It takes a president. That is an ad not aimed
19:31
Speaker 2: at Twitter leftists and certainly not Twitter liberals like myself,
19:35
Speaker 2: but I appreciate it. And what you see also in
19:38
Speaker 2: this ad is like, these are non-ideological, right? These are
19:40
Speaker 2: not ads about policy at all. And I was thinking
19:43
Speaker 2: about what, you know, Roberta Kaplan, who's one of the
19:45
Speaker 2: lawyers who fought for marriage equality all the way to
19:47
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court, you know, she talks about dignity as
19:50
Speaker 2: the conservative word for equality. And so you just feel
19:53
Speaker 2: in this ad like an appeal to independents, appeal to
19:56
Speaker 2: people they're trying to peel away from those sort of
19:59
Speaker 2: soft Trump voters or non-voters in the past.
20:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the Trump version of that type of strategy
20:05
Speaker 3: had me worried for a while, right? For a while,
20:06
Speaker 3: we were reading about how they were opening offices in
20:09
Speaker 3: African-American communities and doing outreach in places that Republicans usually
20:13
Speaker 3: pass over. His Super Bowl ad was touting bipartisan issues
20:18
Speaker 3: like criminal justice reform. Now it is all monuments all
20:22
Speaker 3: the time. I don't think it's hard to explain to
20:25
Speaker 3: people that it's weird to release an executive order That
20:29
Speaker 3: threatens to put people in jail for a decade if
20:32
Speaker 3: you deface a monument while essentially disbanding the coronavirus task force. Like,
20:36
Speaker 3: I think people can kind of get that.
20:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, obviously, we're not fans of Trump here on
20:42
Speaker 1: Pod Save America, but there is a version of this
20:44
Speaker 1: campaign and a message from Trump that I think would
20:47
Speaker 1: would scare me a lot more than what he's doing
20:50
Speaker 1: right now, because he could try to make it a
20:52
Speaker 1: more sort of unifying approach and try to win back
20:55
Speaker 1: independents and swing voters. But as of now, he just
20:58
Speaker 1: isn't trying at all. So let's talk about how both
21:09
Speaker 1: candidates are handling the most important issue of the campaign,
21:11
Speaker 1: the coronavirus pandemic. There's a there's a new Washington Post
21:14
Speaker 1: story about this today. Talks about how Biden advisers are, quote,
21:17
Speaker 1: using the stumbling response and renewed surge in cases as
21:19
Speaker 1: a way to paint Trump as uninformed and capable of empathy.
21:22
Speaker 1: Like you said, love it. And only concerned about his
21:25
Speaker 1: own political standing. Then it talks about how Trump's advisers
21:27
Speaker 1: have also come to believe that. The pandemic could decide
21:30
Speaker 1: the election and are looking to reframe the president's response
21:33
Speaker 1: by sending health officials to swing states, quote, even as
21:36
Speaker 1: the president himself largely seeks to avoid the topic because
21:39
Speaker 1: he views it as a political loser. Trump's weekend events
21:43
Speaker 1: had no social distancing or mask requirements. And in his
21:46
Speaker 1: Fourth of July remarks, he said that 99 percent of
21:49
Speaker 1: covid-19 cases are, quote, totally harmless. Like so is Trump's
21:55
Speaker 1: covid strategy just herd immunity now? Is that is that
21:58
Speaker 1: what it's come down to?
22:00
Speaker 3: I don't think he has a strategy. I think his
22:03
Speaker 3: strategy is try to talk about other things and distract
22:05
Speaker 3: us by talking about other things. I mean, if we're
22:08
Speaker 3: like taking your question literally here, right? Like herd immunity
22:10
Speaker 3: would mean like 60 or 70% of the country got coronavirus,
22:14
Speaker 3: which would mean millions of people were dead. So I
22:18
Speaker 3: don't think that's actually it. I mean, I think he
22:19
Speaker 3: just wants to talk about literally anything else. And Look,
22:23
Speaker 3: his response to the pandemic has been the most egregiously bad.
22:28
Speaker 3: I do think you're seeing government officials at all levels
22:33
Speaker 3: fail to figure out how to message this crisis right now.
22:36
Speaker 3: Even in Los Angeles, where we acted earlier, took a
22:40
Speaker 3: whole bunch of draconian steps, it does feel like this
22:43
Speaker 3: thing is getting out of control and the message has
22:45
Speaker 3: gone back to everybody just stay at home again. And
22:49
Speaker 3: I think that's very hard to sell to people in
22:51
Speaker 3: this moment where they just sacrifice months of their lives.
22:53
Speaker 3: They feel like things are getting worse and it's not
22:55
Speaker 3: opening back up. So I don't know what Trump's coronavirus
22:59
Speaker 3: strategy is. I mean, saying 99% of cases are totally
23:02
Speaker 3: harmless is completely crazy. It is not accurate in any
23:05
Speaker 3: way and is likely to lead to many more people
23:08
Speaker 3: to go out and live their lives like they did
23:10
Speaker 3: beforehand and catch this thing and infect their parents and
23:12
Speaker 3: their grandparents and their friends. So it's all just, it's
23:15
Speaker 3: a mess. I don't even know what to make of it.
23:16
Speaker 3: I don't know how to interpret it.
23:19
Speaker 1: Love it. They said that in the story, the campaign's
23:21
Speaker 1: goal is now to convince Americans they can live with this.
23:24
Speaker 1: And the White House hopes that Americans will grow numb
23:26
Speaker 1: to the escalating death toll.
23:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's beyond, what are we supposed to say? You know,
23:32
Speaker 2: what are you supposed to say? It's so awful. You know,
23:35
Speaker 2: there's all these stories in the past couple of days
23:37
Speaker 2: about whether we should be doing something called pool testing.
23:39
Speaker 2: I didn't know anything about pool testing. I don't know
23:41
Speaker 2: if you know about pool testing. The doctors on Love Relieve,
23:43
Speaker 2: it was talking about it. And pool testing is basically
23:46
Speaker 2: when you don't have enough tests, Basically, you mix the
23:49
Speaker 2: blood together, test a bunch of blood. If any of
23:52
Speaker 2: it comes back positive, then you test the individual samples.
23:54
Speaker 2: And it's a way to make the tests go.
23:56
Speaker 6: Further, okay?
23:57
Speaker 2: Two things. One, we are still unable to test enough people.
24:02
Speaker 2: We still don't have the capacity to test. We're still
24:04
Speaker 2: fighting that backlog. But two, that only works if there
24:07
Speaker 2: aren't enough cases in the population that every time you
24:10
Speaker 2: test 10 samples, it doesn't come back positive.
24:13
Speaker 4: Right.
24:14
Speaker 2: That we have now gotten to the point where some
24:16
Speaker 2: of the mitigation efforts to not mitigate the coronavirus, but
24:19
Speaker 2: mitigate our lack of preparedness are not able to work
24:22
Speaker 2: because the disease is spreading so far out of control.
24:25
Speaker 2: We are six months into this. And I remember like
24:30
Speaker 2: a month or two ago, we were talking about the
24:33
Speaker 2: failures that took place in February and March. And I
24:35
Speaker 2: remember the three of us were just like, we are
24:37
Speaker 2: still failing right now. We're failing right now and it's ongoing.
24:41
Speaker 2: We're still doing that. We are still in the midst
24:43
Speaker 2: of this epic failure. And, you know, the confusion around
24:47
Speaker 2: what we should do, right, like Tommy pointed out, like
24:50
Speaker 2: the lack of leadership, the in and out, the what
24:53
Speaker 2: should be open, what shouldn't be open, the lack of
24:55
Speaker 2: leadership on masks, the lack of direction for what we
24:59
Speaker 2: as individuals should do when we did our part and
25:01
Speaker 2: stayed home and tried to mitigate the risk for the
25:04
Speaker 2: country only to discover that in the months we did that,
25:06
Speaker 2: no preparations took place, nothing happened to make life easier.
25:09
Speaker 2: Everybody is starting to make risk assessments. Everybody's starting to say,
25:12
Speaker 2: fuck it. I want to do something. I want to
25:14
Speaker 2: find a group of people to hang out with. I
25:15
Speaker 2: need a life. I need something outside of this. So
25:17
Speaker 2: like the country is breaking, right? It's the failure of leadership.
25:21
Speaker 2: It's the failure of Republican governors across the country. But
25:24
Speaker 2: it's also just our collective exhaustion with this after six months.
25:28
Speaker 2: And that's it. You know, we're just, we're out of,
25:32
Speaker 2: no one has a great outcome for this. No one
25:34
Speaker 2: has a great thing to tell anybody. We're just fucking trapped.
25:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Nate Silver tweeted this and said this
25:40
Speaker 1: over the weekend on one of the Sunday shows. The
25:43
Speaker 1: best thing Trump could do to improve his reelection chances
25:45
Speaker 1: is mandate masks, which is sort of like a bit
25:49
Speaker 1: of an oversimplification. But I did think it was an
25:50
Speaker 1: interesting comment because, like, obviously, we can all agree Trump's
25:53
Speaker 1: response continues to be fucking awful in that it sort
25:56
Speaker 1: of ignores the very real sickness that that's out there
25:59
Speaker 1: and like the rising death toll and case count and
26:02
Speaker 1: all that. But it's also just really fucking short sighted
26:05
Speaker 1: and stupid from a political perspective that the only way
26:09
Speaker 1: like he could improve his chances and improve his reelection
26:13
Speaker 1: chances if he got the virus under control or at
26:16
Speaker 1: least did a better job. And I think part of
26:19
Speaker 1: what we're seeing is. as you guys are both saying,
26:21
Speaker 1: you know, with even local governments and state governments who
26:23
Speaker 1: took pretty strong restrictions like ours did in California early,
26:27
Speaker 1: still failing to get the virus under control, is that
26:30
Speaker 1: policy is one part of public health response, but communication
26:33
Speaker 1: is a huge part, communication and education. And there is just,
26:37
Speaker 1: there's no consistent message from anywhere, partly because Donald Trump
26:41
Speaker 1: decided early on that the federal government was not going
26:44
Speaker 1: to run this response, that he was just going to
26:46
Speaker 1: leave it to states and localities. And you can't have
26:50
Speaker 1: a patchwork response in a country like ours, as big
26:54
Speaker 1: as ours, right? You can't just have 50 states running,
26:57
Speaker 1: each of them running their own coronavirus response and not
27:00
Speaker 1: having a central form of both like responsibility in the
27:04
Speaker 1: federal government and a type of communication that everyone can
27:06
Speaker 1: tune into. Eric Garcetti and Gavin Newsom can give press
27:10
Speaker 1: conferences all day long. They're not reaching as many people
27:12
Speaker 1: as the President of the United States would.
27:15
Speaker 2: I mean, look, the responses may be different in different places.
27:18
Speaker 2: But if we were all operating from a set of
27:21
Speaker 2: guidelines and a set of kind of expectations on people,
27:25
Speaker 2: the mass guidance, you know, look... It was not a
27:28
Speaker 2: foregone conclusion that masks would become this political idea. You
27:32
Speaker 2: could imagine the exact opposite of masks becoming a way
27:35
Speaker 2: that Trump could talk about how we get to open
27:38
Speaker 2: back up. He could take that on any moment. So
27:40
Speaker 2: much of this is simply him being unable to just
27:43
Speaker 2: admit a change or make a change. It's just a
27:46
Speaker 2: personal ego-driven decision that costs hundreds of thousands of of
27:50
Speaker 2: lives and pain.
27:51
Speaker 3: You don't have mini MAGA rallies popping up in front
27:55
Speaker 3: of signs that say, no shirt, no shoes, no service.
27:58
Speaker 3: And it does drive me crazy the way the media is,
28:02
Speaker 3: and I don't mean to blame them for this, but
28:04
Speaker 3: often you see the press sort of eagerly fold into
28:08
Speaker 3: this argument that this is a politicized thing now, that
28:11
Speaker 3: masks are political, when actually the data doesn't really show that.
28:15
Speaker 3: It's a bunch of super intense extremists who have decided
28:19
Speaker 3: that you know, mask wearing is attack on their liberty
28:23
Speaker 3: or whatever. And then there's on the left, like a
28:25
Speaker 3: bunch of people who, you know, retweet a bunch of
28:27
Speaker 3: Karen videos and people in supermarkets. And I think most
28:30
Speaker 3: of the country is actually like, tell me what to do.
28:33
Speaker 3: Tell me how to stay safe. Tell me how to
28:35
Speaker 3: keep my friends and loved ones safe. I will do
28:36
Speaker 3: what you tell me. I just need some sort of
28:38
Speaker 3: clear guidance. And you're absolutely right, John, like that starts
28:41
Speaker 3: with Trump. It starts at the top. The fact that
28:43
Speaker 3: he won't wear a mask, the fact that he won't
28:44
Speaker 3: advise people to do it is, I think, single most
28:47
Speaker 3: damaging thing. But we do need some consistency. We do
28:50
Speaker 3: need bite-sized, actionable guidance to help us guide our own lives.
28:55
Speaker 3: And I don't think that if some state or municipality
29:00
Speaker 3: tries to tell their citizens that you need to lock
29:03
Speaker 3: down as hard as we did in March again, that
29:05
Speaker 3: they're going to trust them. And that's the really scary part.
29:09
Speaker 1: I totally agree with that. And I worry about that.
29:12
Speaker 1: I mean, in what is hopefully a Biden administration, hopefully
29:14
Speaker 1: Joe Biden wins. If he does, he is going to
29:17
Speaker 1: face sort of all of these challenges. And primarily the
29:20
Speaker 1: number one challenge is to communicate to the American people
29:24
Speaker 1: about what we can do to control this pandemic in
29:26
Speaker 1: a way that is consistent and also maybe focused on
29:29
Speaker 1: harm and risk reduction, right? Like take these sensible steps
29:33
Speaker 1: and you're never going to totally eliminate the risk that
29:35
Speaker 1: you might contract this disease, but at least you can
29:38
Speaker 1: reduce harm as opposed to like, swinging what, you know,
29:41
Speaker 1: I remember first we were told not to wear masks.
29:43
Speaker 1: Then we were told to wear masks. We all locked
29:45
Speaker 1: down really hard, Marshall. Like, are we going to go
29:47
Speaker 1: back into a lockdown now? Like when are we, are
29:49
Speaker 1: we just going to keep locking down and not locking
29:50
Speaker 1: down until we get a vaccine over and over again?
29:53
Speaker 1: Like we've got to figure out, you know, is it
29:55
Speaker 1: safer to Outdoors, should we tell people, if you're going
29:58
Speaker 1: to see people, do it outdoors, stay apart, as opposed
30:01
Speaker 1: to telling everyone, no one ever see anyone ever, right?
30:04
Speaker 1: Like there's gotta be some, like you said, Tommy, some
30:07
Speaker 1: actionable steps that people can take that are consistent coming
30:11
Speaker 1: from our leaders. And we're not getting that now. So
30:13
Speaker 1: we are in bad shape, guys. We are in bad shape.
30:17
Speaker 2: It's the, yeah. Masks, masks, no big indoor events, right?
30:21
Speaker 2: Like it's, that's so much of this.
30:23
Speaker 3: But then on top of that, it's like, So there
30:26
Speaker 3: was so much like beach goer shaming early on. And
30:29
Speaker 3: I can't even remember if I participated in it. I
30:31
Speaker 3: don't think I did because I was like, aren't they outside?
30:34
Speaker 3: Isn't this taken from an angle where you have no
30:36
Speaker 3: idea how close they are?
30:37
Speaker 2: Why are we closing? Yes, the angles, Tommy. The fucking angles.
30:41
Speaker 5: Right?
30:41
Speaker 2: Every fucking up. These aren't too many. They're umbrellas. Umbrellas
30:45
Speaker 2: naturally create social distance.
30:47
Speaker 4: Right.
30:48
Speaker 3: Especially if you're taking it like lengthwise of a three
30:51
Speaker 3: mile long beach. Yes, everybody looks pretty close. But yeah,
30:54
Speaker 3: you have this weird phenomenon where places are reopening bars
30:57
Speaker 3: and restaurants too early and then locking down in a
31:00
Speaker 3: draconian fashion on parks and trails and beaches. And it
31:05
Speaker 3: does seem like the data we're getting and learning from
31:08
Speaker 3: based on the protests show that mask usage outdoors really
31:12
Speaker 3: can help us be better.
31:13
Speaker 2: So why are we closing the beaches?
31:15
Speaker 1: I don't get it. It's so frustrating. Literally, you know,
31:19
Speaker 1: to not make it all about Trump, like Eric Garcetti
31:22
Speaker 1: one day is like, it's alfresco dining in LA and
31:25
Speaker 1: everyone's going to be outside now and welcome to our,
31:27
Speaker 1: you know, we're opening outdoor restaurants and the next day
31:29
Speaker 1: is Tweeting, cancel all your plans, stay home until July 4th,
31:33
Speaker 1: don't leave your house. And I'm just like, this is,
31:35
Speaker 1: it's hard for people to follow the mixed messaging. And again,
31:38
Speaker 1: like you said, Tommy, it goes back to an issue
31:40
Speaker 1: of trusting our leaders. You've got to be consistent. And
31:42
Speaker 1: if you do change your mind because the facts change,
31:44
Speaker 1: that's okay. But you've got to be clear about why,
31:47
Speaker 1: you know?
31:47
Speaker 2: It's also, you know, like. All of these decisions about
31:51
Speaker 2: opening and closing were predicated on this being a very
31:54
Speaker 2: short-term thing. And now that it's clearly not going to
31:56
Speaker 2: be a very short-term thing, we need a different risk
31:58
Speaker 2: assessment so that it's sustainable. Even if it's a little
32:01
Speaker 2: bit more risky, we need something long-term and sustainable because
32:04
Speaker 2: this is our new normal for a while. It has been,
32:07
Speaker 2: but it will continue.
32:08
Speaker 1: Totally agree.
32:08
Speaker 3: That is the original sin of the messaging was bend
32:11
Speaker 3: the curve, bend the curve, and let's just not even
32:13
Speaker 3: talk about what comes after. And I think if you
32:16
Speaker 3: paid attention- you knew that this thing was going to
32:19
Speaker 3: be around for a while. The virus wasn't going to
32:20
Speaker 3: go away in the summer like everybody, like Trump told us, right?
32:24
Speaker 3: And that there would be mitigation steps, but we need
32:25
Speaker 3: to really focus on the mitigation steps now. Because I mean,
32:29
Speaker 3: the scariest thing is we're not even talking about hard decisions.
32:32
Speaker 3: We're talking about whether restaurants will be open at 50% capacity,
32:35
Speaker 3: not whether parents won't be able to do their jobs
32:40
Speaker 3: because they're providing childcare and teaching their kids all day
32:44
Speaker 3: as well, starting in September. I mean, this is about
32:46
Speaker 3: to get so much harder.
32:48
Speaker 2: Obviously, it's not just the absence of Trump's harm, but
32:50
Speaker 2: the present of something different. Imagine a president who in
32:54
Speaker 2: June was saying something along the lines of, we have
32:57
Speaker 2: three months to solve this together and get cases down
33:00
Speaker 2: enough so that our kids can go back to school.
33:02
Speaker 2: Let's all do this together for our children. We all
33:05
Speaker 2: want the kids to go back. It's for the teachers,
33:07
Speaker 2: for our economy, for their futures, so that parents can
33:10
Speaker 2: go back to work. Everything hinges on September. We have
33:12
Speaker 2: a new deadline, everybody. It's to get this down by September. Like,
33:16
Speaker 2: there's just such a, we can criticize Trump, but it's
33:20
Speaker 2: not just, it's, there's a whole host of things a
33:22
Speaker 2: real administration would be doing that's completely absent. And the
33:25
Speaker 2: fact that, and we'll get to it, but like the
33:28
Speaker 2: fact that not only is Trump failing to provide that,
33:30
Speaker 2: but Republicans are failing to point out the mistakes, failing
33:32
Speaker 2: to point this out is just so harmful. This is
33:34
Speaker 2: not a Trump problem, right?
33:36
Speaker 3: There, there is this, there's been this strain of like phony,
33:42
Speaker 3: bad faith libertarianism in Republican politics for a long time.
33:45
Speaker 3: I will never get over the time when Greg Abbott,
33:49
Speaker 3: the current governor of Texas, told the people of Texas
33:53
Speaker 3: that he was sending the Texas National Guard to monitor
33:56
Speaker 3: a military exercise called Jade Helm that was going on
33:59
Speaker 3: in Texas. Because somehow he didn't trust Obama to not
34:02
Speaker 3: invade their state and take it over.
34:04
Speaker 5: Right.
34:04
Speaker 3: Like now Greg Abbott is getting fucking jade helmed by
34:08
Speaker 3: local Republican officials who say they won't enforce an ordinance
34:12
Speaker 3: to force them to wear masks.
34:13
Speaker 6: Right.
34:13
Speaker 3: So like they're all getting bitten by the same disease
34:17
Speaker 3: here that's existed in that party for a long time.
34:19
Speaker 3: And like, I have no idea how to fix that.
34:21
Speaker 3: I have no window into the thinking of these people.
34:24
Speaker 3: I guess I asserted it's bad faith libertarianism. I hope
34:28
Speaker 3: that's the truth. Because the alternative is a sort of
34:31
Speaker 3: frightening belief in conspiracy theories.
34:33
Speaker 1: But I don't know.
34:34
Speaker 3: I guess we're going to find out.
34:36
Speaker 1: Look, and that's what happened here in California, too. Like,
34:38
Speaker 1: you know, there's plenty of county officials and sheriffs who
34:42
Speaker 1: told Newsom they weren't going to enforce a mask mandate.
34:44
Speaker 1: They're not going to do this kind of stuff. So
34:46
Speaker 1: you're sort of seeing that everywhere on a local level
34:48
Speaker 1: as well. The other issue with the lack of trust
34:53
Speaker 1: is we're going to see in the fall, because right
34:55
Speaker 1: now we have a number of very promising candidates. vaccine
34:58
Speaker 1: candidates in their final phase of human trials. And there's
35:03
Speaker 1: going to be manufacturing going alongside of it. So like, theoretically,
35:06
Speaker 1: we could have by the end of this year, a
35:10
Speaker 1: vaccine that's getting ramped up and ready to use. But
35:14
Speaker 1: there's going to be a lot of people who wonder
35:16
Speaker 1: if It's safe. It's going to be safe and effective.
35:19
Speaker 1: Or is Donald Trump just telling us it's safe and
35:22
Speaker 1: effective because he wants to win reelection and thinks this
35:24
Speaker 1: is going to be a boon to him? And we
35:26
Speaker 1: shouldn't be in that position of having to wonder when
35:29
Speaker 1: it comes to something as important as a vaccine for this, right?
35:31
Speaker 1: Because it could be perfectly safe and effective. But anything
35:34
Speaker 1: that comes out of the Trump administration now, you have
35:36
Speaker 1: to question, which is a real fucking problem when we're
35:39
Speaker 1: talking about life and death in a pandemic here.
35:42
Speaker 5: So.
35:51
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about how all of this is affecting
35:52
Speaker 1: the Senate races in 2020. If Joe Biden wins the presidency,
35:56
Speaker 1: Democrats will need a net gain of three seats to
36:00
Speaker 1: flip the Senate. And the latest polls show Republican incumbents
36:03
Speaker 1: trailing Democratic challengers by wide margins in Arizona and Colorado
36:08
Speaker 1: and by smaller margins in North Carolina and Maine. Polls
36:11
Speaker 1: are also close in redder states like Iowa, Georgia, Montana,
36:15
Speaker 1: even Kansas. This might be why some Senate Republicans are
36:17
Speaker 1: starting to put some distance between themselves and Donald Trump.
36:20
Speaker 1: As Lovett pointed out earlier, they were mostly unfazed by
36:22
Speaker 1: the president's threat to veto a defense bill that includes
36:24
Speaker 1: an amendment to rename military bases currently named for members
36:28
Speaker 1: of the Confederacy. Some of them have also pivoted to
36:30
Speaker 1: wearing masks in public. What a sad pivot. With Mitch
36:33
Speaker 1: McConnell and Marco Rubio openly advocating for them now. And
36:37
Speaker 1: then there's Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, who's a great example
36:39
Speaker 1: of someone who's trying to have it both ways. In
36:41
Speaker 1: the very same interview where she disagreed with Trump's positions
36:44
Speaker 1: on the protests and Confederate statues. She also rejected the
36:47
Speaker 1: characterization of Trump's pandemic response as failed leadership and said, quote,
36:51
Speaker 1: I think the president is stepping forward. Love it. The
36:54
Speaker 1: GOP strategy up until now has been to stick with
36:56
Speaker 1: Trump no matter what, because that's where the base is.
36:59
Speaker 1: Is that still the smartest strategy for these Republican senators?
37:02
Speaker 2: Man, look, they don't have a lot of good options,
37:05
Speaker 2: you know, uh, They don't. They don't.
37:07
Speaker 4: Right.
37:08
Speaker 2: I mean, there's been some reporting that basically Republicans are
37:11
Speaker 2: sort of watching Trump and they're going to if things
37:13
Speaker 2: don't change by Labor Day, they'll start abandoning him in droves.
37:16
Speaker 2: Let's see if that happens. You know, it's they're damned
37:19
Speaker 2: that they do.
37:19
Speaker 4: Right.
37:20
Speaker 2: Embracing Trump right now is obviously not a winning strategy
37:23
Speaker 2: at a time when his approval rating is dropping. But
37:26
Speaker 2: at the same time, when you decide to distance yourself
37:30
Speaker 2: from Donald Trump, you have to basically figure out. how
37:34
Speaker 2: close you can get to the electric fence before he
37:37
Speaker 2: fucking zaps you, you know? And their collars, these Republicans,
37:40
Speaker 2: their collars are starting to buzz. You know, Jody Ernst
37:44
Speaker 2: is criticizing Trump walking towards that electric fence. She can't
37:47
Speaker 2: see it, but she knows it's there. And then she
37:49
Speaker 2: backs up. He's stepping forward. He's stepping forward. The interesting
37:53
Speaker 2: thing about the question Jody Ernst was asked is it
37:55
Speaker 2: was actually using her language about Ebola, right? Like the Collins, Ernst,
38:00
Speaker 2: a bunch of others, these senators have these quotes about
38:02
Speaker 2: how Barack Obama's failed response to the Ebola outbreak was
38:06
Speaker 2: a sign of his terrible leadership as president. And then
38:11
Speaker 2: when Joni Ernst is confronted by the fact that she
38:13
Speaker 2: made that point now that 130,000, many more, are dead
38:16
Speaker 2: from coronavirus, she has nothing to say because there's nothing
38:19
Speaker 2: she can say. Because, of course, she knows that Donald
38:21
Speaker 2: Trump is an abysmal failure on this issue, but she's
38:24
Speaker 2: afraid to say it.
38:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Iowa Senate race is the most interesting and
38:29
Speaker 3: instructive example to me. I mean, Iowa has been trending conservative.
38:33
Speaker 3: I didn't really think that this race was going to
38:35
Speaker 3: be on the map. And Joni Ernst is certainly an
38:39
Speaker 3: example of someone for whom Donald Trump has made this
38:43
Speaker 3: a really brutal year to be running for the Senate.
38:46
Speaker 3: But like you said, Love, she's not a victim here.
38:48
Speaker 3: She was happy to attack Obama when two people died
38:51
Speaker 3: of Ebola and called it failed leadership. And now her
38:54
Speaker 3: cowardice is on display because of crediting the coronavirus response.
38:58
Speaker 3: I do wonder, for someone like Joni Ernst, I mean,
39:01
Speaker 3: this threat to veto the NDAA, again, a $ 740 billion
39:06
Speaker 3: bill to fund the military, is the kind of thing
39:09
Speaker 3: that's going to create a whole nother round of headaches
39:12
Speaker 3: and a whole other round of bad stories. And I
39:14
Speaker 3: just don't think it's going to be good politics, period,
39:19
Speaker 3: for anyone to vote against supporting that bill. And so
39:23
Speaker 3: to the question of like, Is it too late for
39:26
Speaker 3: them to jump ship? I think historically you can get
39:29
Speaker 3: away with changing your positions in an election. It's just
39:33
Speaker 3: something that voters are willing to go along with. But
39:36
Speaker 3: in this case, like Levitt said, like he is going
39:38
Speaker 3: to savage you and he's going to do it over
39:40
Speaker 3: and over again. And it's going to actually depress turnout
39:44
Speaker 3: among some of those base voters they need. So I
39:46
Speaker 3: do think, I think the time, look, there's a lifetime
39:49
Speaker 3: ahead of us. between now and these Senate races happening.
39:51
Speaker 3: But I'm not sure that I'd know what I would
39:55
Speaker 3: do if I were these Senate candidates. I really don't.
39:57
Speaker 3: It's tough.
40:00
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it is tough. I think that The
40:04
Speaker 1: time to burnish your reputation as an independent minded Republican
40:09
Speaker 1: senator has probably passed. That's right. Because I think look,
40:12
Speaker 1: I think voters are not stupid. They get that the
40:15
Speaker 1: closer you get to an election, you know, if you're
40:18
Speaker 1: you know, you change your mind here and there like. Look,
40:20
Speaker 1: Susan Collins is an example, right? If Susan Collins had
40:24
Speaker 1: played the last couple years differently, if she had decided
40:27
Speaker 1: not to fucking vote for Brett Kavanaugh, if she had
40:31
Speaker 1: decided not to vote for the tax cut, which is
40:34
Speaker 1: incredibly unpopular, if she had decided to vote to impeach
40:38
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, right? You can see this world where Susan
40:41
Speaker 1: Collins maintains this reputation for quasi-independence in Maine, which is
40:47
Speaker 1: another state, that has sort of like drifted a little
40:50
Speaker 1: redder in recent years, decides, yeah, you know what? We're
40:53
Speaker 1: a purple state. We elected someone who was a pretty
40:56
Speaker 1: moderate Democrat in 2018 to Congress, Jared Golden. And we'll
41:01
Speaker 1: return Susan Collins because she has this reputation for independence.
41:04
Speaker 1: She doesn't have that reputation anymore because she decided to
41:08
Speaker 1: just like throw her lot in with Donald Trump. And
41:10
Speaker 1: you're right. The reason she did this is because what
41:13
Speaker 1: if there had been a primary challenge against Susan Collins
41:15
Speaker 1: from some Trumpy candidate on the right? That's what they're
41:18
Speaker 1: worried about. But that's the calculation they made then. And
41:21
Speaker 1: then now they're all going to pay for it because
41:23
Speaker 1: it's harder to run away from them now.
41:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. There's, you know, each of these states
41:28
Speaker 2: has a different makeup than the country as a whole.
41:30
Speaker 2: And there's a little bit more of a path in
41:32
Speaker 2: some of these states for the Venn diagram of appeal
41:35
Speaker 2: to enough Republican voters to and then appeal to enough
41:38
Speaker 2: of those independent voters to kind of build a willing coalition.
41:42
Speaker 2: It's actually why Donald Trump stands a better chance of
41:43
Speaker 2: winning the electoral college than he does in the popular vote.
41:46
Speaker 2: But one thing we're seeing in these polls is as independence,
41:51
Speaker 2: as Republicans stay firm with Trump and independence starts sliding
41:55
Speaker 2: away from him, that overlapping little bit of sweet spot
42:00
Speaker 2: on messaging gets smaller and smaller and smaller. I don't
42:03
Speaker 2: know how you appeal to the people that Donald Trump
42:06
Speaker 2: spoke to at Mount Rushmore, while also appealing to the
42:09
Speaker 2: rest of the country that finds that pretty repellent at
42:11
Speaker 2: this moment. It's a very difficult job to do.
42:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right.
42:15
Speaker 3: Look, the other interesting thing is, I assume at some
42:18
Speaker 3: point he's going to pivot back to immigration. We're going
42:20
Speaker 3: to have another round of caravan-like stories or demagoguing of immigrants.
42:25
Speaker 3: But last month, the number of migrants apprehended at the U.S.
42:29
Speaker 3: border was down 83%. than may in 2019 so like
42:35
Speaker 3: there almost is no immigration happening right now he's furloughed
42:39
Speaker 3: half the workforce it's like they're taking these draconian actions
42:42
Speaker 3: on some issues the the coronavirus is so bad in
42:45
Speaker 3: the u.s the job market is so bad in the u.s
42:47
Speaker 3: they're like all the boogeymen he usually looks to might
42:50
Speaker 3: be harder to find this time i'm sure he'll try
42:53
Speaker 3: anyway but it's just like i don't know what their
42:55
Speaker 3: their path.
42:56
Speaker 1: Looks like yeah i mean look martha mcsally in arizona
43:00
Speaker 1: is is going to have to, in order to win,
43:03
Speaker 1: is going to have to win votes of people who
43:05
Speaker 1: voted for Kyrsten Sinema in 2018. Susan Collins is going
43:09
Speaker 1: to have to win votes of people who voted for
43:11
Speaker 1: Jared Golden in 2018. Tom Tillis in North Carolina is
43:14
Speaker 1: going to have to, you know, win votes of people
43:16
Speaker 1: who voted for some of the congressmen in sort of
43:18
Speaker 1: the North Carolina suburbs, Democratic congressmen in North Carolina suburbs. Like,
43:21
Speaker 1: These Republican candidates in the Senate have no choice but
43:24
Speaker 1: to try to appeal to people who voted for Democrats
43:28
Speaker 1: in 2018 and in many cases in 2016 in a
43:32
Speaker 1: lot of these states that are sort of getting a
43:34
Speaker 1: little bit more purple or blue. And that's a really
43:38
Speaker 1: hard thing to do when the guy at the head
43:40
Speaker 1: of the party is, like you said, Tommy, basing his
43:44
Speaker 1: entire campaign about protecting statues of dead people from vandalism.
43:49
Speaker 2: You know, Donald Trump became president because he was trying
43:53
Speaker 2: to goose his apprentice numbers. Right now, he's running for
43:56
Speaker 2: re-election by appealing to the group of people that will
43:59
Speaker 2: make up the audience of some future Donald Trump TV network.
44:02
Speaker 2: Is it possible that he manages to win re-election by
44:05
Speaker 2: doing that? Of course it is. But that certainly doesn't
44:07
Speaker 2: help these Senate candidates who are not trying to build
44:10
Speaker 2: an audience for a future right-wing nationalist TV platform. There's just,
44:14
Speaker 2: there's no help for these senators coming from Donald Trump
44:17
Speaker 2: right now.
44:18
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is forever trying to win the Republican primary.
44:22
Speaker 1: That is the entire strategy. And like, it's just, you know,
44:26
Speaker 1: it was enough for him in 2016. It's not enough
44:29
Speaker 1: for him and it's not enough for, it's probably not
44:30
Speaker 1: enough for him and it's not enough for many of
44:32
Speaker 1: these Senate candidates in 2020. And so, yeah, they're in
44:36
Speaker 1: a very tough spot. If you want to help them lose,
44:41
Speaker 1: which you should. You can go to votesaveamerica.com slash getmitch.
44:45
Speaker 1: This is our getmitch or die trying fund where your
44:48
Speaker 1: donation will be split between many of the Democratic challengers
44:53
Speaker 1: for the Republican Senate candidates in some of these very
44:56
Speaker 1: competitive states. Like we said, many of which we didn't
44:59
Speaker 1: know would be that competitive. Who thought like Kansas, right? Georgia.
45:03
Speaker 5: Yeah.
45:05
Speaker 1: Montana, you know, Georgia, two races in Georgia.
45:08
Speaker 2: Even as though the picture does become worse for Republicans,
45:11
Speaker 2: it's worth pausing here to remember that it's still an
45:13
Speaker 2: uphill job. It's still hard to win the Senate. And
45:15
Speaker 2: we still have to do really, really well and win
45:17
Speaker 2: in a bunch of places. Like if Doug Jones can't
45:20
Speaker 2: hang on in Alabama, which is a really tough thing,
45:22
Speaker 2: you need one more seat. You start to need to
45:24
Speaker 2: look to places like Iowa and to look to places
45:26
Speaker 2: like Montana and Kansas. So like, you know, we don't
45:28
Speaker 2: want to be rosy. We don't want to be sanguine
45:30
Speaker 2: about this. It's going to be really hard and we
45:32
Speaker 2: need to win a lot more than they do. We
45:34
Speaker 2: need to really kind of like clean up to win
45:36
Speaker 2: the Senate.
45:36
Speaker 1: That's all. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's a
45:39
Speaker 1: really important point because I think like Arizona, Colorado looking
45:44
Speaker 1: really good. Um, Maine looking, looking pretty okay. If we
45:48
Speaker 1: win those three and you know, for some reason we
45:52
Speaker 1: don't win Alabama, which is possible because it's just a
45:54
Speaker 1: deep red state, even though Doug Jones is fucking terrific
45:57
Speaker 1: and you should donate to him. Um, then we need
45:59
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Then we need Cal Cunningham to win in
46:01
Speaker 1: North Carolina and, which is a state that hasn't gone
46:04
Speaker 1: to Democrats in a presidential year since 2008. So that's
46:08
Speaker 1: not an easy race. And then fortunately, we have a
46:11
Speaker 1: couple different paths to get there. Maybe we pull out
46:13
Speaker 1: a win. Steve Bullock wins in Montana. Maybe we get
46:16
Speaker 1: one in Kansas, maybe one of the Georgia races or
46:18
Speaker 1: maybe Teresa Greenfield in Iowa. So we do have a
46:21
Speaker 1: lot of paths, but it is that sort of fourth seat,
46:24
Speaker 1: that final pickup that's going to be the tough one,
46:26
Speaker 1: even under the best circumstances.
46:28
Speaker 6: Yep.
46:30
Speaker 5: All right.
46:30
Speaker 1: Well, that's our show for today. We're guestless today.
46:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're guestless. I want to talk about two things. Okay,
46:35
Speaker 2: let's talk about it. No, no, no. As long as
46:37
Speaker 2: we're in the outro, there's two things. One, very sad
46:39
Speaker 2: about Morricone passing away. One of the greatest composers in
46:43
Speaker 2: film history. You know the music. You've heard it a
46:46
Speaker 2: million times. You should just play it. Do yourself a favor.
46:50
Speaker 2: Throw on a Spotify Morricone playlist. Entertain yourself. Inspire yourself.
46:55
Speaker 2: It's terrific. Second point I want to make, and this
46:58
Speaker 2: is not important. At all. How dumb is Mount Rushmore?
47:06
Speaker 2: How fucking stupid.
47:09
Speaker 1: This is the clip the RNC is going to play.
47:13
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. We blew up a mountain to carve four faces.
47:19
Speaker 2: You know.
47:21
Speaker 1: I've always sort of wondered about the choice of the four.
47:24
Speaker 1: The choice of the four presidents.
47:25
Speaker 2: Okay.
47:26
Speaker 1: Washington, Lincoln. Teddy Roosevelt.
47:28
Speaker 2: Andrew Jackson.
47:29
Speaker 6: Gluck.
47:29
Speaker 2: And then it's like, they gave up halfway through. The
47:33
Speaker 2: detritus from the explosions is still under the fucking faces.
47:36
Speaker 2: They never finished the goddamn thing. Donald Trump next to
47:39
Speaker 2: Mount Rushmore didn't make me think, oh my God, he
47:42
Speaker 2: doesn't belong on Mount Rushmore. It made me think, God,
47:44
Speaker 2: he reminds me of stupid Mount Rushmore.
47:47
Speaker 3: The thing about Mount Rushmore is, I wonder how many
47:50
Speaker 3: people in the country know that Stone Mountain Park exists
47:54
Speaker 3: in Georgia, which is literally a gigantic... monument carved into
48:00
Speaker 3: the side of the mountain that glorifies the Confederacy that
48:04
Speaker 3: I believe was open to the public on the anniversary
48:08
Speaker 3: of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. It is an abomination.
48:13
Speaker 1: Designed by the same person, right?
48:15
Speaker 3: Let's direct some of that Pentagon budget towards blowing that
48:18
Speaker 3: thing the fuck up because there's no reason for it
48:20
Speaker 3: to exist.
48:22
Speaker 2: Tommy, cancel culture. Shame on you. I would cancel that
48:25
Speaker 2: mountain in a heartbeat. Let's cancel that mountain. I support
48:28
Speaker 2: canceling that mountain.
48:29
Speaker 6: Yeah.
48:30
Speaker 1: Let's cancel the mountain.
48:31
Speaker 2: And look, I actually think that, um, and now this
48:34
Speaker 2: is what they will get.
48:34
Speaker 1: Let's get, let's, let's, let's, uh, let's send our Antifa
48:37
Speaker 1: troops there.
48:38
Speaker 2: Let's have, um, let's have, uh, uh, Joe Biden direct
48:42
Speaker 2: a phalanx of Antifa dynamitis or whatever you call them.
48:46
Speaker 2: And have them blow up that fucking Confederacy monument for that.
48:51
Speaker 2: And then if they have any dynamite left, I think
48:54
Speaker 2: with a couple of key explosions, you could turn Andrew
48:56
Speaker 2: Jackson into Barack Obama. I think you can.
48:58
Speaker 3: Actually get it done.
49:01
Speaker 2: Fine, you don't want it. And listen, okay, okay, fine.
49:04
Speaker 2: We can do FDR. We can do FDR. But I,
49:07
Speaker 2: you know, just think about it. Just think about it.
49:08
Speaker 3: The other thing that just drives me so crazy about
49:11
Speaker 3: the Confederate monument debate is like, Nathan Bedford Forrest, his
49:14
Speaker 3: statue went up in Tennessee in the Capitol in 1978,
49:17
Speaker 3: like disco. was basically getting run out of nightclubs at
49:22
Speaker 3: that point. This isn't some long history that people were
49:25
Speaker 3: proud of. These are monuments to white supremacists put up
49:28
Speaker 3: pretty recently. And like, it's just, it's so infuriating.
49:32
Speaker 1: The thing about history thing is so fucking, you want history,
49:34
Speaker 1: go into a fucking museum, read about history online, get
49:38
Speaker 1: taught history. There's plenty of ways to teach history. Our
49:41
Speaker 1: public places are limited in nature and what we choose
49:44
Speaker 1: to put there says something about what we are proud of.
49:47
Speaker 2: And I'm an idiot, by the way. It's not Andrew Jackson.
49:49
Speaker 2: It's Thomas Jefferson. I was going to say, I forgot
49:52
Speaker 2: who was on Mount Rushmore. It's still very stupid. And
49:57
Speaker 2: I'm actually fine with it. You really just pick one. Honestly,
50:01
Speaker 2: you can redo the faces any way you'd like. Any
50:03
Speaker 2: way you'd like. We should have a vote.
50:05
Speaker 3: So just send a plastic surgeon in there is what
50:07
Speaker 3: you're saying.
50:08
Speaker 2: I always forget who's on Mount Rushmore. Because again, what
50:12
Speaker 2: a fucking stupid project.
50:15
Speaker 1: I don't think Trump could name them. He was just there.
50:17
Speaker 2: I still think one of the great questions Trump could
50:20
Speaker 2: face is perform the Pledge of Allegiance right now.
50:24
Speaker 5: There'd be a lot of mumbling i'm into that let's
50:28
Speaker 5: get yeah well you can slip that question to uh
50:31
Speaker 5: first debate moderator tucker carlson see if he'll ask that's
50:34
Speaker 5: right that's.
50:35
Speaker 2: Really good well tucker carlson riding in a ferrari he
50:37
Speaker 2: bought with ppp funds okay.
50:41
Speaker 1: All right i think is that is that everything everyone
50:44
Speaker 1: has to say that's all i've got bye guys we'll
50:47
Speaker 1: see you in a couple days bye Pod Save America
50:54
Speaker 1: is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
50:58
Speaker 1: Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited
51:01
Speaker 1: by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks
51:04
Speaker 1: to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Reston, and
51:08
Speaker 1: Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team,
51:11
Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who
51:14
Speaker 1: film and upload these episodes as videos every week.